Malicroix

by Henri Bosco

  I sighed.

  And just then, I thought I saw myself. My own self.

  Across from me, in front of the storeroom.

  For a man was there. Unmoving, thick, a block of ice. From where had he come? When had he entered?

  Indeed, it was a man, but he had no face. His countenance, a mask of snow. Two eyes, merely holes. A square coat, with long folds, stiff from top to bottom under its sparkling, frosty crust. The hearth’s fire and the candelabra’s flame cast long lights on it. And now steam was rising from the man’s shoulders, and the mask was melting. As the whiteness dissolved, what came into sight was a strong nose, bony cheeks, and the brush of a wild, snow-covered beard bristling around an olive-colored face. The eyes were gazing at me.

  Two large holes filled with phosphorus. A cold double light that must inwardly be lighting up the whole head. For I could not see the eyes, only this cold clarity. It was a look full of snow, the only look capable of lighting up the night through the white December storms. And my own look must have shone with the same light on this spectral figure, from which the warmer body of Balandran gradually emerged. For the snow was falling from him in glistening sheets and the brightness of his ghostly eyes dimmed beneath a warmer and more human light. He was really gazing at me now, with his usual look of mistrust and hidden hostility. As he was not moving, his whole self was concentrated in this look, and even what he hid warmed that watchful brightness. Vivid golden points burned in those defiant pupils, and from time to time his impassive face shone fleetingly with pride and mute friendship, as he looked at me, dripping with snow, between the candelabra and the fire.

  I said to him, “Now, Balandran, I know the island.”

  He shook the remaining snow from his coat and replied. “It is yours, Mr. Martial.”

  “On condition that I remain, Balandran.”

  He looked at me solemnly. “You will, Mr. Martial.”

  He spoke these words in the sure tone of faith. I was overcome. The deep import of his words was clear to me. They bound my future and were worth more than any solemn promise I myself might have made to Balandran. For the first time, he was expressing his confidence, and what confidence! My whole life was what this wild shepherd expected from me. I was no longer alone. Someone had begun to love me in this immense solitude, where it might have been better, for my peace, not to have found any aid. In expressing his faith, Balandran had just given himself; and in giving himself, he had enlarged me beyond myself.

  He called the dog. Bréquillet appeared, also frost-covered, but with a bright eager eye, his muzzle soft.

  Balandran said to me gently, “He knows you.”

  That was all he said, but I understood. Invisibly, like Balandran, Bréquillet had followed me through the night in the snow. For him, as for Balandran, to know me was to love me—for true knowing is entirely love. And I, who knew them poorly, felt them both, bristly and uncouth, beside my now tender heart. But I did not know how to speak of the tenderness moving through the weak heart they no longer doubted, but which still hesitated to answer the call of a bitter life.

  • • •

  Such was my Christmas Eve at La Redousse.

  I remember that I did not pray. I am generally exacting in my piety, a naive piety. Every winter since childhood, surrounded by the good Mégremuts, I have joined my two hands to help the family’s prayers rise up to the angels who, according to Aunt Philomène, hover above our homes like crowns of stars. “The angels,” she says, “love the Mégremuts, who, in turn, love the angels.” Despite all my scientific knowledge that flies in the face of such a miracle, the childishness of this dear old woman’s faith still agrees with me. Ordinarily, I do not believe in such angelic flights. But come Christmas—I imagine, I see them. Because, all around me, the Mégremuts think of them. And these imaginary creatures, the angels, supplant our reason and trace heavenly shapes in our spirits, so alive to messages. It is as if our family has remained in infancy, preserving its innocence. Hence the ability to transport the angels and mingle them with our simple life, where everything is both earthly and unearthly. But that night I had neither angels nor reason to help me. All alone, without my family, I was unable to understand how I could have praised God for so long with those childish prayers the Mégremuts had naively handed down from time immemorial.

  Without this help, I was naked. And, in the silence, I vainly awaited a deeper word.

  Balandran had withdrawn. The dog as well. Outside it might still be snowing, but no sound came from that slumbering world shrouded in vast whiteness.

