The Earth Read online

  ‘You can be caught out with that sort of thing,’ Jean said.

  ‘Yes, of course, if you take pot-luck with the commercial travellers who work the little country markets. On every market, there ought to be an expert chemist with the job of analysing all these chemical fertilizers, which are so often adulterated. The future certainly lies with that sort of fertilizer but we'll all have kicked the bucket before then. You have to be brave enough to suffer on behalf of all the others.’

  The stench of the manure that Jean was turning had cheered him up a little. He adored its promise of fertility and was sniffing it with the relish of a man smelling a randy woman.

  ‘Of course,’ he went on after a pause, ‘there's nothing like good farm muck. The trouble is there's never enough of it. And then again people spoil it, they don't know either how to prepare it or use it. Look at yours, for example, it's been dried up by the sun. You haven't been covering it.’

  And when Jean confessed to him that he was still using the Buteaus' old pit, in front of the cowshed. Hourdequin attacked him for his conservatism. For some years now he had been putting turf and earth over the bottom of his pit, and in addition he had arranged a system of pipes so that his liquid-manure heap received all the household slops, the urine of both animals and people, all the farm sewage, in fact; and twice a week liquid manure was pumped over the middle heap. And, finally, he had taken to emptying out the latrines as a precious source of fertilizer.

  ‘Yes, there you are! It's stupid to waste God's good gifts! For a long time, I was like the peasants, I had qualms about it. But now Old Ma Poohpooh has converted me. You know Old Ma Poohpooh, don't you, she's your neighbour. Well, she's the only one who's got it right. Those cabbages of hers where she empties her chamber-pot are superb, really outstanding for size, and flavour too. You can't deny it, everything depends on that.’

  Jean laughed as he jumped out of his empty cart and began piling his manure up into little heaps. Hourdequin followed him amid the clouds of steam swirling all around them.

  ‘When you think that the night-soil of Paris alone would fertilize seventy-five thousand acres. They've worked it out, and at present it goes to waste, they only use a very small part of it in powder form. Think of that! Seventy-five thousand acres! Think what that would do to Beauce, can't you see it covered with manure and all the wheat that would grow?’

  He made an expansive gesture, embracing the immense flat plain of Beauce. Enthusiastically, he drew a picture of the whole of Paris opening the floodgates of its sewers and releasing their fertilizing flood of human manure while streams of liquid dung came pouring through brimming channels and covering every field. And bathed in sunshine, this ocean of excreta would rise up and up, its stench invigorated by the steady breezes of the plain. The great city would be restoring to the land the life which it had received from it. The soil would soak up these riches and the fertile, bloated land would lavish giant harvests of good wheaten bread.

  ‘We might have to take to the boats then,’ said Jean, both amused and disgusted at this original idea of submerging plains under floods of night-soil.

  But at that moment the sound of a voice made him look round. He was surprised to see Lise standing in her cart drawn up beside the road and shouting at the top of her voice to Buteau:

  ‘Listen, I'm off to Cloyes to fetch Monsieur Finet. Father's collapsed in his bedroom. I think he's kicking the bucket. Go back and have a look.’

  And without even waiting for a reply, she whipped up her horse and drove off, growing smaller and smaller as she bounced away along the straight road.

  Buteau leisurely finished spreading the last of the heaps. So his father was ill, what a bloody nuisance! Perhaps it was just a trick to get special attention! Then he thought that it must after all be quite serious for his wife to incur the expense of fetching in a doctor, so he put on his jacket.

  ‘He's mean with his manure, that fellow,’ muttered Hourdequin, intrigued by the manure on the next field. ‘Stingy farmer, stingy land. And a nasty piece of work whom you'd better be careful of, after all that trouble between you. How can you expect things to be all right when there are so many rogues and bitches in the world? The land's fed up with us, that's the truth.’

  He went off to La Borderie, disconsolate again, just as Buteau was clumping away heavy-footed back to Rognes. Left to himself, Jean finished off his job, depositing forkfuls of manure at ten-yard intervals, making the fumes of ammonia even more pungent. There were other steaming heaps in the distance, clouding the horizon in a fine bluish haze. The whole of Beauce would remain like this, warm and pungent, until the frosts.

