Fire in the Blood

by Irene Nemirovsky

  Everything suddenly fell silent. I went back down into the living area to wait for François and Hélène; I'd had someone go and fetch them. When they arrived, their very presence restored peace almost immediately. The noise and confusion were replaced by a sort of mournful, respectful whisper. The neighbours were sent home with kind words. The windows and shutters were closed, the lights dimmed; flowers were placed in the room where the body would lie. Towards dawn, the men had found him caught in the reeds, just as they had thought; the silent little group came into the mill carrying a stretcher, and on it a body wrapped in a sheet.

  J EAN DORIN WAS BURIED the day before yesterday. It was a very long service on a cold and rainy afternoon. The mill is up for sale. Colette is keeping only the land; her father will look after it and she will go home to live with her parents.

  A MASS WAS SAID TODAY for the repose of Jean Dorin's soul. The whole family was there, filling the church— a crowd of indifferent, silent people dressed in black. Colette has been very ill. This was her first day out of bed and during the service she fainted. I was sitting quite close to her. I saw her suddenly raise her veil and stare intently above her at the large Christ nailed to the Cross; then she let out a low moan and fell forward, her head resting on her arms. I had lunch at her parents' house after the service; she didn't come down to the dining room. I asked if I could see her; she was in her room, on the bed, her child sleeping beside her. We were alone. When she saw me she started to cry, but she refused to answer any of my questions. She just turned away with a look of shame and despair.

  I finally left her alone. François and Hélène were walking slowly around the garden, waiting for me. They have aged a lot, and have lost that look of serenity that I liked so much and found so touching. I don't know whether people make their own lives, but what is certain is that the life you live ends up transforming you: a calm, happy existence gives the face a gentleness and dignity, a warm, soft look that is almost a kind of sheen, like the varnish on a painting. But now the smoothness and decorum of their features had vanished and you could see their sad, anxious souls peering through the surface. Those poor people! In nature, there is a moment of perfection when every hope is realised, when the luscious fruits finally fall, a crowning moment towards the end of summer. But it quickly passes and the autumn rains begin. It's the same for people.

  My cousins were very worried about Colette. Of course they understood how very affected she was by poor Jean's death, but they had hoped she 'd recover more quickly.

  Quite the opposite: each day she seemed to grow weaker.

  “I don't think,” said François, sounding worried, “I don't think she should stay here. Not only because of all the memories she has, quite naturally, everywhere she turns— the house where she met Jean, where she got married, etc.— but because of us.”

  “I don't know what you mean, my dear,” said Hélène, sounding agitated.

  He placed his hand on her arm; he has an affectionate air of authority she can never resist.

  “I think,” he said, “that the sight of us, of our life, of everything that is good in our relationship intensifies her regret. She understands what she has lost more clearly; she feels it even more, so to speak, when she sees us together. Poor little thing. Sometimes she looks so sad that I can hardly bear it. She 's always been my favourite, I admit it. I tried to convince her to go away, to travel. But she wouldn't. She refuses to leave us. She doesn't want to see anyone.”

  “I don't think she needs that kind of thing at the moment,” Hélène broke in. “And even if she did, she wouldn't agree. What she needs is something serious to concentrate on. I'm sorry she 's decided to sell the mill. It would have been her son's inheritance. She shouldn't just have kept it going, she should have expanded it.”

  “How can you say that? She wouldn't have been able to manage that all alone.”

  “Why all alone? We would have helped her and, in a few years, one of her brothers could have run it, until her son was old enough to take over. Some intense work is the only way she 'll get better.”

  “Or someone else to love,” I said.

  “Someone else to love, of course. But the way to find him (I mean a true, sincere love) is not to think about it too much, not to yearn for him. Otherwise you make the wrong choice. You imagine you see love in the first and most ordinary face you come across. I hope with all my heart that one day, later on, she 'll remarry, but first she must find peace again. Then, of course since she 's young, she 'll find another love, some good man like poor Jean.”

  They continued to talk to one another about Colette. They spoke with an air of tranquil, confident certainty. She was their child. They had made her. They thought they knew her every thought and dream. In the end they decided to do everything they could to get her interested in her estates, the farming, the harvests, all the possessions she had a duty to preserve for her son. When I said goodbye to them they were sitting on a bench in front of the house, under their bedroom window, the same bench on which I had once sat for so long, listening for the sound of footsteps in the night.

  O LD DECLOS IS WORSE. His wife called for a doctor to come from Creusot; he suggested an operation. The old man wanted to know how much it would cost and the doctor told him. Declos then sat for a long time without saying a word, just as he did that day at my house when we negotiated a price for the small estate I owned at Les Roches, after my mother died. I remember he asked my price, then went quiet for a few moments, his eyes closed; finally he said, “Agreed.” He was poor back then; we were approximately the same age. It was a serious thing for him to buy twenty-four hectares of land. In the same way, when the doctor told him the operation would cost ten thousand francs, and that if it were successful he could expect to live three, four, maybe five years longer, he undoubtedly calculated the value of each of those years and decided that, in the end, they wouldn't be sufficiently pleasant or happy to justify the cost. He refused the operation; when the doctor left, he told his wife that his father had died of a similar illness, that it hadn't taken long, a few months at most, but that he 'd suffered a lot.