  I had before me the candelabra, the fire, the wall of the hearth. The wall, the fire, and the candelabra dwelt together. A powerful hand had joined them, and that gave me some comfort. For the space within me was empty, leveled. Inside me, the snow had melted, dissolving the old, inherited treasure. I was afraid that the gentle blood, where these graceful images so naturally flourished, would from now on be replaced by the dark, bitter blood I had also inherited. I was afraid of myself, for I still believed in an easy paradise, even while foreseeing a hard one.

  Which is why I did not pray. I was keeping vigil, awaiting dawn.

  BALANDRAN

  THE DAYS that followed this strange Christmas Eve have remained imprinted in my memory. Not that they were as strange. Quite the opposite—they were among the least remarkable of my stay at La Redousse. And most likely it is thanks to this purity that they left such a clear impression. Although ordinary events easily replaced the extraordinary ones I had anticipated, I was not disappointed. It was, perhaps without my realizing it, the miracle I had desired and foreseen. I was expecting an ineffable sign when, just on the verge of ecstasy, I heard the nascent sounds of a word foreign to human speech. Yet neither sign nor word emerged from the nameless being, and all I saw, as through a veil, was their inchoate existence. Impression that became confused with my return to the sensory world, where other signs—Balandran, the dog, the fire, the candelabra—miraculously restored, suddenly appeared as wonderful forms of life, both commonplace and uncanny. I did not understand how, so simple and still, they could be before me in all their concrete reality while I continued to drift in a lucid delirium. But soon their ordinariness won out, and I passed from unearthly to earthly wonders with such ease I felt as if I were waking from a dream, even as, unbeknownst to me, the miracle occurred. The inhabitants—both animate and inanimate—of this insular, wild world gave themselves to me and loved me.

  From that day forward, my life at La Redousse changed. Balandran, of course, was still Balandran—scrupulous, energetic, reserved. But if he hardly spoke more, he let me glimpse his soul, and his activity on the island was no longer hidden from me.

  He rose before dawn, soundlessly. With his customary skill, he kindled the fire, heated the morning meal, set my table. Often I was still asleep. When I awoke, the house was ready. He had disappeared.

  At seven he crossed the river. As always, he took it on an angle, slipping through the willows toward La Regrègue. He must have reached it half an hour later. He returned around eleven. Whatever the weather—wind, rain, snow—he braved the water on his little black boat and smoothly moored at the landing.

  No sooner back, he began to cook. A rustic meal: pulses, cheese, some nuts. I ate at one o’clock. Alone. He took his meal in the storeroom, with Bréquillet.

  After the meal, we chatted. Always evenhandedly, but with greater trust. He brought me news from the mainland: the flock, the pasture, the sheepfolds, sometimes the dogs. Never the men. There were no men; Balandran had banished them from his mind. Not even a fisherman or a hunter.

  When I questioned him: “Does no one ever come around?” “No,” he answered. “It’s too big . . .” About the ferryman, Le Grelu, never a word. But he thought of him. Every now and then, he let it slip unawares. Sometimes, when the weather was bad, I would say, “Balandran, it would be better to wait. You can go tomorrow. The water is rising. And your boat is light as straw.”

  He wou
ld frown. “Mr. Martial, with a strong arm and a strong oar, you can go anywhere. They’re worth more than a cable that breaks.”

  I did not insist. So, mollified, he would say, “The Sacristan, Mr. Martial, can swim across a lagoon. If I called him from this bank, he would cross the Rhône.” And, mischievously, gently, he would add, “If only to see you again . . .”

  This discreet irony touched me. I felt his friendship and began to smile. Balandran pulled a somewhat brisker smoke from his pipe; Bréquillet sighed between his paws; the fire crackled and the kettle hummed. All three of us shared a moment of well-being, sharing a single soul.

  •

  Of course, Balandran indulged only rarely in such familiarities. Not out of respect—out of taste. It would be hard to say if he had any respect for me, who in any case did not demand it. But having lived for so long beside a man who breathed wildness and grandeur, Balandran carried within him the customs of the grand and the wild. They exclude easy fellowship. That he showed it from time to time, even if just barely, was something of a miracle, and I suspected that—deep down, as always—he was pleased when a hidden vein of friendship moved him.

