Last summer holidays before exam year. School had abandoned us the day before yesterday – not that I had heard many expressions of regret from the pupils, including myself.
On this first day of July nineteen seventy-four, a fine Monday – aren’t all Mondays fine when you’re on holiday? – at eight oh nine a.m., I had already been on the Venice train for at least a minute. Yes, but I wasn’t going to Venice; I was going to my uncle’s, and my uncle didn’t live in Venice.
I was fond of my uncle. He was affable and kind-hearted, just like his younger brother (who was none other than my father), like nearly all the inhabitants of our little region, located among quiet mountains that we shared with peaceable cows on which the russet of autumn rubbed shoulders with the white of snow. No cows in the city where I lived, and a lot fewer affable people; perhaps they didn’t have time to be nice?
My uncle mended clocks, which left me open to teasing from my chums when I was late to school. “If he mends them, it’s because they don’t work. How am I supposed to know what time it is?” I would reply.
One of his neighbours made screws, which made my schoolmates laugh, heaven knows why. They can all get excited about ancient pottery – well, the ancients used to turn their pots too, didn’t they? And the neighbour didn’t only make screws: he also supplied countless tiny, high-precision metal parts to manufacturers and scientific research institutions in innumerable countries.
I hadn’t been to see my uncle last summer; I had preferred to go to summer camp. I hadn’t said anything, but I’d always been bored at my uncle’s. I was used to the city and its distractions, to my many friends – in a nutshell, to a life that had no time or place for boredom. At my uncle’s, nature was very beautiful, it really was, more beautiful than the big parks in the city where I live, but it was only nature after all – trees, grass... what was there to do apart from go for walks, even if it was pleasant? What’s more, I had hardly any company of my own age; the only person I had to play with was the daughter of the neighbour who made screws, a very nice kid, sure, but who always had her head in the clouds and was hardly what you might call vivacious. Now I come to think of it, perhaps she was bored too.
The train, having left drab plains behind without regret – on my part at least –, was running between two green hills alongside a pretty river, lined with tall trees, which meandered unhurriedly away towards a still-distant sea. We were approaching the largest city – albeit nowhere near on the same scale as the one I lived in – of the region in which my uncle’s little village was located. Shortly after the city the landscape changed. The hills loomed larger and larger; you couldn’t see as far.
A little station, the kind no-one pays any attention to on an ordinary journey. Yes, but that was not the case for me; I was to change trains. That wasn’t even true; I was leaving a real train, a proper train, for a two-coacher like those you can find near the city where I live to take you to some out-of-the-way place or other. A quarter of an hour later, after having stopped in front of a kind of shack that nevertheless served as a station, it was no longer the train I was leaving but the railway track itself! Oh, there were still rails; but that was all. What’s more, we had lost half of the train, gone off to serve less rustic parts. The mountains had appeared in the distance.
I had a strange feeling; I was going home at the same time as I was getting further away from home. From the home I lived in every day, where I had my friends, where I had my habits. I realised that it was the sight of the mountains that was stirring me up like this, the mountains I couldn’t even make out clearly yet.
The now single-coacher, slower than a horse in good condition, had finally reached the station where I was to alight – it was the third since we had lost its other half. The station was a proper house, serious-looking; one you could work and live in. My uncle was on the platform. He greeted me warmly, though not effusively; affection is not increased by excessive expression. I spent the afternoon telling my uncle and aunt about my last two years of school, and listening to them talking to me about their life and that of their son. He lived in a nearby village and came over in the early evening with his wife. We all had dinner together.
I have risen late; my uncle has already gone off to deliver a clock. At breakfast I am greeted by the strong smell of milk from the farm on the other side of the road. The bread, less fresh than at home where it is bought every morning, has a more engaging taste. The butter is a different thing altogether. Of course, it’s the butter my cousin brought yesterday evening from the creamery where he works in a little market town nearby, but it’s not just that; this butter conveys the memory of the flowers that grow on our mountains. So which are the ones that leave such a delicious taste of hazelnut in the mouth? It’s a secret between them and the cows that ate them.
The cherry tree in the garden gives good cherries; and it’s my aunt who makes the jam. She looks on with a smile as I eagerly munch the slices of bread and jam she has lovingly made for me. I don’t come often enough for her liking. And I didn’t come last year! Seeing her like that makes me want to be there; but, I’m ashamed to say, I know I’m going to get bored...
Let’s be fair; I’m not bored yet. My aunt asks me countless questions and I enjoy talking with my aunt. I have to set her mind at ease: I’m doing well at school. What is she worried about? I know very well; if I don’t do well at school, what will I be able to do later? She has dreams for me, because I go to school in the big city, dreams of futures other than the creamery or screws. I reassure her. It’s not easy. I have to tread carefully to make sure she doesn’t feel looked down on. No, actually, not her, her son.
Much of the afternoon is spent in my uncle’s workshop. I like being there; he talks to me about his clocks, their qualities and their flaws, what he does. And I’m not bored there either. I like to see the movement of the wheels, understand – not always easy – the life of the hands. Yes, that’s right, the life. As long as the weight that creates the movement is not halted in its fall, the clock lives. I start imagining a weight that would fall to the centre of the earth. I must have struck a strange sort of pose because my uncle has given me a look of slight surprise. I have immediately picked up the thread of our conversation. I have not mentioned the centre of the earth. My uncle doesn’t have a lot of imagination; he would have been worried.
This morning, already not knowing what to do, I decide to fix my bike. My uncle and aunt had bought if for me two years ago in a nearby village from a boy who, having become a man, had gone off I know not where. It was a little bit too big for me at the time but now it’s just right. There’s not a lot to do, as it happens; the bike’s just a bit dusty. However that may be, I like things to be in order. There’s no shortage of oil and grease in my uncle’s workshop. So here I am, hard at work: I conscientiously remove the wheels, the chain, the handlebars. Grease, oil; and now it’s all back together again, with the chain nicely taut, the lights checked, the wheels nice and straight, the puncture repair kit checked, a spanner and a screwdriver for any little mishaps or further adjustments stowed away and the brakes carefully calibrated. And that was my morning. I feel well content, without any particular reason. Actually, that’s not quite true; it’s pleasant to take the time to do something useful, even if it’s not really important. And then, isn’t it sometimes the case that you only find out how important things are much later?
Lunch. My uncle seems to appreciate the value of what I have done. After all, it’s mechanics too. My aunt encourages me to put my efforts to good use by going for a bike ride and mentions a couple of places.
So I set off on a bike ride. It was a very good idea; it was very sunny and I remembered that the landscape was very lovely. I hadn’t really taken in what my aunt had told me about where to go. It wasn’t important; what mattered to her was seeing that I was enjoying myself here.
So I rode along, slowly, in that very beautiful nature, very beautiful, though it wasn’t only nature, made up of trees and grass, as I’ve already said. I also said that the big parks in the city where I live were less beautiful. In that case, why did I prefer the parks? Because I missed them, and nothing here seemed able to replace them.
The third day of my stay. Radiant sunshine. My mother has told me on the telephone that it was very hot in the city. But here... It’s true, here we’re about seven hundred metres above sea level and it’s a good five degrees less than down there. After breakfast, my aunt suggests that I should go to the river. “It’s cool there, it’ll do you a world of good!” she tells me.
Why not go to the river? I remember it very well; I had gone there with the neighbour’s daughter, who had found nothing better to do than splash me with icy water from the nearby spring.
The river wasn’t far, giving me the opportunity for a good walk. I love walking, and must admit that it’s not as pleasant in the city as here; there’s less space and the crowd leaves no room for thinking.
The road had hardly left the last house in the village behind before climbing steeply. From the top I could see the peaks standing out against the horizon, and my uncle’s house too, way down below. Around me, meadows with cows grazing in them, probably the cows that gave their flowery milk to my cousin’s creamery; I couldn’t not see the meadows, here there’s nothing else. On the left, a small path led off gently down towards the river; I think I might have taken it once but I remember it being long and twisty and I wasn’t sure of finding my way again. So I continued along my route that went more directly to the spring, via a very steep footpath through a wood that was great fun to run down.
The spring was as cool as my aunt had said, and it’s true, it did me a world of good. Which surprised me a little. After all, it was cool, true, but that was hardly a miracle: everyone knows that water which comes out of the ground is cold. But was it only the coolness? I seemed to feel something else. Hah! Just a question of habit, to be sure. The next time I come here everything will seem ordinary. I stayed there watching the water gently flowing... Back home.
The midday meal will be good; my aunt is in the vegetable garden, choosing the... menu. In a shop, too, you choose the things you want for a meal. And yet I get the feeling something is different. What? I consider the obvious reasons: the tomatoes my aunt is picking will be much fresher than those you buy, they’ll be picked at the preferred degree of ripeness, some liking them green, others liking them red... But I feel there’s something else. What? While pondering I thought of the cows eating the grass that gave their flowery milk, of the butter my cousin had brought from the creamery where he worked in a nearby little market town. OK, all that is better, the tomatoes come from home. No, it wasn’t enough. In any case, I’m sure there are better tomatoes to be found in the city where I live. And then, my aunt’s vegetable garden is much smaller than a big store. Why tomatoes in particular? I had never paid any attention to all those things in previous years when I had come here. Why now, this year?
My aunt came back from the vegetable garden wreathed in smiles. “I’ve had trouble with my lettuces this year,” she commented. “They wanted to grow much too quickly!” You have no trouble choosing the lettuce you’re given in a shop.
This morning my uncle was to deliver a clock. This afternoon my uncle was to pick up a clock. I asked him, doing my best to sound indifferent, if it was the same person; he almost fell into it. So now here I am with a busy day ahead of me, having willingly taken up his offer to go with him.
We take the car; the landscape rolls by quickly. The landscape is first of all the road that took me up to the spring the day before yesterday. Was it so near, then? My uncle gets his revenge for the little trick I played on him just now by teasing me about my qualities as a hiker. The road turns around the spring which I can’t see because of the woods that surround it; then it heads towards the little market town where my cousin works, my uncle tells me, pointing in the distance to the town perched on a hilltop. I think I’ve already come this way before, but my memories are really very vague. I pretend to recognise the places very clearly so as not to disappoint my uncle. Is he taken in? Perhaps, but it’s by no means certain. We change directions to head for a village, also perched, albeit on a less high hilltop. That’s where my uncle has to deliver the clock he’s mended. We stay for a good while, chatting. I say we, because our host brought me into the conversation, not just by parroting the same old questions about how I was doing at school. I talk to him about me, he talks to me about him; he tells me about what’s going on in the neighbourhood as though talking to someone familiar who is part of local life. My uncle tells him without impatience the reasons why his clock had stopped. The other man listens to him attentively, asks questions, makes comments. Both of them are satisfied. We take our leave.
We take our time on the way back. My uncle makes a couple of little detours and talks briefly about the places we go through. He tells me I ought to come back to this one or that another day so as to see more of them. He tells me I ought to meet people of my own age, cousins living in nearby villages, for example. And there are other boys and girls in all those villages, he tells me, adding that my cousins will introduce me to them.
Over lunch my aunt asks me if I have seen this or that spot during the trip. As of course we didn’t go everywhere, she scolds her husband for not having shown me... Her husband answers sagely that if he had been at that particular spot, it could well have been the case that another spot... My aunt nods, showing that she is not at all convinced. The spot she had mentioned was the most important one. Both conclude, still just as sagely, that I will have plenty of time to see them all.
The afternoon passed in very much the same way, the sole difference being that it was our new host who explained without impatience the reasons why his clock had stopped. I couldn’t be sure, but I got the impression my uncle wasn’t listening to him very closely. “No, not at all,” he told me on the way back, before adding calmly: “And as I’ll have to take it all apart anyway...”
Winter is still a long way off, but when it does come, it’s too late if the firewood hasn’t been cut. Well, it has been now! But that’s not enough; some of it has to be split into kindling, otherwise how could we light the fire that the big logs burn in? That at least is what my aunt has told me; in the city where I live, wood is used for just about anything except cooking or heating.
Having offered, after breakfast, to split the kindling, and my uncle having given his approval, I get to work. My aunt has tried to argue, saying that I was on holiday, but my uncle has stated firmly that a boy needs to build up strength and that that certainly applied to me, because it wasn’t in the city that I would be able to do so.
And so I split logs. The axe is heavy. It’s fun, and it gives me pleasure to think that my firewood will keep uncle and aunt warm this winter. And I am already awarding myself a satisfecit out loud, crying “That’s how it’s done!”
“They have to be wedge-shaped.”
Wedge... I turn round. In the garden next to mine a girl, elegant though wearing very simple clothes, is looking at me with a big, open smile.
“That’s right, so that there’s an edge.”
“An edge?”
“It makes them easier to stack. The logs stay in place and don’t slip.”
I must look particularly... yes, like that.
The smile hasn’t left her face:
“I got here this morning. I was at Grandma’s.”
The neighbour’s daughter! How hadn’t I...?
“Yes, I know; I’ve grown.”
Grown? Not only!
“I’ll show you!”
She has taken the axe from my hands before I’ve had time to realise...
“Like that! You can carry on now.”
She gives me a little wave.
“I’ve got to go. I’ll see you tomorrow!”
Was my uncle surprised to see how perfectly I had split the kindling? I guess so, because he asked me if it was my aunt who had explained how to do it. I don’t know why I didn’t mention the neighbour’s daughter; on the contrary, I assumed a casually knowing look and repeated word for word what she had told me. He said that I could indeed make an excellent countryman and that life in the country was much healthier than in big cities where a chap couldn’t even breathe. My aunt went on about my future...
The morning has barely started.
“Good morning!”
It’s the neighbour’s daughter. My aunt asks her about her stay at her grandmother’s. Storytime. Exchange of news.
“Coming for a walk?”
I ask my aunt if she needs me. She doesn’t, and a walk can only do me good.
We set off.
“D’you want to go to the bridge?”
I hesitate for a moment.
“Don’t you remember?”
I do, very vaguely:
“It’s near the spring...”
She smiles brightly:
“It’s right by the path that goes down.”
I remember now:
“Yes, I was there just last week. But I didn’t see the bridge.”
“The trees have grown up all around it. Do you want to go?”
I don’t know why, but again I hesitate for a moment. She checks herself. I hurriedly answer:
“Oh yes, I’d love to!”
She gives me a sideways glance and sets off at a steady pace.
She doesn’t say anything while we climb the hill. When we reach the spot where the path heads off gently down towards the river, she points out a little house a few paces away:
“The station.”
Suddenly it comes back to me:
“The little train station!”
I add, without pausing for breath:
“The little train bridge!”
She laughs:
“Yes, that’s what you used to call it. It’s true that it wasn’t very big. And it’s not that the trees are hiding the little train; it hasn’t run for ages.”
“Yes, yes, I remember now!”
We walk in silence. The bridge isn’t far. Here we are.
“Shall we climb up?”
I answer... decisively, I think; but why decisively?... There is nothing in particular to decide.
“We’ll climb up!”
You have to scale a rather high embankment that leads to the bridge; it’s not very hard, but a bit of a climb all the same. I’ve barely started before I can see her already at the top. I join her. She sets off towards the bridge at her usual steady pace.
The bridge, still with its two silently rusting guardrails, turned slightly leftwards, revealing the track that pressed gently into the wood. Little bushes and shrubs had chosen the track as their home, patiently and doggedly sewing the wood together again. On the bridge, the grass had grown since the last time I had been here, two years ago. It was like being in a meadow.
Leaning on the railings, she shows me the landscape. Meadows, of course, and more meadows, meadows where cows on which the russet of autumn rubs shoulders with the white of snow amble around slowly, grazing. I can’t take my eyes off them. I’m slightly surprised; is contemplating cows a distraction? It seems so strange... Far off, I can see a church hanging onto a hillside.
“It’s not much further than our village,” she corrects me with a smile.
She lets me look:
“If we go over the meadows it’d only take twenty minutes.”
Twenty minutes? It doesn’t look that close to me.
“You don’t usually walk that fast!”
“You in a hurry?” she asks me briefly.
I am a bit bewildered:
“No...”
I breathe deeply, as if I had just spoken at length:
“No...”
“Look, over there; it’s our village!”
Our... I look. I can’t see anything.
“You can’t see it; it’s down below and the slope gets steeper.”
She adds with a laugh:
“That way, if you get lost, you’ll be able to find your way again!”
This morning my uncle was getting ready to go out:
“We’re going to do some shopping. Do you want to come with us?”
For a moment I hesitated. However, I answered brightly:
“I’d love to!”
And the three of us set off for the little market town where my cousin works at the creamery.
The road had become familiar. I thought it wasn’t the first year I was taking it, so it was natural to find it familiar.
We passed not far from the little train bridge; I could catch a glimpse of it between the trees that half-hid it. Yes, I had known the bridge too for many years. Actually, I had known everything for many years. Well, maybe not everything, but a lot of things anyway.
The road, which we hadn’t left this time for the village where my uncle had delivered a clock last Saturday, took us now to the little market town. Shortly before reaching it, near a crossroads, I saw a tumbledown little house I had never paid any attention to until now. I recognised a station, surely a little train station. Perhaps the neighbour’s daughter didn’t know it. I could show it to her. No, she was bound to know it...
We had reached the little market town. I was surprised. By how busy it was. Only joking. Compared to the city where I live, it was dead. And yet it’s true, I was surprised. Why? By what? By nothing. Nothing could surprise me. So? It’s easy enough; I had been there for a week now. Life in my uncle’s village, country life, the life that was supposed to leave me bored, had got under my skin. Oh, not to the extent of making me want to live here, a here where I wondered what on earth I could find to do. But curiosity had stolen over me; was nature really only made up of grass and trees?
So the little market town was busy. Busy compared to the meadows, where things were bought without shops, where only the birds and the wind spoke.
The bustle gradually faded; faded to my mind, which heard echoes of the noise of the city that made the noise of the little market town seem quiet.
The shops were full of merchants who had gone to find the things that the people who came there needed. What merchant will the bird ask for the food it lacks? But then, which shop is big enough to feed everyone? And what do people do when there aren’t any shops?
The way back was merry, without the shadows that thought can sometimes cast; we had found everything we had come to get.
The morning has barely started.
“Good morning!”
It’s the neighbour’s daughter. Is she also daughter of the dawn?
“I’m going to a friend’s. Coming with me?”
Dawn has asked the question as though not even waiting for the answer. Perhaps just a hint of anxiety at the end?
“Oh, yes, I’d love to!”
“D’you remember the church you saw when we were on the bridge the day before yesterday?”
“The little train bridge?”
“Yes.”
“I remember it very well; it was all on its own on the side of the hill that was in front of us.”
“It wasn’t really all on its own, but you couldn’t see the village properly, it’s behind, tucked into the mountain.”
She indicates the direction with her head:
“That’s where we’re going.”
“Over the meadows.”
She sketches a grin. I give her no time to say anything:
“I’m in no hurry; we don’t have to be there in twenty minutes.”
Surprised for a moment, she gives a peal of laughter:
“Come on then!”
Before setting off we ask my aunt if she needs any help. A couple of little chores then she wishes us a good walk, adding with a little sigh:
“In a hurry or not, it’d take me a lot more than twenty minutes these days!”
The road doesn’t wait for the end of our village to start climbing, albeit a bit less than on the side that goes to the little market town where the creamery is. The church stands out against the sky. We’re going to have to climb some more. And it’s much steeper. Twenty minutes... Just as well I had the bright idea of telling Dawn I wasn’t in a hurry! I can see that she’s adjusted her pace to mine.
The road isn’t empty. A farmer has come out of a meadow and passes close to us, giving us a cheery “Good morning!”. He must certainly know Dawn; as for me, I’m pretty sure I’ve already caught sight of him in our village. I have no idea why, but that simple encounter has populated the countryside. Oh, don’t get me wrong, it’s not the crowds of the city where I live, far from it, and yet... and yet for me there were now people in the meadows.
“Did you see? Another bridge!”
She smiles:
“And there are more, all the way along the line. There are several near our village. Here, the little train ran under the bridge.”
Tracing what is left of the track with her hand, she shows me another not far off, crossing a footpath:
“See that one? It’s the last one before you get to our station. You must have seen it...”
“Yes, it’s the one you pointed out to me the day before yesterday, right by the road that goes to the creamery.”
“The creamery where your cousin works?”
“Yes. I went past it with my uncle in the car, and as we were going past it I could see our bridge... the one where...”
“... the one where we were the day before yesterday.”
“Yes.”
The way has suddenly got steeper. And to make matters worse, it has turned into a sort of path even a cow wouldn’t want to walk on. Now we are almost at the top, close to the church I had seen when we were on the bridge near the spring. Dawn has stopped. She turns round and points out the meadows down below, pale patches between the woods:
“You can see our village from here; look to the left of the church...”
“Yes, I can see your house, and my uncle’s!”
“And opposite, on the other side of the road, that’s the farmer we met just now.”
“You can see the farmer from here?”
She gives me a teasing smile:
“Of course! Can’t you? He’s drinking a glass of wine in the kitchen.”
I crane my neck... as if it would help me to see better from this far away. She seems properly surprised:
“Can you see the wall of the farm?”
“Yes.”
“Well then, behind the wall...”
“There isn’t a window.”
“You don’t need one; look through the wall.”
“Through...”
She had sounded so serious! I answer likewise:
“It’s not wine, it’s beer.”
“Mistakes can be made.”
Still just as serious – until we both burst out laughing!
Peace is restored.
“It looks as though the mountain has slipped.”
Dawn shows surprise:
“Because we’re on a slope?”
“No. Or rather, yes... but not only. I was looking at the bridge, the one near the spring. The slope goes that far.”
“You’re right. And on the left-hand side it goes down even further, you can even see a proper ravine.”
“Whereas on the other side...”
“It goes up everywhere.”
She adds, giving an approving nod of the head:
“You’ll soon know everything around our village.”
I scan my surroundings. Once you’ve seen the landscape there’s not much else to know. I think of the maze of streets in the city where I live; even the people who live there don’t know them all.
I say as much, in a slightly watered-down version, after having hesitated for a moment:
“In the city, you can never manage to know everything...”
“In the city, when you want to find a street, all you have to do is look for the street sign.”
“And, don’t tell me, there are street plans too.”
“Yes, but that’s not the point. Here too there are maps to find villages with, and even meadows.”
“Well, your meadows, you can know them all. Especially as you can see them, they’re right there, in front of your nose. Whereas in the city...”
She cuts me off:
“Do you know which meadow will give the best fodder to my friend’s cows, the friend we’re going to?”
“Your friend has cows?”
She hesitates for a moment. I carry straight on, smiling:
“Yes, I know, it’s not the answer to your question. But I was curious...”
I break off for a second:
“And in any case I don’t think I know what to say... I mean, yes, I do, it’s obvious I don’t know... which meadow...”
I give a shrug and continue:
“In the city it would be difficult to find the street that gives the best food. And yet you can find shops...”
“Shops only have what they’re given.”
“It amounts to the same thing. The food will be there.”
Dawn shakes her head pensively:
“When I go shopping in the town where I go to school, I’m not worried if there’s something I can’t find; I order it for another day and I know it will be there. If there hasn’t been any rain for a long time...”
She adds, after a short silence:
“In your city, do people know if it’s raining?”
I give a start:
“Of course...”
I break off and start again:
“Yes, you take out your umbrella and you say ‘Bother, it’s raining again!’”
I laugh:
“I haven’t got an umbrella.”
My laugh ends with a sheepish frown:
“It’s true, it had never occurred to me that it was rain that gave milk.”
Now it’s her turn to laugh:
“Fortunately cows are good at what they do, otherwise we’d have to make do with wet grass!”
She gives a lopsided grin:
“It wouldn’t really be very good...”
We sit for a moment in silence, looking out over the landscape.
She has stood up:
“Shall we go up to the farm? I think my friend’s waiting for me.”
She hasn’t moved. Waving expansively towards the meadows she says:
“I know everything here but I never get tired of it.”
Without any more delay she sets off purposefully up the slope towards the nearby church.
I was still stood there, looking at the landscape which I knew but whose inner life I seemed to be discovering, and had barely seen her go.
“Come on!” she cries, half-turning.
Here we are in the village, behind the massive church and its rather forbidding square tower. Serious houses, solidly built. An arrow-straight road with no pointless twists and turns. We reach the farm. Dawn’s schoolfriend, wearing clothes as simple as hers, hair up in a ponytail, has come to meet us.
Like last Saturday when my uncle had delivered a clock, the farmer wasn’t happy just to parrot the same old questions about how I was doing at school and we stayed talking for a good while. I talked to him about me, he talked to me about him; he told me about what was going on in the neighbourhood as though talking to someone familiar who was part of local life.
I’ve already said that, I know, but it’s not my fault if the people here care about their fellows; it doesn’t happen so often that it isn’t worth saying again.
