Four Novels

by Marguerite Duras

  “Then, I think, some very small houses.”

  Low houses, children on the porches looking at the cars. They no longer wondered what time it was. It was any time before noon. Soon, after the houses, there was no other shade on the countryside but the fleeting shade of the birds.

  The wheat fields weren’t any help. No landmarks. Nothing but the wheat fields in the blinding light.

  “I drove a long time through these fields,” Maria said. “Eight miles as I told you.”

  Pierre looked at the mileage. He was figuring out the distance they had covered.

  “Two more miles,” he said. “Two more and we’ll be there.”

  They stared at the landscape, swelling slightly toward the horizon. The sky was evenly gray. Telephone lines were running along the road to Madrid as far as you could see. There were few cars because of the heat.

  “Didn’t the road turn?” Pierre asked.

  She said she remembered a turn, yes, but she hadn’t taken it. Then the road was straight up to the side of the road.

  “Everything is going very well,” Pierre said. “We’re getting to the crossing. Look, there, on the left. Look carefully, Maria.”

  He must have been speaking so calmly because of Judith. Maybe because of Claire too. Judith was singing, rested and relaxed.

  “He died from the heat, it’s all over,” Maria said.

  The road was climbing slightly.

  “Do you remember? Do you remember this climb?”

  She remembered. The road was climbing very slightly, up to a crest that was probably hiding a fork, with one road to the left that they would see upon reaching the top of the hill, and more wheat fields, still more and more wheat fields.

  “It’s silly. It’s stupid,” Maria shouted.

  “No,” Pierre said, “not at all.”

  The other wheat fields. They looked less even than the previous ones. They were studded with enormous, brightly colored flowers. Claire was speaking.

  “Around here,” she said, “they’ve started harvesting.”

  Seven

  “IT’S LIKE HELL,” MARIA shouted.

  Pierre stopped the Rover completely. Judith listened and tried to understand. But they stopped talking and she began to think of something else.

  “Look again,” Pierre said. “Please, Maria.”

  The side of the road went downhill on the left, straight to the bottom of the valley. There was no one on it.

  “It’s this road,” Maria said. “The people who are harvesting are far away, half a mile on both sides of the road. They won’t reach it before evening. You see, Claire.”

  “Of course,” Claire said.

  Maria now recognized the road perfectly, its gentle sweep, so gentle, its width, its original way of being buried in the wheat fields, and even its special light. She took the brandy from the car pocket, Pierre stopped her with his arm. She didn’t insist, put the bottle back.

  “He lay down in the wheat, waiting for noon,” she said, “over there, probably”—she pointed to an indefinite spot. “It’s so long ago now, where can he be?”

  “Who?” Judith asked.

  “A man,” Claire said, “who was supposed to go to Madrid with us.”

  Pierre started the car. He slowly drove a few yards on the road to Madrid and then, still slowly, he turned into the side road. Two car tracks were noticeable, intertwined with those of carts.

  “The Rover’s wheels,” Pierre said.

  “You see, you see,” Maria said. “The shade from the wheat must be down to nothing at this time of the day. He must be dead from the heat.”

  The heat was suffocating. The road was already dried out. The tracks of the carts and the Rover had been carved into it, until the next storm.

  “Oh! How stupid,” Maria said. “It was there. It’s there.”

  It was a little after noon, just a little. The time agreed upon.

  “Don’t talk, Maria,” Claire said.

  “I’m not talking.”

  In the fields various spots stuck out, here and there, from the wide rectangles of wheat, staked out by dirt roads, each one gently sloping down to the valley. They watched the car that was coming toward them, they were wondering what the tourists were doing, if they had taken the wrong road. Standing, interrupting their work, all of them were now looking at the Rover.

  “They’re looking at us,” Claire said.

  “We’re going to rest a little on this road,” Pierre said, “since we didn’t sleep last night because of the storm. There were no rooms in the hotel, remember Claire?”

  “I remember.”

