“Gentlemen.” Jean raised his voice. “I’ll ask you to finish up your drinks and come outside. It’s time to get started. I don’t want the morning to slip away before we’ve all done what we’ve come here to do.”
“Well,” said Georges. “We’re getting under way now.”
“Go and kill lots of boars,” said Charlotte. “And bring them back to me, and I’ll cook them for you just the way you like them, and we won’t share them with anybody.”
Georges kissed her on the forehead.
“I’ll go, kill ’em, and come back,” he said. “Like in the movie.”
There wasn’t yet complete daylight in the yard. The sky was still overcast. In the inner courtyard, figures cast no shadows. On the paved surface, boots surrounded Jean with a murmur of rubber. The hunters wore green, but no green was the same as the next. Their jackets were thick fleece, adorned with yellow edges like fine epaulets and deer embroidered on the lapels, with buttons like coins on the sleeves and deep pockets in which nothing jangled, no keys, no matches, because those were garments for the hunting season, and no daily or habitual objects, nothing betraying domestic life, would ever be forgotten in their pockets.
“The circle, gentlemen,” said Jean.
The hunters surrounded him. Jean gave out the orders of the hunt speaking with his trumpet in one hand and a lit cigar in the other. Jean was one of the most respected hunters in the Ardennes, as his father had been, and Georges still felt moved at seeing the son of his best friend acting as maître de chasse.
“I have little to tell you, gentlemen, because you all know the rules. No shotguns, rifles only. Do not fire into the encirclement or toward rocks. The first boar is off-limits, as are females, roe deer, and stags.”
He kept quiet for a few seconds, as if looking for a way to round off his speech. After a moment, he let his cigar get soaked in the drizzle, took two steps toward the barbecue, and threw it in with the firewood.
“That’s it,” he said. “Good luck, and good hunting.”
The group dispersed on the other side of the gate. Each hunter seemed to have arranged beforehand which four-by-four he’d be riding in. The doors opened, the cars began to spew brightly colored supplies—red and purple plastic cylinders that looked like pieces from a children’s board game—green arms checked rifles, opened and closed portable stools, and the beaters pulled on their orange vests.
Xavier was leaning against Georges’s four-by-four. He held a black umbrella and a folding stool, the leather of which had been mended several times. Georges approached him without speaking. He patted him affectionately on the back and a cloud of dust came off his coat.
“How are you?”
“Fine. How else would I be?”
It was as if they hadn’t seen each other the night before. Georges decided to play along. He helped Xavier stow his rifle behind the backseat, with his own guns. Like several of the hunters, Georges couldn’t help bringing his old Browning shotgun on the hunt, even though he knew full well that its use would be forbidden. Balanced among the guns was a big mushroom he’d picked on the way there that fit perfectly, and wouldn’t get too knocked around along the way.
“Hope your dog doesn’t eat it,” said Georges.
Stalky, Xavier’s dog, was a golden retriever, old like his owner and tired from hunting with him for more than twelve years. An illness had damaged his sense of balance some time ago, and he walked with his head tilted to one side as if he were looking at a crooked picture.
“My dog doesn’t eat mushrooms,” said Moré.
“I know,” said Georges. “I was joking.”
“Yeah. Well, don’t make ridiculous jokes.”
They went across the Route de Modave and headed toward Aywaille, and only stopped at the north edge of the forest long enough for the beaters, sheathed in their fluorescent vests like neon scarecrows, to get out with the dogs and each take up their positions. The varied barking of the beasts and a mélange of their names filled the air. Stalky barked, too. “You’re not getting out yet,” said Xavier. “You’re staying with me.” From the other side of the grounds, a narrow track that would only allow the vehicles to proceed single file—one car behind the next, bumper to bumper—led to a field that the hunters would cross on foot on their way to their positions. The barbed wire along the edges of the track was almost grazing the doors of the four-by-fours.
“Why are they stopping?” said Xavier.
“Here comes your son.” Georges leaned out the window. “What’s going on, Jean? Why are they getting out?”
“This is where we’re going to leave the cars, Monsieur Lemoine,” said Jean Moré, who was coming along assigning positions. “Park as close as possible to the one in front, to leave space.”
“Give me the keys,” said Xavier.
“I have things to get out of the back, too,” said Georges, and then asked Jean: “Where’s my stand?”
“In front of the woods.” Jean pointed.
“Give me the keys,” said Xavier.
“Yes, yes, don’t be impatient,” said Georges, and took the keys out of the ignition and handed them to Xavier without looking at him. “And your father? Where should he go?”
“On the corner of this side.” Jean’s hand moved through the air, indicating the precise angle the trees established. “If there are any boars, these are magnificent positions.”
“They’re useless positions,” said Xavier.
“That’s not true, Papa.”
“If you were assigned that spot, you’d be offended.”
It was true, but Georges kept quiet. Being patronized this way had stopped mattering to him quite a while ago. With his dry hand he reached for an apple in the glove compartment and stuck it in his right pocket; he felt the warm contact of the fleece and his arthritis let up for an instant. Xavier, who did wear gloves, criticized him for his stubborn refusal to cover his hands on these freezing mornings. By the time Georges got out, Xavier had already unloaded all the gear they needed. Stalky was beside him, howling. Georges checked his door. Before letting go of it, he asked:
“Have you got the keys?”