Afterwards I joined Dawn and Ponytail, who had important matters about school to discuss – the year gone by, the year to come... Rhetorical flourishes? Not a bit of it. When I saw their demeanour, the look on their faces, almost austere, when I heard how plainly they spoke, I thought I’d come to a Council of the Wise. They weren’t of an age, of course, and the subject of debate hardly had the requisite seriousness for a gathering of sages whose reputations were already well-known, but had I seen many people in the city where I live so assiduous in thinking about their future? Why should the importance of a schoolgirl’s plans be played down simply because people don’t know who they are? Small thoughts, to be sure – don’t those who say they already know make us feel it often enough? – but the life of these schoolgirls, like mine for that matter, depended on them. So doesn’t a life deserve a bit of a rhetorical flourish? I was not asked for my help, since the discussion related to a very particular matter that concerned the class they were both in. A detail, then. A detail? Yes, life is also made up of details.
Dawn and Ponytail are going shopping in the town where they go to school. I’m going with them. Dawn’s father takes the three of us in his car.
A short way beyond the farm I glimpse the path we climbed up yesterday, the one a cow wouldn’t have wanted to walk on. However that may be, it’s much easier by car!
By car... In my mind’s eye I see the path that climbs up. We had stopped, Dawn and I; before us, meadows, our village, mountains, the little train bridge. They go fast, cars.
A long run downhill; I recognise the ravine I had glimpsed yesterday. A small town. A steep descent. Meadows everywhere. I see everything but have time to see nothing. I’m not there in the way that I was there with Dawn at the top of the path; I’m passing by. Is that why nature had seemed to be made only of trees and grass?
The main road. No longer any question of seeing. Now we’re in the town where Dawn and Ponytail go to school, and where Dawn’s father makes screws.
The town is full of people. It’s buzzing! At least, that’s what I deduce from my two companions’ comments. If I were talking about it to one my schoolmates, I would rather say that the place was deserted. Three bikes and two cars, not forgetting five pedestrians, hardly make a crowd. Though it’s true that in comparison with my uncle’s village... I suddenly felt slightly bewildered. Why? Well, in the past I had already happened to find myself in a, shall we say, sparsely populated place, and had had only one burning wish: to get back to the city as soon as possible. Here, in this ordinary town where hardly anyone was about, I felt an unexpected desire to see the meadows again from the top of the path, or to go back to the little train bridge.
“Where are you going?”
I hear Dawn’s voice behind me. I turn round; my two companions are standing in front of a shop and give me a little wave.
“This is where we’re going,” Ponytail tells me in a steady voice.
She has pointed to a bookshop. I smile:
“Sorry, I was somewhere else!”
“In the city where you live?” Dawn asks me in a voice that hovers.
I smile again:
“No. When you’re in the city you don’t miss shops. There’s not much else to see.”
“And yet you told me yesterday that in the city you were never able to know everything.”
“That’s true...”
I cast around for an explanation. Ponytail speaks up:
“Perhaps it’s because in the city you don’t look at anything.”
I nod:
“Maybe... I think that in the city people don’t pay attention to what they’re doing.”
I pause briefly:
“No, I was thinking about the meadows I was in yesterday. It’s vast, what you see.”
“Here too,” Ponytail continues, “it’s possible only to see the meadow your own cows are in.”
We have been standing in front of the bookshop for a while. A passer-by has just had trouble getting in. We apologise.
“We’re in the way!” exclaims Dawn, and pushes us into the shop.
The two... schoolgirls choose... textbooks. I express surprise:
“The holidays have only just started and here you are, already thinking about school!”
Dawn has giggled, then says softly:
“The summer’s only just started and there you are, already splitting kindling!”
Ponytail nods approvingly:
“If you don’t get ahead you might end up getting behind.”
I ponder. I can’t say that I never take precautions myself or never prepare for anything, and I too have friends who are very serious; but here I get the impression that everything fits together. Of course, I’m sure that not everyone here is quite so serious, but not far off.
Textbooks, notebooks, pencils and other items having been purchased, we go round the shoe shops, the girls having decided to get themselves a pair of sandals for the summer. A pair each, of course. And I remark – after the third shoe shop – I remark, aloud:
“I see that girls like pretty things no less among the meadows than in the streets of the city where I live!”
I was mighty pleased with my quip. I couldn’t have been more surprised, or more embarrassed above all, when I saw that Ponytail had looked down without saying anything, and when I heard Dawn say to me, with a slight hesitation in her voice: “Mine were really worn... and I’ve grown, too, they were getting a bit small.”
How did I wiggle my way out of that one? I still don’t know, even now.
It’s a chill morn this morning. That sounds odd when I read it back but that’s indeed what I feel. And the morning still in its infancy...
“Good morning!”
Dawn!
“You coming for a long walk? It’s a lovely morning!”
And I was just saying...
“A bit chilly, isn’t it?”
She laughs:
“Exactly! That way we won’t overheat when we climb!”
“On foot?” I enquire anxiously.
More laughter:
“I’ll carry you!”
I pull a face:
“I’m sure you could!”
I think I’ve already said that the nondescript kid of previous years had become an elegant young woman. Elegant, indeed; but in the city where I live, the elegant young women – as many of them as there were – were slight creatures, barely strong enough to breathe and wait for someone – us boys, of course! – to come to their aid, if not to save them. Dawn was elegant but sturdy. And it wasn’t that much of an exaggeration to suppose that she would be able to carry me.
Here we are, then, on our way, without a moment to lose. There’s not much waiting around with Dawn. On our way, in a manner of speaking, because instead of taking the road out of the village like sensible people would, we leave through the vegetable garden, right into the middle of the meadows.
“Where are we going?”
She gives an innocent smile:
“To the river.”
“To the river?”
“Yes, we’re going to swim our way there.”
The time for what she’s just said to filter through...
“What about our costu...”
But she’s already giving me a teasing look that puts me straight. I too give an innocent smile:
“Which cow will you be riding?”
I point to one with an impressive pair of horns:
“I’ll take this one.”
She laughs, I laugh, we laugh. I should add “you laugh, they laugh” to complete the conjugation.
“What are you mumbling on about?”
I explain. She gives me a pitying look:
“Is that what living in a city does to you?”
I laugh, she laughs, etcetera.
We cross the meadow, followed by the cow I had pointed to. It’s steep.
“Take the track, it’s easier.”
The track?...
“You see the path? The one the cows have made? It slopes gently down to the river.”
Thank you cows!
The current runs rather quickly. The cow that has followed us has come down to the bank and is drinking peacefully. A moment later and all the cows have come to drink; none of them takes any notice of us.
We head upstream. A watermill.
“It hasn’t made flour for ages,” Dawn tells me.
She adds, slightly sadly:
“There are big mills now...”
The river turns.
“This is where we cross,” Dawn tells me.
I’m not so easily taken in:
“Yes, I knew it was here; I saw the bridge a while ago.”
She hasn’t answered. We approach the river. No bridge in sight. I don’t understand. Now she’s taken off her boots and is going into the water. I’ve stopped. She turns to me:
“Hasn’t your cow come to carry you? However will you manage?”
Right, I’ve got it now. It’s a ford. I knew that fords existed but I didn’t think all you had to do was walk in the water, shallow at this point. They don’t teach you anything at school, as one of my favourite authors once said. I feign indifference:
“Wait for my cow to take off its hooves.”
She laughs, I laugh, etcetera.
The water doesn’t come up very far, barely to mid-calf.
“The ford is close to the spring, the river hasn’t had time yet to carve out a bed,” Dawn tells me.
Now we’re following a stream. On the way...
“A sawmill.”
I can’t see any sawyers in the vicinity:
“I suppose the sawmill hasn’t sawn wood for ages?”
She answers, slightly sadly:
“There are big sawmills now...”
Surprised, I start saying:
“And that stops the small ones...?”
She interrupts me:
“You can’t do what the big ones do, when you’re small...”
She has stopped, pressing her lips together:
“Even if you do it better.”
We walk on in silence. I say softly:
“I understand.”
She has turned to me and given me a smile, as if to thank me.
Yes, at school they teach you at least that big ?uns are stronger than little ?uns.
A tiny little bridge. With a bit of a squeeze we manage to pass two abreast. I exaggerate...
“Up!”
Up... again!
“That way?”
I have pointed to a steep slope, sharp, more like a cliff. Dawn has given me an amused glance which clearly shows she was not in the least taken in by my exaggerations and has started to tackle a slope... that would have made a cow laugh. I must say that since I’ve seen them – cows, I mean – on slopes that would terrify a hardened mountaineer... Hum... reading it back, I wonder if I haven’t been exaggerating, ever so slightly...
The climb is quite hard all the same and I have to help myself from time to time with the trunk of a tree that has had the foresight to grow at the right time and in the right place to solve a tricky balance problem – for me, I mean, not for the tree, of course. Dawn, of course, is already at the top and is watching me with interest – in my relative prowess, no doubt...
“You’ll soon be a good climber! You know how to climb.”
I hesitate – is she joking? – but not for long; her open smile is there to reassure me. I would have liked to puff out my chest, but thought it would probably be wiser not to push it too far.
We’re still going uphill but the gradient is more reasonable. The meadows have returned, and the cows with them. No doubt about it – and this time it’s not a joke – it’s well-populated round here.
Well, well! A proper road. Not very wide, but room for a car.
“This is the road that used to go to the sawmill,” Dawn tells me.
Yes, but no-one comes down it any more...
“Another two ridges and we’re at the top, where my cousin lives.”
Easy peasy. At least, that’s what I do my best to make it look like. Success: Dawn is wreathed in smiles.
“Look!”
She has sat down at the top of the slope we’ve just climbed up and is showing me the valley.
“Look! Behind the wood, that’s the river; and on the right you can see...”
She laughs:
“On the right you can see nothing at all! It’s the ford where the cow left its hooves, but it’s in the trees.”
She stretches her arm out over the wood:
“Our village is even further.”
I look. These landscapes are familiar to me – perhaps not this one particularly; but my gaze, instead of getting bored as it used to in previous years, has started to wander. Can a gaze wander?
“It’s like in a marvellous tale,” Dawn answers me. “When your eyes are down there, that’s where you are yourself.”
Down there... The mountains surround me. Do the deep valleys tempt me to stray away from them. No, because each one ends up finding the mountain it started out from.
“Each valley is a world in itself,” says Dawn softly.
“And yet they’re close to one another.”
“The mountains separate them...”
“Roads go from one to another.”
“Roads, perhaps, but people don’t like to leave their homes.”
“People travel...”
“Once they’ve left they never come back again.”
I’m surprised. Everyone travels, don’t they?, and everyone comes back. You see it every day.
For a long while she remains lost in thought:
“They’re no longer the same,” she almost murmurs.
Slowly, she has turned to me:
“You’ve never gone travelling.”
Suddenly she jumps up.
“Come and weigh yourself!” she cries with a laugh, and starts out across the meadow without waiting for me.
Weigh yourself? What’s she going on about? Hah! After all this climbing I’m no longer in a fit state to think. I’ll see when the time comes. I follow her. No more uphill at last. She strides out. I catch up with her, slightly surprising myself with the effort I have had to make. The surprise doesn’t last. There was indeed an uphill; not a steep one, no, not at all, but when you’ve been looking forward to a well-deserved rest, it becomes an impassable mountain range...
I climb. Dawn points out a village, not far away.
“See that farm in front of us?... No, not that one, to the left... Yes. That’s where my cousin lives. She’s not there today, she’s at her grandparents’.”
Another effort to reach our goal. Two sympathetic cows have come towards us.
“They’re my cousin’s cows,” Dawn tells me, stroking the cows’ large, affectionate heads.
“They give their milk to your cousin,” she goes on.
“Oh? Is this where he buys his milk?”
She laughs:
“No, silly, it’s to make butter!”
I am mystified for a moment, then it dawns on me.
“It’s for the creamery,” I say confidently.
She gives a little smile:
“Yes.”
I am emboldened:
“And that’s where we’re going to weigh ourselves!”
“This way,” she says mysteriously.
We enter the village. A large haycart stands in front of the church. Dawn has gone to look at a big dial, in the centre of which reigns a huge needle.
“Climb up!”
“Climb up? Where?”
“On the cart!”
“On the cart?”
“Climb up!”
Bewildered, I do so.
“You’re a good weight!”
I jump down from the cart and go to look at the needle. Of course! It gives weights. And by subtraction...
We had a good laugh...
I have woken up with my eyes full of images. Mountains, valleys, rivers... I could go on for pages but I think in class it’s called enumeration and my teacher has told me it’s a device that should be used sparingly. Though it’s a shame not to mention the... the climbs, the cows, and the grass and the trees, why not?, and the hay which is used for weighing things when Dawn is in charge. Well, too bad, I won’t mention them. Oops! I may have cheated a bit there... But I can’t help smiling, smiling for no reason, smiling for seeing images from yesterday’s walk in my eyes.
Dawn is staying at home today; she has to help her mother, do other things, I don’t know what. She has come over during the morning to say hello... and to congratulate me, because I was splitting wood the way she taught me – in a wedge shape so that there’s an edge, so that the logs stay in place and don’t slip.
I’m also helping my aunt with various chores, unimportant to me but useful for her, of course. My aunt is happy to see me taking part in home life. I say that because I got the feeling, a very clear feeling, that in previous years... I hadn’t taken part in anything at all. I even said to myself that I must have caused my aunt some distress, and my uncle too... I think that in previous years, if I hadn’t taken part in their home life, and village life even less, it was quite simply because I had decided that there was no such thing as life in the country. “Is there anywhere to live other than in our city?” my schoolmates would ask, just like me, when someone mentioned the country.
And now? Sure, I had found out that there was life here, but that wasn’t the only thing that bothered me, it was what that life was like. It seemed like a plant – yes, that’s right, like grass, or a tree – a plant with roots, roots that went deep into the earth, roots that gave it its existence. I thought again about the splendours of my city; splendours like those of an admirable bouquet of flowers displayed in a magnificent vase, offered for a lavish celebration. The water evaporates, life departs.
Sunday. Dawn is at home; members of her family have come to spend the day with her parents. In the morning I gave her a hand picking vegetables in the vegetable garden – as though she needed me. To be honest, I mostly just watched her doing it, she went so fast... and then, I didn’t know how to choose the right pods – those were too young... how could you tell? As far as I’m concerned, garden peas are something you find on a plate. “Don’t you look at them before you eat them?” she exclaimed with surprise. “Yes, they’re round,” I answered. And she laughed. We both laughed. She asked me what I was going to do for the rest of the day; I asked her what she was going to do for the rest of the day. She had her family; as for me, I didn’t know. “See you tomorrow!” she said. “See you tomorrow!” I replied. She picked another pea – another pod, I mean, not another pea. Peas don’t grow on... on... I don’t know what they’re called. Pods grow on... whatever they’re called. The peas are in the pods. I picked a pod that looked just right to me and held it out to her. “That’s a good one, you know how to choose them,” she commented. Is that so? Already! “See you tomorrow!” she said. “See you tomorrow!” I replied. She went in to her house; I went back to mine.
This morning my uncle has to take the push button for the latch of the wooden panel that closes the clock he delivered about a week ago. The button was broken and he has just received a new one. What a nuisance, having to go all that way just for a button when there’s so much to do... And the button just needs putting on, there’s no way it needs a clockmaker! Having heard him chuntering away, I offer to take the button. He is delighted: “It’s true, I could have asked you but I didn’t think of it. It’ll give you a bit of fresh air...” He adds: “You get a bit bored here...” I immediately let him know he has no need to worry about that.
“Is it urgent?” Dawn asks me when I tell her about delivering the button.
“No, it’s just to get some fresh air. Why?”
“Just to know whether we go by bike or walk.”
“What do you prefer?”
“Do you want to go over the meadows?”
She smiles brightly:
“It’s a bit up and down!”
I smile, less brightly:
“So it’s a new way, is it? Until now we’ve only ever gone up.”
She laughs:
“Well then, let’s fly!”
I laugh likewise:
“No can do, I’m afraid. My plane isn’t working just at the moment.”
As our exchange of views has to come to a conclusion, I take it upon myself to wind up:
“Let’s walk. And we don’t have to go the whole way, you know – we can just do the bits that go downhill.”
“I’ve got a better idea! I’ll do the uphills and you do the downhills.”
“It’s a deal!”
Dawn has popped home to let her mother know where we’re going and we set off. Barely have we started than our carefully laid plan falls to pieces at the first hill – a steep one – out of our village. And if we don’t burst out laughing, it’s a close-run thing.
Until we reach the next village the road is the same as the one that goes to the little market town where the creamery is; the little train bridge is there, giving us a wink through the foliage of the trees it is hiding behind.
Downhill! Not much, but downhill all the same. Around us, meadows; and cows in the meadows. Why mention them, since they’re everywhere? Because...:
“Do you know them?”
“Of course!”
She tells me their names, their age... They’re not the same cows as before; we have been introduced.
Ahead of us, a wood. A cross stands guard at the end of the track we have just taken. And now, a proper downhill! We need to catch hold of the tree trunks so as not to fall; at least I do. As for Dawn...
We exit the wood.
“A bridge!”
Down below I have seen a bridge – a little train bridge. I am not wrong.
“And have you seen the rails?”
Yes, slightly to the left, I have seen rails track she has pointed out to me.
“But they stop!”
“Yes, they’ve been taken up nearly everywhere,” Dawn explains. “The little train hasn’t run for ages...”
“Like the watermill and the sawmill.”
She nods...
We head on down. The old rails, all rusted over, still try to reach the bridge; despair is motionless...
“Let’s take the little train!”
Seeing my surprise, she adds with a laugh:
“We can pretend. We follow the track, and you just have to whistle every now and then.”
“It’s sad, a track without a train...”
“I don’t think there were enough people to... It’s sad, a train without anyone in it.”
When we reach the bridge, she points out a village at the top of a hill:
“That’s where you have to take your button.”
She goes on with a teasing smile:
“It’s not very steep.”
Not very steep, indeed... but last Friday I had struggled with just that sort of not very steep uphill. Oh well...
We sit on the bridge, legs dangling.
“You see, over there, the rails start again; though they don’t go very far...”
An image comes back to me all of a sudden; a railway track, right next to the road that goes to the creamery, which I had hardly noticed. I gently interrupt Dawn:
“They go to the little train station hard by the crossroads.”
I add carelessly:
“Perhaps you don’t know it? I’ll show it to you later.”
Hey, hey! That’s surprised her...
“You’ve been looking...” she starts after a moment.
She stops:
“When you used to come before...”
She breaks off again.
I think I have understood:
“I never looked at anything?”
“No, there’s always looking...”
“I didn’t see...?”
“There’s always seeing.”
Not knowing what else to say, I shut up. She doesn’t say anything either. The silence lasts.
“You were seeing something else,” she says slowly.
“You mean I hadn’t left the city, is that it?”
She sighs:
“Yes, of course...”
She nods several times:
“You can stay in a city...”
She gives a helpless shrug:
“I can’t find the words you’d need to talk about the scent of grass after it’s been raining...”
She has stopped. I daren’t say “It smells good.” No, that won’t do, it must have a different scent, one that I don’t know. “That you don’t know yet,” my mind whispers to me.
She has gone on softly:
“Grass doesn’t grow only so as to be eaten and give milk. If that were the case, its scent would attract only cows.”
She remains lost in thought for a long while, then says:
“You were seeing what you thought looked beautiful.”
Then, in a slightly dull voice:
“Beauty doesn’t exist.”
Barely a pause:
“And you can’t see a scent.”
She is silent for a long, long while:
“Now you are looking properly.”
It’s true, I am looking properly:
“Perhaps before I didn’t need to look...”
She waits.
“In the city where I live, I look in order to find: my way, the shop where what I need is waiting for me...”
I wander in my thoughts for a while:
“Perhaps before, all I was looking for was to get back to the city where I live...”
I pull a face:
“... where there’s so much more to see, isn’t there?...”
She is still waiting.
“Does a cow look at the sky thinking that it’s beautiful? Does it look at the sky to see whether it’s going to rain? Does it only look at the grass it eats in its meadow, the meadow which is its shop?”
I pause for a moment:
“When I used to come here before, my eyes stayed in the lovely shop that is the city where I live.”
Dawn has given me a smile, then says brightly:
“You can show me the little train station after we’ve delivered the button.”
I pretend to believe that she really doesn’t know the station:
“It’s really lovely, you’ll see!”
She answers, with the eagerness of someone expecting to make a great discovery:
“I can’t wait!”
And we set off again over the meadows, each looking more innocent than the other...
Here we are on the path that hardly goes uphill. But... And yet... But, and yet, it does...
“You’re going too fast, I can hardly keep up!”
I turn round; she is behind me, dragging her feet... What’s up?
“Catch me if you can!”
She has shot off – what’s the expression? – like an arrow. Now she’s way ahead of me... Right! If that’s how you want to play it... My blood – what’s the expression? – boils in my veins! I swoop after her! I’m breathless, but I’ve caught up with her!... I catch hold of her; she laughs, I laugh, now we’ve both tumbled to the ground! We laugh; the laughter gradually trickles away. We stay without moving for... I don’t remember how long. She has jumped quickly to her feet:
“Come on!”
She has set off again at a brisk pace. I catch her up. She gives me a smile:
“We’ll soon be there. You’re a good climber now, you’ve got used to it.”
We are indeed soon there; I’ve never walked so fast.
The push button for the latch of the wooden panel that closes the clock is back in place. Who said there was no need for a clockmaker? It wasn’t as easy as my uncle had implied. The button was just a tiny bit too big, enough to make the operation awkward. Curiously, there was also a file in the bag that contained the button, heaven knows why. I’m sure that my uncle, once I’m back home, will say, while pretending to be busy with some inoffensive little gear wheel or other: “I don’t suppose you had any bother.” Oh no, of course I didn’t have any bother. And he will say: “Good.”
The road runs down, in no more of a hurry than we are, towards the little train station. On the right, overlooking the meadows, stands the little market town where my cousin’s creamery is; it looks like a fortress.
“It was indeed a fortress in days gone by,” Dawn has confirmed.
A moment later she added with a sorrowful sigh:
“It has seen bad times.”
The road seems to be part of the meadows. Why talk about meadows all the time? I’ve already said there were meadows. But I haven’t described the feeling I had of a sea made up of grass and trees. It was tempting to write that the cows I could see on that sea were ships, but the image of one of the poor creatures struggling against the ocean’s tumult caused me to abandon the enterprise.
“Yes, it’s true, before you used to see something else,” Dawn has commented.
We are approaching the little train station. What inhabitant of my city would even think about heading for a station falling into ruins?
“Before, I used to see what the inhabitants of cities like mine see. For them, the countryside is a stage set you’re never supposed to set foot in; the sky is blue, the flowers are lovely and the earth is dirty.”
“Perhaps city-dwellers aren’t the only ones to find the earth dirty.”
Dawn goes on after a long pause:
“Perhaps those who travel do too.”
“Those who never come back again? Or who come back again but are no longer the same?”
She nods several times.
“Show me your station, then!” she cries joyfully.
The station really is a ruin; but it has still managed to keep its life. Dawn has me guess where, not so very long ago, people came to wait for a train which, on days when it had snowed heavily, did not always arrive at the scheduled time. They would sit here, stand there talking with a friend; here was the ticket counter, where the station-master would issue tickets, there were the points, so hard to work in winter. And through the little window, which I cannot see any more than I can see the rest, the glow of the stove packed with stout logs comes to keep me warm.
It was I who was supposed to be showing the little train station to Dawn...
“Shall we take the little train home?”
My joke, probably intended to shine the spotlight back on me, did not make Dawn laugh. She answered with a hint of sadness:
“The little train won’t come. I’ve been told it no longer had any purpose; where are the people who used to take it every day?”
The road runs downhill. I seem to notice the uphills and downhills less now. Dawn is right, I’m getting used to them. But... if the road is going down...
“We’re on the wrong road!”
Dawn gives me a reassuring smile:
“No, no, but you’re right that this one doesn’t go to our village; it goes to a mill.”
“Which no longer makes flour.”
She nods:
“That’s true.”
Then adds more brightly:
“We’re going to have lunch!”
Now that’s good news. It’ll soon be midday and I can well imagine we’re going to have lunch.
My no doubt stupid look has made her laugh:
“We’re going to have lunch at my cousin’s.”
“Does she live in the mill?”
“No, but it’s in that direction. And don’t worry if the road goes downhill; it’ll climb up again.”
I strike the modest pose of an athlete who knows his worth:
“Oh, it never gets that steep round here!”
She strikes the pose of one lost in admiration, followed by a little giggle:
“I’ll have to work hard to keep up with you now!”
“Don’t worry, I’ll wait for you,” I answer magnanimously.
A tiny little bridge that barely troubles to arch its back over a tiny little stream in which the water plays joyfully with pretty round pebbles that colour the current with their delicate yellows, greens and blues.
A house has just appeared, rather high up on the hillside. A rather steep slope leads up to it. Dawn had mentioned a climb. I know that I’m a good climber now. I hope it isn’t...
“You see that house...?”
Yes, I can see the house. It’s right in front of me.
“Is that where your cousin lives?”
“Yes, that’s it. The place where you weighed yourself on Friday is a bit further on, beyond.”
“Oh, yes, the cousin who wasn’t there...”
