At his arrival he thought he detected a sort of hesitancy in the waters and the tall bulrushes, unruffled by any breeze. Everything seemed to him preternaturally silent, as if in his presence the trees and muddy grass at the pool’s edge had suddenly fallen quiet to observe him. He had not moved for several minutes when he noticed, coming from among the reeds, two ripples disturbing the sleepy surface. A pair of teal, followed by another, emerged from their hiding place and set out across the pool, the males with their heads of maroon browny-red, flecked with green, the female flecked with brown. Coming towards the bank on which he stood, a little to his right, they could not fail to see him. He remembered their arrival in Normandy when he was a boy, at the end of autumn when, after a long migration, they rested on the beach at Grangeville for a few hours before flying on inland. It was impossible to imagine a more suspicious bird, or one quicker to put itself beyond reach. That was what made it incredible to see them out in the open, swimming unconcernedly and quacking enthusiastically. Jean followed them with his gaze. They were heading purposefully for the bank. Only then did he glimpse, half hidden among the reeds and standing up to his thighs in the water, a man, or rather a scarecrow covered in sacking, a brown hat on his head, so still he looked like a statue, like one of those objects one leaves for years in hard water and that harden like stone without losing their colour. He had been there before Jean arrived, blending into the vegetation so well that he would have stayed invisible if the teal had not swum in his direction. When they were no more than two metres from this outlandish figure, an arm came out and lobbed a handful of some kind of pellets that floated. The teal rushed to them, gobbled them up and took off, skimming across the water to hide again in a clump of bulrushes. The man clambered onto the bank. He was wearing black waders and the sacking had been stitched together with some skill to make a rough overcoat that he must have put on over his head. He rubbed his hands, protected by woollen mittens, and pushed back his hat, an old round homburg camouflaged by more sacking. Until that moment all Jean had seen was a black beard. Seeing the rest of the face, he was surprised to find it younger than he had expected. The man came closer, walking stiffly in boots still caked in thick mud. Yes, the face was that of a man of barely forty, with shining, dark eyes beneath thick eyebrows, and a slender nose. The beard hid three-quarters of his face and concealed its thinness and hollow cheeks, their cheekbones reddened by cold.
‘Good morning, Monsieur,’ the man said. ‘I must say I thought because of you they wouldn’t come.’
‘They’re winter teal, aren’t they?’
‘Ah, so you know your ducks! That’s unusual. To know the names of things is a remarkable sign in a world that generally talks about thingumabobs and whatchamacallits.’
The voice was distinguished, without affectation. The get-up was at odds with the tone of the man, who turned towards the pool and pointed towards the reeds where the teal were concealed.
‘Nervous, aren’t they? You’d need centuries to tame them … and we have so little time. You don’t smoke, I hope?’
‘No. Well, hardly at all.’
‘But you drink alcohol!’
‘So little too that it’s hardly worth mentioning.’
‘That little is still too much.’
The man shook himself and Jean was caught unawares by the smell he gave off, a mixture of grime and manure.
‘Yes, still too much,’ he went on. ‘Humankind’s committing suicide. But I suppose there’s nothing new in that. It’s been going on for three thousand years.’
‘Humankind’s a suicide victim who’s doing fairly well, all things considered.’
The man scratched his beard, half amused. The tips of his fingers, poking out of his mittens, were appallingly dirty, covered in scales of filth and with black nails.
‘You think I’m repugnant,’ he said. ‘And I am. Beyond measure. But solitude makes one indifferent. To tell you the truth, you’re the first person I’ve spoken to for nearly two years. Oh, of course I’ve vaguely seen human beings moving in the distance. Sometimes they came so close I heard their blah blah blah. Apart from their clothes — about which they display unbelievable vanity — you can only distinguish them from animals by their lack of instinct. When I saw you appear here you surprised me. You watched and you stood still. I could have sworn you were enjoying imagining the presence of a monster in this fetid pool …’
‘I was.’
The man scratched his armpit. Jean thought he must be infested with lice.
‘That’s the great problem: where have all the monsters gone? There’s one here. I’ve seen its tracks. Animals aren’t innocent. No more than men are. They’re nasty, brutish and cruel. We have to teach them.’
Jean was stirred: a few moments before he had pictured a monster lurking in these depths, and now this man was talking about it as if it was a reality. Between his beard and his eyebrows his eyes shone, sharp, mad, amused.
‘What do you feed your teal on?’ Jean asked.
‘I collect worms in the mud and mould them into balls.’
‘So really you’re encouraging their carnivorous tastes.’
‘Not bad! Not bad! Well thought through. No doubt about it, I’m a lucky man: the first human I’ve spoken to for two years is a thinker. He thinks! A miracle! Yes, Monsieur, it’s true, I sacrifice worms to teal, but the teal are innocent. You … you are not.’
‘And you?’
‘Me? You won’t be surprised: I was falling apart before I hid myself away in the forest. By the way, where are we with the war? Is Danzig still a free city? Has Poland pulled through?’
He scoffed and held up a hand to forestall an answer Jean hesitated to give him.
‘Don’t disappoint me! Don’t disappoint me, Monsieur!’
‘I shan’t disappoint you,’ Jean said. ‘Danzig remains a free city. Poland is free, Austria has expelled the Germans. The Sudetens booed Hitler at a parade and, because they annoyed him, he gave them back to Czechoslavakia, which has returned to being a fine, proud republic with a socialist government. Italy has put good King Zog and his pretty queen Geraldine back on the throne of Albania. Mussolini has offered his apologies to Haile Selassie and given him back his throne at the same time as Victor Emmanuel renounced the title of emperor. General Franco has opened his borders to the remaining Republican army for a festival of reconciliation. Oh, I forgot to mention that Hitler has stepped down as Chancellor of the Reich to devote himself full-time to oil painting. The great dealer, Braun-Lévy, has signed him up exclusively for his first exhibition, which will take place this spring.’
‘Marvellous! I did well not to get involved and I was right to run away from these neighbourly disputes. I’d have been a complete spare part. I bet no one’s even noticed I’ve gone.’
‘It’s true; no one’s said a thing to me.’
The man smiled indulgently and sat down on a tree trunk mouldy with slippery brown mushrooms that squashed beneath his backside.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Jean Arnaud.’
‘Arnaud with an “l”?’
‘No, without an “l”.’
He looked disappointed and subsided into a reverie that lasted two or three minutes, while Jean waited unmoving, the better to observe him. The man scratched himself and tugged on his beard with his thin and dirty fingers. It would have been interesting to see him shaved and his face revealed.