“Don’t worry, you can close up. I’ve put them safely away.”
“Okay. But don’t let them jangle.”
“Don’t worry,” said Xavier, “I won’t be moving much. You’re a lucky man.”
“Nonsense, our positions are as good as each other. They’re spots for old hunters. But we are old hunters.”
“I was talking about Charlotte,” said Xavier.
His eyes had reddened and his skin was turning pale: it was almost possible to see the blood retreating from his forehead and cheeks. Two or three times in the last few years, always after too much wine, Xavier had come out with some brusque comments about Charlotte. This was the first time he’d touched on the subject while sober. Georges, however, confronted the matter with the false tolerance of someone talking to a drunk.
“No hard feelings,” he said.
“Of course not. She chose you. She stayed with you. What hard feelings could there be? Don’t be a hypocrite.”
“All that’s past. The only thing—”
“All right, all right,” said Xavier. “Spare me the philosophizing, I beg you.”
He can’t stand seeing us, thought Georges, he can’t stand seeing what we’ve attained. They went their separate ways. In front of the southern edge of the forest was a pasture where three Limousin cows were grazing. Georges looked to the right and to the left: Xavier, hunched over, was heading to his position with Stalky trotting eagerly at his side, and the complicity or harmony that had developed between the dog and his owner over the years was plain to see; on the side nearest the road, the crowd of younger hunters broke the line of the horizon. The vision of the armed silhouettes reminded Georges of those images of men disembarking in Normandy during t
he war. He walked patiently toward the spot he’d been assigned. He was, for the first time since the day began, truly alone. He was grateful. He stopped, inhaled the cold air, and all the mountain smells, manure and pine, rain and damp moss, washed over him like a wave. Every once in a while, an isolated engine broke the silence, and the only noise that Georges heard, while he settled down, was the sound of the joints of his portable stool as he unfolded it over the dead leaves. Soon, as he loaded his rifle and shotgun, he heard the echo of the metals colliding and, when he finally sat down, putting his gun across his lap and leaning his rifle against an oak tree, the uneven chorus of horns that announced the beginning of the hunt. Suddenly, the image of a Flaubert book and a train ticket to Nancy came to mind.
—
THE DAY GEORGES TURNED FIFTY was also Jean Moré’s initiation to the hunt, Jean having killed his first boar that very morning. Charlotte organized a gathering at home for friends of the family and some fellow hunters. The boar’s head rested on its side on the lawn, beside the stump of an oak tree. The hunters shouted, let’s see him wearing the head, put it on, and Georges eventually lifted the head and set it on Jean’s head like a hat. Not much blood spilled, but enough to give Jean’s black hair the look of a cow’s placenta, and the baptism was complete. Georges would later think that eating with hands dirty with boar’s blood wouldn’t have been so bad. But, at that moment, it hadn’t occurred to him to act any other way. He went inside through the kitchen door and his eyes took a couple of seconds to adjust to the darkness. He found Charlotte sitting on the floor beside the gas stove, surrounded by pheasant feathers. She had her apron on; she was not crying, but she was panting as if she’d been running. On top of the plastic tablecloth was the pheasant they’d be eating later, its throat slit and innards now cleaned out. On the other side of the bird, the Flaubert book: a blue hardback with gold lettering.
“I was going to leave you,” said Charlotte.
She seemed convinced that the world would not be transformed after those words, or that she’d be able to fight against the transformation. Like a puzzle, everything fit together in Georges’s mind. But it was too late (a thousand little signs proved to him) for reproach or jealousy, for confrontation or a scene.
“He gave you that book?”
“Yes. With the train tickets.”
“To where?”
“France.”
Georges looked out the window. Xavier and Jean were playing with the boar’s head. The most obvious strategy for the adulterer was to show up at social gatherings where his lover would be. That way he gave the impression of not having anything to hide and, therefore, that nothing was actually going on.
“I thought I was pregnant,” said Charlotte. “We were going to live in Nancy until the baby was born.”
Georges looked at her chestnut hair and the vertex on which the button of her blouse joined the line of her breasts. Having a child with Xavier in another country was a way of beginning a new life. Later Charlotte and Xavier would have married. Everything would have gone back to normal, and they might even have returned to Belgium. But Charlotte wasn’t pregnant. She’d chosen not to run away; she didn’t need a new life.
“I’m staying,” she said. “I’m staying with you.”
“Are you sure?”
“You don’t know how much I’ve suffered. I don’t want any more of this. I want us to go back to being ourselves.”
“But we haven’t stopped being ourselves, Charlotte. You’ve lied very well. You have an admirable talent.”
“No sarcasm, please.”
“Also, you’re not young. This is no time to be having babies.”
“Let me stay.”
“How long has it been going on?”
“I don’t know,” said Charlotte. “Three, four months.”
“Exactly.”
“I don’t know, dear.”
“Of course you know. That book is an anniversary gift, I’ll bet you anything. Madame Bovary. He’s not what you might call subtle, our friend Xavier.”
