A Life on Paper: Stories

by Georges-Olivier Chateaureynaud

  From beneath disheveled hair, two suspicious eyes watched his every move. The backwoods boy's scrawny legs trembled a bit, but he seemed ready to seize his brothers, one under each arm, and dash off into the underbrush. Maxence softened his voice as best he could.

  "Don't worry, I won't eat you! My name is Maxence. I am a knight. What's your name?"

  The boy didn't say a word. His brothers, excited a moment earlier, and wanting a closer look at the man in metal, were now growing alarmed by their elder's silence. Time passed, fear and discomfort overcoming the little ones in turn, and Maxence steeled himself for the moment when the three would all burst into tears. He was about to set foot on the ground, even if it meant terrifying the little brats, and reestablish his authority, when an old man appeared in the cottage door.

  "Well, didn't you hear his lordship, you little ninnies? He's thirsty. You, boy, fetch an ewer, and the rest of you run off and play in the sun.

  Maxence dismounted. The old man had reached him but kept a few steps away, beret in hand. Maxence guessed that his servile demeanor hid a burning curiosity and, despite his own weariness, tried to make a good impression. But he saw, from an easing of the man's fawning manner, that he'd been sized up for what he truly was: a knight, yes, but a lowly lord, quite old and poor, from whom there was little to fear and even less to hope. Despite it all, Maxence made sure the long sword hanging at his side struck his greave with a ringing sound.

  "Sire, if it pleases you to take your rest here, this house is yours

  "Thank you, old man. Heaven will be grateful for your hospitality toward its humble servant, for I am a Christian knight."

  The old man crossed himself at once. In school, Maxence had been taught how to pay his way in the coin of word. The oldest of the children reappeared, ewer in hand.

  "My thanks, boy. Tell me, would you know how to look after my steed?"

  The boy gazed at his grandfather without answering.

  "Of course he does, sire!" said the old man. "Off you go-you know where fodder can be found, and make sure you give the horse a good rubdown!"

  The boy walked toward the horse. Maxence told him he could ride it instead of leading it to fodder. The boy smiled at last. Maxence plunged the ewer into the spring's fresh water.

  "It's good water, it is, sire," the old man said. "It's kept me in good health for seventy years, it has!"

  "Upon my word, seventy years! It must be good indeed-you seem quite sprightly still!"

  On hearing these words, the old man couldn't keep from contorting his face in a grin. Maxence saw he would have food and shelter tonight for a trifle.

  "My daughter and my son-in-law will soon return from gathering mushrooms," the old man continued. "We've had rain of late, and we'll have wild mushrooms tonight. Water, bread, and a mushroom omelet are all we can offer you, milord."

  "I'd gladly make it my daily fare, if it would guarantee I'd stand up just as straight at your age!"

  The old man straightened proudly, his face wracked by another smile.

  So sore were his loins and limbs from riding that Maxence would have liked to turn in right after supper, but he would have offended his hosts had he begged his leave of them so hurriedly. Thus he spoke graciously of the lands he had seen, his adventures among the Turks, the Germans, and the Calabrese, as well as of a few customs peculiar to these people, and likely to astonish poor folk who'd never been more than a league from their clearing. Then, once the children were in bed and their mother busying herself clearing up, the grandfather removed a flagon of spirits from the dough trough. His son-in-law pointed and said, "If it's the springs of youth you're after, those are the waters that keep him a strapping lad at his age!"

  Maxence was drifting off, but the sight of the bottle restored his forces a bit, for he loved to drink, and the omelet they'd shared would have seemed more delicious with a pitcher of wine. The old man filled the goblets and set the flagon down in reach. The liquor was rough but did the job as well as any other. Maxence settled himself against the wall before picking up the trail of his thoughts once more. He was among men now, and knew what his hosts wanted to hear. He answered their desires, telling tales of Moorish serving girls and Italian bordellos, which he readily embellished with far-fetched or flattering episodes. Eyes wide, the forest-dwellers hung on his every word. They pressed on late into the night, he speaking, the others listening, and everyone drinking so much that the old man had long since fallen asleep on his bench when Maxence was at last done with his flowery fables.

  "Well, my good men, that's how women are in those lands!"

  Across from him, the son-in-law was nodding off, his nose sometimes dipping into his half-empty goblet. "What a life you've had! What women you've seen! We don't have any like that around here… Well, there is one, one beautiful woman in these parts, but she's…"

  Maxence, who wanted only to crawl off to sleep, straightened in his drunken stupor and, as best he could, assumed the air of a great lover hearing tell of a legendary lonely lady. The man hesitated, as though fearing he'd said too much. Maxence pressed him. "Come now, a pretty damsel? You must tell me all about her!"

