The Life of Elves

by Muriel Barbery

  In fact Marcel, who rued the guinea-fowl and the bad things in his life—in particular a duck he had once stolen—was little more now than a colossal infection. The contamination had begun in his stomach and in two hours had built a little mound of pus; then, pleased with what it had done, it had called on its legions to advance at once. His body had begun to undergo the ordeal that the gangrene had restrained until such a time as it would be invincible, and in the sudden agitation of radiating pain, had spread the decline beyond his vessels and tissues. This was the principle behind all warfare, and it had become obvious to Eugénie for a reason she only began to understand when Maria, by touching her shoulder, stirred an awareness inscribed on the genetic map of her old peasant carcass, and which informed her that the only reason she could see the ravages of war so well was because her fate demanded she become a healer.

  The world was growing older. After decades of evil, of constant invasion, there remained nothing more than one fortress amid the chaos of warring rulers, and each time it would confront the resistance of violets. Fleetingly, Eugénie felt sorry it had taken all this time for things to become clear, but she also understood that one cannot give orders to the battalion of gifts, that they must still learn compassion and love, and that the illumination of souls requires the work of grief and mourning—yes, solace is very near and we cannot seize it, it takes time, it takes years, and perhaps, too, the forgiveness of others.

  It is after three o’clock in the morning at the farm and two women have entered together into a territory that requires still more magnanimity and sorrow, while the life of a man who only ever stole a duck lies in their twelve and eighty-seven-year old hands, hanging by the thread that joins them in the trance of battle.

  Eugénie closed her eyes and, as if she were five years old again, lying intoxicated by her mint leaves, she watched as the succession of steps in the healing unreeled across the screen of her inner gaze. She opened her eyes again, and did not need to speak, because the little girl left for the kitchen at once, then came back holding a handful of garlic and thyme branches cupped in her palms, their pungent scent filling the room. Eugénie took the little ewer from Angèle’s night table, crushed the garlic into it, added the thyme and lifted the preparation to the dying man’s nostrils; he seemed to breathe more easily and half-opened one yellowed eye, shot with clotted, black blood. She brushed his lips with some of the sticky paste. He gagged once, then she gently opened his mouth and placed a small amount of the remedy inside.

  Do you know what a dream is? It is not a chimera engendered by our desire, but another way we absorb the substance of the world, and gain access to the same truths as those the mists unveil by concealing the visible and unveiling the invisible. Eugénie knew that neither the garlic nor the thyme could heal an infection that had spread this far, but she had grown up with the wisdom whispered in the ear of those who have left the battle: there are no limits to our powers to accomplish and our natural spirit is stronger than anything. She also knew that her gift as a healer called forth another vaster and more awesome gift and that Maria—standing in the shadows because she was a steward of higher causes—was the realization of the miracle.

  She turned and called to the little girl, who stepped forward to touch her shoulder again. Eugénie swayed, startled by the violence of the shock. She felt energy and rebellion surging through her, waves and tempests. She gulped in surprise as she sensed herself drifting away on the flow of energy the little girl spun around her, then she was restored to her healer’s elation and set sail in search of the ebb and flow of her dream. She discovered it in an image that stood out against a hazy, shimmering background, and the rhythms and sensations slackened to let her move slowly toward a red span between two shores shrouded in mist. What a beautiful bridge it was . . . One could sense the noble wood beneath the deep velvety carmine paint, and before long there followed a procession of absurd, unintelligible thoughts, but they all led to the sense of peace yielded to anyone who cared to look at the red bridge between two clouds of mist. Yet this was a peace that Eugénie had always known, of the sort that united trees and people and caused plants to speak the language of human beings, and the bridge radiated a power of conciliation that revealed the ways of nature with an intensity and harmony she had never before experienced. Then the image was gone. It had lasted only as long as a sigh, and in that time she heard voices more beautiful than all of beauty itself.

  Peace . . . What else had she aspired to all these years? What else can one desire when one loses a son, when his guts explode under the sky of honor? With a sharpness that would have still been painful that very morning and now felt like a caress in her memory, she saw again a summer evening in the garden, when they had set the table for the repast after Saint John’s Day, decorating it with the big solstice irises. She could hear the insects buzzing in the warm air, sounds mingling with scents, the fumet of a pike simmering with little vegetables from the garden; and she saw her son again as she had not seen him in many years; he was sitting across from her and smiling sadly because they both knew he had already died in those same fields where so many of our husbands and sons had died; so she leaned forward slightly and, looking at him tenderly, said in a voice veiled by neither sadness nor regret, Go, son, and know for all eternity how much we love you. Eugénie could have died in that moment, in perfect, idiotic bliss, the way the poppies and dragonflies die in summer. But she had a godson to tear from death’s clutches, and she was not one of those otherworldly souls intoxicated forever by a hymn. She knew that the vision and the singing had appeared to her so that she could accomplish her task—that was why she had adjusted her nightcap, crushed the garlic between her fingers, and seen her son again in the winter night.

