I have to be a man. “Be a man!” my father has told me. “Be men!” the chief has told the warriors who were going to die. “Let’s be men!” the warriors who were going to kill have said.
I am no longer a little boy. People say “My boy” to me, yet I am a man-child. So one day I will become...
Men know things I don’t. All I have to do is learn, no doubt... at least that’s what I’ve been told. Does that mean I also have to learn without doubt – without doubting? Without doubting what I will learn? Without doubting those who will teach it to me? Without doubting what I will become?
Why am I not yet a man? Because I’m still young, of course. And there is certainly no other reason. Is it really so certain? When my father tells me to be a man, he doesn’t add “When you’ve grown up”. No, he means now. So it’s not a matter of experience, as I often hear said. So what am I lacking? More knowledge, more wisdom, doing what I have to do well? And what do I have to do anyway?
At home, my parents tell me I’m well-behaved, they say they’re happy with me, I do what they tell me... as a rule. At school, the teachers find me a hard worker, I get good marks.
What I have to do is something else. What men do. What men do...
The sun was in a hurry to rise this morning, delighted to have an untroubled view of earth; only a small pack of little white clouds had come to wish it a pleasant day. Now I’m on my way to school. The trees have guessed that the air will be warming up in the days to come and let their leaves bask in the sun.
There are neither little white clouds nor leaves at school. The teachers are there to protect us. School is a safe haven. The wind will never blow there.
I learn. Around me, my classmates learn. The same words, the same thoughts. Will we also have to do the same things? Will we be the same men, one day? There are other schools in other places; what are those who are in them doing? From time to time, between lessons, we can go out to play. We play – together. It’s pleasant, being together, playing the same games. Like leaves on the same tree. What do we know of the tree? Can we move to another tree?
“Are you coming with us?”
I hear the husky voice of a sturdy boy the same age as me. Is he looking for a tree? Or is he one himself? An oak... I often lean against him. He doesn’t say much but he listens. His advice is terse but precious. I nod. Robur – the oak – doesn’t care for unnecessary words.
As the weather is fine, we’re on our bikes. He lives on a farm half an hour away. We set off, three of us including his sister, a bit younger than him, who’s just got out of school too, at the same time as us. The road is pleasant, running between gently sloping hills on which the cows don’t need to brace themselves. They watch us like old acquaintances; Robur’s sister waves to this one or that one – they’re hers. She often goes to be with them, like she goes to the pond to sit with the ducks. She’s happier there than at school, which she doesn’t like – they don’t talk about life there, she says. She’s grown up in the middle of the fields, like meadowgrass.
Our tea’s waiting for us at Robur’s parents’. I’ve told mine that I’d be getting home – near the school in our little town – shortly before nightfall. My mother has told me to have fun – and work hard. My parents like Robur, as they do his family.
So we have fun, and we work. I play the teacher with Meadowgrass, helping her to understand her lesson. Should I be doing it? She trusts me. And what if I were wrong? Not about the lesson, that’s easy; no, about... about what? About life, that school doesn’t talk about? So that she will become a man? Do girls have to become men too? That’s what I said, men – be human. But that really isn’t what it’s all about. Men aren’t humans otherwise my father wouldn’t tell me to be a man, since I’m already human. But if I don’t help Meadowgrass, would she have to sort herself out on her own or should she ask others for help? Others who are more knowledgeable than me, perhaps. But if it isn’t experience that makes men, what is it then? Getting it wrong... Getting it wrong is saying or doing something that isn’t right. If you have to do what men do, right is what men do.
“What are you thinking?”
Meadowgrass looks at me with a smile.
“Thoughts,” says Robur.
We laugh.
The small pack of little white clouds is on its own again, talking to the sun. I want to join in their conversation but nature, although I am part of it, is not for me. It’s not allowed, in my class. It’s distracting to look at it, or even think about it. It’s men I have to listen to, not nature.
And yet I like listening to men. Listening, not learning. Even if I like what I hear. I feel like saying “above all”, but that’s just daft. Listening to men reassures me at first, then scares me. Fear comes unasked. “You’re a man, you mustn’t be afraid,” I’ve often heard. So fear must leave me if I want to become a man. Without fear... Without fear I feel abandoned, as if abandoned by a friend who protects me. Who else will protect me? Men? When I’m with Robur, when I’m with Meadowgrass, a breach is made in my fear; I’m not afraid of them.
In my room. I’m studying a text by a writer. A literary writer. I have learnt what “literature” means: knowing the alphabet and grammar. Grammar is easy, it’s a user manual. As for the alphabet, it’s not a word. Words aren’t written down. They’re in nature, they can be seen, they can be heard.
Still wrapped up in yesterday evening’s writer, I distractedly make my way to school. I know what I have to say in class; the teacher will be satisfied. But what would I say to the writer, if he were there? If he were to ask me what I had done with his text? The teacher wants me to read, to understand, to explain, perhaps to learn the text. What about the writer? Did he write for himself or for me? Would he want me to talk about him or about me? Can I talk about myself, at school? Yes, of course, I can talk about what I think of the text, the author, literature. I could even say what I have learnt from what I have read, the benefit I have reaped from it, how it might shape my future thoughts or conduct, for example. But is that the same as talking about myself? What does the author expect from me?
No school today. The little white clouds have taken advantage of the fact to sneak in, just on the edge of the horizon. It’s going to be a bit cooler. It’s the right time for a long walk. Robur and Meadowgrass suggest going up the big hill from where you can see another valley. We set off straight after lunch.
I like walking in the fields, on the uneven grass. Your foot lands on a familiar tussock, not at random like on a road. My town is not large and the fields are not far, yet I don’t sense any boundaries here. We go from one field to another and I feel as though I’m in a big house, passing from one room to another. But in a room you only find tools, and decoration. Here, it is life that furnishes each field.
The cows seem pleased by our visit and hurry over to say hello. I think they come to see Meadowgrass. They look at me kindly, perhaps a little sadly. No doubt they think that living anywhere other than in nature is impossible, and Meadowgrass, who thinks the same thing, must have told them that I live in town. Does she hide the fact that she goes to school from them?
Robur does not stroke the cows as he goes by, unlike his sister. He too looks at them attentively, but they are animals and he remains man and master.
“The earth is still moist.”
I give Meadowgrass a questioning look.
She goes on with a smile:
“The air has been dry for a while now. The cows get less to drink from the grass.”
“The leaves are out. I don’t think we’ll get any more frost,” her brother says cautiously.
We start to climb the big hill. The cows get smaller and smaller; the field, on the other hand, has not ceased trying to reach the horizon. Meadowgrass has stopped and is looking into the distance. I come up to her:
“This is better than school...”
She answers after a moment:
“I can’t look into the distance at school.”
Robur nods:
“Perhaps school teaches you to see even further... I don’t know...”
He adds, as though asking a question he didn’t expect an answer to:
“Nature isn’t the same after the school-men have been.”
“The cows still look at me the same way,” answers Meadowgrass with a slight emphasis.
“They give more milk.”
“Do you stop being my brother when you get a better mark than usual at school?”
“I’ve learnt more, I can do more things, do them better. If you ask me to help you, for example, I can do it better.”
“Will you love me better?”
Robur has stopped. He stands for a while without moving, looking down at the field we’ve just come from. He turns to his sister:
“I don’t want to love you less... I’d rather give less milk.”
We continue to climb in silence, from field to field, through the hedges that separate the... rooms. A few cows come over to walk with us for a while.
We have sat down for a moment. We look at... I don’t know, something invisible, the thing we live in. Meadowgrass has let out a sigh and turns to her brother:
“You’re right; the school-men have changed nature, they’ve changed my field into a classroom where the earth isn’t moist and where I have to listen without budging to what I’m told to do.”
“You’re told what to do at home too.”
“It’s my home.”
Robur says nothing. Meadowgrass goes on:
“I’m not afraid of doing hard work on the farm...”
Her brother breaks in:
“The school-men want to make life easier. Our parents are very tired come evening.”
“And if they had nothing left to do, what would they do?”
She starts to laugh:
“What a daft thing to say!”
She ponders for a while, then adds:
“What does that mean, doing nothing?”