“That’s right, she’s expecting us.”
“Expecting us?”
“Yes, I gave her a call before we left.”
“That was far-sighted.”
“We’ve been walking hard, I thought we’d be ready for a good meal.”
That seems like a bright idea. I attack the rather steep slope with a will. The slope gives in and here I am, at the top!
Dawn’s cousin has seen us coming. Wearing a simple blue dress, she comes to meet us. “Lunch is ready!” she announces with a broad, welcoming smile.
Thick sausages the way they make them round here, jacket potatoes, fresh lettuce picked from the garden just a moment before and served with bacon bits, cheese made with the milk of Dawn’s cousin’s cows... It was indeed a very good meal.
The cousin’s parents are kind and considerate. You soon get used to kindness, you end up finding it normal. And yet you don’t easily find kind people everywhere. Of course I also find lots of kind people in the city where I live, but in the region where my uncle lives I have the unexpected feeling of – how can I put it? – existing more than elsewhere for the people whose houses I go to. The questions I am asked relate more to my life than, as I have already said, the usual “How are you doing at school?” And what’s more, and even more unexpected, people talk to me about their own life, which very much does not happen as often in the city where I live.
After lunch, Dawn’s cousin takes us into a meadow just beside the farm and we settle down there, near the cows that graze quietly without taking much notice of us. Do they look at the sky thinking that it’s beautiful?
Dawn’s cousin is full of curiosity. She asks me one question after another about the city where I live, about my train trip, about my school, about wheatfields... Why wheatfields?
“I’ve never seen a wheatfield, you know; you live in the country...”
“There’s only meadows round here,” she replies. “I like meadows well enough but I’d like to know what life’s like in fields, where cows can’t go because they’d damage the crops.”
I don’t really know what to say. Dawn doesn’t seem to know much about life in fields either.
“I’ve seen pictures of wheatfields,” the cousin continues. “I like to see the cornflowers scattered through the ripe wheat.”
“Is that why you wear blue?” I ask her with a smile.
She laughs:
“Why not?”
Dawn tells her about the books that she and Ponytail bought last Thursday. Their conversation is serious, clear, with no frills. I think of my schoolmates; they’re good students, they’re pretty serious too, and they don’t neglect their studies either... What’s different about these two girls, then? I go back and read what I said about Dawn: “Dawn was elegant but sturdy.” Sturdy... Perhaps that’s what’s different.
The conversation has ended. Dawn’s cousin turns to me:
“I’ve already been to a city; I’ve already seen fields through a train window. But in both cases it was just a glimpse and catching a glimpse isn’t the same as seeing. You’re not familiar with fields but you are familiar with cities because you live in one. What’s life like there?”
I am surprised by how clear-cut the question is. No, not clear-cut, I ought really to say brutal; but brutal suggests violence and that is not the case. People doubtless see things in more shades of grey in the city where I live, but here people call a spade a spade.
“You live, behind a train window; but you don’t know it.”
“What about you: how do you know it?”
The question is still just as direct. I answer after a pause for thought that she respects with showing any sign of impatience:
“Dawn taught me by introducing me to life in the meadows.”
“The dawn?”
“No, Dawn. That’s what I called your cousin because she came over very early in the morning.”
She hasn’t said anything. She’s shot a quick but attentive glance at Dawn.
Dawn has given her a smile:
“And we’ll call you Cornflower!”
Dawn has turned to me:
“What do you think?”
“Done!” I say, nodding.
Cornflower – since Cornflower it is – picks up her strand of thought again:
“I don’t think you can live in the fields from behind a train window, but how can you live without the cows that are always there? Corn doesn’t come and talk to you.”
Time passes. Then she asks me, still just as plainly:
“Who talks to you, in the city where you live?”
The question, still just as direct, takes me unawares. I stammer:
“Who talks to me? Well, all... my schoolfriends, in the street... and... I dunno...”
She hasn’t stopped looking at me:
“But what about life? Life comes from somewhere else.”
“What do you mean, somewhere else?”
“You eat corn, you drink cows’ milk.”
I don’t really understand. I answer, somewhat at a loss:
“Yes...”
“When I want milk I ask for it; who do you ask?”
I am getting more and more confused:
“I go to the shop.”
She ponders for a moment:
“The shop doesn’t have milk. Someone brings it. It’s cows’ milk. How, in the city, do you know where life comes from?”
“I’ve learnt it.”
A moment goes by. I wait patiently. She goes on:
“I learn too, at school. I like learning. But how do you learn to live with my cows?”
She stifles a giggle:
“And how do you learn to live without them?”
“Perhaps someone who lives with corn,” interjects Dawn, “can’t learn to live without it either.”
I sketch something which might pass for a smile:
“In the city where I live, it is customary to claim that it is absolutely impossible to live anywhere else. I was convinced that was the case myself until recently. Now, I don’t know. Life with cows?... I don’t think I know how to talk to them; or rather, how to listen to them. Life with corn?... I really don’t want to mock something I know nothing about. But it’s difficult for me not to laugh even to think of how such an idea would go down if I came out with it to one of my schoolmates.”
I pause:
“Could I learn how to live without my city?”
“Must a life exclude other lives?” asks Cornflower slowly.
Dawn has bitten her lip and looked down.
We return to our village after bidding good evening to Cornflower’s parents. The way is familiar; that’s the path I took when I came up to... weigh myself last Friday. My thoughts are a bit of a jumble. Dawn hasn’t said anything since we left Cornflower’s. I don’t even think to be glad when the path goes downhill. We reach the top of the steep slope that runs down to the sawmill. I stop to look at the meadows that stretch from one little valley to the next, far into the distance, until the gaze gets lost.
I turn to Dawn:
“When you’re here, you get the feeling no other world exists.”
Dawn has looked at me with a smile that trembled slightly.
This morning I’m helping my uncle to mend a clock. To be honest, I don’t know whether I’m really helping or making things harder for him. I think most of all he likes showing me his skills, showing me that a clock isn’t just a collection of metal pieces that people look at absent-mindedly – or don’t look at at all, more like – because the metal pieces are inside the clock and can’t be seen. I know that it can happen sometimes – not often – that some young rascal – as the parents would say in such a case – tries to see what the mystery of the wheels is all about. If the story ends badly, my uncle is asked to repair the damage, which in the worst case involves putting the whole clock back together again. That, of course, is when and how the boy acquires the “rascal” tag. If the story ends well, said boy is generally looked at askance: what can we say to him? Who is he? I must say that I have never seen a girl attempt that kind of exploration. I have wondered why but not come up with an answer; I have asked girls and never really understood their answers – not interesting, no point, have to be careful... My uncle, on the other hand, would tend rather to congratulate the explorer – “You don’t often come across curious chaps”, he told me one day when I was still little. “But it's because of curious chaps that clocks exist, and everyone is very happy to make use of them.” Does that mean people don’t care for those who bring them what they need in order to live?
This afternoon Dawn and I have gone to sit at the end of the meadow behind the house, where the steep slope starts that leads down to the river whose current you can follow as it runs among the pretty round pebbles that colour it with their delicate yellows, greens and blues, that runs between the two watermills than haven’t made flour for ages.
Dawn is preoccupied:
“My cousin is very curious...”
Is that so? Like the boys who explore clocks? If that’s so, each explores in their own way...
“Where are you?”
Where?... Oh, I’d been wool-gathering:
“I heard you mention curiosity and that made me think about something my uncle said.”
I explain.
Dawn seems relieved:
“I was afraid that what she said...”
I interrupt her:
“No, no, not at all, I found her questions really interesting.”
I add with a helpless shrug:
“What bothers me is that I can’t find an answer.”
“But you did give an answer, though. The train window.”
“Oh, yes. And I also said that I knew it thanks to you.”
I give her a smile:
“Because you had introduced me to life in the meadows.”
Apparently both Dawn and I had the same thought at the same time, because we both say together:
“Can you learn...”
A pause – we have just realised. This kind of situation generally ends with a good laugh. But not this time; looking into each other’s eyes, we slowly repeat the end, more or less, of what had been said yesterday:
“... to live without the city?”
One of Dawn’s schoolfriends has invited Dawn and me to come and spend the afternoon with her.
We set off after lunch.
“The way there is almost dead straight,” Dawn tells me. “We don’t need to go over the meadows, we can take our bikes.”
“Sure! I fixed mine up...”
“... as soon as you got here.”
“How do you know?”
“My mother saw you working on it all day...”
I laugh:
“She’s laying it on a bit thick; it only took me all morning!”
Dawn feigns admiration (though I don’t fall for it):
“It must gleam!”
I say as earnestly as I can:
“Is there a best bicycle competition in your...”
I pause for a second, then go on, sounding a little more distant:
“... locality? I have prepared my bike for such a possibility.”
She replies as earnestly as she can:
“I’m afraid not. We only organise competitions of the utmost importance here. But you can put yourself down for the best haycart if you like.”
Touché! I surrender:
“Well then, let’s go and show my bike to the cows!”
It’s not far. We pass by our little train bridge, then the spring; we run through a village, hardly any larger than ours, perched like nearly all of them are. The village where Dawn’s schoolfriend lives is perched even higher up, circled by mountains.
Imposing houses surround a vast meadow, in the middle of which stands a huge haycart. It’s too good an opportunity:
“What do you think?”
I have spoken in a tone of indifference. Dawn shrugs. As I thought, she’s missed the point.
“There’s some hay that’s a bit out of place on the left. You should sort it out, it doesn’t look very attractive the way it is.”
She had entirely got the point.
At the other end of the meadow stands a long woodpile – definitely a candidate for the best woodpile competition, and no mistake – and just alongside it a girl waving to us. It’s Dawn’s schoolfriend.
“Do you like it?”
The fried has pointed towards the long woodpile. I’m surprised:
“Why do you think...?”
“I saw you staring at it on your way over.”
Heavens, she’s got a quick eye!
“They don’t put wood in the streets in the city.”
Somewhat at a loss for words, I merely nod.
She goes on:
“There’s no life in the streets in cities, people don’t know the passers-by.”
“It’s true that here...”
“We’re at home everywhere here, everywhere is our garden.”
“Thank you for asking me over.”
“You’re from these parts, your uncle has always lived here, you can understand us even if you live in the city.”
She gives me a smile:
“Dawn, as you call her, told me you hadn’t gone travelling.”
She nods:
“Those who leave, like those who come from other parts, don’t understand us. They don’t try to understand us, they don’t want to. Do they even see us, I wonder?”
Without transition she laughs brightly:
“They wouldn’t even have seen it – the woodpile, I mean!”
“Or else they would’ve said that the people round here aren’t orderly,” adds Dawn.
I protest:
“On the contrary, it’s very orderly. I think the people who live in my city are more likely to have said that the people round here lack artistry.”
“Artistry?” exclaims Hawkeye.
“For a woodpile?” exclaims Dawn.
“In the city where I live, when you want to encourage people to have things they don’t need, you tell them it’s art.”
“And yet the milk is the same whatever mug you drink it from,” observes Hawkeye.
“There you go! And the city people will tell you you lack artistry,” says Dawn sarcastically.
I can only agree:
“Once art is an accepted idea and taught at school, being against it can only result in being excluded from the society of people who... have artistry.”
Hawkeye shakes her head vigorously:
“I can think otherwise...”
“Yes, and you’ll get a bad mark at school.”
“And no doubt in life too,” adds Dawn softly.
I return to the woodpile:
“Dawn showed me how to split kindling. She didn’t say anything to me about art; she talked about what was practical for someone who wanted firewood. When I saw the woodpile so carefully arranged, I thought I could see a lovely log fire and snow through the window outside.”
Dawn gives me a smile:
“It’s true, now you’re looking properly.”
She turns to Hawkeye:
“The day before yesterday he told me that in the city they saw the countryside only as a stage set you’re never supposed to set foot in.”
“Oh, city people are such artists!” remarks Hawkeye with a laugh.
The conversation continues inside the house over an afternoon snack. It’s a big house... half for people, half for cows. The coming winter may be harsh but the house will be warm, thanks to the firewood... and the cows.
It’s soon six o’clock, and milking time. Setting off, we see a young girl coming in the opposite direction, a long switch in her hand, following a cow that is unhurriedly wending its way home. On the way back we pass other cows heading for the cowshed without anyone to guide them – they know the way well enough.
“What day is it?”
Dawn looks at me with surprise:
“Thursday. Why do you ask?”
“I tend to lose track of time on holiday.”
I add, after a pause for thought:
“What good does it do to know what day it is?”
“Not much, maybe, round here...”
She corrects herself:
“No, that’s not quite true – knowing which day’s market day, for example...”
“Do you go?”
“Sometimes, to town.”
“You’re right. At school too, it’s useful to know when the holidays start!”
She smiles:
“And now to know when they end!”
“I hope it isn’t any time soon...”
“You only have to count, though I really have no wish to. Today is the eighteenth of July.”
“Already?”
“Already.”
I pull a long face. She smiles brightly:
“Only!”
“Only what?”
She laughs:
“It’s only the eighteenth of July!”
“You’re right. So what shall we do today, the eighteenth of July?”
She ponders:
“Do you want to see an electric mill?”
“An electric mill?”
“Yes, an electric mill.”
I assume a particularly interested look:
“Does it make flour?”
“Maybe, probably, I dunno.”
I assume a particularly uninterested look:
“You’re having me on. No matter, I want to see your mill. I’ll tell you whether it makes flour or not.”
“I can’t wait to find out. Let’s go!”
“By bike or on foot?”
“Is it far?”
“Very far. At least twice as far as from here to the little train bridge.”
I pretend to weigh up the options:
“We’ll have to come back as well.”
“You don’t have to. I can come back and my father will come and get you in the car.”
“Is it dangerous?”
“Very dangerous. You have to cross a big river, very fast-flowing.”
“That’s the clincher; I like to live dangerously.”
I add emphatically:
“Don’t worry! I’ll look after you!”
And we set off, taking care not to laugh, which was no easy matter, believe me!
Having passed the hill that leads out of our village, we take the track that slopes gently down towards the river. The little house that used to serve as the little train station gazes sadly at the useless old rails which, reluctant to leave it on its own, still cling tenaciously to the ground.
We follow the river, which makes a big loop through the wood. I’ve already been that way before and wonder where on earth the mill might be. I can remember a rather ugly building beside a stream, a mountain stream, at the place where it joins the river. It is definitely not the mill. And there it is, the building, just as ugly as I remembered it.
“This is where we cross.”
Dawn points to the river, which is no more than four paces from one side to the other.
“So that’s your big river, then?” I sneer.
“It’s not wide but it’s deep. Can you swim?”
“Yeah, don’t worry about me. I’ll help you over to the other side.”
We cross. The water comes at least halfway up our calves.
“Where are we going?”
Instead of answering she points to the ugly building. I frown:
“You said we were going to a mill...”
“Well, there it is!”
It must be some kind of joke, though I can’t see anything funny in it. I ask:
“What is it – that thing?”
“The mill.”
“The mill?”
“The mill.”
I ponder weightily. She says nothing. She doesn’t look like someone who’s joking. I think I know what sort of mill it is.
“Is it the electric mill?”
“Yes.”
I nod my head several times:
“Which hasn’t made flour for ages.”
“Which hasn’t made flour for ages.”
I think I have understood:
“You wanted to show me what was happening to the countryside.”
“Yes.”
“And the electric mill is a plant that makes electricity. And perhaps the electricity makes flour somewhere else. In a big mill.”
“Yes.”
We stand for a long while in silence, after which Dawn goes on pensively:
“Maybe it’s better that way. After all, I use electricity every day and I have no problem with that, quite the opposite in fact. I think it would really bother me not to have electricity.”
I, a city-dweller, was hardly going to contradict her.
Was it the woods all around us whose thick foliage hid us from the world, or was it the river whose waters whispered their secrets to us? In all events, a miracle occurred. The electric mill vanished and in its place I saw the humble watermill and the miller, struggling to carry a big sack of flour.
Dawn’s father has had to make a screw that is particularly... yes, particularly what, exactly? I don’t know. I’ve already said, haven’t I, that he made lots of things other than screws and that we he did was particularly... well, I’ll put “important”, since in any case I don’t know what it is.
The part he had made was for a school of optics. The school was situated in a town that had a museum where you could see eyewear made by opticians who had studied at the school.
So Dawn’s father had asked Dawn and me if we wanted to deliver the important part ourselves. “That way you can see what they do in the school while you’re there, and visit the museum too,” he had told us. He had also added, laughing up his sleeve, “That way you can choose a pair of glasses for when you’re old!”
So here we are at the station of the town where, last week, Dawn and Ponytail had come to buy books... and shoes. The train – or at least the two-coacher, like the one I had taken to get here –, which took a bit less than an hour to cover the distance, was not yet in the station. We were wandering here and there, and, I believe, there and here, when...
“Did you see that? There’s a waggon that’s come off the train and it’s running all on its own. It’s going...”
Dawn interrupts me with a laugh:
“And there’ll be another one in a moment!”
I can indeed see another one... though not on the same track!
“It’s for sorting the waggons,” she tells me. “There’s a points system that sends the waggons on this track or that.”
“Yes, but how do they manage to run all on their own?”
“Come on, I’ll show you.”
Which she does. It’s really clever; a locomotive pushes the waggon up a little incline that is calculated so that the waggon runs just fast enough to find its place.
Eight forty-nine. The train leaves. The track enters a region cluttered with mountains. Yes, her father’s village is also in the mountains. And I like them. Because you can live there. Peacefully. Nobody lives around the track, it’s too steep. That’s what the two-coacher must say to itself as it ambles with little apparent interest from one station to another. I reckon I could go faster on my bike. Oh well, it’s nine forty-seven and we’ve arrived.
The director of the school was waiting for us. He receives us warmly in his office. It’s nice to be welcomed by the director of a school without worrying whether it’s for a telling-off. Should I confess here that it’s something that has already happened to me? Let’s move on.
The part that Dawn’s father has made is duly handed over to the director. “Your father is a magician! We too have lathes to make parts and our pupils are pretty good with their hands, but no-one here was able to make that particular part!” he says to Dawn, who blushes with pleasure.
A teacher takes us to see the big workshop where the pupils are hard at work. I’m surprised by the atmosphere of the place. Serious, yes, but that’s not what surprises me. The pupils at my school too are serious. “The pupils here like what they’re doing,” I have said to Dawn, speaking quietly. “They’re not only pupils,” she has answered in the same tone of voice. I haven’t understood. “In a minute,” she has whispered. We are shown the work in progress. I marvel at the tiny microscope lenses polished with skill and patience; and larger lenses that are used to make glasses. People will be able to see.
We have left the workshop.
“What did you mean?...”
“When I said they weren’t only pupils?” she replies.
“Yes.”
“Pupils learn what they’re told. So do they, of course. But what they want is to know...”
She breaks off for a moment:
“One day, one of the pupils who lives in the town where my father works came to see him to ask him for some advice about a tricky part he’d made at the school. My father gave him the necessary explanations. The pupil came back two weeks later to show him some improvements he had made off his own bat, without anyone asking him to and of no particular use for his schoolwork. He said he wanted to be capable of finding things out for himself that he would have to do later.”
I remain lost in thought for a few moments:
“Is it really possible to find something out for yourself? But then, if we leave others to find out for us... what becomes of our life?”
The director of the school has asked to stay for lunch. I feel very proud. Dawn is really happy. Really happy that the director has included me in the invitation. She was used to the honour, having already come with her father when he occasionally did work for the school that required particular skills.
The director did not ask me how I was doing at school, as I had been expecting, but spent the whole lunch telling me about his school’s history, the work that was done there and the advantages of the qualification the school gave. I was surprised by how interesting I found what he had to say. I usually found that kind of thing deeply boring. And it was not the first time I had heard that kind of thing either, far from it. Why did I now find it so interesting, exciting even? Dawn, after lunch, gave me the solution to the riddle. The director was no more a director than the pupils were pupils, as she had said earlier. A curious kind of school! Passion is contagious, and here it replaced authority and obedience.
In the afternoon we visit the eyewear museum. All sorts of eyewear, of course, otherwise why create a museum? And how many pairs of glasses must have been made by the hands of those curious students, under the guidance of that curious director?
July had stored up plenty of heat which it was generously offering to its guests today.
“It’s hot!”
“How very observant of you,” smiles Dawn brightly, seeming not at all bothered by the heat, unlike me.
“I’m hot!”
“The afternoon’s just beginning; it’s going to get a lot...”
She breaks off:
“Let’s go where it’s cool!”
“Where it’s cool?”
Some joke! And yet... Oh, yes:
“Let’s go to the spring!”
She laughs:
“What a good idea!”
“Isn’t it?” I say nonchalantly. “Good idea I had it!”
We set off. The big hill that leads out of the village unfortunately does nothing to cool us down, rather the opposite in fact.
“Let’s take the train!”
My proposal is accepted. We go and get our tickets from the station near the path that slopes gently down towards the river.
I pretend to pocket the tickets:
“It doesn’t cost much to travel round here!”
Dawn nods:
“Perhaps that’s why nobody does...”
I laugh, as one does for a jest; but it wasn’t one. She has gone on:
“What can you measure value by if not price, when you don’t measure it yourself?”
I am surprised:
“Don’t people always measure things themselves?”
“It’s so much easier to let others do it in your place.”
I exclaim:
“Well, we’re going to have a wonderful trip!...”
I hadn’t finished what I wanted to say, but didn’t know what...
“The little train’s coming, we mustn’t miss it!...”
Why did I get the feeling that she hadn’t finished either?...
The little train has left, without forgetting us.
The rails, having bravely supported us for a little while – not long... – haven’t had the strength to accompany us any further on our trip. No matter! The track is still there, even if only grass supports our little train.
A bend to the left, a bend to the right. It would be difficult for us to climb the big hills directly so we go round them. There is a stop at our bridge; the little train pulls in and we get off.
“Last one’s a sissy!” cries Dawn.
She shoots off towards the narrow footpath that runs steeply down through the wood to the spring.
I run faster than her and, despite setting off after her, start to catch up. Yes, but I lose ground all the same during the descent; the path is twisting and full of snags which she knows much better than I do. She reaches the spring first.
The water that bubbles out of the ground is cool, oh how cool! Suddenly I remember how I had found it not cool but icy, back in the days when a kid, the neighbour’s daughter, used to splash me with it.
“Aren’t you going to splash me today?”
Dawn smiles dreamily:
“Perhaps today you see that I am here; you would splash me back.”
One of Ponytail’s cousins, who lives in the biggest city in the region – I passed through it in the train on my way here, it didn’t take long – has come to spend a couple of days with her. He has to leave tomorrow morning, and this Sunday he and Ponytail have come to Dawn’s for the afternoon. The four of us settle down near the river behind the house. Two cows have ambled over to take part in the conversation; while waiting for the subjects discussed to suit them they have gone to drink, front legs in the water, showing no signs of impatience whatsoever. Perhaps they’re hot too.
The cousin is two or three years older than me and studying to be a chartered accountant. Between you and me, I think it highly unlikely that our two cows will take any interest at all in the ins and outs of that respectable profession.
“It’s restful here,” he begins.
Is he looking for something else to say or has he finished? I have no idea. But truth be told, I don’t think I need to.
As he says nothing, his cousin continues for him, more or less:
“Living in a city is more tiring.”
I have noticed that Ponytail has said something under her breath to Dawn, which could be “What am I supposed to do about it?” As Dawn does not seem to show any particular surprise, I have concluded that there was nothing at all out of the ordinary in it. The cows, suitably edified, have gone off to pursue the joys of grazing.
Dawn continues the lively exchange of views:
“Don’t you get too bored here?”
He has turned towards her and has given her an indulgent look. After seeming to think for a moment, he finally answers calmly:
“No, not at all.”
The conversation continues. I pitch in without hesitation:
“Do you like walking? Here...”
I have stopped because he is giving me a speculative look, like someone who is trying, without setting any more store by it than that, to probe a mystery that it might be somewhat interesting to fathom. Which hasn’t stopped him, after seeming to weigh up the pros and cons, from answering in a very assured tone of voice:
“Yes. The vicinity is quite captivating.”
I can’t really remember the rest of the conversation. The Accountant left in the late afternoon, leaving me the impression of a very pleasant young fellow.
Yesterday evening my cousin invited Dawn and me to come and see the creamery where he works. He offered to pick us up in his car. “It’ll only take five minutes,” he said. But we preferred to go by bike. “It’ll only take twenty minutes,” we said. “And it’ll give us a breath of fresh air,” we added.
Having established our respective positions and reached a general consensus, this morning we have set off on our bikes. The way there now holds no surprises for me: the hill, our bridge, the station where memories stray, and finally the little market town where the creamery is.
My cousin receives us like a couple of VIPs. Just joking, though he does seem very happy to show us what he does. And what is that? Making butter. And how is it done? With milk. Yes, of course, but here butter isn’t made just any old how. It is made the same way it used to be made, a long time ago, a very long time ago, at a time when people who lived in cities like mine paid as much attention as country people to the little food they had. The cream from good cow’s milk is not mixed, as is all too often the case these days, with whey cream, which tastes so sour it leaves not the slightest hope of the sweet flavour of hazelnut, so mouth-watering, so delicious... Good cream and good milk alone would not be enough to make that unique butter, however. The other ingredient is passion, the passion to do something well, the passion to contribute something, even if it’s only something now seen as so banal as food, in a world where food is abundant. Without that passion, why bother to wash butter until the water runs clear?
