I couldn’t breathe. What was her name? She downed another glass and dried her lips on her sleeve. A funny name. What would you guess it was? She had the same name as the mother of men. Funny, isn’t it? I gulped down the wine that was left in the glass and choked. Stifling a laugh, huh? Like the mother of all men. Eva, Eva, Eva. . I used to say to her: Eva, lucky day when I found you more dead than alive by the cabbage patch. What a stroke of luck! And she thought only of running away. I bound her tighter every day. Soon she had red marks, a girdle of raw flesh around her wrists and ankles. I had to put the food in her mouth; sometimes she’d swallow it, sometimes she’d spit it out. Until one night, when I had already closed the shutters and was bolting the door, seven men the color of chestnuts showed up, all of them the color of chestnuts, and I lent her to them for the night. Here, take her. They hauled her off into the woods; she was as still as death and didn’t let out a cry. They took her away, holding her aloft like a goat. . all the while I had her here she never shed a tear. She struggled to get loose, and the harder she struggled the deeper the ropes cut into her skin. . but I never saw her cry. I would have liked to see a tear, at least one, in those eyes the color of violets. But no. Never. She didn’t come back. They didn’t bring her back. I found her the following morning at daybreak, naked under the trees, with a branch stuck up her, thrust where life is born. She drank again and clicked her tongue. She went to fetch another bottle. Fixing her eyes on me as she uncorked it, she filled her glass and, without taking her eyes off me, filled mine and then emptied her own with one gulp. Drink! With violet eyes. . you’ll sleep outside. You’re young, the night won’t do you no harm. I’ll lend you a blanket. No, two: one to place under you, the other on top. You’ll see how pleasant it is to sleep under the trees. Tomorrow, in exchange for food, you will help me clean the rabbit cage.
I jumped up, nearly out of my mind, grabbed a log from the fireplace and, without stopping to think what I was doing, I struck her. She was left with one eye open. I don’t know where I got the strength, but I dragged her to the armchair, sat her in it, and bound her wrists and ankles to the legs and armrests. I walked outside with a burning log, panting, my eyes bulging, and went around to the back of the house, to the pile of wood by the wall. Tongues of fire immediately rose from the bundles of heather, everything crackled. The shack quickly turned into a furnace, and the nearest leaves and branches screamed as they caught fire. Clutching Eva’s penknife in one hand and the burning log in the other, I went about wildly setting fire to all the grasses, the bushes, the low-lying branches.
I stopped at the edge of the forest, my hands and feet frozen, all of me a feverish knot, and hurled the burning log into the woods.
At first I couldn’t find the rowboat, but when I finally stumbled upon it, I let myself fall inside. I felt like the boat was sinking and I was rising, that nothing separated me from the boat, that the river was standing up. I still don’t know how I managed to drag it to the water, but somehow I found myself floating on the river with the oars in my hands. I rowed mechanically, lost in that nightmare, beneath a sky of hastening clouds, without knowing what to do, whether to let the current carry me downstream or to forge ahead. . if, in the end, one shore was the same as the next and nothing made any difference. Only the river and myself. No war. No evil. I grasped Eva’s knife, held it under the water, and then slowly opened my hand. The boat floated along on its own. . until, with some effort, I reached the shore. A gleam of moonlight fell on me like a sword and was mirrored by the river. The fog — a low, sulphurous-yellow fog — was spreading, slowly shrouding the dead.
XLIII NIGHT’S END
I’VE LOOKED FOR YOU. I’VE BEEN SEARCHING FOR YOU SINCE YESTERDAY. As soon as you left I started looking. Where were you? I knew you would come back. The baby died, my son died. I was looking for you so you would help me bury him. The woman with the dead baby was carrying a lantern, which she handed to me. I was able to close his eyes. He doesn’t look, he doesn’t see, so beautiful. . the child was wearing a lace-trimmed garment, like a Christening gown, with a white ribbon just below his chest. A lace bonnet tied with a silk ribbon framed his face. Look how beautiful. The woman with the dead baby had a shovel at her feet. Pick it up. We’ll bury him farther down, where the ground is not so thick with the dead, in a hole made by a howitzer. The earth isn’t as hard there because it’s been turned. Close to the river, so it will lull him to sleep if he hears it. The woman’s face was as pale as the child’s: two faces as white as a sheet of paper against the sulphurous fog. I put the shovel inside the boat. You row, I don’t know how to. The boat glided along the water, cutting through the wisps of fog that drifted by, though the evening was airless. Last night I realized that my son had died and I started looking for you. He’d be alive if he had been able to eat, but the food is all gone. A neighbor gave me this gown — see? — and with tears in her eyes she said, bury him all beautiful. . She took my hand, your hand is as icy as my son’s. Only the whisper of the oars and the water could be heard. This is it. I recognize it from the flag, from the flagpole planted in the ground that the flash of moonlight just illuminated. I took the lantern and the shovel and helped her out of the boat, her child still in her arms. Can you feel how the earth slopes a bit under your feet?