Nobody says anything. I break the silence:
“Well, we’re going for a walk; that has no purpose.”
Meadowgrass exclaims:
“We talk about us, about what we think, about our life; we don’t just stand still watching the cows eat grass!”
I smile wistfully:
“Perhaps because we are men.”
Meadowgrass frowns doubtfully:
“There’s a girl in my class who does nothing, according to our teachers.”
“That’s just a way of saying she does nothing good, nothing useful.”
“If I stand still watching the cows graze I’m doing something: I’m looking. It’s neither good nor useful. The way you put it, I’d say I was doing nothing.”
I remain silent for a moment, then make up my mind:
“So men can do nothing...”
I add slowly:
“... and we don’t have a clue.”
We start to climb again. The slope gradually relaxes and stretches itself out along the top of the hill where familiar trees await. Cows come to see us, to tell us they haven’t forgotten us. Our pace eases, the distances fade into a slight mist. The path gets lost in the hill’s undulations.
On the other side, not far away, in a little hollow, is a spring, hidden by large oaks. On hot days its coolness protects us. We have brought our tea and sit down beside it. Meadowgrass unpacks the food and we eat hungrily.
“It’s good to have a spring, the animals always have fresh water,” comments Robur, yet again.
“And the school-men haven’t changed anything yet either,” his sister teases him.
“Do you think this place was the same as it is now, centuries and centuries ago?”
I speak up:
“There wasn’t any school back then.”
They both look at me, waiting for an explanation. I go on:
“Nature is no longer the same after the school-men haven’t been.”
Meadowgrass laughs, Robur smiles.
Cycling is quicker than walking. It’s Sunday and we’re heading for a farm below the spring we like so much. A black dog greets us, wagging its tail. The farmer isn’t there, he’s busy putting away his tools. The farmer’s wife tells us kindly that the children will be delighted to see us. They run up: a girl a little older than Robur and a boy my age. As the hill lies between us they go to a different school. The boy is full of curiosity; he would like to know everything about his farm and never leave it, like a snail its shell. The girl is less demonstrative; she loves her land as though it were of her doing, as though she were Demeter herself.
Some cattle have to be moved from one field to another; we all set off together, with the black dog. The cows rumble over impatiently, guessing what we’re about to do. They were already trying to graze in the next field the day before, Snail has told us. It’s not far to the new grass. We go and sit at the foot of an oak tree in the middle of the field, accompanied by the barely perceptible murmur of the little stream that comes from our spring, its trace just visible through the grass.
Snail is troubled. He’s had geometry this week.
“Have you done geometry too?” he asks us, sounding worried.
“Yes, we have. Why?”
My answer seems to bother him. He says with a downcast look:
“I didn’t really get it and the teacher said it was useful for measuring fields. If I get it wrong, how will I manage with the animals?”
It’s my turn to be bothered. I see geometry more as a science for important things, which measuring a field isn’t.
Demeter shrugs:
“A field wants its cows. If you get things wrong at school you get a bad mark, but here you won’t get it wrong about the field you need for your cows.”
Robur says softly:
“And what if they give more milk with the same amount of grass?”
“They’ll need less field!” answers Snail, quick as a flash.
I laugh:
“So you needn’t bother your head with geometry!”
“Can you get a bad mark without getting things wrong?”
Nobody seems able to answer Meadowgrass’s question, though Robur tries.
“Demeter was talking about getting things wrong at school and so getting a bad mark at school...”
His sister interrupts him nervously:
“Does school only teach what you have to do at school?”
“It also teaches you how to do better than you already can, I suppose.”
“Do you always have to do better?”
Robur leaves his sister’s question unanswered.
We remain silent, looking around us. The cows graze peacefully, the calves run around the field in quest of adventure, a slight mist covers the hills as the sun warms them.
Demeter breaks the silence:
“Does nature do better when it builds mountains?”
We listen. She goes on:
“You can learn how to build a house better for people, but if you put a mountain where the sea ought to be, what will the fish do?”
Snail pretends to be worried:
“If I learn how to measure my field better, am I building a house or a mountain?”
We all laugh. But why doesn’t our laughter last very long?
I’m listening to the teacher this morning. I’m interested in what he’s saying; he’s talking about geography. He tells us about far-away countries of which I know nothing. It’s as though I’m living in other places, leading other lives. And yet the people there often do the same things, except that it’s somewhere else... When I go to Meadowgrass’s farm I am somewhere else too. If the teacher were to talk about the hills round where she lives, would I be as curious? What about her? I think she’d like it very much if he were to talk to her about her fields... But he can’t talk about everyone’s fields. Perhaps Meadowgrass’s fields are the same as those on the other side of the world that the teacher talks about. Will he tell her that?
“You will learn...”, the teacher has said at the end of the lesson. Yes, of course, you have to learn in order to know and knowing is pleasant, useful even. But no-one will tell me about Meadowgrass’s fields better than her.
Maths this afternoon. It’s easy, no need to think, only to reflect. Should one think or reflect about the consequences of a calculation that comes out right? Did nature think or reflect when it built mountains?
Some homework this evening. A bit of help – by phone – for Meadowgrass with her arithmetic. She has said “With you, the numbers are in the grass beside me, I can talk to them.” I didn’t really understand but I liked it. It reminded me that Snail hadn’t told me what his geometry problem was the day before. I called him. It went well. I’m doing my homework.
This morning I have answered the maths teacher’s questions. He was happy, I had given the right answers. It’s pleasant, to be in agreement with the person on whom school marks depend... on whom I depend. It’s like the coming of sleep, with its quietness, its immobility, its lack of fear, its indifference. In maths, you can’t disagree when you’ve reflected and come to the right solution together. What if I were to start thinking?
Break time. We have to play. I love playing, as long as I’m allowed to do something else from time to time. Thinking lazily, listening to the wind blow, dreaming dreams that evaporate, giving and receiving friendly words. And reflecting about mathematics, and storing up the secrets of the world that my teachers reveal to me, and diving into the sea while it becomes a mountain.
“Are you coming to play?”
Coming...
At dinner I talked about seas and mountains. My mother smiled and said “How odd...”; my father gave me explanations. Explanations that told me a lot, and especially that I couldn’t dive into that sea... As for knowing about whether or not to build this or that, I’ll find out at school.
Did nature go to school? And if nature got it wrong, is it because it didn’t understand properly?
“... and the more you listen, the more you learn,” finishes up my father.
I can’t have been listening, wrapped up in my own thoughts, and my father imagined I had been paying attention to what he was saying. Before falling asleep I dreamed that I was a fish and that I was climbing mountains.
Meadowgrass had a good laugh when I told her about my exploits the previous day. Robur said nothing. Actually, that’s not quite true: he said I had been absent-minded at school and asked if I had been careful during my climb, which made Meadowgrass laugh even more. Then he talked about what we would do the following day, when there was no school. If I agreed, we would go to see his father’s uncle, to whom he had something to take.
“Oh, yes!” cried Meadowgrass, “I love going there, and Great-Aunt makes such lovely blackcurrant jam!”
I accepted readily. Their farm was about half an hour’s bike ride from Robur’s, taking back roads and passing through the great-uncle’s chestnut field, which made the excursion particularly enjoyable. And I never say no to jam.
Nature does not only build mountains. It has also prepared the great sunlit mansion, made of hills, studded with trees, carpeted with grass, watered by streams, inhabited by familiar creatures, through which we pass shortly after lunch on the way to Great-Uncle’s.
The road winds its way between the hedges, brushing against this one, tacking around that one, passing the entrance to a field where cows graze nonchalantly, then, a little further on, circling a farm where we pass the time of day with the farmers; Robur exchanges a few words with them about their animals and his. The road continues, familiarly entering a little village – more a cluster of houses, actually, that met up one day and have stayed together ever since; a greeting here, a greeting there and we’re on our way again. Suddenly the road hurries up, heading straight for a mysterious place to join five friends with whom it whispers for a moment in secret; then it rambles off gently towards the chestnut field, which it leaves us to coast down and end our journey.
Great-Aunt has seen us in the field and, delighted, comes to meet us.