My cousin seems very happy to have shown us what he does. I understand him and approve. You don’t often get the opportunity to share something people generally find so unworthy of attention, something that has required so much hard work and, as I have said, so much passion. I’m talking about people nowadays.
The sky is dotted with little puffs of white cloud that have come to a halt over the meadows. The meadows snooze in the heat of days that announce the end of July. It’s even hotter and muggier in the city, the Accountant told us yesterday. “You’re lucky to be that much higher up; the air is lighter,” he commented. It’s true, we’re nearly a thousand metres above sea level and the air is definitely more pleasant that down in the city. So why doesn’t he stay here, then? Pish!... There’s more to life than just distance above sea level. Why am I here, a thousand metres up?
We – Dawn and I – are sitting under the guardrail of the little train bridge, legs dangling, looking peaceably at the meadows that are gradually starting to turn yellow, the meadows that run from our village to Ponytail’s.
“Down there, just next to the little wood, on the right, isn’t that where the bridge is that we went over on our way to Ponytail’s?”
“No,” Dawn replies, “it’s behind the wood, further on and lower down, you can’t see it from here.”
“In all events, the track goes in that direction from the station near us, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, it does.”
“I can’t see any rails.”
“They’ve almost all been taken up.”
“Yes, but there were some left, I saw them.”
She looks more closely:
“Yes, you’re right, I can see some over there, not far from the road that runs past our station.”
I look again, as well as I can:
“Yes, maybe...”
A short silence. She goes on:
“I think I know why you can’t see the rails. Do you remember what they’re like?”
I’ve got it now:
“I’d forgotten. They’re flat on the ground. And from this distance...”
She smiles:
“And all overgrown...”
“That’s true. It reminds me that it’s not like in the city.”
“In the city? You have the same kind of rails?”
“Of course, otherwise the cars wouldn’t be able to drive on the roads.”
She ponders:
“Why here, then? There are no roads in the meadows.”
“For the haycarts, I suppose.”
“And yet there are bridges for all the roads and paths... You’ve seen them.”
I have indeed. So?...
“I don’t know.”
She gives a helpless shrug:
“Me neither.”
As the question doesn’t seem to take up any more of our headspace, we go back to contemplating the meadows that rise and fall into the distance...
Dawn and Ponytail have some more shopping to do in town. At this rate I’ll no doubt end up buying something too! This time we take our bikes; without hurrying, it takes about an hour. Ponytail has set off from her house and we meet up in a village about ten minutes away from hers and ours.
“And now, seeing as you like it, we’ll take the train!” she tells me brightly.
“Great idea!” exclaims Dawn.
She adds, turning to me:
“It had slipped my mind; Ponytail knows all about the little train.”
Ponytail passes the parcel straight back:
“She knows just as much as I do, and I’m not at all sure it had slipped her mind, either!”
I put an end to their little game by saying with a smile:
“However that may be, I’m delighted to be taking the train; it’s much less tiring than cycling.”
“Especially as we’re going to be climbing that mountain there,” Ponytail tells me with an innocent air.
She points to a huge mountain, worthy of the world’s highest peaks, on top of which I can see an ancient, ruined keep...
My air is equally innocent:
“I see my vassals have somewhat neglected my castle while I’ve been away.”
“My lord!” exclaims Ponytail theatrically, “have mercy on them and forgive them...”
Her face has suddenly fallen, and she goes on dully:
“They’ve known such misfortune...”
I am a bit embarrassed. Dawn comes to my aid:
“He doesn’t know...”
I interrupt her:
“I do know, I just didn’t dare say anything...”
The two girls give me a kind smile.
“The train’s waiting, let’s go!” cries Ponytail brightly.
Here we are at the place where the track and the road cross. A short dirt track, a grassy embankment, the start of a street which oddly passes over another dirt track.
“It’s a little train bridge,” Dawn tells me.
“And the street is the track,” Ponytail confirms.
The track...
“What about somebody who doesn’t know? What do they see?”
“Somebody who looks only at what they see,” answers Ponytail, “sees only the street.”
“That’s harsh,” comments Dawn. “You can’t guess everything that’s ever existed.”
“That’s true. But that person will look away even if they’ve guessed; it’s the street they have to walk down.”
We have stopped. Is it to look at what no longer exists?
“Is that the station?”
“How did you guess?” Ponytail asks me, slightly surprised all the same.
I am perhaps just as surprised myself; the house I’ve pointed to is lost among the others. Nearly.
“He followed the track,” explains Dawn.
It’s true, I followed the track; the house I pointed to is slightly aslant of the street and the other houses. It is on the extension of the track, a track between two streets, hardly distinguishable even if you know it was once there. Dawn had been right when she said I had started to look properly.
We get back onto our bikes. The track is harder to follow.
“Look at the bridge, ahead of you,” Dawn tells me.
“Oh, yes, can’t go wrong there!”
What made me say that? It’s not as though I’m going to say I had seen the little train when I saw the bridge, am I? Let’s drop the subject.
At the end of the street, a track – a dirt track? – and at the end a tunnel. Alongside, the road out of the village; at the end, a tunnel.
“Guess which...!”
I interrupt Ponytail, sounding confident:
“It’s easy! Let’s go and see the entrances.”
That takes the two girls by surprise.
“How will you tell?” asks Ponytail.
“A train goes straight on, a road can turn. If you can see the end from the entrance, it’s for the train.”
The girls laugh.
“Well, well, well!” exclaims Ponytail.
The girls are still laughing. What’s going on? After all, I think I’m right...
“You are right, but out of luck. The train tunnel is blocked,” Dawn tells me, still laughing.
I must look really downcast because Ponytail comforts me by saying that I had found the solution to the problem she had posed and which she never thought I would...
“Very kind of you to console me...” I mutter.
The whole episode ends with general laughter.
The tunnel, then. Passing by, Dawn shows me where the tunnel has been blocked off. We leave the tunnel. We are back on the track. We follow it as best we can, walking our bikes, given the state the track is in.
“It went through a marsh; it’s fortunate it’s as well-preserved as it is,” Ponytail tells me.
Having crossed the marsh, we reach a village that seems a little busier than those I usually see.
“We’ve arrived,” Dawn tells me. “The town is very close.”
The track has disappeared.
Here we are again in the town bookshop. My two companions like to draw. And to find the best paints and the best paper. Actually, that’s not quite true; the paints are expensive, and so is the paper. They do what they can. What else is there in the bookshop that attracts them? They have glanced at the crayons but not gone over to look at them more closely. Other needful things for school: notebooks and such like.
We have left the shop. Will we go home? Yes... no... Schoolfriends hail my two companions. Conversation. Other boys and girls are there, they are told. We stroll a short way down the high street. A tall, square tower; a clock – does my uncle mend it?... We walk towards the town hall, which stands opposite the clock. The town hall is a large, quite impressive building. A large and quite impressive fountain stands in the middle of the rather large square which stands in front of the town hall. A few long stone steps lead up to the entrance. But these are not just steps. They are a meeting-place, or perhaps I should rather say an agora. But not a market that sells vegetables, not at all; this is a market that trades in ideas. Worthy of the Agora itself: Athens in the mountains! The conversations fly from one step to another. An argument is under way among the Top Steps Group, though I don’t know what about, I’m too far away to hear, in my Bottom Steps Group. The conversation is heated, agreements, disagreements, vehement protests, sudden exclamations. Someone has made a calming gesture, the one it was intended for has thrown up his arms. Two boys – friends, no doubt, from the way they talk to each other – have left the agora and are hurrying away... Where are they going? To one of them’s house, to continue their discussion? To see a friend who couldn’t be there? Or just for a walk? No matter, they seem so happy to be together...
I have slipped away for a moment, taking care that my two companions don’t notice. I think I have succeeded, but you never know, do you? They won’t tell me if they did when they see the reason why. I have gone to buy the crayons they wanted so much.
“Hawkeye’s going to the meadow this afternoon.”
Dawn has sketched an amused smile but I have gone on without letting her finish:
“I know, it’s cows that go to the meadow, not people. Well, just this once it’ll be the three of us.”
“No need for lunch then, we can eat when we get there.”
I pull a face. She laughs.
“On foot? By bike?”
“Do you want to go over the meadows?” she asks.
“Oh, yes! It’s much nicer than by the road. And as it’s not far... And as it’s not too steep...”
“Lazybones! But you’re in luck, the meadow where she’ll be waiting for us is just before the steep climb up to the village.”
So we set out on foot – after lunch. We’re due to meet up with Hawkeye – and her cows – in her grandmother’s meadow.
“Why her grandmother’s?”
“That’s what she calls it because it’s been in the family on her grandmother’s side for a very long time.”
I am surprised all the same to see how nonchalantly I talk about hills now, because when you look more closely it’s uphill all the way from our village to Hawkeye’s. And steep, too, when all is said and done.
You have to be supple to cross the meadows, and not be afraid to roll on the ground to pass under the fences. But it’s true that it’s pleasant. You get the feeling that you’re in your own world, where you’re not short of anything, where there are no pitfalls, where there’s no path to come and tell you where to go.
A cow was lying down in one of the meadows. It had conscientiously prepared its meal with big flicks of its tongue, carefully cutting the grass so as not to tear up the roots, without which the grass would not grow again. And Mrs Cow was now ruminating patiently. A serious business, which she treated as such, as we could see from the calm gaze she had bestowed on us.
“Hello!”
That’s Hawkeye, who has seen us coming from afar and is running to meet us:
“Let’s go down to Grandma’s meadow, it’s just the place for us!”
"Bye!” I felt like saying to Mrs Cow as we left.
Grandma’s meadow has its advantages; there’s a little spring there, surrounded by lovely trees that have come in search of water. We find the shade and coolness that is so welcome on this hot day in a month of July that seems not to want to come to an end.
“That’s all there is.”
Surprised, I turn to Hawkeye:
“All there is?”
“You look at everything around you.”
It’s true, I was looking.
“I love...”
I cast around for words.
“You love, but it’s always the same thing.”
I reply instinctively:
“You can love things that look the same...”
I cast around for good examples, like at school: “Give examples...” As none come to mind immediately, Hawkeye goes on:
“Do you think everything looks the same here?”
I don’t answer straight away. Dawn remarks softly:
“There must be so much variety in the city where he lives...”
How had she sounded? Slightly anxious, perhaps? I give her a smile:
“You look the same every day. I like to see you.”
Now it’s Dawn’s turn to say nothing. A pause, quite short.
“I’m glad you like Dawn,” Hawkeye exclaims joyously. “I like her a lot too. She’s...”
Dawn has blushed:
“Hush, now! I’m just an ordinary...”
I break in:
“Ordinary; that’s what the people who live in my city say about the country...”
“We don’t have a lot to show them...” starts Hawkeye.
I shrug:
“No need; they don’t look.”
“That’s going a bit far!”
“Maybe. Me, in any case, I didn’t look at anything, I got bored; all I thought about was going back home.”
I go on after a short silence:
“I think I didn’t want to look.”
“Didn’t want to?” says Hawkeye with surprise. “Was it so unpleasant?”
“I think now that I was afraid.”
“Afraid of what? The people who live here?”
Dawn has shifted slightly but hasn’t said anything. I go on:
“No, no of course not. I was afraid...”
I pause for a moment:
“Where I live, earth is kept in pots. You can’t see that it’s just ordinary earth, the kind you find life in. Here, there was nothing to separate me from life. I didn’t know what life was. It isn’t sold in shops.”
I take Dawn’s hand:
“You’re just an ordinary girl.”
My uncle has mended an old clock and needs to take it to a small town about an hour’s drive from our village. “Do you want to come with me?” he asked me this morning. “Where?” I answered, thinking about something else. He looked at me closely: “I’ve just told you.” I apologised: “Sorry, my mind was elsewhere.” “I noticed,” he said drily. “You aren’t in any bother, are you?” I reassured him with a bright smile. But I still didn’t know where he was going. Not daring to ask him, so as not to make him worry again, I merely said that I would love to. He started to laugh: “But you don’t even know where I’m going!” He told me straight away. I had nothing against it, quite the opposite in fact, and... And I don’t know what I meant to say – I mean, what I meant to say to myself. I was thinking about ordinary earth. No, I was thinking about just an ordinary girl, the one who used to splash me with icy water from the spring two years ago.
The main road is dreary. A forest which goes on and on. Vast tracts of land – meadows, no doubt, but you couldn’t tell. A long descent. There is no path I need to follow, the road descends all on its own and the car follows it. A plain. Meadows, no doubt, but you couldn’t tell. I am bored. I remember the boredom I used to feel when I came to our village in previous years. Is it the same boredom? No, it isn’t; the landscapes I am travelling through don’t have the attraction of the landscapes I see around my village, around other villages, those where Ponytail, Hawkeye and Cornflower live. Hills, valleys, rivers; and mountains too, one revealing another as I move through them. And the path, the mill, the spring. Dawn.
Dawn isn’t there. What would I have discovered in these dreary landscapes if she had been? Perhaps, in the village I glimpse distractedly, there is a house with a vegetable garden and pea pods. And a dirt track to get there which is too far for me to see. Too far from my eyes; too far from my thoughts, too far from me. Too far from Dawn.
Can the eyes make visible what the heart shows?
We have nearly reached our destination without my realising it. My uncle has talked to me, I have talked to my uncle. I wasn’t distracted, like when I was looking at the landscape. The landscape that I wasn’t looking at and that left me with a memory. A memory that wasn’t in the landscape.
Here we are on the outskirts of the small town. Does it fly over the lively river by whose banks we arrived? No, the mountain makes a sheer wall along the river; the small town stands powerfully behind the wall.
We enter it. The houses, which came here one by one a long time ago – each wearing its own clothes, not to be mistaken for those of a neighbour – line narrow streets which climb the wall into which they seem to merge.
Are the trees which line the paths I climb with Dawn the houses which shelter us?
“It’s downhill!”
We’ve been going downhill almost since we left our village and I have just commented on the fact, giving my reasons:
“We ought to always take this road instead of tiring ourselves out with the other one that goes uphill.”
Dawn has fallen for it:
“Then how would we get to...”
But she’s quickly recovered her wits:
“Oh, no, of course, we’d just need to turn the map round.”
Nice one! I keep a straight face nonetheless:
“Remember to think of it next time.”
She pretends to take no notice and we carry on – downhill.
Once across the river, however...
“You’ve forgotten to turn the map round!”
My exclamation makes her laugh:
“No matter. If you climb in reverse, the bottom of the road will be in front of you.”
“And I will get the impression I’m going downhill, is that it?”
“Pedal!”
I do so. Hard. She loses ground.
“Flat tyre?”
She doesn’t answer and does her best to catch up. In vain. I slow down:
“Hang on to my bike!”
I was just starting to chuckle at my own joke when...
“Pull!”
She has hung on and is looking at me with an easy smile. I try to pull for a moment but the road has started to climb, steeply. I give in:
“Peace!”
She laughs:
“Surrender?”
Unconditional...
If you climb, you sometimes get to the top. Especially when there is a top.
I must have said something along those lines because Dawn has commented:
“The more you climb, the less you see the one who couldn’t. Always assuming there was one.”
The harder you pedal...
“The harder... you pedal...”
“... the more you lose your breath!”
I think she wanted to laugh as well, but merely pulled a face. The harder you pedal...
“Well, it wasn’t all that far! A nice rest...”
She laughs:
“We only came here to leave our bikes. It’s not in this village...”
“Is it much further? And how do we get there?”
“On foot.”
“And is it uphill?”
She gives a little shrug:
“Uphill, yes, but downhill too.”
“OK, I’ll do the downhill and you...”
“Alright, but with you.”
“That’s not so easy.”
“It only goes uphill at the end.”
“You should never see anything through to the end.”
“I think you got the quote wrong.”
“I think so too.”
While we’ve been talking, we have reached a crest.
“Look, there’s the river!”
I look:
“I don’t see anything.”
“You can’t, it’s hidden by the trees.”
“Oh! It’s beautiful!”
“What is?”
“The river.”
She ponders:
“You’re right to say that.”
“That the river’s beautiful?”
I laugh:
“I was joking!”
“Are you sure?”
I ponder:
“You’re right to say that. I know the river; we were there together.”
I smile:
“Actually in the river itself.”
“Oh, yes, the ford.”
“Oh, yes, the ford.”
Reading back what I have written, I notice that I can no longer remember who was the first to say “Oh, yes, the ford.” No matter. It will remain a secret.
“It’s downhill!”
That’s me. Her:
“As far as the tunnel.”
“The tunnel? The one we...”
“That one.”
“Will we take the...
“No, we pass over it.”
“But we are going to see the castle?”
“Of course, since that’s what we’ve come for.”
“Then why are we going downhill?”
“Because it goes uphill afterwards.”
“A lot?”
“Don’t try and have me on. You can climb better than me now.”
That’s her. Yes, I have written without breathing; memories count for more than the form you clothe them in, whatever my English teacher might say. You mustn’t let them get away – memories, of course. Me:
“No. I’m a boy and I’m older than you are...”
I have broken off because since a moment ago Dawn has been looking at me with a... shall we say, a mocking gaze.
I mutter:
“OK, OK, I can climb better than you. Where are we going?”
“To the castle. It’s on a very steep outcrop...”
“Impregnable.”
“Yes, the mightiest in the whole region. Attackers could wait as long as they liked, there was a spring inside the castle that never failed.”
She lowers her voice slightly:
“It was taken.”
“Taken?”
“Taken. About five hundred years ago.”
I am surprised:
“By a mighty army?”
“Yes, but most of all there were a lot of people. We got in the way.”
Silence falls for a moment. I go on:
“Has it been left in ruins until now?”
“No, it was rebuilt about three hundred and fifty years ago.”
“And now?”
“It was demolished about a hundred and fifty years ago.”
I express surprise again:
“A mighty army?”
“Do you remember the electric mill?”
Yes, I remember:
“Now there are big electric mills?”
“Big, yes, and not even mills.”
“So?”
“They needed stone.”
We reach the castle. There is nothing left. Except a tower.
“A keep,” Dawn tells me.
A keep. Or what’s left of it. I ask:
“When was it...?”
“It was built about eight hundred years ago.”
We stand in silence looking at the meadows, way down below, where you can see cows and where others had seen the attackers who had come to lay waste to everything.
People seem obliged to kill each other. Why?
“Hello!”
Ponytail has just arrived at the crossroads where Dawn and I have been waiting for a couple of minutes. We’re going together to the little market town where my cousin’s creamery is. But it’s not the creamery we’re going to; on this fine Sunday, the twenty-eighth of July, we’re going to the summer fete! Hawkeye’s isn’t far out of our way and we are soon there.
“Hello!”
And we’re off again. The road skirts the village where my cousin lives, then the one I went to with my uncle to deliver a clock. Why do I speak of all that? Because I feel now that I am at home. Not as much as Dawn, who lives here. But when I go from one village to another I know where I am, I know who lives there, what they do there; when I’m on a road or just a farm track, or in a meadow I cross or in which I sit and talk with Dawn, that meadow forms part of a world that has become mine.
What about the city where I live? My city also forms part of a world that is mine. Before coming here, before Dawn introduced me to a new world, the city was all I knew. I had lived in it. I hadn’t just visited it, like those who come to see, even if they show a genuine interest; they can see, but what can they say about what they have seen? That it was beautiful? A world isn’t there to be seen, it’s there to be lived in, and living takes time.
Writing also takes time; life cannot be summarised, even if you can’t say everything. While I’m writing I can’t do anything else. Do I have to write? Should I do something else? Or should I not do anything at all? I laugh – for myself alone. If I do nothing at all, I have time... to write! Isn’t that silly? What if I do something else? Will I choose it myself, or will someone else – my teacher, for example – choose it for me? If I choose it myself, why shouldn’t I choose to write? This is getting sillier and sillier, isn’t it? And if it’s my teacher who chooses for me, will he mind if I do something other than what he has asked me to do? Such as what another teacher has chosen? What should I do? Pay a quick visit, or live a long time, to the detriment of one of my teachers, for example? “You have to do what you do!” they will all tell me. “You have to do everything we have all asked you to do...” they will all tell me, “...or else!”
If I want to live, how will I be punished?
“Hello!”
That’s Cornflower; she has arrived by another road than ours, her village not being on the same side of the little market town as ours. That’s obvious, isn’t it?
“What were you thinking about?” Dawn has asked me as we were parking our bikes.
“About you,” I have told her.
So here we are at the summer fair.
I hadn’t really paid attention when Dawn had mentioned fairs to me; there are always fairs in the city where I live and they’re all the same. I like to go to them, meet up with my mates and have fun. Who’ll do best on the shooting range? It’s a different class of important to knowing who’s going to get the best mark at school. Doubtless because at school the best mark can have consequences, whereas here it’s just for fun.
“That’s pretty odd, what you’re saying!” exclaims Ponytail.
“And pretty worrying if true,” comments Dawn in a slightly muffled voice.
I nod:
“You just have to observe those who watch others play, other people they don’t even know.”
There are target games here too. I ought to make the same remarks. But here you throw a scrunched-up ball of rags at a pile of old cans. Nothing is broken. I make no remarks.
“You’re right,” says Cornflower approvingly. “There are more important things here than watching tin cans get knocked over.”
She adds with a vigorous shake of the head:
“Though that doesn’t stop me from having fun; quite the opposite, in fact!”
Hawkeye gives her a knowing glance:
“Especially when the boys miss the cans after making fun of the girls!”
The three girls laugh brightly. Yes, for them fun is a game.
Throwing rag balls at tin cans isn’t the fairgoers’ only occupation, of course, or only game, I should say. There’s the sack race, both feet in the sack – a curious idea, one I’ve never seen in the city where I live. But although a curious idea it’s also a funny one; like the girls, I take wicked pleasure in watching the participants fall over.
“How nasty we are!” I exclaim, laughing the while.
Hawkeye has stopped laughing for a moment:
“Nasty people don’t forget what they’ve seen, they take fun,” adds Ponytail.
I hear a great "Aaah!" I turn round. A cart covered with flowers has appeared. Followed by another; and another. So there aren’t just games at fairs, then? But is it really a fair?
“No,” Dawn tells me gently, “it’s a fete, our fete, all of us. It’s there so that we can all be together, it’s not about winning a race.”
The games had stopped to watch the carts covered in flowers go past. The big square where we are is now deserted. The games haven’t started up again. Silence reigns. What’s going on? Music can be heard. Music in the distance. Music slowly coming nearer. And suddenly, dancers, male and female, in costumes and dresses abounding in bright colours. That’s what it’s about, the fete; it’s not about artists and audience because everyone here could have been one or the other. Today it’s one lot, the next time it will be those warmly applauding their friends on stage.
The music has stopped, the dancers have left. Oh, no, no, they haven’t! They’re all there, mingling in the crowd of their friends.
Evening has come, like a long-awaited guest. It’s time for the hop, the hop at which everyone dances. Together.
Today, the day after the fete, has been quiet. Dawn was rather taken up with her mother. I stayed some of the day with my uncle in his workshop. I put a clock back together. It’s more difficult than taking one apart, so it is said. Yes and no. The key is knowing whether you’re taking it apart to get rid of it or taking it apart to put it back together later. If it’s to put it back together again you have to be very careful not to forget where the pieces you take apart come from. Of course, that applies above all if it’s your first time taking apart a clock you’re not familiar with. “A clock’s like a person, you have to get to know them before you handle them,” my uncle has said.
It’s late afternoon and I have gone to spend the evening at my cousin’s. He wasn’t back from the creamery yet. His wife – so my cousin too – makes we welcome. She’s not from here but from a city in a nearby region. I know the city by name; it’s quite big, even if not as big as the city where I live.
“How are the holidays going?” she has asked me.
“Great,” I have answered.
She has started laughing:
“What a speech!”
I start laughing too:
“What a question!”
My cousin’s wife is merry by nature, which is quite unlike the nature of the people here. Not that they don’t laugh, but they never laugh for nothing. My cousin’s wife makes me think of my chums; we often laugh just for laughter’s sake. Which is not unpleasant, after all. But I notice that I no longer feel such things the way I used to; am I assuming the habits of the people here or is it that fact that I too am from here?
“You’ve been out and about a lot. How do you find it, round here?”
She goes on, without leaving me time to reply:
“It’s very pretty, but it all looks a bit the same.”
I hesitate slightly:
“There are meadows, rivers...”
She laughs:
“Yes, and mountains too! They’re everywhere!”
“Mountains?”
She laughs again:
“No, not mountains! But everything...”
She breaks off, looking for words. I suggest:
“There’s nothing but earth?”
She looks at me with surprise:
“Why?...”
She seems to take time to consider:
“Yes, that could be it; I hadn’t thought of it before.”
