The dog, sure of its importance, keeps running up and down fore and aft of the herd, straightens out the recalcitrant or laggardly cows, makes its voice heard to gain respect. From time to time it comes and looks up at its master to claim his approval. He’s a gentle, ugly mongrel, who has never known what it is to be patted and who, like most of his dubious breed, is very likely to be called Whitey or maybe Patches — merely because of the white patches on his lower legs. Imagination is not the strong point of country folk, who consider it wiser and more reassuring for things to be repeated identically. It was the Crusaders, on their return from Palestine, who invented the idea of baptizing the faithful animal in the name of those “dogs of infidels,” so we still come across a few dogs called Medor. But no one would want to choose their names from the calendar of saints. That would be to blaspheme against the Holy Spirit, the only sin that is not remissible.
As for cats, they have no civil status. In generic terms, they are just “cats” — and it’s a mistake to feed them because when their bellies are full they won’t even bother to chase mice anymore, which after all is their function, and why we tolerate them. They are saddled with the old tradition of bringers of bad luck, which transforms them into scapegoats and sometimes into quarry, when there’s nothing better to kill. It is not unusual to come across their famished corpses riddled with shot in the hollow of a furrow. Some have a more enviable fate and can bask, supremely indifferent, on the rim of a well or groom themselves interminably on a windowsill.
On other occasions it’s a horse and cart that enjoins the motorist to take his foot off the accelerator. The man stands on the cart, keeping a loose hold on the reins, as upright as a charioteer. His feet are wide apart, to ensure his balance. This stance is also the assertion of his power—? that, for instance, of preventing anyone from passing him. He wears faded blue denim overalls, with patches of a darker indigo sewn over his bottom and his knees, a reminder of his garment’s long-forgotten original color. Frequently, with a Napoleonic gesture, he inserts a free hand into the bib of his overalls. But the essential attribute of his caste, his fetish, is his cap, whose peak pulled down over his eyes both protects him from the setting sun and makes him look like a person of consequence. His cap is more important to him than his horses; it is only separated from him at bedtime, although it comes as quite a surprise, when he takes it off for a moment to scratch his head, to see a pure white tonsure, in sharp contrast to the coppery red of the back of his neck, which has been tanned by the sun and the inclement weather.
When he feels that the car behind him is becoming impatient, he sends a rapid movement rippling down the reins that smacks the hindquarters of the horse and makes it get a move on for three paces, but it very soon reverts to its weary walk. Often, sitting at the back of the cart, her legs dangling, both hands clutching the rails, his wife comes eye to eye with the motorist facing her behind his windshield, and she alone has to brave his wrath. In such cases, she becomes absorbed in the contemplation of a landscape she has seen a thousand times, and in which there is nothing to be seen, and contents herself with pulling her autumn-colored smock down over her thigh when a rut jolts her and discloses a knee as white as her husband’s balding head. Her rubber boots only come up to mid-calf, and so reveal her thick gray wool socks. She wishes herself a thousand leagues away and prays to heaven that the road will soon widen and give the irascible driver room to pass. To keep her composure, with an exquisite gesture she pushes a lock of hair back under her scarf. Which gives one to understand that the art of good manners is found just as naturally in the country as it is in the town. She is greatly relieved when the cart finally turns into a side road.
Father’s clients did not all own large businesses. In the impoverished Brittany of the interior, in the isolated villages, most of the retail outlets were more or less general stores, in comparison with which our shop in Random could be seen as a model of specialization. Was this due to their geographical situation? Entering these glory-holes with their multiple odors, you found yourself back in the days of “the Conquest of the West,” when the bazaars that flourished along the railroad offered the new colonists bacon, gunpowder, and lace. As each new demand appeared in the commune, fly papers and pink and green sachets of shampoo would find themselves cheek by jowl on the counter with a long-playing record of a compilation of the most popular operettas, interpreted by the king of the accordion and his great orchestra of three musicians. In this quasi-economy in the mountains, all needs had to be catered for: from bottle gas to writing paper, not forgetting fancy cups and saucers, “a souvenir of my first communion.” This is where Father came in.
He would sometimes go dozens of kilometers out of his way just to sell two glasses and three plates to a general store-café in some obscure village in the Arcoat. Brittany had a gift for these heterogeneous shops in which married couples combined their talents as one adds a string to one’s bow in the hope of ameliorating the run of the mill. Some were real Jacks-of-all-trades: market gardeners in the morning, hairdressers in the afternoon, and insurance agents in the evening. The bar was their indispensable source of income. Demanding no specific skill from its proprietor except that of succeeding in filling glasses to the brim (with that precise knack of half turning the bottle to prevent the last drop from trickling down its neck), it guaranteed a minimum but constant income, as the consumption of alcohol by the most fervent drinkers never flagged until they were on their deathbeds. Besides, the more bars there were to visit — the only tried and tested remedy against boredom and solitude — the more it delayed the dreaded moment when there was nothing else to do but go home. In Random, a village that, modest as it was, nevertheless boasted no less than seventeen cafés, you could tell the precise time of day by the state of intoxication of their most assiduous habitués. On Sundays, for instance, when Monsieur So-and-So, who progressed with metronomic regularity from one bistro to the next, came staggering up to his last port of call, everyone knew that it was two in the afternoon, that we had just finished our chocolate eclairs, and that Madame So-and-So, his wife, had been waiting stoically since the end of High Mass, her handbag on her knees, in the last remaining car parked in the square.
As for Monsieur René, he was a sundial in himself. And there was no need for the sun to shine for his nose to become red: rutilant, granular, a street-market strawberry. He was a veteran of the first war who was ending his days in the old people’s home and who shuffled along leaning on two canes. His entire day was occupied by two great circuits of the square, with a systematic halt at each café. In the interval, he went back to the canteen for his lunch. Considering the speed of his movement in four-four time (one foot, one cane, the other foot, the other cane) and the steep slope joining the old people’s home to the village, it could be said of Monsieur René that he was a very busy man.