“How lovely of you to come and see us!” she exclaims with a beaming smile.
She gives us all a hug and, seeing her great-nephew looking rather embarrassed, adds kindly:
“I know you’re here to bring your great-uncle something, but you didn’t have to come in person. I’m very happy to see you.”
Robur responds with a shy smile.
“We always have the same things to do here,” she goes on, looking at us all. “You brighten up our lives a bit.”
“Can I give you a hand with anything?” asks Meadowgrass.
“Yes, and we too!” says her brother emphatically.
I nod my head vigorously.
Great-Aunt points to the orchard:
“There are lots of strawberries this year. I was just about to go and pick some.”
Our answer is to set off for the orchard.
“I hope there’ll be lots of blackcurrants too!” says Meadowgrass eagerly.
We pick. Great-Aunt has encouraged us to help ourselves to some strawberries; we need no second invitation. They are fully ripe: the jam will be good, or so says Meadowgrass. In the meantime we talk about farm life, haymaking, the cow with a broken horn that is a cause of some concern, the egg found on the tractor seat – just in time, fortunately –, the tractor itself, which Robur had helped to mend, the little pig with big floppy ears that Meadowgrass likes so much, and Great-Uncle’s health, because he’s getting a bit tired these days. Great-Aunt probably doesn’t know what the word means in her own case, for she never complains – doesn’t have time, she says.
How far away geometry seems now. Sometimes, while we talk, I get the impression that life has been stripped of all the adornments that make it so desirable to people. Here it is life itself that you have to love, not its artifices. If I want to be a man, where do I have to be?
“Are you well-behaved at school?” asks Great-Aunt.
School... Is it life itself? Or is it the artifice that makes life seem easier?
Meadowgrass frowns:
“I am... because I don’t think about not being.”
Great-Aunt doesn’t understand. Meadowgrass insists:
“I learn my lessons...”
Great-Aunt breaks in quickly:
“That’s good. Studying is important. There are things we don’t know how to do. We’ve already been told our... yield...”
She stumbles over the word.
“... could be better.”
She stops for a moment, then finishes up:
“When you take care of your farm, you’ll do it better than we do.”
She looks at Robur:
“You too.”
She adds:
“You’re a man, you are.”
She has turned to me:
“And there’s a lot to do in town, too.”
She ponders for a brief moment, then goes back to picking strawberries.
There we go, done for the day! Now it’s time to make the jam. After having had our mouths full, it’s our hands’ turn.
“There’s no point making too much,” says Great-Aunt to Meadowgrass with a laugh, “because you aren’t going to get any!”
“What do you mean, I’m not going to get any!” Meadowgrass cries.
“You said yourself you wanted blackcurrant.”
Meadowgrass scowls:
“Yes, yes, I know, but your strawberries are too good not to eat.”
She ponders for a moment, then says:
“Even if I learn how to do it better at school, I still prefer yours.”
She goes to hug Great-Aunt, who gives a happy smile.
I am still dreaming of yesterday, the bike ride, the strawberries...
The literature teacher is going through our last piece of homework. I have nothing to worry about, I knew what I had to say, I’ll get a good mark. Robur finds it hard to understand that you have to talk about things that don’t exist. I’m used to it. We in town don’t live with animals, they’re on the meat counter at the butcher’s. The teacher advises us to talk about our own ideas. Will he understand what Robur thinks?
And yet the teacher understands that one of the pupils doesn’t like a particular character, and tells the pupil that it’s all right to have preferences. He adds that the most important thing is to understand the author’s intentions.
Understand... Yes, it is always necessary to understand other people. I don’t need to understand Meadowgrass. On the other hand, I do need to understand maths. I use them. I use them...
My parents are happy. I’ve got good marks again. Robur’s parents are happy too when their cow has given them the milk they asked of it. And I too am happy to drink it. I can’t be a cow; I’m a man. No, actually, I’m just a human. Am I closer to the cow or to the man? I have to become a man so that my parents no longer ask me for my marks... And in that case the teacher will no longer need to give me any. Meadowgrass’s great-aunt doesn’t need marks in order to pick her strawberries. But someone has made a road so that we can go to see her. The road has to be good, otherwise I would give the builder a bad mark. Is it a man? If so, does that mean one can also give men marks? Otherwise... And yet it’s not a cow.
This Sunday my parents are taking me with them to the city to see their friends. The road isn’t like the one that goes to Great-Aunt’s. Meadowgrass and Robur feel ill at ease on it, and they are lost in the city. I’m more used to it, though I always feel far, far away... in another land. Even though it’s only an hour’s drive.
At lunch my father tries to talk about matters he has in common with his friend – property sales, estates, inheritances, law... My mother keeps him on a short leash and talks about matters she has in common with her friend – housework, cooking, relations... and children. Children means me: their son, much older than me, has finished his studies and lives elsewhere.
As I have the good fortune to be good at school, my parents’ friends predict dream futures for me, by which I mean their dreams, not mine – no way! Do, do, always do... You have to, you have to, you have to. You have to do! No, people don’t tell me what to do; they say “He will do” this or that. Of course he will, because he can. Are the futures they build for me mountains in place of the sea? The sea... Which sea? My town? Or Meadowgrass and Robur’s fields?
A few short streets separate me from my school. Friendly houses surround me. Yesterday, in the city, the houses had retreated from me and the broad avenues had opened up before me with indifference.
I return to my classmates and my teacher with pleasure; during the lesson we are going to speak a language that isn’t ours, so that we can travel and talk with people who live in other countries. How can you speak with words you haven’t lived with? Robur learns these words and has told me they will come in handy for him in his conversations with school-men. He told me that with a laugh... But what if it were true? If you couldn’t talk with friends? With school-men you talk about what is; with friends you talk about what you live. Is life the same everywhere? Is it the same in the fields, and in the city, whose language I happen to know?
Yesterday listened to the last lessons at school. The day after tomorrow our classrooms will be surprised not to see us. Will they feel sad or relieved? We have often been rowdy, sure, but always full of an unobtrusive affection for the small havens they offered us during our lessons. The teachers no longer feel the urgent need to impart the knowledge they have been told to give us; they already seem to be heading off for summer and take advantage of the fact to talk to us freely about their vision of what they have introduced us to during the year. We listen to them wide-eyed.
The last day of school. The teachers have never had to work so hard. They are peppered with questions. Why on this of all days? We have always been able to ask questions, even been encouraged to do so. So why? Because we weren’t expected to learn anything from what we were being told? And yet I got the impression I was going to remember what I was hearing even better.
The time has come. Leaving my classroom, I looked back at it with a sort of slightly worried attention: will I come back next year and find again everything that has been mine?
We all go our separate ways, though we don’t really live very far from each other. Robur and Meadowgrass are expecting me at theirs tomorrow.
I hardly have time to finish my lunch; Robur has just told me he’ll be taking the hay in before evening – his father fears a storm. The air is thick and hot. I pedal hard up the steep hill at the start of my route; it is followed by another little hill, then the final descent to the farm. They are hard at work in the big, slightly sloping hay meadow. Robur’s father is glad to see me.
“Good job the school-men are here to help,” comments Robur sarcastically.
As his father doesn’t understand, I explain what it’s all about. Meadowgrass mutters:
“Yeah, yeah, they made the tractors, but I have to know how to stack the hay.”
“Why didn’t you cut the grass yourself?” Robur teases his sister.
“I could never cut it as high as your machine!” retorts Meadowgrass.
“And you reckon the machine won’t be able to stack the hay better than you one day?”
“Oh no, I’m quite sure it will. Better than me, yes, but not the way I...”
She trails off, then adds sadly:
“I hope they won’t start making motor cows...”
Her father has looked at her for a long while, chewing his lip.
It rained all night. Listening to the thunder, I dreamed of the hills over there, dripping with light from the lightning.
We finish stacking the hay, tossed into the barn any which way the day before. The heat has gone and the sun has stopped by to watch the still-wet grass glisten.
Robur’s mother has prepared a substantial tea. His father is there, back from the sloping meadow.
“That’s good,” he says.
He is as talkative as Robur.
Robur’s mother has turned to me:
“You’re a real help to us, and a good friend to our children.”
