In the evenings, after our jobs were done, we usually went to the river to wash. The water was cold, but the river was deep enough to swim in and that was how we warmed up. Then we would soap ourselves, wash our hair, and go home for dinner. The three Spaniards were staying in another house and they led a separate life, except when we invited them to eat with us. The two French girls lived in the next village (where the cooperative was) and every night they rode home on their motorcycles. One was called Marie-Josette and the other was called Marie-France.
One night, when we had all had too much to drink, Hans told us that he had lived in a Danish commune, the biggest and best organized commune in the world. I don't know how long he talked. Sometimes he got excited and banged the table, or stood up, and sitting there we watched him grow, stretching to exaggerated heights, like an ogre, an ogre to whom we were bound by his generosity and our lack of money. Another night, when everyone was asleep, I heard him talking to Monique. She and Hans had the room above mine and that night they must have left the window open. Whatever the case, I heard them. They were speaking in French, and Hans was saying that he couldn't help it, that was all, he couldn't help it, and Monique was saying yes, he could, he had to try. I couldn't hear the rest.
One afternoon, when we were about to finish work, the night watchman turned up in Planèzes, and I was so happy to see him I told him that I loved him, and that he should be careful. I don't know why I said that, but seeing him walk down the main street, I had the sense that certain danger was looming over all of us.
Surprisingly, he said that he loved me too and that he wanted to live with me. He seemed happy. Tired-he'd arrived after hitching around almost the whole département-but happy. That afternoon, I remember, everyone except Hans and Monique went for a swim in the river, and when we took our clothes off and jumped in the night watchman stayed on the bank, fully clothed, in fact with too much on, as if he were cold despite how hot it was. And then something happened that might seem unimportant but in which I sensed the hand of something: fate or God. While we were in the water three migrant workers appeared on the bridge and stopped for a long time to watch us, watch Erica and me. They were two older men and a teenager, maybe grandfather, father, and son, dressed in ragged work clothes, and finally one of them said something in Spanish and the night watchman answered them. I could see their faces looking down and his face looking up (the sky was very blue), and after the first few words, more were exchanged. They were all talking, the three migrant workers and the night watchman. At first it seemed like questions and answers and then just like small talk, three people on a bridge and a tramp underneath it having a simple conversation, and it all went on while we, Steve, Erica, Hugh, and I, were washing and swimming back and forth, like swans or ducks, theoretically removed from the conversation in Spanish but partly the object of it, Erica and me in particular being a source of visual pleasure and expectation. But soon the migrant workers left (without waiting for us to get out of the water), and they said adiós, a word I do understand in Spanish, of course, and the night watchman said goodbye to them too, and that was as far as it went.
That night, during dinner, we all got drunk. I was drunk too, but not as drunk as everyone else. I remember that Hugh was shouting Dionysius, Dionysius. I remember that Erica, who was sitting next to me at the long table, grabbed me by the chin and kissed me on the mouth.
I was sure something bad was going to happen.
I told the night watchman we should go to bed. He ignored me. He was talking, in his terrible English mixed with French, about a friend who had disappeared in the Roussillon. Nice way to look for your friend, said Hugh, drinking with strangers. You aren't strangers, the night watchman said. Then they all started to sing, Hugh, Erica, Steve, and the night watchman, a Rolling Stones song, I think. A little later the two Spaniards who worked with us turned up. I don't know who had gone to get them. And all this time I was thinking: something bad is going to happen, something bad is going to happen, but I didn't know what it would be or what I could do to prevent it, except drag the night watchman to my room and make love with him or convince him to go to sleep.
Then Hans came out of his room (he and Monique had gone to bed early, soon after dinner) and asked us not to make so much noise. I remember this happened several times. Hans would open the door, look at us one by one, and tell us that it was late, that the noise was keeping him up, that we had to work the next day. And I remember that no one paid the slightest bit of attention. When he came out they would say yes, yes, Hans, we'll be quiet now, but when the door closed behind him they would immediately start shouting and laughing again. And then Hans opened the door, his nakedness covered only by a pair of white briefs, his long blond hair wild, and he said that the party was over, that we should get out that instant and go to our rooms. And the night watchman stood up and said: look, Hans, stop being an idiot, or something like that. I remember that Hugh and Steve laughed, whether at the look on Hans's face or at how awkward the sentence was in English. And Hans stopped for an instant, confused, and then roared: how dare you? that was all, and rushed at the night watchman. There was quite a distance between them, and we were all able to watch him in great detail, a seminaked colossus crossing the room at a near run, coming straight at my poor friend.
But then something happened that no one expected. The watchman didn't move from where he was sitting, remaining calm as the mass of flesh hurtled across the room toward him, and when Hans was just a few inches away a knife appeared in his right hand (in his delicate right hand, so different from a grape cutter's hand) and the knife rose until it was just under Hans's beard, in fact just barely embedded in its outer fringes, which stopped Hans cold, and Hans said, what is this? What kind of joke is this? in German, and Erica screamed, and the door, the door that Monique and little Udo were behind, opened a crack and Monique's head appeared chastely, Monique herself possibly naked. And then the night watchman started to walk forward in the direction from which Hans had come barreling, and the knife, I could see clearly since I was only a few feet away, slid into Hans's beard, and Hans began to retreat, and although to me it seemed as if they crossed the whole room back to the door behind which Monique was hiding, they actually only took three steps, maybe two, and then they stopped and the night watchman lowered the knife, looked Hans in the eye, and turned his back on him.
According to Hugh, that was the moment when Hans should have tackled him and overpowered him, but the truth is he stood still, not even noticing that Steve had come up to him and offered him a glass of wine, although he drank it like someone gulping air.
And then the night watchman turned and insulted him. He called him a Nazi, saying what were you trying to do to me, Nazi? And Hans looked him in the eye and muttered something and balled his fists and then we all thought he would lunge at the night watchman, this time nothing would stop him, but he controlled himself, Monique said something, he turned and answered her, Hugh went over to the night watchman and dragged him to a chair, probably poured him more wine.
The next thing I remember is that we all left the house and started to walk the streets of Planèzes in search of the moon. We were looking up at the sky: the moon was hidden by big black clouds. But the wind pushed the clouds eastward and the moon appeared (we screamed) and then disappeared again. At some point I thought we seemed like ghosts. I said to the night watchman: let's go home, I want to sleep, I'm tired, but he ignored me.