  "A… damsel? Oh, I don't know… She is a beautiful woman, but…"

  "But?"

  "But… how should I put it? We think her a bit of a witch, milord, and she frightens us."

  Maxence shrugged. "I've yet to meet a woman who frightens me! Come now, tell me everything! After all, you must, if she's a witch. Do you understand?"

  The threat lurking behind his last words overcame the woodsman's scruples.

  "Milord, she lives not far from us, on the island in the river. She lives alone. My father-in-law, who has indeed seen seventy winters, claims she's been there all his life. She was already living there, alone on the island, making charcoal, when he was a little bov:'

  "What are you saying?"

  "The truth, milord, as the old man has spoken it a hundred times."

  "Then she must be a hundred if a day!"

  "A hundred she may well be, but her hair is dark as the crow's wing, and the snow no whiter than her teeth or skin. Milord, it's girls of sixteen who seem crones beside her! I remember, for I saw her once, up close. My father-in-law had told me so much about her that I wanted to see her for myself, I went to the island. And suddenly there she was, standing before me, stepped out from behind a thicket."

  "What did you do?"

  "I gazed on her a long time. I was a young man, just married, my wife expecting our first child. And yet I swear to you, at her slightest sign I would've left it all behind, wife and child; never would I have come back across the river. But she remained unmoving, unspeaking, in the middle of the path, and I fled. So far as I know, God never wrought a thing so beautiful-the Evil One must have had a hand in it… Once home, I pulled my wife to me and held her close. Since that day, I have avoided the banks."

  The man fell silent. His eyes, which had shone as he spoke, were once more dull with drink. Maxence wanted to pour him another, but he shook his head.

  "Thank you, milord. I've had enough. I should not have spoken of such things. They always make me sad."

  "Let's go to bed. It was a beautiful tale, my friend. But do you really believe that woman's a hundred? Your father-in-law is old. Sometimes, toward the end of such a long life, everything runs together in one's head. Was it not the mother, or even the grandmother of the girl you met, that he'd known as a child?"

  "I don't know, milord. Were she but sixteen summers, she'd still be too beautiful. So much beauty is a terrible thing: a man's soul cannot conceive of it without being troubled forevermore. Please, I beg of you-forget what I've said. No doubt you're right, no doubt she's but sixteen, or twenty, and shines too brightly for we who share these woods… She must be a good Christian… I wish her no harm."

  "We'll see."

  Looking up, Maxence was surprised to find on the face of host an expression of such fear and remorse that he hadn't the heart to worry him any longer.<
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  "Rest easy. I'm a knight, not a prelate. Let us to bed."

  The two men rose clumsily. Maxence lay down beside the fire and rolled himself up in a blanket from the couple's bed while, with an uncertain step, the man joined his sleeping wife.

  Heads were heavy the next day at dawn. When it was time to say goodbye, Maxence gave the old man a medal he'd claimed to have brought back from the Holy Land, then took the path toward the river.

  In the morning mist, man and mount, both half-asleep, trailed the night's dreams. Maxence liked this torpor, the world's melancholy in the early hours of the day. Among his memories of military life, he loved more than the thrills of victory and pillage the uncertain dawns, the hushed sunups when, first to rise, he'd walked at length among his dozing comrades. It was a good hour for lending a hand, when the sentinels themselves were often nodding off. Yet he had felt invulnerable then. He retreated into those slow minutes as though into the heart of an impregnable citadel. Then a bugle would sound at the other end of camp, the sleepers would stir, and Maxence begin once more to fear death.

  Before he glimpsed the river, its cold breath bathed his face. He advanced to the edge of the bank with care, so difficult was it to tell, in the gray, mist from water. The island rose up halfway between the banks. Maxence contemplated it at length. His indecisive nature often led to such moments, hours even, of being torn between two paths, neither of which particularly drew him. Why ride beside the river? Why try to reach the isle? Why, in the past, had he followed one man in war and not another? Most of the time, the first banner to go by had been the one he went with, and the same for women. Last night's desire had flown with morning. What was he going to do with a wildwoman he wasn't even sure of winning? And yet he could not bring himself simply to go on his way. He thought he saw a figure on the island, and his horse went into the water.