She wants to say something else, hesitates, and gives me a thick slice of ham. The father pours me some tea.
“On Monday,” announces Meadowgrass, “I’m going to make a chocolate cake.”
She adds for her brother:
“You can go and ask Daisy for some cream, you can tell her it’s for me.”
She gives me a smile:
“And you.”
“And me!” says Robur, pretending to grumble. “All I have to do is milk the cow...”
“Ah, but you’re a man,” says Meadowgrass sarcastically.
You’re a man... My father has never told me that you had to milk cows in order to become a man. Yes, I know, it’s daft to say that. I ask Meadowgrass:
“To be a man...”
I start again:
“Do you have to be a man to milk a cow?”
It’s her father who replies:
“It’s not woman’s work. You have to be a man.”
So women can’t become... men?
“And where would we get the time to do men’s work?” the mother responds sharply.
So a woman could be a... man if she had the time?
The father gives a long frown of approval and comments:
“And it’s not easy...”
He adds after a pause:
“You have to be strong...”
So that’s all it is, then. Men are strong. I’ll do lots of gym at school next year. If I get very good at it, the teacher will say: “There, you’re a man now!”
Tea over, we return to the barn to wrap ourselves in the intoxicating smell of hay.
Yesterday was spent tidying away school things – exercise books, textbooks – and preparing a timetable for Robur and me, to revise a few things that might not have been fully understood, and perhaps create a little surprise or two next year. Meadowgrass has already asked me to share the secrets of the class I was in, and which will be hers next term.
At lunch this Sunday, my father asked me if I had been satisfied with my year at school. I said that I had learnt some interesting things and that I was curious to find out what they didn’t want to tell me about.
My father expressed surprise:
“What do you mean, the things they don’t want to tell you about?”
I answered firmly:
“They tell me it’s not part of the curriculum...”
My father broke in:
“Oh, that’s normal, then. You’ll be told in other classes.”
“It’s not part of any curriculum.”
I was looking squarely at my father. He made little movements with his hands, looked quickly this way and that, then said in a tone of concern:
“What sort of questions can you be asking then, for them not to answer? They can’t be...”
He stopped suddenly, as though he’d come up against a brick wall.
I went on, still just as firmly:
“At school they teach you what you have to do and how to do it, they teach you what the world is like, they teach you what others think.”
I pause. My father seems bewildered, my mother is looking up at me, baffled. I finish slowly:
“They don’t teach you how to live.”
A long silence sets in. My parents look down at their plates.
I murmur:
“’Be a man!’ my father said. He didn’t tell me how, and school didn’t answer.”
Yesterday afternoon was quiet. My parents both had things to do after lunch. Then we talked about nothing much and finished the day by watching a film. Nothing had happened.
The sun has invaded the sky and is starting to go down; I arrive at the farm. Robur is rummaging around in the tractor, Meadowgrass in the chocolate cake. I prefer the chocolate cake and prove it by running my finger round the bowl. I get rapped with a wooden spoon for my pains, but have had enough time to get something to lick off.
“Is it good, then?” Meadowgrass asks me with a smile.
“I couldn’t really tell you without another taste...”
“And then you won’t be hungry any more.”
“All right, all right, I’ll be good and wait.”
After a while I say nonchalantly:
“Can I give you a hand?”
“What, with eating chocolate? How very thoughtful. No thank you, there’s no need. On the other hand, you can perk up the stove.”
I perk up the stove. I mooch about the kitchen.
“I still have stuff to do,” Meadowgrass tells me gently. “I think my brother’s waiting for you, he needed help.”
“Oh, yes, right!” I answer brightly. “I’m on my way.”
She sends me out with a long smile.
Robur is still rummaging around in the tractor.
“Ah, just in time!” he cries when he sees me coming.
“Are you hoping I’ll find out what’s wrong?”
He laughs:
“I know you never would. You can help me by holding this.”
Has he said what it is? Maybe...
“Your sister would say your tractor isn’t worth two good oxen.”
“Oxen get sick too.”
He tightens something with a spanner, then goes on:
“Have you ever tended a sick ox?”
No, I’ve never tended a sick ox. Nor have I...
“I’ve never mended a tractor either. I couldn’t do what you do.”
“You’re better at school than me.”
Yes.
“Yes, that’s true.”
Yes, that’s true. What else could I say? Robur hands me a screwdriver:
“Here, tighten that.”
The tractor starts. Can you tighten screws on an ox?
The cake is ready...
“It’s not ready yet, it’s in the oven. You can have it for tea!” cries Meadowgrass, barring our way into the kitchen.
She laughs, seeing our faces fall.
“Come and show me the books you’ve brought,” she says to me.
We go into the barn, where the smell of hay awaits us.
The hay, on which Robur has stretched out lazily. Once again he teases his sister:
“Hard at work already! You’ll become a school-girl.”
His sister is quick to answer:
“The more I know, the more I can keep tabs on your school-men!”
“And what good will that do you?”
“I can stop them from putting a motor in my cows.”
“You’re daft!” laughs Robur affectionately.
“And that’s why I have to learn!”
We laugh. Though I don’t really. Men know things, and I have to learn in order to become a man. And when I have become a man I will have to stop men from...
The chocolate cake was delicious.
This morning I have prepared a commentary for Meadowgrass on a literary text from a book I had brought her yesterday. I want to talk to her about the reasons why the writer studies a character he has made up, and who therefore does not exist, according to Robur.
The sun comes back towards us after having explored the summits of the sky. We are hiding under a tree through which it is trying to spy us. A cow has drawn near to listen to what we are saying.
I start my... presentation.
“What’s the difference between a character who exists and one who doesn’t?”
“When’s break-time?” says Robur with a yawn.
Meadowgrass gives him a condescending smile:
“It’s too hard for you, I know. I’ll tell you all about what I did in class, I think it’s the one you’re going to be in next year.”
“’Fraid not, I won’t be a teacher yet next year!”
I raise my voice:
“I’ll put you both in detention!”
“Ooooh!” cries the class.
The cows look up in perfect harmony and gaze at us with clear disapproval.
I go on in my best teacher’s voice:
“May I go on?”
I get a moo for an answer. The class giggles.
Meadowgrass assumes a serious air:
“Please do; I’m listening. Forget about the duffers.”
Robur pulls a face. Order is restored. I continue:
“When I talk about a character I’ve made up, he isn’t among us.”
“Bravo! Jolly good!” interjects Robur.
I ignore him:
“When I talk about a real character who is somewhere else, he isn’t among us.”
“Oh, I get it,” says Robur solemnly. “If he’s somewhere else, it means he’s not here.”
“And I get it too, but properly,” asserts Meadowgrass. “If he isn’t among us, we can’t know whether he exists or not.”
Robur becomes serious all of a sudden:
“I can easily find out if he exists; all I have to do is phone him!”
Meadowgrass stares at him wide-eyed:
“Oh, you’re here. I didn’t see you come in.”
“Oh, yes, little sister, I’m here,” says Robur mock-sarcastically, “only you haven’t responded to what I just said.”
“That’s easy enough, big brother. What if he’s disappeared and we don’t know where he is?”
“He’ll come back one day.”
“And what if he doesn’t come back, like those who left to go far away in days gone by?”
“They existed before, people saw them.”
Meadowgrass ponders. I step in:
“Yesterday, a boy I didn’t know asked me where the baker’s was. I saw him again later and he laid into me for directing him to a bakery that didn’t have any more buns.”
“It wasn’t your fault; he should have said he was looking for buns,” protests Meadowgrass.
“You mean if you want the right answer you have to ask the right question?”
“Yes, of course.”
I go on steadily:
“There may be people less bright than you who don’t find it quite so obvious.”
Robur shrugs:
“Tell them your story, they’ll get it.”
“I made it up.”
This morning I finish up the revision timetable for Robur and me. My mother is pleased:
“You work hard, you and your friends. I’m glad to see it. But you do have to rest a bit all the same. You must be tired after all that school.”
“I don’t feel tired, Mum. And I really like the work we do on the farm, I feel as though I’m living things that school was trying to show me. This afternoon we’re going to weed the vegetable patch so that the vegetables grow better.”