  The Buteaus were still living with the Frimats, occupying the whole of the house except for the downstairs back room, which Frimat's wife had kept for herself and her husband. The Buteaus felt cramped and, above all, they missed their kitchen-garden, for Frimat's wife had naturally retained her own little patch which enabled her to feed her husband and even offer him a few little luxuries. They would have moved out into larger accommodation had they not realized that their presence was a source of exasperation for Françoise. As the two properties were separated only by a party-wall, they would talk at the top of their voices, loud enough to be heard, saying that they were only camping out there and would certainly be returning to their old house at the first opportunity. So it was pointless to go to the bother of making another move, wasn't it? Why and how they might manage it, they made no attempt to explain to each other and it was this crazy certainty and utter confidence, based on unknown factors, that upset Françoise so much and spoilt her pleasure at having become the owner of the house; quite apart from the fact that, now and again, her sister Lise would prop a ladder against the wall to shout abuse at her. Ever since the final settlement of accounts in Monsieur Baillehache's office, she had been saying that she'd been robbed and would stand in her backyard interminably hurling foul accusations over the wall.

  When Buteau finally reached home, he found Fouan lying sprawled on his bed in his little corner behind the kitchen, under the hayloft stairs. The two children were looking after him; Jules, now eight, and Laure, three, were playing at making streams by emptying the old man's jug on the floor.

  ‘Well, what's all this?’ asked Buteau, standing beside his bed.

  Fouan had regained consciousness. His wide-open eyes slowly turned and stared; but his head did not turn. He seemed as though turned to stone.

  ‘Look here now, Father, there's too much work to be done, you mustn't play the fool! You can't pack up today.’

  And as Laure and Jules now succeeded in breaking the jug, he clouted them, making them both yell. The old man did not blink an eyelid but kept staring through his wide-open eyes. So there was nothing to be done, since the old boy couldn't stir his stumps or himself. We'll see what the doctor says. He was sorry he had left his field and set about splitting some logs in front of the door, in order not to be idle.

  In any case, Lise came back almost at once with Monsieur Finet, who spent a long time examining the sick man, while she and her husband watched anxiously. If the old man died straight away, his death would have been a good riddance; but now it might last a long time. That could cost a pretty penny, and if he were to peg out before they had laid hands on his nest-egg, Fanny and Jesus Christ would surely make a fuss. The doctor's silence confirmed their anxiety. When he sat down in the kitchen to write a prescription, they decided to question him.

  ‘So it's serious, is it? Might last a week, eh? Heavens, what a long prescription! What's all that you're writing?’

  Monsieur Finet made no reply: he was used to this sort of interrogation by peasants bewildered and upset by the sight of illness, and he had taken the wise decision of treating them like horses, refusing to enter into conversation with them. He was very familiar with the common forms of illness and usually managed to cure them, better than a cleverer doctor would have done. But since he blamed his patients for having ruined his career, he treated them roughly,
thereby making them all the more deferential, despite their constant suspicions as to the effectiveness of his potions. Would the good that they did be worth the money they cost?

  ‘So you think that with all that lot he'll get better?’ Buteau went on, scared at the length of the prescription.

  The doctor merely shrugged his shoulders. He had gone back to look at the sick man, intrigued to discover a little fever after this slight stroke. He took his pulse again, with his eyes on his watch, not even bothering to ask any questions of the old man, who was looking at him with his bewildered air. And as he left, he simply said:

  ‘It'll take three weeks. I'll look in tomorrow. Don't be surprised if he's a trifle delirious tonight.’