  The young woman raised her head and saw Maxence. His whole body was shaking. Though he'd forded many a river on horseback before, the cold had never affected him so. He wasn't sure the cold alone was to blame for his state; as soon as he'd seen the coalwoman, he'd understood his host's troubled words. He too had been afraid, and ready to turn heel and run from the girl. In the purity of features, that high forehead lightly smudged with soot, Maxence saw the face of all his longings. Everything he'd dreamed of as a youth, and even earlier, in those final days of childhood when desire knows nothing of the flesh and vet calls out to it, were suddenly incarnate before him. The tenderness of those vanished days, toward everyone, no one and the heavens above, awoke in him that morning, his life almost wholly consumed, his graying, wasting life broken by wars and embraces, and tears clouded his eyes. He was about to flee when she spoke.

  "The river has chilled you to the bone, knight. You mustn't stay here. Come and dry off in my hut. I'll make a fire. Come, you're shivering, you'll take ill!"

  "Y-yes… you're right. The river is cold as death."

  He shook from head to toe, and his teeth chattered. She took his mount by the reins. He let himself be led. The hut was more wretched than the woodsman's cottage, but he barely noticed. Regiments ran this way and that across his body as though across a battlefield, some mounted on horses of flame and others on horses of ice. He let himself be undressed and put to bed by the young woman like a child by his mother. When she drew away to light the fire and reheat a bit of broth, he remained on his back, staring at the ceiling, a thin coverlet drawn up to his chin. Despite the fever, a feeling of peace flooded through him. He was likely to die, and the thought no longer worried him. His final resting place would be a meager hut of twigs and branches, and the last thing he saw a face like those he'd never dwelled on in the alcoves of churches; so it was, and it was good. When she returned, he drank a bit of broth, then all was dark.

  He had no memory of the days and nights that passed. Then the fires the fever had stoked in his body went out one by one, and the black smoke they'd thrown off stopped clouding his mind. The morning came when he could step outside and walk all the way to a nearby pond. He leaned over the water and looked at his reflection between the ribbons of scum on the surface. Though thinner than ever, his hair and beard whiter than expected, it was still him, and he laughed to find himself alive. He heard a gentle voice call out to him, and rose, blushing.

  "Sir knight! Sir knight! You're on your feet again!"

  Today it was her cheek that was smudged with soot. He remembered their first encounter, and couldn't keep himself from laughing again. Beautiful, yes-but a coalwoman. Still-beautiful! He didn't know what to say to her and cleared his throat.

  "You looked after me…"

  "Yes, sir knight. A long time."

  He misread her. "I'm sorry. My purse is empty."

  She stopped smiling, and made as if to leave.

  "Don't go! What have I said to offend you?"

  "Do you think I'm interested in your money? Had you died, I could have taken it freely."

  "Forgive me. I am old and poor, and sooner or later, the subject always comes up.

  "You tire me."

  She moved away. He returned to the hut, upset with himself. When night began to fall, he waited, but she did not come. He fell asleep late that night. That was how she was, the ruler of her little island, and that day he had displeased her. She did not come till the next day, after noon, bringing fish, four gleaming fish spotted green and blue, one of which still jerked among the blackberries she'd gathered along the way and tossed pell-mell into the wicker basket with her catch. They ate without speaking a word. When they'd finished, they went inside. There they shed their clothes and coupled. Then they fell asleep. Night was falling when they woke. They drank some broth and fought over the remaining blackberries before returning to their lover's sport, inventing new games to play.

  They were the only two souls on the island. From time to time, said the coalwoman, boatmen stopped to buy some charcoal from her. The yard behind the hut was almost bare: they would not come again for a long while. The days went by. Slowly, Maxence recovered his forces. He no longer wore his coat of mail, but a simple serge tunic the young woman had sewn him. He helped make charcoal, and at night they lay down beside each other like husband and wife. Sometimes he was astonished that so young and beautiful a girl had given herself to him like this, and the woodsman's words came back to him. He had indeed found a strange companion. She spoke little, and some days behaved as if he didn't exist, coming and going or dreaming in the sun before their hut without giving him so much as a word or a glance. Sometimes she suddenly disappeared, and Maxence spent hours, days even, searching for her on the island. It wasn't very big, but the young woman only reappeared when she chose to.

  She pretended not to know her age. Maxence teased her, saying that her childhood days could hardly be so long past, that she should remember them, and made as if to look for dolls beneath the bed. She replied in a serious voice that frightened him.