  Friendship that sometimes led him to confide in me. That was how he revealed the treasures of the storeroom. He opened the cupboards and had me admire the supplies. Three months of foodstuffs. I admired . . . And so I learned how the household was managed, carefully planned to support an austere, independent life. With fine foresight, Balandran governed our domestic economy so that, no matter what happened, we could survive on our own.

  He would say, “When you live on an island, Mr. Martial, you must make do. Otherwise, why bother? The pleasure of being alone, that’s it.” As he contemplated his sacks of lentils, his jars of oil, his barrel of wine, he would proudly add, “We are strong.” Then he would give me a sidelong glance, as if to evaluate me. The inspection was not unfavorable, for he would conclude with satisfaction: “You could manage without me, Mr. Martial.”

  I denied it; but he refused to listen. I know how to use my hands. He was not unaware of it.

  “Here,” he declared, “you need your hands, even when there’s nothing to do. It keeps the mind busy.”

  Veiled advice, whose singular depth surprised me. Such insight in this simple man revealed a sharp, watchful, precise mind. He had seen into me, discovered my doubts, touched my trouble, perceived perhaps the turbulent depths of my secret life, in thrall to so many dreams. And he knew too that I was weak, as much through lack of mental discipline as through my need for tenderness, my longing for love.

  He hunted and fished, but never just for sport. Fish and game served solely as food. And yet, when the time came, he was a patient, extremely skilled hunter. Rarely a gunshot; instead, a refined stalking: snares, traps, a fishing basket. He used them sparingly, for he loved fresh game and never killed for the sake of killing. When he did, it was with one blow, as is right.

  He used an ancient punt gun that went back to the most rustic Malicroix. Heavy, cumbersome, as tall as he, with a recoil that wrenched your shoulder. In Balandran’s hands, it was unfailing. He took good care of it.

  Still, he was not a man given to weapons; or rather, he had just one—Balandran himself—with the arms, hands, lithe legs, and bright eyes of Balandran. That lean and sinewy body, skilled at everything, and above all so controlled by his mind. I sometimes told myself that, faced with the most pressing danger, Balandran would first have reckoned his strength. He also knew how to take his time; gifted with strong, wild instincts, he used his mind to check his impulses.

  I did not follow him on his errands, but sometimes—when he seemed in a welcoming mood—I joined him.

  In the afternoon he would stay on the island until nightfall. At dusk, he would go back over the water and after a short absence, return to La Redousse. And so he would cross the river in total darkness. Bréquillet never left his side.

  At times I went as far as the landing. I wanted to be on the shore, beside the river, to fight my terror of water. But despite my struggle against this terror, it kept me in its grip.

  So I forced myself to forget the river and to fix my attention on the other shore. The ground was so dark I could barely make out the flat line bristling with jumbled shrubs. But I knew it was there and, seeing it so black, I was often surprised that not one fire burned there at night.

  During the day I had a little less dread of river and shore. I often found Balandran in an inlet where he stored his fishing basket under a dry rock. This well-hidden hollow, where the water barely stirred, pleased him greatly. He would build a fire there. Three stones, three sticks of wood, a few flames, nothing over it. For this fire cooked nothing. Knowing Balandran, I was surprised.

  “It’s for the smoke, Mr. Martial. That way, on the mainland, they can tell themselves that La Redousse is inhabited. And they won’t come here.”

  “But Balandran, I thought there was no one on the mainland. You told me so.”

  “Maybe. But it keeps them away all the same. Who knows?”

  On the island, Balandran had his dwellings—the huts. I counted seven. All similar and in good condition. Always that sugarloaf, that leafy bonnet pierced by a door and a skylight, aerated from above; sturdy, sullen, brushy—like Balandran, like Bréquillet. Beside the hut, a small yard with some wood and a pile of sawdust. The hut smelled of smoke; the yard of wet trees.