  Three weeks! These were the only words that the Buteaus heard and they filled them with consternation. What a lot of money if they had a similar list of medicine every day! The worst thing was that now Buteau had to take his cart and rush off to the chemist's at Cloyes. It was a Saturday; Frimat's wife, coming back from selling her vegetables, found Lise alone and so disconsolate that she was just standing there doing nothing. And the old woman was equally disconsolate when she heard what had happened: she never had any luck, she could at least have taken advantage of the doctor's visit to ask about her old man into the bargain, if it hadn't been market day. The news had already spread through Rognes, because La Trouille had the impertinence to appear and refused to leave until she had felt her grandfather's hand. She went back and told Jesus Christ that he wasn't dead, at any rate. Hard on the heels of this shameless little hussy, La Grande appeared, obviously sent by Fanny. The old woman took up her position at her brother's bedside and summed him up by the freshness of his eyes, like the eels from the Aigre. She went away with a sniff, apparently disappointed that it wouldn't be this time. After this, the family paid no further attention. What was the point, seeing that the odds were that he would recover?

  Till midnight the house was in confusion. Buteau had come back in a nasty mood. There were mustard plasters for his legs, a potion to take hourly and, if he improved, a purge for the following morning. Frimat's wife lent a willing hand but at ten o'clock, dropping with sleep and not greatly concerned, she went to bed. Buteau would have liked to do the same and started bullying Lise. What on earth were they doing there? Certainly watching the old man wouldn't help him to get better. He was now wandering in his head, rambling away out loud, seemingly imagining he was out in the fields, working as hard as he had in the distant days of his prime. And Lise, disturbed at hearing her father mumbling these incoherent old stories, as though dead and buried and returning from the grave, was just about to follow her husband, who was undressing, when she thought she would tidy up the sick man's clothes, which had been left on a chair. She shook them carefully, after thoroughly searching through the pockets, where she found nothing but an old knife and some string. Then, just as she was hanging them up at the back of the wall-cupboard, there, staring her in the face, she saw a little bundle of papers lying in the middle of a shelf. Her heart missed a beat: it was the nest-egg, that nest-egg for which they had been on the look-out for the last month, which they had been searching for in all sorts of extraordinary places and which was now lying there for all to see under her very nose! Had the old man been changing his hiding-place when the stroke had laid him low?

  ‘Buteau! Buteau!’ she called in such a strained voice that he hurried in, wearing only his shirt, thinking that his father was breathing his last.

  He too was left breathless at first. Then the pair of them were seized by such a frenzy of joy that they joined hands and, face to face, capered up and down like goats, oblivious of the sick man who, now with eyes closed and with his head sunk deep in his pillow, was still rambling on, continually losing the thread in his delirium. He was ploughing.

  ‘Come along, you old nag, come along. It's as dry as a bone, curse it, it's like rock! It's back-breaking, I'll have to buy another one! Gee up! damn you!’

  ‘Sh!’ whispered Lise, turning round with a sudden start.

  ‘Oh, for God's sake,’ Buteau replied. ‘How can he know? Can't you hear him raving?’

  They sat down beside the bed, their legs giving way under the shock of their joy.

  ‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘nobody will be able to accuse us of having searched him, because, God's my witness, I wasn't really thinking of his money. It just jumped into my hand. Let's have a look.’

  He was already undoing the bundle and counting out loud.

  ‘Two hundred and thirty and seventy, that's exactly three hundred. Yes, that's it. I'd worked it out right, because of that quarterly payment, those fifteen five-franc pieces, that time at the tax-collector's. It's the five per cents. Isn't it funny to think of those shabby little bits of paper being as good as real money!’

  But Lise shushed him again, scared at a sudden outburst of mirth from the old man, who had perhaps now reached the Great Harvest in the reign of Charles X, the one which they hadn't been able to store for lack of space.

  ‘What a lot! What a lot! It's stupid, what a lot there is! God save me, when there's a lot, there surely is a lot!’

  And his choking laughter sounded like a death-rattle. His mirth must have been hidden deep inside him, because no sign of it was to be seen on his rigid face.

  ‘It's just foolish thoughts running through his mind,’ said Buteau, with a shrug.

  Silence fell. They were both looking at the papers and thinking.

  ‘Well, what shall we do?’ whispered Lise in the end. ‘We'll have to put them back, I suppose?’

