The opposing party’s lawyer argued, on the contrary, that the victim, the elderly Corbé, had laid his hunting rifle on the riverbank and was constructing a small stone dam so as to sluice water to his thirsty cattle, when Chrétien took his own rifle by the barrel and struck the defenseless old man with its butt, inadvertently firing the avenging shot upon himself, “. . . and was felled by the same sanguineous act that took the life of his victim . . . Or, perhaps, by the hand of God.”
According to the court in Rennes, however, Corbé’s weapon had also been fired.
The date, written in nearly faded ink on the upper corner of the article, read 17 August 1852.
My God, Eduard thought to himself. Here we are in the twentieth century, a peace treaty is being drawn up in Versailles to forestall future wars once and for all, and these families persist in passing their petty feud from father to son. The sleep of reason produces monsters. There had to be a solution. He tucked away the clipping and gazed out over the ostensibly tranquil valley, following the branched and reunited waterway with his eyes. If both parties felt shortchanged, then . . . It was such a bold idea that he hardly dared to imagine it to its conclusion and allowed himself to be distracted by a pair of falcons, gliding around each other in a double helix, scouring the ground for prey.
By now it had become quite hot, and the buzz of the flies ever more intrusive. He unbuttoned his collar and vest. He became more aware of the stench of the goat droppings among the stones of the ruins. Maybe not the best place for a picnic after all. Again he let his gaze follow the glistening creek, until in the distance it vanished behind a bend in the valley. One could—
Something tugged at his hat.
The buck was now standing directly behind him, its silhouette standing out against the blue sky. His horns and beard made his head look four times longer than it really was. He curled his upper lip and licked his snout with his long tongue, staring at Eduard with tiny pupils. An impressive mask, Eduard thought. Beelzebub, the lord of the flies. Strange to think that goats were content to eat grass; they looked to him like carnivores. He gathered up his portfolio and lunch box and prepared to leave. He had seen enough.
As he descended the hillock, a long row of cows appeared across the river. If these were Corbé’s goats, then those must be the Chrétiens’ cows.
He began the trek back to the Auray train station. The cows appeared to have nothing better to do than follow him in single file. The appearance of a human being in this remote valley was probably something quite special and carried with it certain expectations, which, however, he was unable to satisfy.
Eduard stopped and explained to them that he could do nothing for them, that he could not milk them and was not a cattleman. The frontmost cow listened attentively, but as soon as he continued walking, she did the same. It was some time before she stayed put, swishing her tail to brush the flies off her rump—a disciple who eventually lost faith.
This is not my world, Eduard thought, and as he walked, he began pondering the proposal details he planned to work out at home.
But he had underestimated the exceptional instinct that every farmer possesses when someone is on his land, even if it’s a Sunday; a man on horseback came galloping at him.
It was Corentin Berthou.
Even without much equestrian knowledge, Eduard could see that Berthou was a poor horseman. He sat upright in his saddle, with short stirrups, and with every bounce he slapped his sorrel’s flank with his crop.
Seeing as there was no escape, Eduard stopped and removed his hat. Corentin brought his horse to a halt and greeted him by sliding his cap back slightly with the tip of his whip.
“Bonjour, maître.”
“Bonjour, Monsieur Berthou. I’ve been having a stroll.”
“Always welcome, maître,” Corentin said, and jovially slapped his horse’s neck. The animal responded with an indifferent swivel of the ears. “You’ve seen the site of our new barn, I take it? We’ll be laying the foundation tomorrow.”
“Where, exactly?” Eduard asked warily.
“Just on the shore, on our side of the river.”
“On the new island.”
“Indeed,” Corentin grinned.
The Corbés had a dark complexion and were smallish people with unpronounced but regular features; the Chrétiens were in general taller, tended to be blond, and often had large noses, ears, and chins. But the new man did not resemble them in the slightest. He was pale and freckled, with cropped reddish hair.
“Pierre Corbé won’t stand for that. He has as much right to this new, temporary island as you do.”
“And what can he do about it—take me to court? If I’m not mistaken, he’s nearly broke. But as a solicitor you’ll know more than I do, I expect?”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss it, Monsieur Berthou.”
“You’re not, are you? As you wish. But I do hope you realize who the future belongs to and that you’ll take appropriate measures. It’s said that your sort have a nose for that.”
“You’re referring to the fact that I’m Jewish?”
“I didn’t want to put it that explicitly, maître. I’m not biased myself, as long as every man knows his place.”
Eduard pulled himself together, and placed a hand on the horse’s bridle. “Don’t do it, Monsieur Berthou. The law is not on your side.”
“Oh really? On whose side is it, then? The Corbés fight with every means they have, and for centuries they’ve profited from every new bend in the river. I’ve read the deeds. And they murdered my wife’s grandfather.”
“That has never been proved. And besides—where does the river flow? Look over your shoulder.”
“I don’t need to look. I know this river.”
“It flows through the middle of the valley, Monsieur Berthou, where it always has done. It cannot do otherwise; it is a fact of nature. A river does just not meander up a hillside, to do one landowner or the other a favor. It flows where it has always flowed, with minimal deviations where the bed is flat. The river is the boundary. Do respect it.”