  Judith also looked at the workers. With her four-year-old experience she was trying to understand. Sitting on Claire’s lap, she could see all the way into the valley.

  Maria could now recognize the spot. In the hollow of the road, the heat didn’t move and brought out sweat from every part of their bodies.

  “Twenty more yards. Follow the tracks. I’ll let you know.”

  Pierre moved ahead. The harvesters, still standing, watched them. This road led nowhere. It belonged to their fields. They were surrounding a large rectanglar area, in the center of which Rodrigo Paestra had lain down seven hours before. They had started harvesting at the bottom of the valley. They were moving up toward the road to Madrid, which they would reach by the end of the day.

  The dirt road was getting more hollow, dipping beneath the level of the wheat fields. Only the heads, the still heads of the harvesters could be seen.

  “I think you should stop,” Maria said.

  He stopped. The workers didn’t move. Some of them would probably come over to the Rover.

  Pierre got out of the car and made a friendly gesture with his hand, to the group nearest to them, composed of two men. A few seconds passed. And one of the two men answered Pierre’s gesture. Then Pierre took Judith out of the car, lifted her, and Judith repeated the same greeting after him. When Maria thought of it later, she remembered Pierre’s happy smile.

  All the workers answered the little girl’s greeting. The group of two men and, a little behind them, a group of women. Their faces changed: they were laughing. They were laughing, making faces because of the sun: like ripples on the water, that can be seen from far away. They were laughing.

  Claire didn’t leave the car. Maria got out.

  “It’s impossible for him to get out of the field now,” she said.

  Pierre pointed out to Maria several carts at the bottom of the valley. Half way down, between these carts and the road to Madrid, there were still more carts and horses.

  “In half an hour,” Pierre said, “they’re going to eat in the shade of the carts. And, hidden by the wheat, they won’t see us at all.”

  A voice from the car.

  “In half an hour, we’ll be dead from the heat,” Claire said.

  She again had Judith with her. She was telling her a story, while following Maria and Pierre with her eyes.

  They had gone back to work. The wind that came from the valley, full of wheat dust, tickled their throats. And this wind was still balmy, it had blown through last night’s storm.

  “I’m going there,” Maria said, “so I can at least tell him to wait, to be patient.”

  She slowly moved away, as if taking a walk. She sang. Pierre waited for her, in the sun.

  She sang the song she had been singing for Rodrigo Paestra two hours before dawn. A worker heard her, raised his head, went back to work, failing to understand why tourists had stopped there.

  She walked on mechanically and calmly, just as Rodrigo Paestra had, when he had left her at four in the morning. The road hollowed out so much that no one could possibly see her. Except Pierre and Claire.

  What could Maria call the time that opened ahead of her? The certainty of her hope? This rejuvenated air she was breathing. This incandescence, this bursting of love at last without object?

  Deep in the valley, there must have been a stream where the storm’s luminous wate
rs were still rolling.

  She hadn’t been mistaken. Her hope came true. Suddenly, on her left, the wheat opened up. She could no longer see them. She was alone with him again. She pushed aside the wheat and walked in. He was there. Over him, the wheat, naively, came back together. It would have done the same over a stone.

  He was sleeping.

  The colorful carts that had passed by him that morning in the rising sun had not waked him. He was where he had settled down, where he had dropped as if struck by lightning, when she had left. He was sleeping on his stomach, his legs folded, just slightly, like a child’s, instinctively looking for comfort away from misfortune. The legs that had carried Rodrigo Paestra through his great misfortune, all the way to this wheat field, had, lonely and courageous, adapted themselves to his sleep.

  His arms were around his head, and childishly abandoned like his legs.

  Maria called out, “Rodrigo Paestra.”

  She bent over him. He was sleeping. She would carry that body to France. She would take him very far, her miracle, the storm murderer. So he had been waiting for her. He had believed what she had told him in the morning. She felt a desire to slip into the wheat next to his body, so that, on waking up, he would recognize an object of this world, the anonymous and grateful face of a woman.