I remain lost in thought for a moment, then add with an affectionate grin:
“And your meals will be better.”
We weed, we dig; the little world of the vegetable patch wakes up, breathes, stretches out in the sunshine. Time is spent in simple movements, leaving the mind unengaged; open-ended time which unfurls while we go from carrot to radish, from cauliflower to courgette.
The swallows invite us to have a breather before tea-time, in the barn where they go to bring their little ones some tasty morsel. We find the hay restful, the scent still just as compelling.
“I’m starting to feel hungry!” exclaims Robur. “I hope my mum’ll give us something real to eat, not something made up!”
Meadowgrass smiles teasingly:
“No worries, you’ll be able to fill your belly. But when I made my chocolate cake, I invented the recipe...”
“It wasn’t the recipe I ate, it was the cake!”
“And what if I’d given you a piece of chocolate and a lump of butter?”
A mocking smile appears on Robur’s lips:
“I’d forgotten you’d become a school-girl.”
I turn to Meadowgrass and say innocently:
“Next time, you can keep it all for me.”
Lunch was very pleasant. My mother had mentioned yesterday’s conversation to my father and my father congratulated me on how seriously Robur and I were going about getting ready for the next year at school.
And now here we are, hard at work. Meadowgrass chips in by asking us lots of questions that we have our work cut out to answer, even though they’re about our previous year’s lessons. Knowing something doesn’t mean to say you can explain it; and the fact of explaining helps us to find out more.
Robur is impressed:
“Well now! And I thought you didn’t like school!”
“It’s not school I don’t like, it’s what they tell me at school.”
She ponders for a moment then corrects herself:
“No, it’s the way they tell me.”
Robur assumes a superior air:
“What do you expect when you’re with people who...”
He fumbles for words; Meadowgrass quickly finishes off for him:
“People who can’t even remember their last year’s lessons!”
She laughs at our hangdog expression and adds, smiling kindly:
“But thanks to whom I’m a bit less scared of the school-men.”
Robur has come over this morning with Meadowgrass to study with me a text by a writer that my father has in his library; we can use the many books and dictionaries in the library to help us. The room is large, the armchairs are comfortable, and the heavy oak table gives us all the necessary space for the books we need. It’s a good place to work, yet Meadowgrass and Robur do not really feel at home there. They like to come over to my house, they think it’s lovely; but one day Meadowgrass said to me: “There are walls where you live”.
At lunch, my father told Robur that he and his sister were very good friends for me, and that he thought the coming year would be very good for our studies, given how hard we were working. “The future depends on how you prepare it,” he said sententiously, looking at Robur. He spoke about the farm, to which a good field was to be added; he would be taking care of the paperwork for the purchase. “You tell your father he’s got good children,” he also said to Robur.
We are cycling towards the hilltop, from whence you can see into the distance without anything getting in the way. At the end of the wood that crowns it, a small clearing acts as an antechamber; a concert of birds lines the walls. Through the sparse trees around the edge of the clearing, we can see the square tower of the farm, right at the bottom of the steep slope that leads to it. Here there are no walls...
“Can you watch someone who doesn’t exist live?”
Meadowgrass has spoken softly, as though to herself. After a long silence Robur begins:
“If it’s an example...”
He stops there. Meadowgrass’s voice is still soft:
“What if it’s a dream? He exists in the dream.”
She goes on after a short pause:
“Why does the writer want to talk about his dream?”
Dream. I think of dream images:
“Perhaps because he can’t show it.”
“Why do you say that?” Robur asks me. “He can draw what he’s seen.”
“You’ll see what he’s seen, but you can’t see it yourself.”
Meadowgrass says sadly:
“So it’s the writer we watch living, not what he describes.”
She suddenly brightens up:
“The writer! That’s who I want to know!”
She adds with a laugh:
“And then I’ll tell the story of his life!”
I chuckle; Robur grumbles:
“Me, I want to see for myself.”
“Well, look, then!” cries Meadowgrass, amused.
Robur gapes at her:
“Since you can’t...”
“You can look at whatever you want around you! Yourself!”
Robur has pulled himself together.
“But then you can’t see what I’ve seen,” he answers his sister ironically.
“Oh yes, I can! All you have to do is take a photo of what you’re looking at...”
I have taken the photo: Meadowgrass, Robur, the countryside... I have taken it with my heart.
Arriving at the farm, I glance up towards the invisible clearing where we were sitting yesterday. It tells me I can come back whenever I want to.
I’m just in time to catch the lettuces that were about to bolt. To make amends we sow carrots and radishes, which will be ready for us come winter.
It’s nearly tea-time, fortunately because we’re ravenous.
“Here we are!” the tomatoes, cucumbers and spring onions tell us.
At table, the father talks to us about the new field; it has to be made ready for the cows he will soon have to go and fetch. We decide to go along too, as the farm is close to a river where we like to go swimming.
Sunday. A studious day. The old oak table is covered with books. Books on astronomy. In class, we were told about calculations used to identify stars. The stars shine in the pages we are looking at. We know pretty well how to do the calculations, except for a few examples that we are revising so that we understand them more fully. We act as teachers for Meadowgrass, who dutifully follows the calculations.
Well, not as dutifully as all that because suddenly she declares:
“How can we talk about the stars, since they don’t exist?”
“Oh, not again!” groans Robur.
I am surprised:
“You can see them...”
She breaks in:
“You told me we could only see images from the past. So where are they, then, the stars?”
I don’t know what to say. Robur has his head down in his exercise book.
Meadowgrass is thoughtful:
“We learn about the past at school, in history for example.”
She says nothing for a moment, then adds calmly:
“When I talk about last year’s hay, it’s so that I know how much I need this year.”
I have found something to say:
“History teaches us...”
“Yes, yes. And what about the stars?”
“As we saw a moment ago, they help us to understand...”
“Yes, you’re right. So our life is made up of things that don’t exist.”
I protest:
“No, it’s made up of what’s been seen to exist, and the consequences of which have been seen; and that’s what also shows us how to live. Your hay, for example.”
“My hay grew, the animals ate it; that I’ve seen. If you’d only given me a photo of the hay, how could I have known what happened to it?”
She dreams for a moment, then adds:
“What happened to the stars?”
Robur has finally looked up.
“I thought we were doing calculations,” he mutters. “But perhaps my little sister will tell the teacher that the stars don’t exist, so we can’t calculate anything.”
“I couldn’t say that,” Meadowgrass retorts. “If a school-man says it, on the other hand, it will be called a new theory.”
A school-man... It has to be a school-man. Just a man is not enough. So why do I have to become a man?
Yesterday’s stars have gone out. Robur is finishing mending the somewhat sagging fence in the new field. I help him to knock in the last wooden stake. Then the three of us go to help chase away the grasses the cows don’t want. The field has become... edible, Meadowgrass has said with a satisfied smile.
We are cycling. Downhill. To where nothing goes either up or down, where you can’t stop at the top of a hill to look into the distance, where you can’t snuggle into a hollow for a good rest.
We cycle. The plain has no end, just as it has no beginning. We follow the bull path. With no hilltop to hide it, the sun looks down on us despite the early hour.
We cycle. The thought of the river’s coolness helps us to bear the heat which is gradually embracing us.
The father is already there, and we can see him talking with the farmer when we arrive. The cows are ready for the move. “I hope they’ll like our grass,” frets Meadowgrass after inspecting them.
We have lunch with the farmers. They talk with the father, about animals, about the hot weather that is drying up the soil, about the hay, which they’ll need more of than usual, about the farm which needs upkeep... A hen has come by to take part in the conversation, and perhaps also to glean some particularly good crumbs that have fallen from the table.
There is no talk of stars here. The talk is about things they need every day and without which they can’t live. Where is the time to be found to even want to dream about stars? And yet the stars are there, even if they don’t exist, and they light up the night when it is deprived of the moon.
The farmers are not school-men. Do they seek to be men? Or are they men already?
The river’s cool waters enfold us. We play with the current, which makes little effort to thwart us. A cow has come to drink. A fish has passed close by us then fled, tail flashing.