  At that very moment, the little girl removed her hand from Eugénie’s shoulder, and the old woman felt, understood, and recognized everything. She focused on the sick man’s body and saw that he was infected with the sticky yellow substance from her dream, and that the air was saturated with the same odor as all through the war—it was a gangrene that sought only to destroy and defeat, invading and gradually sucking away everything that lived and loved. For a moment she was overwhelmed by the evidence that the enemy was far superior to anything with which a poor country healer might oppose it—her limited means and unworldly knowledge. But she had the strength of a new illumination that had entered her when Maria touched her shoulder.

  Wars . . . We know they dictate their laws of retribution, and drive the just to the battlefield. But what would happen if everyone sat on the grass in those fields, and in the pure dawn air put their weapons down beside them? There would be the sound of the angelus ringing from the nearby steeple, while the men woke from their dreams of horror and darkness. Suddenly, it would start to rain, and one could merely succumb to the prayer that brings with it a life full of violets and abundance. How futile it was to hope to triumph over the attack by sacrificing three soldiers—what could they do against hordes and cannons . . . What was healing, in the end, if not the making of peace? And what was living if it was not for love?

  Important decisions are made by those who are invisible, by the humble people. The dark army was building its bastions, piercing the sick man’s very skin with spurs from which they could suspend their web of infection. So, instead of sending them to the lines, Eugénie made her soldiers sit down. Her gift visualized the path the garlic and thyme would take through the sick man’s bowels and blood, and her dream increased its viscosity tenfold, oiling the walls so that it would be harder for the enemy to plant its barbs. Her dream became stronger still, and she coated the base of the existing hooks until they were swept away by the crushed cloves and the needles of thyme and, at the same time, their healing properties filled the holes the enemy had drilled, and set about closing the wounds with their beneficial active ingredients.

  She was filled with enthusiasm. It was so easy to use the medicinal plants in this way, and to apply the
m directly to the substance of the illness, and so miraculous to see how one could work toward recovery by using the magic of the dream to hasten processes that were themselves quite natural. But she also felt that her gift drew upon declining reserves, and she could tell the moment was approaching when the energy of her dream would have drained away and she would have to renounce her efforts. Then she caught a glimpse of an iris. She did not know where, it was there and it was nowhere; she could look at it but it was invisible, and it was radiating an intense presence even though she could neither locate nor grasp it. It was smaller than the irises in the garden, its white petals streaked with pale blue, and it had a deep purple heart with orange stamens. It emanated something fresh, and she could not identify the formula at first, but then she suddenly understood that it was the freshness of childhood. So . . . Now she knew why the iris could not be seen even when it was so visible, and she understood how she must carry her task to fruition. She gave a start when she read the flower’s message, written in letters perfumed with the joys of early childhood, then she relaxed her entire being, transported by the pure and simple acceptance of the gift.

  She returned to the eighty-seven-year-old body she had forgotten when Maria had touched her shoulder for the second time, and in which she was now reincarnated, feeling alive as never before. She looked around her at a painting whose pigments had been brushed with a smooth, shining varnish. The room was silent. Angèle was kneeling on the old chestnut prie-dieu she had always refused to replace with one of those fine red velvet ones you could see in the front rows of the church, and she was so absorbed by her prayer that she had not noticed her nightgown was turned up over a pair of cotton bloomers with a hem of pristine braided ribbon. Léonce was sitting on the duvet next to her Marcel, rubbing his feet with the patience of a Madonna. Jeannette and Marie both stood in the doorway, which seemed to dwarf the two old ladies: fear had made them even smaller than age. Eugénie took Marcel’s pulse and then lifted his eyelid. His breath was weak but regular, and the injections of blood that had marred his eye had disappeared. Just to be on the safe side, she slipped a last dose of garlic and thyme into his mouth. She suddenly felt very old and tired. Then she turned around abruptly to face Maria.

  Her black eyes filled with tears, and she was clenching her fists, the focus of her heightened sorrow. Eugénie felt despondent for the little girl, whose magic could not change a heart made like all little girls’ hearts, a heart that would bleed for a long time from this first wrenching experience. She smiled at her with all the tenderness of a mother who would kill and die a hundred times for her child, and with her hand she made a gesture in which she placed the consciousness and majesty of the gift, in the form of the iris of childhood. But Maria’s tears were still flowing and the expression in her eyes was one of bitterness and sorrow. Then she stepped to one side and the connection was broken. Besides, it was not a time for distress, while this great wave of relief was washing over the little room and they were all leaving their battle stations, including the prie-dieu and the down duvet, in order to embrace one another in triumph.