  “Rodrigo Paestra.”

  Half bent over him, she called very softly, wishing and at the same time fearing to wake him up. Probably Pierre and Claire could neither see nor hear her. Nor even imagine her.

  “Rodrigo Paestra,” she said very softly.

  So strong was her pleasure at seeing Rodrigo Paestra again that she thought she was still drunk. Then she thought him ungrateful. He was there, waiting for her to come at the appointed time. Just as you wait for spring.

  She shouted more loudly.

  “Rodrigo Paestra. It’s me. It’s me.”

  She bent still farther and called him. This time closer, lower.

  And when she got so close to him she could have touched him, she noticed that Rodrigo Paestra was dead.

  His open eyes were staring at the ground. The spot around his head and on the blades of wheat, which she had taken for his shadow, was his blood. It had happened a long time ago, probably a little after dawn, six or seven hours ago. Next to Rodrigo Paestra’s face was his gun, like a toy abandoned by a child overcome by sleep.

  Maria got up. She left the wheat field. Pierre was standing on the road. He walked toward her. They met.

  “There’s no point in waiting,” Maria said. “He’s dead.”

  “What?”

  “The heat probably. It’s all over.”

  Pierre stayed motionless next to Maria. They looked at each other without speaking. Maria was the first to smile. A very long time ago, they had looked at each other in nearly the same way.

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  She didn’t move. Pierre left her, went toward the spot she had just left, where the wheat opened up. It was his turn to bend over Rodrigo Paestra. He took a long time to get back. But he walked back to Maria. Claire and Judith were waiting for them, completely silent. Maria picked up a grain of wheat, and another, held them, let them go, picked more and let those go again. Pierre was next to her now.

  “He killed himself,” he said.

  “An idiot. An idot. Let’s not talk about it anymore.”

  They stayed on the road, facing each other. Each one was waiting for the other to say a word that would serve as a conclusion, a word which didn’t come. Then Pierre took Maria by the shoulder and called her.

  “Maria.”

  From the Rover came another call. Claire. She had forgotten her. It was Pierre she was calling. Pierre answered, motioning. They were coming.

  “And the man?” Judith asked.

  “He won’t be coming,” Pierre said.

  Maria opened the back door and asked Claire to sit in front. She would keep Judith with her in the back.

  “He’s dead,” Pierre whispered to Claire.

  “How did it happen?”

  Pierre hesitated.

  “Sunstroke, probably,” he said.

  He started the Rover and began to make a U-turn. It was difficult to manage. He had to drive up on the sides a bit because the dirt road was very narrow. Over his shoulder Pierre could see Maria, who had taken Judith in her arms and was wiping her forehead. She was doing this carefully, as always. Claire, in front, was silent. Maria didn’t look at her beautiful neck outlined against the wheat fields.

  Pierre had managed the turn. He drove up the dirt road and, while on it, moved slowly. Then came the road to Madrid.

  “What are we going to do?” Claire asked.

  Nobody answered.

  “Am I thirsty,” Judith said.

  The road to Madrid. Monumental, straight, on and on. Again the harvesters must have looked up, in the fields, but they couldn’t be seen anymore. Pierre stopped again and turned around, looking at Maria without speaking.

  “There is no reason,” she said, “absolutely no reason why we shouldn’t do what we had decided to do.”

  “Exactly one-hundred fifty-two miles,” Claire said. “We can be there before dark.”

  Pierre started to drive again. The heat was more bearable because of the speed. It blew away your sweat, made your head less heavy. Judith complained again about being thirsty. Pierre promised her they would stop in the next village. Twenty-nine more miles. Judith still complained. She was bored.

  “She’s bored,” Claire said.

  Then, well before the village, the road changed all of a sudden. First it climbed imperceptibly toward a spot that was very far away. Then it went down, in the same fashion, through a higher, rockier, lunar region. It didn’t go down as much as it had gone up; then it became flat and straight again.

  “We must have entered Castile,” Claire said.

  “Probably,” Pierre said.