We meet up by our little spring with Demeter and Snail, who have dropped by. The sun has invaded the sky and the great oaks have clustered together to preserve the welcome coolness that the spring brings us from below ground.
“Are they good, the cows you went to fetch yesterday?” Snail is eager to know.
“They are good cows,” Robur answers with conviction.
He ponders, then gives a detailed description of the animals. Snail approves the choice. The black dog, which has not forgotten to tag along, also seems to approve.
Demeter has noticed that Meadowgrass is looking worried.
“Is something up?” she asks her.
Meadowgrass hesitates:
“No, I don’t think so. I reckon... I hope our grass will be to their liking.”
Snail seeks to reassure her:
“Grass isn’t the same everywhere but the animals’ll get used to it, especially as they’re the same breed as yours.”
Demeter says pensively:
“Yes, it’s true, they’ll get used to it...”
She goes on:
“I’ve already put the question to a cow that had just arrived.”
Snail smiles with amused irony:
“My sister talks to cows...”
“No, I don’t, I don’t talk to cows... She told me it wasn’t the grass...”
She leaves the end of the sentence hanging. Meadowgrass picks it up:
“She’d lost her field, her hedges, her cowshed...”
“I’ve seen their cowshed; ours is better,” breaks in Robur.
Demeter smiles sadly:
“Yes, but it was hers.”
Snail seems surprised:
“When you give a man something better, he’s happy!”
So a man wants something better. I can’t help asking:
“So cows aren’t capable of understanding?”
Demeter answers me, looking at the herd not far away from us:
“They are capable of understanding that their field has disappeared even though they weren’t looking for another one.”
I insist:
“And what if they were being given better grass all the same?”
“With better grass their milk would be better.”
Demeter’s answer rouses Robur:
“So it’s true that cows aren’t capable of understanding! With better milk, they’d feed their calves better!”
I advance an explanation:
“You can only understand what you know...”
Meadowgrass corrects me:
“Cows don’t eat just any old grass, and they prefer certain types to others.”
“In that case they ought to be happy to find the grass they prefer, even if they’ve had to leave their field,” states Snail.
A long silence has settled over us. I try to analyse the reasoning, as they say at school:
“A man looks for something better; if he’s given it, he’s happy. Cows are capable of understanding what is better; if they’re given it, they’re not happy.”
“Oh, hats off to the teacher!” exclaims Robur mockingly.
“It wouldn’t hurt you to do some reasoning yourself!” snaps Meadowgrass.
“I await yours!”
The sister does not give ground:
“Why not? Right, then! Cows want to live their own lives...”
“So do men!”
“Having something better means changing your life.”
“Well then, choosing your grass also means changing your life.”
Demeter chips in:
“It’s the grass in their field. They’re not looking to produce new types.”
Snail says soothingly:
“If you give it to them, they take it.”
A short silence is broken by Meadowgrass:
“Living their own lives means still being cows.”
Demeter explains, seeing that her brother doesn’t understand:
“Cows aren’t looking to be elephants.”
Her brother bursts out laughing:
“Because men look to be elephants?”
“Men often dream of being... something else. Inhabitants of another planet, for example; or inhabitants of... nowhere.”
“What do you mean, nowhere?” asks Robur, who doesn’t understand either.
Demeter goes on:
“Men often dream of being... someone else. Somone who can do what they can’t, for example; someone who can... who can do everything.”
A long silence has settled over us. I do not try to analyse the reasoning, as they say at school.
I wake up heavy-eyed. I have dreamt, no doubt. My thoughts are muddled. I think I spoke out loud as I was waking up. Words gradually come back to me. Words I’m not sure I understand. “Cows want to be cows... Men don’t want to be men.”
My hot chocolate is waiting for me. It’s been waiting for a long time because it’s quite late.
“You slept a long time,” my mother frets. “Did you overdo it yesterday? Did you go far?”
“No, we stayed close to the spring.”
“Ah, so you were working then!”
“No, we were talking about the animals that had just arrived.”
“Did it all go well? You father said it was a good field.”
“Very well; the animals are very fine.”
“I think the farmer really knows how to choose them.”
My mother is reassured by our conversation.
I have gone out to buy some crayons for our maps. The streets are full of houses – and there are walls, as Meadowgrass would say. And yet these walls are not like those in the city, they let life through. A woman is gossiping with a neighbour leaning against her window-sill, someone somewhere is humming a tune, two boys are sitting on their front steps and chatting.
I run into a classmate. He tells me what he’s up to. He sings in a choir in the city, he goes there with his friends. He reads adventure stories. Exciting adventures that happen in far-off lands. He plays football with other friends. Other games too. He leaves me because he’s in a hurry. “Don’t you want to come...?” he asks me as he rushes off. I wasn’t sure whether he meant come and sing or come and play. I thought about the spring in Meadowgrass’s field. I hadn’t dared mention it.
The Earth is spread out on the old oak table. I’m looking for a map we can study tomorrow, like the ones they give us at school. My father has helped me find books and atlases in his library. He seemed imbued with the importance he placed on the work I wanted to do. He was going about his business with the same application he would show in his professional pursuits. “You work hard!” he told me on his way out.
So now here I am, running around our planet looking for one of those places that set us dreaming. An inaccessible mountain beribboned with immense clouds, a vast ocean criss-crossed by deep currents, a broad river lazing its way between giant trees, home to basking crocodiles with deadly jaws, or a lost island inhabited by palm trees and savages brandishing sharp spears and performing traditional dances.
They don’t ask us to dream at school, though. They want something else. A big country, then, whose rugged terrain and innumerable activities we have to identify and situate on the map? The countries jostle each other in my books. Each one claims first place.
Well, we too have our cows and our cauliflowers that enable us to live. And why go to places so far away to see landscapes that we don’t look at on our own doorstep? Sky, water, earth. I know, nothing elsewhere is like what we have at home. There’ll never be palm trees here. But who knows about our little spring?
I have spread out the map of our paths and our fields. That’s what we will study tomorrow.
Robur and Meadowgrass are delighted by the idea I had yesterday.
“So much for the books that take no interest in us!” cries Meadowgrass.
“Oh, just as long as people buy our cows,” comments her brother.
He glances at the map I have prepared and adds:
“Knowing our own country better can be useful.”
We have never found geography so exciting.
“What a horrid-looking map!” exclaims Meadowgrass.
She sets out the crayons and says firmly:
“Your colours are much nicer. I’m going to redo the whole thing.”
We follow the paths we know so well, almost as if we were actually on them. We shelter beneath the trees, pant our way up the steep bits, swoop down the descents. How many hedges are corrected, and how many copses and thickets!
Meadowgrass has brought a new map to life with the colours of her crayons. The streams glint in the sunshine, the woods are shrouded in mystery and you can smell the scent of new-mown hay. “That’s why you should sow here, take the animals there,” the colours whisper to us.
The storm wakes me. I get up quickly and go to the window to watch the heavy raindrops I can hear falling between the ripping thunder. Far away in the distance, behind the great cloud that has replaced the sky, there is the hint of a pale smile. In an hour or so the sun will come and set the veil drawn by the rain ashimmer. And soon, little white clouds will come and brighten up our new-found sky.
I no longer feel sleepy. I leave a note for my mother and now here I am cycling along the road to the farm through the last ragings of the storm.
The farm is just as wide awake as I am. A promising smell wafts from the kitchen. Nobody was expecting me but nobody was surprised to see me. Meadowgrass has already laid a place for me at the table. “Oh, I’m glad you’re here!” she tells me happily. “There’s plenty to do,” says Robur stolidly. Then he takes me to his room to give me dry clothes.
We eat peacefully. The rain is still falling, though a pale blue is starting to spread over the sky. A bowl of stew left over from the day before warms me up and gives me the strength to go to the vegetable patch to help repair the night’s damage.
The ground is sodden but we walk firmly in our clogs well stuffed with hay. Yes, there is indeed plenty to do, as Robur had said: branches have been snapped off, stalks flattened, leaves shredded, sticks dispersed. Almost all the damage could be made good but it was going to take patience so as not to spoil what remained intact. It was a long day; we were worn out and starving come tea-time, but happy to have finished the job.