After a moment’s silence she adds with a frown:
“And then everything’s so far...”
“The villages? You’ve got a car...”
“No, the shops. I know we’ve got a car; but at home I used to walk to the next street.”
I must have given her a funny look because she has said with surprise:
“Do you find that odd?”
No, I don’t find that odd, far from it:
“You know, in the city where I live...”
“I know. It’s bigger than mine, a lot bigger. But in that case you ought to understand...”
“I do understand. I understand very well. That’s what I used to think too when I came here for the holidays in previous years...”
She gives a little laugh:
“You didn’t come very often.”
“I was bored.”
I smiled:
“I missed the shops...”
“Don’t you miss them any more?”
She looks so taken aback that I can’t help laughing:
“Yes, yes, I do miss them.”
She is still looking at me without saying anything. After a silence I go on:
“It’s all the stuff in the shops that I don’t miss any more.”
Now she is giving me a look of concern. Dawn... I don’t want to talk about Dawn.
The noise of a car. It’s my cousin.
“Given her a breath of city air then, have you?” he exclaims with a joyful laugh.
Although it’s clearly meant in jest, I feel slightly embarrassed. His wife seems to have realised my embarrassment and comes to my aid:
“I was the one to talk about the city...”
My cousin shakes his head:
“He misses the pace of city life...”
He goes on after a short pause:
“You only come in the holidays...”
His joyful humour returns:
“Perhaps you haven’t missed the city as much this year. I believe you’ve been very busy!”
He gives a good-natured chuckle. His wife scolds him:
“Have you done teasing your cousin who’s so nice?”
The cousin in question – i.e. me – has blushed slightly, and the other cousin – mine – has given him a good slap on the shoulder:
“She’s great, we all like her a lot.”
The cousin – that’s me again – has blushed a little less slightly... and taken the plunge:
“I like Dawn a lot too...”
I wanted to continue, to talk about her, but nothing came. The wife has given me an affectionate smile:
“You’ve found a lovely name for her.”
A dirt track, fairly wide, off to the left. Straight ahead of us the plant that makes electricity, for which stones were taken from the castle on the mountain where Dawn and I were last Saturday.
“Aren’t we going towards the little train tunnel?”
“No,” Dawn replies, “the path to the river is on the left.”
Let’s go left, then. And even though now I’m thoroughly accustomed to climbing, I’m not going to scorn a quiet path, by which I mean one that is flat. And there aren’t many of those round here. It must be something wrong with the mountains.
My thoughts have left Dawn reflective:
“The mountains don’t get things wrong; it’s people who get things wrong, sometimes...”
She has left her sentence hanging:
“In winter, when there’s snow, you have to watch where you’re going...”
I’m not familiar with the mountains in winter, I’m not a great traveller, but I know that the mountains can be dangerous.
“You mean the people who come on winter holidays to have fun in the snow.”
She is still reflective:
“Yes.”
She pauses a little longer:
“They don’t know that the grass which feeds our cattle is hidden under the snow; as far as they’re concerned, the snow’s just a great big garden.”
“A garden under the snow is pretty all the same. I’ve already seen pictures. I even once wanted to come specially to my uncle’s to see the snow.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I dunno. It was cold.”
She seems surprised:
“Don’t you like the cold?”
“Yes, I do.”
I have answered without thinking. Now it’s my turn to be surprised.
“It’s true, I do like it when the cold comes... in winter...”
I add immediately:
“The snow isn’t white, in the city where I live.”
“What do you mean, it’s not white?”
“There are lots of people, it’s dirty.”
She doesn’t say anything. We are silent for a moment. She goes on:
“I’d really like...”
I have said at the same time:
“I’d love...”
We have both stopped; knowing what the other was about to say.
“I’ll come!”
“I’ll be waiting!”
Oh! I haven’t even said who said what to whom. Whatever would my teacher have to say? But perhaps he won’t have understood what was said, or why. I know I’m exaggerating, or rather making things up, but that’s what I wanted to say. And now I have.
So we are cycling along the dirt track, fairly wide. Isn’t that where I started to tell the story of the day? Let’s carry on.
“Look!”
That’s her. I answer:
“I’m looking.”
“No, no, not straight ahead. To the right!”
“You didn’t tell me!”
She laughs:
“I pointed!”
“You have to watch where you’re going, especially when there’s snow around!”
“Don’t worry, the snowplough’s just been.”
“Under the circumstances as you present them to me, then, I’m willing to look to the right. I hope it’s worth my while.”
I look:
“The castle!”
“And there’s something else, too.”
“Absolutely. A chapel, to the left of the castle.”
“No, a door.”
“A door?”
“A door.”
“It must be the snow...”
“A door.”
She must have a reason for repeating herself. Which is why I ask to be told:
“What is there behind the door?”
“The castle.”
“The castle?”
“The castle.”
She must have a reason for repeating herself. Which is why I ask to be told:
“Tell!”
“It is indeed a chapel...”
I give a grunt which conveys my intense satisfaction to Dawn.
“I haven’t finished...”
“Shame!”
“Everyone round here calls it the castle door.”
“Everyone is wrong.”
“I suppose it must have been where people went into the castle. You saw for yourself last time that the road runs round the castle...”
“I did indeed. Everyone is right.”
I add, giving her a huge smile:
“You’re right too! You’re right... that I should come... Get the snow ready!”
We ought to re-read what we write. I suppose that’s what great writers do. If I had re-read what I had written, I would have seen that I hadn’t said that we had been sitting for a good while, legs dangling, on a tiny little bridge that spanned the river.
How did we get there, then, when we had been cycling along a dirt track, fairly wide, as I said at the start of the story of the day?
It’s easy. After a while we saw a rather steep path going down through a thick wood and we followed it as far as the river. When I say we, it’s a stylistic device. I didn’t see any path at all – how could I have, when it was buried in the woods? – and it was Dawn I followed, not the path. There: that’s exactly how things happened. Oh, and I forgot to say that we followed the river – me following Dawn and Dawn following the river, of course – as far as the tiny little bridge on which we have been sitting for a good while, legs dangling.
It all seems terribly complicated when I read it back to myself. No matter! Who will read it, apart from myself? And for me, all that matters is the memory. It’s so pleasant to relive a memory.
Seven thirty-nine a.m. Our train – or at least our two-coacher – has just left for the “biggest city in the region”, the one where Ponytail’s cousin lives, the Accountant who had come to see her the Sunday before the summer fete and who had left me with the impression of a very pleasant young fellow. Ponytail is going to see him in turn, and he has very kindly invited us – Dawn and me – along too.
The railway line goes through the small town where my uncle had gone with me last Friday to deliver an old clock he had mended. We had taken the car and I had found the countryside we drove through dreary. Fortunately the landscape I can see through the train window is not the same. It’s the same one I had seen when I came here, a month ago. A month... already! I see again the shack that serves as a station, the other station, the kind no-one pays any attention to on an ordinary journey... and the main line, the one that comes from Venice. But I’m not coming back from Venice. I would have been coming back alone, from Venice. Today, I am no longer alone in the two-coacher; Dawn is with me. Not forgetting Ponytail, who I think is really kind, and whom Dawn likes a lot. So we chatter away brightly, not actually looking out of the window very much.
Here’s the small town, and here’s the wall into which the houses merge. The station. A stop. Our two-coacher must be tired, because we’re told to take another one. “What are you on about? Don’t you know what a change is?” Ponytail teases me with a laugh. Of course I do: it’s when you have to get off one train, waste time on the platform, then get on another train. “Come off it! It’s only a ten-minute wait,” Dawn points out. I meekly admit that I was indeed exaggerating. The girls have had a good laugh. I have kept a straight face, though I don’t think they were taken in at all.
The two-coacher has set off again. The mountains have disappeared. Landscapes that no longer have anything to hide start to emerge further and further off in the distance. Nine thirty-six. We have arrived. Ponytail’s cousin is waiting for us on the platform.
“Good journey?” he asks us pleasantly.
We reassure him.
“We had a very good trip,” Ponytail answers with a smile.
He seems very happy.
“Did you have breakfast before setting off?” he enquires.
We reassure him again.
“They don’t serve breakfast on branch lines,” he adds wistfully.
I think, I don’t know why, about the Venice train, on which breakfast is served, of course. The hot tea steams in front of me, the bread is soft, the jam tastes good. The train is fast and comfortable. I’m going to Venice. Venice is not the little village half-hidden in the mountains where you find only cows and a little train on a bridge with no track and lots of grass.
The little train bridge... How many bridges can there be in Venice? Suddenly I miss one single bridge; and I am back in my uncomfortable two-coacher which shakes and rattles and says to me “That’s where I’ve come from, and I’m going back there this evening.” I’m not really on the two-coacher but no matter, I am all the same, and I will be again this evening.
Since we had breakfast this morning, the cousin suggests a walk before lunch. So we stroll along the city’s wide avenues, lined with beautiful trees. Large, serious houses. The avenues give me the impression they all look alike. The houses give me the impression they all look alike. And yet I feel as though I’m not seeing things the way I should. Should... I think I know what it is. The city is too big for my eyes full of the countryside where Dawn lives. The city is too small for my eyes full of the city where I live. Full eyes don’t see very well, I guess. Should we look with empty eyes? Can we look with empty eyes?
Lunch. The cousin’s father comes from a family that has always lived in this city, and he himself has lived there since birth. He finds my city unpleasant, and the countryside is far from his mind. “How can anyone live in the country?” he often says, or so Dawn told me one day. “My aunt enjoys living in the city,” was Ponytail’s comment on the subject. Of course, I thought to myself that her comment merely strengthened the notion that it was better to live in the town than in the country. To that comment I added another one, which consisted in wondering how anyone could live in what he called a city. I was well aware that I had only passed through it on a train, but that had been quite enough to leave me edified on the matter.
So the cousin’s father talks to me about the city where I live as he would talk about his own. They’re both cities, aren’t they? In that case... His city, all things considered, was much better appointed than mine for a healthy lifestyle. “There are too many people where you live!” he tells me. I approve unstintingly, declaring with an expansive wave of the hand to demonstrate the strength of my conviction that people in his city were much closer to nature serene and calm, as I had been able to appreciate during my stay at my uncle’s. He seems taken back – I am convinced he doesn’t know why. “There are more people in our city than in the country,” the cousin observes calmly.
Has Ponytail’s aunt had an inkling that silence would very shortly be asking to join us? She hurriedly starts to talk about things that are called commonplace in a usual conversation; the weather that was so fine it certainly couldn’t last long... After a while the cousin’s father returns. Returns to the conversation, I mean. “You should show your cousin and her friends round the gardens; there are none other like it in...” I didn’t really understand whether he was talking about the region or the whole wide world. The cousin replied that it was a very good idea and that we would therefore go there once lunch was over. The cousin had already mentioned the gardens to us that morning, offering to show us round. The offer was mostly addressed to me, since the two girls were familiar with the place. I had greatly appreciated his solicitude.
The gardens are big, more of a park, I would say. An attractive park. I try to thank the cousin for having invited me to come here:
“It’s very lovely!”
The cousin smiles slightly:
“You can’t live in it.”
Rather taken aback, I don’t know how to answer. Was it just said in jest? But he has gone on:
“You can neither buy nor take.”
Ponytail expresses surprise:
“Can you live only if you buy or take?”
Again, he smiles slightly:
“How else do you eat?”
She seems unable to find an answer and he doesn’t give silence the time to answer for her:
“Let’s go towards the river.”
I exclaim:
“A river? Is there a valley, further away?”
He points to the huge, thickly leaved trees that line the walk:
“The river is on the other side of the trees; you can’t see it from here.”
He adds, turning to me:
“Rivers run on the plains too. Don’t you have one in the city where you live?”
I nod in agreement. He goes on:
“You soon get used to the country.”
He sets off. We follow him on narrow paths covered with gravel.
Get used to the country... It is in these gardens, this park, this attractive park that reminds me of the city where I live, that I ought to feel comfortable. And I do, actually, I do, in the park. The trees are magnificent, as I have said, you won’t find many more beautiful in the countryside. The great cedar tree in front of me that the cousin is showing me, must be at least thirty metres high... I’ve never seen any like it round the village where Dawn lives. Round the village... The trees there, when the sun burns, stretch out above the cows to cover them with their welcome shade. Are they beautiful? Are they beautiful, the tall, slender trees that line our tiny little stream in which the water plays joyfully with pretty round pebbles that colour the current with their delicate yellows, greens and blues?
Get used to the country...
Now we’re taking a shortcut across the meadow – no, no, not the meadow, the lawn, silly! It is dotted with pretty flowers all the colours of the rainbow, and red rose bushes mingle with the green clumps of boxwood. Here and there, people out for a walk have sat down on the grass and are chatting peacefully – a lawn is grass, isn’t it? Are they having a picnic? What do you mean, a picnic – at this time of day? No, it’s not really a picnic, just some friends who have come to spend time together in the afternoon and have brought some good things to eat along with them.
The river... right in the middle of the lawn; the lawn that is not a meadow.
“But... there are fish! Big fish!”
My exclamation has made Ponytail laugh:
“They’re carp...”
“That big?”
“They’re at least a hundred years old...”
“A hundred?”
“Yes; it’s highly unusual.”
I look at all the carp, pressed up against each other, penned into this pretend river:
“They’d be much better off in a real river, where they’d be free to go wherever they want.”
I nod:
“It’s a shame there are so few fish in the river that runs nearby my uncle’s house...”
The cousin had been looking at me for a while with a slight smile:
“Freedom ends on a hook.”
Thursday. The first of August. The fine, hot weather is still with us. This afternoon we’re going for a walk, Dawn and I. A short walk, actually. Our journey will take us to the spring so cool.
“You want to go on foot?”
Dawn, who had already set off on the journey, turns round:
“To the spring? Why, do you want to go by bike?”
“Oh, no, that’s much too tiring. Let’s take the train.”
She laughs:
“We ought to get a season ticket, otherwise we’re going to ruin ourselves!”
When we reach the top of the hill going out of the village, we enter the station. I pretend to be a regular passenger on the line:
“Station master, two season tickets, please!”
“Yes, sir, how long for?”
I seem to remember having wanted to give an offhand answer, saying some length of time intended merely to continue the game...
On the other hand, I remember very clearly...
I have grabbed her arms, clumsily, almost roughly. Gripping tightly. I must have hurt her. I said huskily:
“For always!”
We didn’t move...
I felt I was hurting her arms, which I hadn’t let go of.
I released her suddenly. We were standing in front of each other.
Yes...
She is against me. She is in my arms. My hands, awkwardly placed on her shoulders, twist her to one side.
My lips are on hers. After a moment her lips open, very slightly; I press them with mine, which open, also very slightly. We don’t move.
Now we are standing in front of each other. We look at each other in silence. A long silence... How much time has passed?
We can take the train now.
The journey passes in silence. The landscape goes slowly by – the little train does not go very fast – and the gaze follows it nonchalantly, like when you’re going along a track you’ve always known and travelled a thousand times. The train driver knows where we want to go; how many times has he seen us when crossing our bridge where we would sit, legs dangling? Of course there is no station at that point – bridges without track and full of grass are not suitable places for stations. The train driver has stopped the little train, gently, so that no-one notices. We have got off discreetly. The little train has pulled away again, noiselessly.
The path that leads to the spring is just nearby. We descend the steep slope that picks its way through the thick woods. We’re not racing today, the way we usually do; we’re going slowly, from tree to tree, brushing them in turn as if to look for a support we have no need of at all.
The spring, and the sound of its soft lapping.
“Is the water coming or going?”
Dawn has asked the question in a low voice. I don’t know what to say. The water comes in one side and leaves on the other; there’s nothing to explain. I suppose Dawn must mean something else. I try to guess...
“You are there.”
The murmur of the nascent river has not covered the murmur of Dawn’s voice.
She has fallen silent. I answer her silence:
“My heart will not slip away like the water that flows between your fingers when you try to hold it.”
We say nothing. The spring laps softly.
“You asked me on Sunday what I was thinking about while we were cycling...”
“I remember. You said you were thinking about me.”
I pause:
“I was thinking that when I saw you again...”
“You were splitting kindling.”
I start a smile that takes its leave, not having found its place:
“You told me to split it in a wedge shape.”
No, I don’t want to smile; it’s too important:
“I needed to look at you so as to see you. And my eyes were far away. They couldn’t even see the meadows you were living in the middle of. Now I too can say to you: ‘You are there’.”
I have fallen silent. The spring laps softly. Dawn has looked at me without smiling:
“I have always been waiting for you.”
A terrible crack wakes me. Day is trying to break. The lightning has struck not far off. I get up. The storm is flooding the meadows.
Dawn had mentioned a storm that was due to break soon. The air had been heavy yesterday evening; I hadn’t noticed. Yesterday... No, it wasn’t yesterday that Dawn mentioned the storm, it was before. No, it wasn’t yesterday.
Where is she? At home, of course. Of course? A madness takes hold of me. I go out into the garden. She comes out straight away.
“I saw you, you were watching the storm. Do you like storms?”
I answer, mouth full of rainwater:
“I love storms! I love storms!”
We start to laugh; how we laugh...
I am in my uncle’s workshop. Dawn is staying with her mother. It’s going to rain for much of the day. It will be fine tomorrow, Dawn assured me just now. Just now...
Cornflower has invited Dawn and me to spend the afternoon with her. Yesterday’s storm has lost all its strength in the violence with which it arrived. It disappeared during the night and there are no traces to be seen in the sky this morning.
“I think it would be better to take our bikes,” Dawn suggests.
“Much too tiring!” I quip. “Let’s take the train.”
She pretends to look sorrowful:
“I’ve just called the station. The line is cut, the lightning melted the rails.”
“We’ll ask your father to make some more,” I say with the straightest of faces.
She pretends to look worried:
“That’s what he offered to do straight away...”
“Problem solved, then!”
“I’m afraid not...”
“And why not, pray?”
“To make rails you need...”
I cut her off:
“OK, you win! To make rails you need iron, and to fetch iron you need...”
She finishes up:
“You need rails!”
We laugh, of course, at our wit.
I try a feint:
“I only mentioned the train to spare you the effort of going on foot.”
She answers in a voice that shows the extent of her gratitude:
“Oh, how very kind of you. I’m really very touched.”
And she adds, as natural as can be:
“In that case we can walk over with no worries. I’m well used to crossing meadows brimming with water after a heavy storm.”
As I don’t have much to say, she goes on calmly:
“You know how to cross a ford now; it’s the same, going across a meadow. Perhaps a bit longer, that’s all.”
“I’ll go and get my bike.”
She gives me a big smile:
“It’ll all have dried out by tomorrow, and I don’t think there’s going to be another storm in the next few days.”
There is some hesitation about which way to go. Especially because there’s little to choose between them; one is steeper, the other is longer... We take the one we like the best, the one that goes via the ford.
A descent, the ford, a steep climb through woods – a shortcut for which we carry our bikes; fortunately the ground is nearly dry, as the slope is steep – and here we are at Cornflower’s.
“She’s in the cowshed,” her mother tells us, having come to meet us.
Dawn gives her aunt a hug; the aunt says:
“It’ll do her good to see you; there’s a lot to do and she always wants to help.”
She inclines her head to one side, as though to think:
“She doesn’t have a lot of fun.”
She pauses for a moment, head on one side again:
“She works hard. She works hard at school.”
Another pause, and likewise:
“She’s a good girl.”
It can’t be the first time Cornflower’s mother has said that kind of thing because Dawn reassures her aunt in a way that seems to be usual:
“My cousin’s always one of the best in our class.”
The aunt nods her head slowly:
“She’s a good girl.”
She adds, with a sudden warm smile:
“Go on then, she’s waiting for you!”
We go to the cowshed; Cornflower is cleaning it.
“There’s always something to do,” she tells us, as though to excuse herself.
“We’ll give you a hand; what can we do?” asks Dawn.
“I’m nearly done. Just a quick brush round and...”
She breaks off and says, turning to me with a bright smile:
“Well, as there’s a boy here, you can take the barrow to the muckheap in the yard.”
She starts to show me where I have to go but I am ahead of her:
“I know where it is, I’ve already been here!”
Cornflower gives me a thumbs-up; Dawn has already picked up a broom.
Now here we are in the sitting-room. In the sitting-room? And why shouldn’t I say in the sitting-room, just because I’m on a simple farm? What is a sitting-room? Isn’t it a space with its own decor, its own furniture? In the city where I live I know some very lovely sitting-rooms in which I get bored stiff. Here I’m with Dawn, with her lovely cousin, I can talk without having to think twice about what I should be saying. I can listen, wanting to hear. The furniture? Why, it’s sumptuous! What do they say in the sitting-rooms of the city where I live? “Oh, what a splendid armchair. It’s period... What craftsmanship! And what magnificent wood! It’s by...” Here, the room is the countryside, glowing in the sunshine; the decor, the trees, the meadows and Cornflower’s cows. The furniture? The period is the one I’m living in, the one Dawn’s living in; the craftsmanship is the work of nature; and the wood is the tree itself, which has offered us its thick trunk to sit on. There is no armchair in the world in which we could be better seated than on this welcoming tree-trunk, our backs propped up against the wall of Dawn’s cousin’s solid farmhouse.
“There’s more to do in your city...” Cornflower starts.
It’s not a question, of course. How can I answer? I talk about... things to do:
“That’s true, there is more to do. I like going to see a good show...”
I cast around for something else to say:
“I could list the different sorts of show, but they’re always about what other people do.”
Cornflower is surprised:
“Don’t you like that?”
“Yes, I do, I like it a lot. And when that’s the life you know, it’s hard to imagine that there are others. I mean others where the things you find in my city wouldn’t be missed.”
“I can understand that the life you have is more...”
She pauses. Then, slightly violently:
“Can you say of a life that it is more or less one thing rather than another? There is life here too...”
I interrupt her:
“I remember very clearly what you said the first time I came to see you with Dawn. You were wondering how you learn – at school, for example – to live with your cows.”
She twitches. I raise my hand to ask for permission to go on:
“You were wondering above all how you learn to live without them.”
“What about you? Are you learning how to live without your city?”
I’m slightly taken aback by the question – oh, yes, I remember now, that’s what I wrote the first time –, Cornflower being as direct as usual. What was the actual question, then? It was clear. So I answer, clearly:
“Yes, I am, I am learning. It’s not easy. Dawn is helping me.”
Sunday. My cousin and his wife have come to my uncle’s for lunch. She has filled the house with merriment. I think I had a hand in it too, slipping back into the habits of my city where – as they say – you can have a laugh over anything. So why do I feel like having a laugh over anything today? As my cousin’s wife said when I was at their house last Monday, it must be because she talks to me about the city as if we were really there. She talks to me about shows no-one has ever even heard of here, about shops where you can find everything you can’t find here – I think we had already broached the subject on Monday, – of the variety of life – “You never do the same thing two days running!” –, of the evening lights – “Here we’ve got three lampposts!” The tone of our conversation – my cousin’s wife and me, I mean – is lively and cheerful, full of unprompted laughter; and of that well-meant mockery that can be so hurtful. My uncle and my aunt listen without saying anything, without moving, I believe without understanding. My cousin… he looks surprised. Surprised? Why? He knows, doesn’t he?... As for me, I feel as though I’m on holiday!
On holiday… On holiday you have left your city, you have left… No, here, I don’t want to leave anything. Dawn is in the house that’s there, close by. I’ve just come back from holiday…
When you return from holiday you get back to business. School? No way, it’s too hot. My cousin and his wife stayed until late yesterday; the conversation eventually took a more usual turn. My cousin’s wife very skilfully made sure that everything was back in place; there’s fresh air in the country, the city is stifling. All that in the subtlest of ways. Ah, those city-dwellers!
So I get back to business.
“It’s fine today; you were right, the meadow is dry.”
Dawn has listened to me with a smile:
“Do you like needlework?”
“Needlework?”
“Needlework.”
“Is it the name of a meadow, or a mountain, or a village, or do you mean sewing?”
“Sewing.”
“I love it! I sew every morning before breakfast.”
I go on before she has had time to react:
“But I only sew…”
Have I blushed? I fear I have. Slightly, no doubt. I was going to say “I only sew ball gowns.” Ball gowns!... I suddenly remembered the shoe shop in the town and Dawn saying, more or less, “My shoes were very worn and they were getting a bit small too.” So I stammer… and finally come up with this:
“… when I have needles!”
Dawn was watching me the while. She seemed to hesitate… then starts to laugh brightly:
“Well then, seeing as to how you can’t sew without needles, we’ll go and buy some!””
“On foot or by bike? “I shoot back just as brightly.
She has pulled me to her and given me an affectionate kiss on the cheek:
“As you like. But it’s Hawkeye’s we’re going to.”
I am surprised:
“Hawkeye sells needles?”
“Didn’t you know?”
I hesitate briefly:
“You’re making fun of me!”
I have pulled her to me and given her an affectionate kiss on the cheek:
“Right then! On foot or by bike?”
She laughs whole-heartedly. I laugh whole-heartedly.
“By bike,” she concludes. “They’re waiting for us!”