  Judith once again cried that she was thirsty.

  “Judith, if you cry,” Maria said calmly, “if you cry . . .”

  Judith cried.

  “I’ll leave you on the side of the road,” Maria shouted. “If you cry, Judith, you’d better watch out.”

  Pierre went faster. Faster and faster. The Rover was leaving clouds of dust and gravel behind it. The air was torrid. Claire leaned back, looking at the road ahead.

  “There’s no point in killing ourselves,” she said.

  The wheat fields disappeared. All that was left were stones, heaps of stones, completely discolored by the sun.

  Judith stopped crying, huddled against her mother. Pierre was driving faster and faster in spite of Claire’s warning. Maria was silent.

  “Mummy,” Judith called.

  “We’ll get killed,” Claire announced.

  Pierre didn’t slow down. He was driving so fast that Judith was tossed from one side to the other, from the back of the seat to her mother. Her mother reached out to hold her against her hip. And Judith stayed there, whimpering again.

  “Pierre,” Claire shouted, “Pierre.”

  He slowed down a little. They reached the end of the plateau and the road started climbing again. On the top, it became flat once more, but this time it was not going to go down again. At the end of the road, there was an amphitheater of mountains with round summits. As they moved ahead, other mountains appeared, strangely piled up. Now there were mountains on all sides, one on top of the other, some resting on others with their whole weight, white, pink or blue from the sulfides exposed to the sun, jostling each other madly.

  “Mummy,” Judith called again.

  “Be quiet, that’s enough,” Maria shouted.

  “She’s afraid,” Claire said. “Judith is afraid.”

  Pierre slowed down even more. In the rear-view mirror he saw Maria put her arm around Judith and kiss her, and Judith, who at last was smiling.

  They were now traveling at a normal speed. They were only six miles from the village that Pierre had
announced. There was a pause, the first since the mood that set in after they discovered Rodrigo Paestra’s body in the wheat field, when time had started to rush forward.

  “Our rooms,” Claire said a little later. “Let’s not forget to reserve them by phone before this evening. Yesterday we had planned to do this before three.”

  Maria let go of Judith, who had now calmed down. Maria became aware of Claire again, and of Claire’s beauty which nearly made her cry. Claire was there, her profile outlined against the sky and the sulfurous and milky mountains on the horizon, which marked the progress of their trip and foretold its end that evening, in Madrid. Tonight, Pierre. She had been afraid earlier, when Pierre was driving so fast, that she would die while waiting. Now she had become thoughtful and her fear had been erased as she waited for a room, in Madrid, that very night in Madrid, as she waited to be coiled up against Pierre, that night, in Madrid, naked, in the warm moistness of a room closed to daylight, when Maria would be asleep in a lonely slumber brought on by liquor.

  Could she see them already, in their white bed, in Madrid, that night, hiding? Yes, except for Claire’s nakedness which she didn’t know.

  “I’ll always love you, Claire,” Maria said.

  Claire turned around and didn’t smile at Maria. Pierre did not turn. There was complete silence in the Rover. Claire had never shown herself naked to Maria. She would tonight, to Pierre. This was just as ineluctable as the coming of twilight in a while would be. She could read the fate of that night in Claire’s eyes.

  “Look Judith,” Pierre shouted.

  It was the village they wanted to reach. Looking like Rodrigo Paestra’s, it moved quickly toward them. Pierre slowed down. His hands on the wheel were beautiful, supple, long, brown, uniquely docile from now on. Claire kept looking at them.

  “There’s an inn,” Pierre said. “At the other end of the village.”

  The village was already enjoying a peaceful siesta. The inn was surrounded by pine trees, where Pierre had said it would be.

  It was a rather old, immense residence, entirely shielded from the heat. There were many cars under the pine trees. A round terrace, looking out on the countryside, was empty.

  They hadn’t even noticed that it was already lunch time. Everybody was eating. Some of the people they had seen at the Hotel Principal. The recognized one another. Claire smiled at a young woman.