  “It doesn't matter,” he concluded. “I'm used to suffering.”

  It's true: the people around here have a kind of genius for living in the most difficult way possible. No matter how rich they are, they refuse pleasure, even happiness, with implacable determination, wary perhaps of its deceptive promise. To the best of my knowledge, the only time old Declos broke this rule was the day he married Brigitte, and he must have regretted it. So he is putting his affairs in order and preparing to die at Christmas. His wife will inherit everything, there 's no doubt about that. Even if he knows she 's cheating on him, he 'll make very sure to behave in such a way that no one else suspects her adultery. It's both a matter of pride and loyalty to the family; a kind of solidarity that ties husband and wife, father and son. In order to avoid scandal, to make sure no one knows anything, all hatreds are hidden. It's not that they seek approval: they're too primitive for that and too proud. What they fear most of all is that others might know their business. To feel judgemental eyes upon them is unbearable suffering. That's what makes them incapable of vanity: they do not wish to be envied any more than they wish others to feel sorry for them. They just want to be left in peace. Peace, that's how they put it. To them, peace is synonymous with happiness, or rather, it replaces the happiness they lack.

  I heard an old woman talking to Hélène about Colette and the accident that left her a widow: “It's a shame, a real shame … Your daughter was at peace at the mill.” And that word symbolised everything she could possibly imagine about human happiness.

  Old Declos as well, he wants everything to be peaceful during his last days on earth, and after he 's gone too.

  A UTUMN HAS COME EARLY. I get up before dawn and walk through the countryside, between the fields that belonged to my family for generations, which are now owned and cultivated by others. I can't say the idea is painful to me; I have just a little
twinge of sadness sometimes … I don't regret the time I lost trying to make my fortune, the time I bought horses in Canada, or sold cocoa beans on the Pacific coast. The need to travel, the suffocating boredom I felt in this place when I was twenty, burned within me so strongly that I think I would have died if I'd been forced to stay. My father had passed away and my mother couldn't hold me back. “It's like an illness,” she said, horrified, when I begged her to give me some money and let me go. “Wait a bit and it will pass.” Or “You're acting just like the Gonin boy and the Charles boy. They want to go and work in town even though they know they won't be as happy as they are here. But when I try to reason with them, all they say is 'It will make a change.' ”

  In fact, that was exactly what I wanted: a change. My blood burned at the thought of the vast world that existed, while I simply remained here. So I left, and now I cannot understand the demon that drove me far from my home, I who am so unsociable and sedentary. I remember how Colette Dorin once told me I resembled a faun: an old faun, now, who has stopped chasing after nymphs and who huddles near the fireplace. And how can I describe the pleasure I find here? I enjoy simple things, things within reach: a nice meal, some good wine, the secret, bitter pleasure of writing in this notebook; but, most especially, this divine solitude. What else do I need? But when I was twenty, how I burned! How is this fire lit within us? It devours everything and then, in a few years, a few months, a few hours even, it burns itself out. Then you see how much damage has been done. You find yourself tied to a woman you don't love any more, or ruined, like me. Perhaps, born to be a grocer, you struggle to become a painter in Paris and end up in a hospital. Who hasn't had his life strangely warped and distorted by that fire so opposite to his true nature? Are we not all somewhat like these branches burning in my fireplace, buckling beneath the power of the flames? I'm undoubtedly wrong to generalise; there are people who are sensible at twenty, but I'll take the recklessness of my youth over their restraint any day.

  I 'VE HEARD THAT COLETTE WILL FOLLOW her father's wishes and look after her estate herself. She will be, according to François Erard, “her own manager.” This will force her to see people, to go out, to fight sometimes in order to defend her son's interests. In an attempt to convince her, Hélène is using the skilful, affectionate persuasiveness she uses on little Loulou when she takes his toys away from him so he can learn his lessons. It's the same for Colette … Playtime is over.

  O LD DECLOS HAS DIED. He never made it to Christmas. He missed it by just a few weeks. His heart stopped. His wife is rich now. When kind Cécile, who brought her up, passed away, all Brigitte had to her name was Coudray. That is to say, nothing. The house was falling to pieces; the land had been sold. Old Declos bought Coudray; that's when he fell in love with Brigitte. Little by little he restored the farm; he knocked down the old living quarters and built the most beautiful house in the region; and, to cap it all, he married the young woman. At the time we all thought how lucky she was, but I expect she would have said that Colette was more fortunate. Colette didn't have to marry an old man to be happy and pampered. But death has made them equal. I wonder if these two children know … or suspect … I doubt it: the young are concerned only with themselves. What are we to them? Fading shadows. And what are they to us?