“I respect nothing that puts my family at a disadvantage. You simply don’t think like a landowner, Maître Solomon. How could you? You come from different stock.”
The sorrel snorted, and he quickly let go of the reins. Corentin laughed, and tugged fiercely on the double bridle until his horse stood still, its neck doubled forward and its chest splotched with froth.
“Don’t do it,” Eduard repeated. “I have a proposal, that perhaps might—”
“Have a pleasant walk, maître. You know the way to the station?” He turned his horse and galloped back toward the island.
The barn was never built, because the cartload of stones Berthou had brought to the island soon lay on Corbé’s side of the river. It was a dry May, and the river abandoned its overconfident branching efforts and was satisfied to settle back into its old bed.
Nor did Eduard ever get the chance to present his proposal: Pierre Corbé loaded the stones onto a wagon and brought them to his farm without granting Berthou, who stood ranting across the river, so much as a glance. He would never forgive this attempt at land theft. Just as the Chrétiens would never forgive the pilfering of their stones. From that day onward, both parties refused any form of consultation.
When Adèle sat at the mirror, she never actually looked at herself. She was well aware of her appearance and had no desire to reacquaint herself with it. She would fix her glance on the reflection of her earlobe while attaching a pearl to it, on the column of her neck while clasping her triple-strand coral necklace, on her dark-blond braids while winding them around her head. But she did not look at herself. Not that she had any reason to doubt her appearance: she was the model of a stately Breton woman in the prime of her life. Her imperturbable eyes seemed made to take on the entire world.
But she avoided her reflection because she did not want to see what her husband desired. She felt nothing but revulsion for Corentin. When her father died,
she, the heiress, was seen as a fine match, and everyone urged her to accept Berthou’s advances because his family was powerful and would protect her against the Corbés.
Her husband was libidinous, but no children were born.
Adèle had nothing more in common with the young woman who had entered into that marriage, but time had been merciless, for she was still as beautiful as the bride she now so despised.
She had not exchanged a word with Pierre Corbé since the day they argued by the water, back when they were children. She sometimes saw him in the distance: a stocky, dark-haired man who performed his labors and attended to his business with an uncompromising humility that exuded a kind of strength. He had been decorated at the front, she knew, while Corentin had been a dealer of Renault automobiles. Corentin also drank, abused animals, was an anti-Semite, and was incapable, she now knew, of any emotions other than conceit and self-pity. And her husband did not listen to her. Building a barn on that temporary island was a stupid idea, but she could not talk him out of it. That was not how you played the game. It only ended in humiliation, just as she had predicted.
Pierre Corbé had undertaken numerous attempts to marry. Pickings were slim in the small Protestant community, and there was no girl among them he could imagine as his wife. So he took the laborious path of placing anonymous personal advertisements in various provincial newspapers, even as far afield as Normandy and Charente. A period of wearisome correspondence led to all of two meetings. For the first, he had to take the train to Caen. The woman turned out, for starters, to be twenty years older than he had presumed and was a religious lunatic to boot. The second candidate was a bubbly grocer’s daughter with bulges and curves in unusual places and who soon confessed not to be Protestant at all, but from Catholic folk, although, she assured him, it did not matter to her a whit. Pierre remained a bachelor. At least the farmstead would stay in the family after his death, because even though his younger brother had died, there were still a few Corbés in Brittany. That he hardly knew them personally was of no consequence.
His life had narrowed to carrying out his duties, or whatever he regarded as such. Six days thou shalt work. Happiness did not figure into it.
When Pierre Corbé looked in the mirror, it was to shave or if he contemplated a visit to the dentist. He took his looks as a given. Vanity was a torment of the soul. Of course he could recognize himself in a group photo of his battalion—if nothing else because of the scar on his upper lip—just as one picks out one’s coat and hat from a cloakroom, but his appearance did not concern him in the least.
He had no other notion of self than his role in the order of things, as the Bible had taught him. What counted in the world were money and power, and of these he had precious little. And land. Land was everything.
For him, Adèle Chrétien was like the queens from the olden days, whom he had read about at school: she had allied herself with a powerful suitor in order to keep her realm. Corentin Berthou was a punishment of the Lord. It was as though the Almighty, who had once spread plagues across heathen Egypt, was out to test his faith by presenting him with a new enemy.
There was one memory that went further back than the day they argued at the creek, although Pierre thought he might be remembering something he had only dreamed.
He and Adèle were both still small, and they stood on either side of the creek, which in the dream was tiny and twinkling.
“If you jump, I will!” shouted Adèle, who was wearing a little straw hat. Her face was smeared with blueberry juice.
“No, you can’t!” Pierre called back. “This is our side.”
“I know. And this side is ours. But if we both jump at the same time . . . then, just for second, your side is mine, and mine is yours!”
“What do you mean? If my father catches us, I’ll get a thrashing.”
“Well, if we’re both in the air at the same time, and then I’m on your side and you’re on mine, then it’s like we just trade land for a minute, right?”
She took a few steps back to get a running start, swishing her dress ostentatiously from side to side, as though she were capable of taking an enormous leap.