She goes off to get her bike; I go off to get my bike.
They were indeed waiting for us at Hawkeye’s. Everyone: Ponytail and Cornflower. What on earth was going on?
“You’ll tell us what you think,” says Ponytail at the outset.
It was indeed me she was talking to. I must look a bit dumb.
“Yes, that’s right,” goes on Cornflower, “we’ve decided you’re going to tell us all what you think.”
Hawkeye turns to Dawn and says teasingly:
“You can’t keep him to yourself for ever; we’re going to kidnap him!”
I don’t know what to do with myself. Or rather, what kind of face to make. It amounts to the same thing, more or less, but it’s a bit more apposite. Fortunately, Ponytail dispels all my concerns on the subject:
“Tomorrow we’re going to go and get everything we need.”
Cornflower explains that we’ll be going to the big town, the one with the shoe shop. Right, I’ve got it:
“We’re going to go and buy needles.”
The three girls – I don’t mean Dawn, of course, because she knows that I know – look at me, slightly surprised:
“What would you want to buy needles for…?” starts Hawkeye.
I interrupt her, as though pointing out something obvious but unnoticed:
“To sew with, i’faith.”
“But we’ve got needles!”
“I know...”
(I know nothing at all.)
“… but Dawn hasn’t.”
Dawn giggles:
“The gentleman told me he only sews with needles.”
“You know how to sew?” exclaims Ponytail.
“What do you sew?” adds Cornflower.
Things are getting complicated. Dawn, who has suddenly seemed embarrassed, comes to my rescue:
“I was teasing him just now…”
I set things back on the rails, though without giving all the game away:
“I wanted to act the know-it-all…”
“So much the better!” Hawkeye breaks in.
She goes on, pulling a face:
“Otherwise you would have used patterns from the city where you live; we only know how to do simple things here."
“Well, then, I’ll be very happy to learn!”
I add, smiling brightly:
“I’ve never done any sewing before!”
Dawn has given me a broad smile, which no-one had any reason in particular to notice.
Cornflower has turned swiftly to me:
“I really like it, that you want to sew with us; most boys think sewing is stupid.”
Ponytail nods her head vigorously:
“They say there’s no point!”
Hawkeye goes on:
“They just buy things in shops, of course.”
“Yes, but they like it all the same when their mother knits a pullover for them,” points out Ponytail.
“And they’re as pleased as anything when a girl tells them how nice it is,” comments Cornflower.
Dawn has suddenly grabbed my arm:
“Make me a nice warm pullover for the winter!”
“A…”
I didn’t even finish what I was going to say. What do you mean, what I was going to say? I have no idea what I was going to say!
And yet the girls were grumbling. Cornflower was the first to speak up, waving her arms in disapproval:
“Oh, dear! Do you realise what you’re asking him to do? How difficult it is?”
Followed by Hawkeye:
“It’ll make him unhappy, because he won’t be able to do it; it’s too hard and he’s never done it before!”
With Ponytail bringing up the rear:
“If that’s how it’s going to be, we’re all going to have to give him a hand, poor boy!”
The poor boy simply says placidly:
“I told you we were going to buy needles.”
The girls pretend to be cross. Dawn has given me a smile.
This early afternoon, the large town we have just arrived in is still snoozing. It couldn’t be further removed from the city where I live, which never rests. The shops are gradually starting to open again and we are going from one to another, making our purchases for the difficult work that lies before us. Yes, I can indeed say “us” because I too have a difficult task ahead. And it is clearly the most important one of all. But given my valour… Oh, I think I’d better stop there. My valour… That is the question. Will my valour be sufficient? I have doubts, but I cast them aside and… charge!
In the meantime, the girls are choosing fabric to make housecoats.
“What do you think?” Cornflower asks me.
She has shown me more or less the same fabric I have already seen her in before.
“What about this one?”
That’s Ponytail. I can’t see much difference between the two fabrics, both blue. Perhaps a slightly different shade? I feel one of the fabrics then the other, running them between finger and thumb, the way I have seen my mother do it. I point out one of the fabrics to Cornflower:
“I like this one for you, it seems to be good quality.”
She has taken it, unrolled it and held it up against herself, to see the effect, I suppose:
“Do you like it?”
Without waiting for an answer:
“I’ve got my housecoat!”
Ponytail was waiting patiently. I take the other fabric and smooth it with my hand, the way I have seen my mother do it:
“This one’s a bit sheer, it’ll suit you very well.”
Sheer. I know the word; for a cliff or a ridge it means very steep, almost vertical. I don’t really know what it means for dresses. But words are only a means to an end and I have always noticed that this one was applied to dresses that I found pleasant to look at. So…
Same performance.
“Do you like it?”
Without waiting for an answer:
“It really does suit me!”
Hawkeye has chosen a slightly thicker fabric, a pretty dark red. I tell her so. She starts to give me a smile, looks down and smooths the fabric with her hand without saying anything.
Dawn hasn’t chosen anything. I glance quickly at the rolls of fabric on their display racks. A bit further off, one of the fabrics has caught my eye. I quickly go and get it and hand it to Dawn:
“Do you want it?”
She has taken it delicately:
“It’s lovely… I had seen it but didn’t dare to take it.”
It was black, with tiny little multi-coloured flowers…
“Oh, you’ll look so pretty!...”
With those words or others very similar, the three girls have joyously surrounded Dawn.
Ribbons, threads, buttons, pins, scissors – tiny ones, long ones, pointed ones, the like of which I had never seen before – a tape measure – my mother has one of those – a doll. They play with dolls here?
“Look at what it’s wearing,” Dawn whispers to me.
“Wearing? Oh, yes, everything’s made of wool. How odd!”
“It’s the haberdasher who’s dressed it like that,” Cornflower tells me in a low voice.
But the haberdasher has heard, and she shows me the doll:
“And I knitted it myself.”
“Now you can do the same,” Ponytail tells me.
“Do you knit?” the haberdasher asks me, raising an eyebrow.
Hawkeye leaves me no time to answer:
“He knits all our pullovers.”
She has spoken seriously. The haberdasher takes the bait:
“Well now, think of that! It’s not often you find a boy who…”
Dawn interrupts her:
“No, no, she’s only joking, but he would like to give it a try…”
Now it’s Hawkeye’s turn to interrupt:
“Yes, and he’s going to start with a pullover for one of us in particular…”
The haberdasher gives me a kind smile:
“Oh, that’s lovely… really lovely…”
I think she doesn’t really know what to say. I can quite understand.
“Would you like to choose the wool?”
She has found what to say.
“Oh, yes please, I’d love to!”
She shows me wool yarn rolled into a ball, a slightly elongated ball. It looks nice, it feels nice.
“You’ll need about a dozen balls. If that’s not enough, don’t worry, I’ll have more from the same batch.”
That I have understood. I have noticed a number on one of the balls. I say offhandedly:
“Yes, indeed, it’s better to have the same colour.”
Of all the balls of wool of all different colours, one looks like a big chestnut; a ripe chestnut, well ripe.
“I’ll take those – and don’t forget to keep the same batch for me!”
I have seen a smile wreathed in pleasure on Dawn’s lips.
Our little train bridge. We’re sitting, legs dangling.
“It’s the seventh of August today.”
“Are you afraid I won’t finish your pullover?” I joke.
She answers, as though she hadn’t heard:
“You will finish the pullover…”
She stops there. No longer joking, I say:
“I’ll come back this winter.”
She answers, again as though she hadn’t heard:
“You will come back this winter; yes, you will come back this winter…”
She stops there. I continue, after a long silence:
“I’ll write, I’ll phone.”
She gives me a silent smile:
“You will write, you will phone.”
I continue, after a long silence:
“I...”
She has not let me continue:
“Kiss me!”
Her lips have parted; my lips have parted.
Ponytail’s cousin came in the evening of the day before yesterday to spend a couple of days with her. He has suggested a walk to see the countryside. “The countryside is a great big garden,” he said, according to his cousin.
And so, this fine Thursday – no storm on the horizon as yet – we leave early in the morning to ramble down farm tracks and through meadows – the cousin has even thought to dress appropriately –, heading for a peak from whence you can see the villages where the five of us live.
The five of whom we speak – good style is important when you claim to be a writer; who knows, someone may even read you one day – have agreed to meet at a crossroads near one of the many little train stations, a station that has nothing to catch the eye, which explains why we haven’t mentioned it yet – see above. The crossroads has the advantage of being roughly equidistant from our village and the three villages where Ponytail, Hawkeye and Cornflower live. So here we are, all five of us, plus the cousin makes six.
“My cousin – oh, that’s right, you call her Ponytail – my cousin has shown me where we’re going,” says the cousin. “I can see the peak from my window, it’s not far.”
He spreads his arms slightly, no doubt showing slight surprise:
“Why are we going such a long way round?”
Hawkeye answers with a laugh:
“It’s a better path!”
The cousin shakes his head:
“I looked at the map, there’s an excellent road that goes straight there.”
He pauses for a moment:
“We’ve strayed away from it here, and I can’t see any option other than to go back the way we came.”
“Look!” says Ponytail, pointing.
Her Accountant cousin looks attentively in the direction she has indicated; then looks at her attentively with a slight smile:
“What if we were to cut across the fields? What do you think, Ponytail?”
His cousin pulls a face. The rest of us burst out laughing. When order has been restored, Cornflower turns to Ponytail and says, with a trace of laughter still in her voice:
“I agree with your cousin.”
Then she turns to the rest of us:
“What do you think, you lot?”
Of course we all agree with the Accountant.
Our path doesn’t start crossing the meadows immediately, but it’s as if; a hundred paces or so on a half-overgrown farm track that peters out in a meadow where two cows watch us with the customary curiosity of the inhabitants of these parts, then another half-overgrown farm track that peters out in a vast meadow where six cows watch us, thinking: “Well, well! Six of them too. This meadow’s already full, let’s hope they find another one to their taste.”
“The paths that run through the fields aren’t very well maintained,” comments the Accountant.
“The ground doesn’t give under the cartwheels,” points out Ponytail. “Look, there aren’t any ruts.”
He gives a nod:
“The path has indeed been very well made.”
He takes his time:
“The grass grows in the middle of the path.”
“The cows have never complained,” says Hawkeye innocently.
He ponders carefully:
“It is pleasant…”
He breaks off for a moment:
“… for us people…”
He breaks off again for a moment:
“… to see nice scenery.”
A moment’s silence. Cornflower speaks up:
“The gardens we went to with you last week are beautifully kept and I think we all really enjoyed walking around in them…”
Dawn hasn’t really interrupted her:
“In a garden you walk around, then you leave.”
I say, slightly harshly:
“This isn’t a garden.”
I didn’t need to look at Dawn to know that she didn’t need to look at me to know…
In all events, there was no longer any path. We had to walk through the meadows, pass under fences, talk to the cows – yes, that’s right, I said talk to the cows. And to hear the way they took part in the conversation with a discreet moo, one might wonder what they would have thought if we hadn’t spoken to them. I was used enough by now to both meadows and cows, but I said to myself that the cousin… So I couldn’t have been more surprised to see him walk up to a cow and hear him say confidently:
“This one’s a good milker.”
And, turning to his cousin:
“They are your cows, aren’t they, Ponytail?”
They were indeed her cows.
Our walk continues. We walk without hurrying, leisurely, chatting peaceably. On our right is a long and narrow valley, bordered by a little wood, that wanders off into the mountains.
It’s uphill now. We will be climbing until we reach the peak that is our destination. I look at the cousin; he’s doing well. I guess I hadn’t really realised that he’s Ponytail’s cousin and not just a city-dweller. Talking of which… Me too, I’m from here. Let’s press on.
It’s still uphill. So what? Not even worth mentioning. On our left is a big wood that covers the bottom of the slope. There wouldn’t be much hay to be made with the sickly grass that tries to grow in and among the scrub we’re passing through now.
Between the wood we’ve just passed and the peak that is our destination stands a farm, all on its own in the middle of the meadows.
“Morning!” calls the farmer from a distance.
He adds, when we have come closer:
“Out for a walk?”
He is perceptive. We do not deny it.
“Here for the holidays?” he asks Ponytail’s cousin.
I am slightly surprised. So he knows… Oh, silly me! Of course he does. His farm and Ponytail’s are neighbours – the same distance as between Ponytail’s and our village.
“No,” replies the cousin, “I’ve just come for a couple of days…”
The farmer nods:
“The country air would do you good. And there’s no shortage of things to do here!”
That riles me a little; does he suppose there aren’t things to do in the city? He has noticed me. He turns to the cousin:
“Did you bring a friend with you?”
“No,” replies the Accountant, “he’s the clockmaker’s nephew, the one on the other side of our village. He’s come to stay with them for the holidays.”
The cousin isn’t skilled only in accountancy.
The farmer studies me again:
“Do you live in the city as well?”
I nod and say yes, without adding where.
“Well, enjoy your walk. I’ve got things to do,” concludes the farmer, taking his leave.
There’s a good track which leads steadily uphill from the farm towards the peak. After that, all we have to do is climb, equally steadily.
Now here we are, nearly at the peak, on the flank from which you can see our villages. We’re on the edge of the wood; if we climb any higher, the trees will hide the view.
You can see a long, long way. The cousin contemplates the view. Is it nice scenery?
The cousin turns to his cousin:
“You’ve never brought me up this hill before.”
“Your hill is a mountain,” protests the cousin weakly.
“It’s a mountain on another mountain; the relative elevation is small.”
He corrects himself:
“But you’re right, it is indeed a mountain; I’m not very used to them.”
He goes on without waiting:
“You’ve never brought me up this mountain before.”
Ponytail shrugs:
“You always seem to be so bored in the country...”
He seems to ponder:
“It’s true, I often get bored when I’m in the meadows where you go to see to your cows.”
He seems to ponder further:
“I have on occasion thought that, as your neighbour from just now might say, there aren’t things to do here.”
He shrugs:
“There aren’t things to do when you walk in the gardens I took you to last week.”
He says nothing for a moment:
“The countryside isn’t made for taking walks in.”
He gives his cousin a smile:
“When you go to a meadow it isn’t for the walk, it’s to see to your cows. I don’t think I’d ever thought of that before.”
He waves an arm at the landscape:
“You told me that from here you could see where you all live; so it’s not just a walk.”
The girls, one by one and even sometimes together, point out the location of their villages, tell him about what they do there, about their cows whose meadows they show him. The cousin listens attentively, asks questions. I think nice scenery is no longer enough for him.
I know all the villages, and from the top of the peak I can see them all, close to one another, as though they formed a family; I can also see the village where my cousin lives, the little market town where his creamery is. Oh! In the distance, on another mountain, I can glimpse the castle that Dawn showed me.
Neither Dawn nor my uncle have cows; but the meadows in which the two of us have walked are familiar to my heart. Down there, hidden behind the trees, stands our little train bridge...
Today is a sewing day. We are at Ponytail’s.
Arriving, we met her father, who was on his way out to see to the roads. The roads? It was he himself who said so:
“The road over by the river has been in a poor state for a while, and the bridge hasn’t been maintained for a while either.”
He has gone. Ponytail explains:
“We don’t have enough cows. My father also takes care of the roads around here.”
Curiosity pushes me to ask which bridge he was talking about.
“The bridge we were sitting on last week,” Dawn tells me.
“Oh yes, the one where the snowplough had been.”
The three girls goggle at me.
“You were here last winter?” exclaims Cornflower.
“Of course! It was the winter that we sledged down the river.”
“Oh, yes, the famous day when the river froze. Everyone was talking about it, it was the only time all winter,” comments Hawkeye coolly.
A moment to collect our scattered wits, followed by a peal of laughter.
We get down to the business at hand, namely sewing. That is, the girls start sewing; I start knitting. That is, Dawn doesn’t start sewing either; like me, she starts knitting. Which means that she shows me how to start making stitches. Stitches... I’ve already learnt the word, if not the technique. Because the yarn loops but fails to stay on the needle and unravels. Dawn is certainly endowed with patience...
Knitting and sewing don’t prevent conversations, however; quite the opposite, in fact. Comfortably installed on the big stack of wood piled up against the wall of the farm, we chatter away.
“What do boys do when they’re together?” Ponytail asks me.
“Knit. Why?”
“That’s odd, I thought they’d be more likely to make dresses for their dolls,” says Hawkeye coolly.
“All right, you win! Well now, what do they do? I don’t know, play cards...”
“I don’t suppose playing is all they do,” chimes in Cornflower.
“No, of course not. Some do music, others show their friends the photos they’ve taken, some make model aircraft together...”
I have tailed off. The girls say nothing and wait. I go on:
“When we’re outside, we play...”
“You play?...”
Cornflower had interrupted me as if inadvertently; she has blushed slightly, and I think she might have bitten her lip.
“We sometimes have fun too...” starts Ponytail.
She has stopped as suddenly as she started. Silence was about to fall, but Hawkeye gets in first:
“We often have fun, even; there’s no shortage of opportunities on the farm!”
Silence was about to fall, but Dawn gets in first:
“Boys don’t only have fun.”
She sighs discreetly:
“I would have loved to do music...”
It’s been cool this morning. Not really chilly, but no longer the motionless heat of a July long gone; ten days gone... And when you’re perched way above sea-level – our mountain is about a thousand metres closer to the sky – you can no longer count on the earth’s ardour to the same extent. And although it’s still fine during the day, the sun no longer has the same enthusiasm as when I first arrived here for the holidays.
The holidays here. Holidays during which I used to get so bored, during which I used to think so often of going home. But my uncle and aunt, and my cousins, would certainly have thought that... that it was they who bored me, perhaps. However that may be, they would have been upset. And I really like them all. They are affectionate with me, they try to please me. It’s not their fault, all that. Is it mine? Why should it be? Is it mine?... Now I ought rather to say: was it mine? Because now I no longer get bored, now the holidays... you can’t put back the date when the holidays end. That is to say, I can’t put back the date when the holidays end.
It is less cool this afternoon than this morning. Yes, that is the natural order of... of nature. I can’t change the natural order of nature.
This afternoon I am with Dawn at the spring. The spring flows; there’s nothing it can do about it, a spring is made to flow. And if one day the rain stops feeding it, it will not be the spring that has changed the natural order of nature. The spring needs water; I need Dawn.
This afternoon I am with Dawn at the spring.
Sunday. The platform of the station in our town. We are waiting for the train. It leaves at nine twenty-six.
Ponytail frowns:
“It’ll leave at half-past nine.”
“Twenty-five to ten,” Hawkeye corrects her, frowning.
I am not surprised:
“Main line trains are on time.”
Nine twenty-five; the train pulls into the station.
“Branch line trains are on time,” comments Cornflower placidly.
“Hurry up and get in, otherwise you’ll hold it up,” Dawn presses me, bustling about.
I have more important things to do than join in such idle chit-chat. Now then! We are to get off at the little station, the kind no-one pays any attention to on an ordinary journey, at which, when I came to my uncle’s, I had to leave a proper train – the one going to Venice – for the same kind of two-coacher as the one I am on at present. Will I find that proper train again? Alas, as I will learn subsequently, another two-coacher will again be waiting for me. In the meantime, the brakes screech and we pull into the station. It’s ten oh three. Of course, I should have known: that’s the time given in the official railway timetable. Has a train ever been late on this line?
“Oh, not half,” sighs Cornflower.
We are here to pay a visit to a friend of my uncle’s, long settled in our region. We cross the town. I say town, but actually it’s more of a large village. And perhaps it wasn’t an accident that I first said town. I’m surprised to see the wide streets offering themselves to the sun, and the sturdy houses standing solidly one next to another. The impression of proper life – words whose meaning people are not exactly sure of but that everyone understands. Except certain teachers, I should add.
My uncle’s friend seems delighted to see us turn up on his doorstep, however many of us there may be.
“Oh, how lovely to see you! This’ll liven things up a bit – young people haven’t yet had time to settle down.”
He chuckles brightly:
“Judging by a lot of people, I ought rather to say go to sleep!”
We chuckle too, without really knowing, I believe, whether it’s for what he said or simply to be nice to him, given the warmth of his welcome and the tenor of his remarks, rather unexpected for a man of his age. Not to say that he was very old, but still...
“I’m sure you’d like a glass of the local white wine, it’s excellent.”
His bright chuckle again:
“I believe you’re having lunch with your grandparents; it’ll give you an appetite!”
He adds, still with his bright chuckle:
“You may not all be their grandchildren, but I’m sure you all have a healthy appetite!”
There was another reason for calling on my uncle’s friend; a clock that I was to bring him.
“Oh, there it is!” he exclaims brightly when I take it out of the bag I had put it in.
“My uncle said it wasn’t much.”
He cuts me short with an uncompromising gesture:
“Tut, tut, tut, tut, your uncle was having you on... or having me on, rather. I know full well what was wrong, and that it was not at all easy to mend.”
He goes on gleefully:
“I know because I took it apart!”
I answer without quite realising:
“My uncle noticed...”
I break off suddenly, but he chuckles all the more:
“Oh, I knew full well he would. I suppose he chuntered a bit!”
I don’t dare quote the words my uncle actually used...
“You’re right not to tell me, but I know full well what he would’ve said!”
I neither confirm nor deny.
He goes on, cheerful as ever:
“But there’s never any bother with him, he’s the best in the business!”
He has taken the clock and opened it:
“Yes, there we are, right as rain!”
And he has concluded:
“I’d never let anyone else go near it.”
He chuckles, a bright little chuckle:
“Especially me!”
As my uncle’s friend had said, we’re now going to have lunch with Ponytail and her cousin’s grandparents. The grandparents live in another town, fairly large and very important for our region’s life. So we return to the station – the one we arrived at, i’faith – to take the twelve fifteen train. There is an earlier one, but the cousin arrives from his city too late to take it with us, and of course we prefer to be all together.
Here is the cousin, getting off the train that goes to Venice. Here is our two-coacher, alas, as I have already said.
We travel towards the sun, a sun that finds it a bit more difficult, in August, to leave the earth. The weather has become more sultry since this morning. “There’s a storm coming soon,” Dawn has predicted. Everyone has nodded except the cousin, whose expertise apparently does not extend to meteorology. As for me, the less said the better! The countryside… There are two countrysides. On the right-hand side the plain, or almost; on the left-hand side the mountains, or almost. Almost, because I know those mountains, they’re the ones where my village is; they’re not really very high at this point, but when I look, I get the impression that the vast walls of a castle built high up in the sky are rearing up before me.
In the meantime, we chat.
“Doesn’t your uncle like people dismantling his clocks?” Cornflower was asking me.
“It’s not that. He says it takes him three times longer to put them back together if someone else has taken them apart.”
“What a curious idea, taking a clock apart when you’re going to give it to a clockmaker who will do the job himself,” remarks the cousin.
“The idea may be curious, but perhaps someone who takes a clock apart is curious to find out how it works,” remarks Hawkeye in return.
“Do you take his clocks apart?” the cousin asks me.
“It’s not about me. I do take them apart sometimes, but my uncle shows me how to do it.”
“Do you want to become a clockmaker?”
I had never thought about it. And I don’t think my aunt had either, given her ambitions for her nephew who “goes to school in the big city”. Suddenly I thought of my uncle, who would show me, whenever the opportunity arose, how to get to know about clocks. Did he want me to…? He had never said anything to me. I was slightly troubled. The cousin was looking at me attentively, tinged with very slight surprise.
Finally I replied:
“At my school...”
I break off for a moment; he doesn’t let me finish:
“They don’t talk about clockmaking at my school either.”
He stops there. I don’t say anything else either. Ponytail turns to him:
“Come on then, say what you think!”
“I think that if my watch doesn’t work, I will need a watchmaker.”
A pause:
“And I’m not going to take my watch apart myself.”
“So you’re not curious, then?” asks Hawkeye.
“No, I am. But if you’re going to take a watch apart, you’d be better off starting with one that isn’t going to be used for anything else. They’re fragile things, watches. You have to take care with them. If you’re attached to one and you break it, you’ll never get it back.”
One seventeen. The brakes screech, we enter the station.
A vast small town. A square that extends towards houses, each one of which is a stronghold. Houses that are heavy and graceful. You can see the grace, you can feel the weight. You are at home, as in a meadow whose fences are mysterious arcades under which it is good to take shelter when the storm breaks. Does each inhabitant have their own arcade? You could almost believe it, so different are they from each other.
The grandparents, and lunch, are waiting for us.
“I suppose everyone likes chocolate cake,” says the grandmother just as we are sitting down.
No-one contradicts her statement; quite the opposite, in fact. “Her chocolate cake is delicious, you’ll see,” Ponytail has whispered to me. And yet I have seen a slight frown on the cousin’s face which seems to mean “Chocolate cake again?”
“How are the holidays going?” asks the grandmother, traditionally.
“Very well,” we all answer, with variations, equally traditionally.
“Time flies,” pronounces the grandfather.
He has stopped on the truism. After a short silence the conversation picks up again.
“Do you like it here?” the grandmother asks me.