  A T THIS TIME OF YEAR, when it rains every day, I go down to the village on Sundays. I pass close by the Erards' house without calling in. Sometimes, from outside the sitting-room window, you can hear Hélène playing the piano. Other times I can see her in her clogs in the garden, picking the last of the roses, the ones people save to place on graves on All Saints' Day,” or wild, fire-coloured dahlias. She sees me and waves; walks over to the fence and tells me to come in. But I say no; I haven't been feeling at all sociable lately. Hélène and her family have the same effect on me as dessert wine: Muscat or that honey-coloured Frontignan. My palate is so used to old Burgundy, it can't deal with them any more. So I say goodbye to Hélène and, beneath the trickle of light rain that falls from the bare trees, I walk into the village.

  It is silent, empty and melancholy; night falls quickly. I cross the Place du Monument aux Morts, where the image of a soldier stands guard, painted in the brightest pink and blue. Further along there is an avenue lined with lime trees, then ancientdarkish ramparts where an arched doorway opens on to empty space and lets through a chill north wind, and finally the small square in front of the church. At dusk, you can just make out the round loaves of golden bread in the bakery window, lit up by a lamp with a paper shade. In the grey drizzle and fog, the signs hanging in front of the notary and shoemaker seem to float in the air: the shoemaker has a large clog carved out of light wood the size and shape of a cradle. Over the road is the Hôtel des Voyageurs. I push open the door, making a little bell ring, and find myself in the dark, smoky café. A wood-burning stove glows like a red eye; mirrors reflect the marble tabletops, the billiard table, the torn leather settee and the calendar from 1919 with its picture of an Alsatian woman in white stockings standing between two soldiers. Every Sunday, eight farmers (always the same ones) come and play cards in this café. The same words are spoken. You can hear the sound of bottles of red wine being opened and the noise of heavy glasses on the tables. When I come in, voices greet me, one after the other.

  “Hello there, Monsieur Sylvestre.”

  They speak in the slow, gravelly accent that this region has borrowed from neighbouring Burgundy.

  I take off my clogs, order some wine and sit down at my usual place, on the left-hand side of the room near the window, from where I can see the hen-house, the laundry and a little garden being drenched by rain.

  Everything is permeated by the silence of an autumn evening in a sleepy little village. In front of me is a mirror that frames my wrinkled face, a face so mysteriously changed over the past few years that I scarcely recognise myself. Bah! A sweet, sensual warmth seeps into my bones; I warm my hands at the sputtering wood-burning stove whose smell makes me feel sleepy and slightly sick. The door opens and a young man in a cap appears, or a man in his best Sunday clothes, or a little girl who's come to fetch her father, calling out in a shrill little voice, “You in there? Mum's wantin' you,” before she disappears with a burst of laughter.

  A few years ago old Declos used to come here every Sunday, like clockwork; he never played cards, he was too mean to risk his money, but he would sit beside the card table, his pipe gripped in the corner of his mouth, and look on silently. Whenever someone asked his advice, he would gesture to them to leave him alone, as if he were refusing to take alms. He 's dead and buried now, and in his place is Marc Ohnet, bare-headed and dressed in a leather waistcoat, sitting at a table with a bottle of Beaujolais.

  The way a man drinks in company tells you nothing about him, but the way he drinks when alone reveals, without him realising it, the very depths of his soul. There is a particular manner in which a man turns the stem of the glass in his hand, tilts the bottle and watches the wine pour, brings the glass to his lips, then winces and puts it down again when someone calls out to him, picks it up again with a false little cough and downs it in one go, eyes closed, as if seeking forgetfulness at the bottom of the glass—a manner that shows he is preoccupied with something or troubled by worrying thoughts. Marc Ohnet has been spotted; my eight farmers continue to play cards, but now and then they cast furtive glances in his direction. He feigns indifference. It 's getting darker. Someone lights the large brass gas lamp hanging from the ceiling; the men put away their cards and begin getting ready to go home. That's when they start talking. First about the weather, the cost of living and the harvest. Then they turn towards Marc Ohnet.

  “We haven't seen you in quite a while, Monsieur Marc.”

  “Not since old Declos's funeral,” someone else says.

  The young man makes a vague gesture and mutters he 's been busy.

  They talk about Declos and what he left: “the most beautiful land in the region.”

  “Now, he knew about fa
rming … A miser. A penny was a penny to him. No one round here liked him much, but he knew about farming.”

  Silence. They've given the dead man their greatest compliment and, in some way, they've made it clear to the young man that they take the side of the dead man and not the living, the old not the young, the husband not the lover. For certain things are known, of course … where Brigitte is concerned, at least. They stare at Marc, curiosity burning in their eyes.

  “His wife,” someone says finally.

  Marc looks up and frowns. “What about his wife?”

  Cautious little comments slip from the farmers' lips along with the smoke from their pipes:

  “His wife … She was very young for him, of course, but then, when he married her, he was already rich, and she …”

  “There was Coudray, but it was falling to bits.”

  “She should have left these parts, of course, it was only thanks to Declos that she kept what she had.”