“Just once, then,” Pierre called back.
“Fraidy-cat!” Adèle shouted.
They sailed alongside each other and landed on opposite banks.
“Corbé, Corbé!” she cheered, dancing in a circle. “I’m on Corbés’ land!”
“Chrétien, Chrétien!” Pierre hollered, and made odd somersaults.
“One more time!” Adèle exclaimed, and once again they jumped simultaneously over the water.
“And again, hooray, hooray!”
In his dream, they finally flopped, exhausted, in the grass on their own side of the river. Adèle rubbed her skinny knees, and he rolled onto his back and let out a fart.
“You see? It works if we both jump at the same time,” Adèle panted. “Tomorrow too?”
“Maybe,” he replied.
And Adèle, for her part, thought she recalled that they did do it again, but she wasn’t entirely sure.
In the year the French occupied the shores of the Rhine, an incident occurred that would leave Pierre an invalid; thereafter he could walk only with the aid of a prosthetic leg.
The day had already started strangely. The Chrétiens’ livestock was nowhere to be seen. It was hot and still, and the cloudless sky seemed two-dimensional: a flat blue surface behind the static green of the hillsides. Pierre had counted his heifers and was preparing to return home for his midday meal when he spotted the lapwings. The female dragged herself with exaggerated drama away from him through the reeds, pretending she had a broken wing. Pierre walked back and forth along the shore and from her behavior guessed that the nest must be on the other side of the creek.
He glanced up and down the vale. There was no one in sight.
The temptation was too great. He was a law-abiding man, if only to keep his conscience pure for the Lord, but helping himself to a few lapwing eggs was really quite innocent. He’d done so since he was a boy.
The creek was at most knee-deep at this spot, and there wasn’t a soul in sight.
He removed his shoes and socks, rolled up his trouser legs. The lapwing performed a heartrendingly dramatic solo on the riverbank. Pierre chuckled and waded into the cool water, keeping one eye on the treacherous bottom and the other on the spot where he suspected he’d find the nest.
There it was, no more than ten meters from the shoreline.
Four spotted eggs.
He reached out his hand and took one more step, and then the fox trap snapped shut.
He registered the dull clunk and looked down. The large, toothed jaws had clamped shut just above his ankle.
He stood up to check whether there were any witnesses; there were none. Only then came the pain, strange and overwhelming. The scream with which he collapsed before losing consciousness was mostly one of surprise.
Upon reopening his eyes, the first thing he saw were the four spotted eggs in the shallow nest, almost within reach, and after that, the monstrous jaws of the trap that held him captive.
It was not your normal fox trap. It was a vintage exemplar that in his grandfather’s day had been used to catch roving wolves. It would have snapped a fox paw straight through. The serrated jaws nearly met, deep in his leg.
Stupid of me, he thought, and lifted the chain to see where it led. To a long, wrought-iron peg hammered deep into the clay.
Pierre needed time, and lay down on his back, assailed by the lapwing parents who returned to claim their unhatched brood.
Heavy raindrops began falling on his face and hands. Light flashed beyond the wispy clouds. Pierre saw short zigzags of lightning and for a moment wondered if this was perhaps the veins bursting in his eyeballs. The pain was intense.
A heavy downpour pummeled him even deeper into the grass. Something had to be done.
He sat up and attempted the most obvious: to open the trap. But it would not budge. Hand
over hand, he pulled himself by the chain toward the peg. Standing on one leg, he tugged it out of the clay. He dragged himself, clutching the peg and clamp, back to the river and waded through it on his hands and knees. Now he was at least on his own property.
The thunderstorm broke in a fury; the two little black lapwing crests poked out stoically from their nest above the rain-battered grass.
He took his walking stick and, using it as a lever, managed to pry open the clamp. This brought with it another, new pain, somehow more excruciating than before.
Pierre wiped the rain from his eyes and looked at the gaping wound and the tattered stocking of streaming blood.
So that’s why there was no livestock on the other side. Berthou had caught him out, but he’d be damned if he would give him the satisfaction of this triumph.
He got up and flung the trap—chain, peg and all—to the other side of the river.
He hung his shoes around his neck and staggered up the bank to the woods. But once he had reached safety and looked back, he realized that this would not do. Berthou would find the sprung trap and the loose chain, and as soon as he saw Pierre limp, he would put two and two together.
He found a branch that could serve as a crutch, and dragged himself back to the water’s edge.
The pouring rain obscured the vale almost completely. Forked lightning bolts lit up the firmament. He resembled a sinner from the grotesque world of Gustave Doré, returning to the scene of a calamity to wipe out the tracks of a crime of which he himself was the victim.
Now the thunderclouds discharged their load directly above him. He waded back across the river, leaning on his forked branch; he picked up the hefty trap and brought it to the lapwing nest. He pried the toothed maw open just enough to wedge a stone in between the jaws, eventually forcing the coil springs far enough open to reset the cruel instrument.
The lapwings sat in motionless fatalism on their eggs.
He crawled through the grass, located the hole where the peg had been, and used the stone to hammer it back into the ground.
Rivers Page 10