An equally traditional question. And yet I answer as though the question were exceptional, or rather as if it concerned something exceptional, which makes my answer a bit of a muddle:
“A lot. I’m used to city life and I didn’t think, before coming here, that there was… that you could… find things just as interesting, I mean that you could go on such lovely walks and find so many things… You can live here…”
I stutter to a halt. The grandfather speaks up, seeming surprised that I found it necessary to say something so obvious:
“People live, here.”
As I don’t say anything, he asks suddenly:
“Is it the first time you’ve been to stay with your uncle?”
Quarter past four. Our two-coacher leaves in one minute.
Sewing day at Cornflower’s.
“Careful, you have to decrease there.”
“I have to what?”
“Decrease. If you don’t decrease the width of the back, you won’t be able to get your arm in.”
Not really being used to it, I have some trouble following Dawn’s explanations. I try to brazen it out by making a joke:
“Oh, well, as long as you can yet yours in!...”
“Very funny.”
Cornflower comes to my defence:
“Don’t harass the poor lad, you’ll put him off!”
“If I were you, I’d help him myself,” says Hawkeye, all innocence.
“Yes, but you aren’t,” remarks Ponytail.
“No, not one stitch, both stitches,” says Dawn as if she hadn’t heard.
I hope I have faithfully transcribed the conversation, because I was slightly lost in my stitches. Two stitches; no, not three; in any case, how could I?
“That’s good.”
Dawn’s approval seems not to be just an encouragement. It’s decreasing! I think I’ve done what had to be done. I also think I didn’t realise it. Watch out for the next stitch!...
The needles come and go. We talk little, taken up by our work.
“Don’t girls sew in the city where you live?” Ponytail asks me, breaking the silence.
What do I know?
“I’ve no idea. My mother sometimes sews. I don’t… Why not? I think there are some who do. I suppose so…”
“Do they get together to sew like we do?” asks Cornflower.
I ponder:
“I don’t know. When I’m round at friends’ and there are girls – their sisters or their girlfriends –, they don’t sew, of course.”
I give a little wave of the hand that shows my ignorance:
“I’ve never asked.”
“What do you do when you’re together?”
I am about to tell Hawkeye that I thought I’d already talked about that but she gets in first:
“I mean when there aren’t just boys?”
What do I know?
“I don’t know. We talk.”
I smile:
“We don’t play cards, like I think I said boys do amongst themselves.”
As I say nothing more, Hawkeye gets impatient:
“OK, so that’s what you don’t do; but what do you do?”
What do I know?
“I don’t know. We chat...”
“You already said that.”
I...:
“Yes, that’s true. Hang on, I’m thinking.”
“Is it that difficult?”
I...:
“No, no. Well… Well…”
Inspiration:
“We dance!”
“You dance?!”
Three voices have cried out at the same time. Dawn has not said anything. After a short silence, the kind that you hear very clearly…
“We only dance at the fete…” says Cornflower timidly.
Another short silence of the same kind. Then suddenly:
“Dance with us!” exclaims Hawkeye.
I see happy smiles appear on their faces…
“Oh, yes, yes!...”
Three cries. Dawn has not said anything.
“May I invite you to dance, young lady?” I have asked her ceremoniously.
She has hesitated for a long time:
“I don’t know how to dance.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know how to dance?” Hawkeye has protested hotly. “You dance very well at the fete!”
Again, Dawn hesitates slightly:
“It’s not the same, at the fete...”
I have suddenly remembered that none of the girls had danced at the summer fete at the end of July. I take Dawn’s hand:
“I can’t dance very well either, you know…”
Which is true. She has given me a gentle smile:
“I don’t know the latest dances.”
I hadn’t let go of Dawn’s hand. I cheerfully shake her arm:
“It’s true, there are indeed people who invent dances; but what matters most for the girls in the city where I live is to the pleasure dancing, and not so much how and with whom.”
I have exaggerated slightly, but not that much, I don’t think. A smile of relief has played on her lips.
“However will we manage?” objects Ponytail sagely. “We don’t have a band.”
Disappointment. I think I have found the answer; in the city where I live, we dance to records.
“You’ve got records, haven’t you?” I ask.
Hope attempts a comeback. But...
“Yes, we do have records,” answers Cornflower, “but they’re mostly songs.”
“No, no!” exclaims Hawkeye. “They’re not only songs… I mean songs just for singing; we also have records you can dance to, songs or not.”
I don’t dare ask why in that case they never dance. In all events, I have my answer, and I encourage my dancers:
“In the city where I live we always dance to records, we don’t really care about the type of music.”
That’s not true, by the way.
My dancers are enthusiastic. Dawn has whispered to me:
“Dance with them first.”
Cornflower has got out all her records. There aren’t that many. We choose – it’s a bit hit or miss, but we don’t care.
I am exhausted. I don’t usually dance much… During the last dance, Dawn has whispered to me:
“I’ve danced with you.”
It’s been sultry all morning. The storm Dawn had predicted the day before yesterday is on its way. After lunch, she has come over to suggest a walk. “I think we’re going to have bad weather tomorrow,” she has said, even adding: “It’s possible the storm may come this evening.”
We set off, wandering without really paying attention to the way we take. No matter, Dawn has known all the paths round here ever since she was born, and even I am starting to feel as at home as in the streets of the city where I live. Right then, where does this track go to? Why, to Ponytail’s farm, of course. And what about that one, the straight one, covered with grass that the cows come to eat in their idle moments – for dessert, no doubt –, the one that passes under a little bridge? Why, to the station, of course… And of course we follow the track as far as the station, and then as it turns and then… our little train bridge, which we are now sitting on again, legs dangling.
“It’s the first time…”
I wait for her to go on but she leaves the sentence unfinished. I wait, saying nothing. Why? I don’t know. She goes on:
“It was the dance. But it doesn’t matter.”
She turns to me:
“Kiss me.”
I kiss her. It wasn’t easy, sitting as we were, all tangled up in the guardrail. The kiss is more like a balancing act. Dawn puts her cheek against mine and murmurs:
“I am with you.”
The storm broke during the night. It’s cold this morning. Really cold this time. When I got up I put on warm clothes. Dawn is taken up with her mother. I spend the morning in my uncle’s workshop. At lunch my aunt asks if the bad weather won’t be too much of a problem for our walks. I talk about sewing. She congratulates me on the knitting. Well, well! I must have said something about it, though I can’t remember doing so. It doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter… It’s the first time for me too… It was the dance for me too. But it doesn’t matter.
What had my uncle said when I took a clock apart for the first time? He had said: ““A clock’s like a person, you have to get to know them before you handle them.” What had Ponytail’s cousin said last Sunday about the clock I had brought to my uncle’s friend? He had said: “They’re fragile things, watches. You have to take care with them. If you’re attached to one and you break it, you’ll never get it back.” I remember. I remember very clearly. There are things one does remember very clearly. I quoted word for word? That’s nothing, I read it back in my diary. It doesn’t matter.
On a pretext, I said I needed to get something from Dawn’s. “It’s in your room,” I told her. She didn’t say anything. We went up to her room. I kissed her.
I didn’t sleep last night. Well, not much. I woke up, I went back to sleep; I didn’t quite know when I was asleep or when I was awake. I slept badly, but this morning I feel as though I had slept well. I went out into the vegetable garden; she was there, we kissed. Was it while I was asleep, was it while I was awake? It’s cold this morning. I don’t want to get up. And yet it can’t really be early, I can hear my aunt in the kitchen. The smell of coffee. I get up. It’s daylight. I go out into the vegetable garden; she is there. She tells me she slept badly. She feels as though she had slept well, she says. She tells me she dreamt she went out into the vegetable garden during the night and that she kissed me. I tell her I dreamt I went out into the vegetable garden during the night and that I kissed her. Her eyes have left a long, long kiss on my eyes.
A sewing afternoon at Dawn’s.
“Do you often dance in the city where you live?” Hawkeye asks me. We have barely started our work.
“You aren’t going to make him dance every day, are you?” breaks in Cornflower. “He was tired…”
“I just wanted to know…”
Ponytail interrupts her:
“She’s right. And you can’t get us to believe it was only…”
“All right, all right, if you don’t like dancing!...”
Cornflower and Ponytail just start laughing.
“Well then, say something, why don’t you!” Hawkeye exclaims to me, pouting.
I have no idea what to say. To be honest, I’m taken up with the pullover I’m knitting for Dawn. Dawn isn’t there. That is to say, she is there, but… I answer as best I can:
“I really enjoyed…”
“All right, all right,” Hawkeye reassures me. “I really enjoyed it too…”
“Don’t forget us!” says Ponytail with a hint of sarcasm.
“No, no, I’m not forgetting anyone,” replies Hawkeye, “but it’s true that it’s tiring when you’re on your own with…”
She has stopped, as though looking for words:
“… with so many girls.”
I am about to say something – what?... but Dawn gets in first:
“You’ve dropped a stitch.”
It’s true, I have just dropped a stitch, right then. She helps me to find it again. The conversation changes because Dawn has asked Cornflower for some advice, which I personally am not sure she really needed.
The Accountant and a colleague – by which I mean Ponytail’s cousin and a friend of his – are coming to spend the day in… our country, I feel like saying. And have done so. They will come in a car the friend has borrowed from his father. “He’d like to see around,” the cousin has explained; he has invited Dawn and me to come with them. Ponytail will also be there, of course. “I mentioned it to her; she told me she liked it when there were people around, it was jollier,” the cousin has added.
So early this morning Dawn and I have come to Ponytail’s, taking our usual path over the meadows. The cold is keen but the walk – a brisk one, it’s taken us just quarter of an hour – has warmed us up.
“They’ll be here soon,” Ponytail announces. “Have you had breakfast?”
We have, but the smell of good, hot coffee tempts us to have another one.
“He wants to go to the big lake,” she goes on.
She wrinkles her nose:
“There’re always a lot of people there in August, it’ll be crowded.”
Ponytail drinks a mouthful of coffee – she’s having a second breakfast too – then goes on:
“It’s odd, he lives in a city where people are packed in like sardines and here he wants to go to the only place where it’s crowded.”
Would I have found that so odd, not so very long ago? As for the “city where people are packed in like sardines”, what a joke! On their broad avenues, you could imagine yourself on the path that goes down to the ford. Am I exaggerating? Not at all, it’s what my teacher would call “hyperbole”. No, not my maths teacher, my English teacher. It’s a rhetorical device. It means you say something other than what you mean to say and the reader… either they don’t know and understand nothing, or else they do know and they understand… the same thing that they would have understood if you had said what you meant to say. Complicated? Oh, when I think about my rhetoric classes – I mean literature lessons… Yes, I know, I’m talking to myself; not a good sign, they say…
The colleague is jolly. It’s not unpleasant, when you live among serious people – and when perhaps you may be one yourself. We set off for the big lake.
“It’s very pretty!”
We’re on the road to the little market town where the creamery where my cousin works is. The colleague has accompanied his declaration with a long, approving nod. After three or four more declarations in similar vein, he adds:
“It must be very pleasant to live in such a pretty region.”
He adds again:
“How lucky you are to live here!”
The cousin turns to his cousin:
“Do you need somebody for the farm?”
He indicates his colleague:
“I know someone who wants to move to the country.”
The colleague guffaws:
“Absolutely! And I already know where to start. As we were driving along just now I saw some cows all on their own on the road; I think they need someone to lead them.”
He winks at Ponytail:
“And at least you can be sure you’ll never lose any: accounting has no secrets for me!”
Ponytail gives a little chuckle, just to show that she appreciates the joke… for what it’s worth. Or at least that’s what I thought.
We enter the little market town. The colleague drives through the streets without stopping and leaves the little market town without comment. He did the same when we went past the little train bridges.
However, silence had not fallen on our car, as my highly fragmentary account might suggest. On the contrary, the conversation was quite lively, talking about… that’s where I have a bit of trouble finding what to say. The colleague had come to see around the region, he had said, but he talked about anything but the region, apart from the declaration he had made at the outset: “It’s very pretty!” In contrast, he no longer added: “It must be very nice to live in such a pretty region,” or “How lucky you are to live here!” Had he changed his mind? I scoff: when you’re looking for a life, you don’t start by trying to find out if it’s pretty.
A tiny village, more of a hamlet really. That is where, a long time ago, the creamery where my cousin works started life. From the hamlet you can see the long valley where the cows patiently prepare butter. I mean milk that will be made into butter, of course. The colleague has taken a keen interest in the subject. The questions come thick and fast. How many cows, how much milk, how much butter, what yield, what selling prices… Yes, I know, there are shops in the meadows, shops where the earth provides butter. But hey! isn’t there anything other than shops in those meadows?
“Well, well! There’s a train in the middle of the fields here?” exclaims the keen-eyed colleague.
“Turn onto the track on the right,” suggests Ponytail’s cousin.
“It’s not a road.”
“You don’t say! Go on, man!”
The fields are meadows, but for city-dwellers… I am a city-dweller too, sure, but I am from here.
We stop right next to the line. The train is of course the little train. The colleague is cautious and doesn’t drive onto the old track, even though the rails can barely be seen under the grass.
“It’s dangerous, there aren’t even any signs!”
“It hasn’t run for ages,” Ponytail tells him.
“Why, didn’t it make money any more?”
Making money is a key concept for the colleague. The cousin is aware what happened to the line:
“There were fewer and fewer passengers, the region’s activities had changed.”
“Oh, that’s all right, then.”
“It’s a shame, we should have the pleasure of seeing it go by…”
Dawn has not spoken loudly but the colleague is also sharp-eared:
“A train’s job is to carry passengers, not to be part of the scenery.”
“Why do we keep ancient monuments, then?”
The colleague does not hesitate:
“To preserve the memory of an historical culture.”
Dawn doesn’t hesitate either:
“It’s not the memory of a culture that’s preserved, it’s the memory of a life. People have lived here too.”
The colleague seems slightly taken aback. He says nothing. I don’t know why, but I’m sure he’s thinking: “It’s not the same thing.” Ponytail’s cousin, for his part, seems to be thinking deeply. Let’s not forget that he is from here too.
Rails. Rails in good condition this time.
“That’s the main line,” Ponytail tells us.
The colleague wakes up:
“Where does it go? How many trains a day pass on this track?”
And other questions that I forgot even before he asked them. Nicely put! But it’s true, that’s what it seemed like to me. By the way, I had said that he was jolly; not so much in evidence now. Actually, that’s not quite true. He jokes and laughs when he’s not asking questions. He bores me. But perhaps that’s my fault. He’s a nice enough fellow.
I have heard the end of Ponytail’s answer to the colleague: “… there are only expresses.” No, it was rather: “… there are mostly expresses.”
On the other side of the river that follows our road, a forest. Alongside the forest, leaning against the trees, a two-coacher wends its slow way.
The big lake. I haven’t found anything to say.
It’s raining. The air is full of water. It’s cold. Summer has taken its leave without warning.
“We’ll still have fine weather, it’s still only August, but the days won’t be the same,” Dawn tells me. “The sun doesn’t want to stay with us quite as long as in July.”
“And after mid-August storms often come with the end of the hot weather,” adds Cornflower.
“It doesn’t often get really hot in the mountains,” remarks Ponytail.
I nod:
“It’s much more bearable than in the city; and I don’t like it when it gets too hot.”
“Well, that won’t be a problem today,” chuckles Hawkeye. “Putting a big log in the hearth was clearly the right thing to do.”
That’s true enough. And it’s so comforting to see the hearth glowing red with a good log fire.
The housecoats are making progress. The pullover is making progress, faster than I had expected – thanks, of course, to Dawn’s explanations and help.
“You’re doing very well,” she reassures me.
“Yes, it’s easy enough, but the slightest change...”
“What changes? Oh, yes, the decreases...”
“Yes, the decreases. I’d never have managed without you, it would’ve been a disaster!”
“Especially for her,” chips in Hawkeye, all innocence and concern. “What would she have done this winter?”
They all give a condescending little chuckle, sewing away the while.
The log fire crackles. The air is no longer full of water. My thoughts turn to winter. I’ve never been here before in winter. The dazzling, cold white of the snow outside, the dark, warm red of the logs in the fire...
It’s raining. The air is full of water. It’s cold. I already said that yesterday but it’s not my fault; the sky is repeating itself and so am I. I am at Dawn’s.
“It’ll be fine tomorrow,” she says encouragingly.
“How can you tell?”
“The birds – they’re getting ready to sing.”
What does she mean? I am amazed:
“What do you mean, they’re getting ready to sing?”
“Listen! You can hear a little twitter from time to time.”
I listen. It’s true, you can. She goes on:
“You’ll be able to hear them more and more often. And as soon as the weather lifts, they’ll start singing as brightly as ever.”
“Do you talk to the birds? Like you do to the cows?”
“They talk to me.”
“What do they tell you?”
“That the rain will stop, that it’s time to get up in the morning, that time is going by and the chores aren’t finished yet, that the day is coming to an end, that the sun is setting even if you can’t see it behind the clouds; and the nightingale tells me that it’s spring and that it’s night-time.”
I am no longer amazed. I feel as though I understand everything:
“Cows can tell the time too: time to graze, time to ruminate, time to sleep.”
Dawn has given me a smile. I ponder:
“We know when it’s time to sleep too...”
“And we know when it’s time to eat. I’m always hungry at noon.”
“It’s true, we usually have our lunch around then.”
She interrupts me sharply:
“No, not around then, precisely then.”
That I have not understand. She explains:
“I get hungry at noon, at noon precisely. You can see for yourself: keep an eye on what time you feel hungry.”
I have done so. At noon, noon precisely, I felt hungry.
The sun is teasing us, playing with the clouds instead of coming to see us. The morning was cool, but the afternoon has got a bit warmer. We have all come to the town to do some shopping; the girls are going to embroider their housecoats and need thread.
In the haberdashery...
“What do you think of this one?”
Cornflower shows me a thread the same blue as her housecoat.
“It won’t show up. You need a lighter one or a darker one.”
“What about this one for me?”
Ponytail shows me a bright green thread.
“It doesn’t go with the blue of your housecoat; try that one there.”
The scene reminds me very strongly of when we were buying fabric two weeks ago. Do they really need my advice? Or are they just doing it to please me? Let’s not think about that and focus on what’s important. After all, they seem happy enough with the situation. Let’s say that it is a game... I ponder again – something you should never do in such a case. I come from the city. Perhaps they would be disappointed if they saw that I don’t know everything...
What about Hawkeye? I can see her hesitating over a lovely, deep black thread. She has turned to me but says nothing. I am slightly surprised; she’s usually so lively...
“It’s amazing! You’d think the black was made on purpose for the red of your housecoat.”
She gives me a bright smile.
Dawn, in the meantime, has been rummaging around here and there and, when I asked her what she wanted to get, has given me a pert smile:
“You’ll see!”
I have certainly seen nothing so far.
Now we’re going to look for patterns.
“Patterns?”
“Yes, embroidery patterns,” Dawn tells me.
“Don’t you make them up yourselves?”
“Oh, no!” cried Hawkeye. “We don’t know enough to embroider the ideas we might come up with for ourselves. And patterns also tell you what to do.”
“So that means embroidery must be very hard, doesn’t it? Because everything I’ve seen you do so far has been pretty impressive!”
The girls’ cheeks were starting to resemble the red of Hawkeye’s housecoat...
Choosing patterns was no easy matter and for once my advice was unavailing.
“It’s much too hard,” protested Ponytail.
“I don’t understand the explanations for your pattern,” wailed Cornflower.
All that took time, but we came away with everything in the end.
“Hello!”
That’s one of Dawn’s schoolfriends with a boy a little older than us – her brother. As apparently required by tradition, we go and sit on the town hall steps, opposite the large and quite impressive fountain. As there is plenty of space, we take over the Top Steps – it’s much more comfortable and the view is so much better... Ah, se non è vero, è bene trovato!
“You’re on holiday?” the boy asks me, having just been told that.
I answer, as though nobody had already told him:
“Yes, I’m on holiday.”
“For three months?”
It was probably a question, given that it came with an inquiring look. That’s why I have put a question mark. I had hesitated at the time, given that he had just been told that I was on holiday for three months.
“Are you going back home when school starts again?”
“Yes, I’m going back home when school starts again.”
The conversation looks like being hard work. I ask him:
“Are you on holiday?”
Answering, his tone of voice clearly shows that he found my question quite natural, whereas it had equally clearly been put sarcastically:
“Yes, I have come to spend the holidays here.”
I don’t dare look at anyone around me for fear of giggling. He goes on:
“I have to go to study in the city. There’s nowhere here. I mean, nowhere for higher education.”
He nods several times:
“It really bothers me. I like it here, life there is dull. I’ve got my friends here...”
He places his hand gently on his sister’s shoulder:
“I will miss my sister.”
I no longer feel like laughing.
The sun is back, the wind blows in from warmer climes. “Let’s go to the spring,” Dawn has suggested after lunch.
We do so. We don’t take the shortest way. Since we have a season ticket – do we not? – we take the little train again. We don’t get on at the station, because that would mean having to take the road and we don’t feel like it. We get on where it passes under the little bridge over the road that goes to Ponytail’s. To Ponytail’s... Writing the words is inconsequential, but they have a cadence that tickles my fancy. It doesn’t take much to tickle my fancy. And why should it, pray? Anyway, back to our train trip. So, we get on the little train under the little bridge over the road that goes to Ponytail’s. There isn’t a stop there but the train driver knows us well – does he not? – and comes to a halt, very gently so that no one notices, to let us get on. The little train makes detours; here is the station, here is our bridge where we get off, discreetly, letting the little train pull noiselessly away again. And then the path that descends, still just as quickly, through the wood. The spring welcomes us with its affectionate lapping.
The water flows along the nascent river and we walk. The water is calm and we are in no hurry. A path on the right leads to the ford we had crossed to go to the electric mill on the eighteenth of July, as I had said. Just thinking about the sight of that ugly building – as I had also said – makes us abandon the idea of crossing the ford again and encourages us to retrace our steps.
Not far from the stream is a wide rock where we like to go and sit. The coolness of the water is still pleasant but no longer brings that feeling of well-being that we came to seek in July.
“When are you going?”
Dawn’s question has broken a silence. I wasn’t expecting it. No, actually, I was expecting it. But although I had thought about it I hadn’t found an answer. I take Dawn’s hand:
“I don’t want to...”
My voice has choked. Her hand has stayed in mine, but her hand is inert. She says slowly:
“There’s nowhere for higher education here.”
I feel a surge of anger. Why isn’t there anywhere for higher education here?
“You can go on to higher education too!” I cry.
“Yes, in three years’ time.”
We have stayed for a long time, holding each other tight. The affectionate lapping of the spring held a note of sadness.
Wednesday the twenty-first of August. Dawn is with her mother. I am in the workshop with my uncle. I am taking a clock apart. This morning, while writing, I leafed through my diary. I re-read what my uncle had said on July the twenty-ninth, nearly a month ago: “A clock’s like a person, you have to get to know them before you handle them.” No, a clock is not like a person; it doesn’t leave a trace on the heart.
In the middle of the afternoon my uncle and aunt go shopping in the little market town where the creamery is. Occasionally they include a few errands for Dawn’s parents. “Are you coming with us?” they asked. I answered that I would love to and was about to say... But my aunt got in first: “Go and get your friend,” she told me with a smile. I thanked her effusively – and my uncle too, of course.
We left, the four of us. Dawn was beside me on the back seat. We held hands all the way.
Ponytail’s cousin has come to spend a couple of days with her. He arrived at around two o’clock – on a direct train, if you please! – and we all meet up at Ponytail’s at around three. He tells us that he really likes seeing us, that he enjoys our company, our conversations and our walks. Yes, indeed, he really does tell us all those things.
The weather is fine and we go to sit behind the farm on the slope from which you can see as far as our village.
“My cousin tells me you’ve all being sewing; that must be a very pleasant pastime...” begins the cousin.
Said cousin – Ponytail – cuts him off:
“It’s not a pastime. We need housecoats, ours are worn out.”
The cousin expresses surprise:
“Why don’t you just buy them?”
“They’re expensive,” says Cornflower.
The cousin is even more surprised:
“That expensive?”
A short silence. I look at the girls; they seem slightly embarrassed.
“We’re not in the city here,” states Ponytail bluntly.
The cousin ponders:
“Yes, it’s true, we don’t live the same way in the city. We don’t depend on the weather, and the grass in our gardens doesn’t make milk.”
He remains lost in thought for a good while. Nobody says anything. He turns to me:
“You knit, my cousin tells me.”
What does he want to know? I answer simply:
“Yes, a pullover for Dawn.”
The cousin ponders:
“That’s very thoughtful. It will come from you, not from a shop.”
I continue simply:
“It’s the first time I’ve ever tried knitting. Dawn is teaching me. She had asked me to make her one.”
The cousin ponders:
“You’re very fond of each other.”
A pause:
“I like that.”
A pause:
“You’re very nice, the two of you.”
After a moment’s silence Cornflower speaks up:
“My cousin is happy. The three of us are very happy too to see that they are so fond of each other.”
Ponytail gives a broad smile of approval. Hawkeye nods several times.
“Who would like some blackberry pie?”