  In each hut, a rush mat with a thin straw mattress, the hearth, a jug, and a small hanging oil lamp—a copper calen. Whitewashed walls and floor. Once the door was shut, you had the sense of a sure life, enclosed. So many huts could not fail to surprise me, but I did not dare question Balandran. That he had seven intrigued me so much I pondered them. Seven, like the days of the week. Balandran must sleep each night in a different hut. And I also thought, “Seven houses, seven planets . . . The thoughts of a shepherd, friend of the stars . . .” Anything was possible with Balandran, even that, in his imagination, he transported his brief sleep from planet to planet.

  Yet he did not seem to be much of a dreamer. I never caught him daydreaming. He was always doing something. But he hid his household labor as much as his thoughts. When his hands were not doing something, his mind, watchful, worked for them, and nothing escaped his patient eye. The least breath of wind on the leaves, a broken branch, a bird’s cry, a fish leaping in the dark river—everything made him briskly prick up his ears. He was on guard everywhere, wary even of the vast silences of the desert. As much by night as by day, he kept watch over the peace of the island; it seemed his biggest concern.

  “No one,” he told me, “has come here for ten years, except the notaire. And he only dared to come when we called him. We’re on our own here. Even across the way, you never see anyone, Mr. Martial. And I keep watch.”

  He kept watch. Still, I had noticed, at dusk behind the gorse, that light boat handled by a woman, coursing quickly on the dead branch of the river, between the brushy lagoons. Who was it? He must know. But he never spoke of it. So I thought it best also to stay silent and to keep an eye on the shore. But no sign of life appeared. I mean human life—for sometimes, especially in the morning, I saw animals there.

  At daybreak in the fog, long pinkish mists would float up from the flat strands where small lagoons glistened. It was cold. An eerie winter sun shone in the east, above the ramparts of blue fog resting on the plain. The riverbanks came into view very slowly in this cold light, and, on the luminous banks rolling with gold vapors, the brown earth appeared, thick with alders, dwarf birches, stunted willows, and samphire. I could see Balandran crossing the river. Bent over his single oar, he was steering toward the copse at La Regrègue, beyond which he disappeared through a clear channel. And then I would hear long beatings of wings, cries, calls, ripples. A flight of coots brushed the tops of the bushes, wheeled, then frolicked above a lagoon. Thousands of ducks fluttered, invisible in their dense reed cities, while whole tribes squabbled in the cold dawn light. Mallards, widgeons, teals complained and chi
ded each other before entering the great daytime silence of backwaters so prudently and profoundly still they seem deserted. Sometimes a greylag goose, a fleeting vision, threaded its way between two tufts. A few pipits or cawing rooks flew out from a bush. On calm days, a gray heron solemnly, perhaps self-importantly, fished in a pond. Once I even saw a single swan drop onto the lagoon. But it did not linger. Soon, resuming its flight, it headed westward, right into the wind. The weather was bad that day, and for a long time I thought about the wonderful bird that had continued its journey by flying into the storm.

  • • •

  Meanwhile, after Christmas, we counted more good days than bad. The snow melted. Except for some flurries, it was a dry cold. It quickened my blood; I was very alert. At night, the island iced over; in the morning, it sparkled. The north wind cracked skin and split lips. But often enough, until three in the afternoon, the sun heated things up a bit. That was when the island offered warm nooks where I would stretch out, sheltered from the wind. The warmest was at the southern end of the island, where a hollow on the riverbank was wreathed by a thick stand of willow, arbutus, and gray tamarisk. From there you could see where the two branches of the river rejoined, forming powerful whirlpools where their waves mingled. The view opened southward toward the glistening lagoons and salt flats, above which a layer of light mists always drifted. In this resting place, one was closest to the opposite shore. Before merging its two branches, the river narrowed, as if to bring the mainland closer, and a low bluff, bristling with those tall reeds called Arundo donax, jutted out toward the island. Atop a lonely, gently sloping sand beach, clumps of reeds reared up against the mistral’s blast. Because I like names, I imagined calling this hidden beach the Waters of Repentance, in memory of my distant cousin, Delphine d’Or, whom old Malicroix had loved—most likely because of her beautiful hair—and whom the river had ravished.