  But he made a vigorous gesture of refusal.

  ‘Oh, yes, of course we must put them back. If not, he'll start looking for them and screaming the house down and we'll be in a fine mess with those other swine in the family.’

  She interrupted him again, shocked at hearing her father sobbing with despair and misery, from the bottom of his heart, tears which seemed to sum up his whole life but without rhyme or reason, because he merely kept repeating:

  ‘I'm buggered! I'm buggered! I'm buggered!’

  ‘And do you think,’ Buteau went on fiercely, ‘that I'm going to leave these papers with that old man who's going off his rocker? So that he can burn them or tear them up, oh, no, that's not on!’

  ‘Yes, that's true,’ she murmured.

  ‘Well, that's enough, now let's go to bed. If he asks for them, I'll answer him, I know what to say. And the others had better not cause any trouble!’

  They went to bed after hiding the papers under the marble top of an old chest of drawers, which seemed safer than a locked drawer. Left alone, in the dark in case a candle caused a fire, their father continued to rave and sob deliriously all night.

  Next day, Monsieur Finet found him quieter, better than he had hoped. Ah, these old carthorses, they're as tough as nails! The fever which he had feared seemed not to have materialized. He ordered iron, quinine, rich man's drugs, the cost of which once again threw the couple into consternation; and as he was leaving he was tackled by Frimat's wife, who had been lying in wait for him.

  ‘My dear woman, I've already told you that your husband's just a cabbage, no more, no less. I'm not a gardener, for goodness' sake! You know what the end will be, don't you? And the sooner the better for him and for you.’

  He whipped up his horse and she sank down on a boulder in tears. Certainly twelve years was a long time to have been looking after her husband; and as she grew older her strength was flagging, so that she was terrified that she might no longer be able to tend her little garden; all the same, she felt sick at heart at the thought of losing her paralytic old husband, who had relapsed into childhood and whom she carried about, changed and pampered with delicacies. Even his good arm was becoming paralysed now and it was she who had to stick his pipe in his mouth.

  At the end of a week, Monsieur Finet was surprised to see Fouan on his legs, a trifle weak but determined to walk because, he said, the way to stop yourself dying is not to want
to. And behind the doctor's back, Buteau gave a sly grin because he had destroyed all the prescriptions after the first one, claiming that the safest thing was to let the illness cure itself. However, on market day, Lise was soft-hearted enough to bring back a potion which had been prescribed the day before; and as the doctor came in on Monday for the last time, Buteau told him that the old man had nearly had a relapse:

  ‘I don't know what they'd put in that bottle of yours but it made him bloody ill.’

  That was the evening when Fouan decided to speak out. Ever since he had been up, he had been roaming around the house with an anxious look; his mind was a blank and he could no longer remember where on earth he had hidden his papers. He ferreted and rummaged about everywhere, desperately probing his memory. Then vaguely he recalled something: perhaps he hadn't hidden them after all, but left them there on the shelf? But if he was mistaken and nobody had taken them, wouldn't he be letting the cat out of the bag and admitting the existence of this hard-earned nest-egg which he had been hiding with such care ever since? He struggled with himself for another two days, torn between anger at this sudden disappearance and the need to keep his mouth shut. But the facts were becoming clearer in his mind, he could remember that on the morning of his stroke he had put the packet down, intending to slip it into a gap behind a beam in the ceiling, which he had noticed as he was lying in bed. So, feeling miserable and robbed, he finally spoke his mind.

  They had finished their evening bowl of soup. Lise was putting the plates away and Buteau was rocking to and fro on his chair with a facetious look on his face; he had been watching his father closely ever since he had left his bed and was waiting to see what would happen, realizing from his father's unhappy, overwrought look that the time had come. And, in fact, the old man, his legs weak and tottering from walking up and down, suddenly stopped short in front of his son.

  ‘What about my papers?’ he asked, in a hoarse, strangled voice.

  Buteau blinked and looked extremely surprised, as though failing to understand.