Ponytail’s mother’s offer has not fallen on deaf ears. “Me, me!” everyone has cried – except for Ponytail herself, who had helped to make it.
Blackberry pie encourages conversation. We chatter away about this and that. Suddenly the cousin says in a steady voice:
“It’ll soon be time to go back to school.”
The conversations have stopped. Hawkeye protests:
“Not yet, though!”
“On Monday the sixteenth of September,” retorts the cousin, still equally unruffled.
And he adds in the same tone of voice, in the silence that has suddenly fallen:
“It’s Thursday the twenty-second of August today.”
The night is dark. It’s cold. I have dressed warmly. I have gone out into the meadow behind the house. I’m not sleepy. Yes, yes, that’s exactly why I have gone out.
Dawn’s window has opened. She gestures that she’s coming down. Here she is. She is dressed warmly.
“You can’t sleep either.”
It’s not a question. That’s why I’ve put a full stop. Not an exclamation mark, no, a full stop. She has said it calmly, as though saying... oh, I don’t know what, and what’s more, I don’t care. With a full stop. Not an exclamation mark, no, a full stop.
We have walked down the nearby slope that leads to the river. We have sat down on an old tree trunk right near the edge. I have held her tightly; she has put her head on my shoulder. The water flows, murmuring softly.
Cornflower has invited us to lunch today. That’s a bit pretentious – my city habits coming out again. Actually, last night she said “Lunch tomorrow? At mine?”
The lunch is not too downcast. Cornflower’s parents have no reason whatsoever to be downcast, there’s nothing special about it for them. They talk about milk, cows, cheese... Cornflower does her best to be bright and cheerful.
“Back to school soon, eh?” Cornflower’s father tells me, not meaning any harm. “I suppose we’ll see you again next holidays.”
Next holidays; yes, next holidays.
Oh! I’ve forgotten to say how Dawn and I got to Cornflower’s. As I’m writing this so as to remember, I’ll put it down. I ought to start again... No matter, I’m only writing for myself. It won’t be quite in the right order; too bad.
Right, so here’s the path; I’ll get back to the lunch in a mo.
We had no desire at all to take the road, and even less so to take our bikes. It wasn’t too cold and we were dressed up warm.
“Let’s go by the river,” Dawn had suggested.
We walk slowly, sometimes on a track, sometimes in the grass, there’s no regular way for the path we’re taking. We have given ourselves plenty of time. Usually it takes three quarters of an hour, with a rather steep climb. We’ve set off three hours early; plenty of time, as I said...
We don’t talk much on the way. We walk hand in hand... when the terrain lets us. We pass the mill. Here we are at the ford. We climb – I don’t think I’ve even noticed. We’re early. We sit down on the first tree trunk we come across. We let time pass. We’re together. Cornflower’s meadow to cross. We’ve arrived... slightly late.
Back to the lunch. Where was I? Oh, yes, there.
So, Cornflower’s father has said he supposed he would see me next holidays. OK, OK; we’ll see about that. It’s not the issue right now.
“Somebody has to go to the dairy to get some cheese; would you mind?” Cornflower’s mother asks her daughter.
She adds immediately:
“You can all go together.”
Lunch over, we set off. The cheese dairy isn’t far, it’s in the same village.
The place is abuzz. Large empty churns are evidence that the morning milk run has taken place. I am familiar with those churns; every farm has them. Nothing can be seen through the narrow slits in the wall that hides from the sun; it’s too dark inside. Dawn points to the slits:
“This is the milk room, it’s where the milk rests.”
I attempt a joke – a silly one, to be sure, but I so much don’t want to think about the next holidays:
“Why, is it tired?”
She smiles at me, kindly, as if to say “I would laugh, if only...”
“Yes, from the milking; tomorrow we’ll collect the cream from the milk to make cheese,” she explains.
An old man comes to meet us.
“Hello! Come to get some more cheese, have you? Eaten it all already, have you?” he asks Cornflower in a jolly voice.
“Yes, ’fraid so; it’s too good not to!” she replies in the same vein.
We go with him to the ageing cellar. Large rounds of cheese sit on wide spruce shelves, tempting you to get your teeth into them right away. The old man heads towards a large one – a wheel, as they call them.
“Some of mine you’ll be wanting, will you?” he says.
His is special. Cornflower tells me about it on the way back.
“He makes it for himself, he doesn’t sell it. Every week he rubs it with brine and then with the local wine. And what’s more, he keeps it and matures it for years – at least three or four.”
She adds, licking her lips:
“I don’t know of any better.”
Indeed; I had had some at lunch just now. I lick my lips too:
“That’s true; I don’t know of any better either!”
She gives me a teasing grin:
“And it’s my milk he makes his cheese with, so it’s the crème de la crème!”
Half an hour to get to Ponytail’s. The way there is easy, what’s more, it’s straight ahead. One hill to climb, not very steep. Like yesterday, we leave three hours early. You never know... And as the way there is shorter than the way to Cornflower’s, there’s all the more call for precautions. You don’t get it? No matter; diaries you keep for yourself are secret.
The way there has become as familiar to me as the roads of the city where I live. And instead of stopping in a square flooded by impatient crowds, I stop on the little train bridge around which just a few cows graze without showing any sign of emotion at my presence... or Dawn’s, for that matter. The little stretch uphill and we get to Ponytail’s... slightly late.
“We’ve been waiting for you for hours!”
“Where have you been?”
“We’ve already finished our embroidery!”
The three embroiderers have launched a vocal assault on us. I have no idea who said what, because they were all talking at the same time. How can you write down your memories in that kind of situation? It’s not as if I could ask them who said what when I’m actually writing in my diary.
Back to Ponytail’s. The embroiderers embroider. It’s pretty but complicated. Fortunately Dawn hasn’t asked me for embroidery. I would never have managed. To tell the truth, what bothers me is that if Dawn does ask me for something of the sort, I’ll just have to do it. In the meantime, I turn my pullover over. It’s making progress, my pullover, and I should be pleased. And I am pleased, of course. But the pullover is also the end of the holidays. Dawn will wear it when I’m no longer there.
That’s impossible... What’s to be done?...
“You’ve dropped another stitch,” Dawn points out.
Another one?
“It’s the second.”
I hadn’t even noticed the first.
“Did you bring the buttons?” Hawkeye suddenly asks Ponytail. “I’ve looked, and these are the only ones I’ve got.”
She’s right to be concerned. They really aren’t nice, by which I mean that they don’t go at all.
“Your buttons don’t go with any of the housecoats; just look at the colour!”
“It’s true, you’re right,” she replies, looking alarmed.
Curiously, Cornflower and Ponytail are looking at me with the hint of a smile and Hawkeye has gone back to her work as if nothing was amiss. I am slightly surprised; it is Dawn who gives the game away:
“She was just joking. They’re old buttons; we’re going to cover them with the same fabric as for our housecoats.”
“That’s what I meant...”
I pause, very briefly:
“... I mean, I couldn’t understand why you hadn’t already done it.”
Although I said it confidently enough, they weren’t to be fooled.
“We supposed you would have taken care of it,” says Hawkeye innocently.
It all ends in laughter.
Laughter... but why has our laughter ceased so quickly? I know very well why. We all know very well why.
A long silence ensues. And then the conversations pick up again, quietly, as if we were afraid of being overheard. I’ve no idea why I’ve said that.
Sunday. Family Sunday lunch. Uncle, aunt, cousin, cousin’s wife.
There will certainly be talk about the end of the holidays.
“Soon be the end of the holidays!” my cousin starts.
As expected. Albeit hardly surprising.
“But you’ll be back next holidays, I hope,” continues my cousin’s wife.
Two down.
“You’re lucky, to be going back to the city.”
That’s my cousin’s wife. Of course.
“Had a good time, then, have you?”
My cousin. I reply:
“A very good time, thank you.”
As expected, the conversation turns to city life compared with country life. Opinions remain unchanged.
“I’m happy here,” states my cousin. “What more would I get in the city? Entertainment? I don’t feel the need.”
“That’s true,” says his wife. “But as he’s a kind soul and he’s fond of me, he sometimes takes me to the city.”
She adds immediately:
“But I can see he doesn’t really like it there.”
She gives a little sigh:
“I like the country well enough, but I do feel the need for entertainment. He tells me I don’t know how to live with my own company, but I’ve never really understood what that’s supposed to mean.”
“Maybe thinking your own thoughts,” suggests my uncle.
“Why wouldn’t you think in the city?” protests my aunt. “Is it forbidden?”
“No, but do you have time to think your own thoughts when your thought is taken by other people?”
“You think about the people who give you a clock to mend!”
My uncle ponders:
“Yes, I do think about them; but not about people I see on posters in town who I will never know.”
After a moment’s silence, my cousin’s wife speaks up:
“In the city, you find more things to do when you’ve got a good education.”
My aunt has nodded vigorously.
“And what if you’ve already found something to do and you’re happy with it?” asks my cousin.
“You can always find something better,” mutters my aunt.
“Even in the city you can always find something better.”
My uncle heartily approves his son’s words:
“You can always find a bigger creamery than the one you work in.”
“You can always find something other than creameries in the city,” mutters my aunt again.
“People need butter.”
I have spoken without really realising.
“You aren’t going to come and live in the country, are you?” my cousin’s wife has cried.
Monday. The start of the week. Next week ends with the end of the holidays; Monday the sixteenth of September.
Dawn and I are on our bikes. “Let’s go a long way!” Dawn has said to me. You can’t go a long way on a bike. Though you can go as far as winter. “The snowplough’s just been through,” I have said to Dawn. She has given me a smile: “Let’s go to the little bridge.” Yes, that was indeed the way on which we had played at snowploughs nearly a month ago; the track that went to the tiny little bridge... that spanned the river.
We are heading for the tiny little bridge. On the right, at the top of the very steep cliff on the mountainside, the ruined castle. It no longer has enemies, but those who come to visit it to take away its last remaining stones are not its friends either. It will never come back to life again.
Here we are, sitting on the tiny little bridge, legs dangling. There is no snow today. When there is snow... By the time there is snow I won’t be there.
Why shouldn’t I be there? There are holidays in winter!
“When the snowplough comes, I’ll be there!”
I have spoken forcefully. She has said nothing for a long while, then, slowly and without looking at me:
“School starts on the sixteenth of September. Half-term starts on the thirtieth of October and lasts five days.”
We have sat there for a long, long time, saying nothing, hand in hand.
In the middle of the silence, Dawn points to the river:
“Look at the river; it never stops flowing, for as long as the rain keeps it alive and the frost doesn’t kill it.”
I squeeze her hand:
“The river doesn’t freeze if it flows fast enough. We’ll be like the river.”
She squeezes my hand:
“You are my rain.”
I take her in my arms:
“My rain...”
Sewing day. We are at Cornflower’s. My pullover is coming on well; it will soon be finished. Yet I don’t feel the sadness that had filled me last Saturday when I was knitting my pullover at Ponytail’s. I no longer had any room for sadness. A single thought filled my brain: “I will be there when she wears it, so I will; I will go fast, very fast!”
“You’ve dropped a stitch.”
Dawn’s alert makes me laugh. I must have been going too fast!
“You’ll never finish your pullover before you go if you keep dropping your stitches like that, then you’ll have to come back and finish it!” Hawkeye teases me.
“Oh, yes! We’ll undo his stitches when he isn’t there, that way he won’t be able to go!” says Ponytail, upping the ante.
Cornflower hasn’t said anything; she gives her cousin a long smile.
The stitch has been picked up. Dawn helps me to put it back. The session continues. The housecoats will soon be finished – there’s only the embroidery and the buttons left to do. I reckon the embroidery is the most difficult part. In addition to the borders, each girl is also embroidering her initials. We chat as we work, a quiet conversation that leaves time to think. I think all our thoughts converge. The session continues.
“By the way, you didn’t tell me whether you’d brought the buttons,” says Hawkeye to Ponytail.
“Here, these are all I had.”
She shows some old buttons – about which I dare not make a comment. Hawkeye has taken one and is sizing it up, having covered it with her housecoat fabric.
“Why are you using the same fabric?”
“It makes a set,” she answers me.
“A button isn’t a fabric.”
“The housecoats won’t be uniform if the buttons stand out.”
Why does Hawkeye want the housecoats to be uniform?
“Why do they have to be uniform?” I ask her.
She shrugs, like someone who doesn’t really know. Cornflower speaks up:
“We’re always being told that you shouldn’t stand out.”
I nod:
“So the buttons aren’t allowed to exist; or, if so, only on their own.”
Ponytail gives a little shrug that indicates slight indifference:
“Nobody will say anything if we do things otherwise, you know. It’s just a habit.”
“So the buttons’ life depends on a habit...”
“We know school starts again soon!” Hawkeye has exclaimed. “There’s no need to set us an essay!”
Her little outburst has made everyone laugh. Except Dawn:
“I hope our life doesn’t only consist of habits we’re not even aware of.”
We have all nodded vigorously in agreement.
Hawkeye is starting to cover her button all the same. I set my knitting aside:
“How ever do you do that? It looks really hard!”
She has got up quickly and come to sit beside me:
“I’ll show you. It’s really easy!”
And she does just that. Indeed, it does not look particularly complicated, though you have to be very meticulous, but I pretend to have trouble understanding her, and to be delighted to learn how you make a button covered with fabric. I can see how pleased she is to show me her skills and have no desire whatsoever to cause her distress by snubbing her good intentions.
It’s not going to be so easy to copy her explanations into my diary, but I’ll try all the same. First you cut out a circle of fabric larger than the button. Then you make a row of little stitches not too far from the edge. You leave the thread in – you mustn’t cut it. You place the button in the middle, face down. Then – and this is the key to success – you pull the thread to gather the fabric, or at least that’s what Hawkeye told me, though I think it’s more to hold the button tight. The next bit is where the seamstress shows her skill: no crease at all in the fabric is permitted. Lastly, all you have to do is tie off the thread. There you go: it’s done!
“No, no, silly!” cries Hawkeye with a laugh. “It won’t look nice underneath.”
She takes a circle of fabric, smaller than the first, and carefully covers the back of the button. Now it’s perfect!
I dutifully show my admiration. To be honest, my admiration is entirely sincere because I really can’t see myself placing the fabric precisely, stretching it properly and, above all, not breaking the thread when pulling it tight.
The three girls have followed the lesson attentively and can find nothing wrong with it. Ponytail has remarked:
“You’ve got a pretty good teacher there!”
Ponytail’s cousin has come back to spend a couple of days with her, and this afternoon we’re going to go for a little walk in the vicinity.
We set off on a track that crosses the meadows. A solitary cow, far from the herd – is it dreaming of adventure? – has come to the very edge of the track and watches us with a hint of nostalgia. Does she want to come with us? Where would she go? It’s a walk for us, and a discovery for me, but for her it’s just her realm, the realm she lives in every day. The same place is not the same world for everyone.
The track starts climbing steeply. I like climbing now; the earth falls away, the far distances appear. Here is my village, there is Ponytail’s and Hawkeye’s, and Cornflower’s that I have trouble making out through the forest. Is that the castle, over there in the distance? And down there, that’s our bridge; and over there, that’s the spring...
The track runs through a wood. And now there is no track any more, only the meadows, which we share with Hawkeye’s cows. A path to cross; we’re walking between the hedges – no need to twist to pass under them. We sit down in a meadow that borders a little wood. The sun is slightly behind us but the little wood doesn’t hide it. We’re nearly nine hundred metres above sea level. It’s neither hot nor cold. We’re warmly dressed. We’re good.
“It’ll soon be time to go back to school.”
Ponytail’s cousin has spoken just as steadily as he had last Thursday. He had said the same thing last Thursday. Hawkeye had protested. I feel like doing the same, but what’s the point? Hawkeye hasn’t said anything. Nor has anyone else.
The cousin goes on, just as steadily:
“On Monday the sixteenth of September.”
“Yes, and today is Wednesday the twenty-eighth of August,” I say somewhat testily.
He pauses for a moment:
“What are you going to do?”
Oh, so that’s what it’s all about. Everybody has understood. Exclamations fly.
“He can’t go!” Hawkeye has cried.
“Find something!” insists Cornflower.
Ponytail asks, in a voice as steady as her cousin’s:
“You’ve got an idea, haven’t you?”
“Moo!”
What’s that? A cow, responding to Hawkeye’s and Cornflower’s exclamations. We have, of course, stopped talking, perhaps even stopped thinking. It’s not really the right time for hilarity, of course, but we haven’t been able to help ourselves bursting out into laughter, laughter tinged with anxiety but, I believe, full of hope.
“I don’t think your answer quite gets to the bottom of the question,” Hawkeye remarks to her cow.
The cow, having nothing else to offer us, returns to its pastoral occupations.
We, however, are waiting for the Accountant’s idea – he’s an expert, after all, even if it is only in accountancy.
“You’ve got exams at the end of this year, I believe?” the Expert says interrogatively.
Slightly surprised by a question that seemed to me to be about as relevant to the subject as Hawkeye’s cow’s proposal, I answer all the same:
“Yes, I’ve got exams.”
“So you will have a lot of work to do.”
“Of course.”
“So even if you were to live here, you wouldn’t have the time to see as much of Dawn as you do at the moment.”
OK, I was wrong not to have seen the connection. But what difference does that make?
“We’ve thought about it, you know, Dawn and I, but as you said yourself, I will have a lot of work to do.”
I add, with a helpless shrug:
“Even on Saturdays...”
He interrupts me:
“Will you have school on Saturday?”
“No, but...”
He interrupts me again:
“There’s no problem working on a train. When my father travels on business, he always takes...”
Now it’s Dawn who interrupts him:
“But it’s terribly expensive!”
The Accountant gives a slight smile:
“You’re right; but there are season tickets.”
Dawn and I have exchanged looks; season tickets!... I almost said “But we already have a season ticket!” I didn’t, but Dawn has heard me all the same. I have seen it in her look.
“There are even free season tickets,” continues the Accountant, still with the same slight smile.
We have all stared at him open-mouthed.
“What are you on about – free season tickets? There’s no such thing!” exclaims his cousin.
He gives a teasing little grin:
“I know there’s no such thing.”
Blank looks prevail in the meadow, yet no cow deems it sufficiently worthy of interest to find out why. Everyone waits.
The Accountant turns to me:
“My father works with companies in the city where you live; he often has accounting documents to transmit.”
“Your father’s an accountant?”
“He’s a chartered accountant. I’d like to take over from him later; that’s why I’m studying accountancy.”
“Oh, yes, your cousin mentioned your studies.”
“I spoke to my father about the two of you. What he’s proposing is that you take his documents and bring back documents from the city where you live. The price of your train ticket won’t be more than what it costs him to have the documents couriered as it is.”
No-one, of course, had been expecting such a proposal. Once the initial surprise had passed, everyone erupted in applause and cries of joy. The cows stopped grazing and stood in amazement. The whole meadow was rocked by an event that would never be forgotten.
“We’ll have to go and have a closer look at the train times tomorrow,” continues the Accountant imperturbably.
He adds, equally imperturbably:
“The train stops in our town both coming and going. We can meet you at the station.”
Tomorrow is today. So here we are at the station in the town. Everyone has come along to make sure that the times fit. The Accountant is as calm as ever. Ponytail, cousin or not, is rather more anxious. Hawkeye keeps on turning the big metal panels on which the timetables are posted. “No, no, you’ve just gone past it, it’s on the other side,” says Cornflower, keeping a close eye on proceedings. Dawn and I, slightly to one side, slightly lost too, wait trustingly. Nothing bad can happen on those yellowed pages covered with black figures that reassure us from a distance: “Don’t fret, we’ll make sure everything’s all right.”
Hawkeye is indeed well-named; she has done most of the looking-up. Ponytail has written everything down. Cornflower was correcting Hawkeye’s read-offs: “Not so fast, the train’s not leaving yet!”
The three girls were looking of course for the best trains; the fastest, the most comfortable. The big panels are a practical way of following the adventures of all those trains. There’s one which, having gained momentum, has headed off for distant parts; how could the panel be enough for it? It has disappeared, saying “There, that’s where you need to look next!” And now the girls are waiting for it on the panel it had indicated. There it is, it hasn’t disappeared. What about this train that refuses to go where we would like it to go? “I’ll take you with pleasure as far as I go; but don’t worry, I’ll pass you on to a chum who will take you where you want to go.” What on earth are you on about? Come on – don’t you think it’s a fine way indeed to talk about a connection?
Right! The girls have found the trains. We wait patiently, chatting about this and that with Ponytail’s cousin. He tells us about his life in his town, his studies, his family. Conversing with him is pleasant, never boring.
“Now then, what have you found?” the cousin asks the girls.
They bring him the train times, which Ponytail has copied down.
“Well, well, that’s all in order. Oh, I wasn’t worried, but it’s better to have the documents in hand.”
The documents in hand! I was very tempted to mock his choice of words but I didn’t; he’s going to be a chartered accountant and he’s shown us what he can do. And above all... And above all, how incredibly kind he is. It’s so good to know someone so warm-hearted.
Lunch has just finished. Dawn has called to bring the newspaper her father gets in the market town where he works, which he leaves for my uncle once he’s read it. I go with her back to hers. We have our last sewing session this afternoon. The housecoats are ready; there is only a final inspection to be carried out. How fine they are, the housecoats, and how good their makers will look in them!
Cornflower is wearing blue, like the first time I saw her; but today it’s the fluted embroidery which makes her housecoat so delightful.
Ponytail is in blue too, but her blue, slightly lighter than that of Dawn’s cousin, is enhanced with shades of colour that seem to shimmer along her tone-on-tone embroidery.
Hawkeye is encased in a pretty dark red; a dark red that magnificently sets off the golden yellow of her embroidery.
While I cannot claim that Dawn’s is the most beautiful housecoat, I can say that it’s the one I find the loveliest. Yes, of course, it’s Dawn’s; yes, of course, I chose the fabric – on Tuesday the sixth of August, so my diary tells me – but there’s no doubt about it, Dawn’s housecoat is lovely. Black, with tiny little multi-coloured flowers. And the embroidery, made of ribbons with little sky-blue knots! No doubt about it, Dawn’s housecoat is indeed beautiful!
Now it’s pullover time. It is done. Dawn puts it on. Will it fit? Will she like it? I know, she’s tried it on a thousand times; I know, she’ll be pleased with it because she already knows what it’s like, especially as she showed me how to go about it. Be that as it may, however, I wait expectantly as though it was the first time she was going to wear it.
She has put the pullover on. She has smiled at me with her eyes.
What is she looking for now? Here she is, with a handkerchief in her hand. She holds it out to me. I can see an embroidery, made with silk thread. It’s our little train bridge.
The last day of August. Tomorrow evening, Sunday, I leave on the six twenty-three, the outbound train I will take when I come back here during term time. The outbound train. If there’s an outbound train, that means there must be an inbound train. It means I will come back here, it means I will see Dawn again; and not only on the thirtieth of October, when half-term starts. The outbound train. The inbound train. Yes, yes, I know, I’ve already said it, I can see that, but I would like to see it written down in black and white a thousand times, a thousand times, I say! So that it never stops. No, actually, quite the opposite in fact: so that there is no longer either any outbound train or inbound train. So that we never have to be apart.
Lunch. My cousin and his wife are there.
“Off tomorrow, are you?” my cousin asks.
“Back on Friday, are you?” his wife answers.
All I have to do is nod.
“I worry that you’ll get worn out with all that travelling,” frets my aunt.
She’s been fretting since Thursday evening, ever since I told her about the train times.
“Your aunt’s right; you shouldn’t come too often,” my uncle advises me.
“The trains are very comfortable!” my cousin cries. “And whether he works on the train or at home...”
“That’s true,” nods his wife. “Important businessmen all work on trains!”
“He’s a bit young to be an important businessman,” my uncle comments.
“You shouldn’t come too often,” my aunt repeats.
My uncle nods slightly:
“I talked to my brother about it but he doesn’t seem to be much bothered.”
Yes, that’s true enough, my father doesn’t usually get bothered about small things.
“What matters most is your education,” my aunt goes on, still fretting.
“Oh, my uncle will keep an eye on him!” says my cousin in jest.
I speak earnestly:
“I have always been very demanding where my education is concerned.”
The moment of silence that has followed has shown me clearly that everyone was greatly satisfied with my declaration.
I am leaving this evening. After breakfast I go to Dawn’s.
“Where do you want to go?”
“What about you?” she replies.
I smile at her:
“Let’s take our little train. No need to look up the timetable, it’ll come when we get to our station.”
“And its next stop is our bridge, where we’ll both get off.”
Our little train has pulled out. A slight breeze has come to help the grass and the trees wave to us as we pass by. “You’re at home here,” whispers the breeze.
Our bridge. We both get off. Sitting with our legs dangling, we look out; the meadows where the cows live, our village...
“Come to the spring!”
Has Dawn spoken? I don’t know; but I have heard her. I have stood up. She has turned to me with a smile and said, as though in answer:
“Yes, I’m coming!"
The spring.
Holding each other tight, we watch the gently flowing spring, the way you watch a dream, the dream I see in Dawn’s eyes.
T H E E N D
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