  There was victorious reciting of the rosary beads, there was a celebration of the constancy with which Eugénie had always praised the virtues of garlic and thyme—but what was going on inside the heads of these yokels: over those two snowy nights there’d been no need to add two plus two to conclude that the little girl was magical and that glorious seasons and human boars do not fall from the sky every day. In fact, faith and what they had before their eyes were made to coexist, and they were convinced that the Lord must have something to do with powers of the sort where what you believed and what you saw—well, you needn’t bother to try to make the two agree. Above all, there was a more urgent task at hand now that Marcel was snoring like a baby and they had all gone down to the kitchen to drink some coffee as a reward: they must make sure that Maria was well protected, for a reason Angèle had been convinced of from the beginning, namely that the child was very powerful, and would constantly attract the attention of other powers in the world. No one had noticed that Eugénie was not drinking her coffee; she went on sitting there, a dreamy smile on her old timeworn lips.

  “What a long, or short, night it’s been,” said the father finally, putting down his cup, and he smiled to all those present the way only he knew how, restoring time to its regular and peaceful amble, and placing the day back on the rightful path of routine.

  They heard the angelus ringing from the village steeple, while smoke rose into the sky from the chimneys of happy farms, and life went back to normal, nourished with hawthorn and love.

  RAFFAELE

  The Servants We Are

  Oh, so handsome; so tall and blond; eyes bluer than the water of a glacier; porcelain features in the face of a virile man; a supple body, superbly unselfconscious, and on his left cheek, a charming dimple. But the most splendid thing about his remarkable physiognomy was the smile that beamed upon the world like an iridescent shower of sunlight. Yes, the handsomest of angels, indeed, and it made you wonder how you could have lived until now, without this promise of renewal and love.

  Raffaele Santangelo looked at Clara until she had finished playing, then turned to speak to the Maestro when silence had returned.

  “I’ve invited myself, how thoughtless of me,” he said, “and I’m disturbing a friendly gathering.”

  It was the same voice Clara had heard in the past, resonating with the same violence that paved the road of death.

  “I wish to pay my respects,” he said to Leonora.

  She stood up, and held out her hand for him to kiss.

  “Ah, my friend,” she said, “we are getting old, aren’t we?”

  He gave a quick bow. “You are as beautiful as ever.”

  When he had come into the room, all the men had stood up, but they did not greet him, and they had continued to stand there in a position of feigned deference, while their expressions belied any friendship. Acciavatti had gone to stand closer to Clara, but the most remarkable change was in Petrus, who had had time to do justice to the moscato then collapse into an armchair; the arrival of the Governor had not roused him from his seat, but now he had sprung to attention like a watch dog, his lips deformed in an evil grimace, accompanied by the occasional hostile growl.

  The moment the Maestro’s gaze met the Governor’s, the piano room exploded with a spray of lustrous bronze stars: Clara was so surprised that she leapt up, and the space was resplendent with a shining dust, a double cone of light dancing with fragments unknown to memory—originating in each of the two men, then converging where their powers were concentrated. Alone of all the guests, Petrus seemed to have seen the cone, and he emitted another hostile growl, his nose in the air and his suit unkempt. But the Governor was looking at the Maestro, and the Maestro was looking at the Governor, and neither one of them seemed to be in any hurry to speak; not to mention the fact that the little group of friends also remained silent, admirably motionless and mute, despite their fear. But on Alessandro’s face there appeared a fresh light, which rendered him younger, sharper, and Clara liked what she saw at the same time as it filled her with fresh anxiety, like a foretaste of the pain of important things and final resolutions.

  “A joyful company,” said Raffaele at last. But he had stopped smiling. He made a gesture—oh, how graceful—which embraced the assembly as if he wanted to call a friendly brotherhood to witness, and he added, “One hopes there will be more, and that they will form alliances among themselves.”

  Gustavo smiled. “Alliances are formed naturally,” he said.

  “Alliances are forged,” answered Raffaele.

  “We are merely artists,” said the Maestro, “and our only guides are the stars.”

  “But every man must find courage,” said the Governor, “and artists, too, are men.”

  “Who can judge the destiny of men?” responded the Maestro.

  “Who can judge t
heir inconsequence? Stars have no courage,” said the Governor.

  “They have wisdom,” said the Maestro.

  “Only the weak invoke wisdom,” said the Governor, “brave men only believe facts.” And without waiting for the Maestro’s reply, he went up to the piano and looked at Clara. “So here we have another little girl . . . ” he murmured. “What is your name, young lady?”