They did not embrace. They did not kiss, not even like friends. But their marriage was safe, even if just for this moment. The next step would be to work at it, work tenaciously. Georges loved her, and that certainty should be enough for him to go back with Charlotte, for that complicated return to the body of a woman he’d never left. That Charlotte was not young, at forty-five, was false, but that didn’t prevent them from feeling the excitement of the surprise of realizing they’d stay together, that they had their whole lives ahead of them.
—
TO FRIGHTEN THE PREY, to force them to leave the woods and expose themselves to the hunters’ sight, each beater had developed a particular and private voice that Georges, over time, had begun to be able to distinguish. He made an effort, a sort of personal challenge, to discern them in the air. That oooooooo with hands clapping was from Guillaume Respin; Frédéric Fontaine shook the bushes with a polished stick and shouted ah-ah-ah-eeeee. Catherine had decided, quite a while ago, to do without onomatopoeia.
“Get a move on, brutes!” she shouted. “Foutez le camp!”
But no animal escaped down this side. With a bit of luck, the hunters on the other side would trap at least one boar. Georges looked up, but the pigeons were flying too high: it would be arrogance for a man whose aim was not as sure as it used to be to attempt such a shot. Nevertheless, he pointed his rifle at the gray sky and looked through the telescopic lens, dusty and smudged with fingerprints: years ago he would have tried, he thought calmly, his finger caressing the trigger. He lowered the gun and listened to the beaters; the commotion of branches breaking under their feet didn’t drown out that other commotion of their threats. It was possible to follow those movements among the trees, because the boundary of the woods was clearly established and the way the wind played with the sounds intensified the voices as soon as the beaters came around the western corner.
Then three shots rang out.
“Tiens,” Georges said to no one. “Someone’s had some luck.”
He tried to relive the sound of the shots, and smiled as he guessed someone had fired a shotgun and was going to be admonished by Jean. He imagined the prey, made bets with himself: a young boar, an out-of-season deer, a banal rabbit that had made someone react too quickly? He was attentive to the rest of the noises. The beaters were covering the second flank of the woods and the dogs barked as if to cut through the cold.
A fourth shot rang out.
Georges inhaled deeply, because ever since he was a little boy the smell of gunpowder in his nostrils, in case by chance the wind was blowing in his direction strongly enough after a nearby shot, had fascinated him. He couldn’t smell anything this time. Instead, he was surprised to hear the three horn blasts signaling the end of the hunt.
Why were they stopping already? Didn’t they still have a good stretch to cover? He didn’t react yet, waiting for confirmation. A hunter shouted from somewhere:
“Pap, pap, pap.”
Georges didn’t hide a grimace of disappointment. That was the sign: the hunt had been called off early. What had gone wrong?
“Pap, pap, pap,” he shouted in turn.
Swearing, the hunters began to show themselves throughout the forest. They no longer walked calmly as they had earlier in the morning, but hurried like boys; they wanted to get back to the cars as fast as possible and find out which beater had sounded the trumpet three times before having gone all the way through the woods and settle that innocuous blame, and then, finally, carry on to the next place. Georges did the same. He didn’t stop to sniff the air. He wasn’t paying attention to mushrooms or chestnuts fallen among the grass. He didn’t even allow himself the basic curiosity of who had shot what. His gaze was fixed on the line of cars of which his, being the last to arrive, was now the first. He was pleased about that: he’d leave before the rest, avoid hearing the
disputes and reproaches. When he was getting to the end (now the beginning) of the convoy, he saw Jean arriving almost at a run, his face disfigured with rage.
His wife was following him. Five meters or so behind them the group’s novice was walking. His lank reddish hair had fallen across his face and he had recent acne scars on his chin. Georges knew Jean’s words referred to him, not to the others: Respin and Cambronne hadn’t even appeared yet, and the rest of the beaters were too far behind to even hear him.
“Idiot! He’s an incompetent idiot! We’ve completely wasted the woods, shit. How incompetent can someone be. But by God he won’t be coming out with us again. If it’s up to me, he won’t ever be with us again.”
“It wasn’t him, dear,” said Catherine. “I was with him, I swear it was someone else.”
“I had to learn the hard way. But one thing’s for sure, this is the last time a beginner gets his first chance on my hunt.”
“But it was someone else,” said Catherine.
“Everyone back to their vehicles,” shouted Jean. Dark looks from one or more of the hunters reminded him that he was speaking to older men who deserved respect. His tone calmed down then; but in his throat remained the suppressed fury of a spoiled little boy.
“I beg your pardon, gentlemen. Someone brought this station to an end ahead of time, and we’ve missed out on some good opportunities.”
“Where’s your father?” said Georges.
“I propose we simply forget this matter and proceed to the next stop.”
“Jean,” said Georges.
“Yes sir.” Jean turned impatiently.
“Where is your father?”
Jean looked around at all those present. He looked toward the field, looked at the grazing cattle, looked over the barbed wire.
“Has anyone seen my father?”
The heads moved from one side to another, like at a tennis match.
Lovers on All Saints' Day Page 6