Robur’s father has poured me some tea. He says to me in his deep voice:
“You’re a brave lad. Thank you for helping us.”
Tea-time is over. The father has got up, he stands there for a moment looking out of the window, then says slowly:
“The wheat is in. We haven’t lost the crop.”
I have returned to my little town. Everyone is talking about the storm. The damage has been extensive: some houses have lost roof tiles and the rain has got in. It will take a lot of work to put everything back to rights.
I go home. Everything is fine. Dinner is waiting.
I fall asleep gently, in a mixture of thoughts and dreams. The wheat is in... Without the wheat, without the vegetable garden, a long, long time ago... who would have fed the school-men? “You’re a brave lad”, Robur’s father had said to me after we had brought the vegetable patch back to life. Do you have to be brave to survive? Do I have to be brave to be a man?
Friends of my parents have come for lunch. They live in the city. And this Sunday they have brought their daughter, who is still in primary school. “My daughter will be delighted to meet you, and I’m sure that with you she won’t get bored,” her father has told me.
Her father is used to being sure. He manages a light engineering firm and his customers are happy with him. Why would he not be sure? The girl has said nothing at table. Is she used to being silent? Her mother manages the household and her friends are happy with her. Why would the girl talk?
The business manager talks to my father about his firm, the household manager talks to my mother about her daughter. My father listens to him, my mother listens to her. My father takes care of certain matters for the business manager. The girl listens to everything that is said. She looks from one to the other with big, anxious eyes. Is she trying to work out whether her life will depend on what is said and that she doesn’t understand?
After lunch we move into the sitting room. The conversations...
“Have you got a doll?” I ask her in a low voice.
She looks at me brightly, wide-eyed. I ask her again:
“Do you love it?”
She seems... no, not aghast, no, not at all; but... I don’t know how to put it... and in any case, can you say everything with words? Her eyes are wide open, even bigger; see looks at me... no, she rivets her eyes to mine; her mouth is barely open, as though she were murmuring to me: “I can love my doll? Yes? It’s not just a toy? You understand, do you?” Suddenly her eyes crinkle in a great big smile and she says “Yes” in a whoosh.
We’re on the way to see Great-Aunt and Great-Uncle, who need help with a few jobs after the storm. The sun is most definitely there, sending us its flames; and yet, try as it might, we no longer feel the same burning as in the weeks gone by. Meadowgrass is vexed; we won’t be able to pick blackcurrants because they’ll be swollen with water. The cows, on the other hand, are not complaining that the fields are still wet. They let us know how pleased they are as we pass by. Yesterday’s lunch at home was clearly nothing at all compared with their succulent grass.
The cows love their field which keeps them alive. The girl loves her doll which gives her hope for her future life. What about men, then? What do they love? And why?
The blackcurrants may not be much good for jam but they taste delicious. Meadowgrass doesn’t stint herself, and we neither.
Once the jobs are done... and the blackcurrants gobbled up – “Oh, I love to see you enjoying them!” Grand-Aunt has said, radiant – we go down to the old mill below the farm.
The waterwheel of the old mill stopped turning a long time ago. The grindstone that made seed oil for the farm, and for that of Robur’s grandparents too, is at rest, fondly remembering the constant hustle and bustle of yesteryear. The stream which gave the mill its strength has slid beneath the grass and murmurs softly.
We are sitting in the long grass by the stream. Some minnows observe us curiously; nobody has come this way since the miller left. A desire to do nothing sets in. The leaves in the trees play with the breeze. The long grass-stems sway gently as though telling each other secrets. The stream wends its way; it has no need to think, the slope tells it how to meet up with its fellows in the great sea which patiently awaits them all. Will it get there or will it fly up into heaven on its way? We stay there, listening to our stream, the way you listen to someone you know well.
That evening, back at home, my memory was of a day full of adventures.
There may no longer be any hustle and bustle at the old mill, but there is plenty at the farm. Will a day come when the birds will be surprised to see people there? In the meantime, let’s hope the birds won’t eat what we’re in the process of sowing. Summer doesn’t last for ever and if we want turnips and spinach for autumn and radishes for winter and so many other good things that we’ll be so happy to see on the table, they all have to come from somewhere. In the city, for example, they come from the greengrocer.
“Cows eat grass and people drink milk,” says Meadowgrass to me while picking mint and thyme.
Seeing my surprise she goes on:
“I pick, the greengrocer gets the harvest.”
“And people barely know that you’ve picked it for them!” I exclaim indignantly.
She gives an ironic smile:
“Have you ever seen people thanking cows?”
“Maybe that’s because cows never refuse to give their milk,” grunts Robur, who is weeding the peas.
“Cows can only do what is in their nature,” replies his sister.
“When you pick, you’re doing what’s in your nature too,” I point out.
“Yes, that’s true,” she answers slowly.
She ponders for a moment, then adds with a kind of strength in her voice:
“I feel a need to do it.”
And when you’re a man, do you also do what is in your nature? Or do you do something else?
Meadowgrass goes on firmly:
“People in the city don’t pick. They do other things, though. And when they’re done? The cows are never done. Here on the farm we’re never done.”
A classmate has come to my house today. He has asked me why I wasn’t around much. He has invited me to take part in games with other schoolmates we both know. I have said I will do my best. He has asked me what could be keeping me so busy. I have mentioned studying. “But we’re on holiday!” he has retorted. I have quickly added that it was just a few exercises. “So you do have time then!” he has insisted. I didn’t dare mention the farm. I have spoken about bike rides, visits to friends with my parents... “All that doesn’t stop you from coming,” he has concluded. I have answered that I will do my best. Why didn’t I want him to know about the farm? Especially when everyone, himself included, knew about my relations with my two friends? To change the subject I asked him what he liked doing. He said:
“Painting.”
“What do you paint?”
“Landscapes, and portraits,” he answered.
“Local landscapes?”
“Yes, and landscapes that I make up myself...”
“How can you make them up?...”
“I think of places I’ve seen photos of...”
I interrupted him:
“So you don’t make them up?”
“Yes, I do, I transform them to turn them into fantastical places.”
“You transform them by painting things that exist, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to paint them.”
He laughed out loud:
“What matters is how I put them together; I show what I imagine.”
“So what you see isn’t enough for you?”
He looked at me curiously:
“I also paint what I see.”
“And you want to show what you have seen.”
He hesitated a moment, surprised:
“Of course...”
“So you don’t like our landscapes?”
That seemed to take him aback:
“But I’ve just told you I paint them.”
“Why not just look at them?”
I detected slight commiseration on his face.
“I like to paint to show what I feel.”
“And you feel it with a landscape that isn’t the one you’re painting, since you transform it.”
“It’s the one I see.”
“Yes, I get that. And do you do the same thing with portraits?”
“Yes, of course,” he answered, more comfortably. “I always want to show what I see, what I feel.”
I did not have the courage to tell him “And you feel it with a person who is not the one you’re painting, since you transform them.”
I would never be able to transform what I love.
Meadowgrass has smiled at me when I repeated the last words I had said yesterday. Robur has said:
“All the same, your painter does a difficult job, though.”
“All the same, when it comes to picking up hay bales you prefer your tractor to your pitchfork,” I fire back at him.
For good measure Meadowgrass adds:
“And you say the work’s done better.”
“All right, all right,” says her brother placatingly.
And he adds, giving me a sideways look:
“In any case, I won’t be painting any time soon; I’ll go and look at the tractor itself, not listen to what you have to tell me about it!”
“Go and look at your bicycle instead, otherwise your sister won’t get her blackcurrants!” I reply.
So the bikes set off to pick Great-Aunt’s blackcurrants. The sun has taken over the sky for four days now and the blackcurrants will be champing at the bit to leap into the jam pan. Great-Aunt is delighted; Great-Uncle would have liked to come and help but he’s feeling tired. “He’s got to make up his mind to listen to the doctor, who’s given him pills that he won’t take,” Great-Aunt has complained. The little pig with big floppy ears has grunted its approval. Meadowgrass has gone to see the pig in its little field on the other side of the hedge. It grunted even more as it listened to what she was telling it. The jam is being made. Robur’s father is due to pass by his uncle’s place one of these days and will bring back a few jars that his daughter is already waiting for impatiently.