  "Oh, but they are, they are! Long, long past! I no longer even remember ever playing with dolls!"

  He asked her about her parents, and got no answer; if he insisted, she fled. He would only see her one or two days later, and then thought only of being forgiven for his tiresome questions. Unlike most young women he'd known, she cared not a whit in love for sweet words or vows. She gave and took without flowery phrases, then fell asleep with a smile on her lips. They never once had those lovers' conversations, which are really confessions, and Maxence, whom these had always bored, missed them for the first time, for his curiosity gnawed at him. One time, as he laughingly threatened to leave her, he caught her giving in to the silly nothings said in bed.

  "If you leave this place;" she said, "no path will lead you anywhere. The world around this isle is empty:"

  He pretended to play her game. "But then, my beautiful sorceress, what of your buyers, the boatmen? Doesn't the river lead them to the sea after they've stopped at your but?"

  "Yes, because I wish it. You can leave; you are free to do so. Cut down bran
ches and make a raft if you wish. But be warned: the river runs only between dead banks to an ocean of silence."

  Maxence tried to lighten the mood. "My dearest, love makes a world without the one we love a wasteland!"

  "It is not love, but I;" she said gravely, "who will make the world a wasteland for you"

  She slipped away, as always when the conversation displeased her. Alone, Maxence went to check on the ovens. He looked up for a moment at the opposite shore and reflected that he'd never seen smoke rising where the woodsman's cottage should have been. No doubt he had misreckoned the length of his ride to the river the morning he'd left, and the next moment, gave it no more thought.

  A short while later, winter came. All night, the wind howled round the hut like a hungry dog and in the morning, when the lovers stepped out, snapped at their hands and faces. The river would soon freeze. Already gray lace advanced from either side, just above the water, soon to meet and harden in the middle till the river could reliably be crossed on foot. Then it snowed for three days. The river vanished; frost after frost immobilized the landscape for several long months. Maxence complained of the cold and spoke to the coalwoman of distant climes he'd witnessed in his travels, depicting the golden lives they'd lead if she but agreed to follow him to those lands where the sun shone all year long. She listened to him, but never replied. He himself was uncertain if he wished to bring her along. He often coughed and felt suffocated at night. After his illness and convalescence, he had seemed, briefly, to recover his youth, but since winter's sudden start had felt himself growing older by the day. While his companion braved winter with a smile, his own temperament grew bitter. Eventually he no longer stepped outside, and spent his days by the fire, nursing memories of the Orient. One night at last, he realized he was an old man. He said so to the young woman, who pulled him close. No doubt he had a fever already, for she fell asleep first while he shivered at length in her arms before joining her. When dawn came he rose without waking her. Though he had not used his armor since arriving on the island, he had always taken care-an old campaigner's habit-to keep its pieces in good shape. He donned his armor, harnessed his horse, then mounted her and crossed the river. He went slowly, often getting off to help the creature, who sometimes sank to her chest in the snow. Beneath his helm he wept with cold. His tears froze to his face as soon as they welled from his eves. He soon realized he wouldn't make it far this way, but the hope of warming himself by the woodsman's fire restored his courage. He squinted at the icy air before him, expecting at any moment to see smoke from their hearth rising through the trees. He saw nothing of the sort, but suddenly, lifting his gaze once more toward the skies, recognized the two giant oaks: no tree in all the woods could have rivaled them in height. He took another look around him: he was standing in the clearing. The frozen spring, which he found easily, was proof. But there was no cottage. He dismounted and got on his knees, sifting through the snow for some trace. Though he dug through the snow with his own hands, nothing remained of the cottage. He stood up again. Considering the clearing, he tried with his mind to efface the snow and recreate the shapes and colors of the autumn forest he still remembered. He was unable to decide, in his confusion, if the attempt was conclusive. His head spun; he tried to get back in the saddle but an even more violent dizziness seized him and he had to give up. The snow had started to fall again, slowly at first, then in large flakes that the wind hurled into his face. He tried to catch his breath long enough to make the shelter of the trees, but his mount didn't give him time: she took fright in the white whirlwind and jerked hard on the bridle. His numb fingers failed to hold her back. She broke free, bucked once and knocked him back in the snow. He tried to get up again, but rose no higher than his knees. He saw his horse one last time, mad with fear, dashing out of reach. Crossing his arms over his dented chest, he let himself fall back. The first flake settled on his right pupil, which didn't flinch, then another fell, and then a hundred more as the snow filled his eyes and his wide-open mouth.