The Christophes had tried to dissuade him: “Joseph, The Three Musketeers, whether there’s one more or one less, and no one even knows exactly how many they were, but in any case they can get on perfectly well without you. You’d be taking too many risks for nothing much.” But the “nothing much” in question was also called Emilienne, and that’s the kind of risk that for a twenty-year-old justifies certain extravagances.
He left Nantes by stealth and pedaled hard through the growing dusk, his suitcase fastened to the carrier, his fishing rods strapped to the crossbar. He rode without lights to avoid attracting attention — he had removed the red reflector from the rear mudguard — diving behind a hedge with his bike every time some vehicle’s headlights pierced the darkness — with a curfew in force, it could only be someone undesirable — stopping at a signpost to read it by the flame of his lighter since he had taken so many detours that he had finally gotten completely lost, arriving just as the show was about to begin, sneaking into the wings where while awaiting his entrance he put on his makeup and borrowed the poor gardener’s wig, promising to give it back before the end of the show, which he did immediately after the scene of the embarcation for England. For this was no time to hang around. He wouldn’t wait for the reward of his brilliant feat. And yet with what enthusiasm the company would have welcomed its hero. But the alarm might already have been raised. When he confided to Maryvonne, as he gave her a letter to pass on to the proper quarter, that he intended to call at the house to collect a few things and some more books, she told him that the Germans had commandeered his aunt’s little cottage and that she, as he had requested, was camping in the big house with a group of students she had taken in as boarders so that any authoritarian squatters would come up against what might be seen as a “No Vacancies” sign. Three of these would-be squatters, kept at a respectful distance by this obstinate little force, had had to squeeze into the tiny little hermitage in the garden. So he abandoned his plan and set off once again on the road to Riancé. For a few kilometers he was seized with remorse at not having spared a little time for his courageous aunt. Why hadn’t he at least left her a note? She, the ever-faithful, betrayed by her swaggerer of a nephew. All at once he felt less proud of himself. Soon it began to rain, a fine, insidious rain that, together with the coldness of the night, obliged him to look for shelter. He was far enough away, now. He spotted a barn, hid his bike, and went and curled up in the hay where, tired out, he fell asleep.
Very early the next morning he got off his bike outside the shop of Monsieur Burgaud, ladies’ and gentlemen’s tailor at Riancé, a firm founded in 1830 according to the aristocratic gilded coat of arms above the shop window. While waiting for the shop to open, he did his best to make himself presentable, extracting bits of hay from his clothes, wiping the lenses of his glasses, and running a comb through his hair, hoping for the best. Two girls passed him, giggling. They walked through the garden around to the back of the house and shortly afterward one of them began to crank up the shop shutter, once again looking curiously at the half-frozen young man rubbing his hands and stamping his feet on the pavement outside. Since there weren’t any customers, he pushed the door open, and the little copper rods hanging above his head began to jingle. He was immediately enveloped in a warm smell of cloth, which consoled him for his night of vagrancy. The small glass window of the stove cast a flickering orange gleam on the floor. He was scrutinizing the piled-up lengths of cloth wound around their boards, admiring as a connoisseur the long, ornate counter with the square-sectioned wooden measure lying on it, when a woman came in from the back of the shop. By her slightly lopsided gait, which corresponded to the description he had been given of her, he recognized her as Madame Burgaud. “What can I do for you, Monsieur?” she asked suspiciously, keeping her distance from the tall young man who stank of hay. A lot, but he thought it would be more seemly to begin by introducing himself. No doubt she knew all about it — he had been sent by her daughter Marthe and her son-in-law Etienne, who, when they were first married a few years before the war, had gone to live in Random and taken over a firm dealing in grain.
It was Etienne, in whom he had confided after he received his call-up papers, who had advised him to go to Riancé. For the best of all reasons: you never saw a single German there. And then, another advantage in these days of shortages, the town was surrounded by forests that abounded in game, all the more so in that shooting was forbidden, so the most princely supplementary rations were available. Poaching was rife, and on some Sundays it wasn’t unusual for venison to be served at the Burgauds’ table. And anyway, since life in Random had become too difficult, that was where Etienne had sent his wife and three children. There was a warm welcome to be found at the house of his parents-in-law. Alphonse Burgaud knew all the peasants in the region, having at one time or another made suits for them — either for a funeral or a wedding — and he would certainly be able to find a farm willing to harbor the fugitive.
Madame Burgaud asked the tall young man to follow her, took him into the living room-dining room, invited him to sit down in spite of her fears that the tenacious smell of hay might contaminate her armchair, and went to fetch her husband. Three steps inlaid with mosaic led up to this room, which occupied a wing recently built on to the house. Lighted by large picture windows at an angle to each other, it looked out on a little enclosure where a tiny goat was prancing around untethered. Coming back unexpectedly, Madame Burgaud anticipated the question of the young man looking pensively out of the window and, pointing at the animal, said, “With his very unusual business sense, my husband is going to turn us all into goats.”
As the peasants were short of liquid assets, the tradition being that money only came in at the end of the harvest — and a suit sometimes didn’t have the patience to wait — Alphonse Burgaud accepted without haggling whatever he was offered in exchange for his work. A goat for the biggest jobs, some butter and eggs for the more modest ones, and even “You can pay me next time,” if his debtors were too hard up. The first kid of a long and already ancient line of descendants ended up on his table. When the three little girls of the family, from whom the truth had been concealed, recognized in various roasts their playmate of the last few weeks that had inexplicably disappeared, they began to sniffle, then great big tears fell on their plates, and soon, in a chorus of sobs, they refused to touch their food, whereupon Alphonse declared that he wasn’t hungry either. At which Claire, his wife, since that was the way it was, grabbed the dish and tipped all its contents, plop, into the garbage. The goats that followed — there had been as many as four in the fenced enclosure in which there was a log cabin — were allowed to take their time to grow up and die a natural death, to the great displeasure of Claire, who asked her husband to bring them to her as single components in future. In spite of its size, it was a long time since the last one had been a kid. A pituitary deficiency, no doubt, but whatever it was it had allowed the peasant to drive a hard bargain, because, honestly, all those yards of organdy, those dozens of hours spent in plying the needle and ruining one’s eyesight, those long fitting sessions to ensure that the bride would finally look like a fluffy liiftle cloud — all this was worth more than a dwarf goat.