We set off to laze along our usual paths far from the roads; they’re very quiet, sometimes a goose or two to hiss us on our way. We meet one of Meadowgrass’s classmates, a girl who lives in one of the houses in a hamlet that straggles along the path and who was taking in their cow. We go and sit down behind the house, not far from the well, on the corner of the wall that runs along the farmyard. Three hens have left the dunghill and have stopped pecking for grains to come and find out what’s going on.
The classmate is not very popular at school. She has trouble getting to grips with abstract ideas and when she doesn’t understand she says “Why?” When she talks, she says simple things. So she’s reckoned to be simple.
“Have you had your tea?” she asks us kindly.
Meadowgrass reassures her:
“We had it at my Great-Aunt’s. We picked blackcurrants. I’ll bring you some jam.”
“Oh, her jam’s really good! We’ve just finished the redcurrants. You can take some with you when you go.”
“Were you able to get your wheat in before the storm?” Meadowgrass asks her with concern.
Simpleheart heaves a great sigh of relief:
“Yes, thank goodness! The storm blew up so quickly. My Dad had an idea it would, so we brought it in the day before.”
She adds, sounding anxious:
“Did you have any damage at yours?”
“No, not much. It just took us a day to put the vegetable patch back to rights.”
Meadowgrass lays her hand on my shoulder and goes on:
“He was a great help!”
I mutter a denial. Taking no notice of my interruption, she continues:
“What are you up to now?”
“I’m helping the poultry hand, she’s got so much to do these days. We’ve bought new hens to replace the ones that were sold; we have to help them get used to us, you know how hard that is.”
Sleep will not come. My thoughts are muddled. I’m not back from school, we’re on holiday. Holidays aren’t spent at school. At Simpleheart’s... Meadowgrass and Simpleheart spoke about... Oh, how muddled my thoughts are! Important things... but... I don’t have to learn them... Learning them would be easy... Like at school. There, at Simpleheart’s, there was nothing to learn, everything was... I don’t know... It was... true... necessary... yes, necessary... essential... for people... for people... Holidays are at school... no, that can’t be right... I can’t think any more. Sleep comes...
I am heavy-eyed when I wake up. Did I only dream the extravagant thoughts that have not yet left my mind? And yet Meadowgrass and Simpleheart didn’t say anything out of the ordinary. I have the unpleasant impression of a mistake I must have made. Not because of what I did but because of what I thought. What wrong might I have thought? The night’s words come back and collide in my mind but I can no longer find any meaning in them. I shake my head, the way animals do... It was just a nightmare. Do nightmares sometimes come true?
The old oak table is once more covered in books. A writer explains how to conduct oneself in order to be well-regarded.
“I don’t tell the teacher everything so as not to get scolded,” says Meadowgrass for starters.
“So you don’t do what the writer says,” notes Robur straight away.
“So I have to let myself be scolded,” notes his sister likewise.
“Absolutely,” concludes her brother.
“You don’t tell the cows everything,” Meadowgrass starts up again.
“What do you mean?” says Robur with surprise.
“You don’t tell them you’re going to sell them!”
Robur doesn’t answer. She goes on:
“And yet they won’t even scold you!”
I attempt a diversion:
“Hey, hey! The writer doesn’t... didn’t... the cows...”
Not a very successful diversion... Fortunately no-one seems to have heard me. I try something else.
“People don’t get sold.”
They both look at me rather sceptically.
“At least, not as a rule,” I add hastily.
Robur nods:
“No, of course people don’t get sold in this day and age.”
He looks at his sister with a grin:
“You might get scolded but you won’t get sold.”
Then he proclaims solemnly:
“And if you do, I’ll buy you back.”
Meadowgrass smiles at him kindly, but her smile gradually fades.
“If I’m scolded, there’ll be nothing to buy back,” she says slowly.
She adds, just as slowly:
“I don’t want to be scolded.”
“If you’ve deserved it...” Robur comments hesitantly.
She perks up:
“Yes, and then I’ll be punished. I don’t want to be punished.”
She goes on with a grating laugh:
“So I have to do what the writer says. And if I think differently to him I have to lie in order to be well-regarded; yet the writer says we mustn’t lie.”
“You’re not lying,” I say cautiously. “According to the writer you should behave the way he says, but he doesn’t stop you from thinking whatever you want.”
Meadowgrass blows her top:
“So I think one thing but do another, and that’s not a lie?”
I don’t know what to say. She goes on in the same tone of voice:
“If I do that I’ll be lying to myself, and afterwards I won’t be myself any more.”
She looks at me and finishes up:
“So tell me, who will be well-regarded? Me? Which me?”
Clouds have come to sprinkle their drops on the heat of the last few days. The morning was even a little cool and the afternoon looked like being pleasant. We set off shortly after lunch to meet up with Demeter and Snail and go for a long walk.
Leaving their house, we take a path that the cows have made through the fields and from which the distant hills on the other side of the great valley can be seen. The grass has soaked up all the morning’s water and tells us by its penetrating scent that it’s already starting to go green again. The birds are flying high, their song a transparent canopy over us. The butterflies are in party mode; they have decked themselves out in scintillating colours and come and dance around us.
From field to path, from stream to wood, tea-time comes. We choose the top of a hill which the sun warms in atonement for bunking off this morning. The girls unwrap the victuals that Demeter has brought – all good things.
“That’s what I call behaving so as to be well-regarded by me,” says Robur.
His sister calls him a selfish greedy-guts. Demeter suggests not letting him have any cake, so seriously that Robur involuntarily glances towards the place where the cake might be. The two girls burst out laughing. Robur sniffs haughtily and lets it be known that he’s not sure he’ll still be hungry enough for cake. The girls exchange an amused look.
I explain what the writer explains in his text.
“In any case, I know what the teacher will want me to say,” mocks Snail.
His sister is calmer:
“All the same, there is advice that we find good in what we’re told.”
“Yes, yes!” cries Meadowgrass. “Yes, that’s true! And then we’re told that because that advice – which they’re careful to give us first – is good, the rest is too.”
She takes a deep breath and goes on:
“And let’s not forget that the writer has never given advice about doing the right thing, just about how to be well-regarded.”
Robur is surprised:
“So you reckon that if we’re well-regarded it’s not because we do the right thing?”
“People reckon we do the right thing when it suits them to do so; and in that case they regard us well.”
Robur has listened to his sister with a trace of concern.
“You look cross when you say that. Are you in trouble?” he asks affectionately.
“Not in trouble, no; but I wouldn’t be well-regarded by the teachers at school if I tell them they matter less to me than my cows.”
Reinforcements are on their way, in the shape of Snail:
“Absolutely! And I would dearly like to let them know that their geometry matters less to me than my fields!”
“But we learn important things at school all the same,” comments Robur.
“Perhaps for another world than ours,” says Demeter softly.
The sun has lost some of its strength; the shadows are lengthening. We’re on our way back. The world of the hills is still there, seemingly eternal. Motor cows are still nowhere to be seen...
The manager of the light engineering firm has come back again on business matters. The girl has brought her doll. At lunch she has kept it on her knees despite her mother’s repeated admonitions – her father, wrapped up in serious conversation, notices nothing. “I don’t know what’s got into her today,” her mother has said. “I just can’t get her to let go of her doll!” “For heaven’s sake,” she has added for her daughter, “you don’t have lunch with a doll!” The girl, gaze fixed on the tablecloth, has said in a clipped tone of voice: “She’s hungry too. She has to eat!” Her mother has shrugged her shoulders and gone on talking with my mother.
After lunch my father takes the manager of the light engineering firm off to his office. The ladies take their seats in a corner of the sitting-room. The girl, of her own accord, heads for another corner; I follow her. She has barely sat down when she raises her wide-open eyes to me – the eyes she had kept lowered ever since she got here – shows me her doll and tells me in a low voice:
“I brought her so you could see her; she’s called Come. When I’m sad, I call her to come and be with me.
“Are you often sad?”
“I’m sad when I’m all on my own. Mummy is always busy.”
“Do you have friends?”
She hesitates:
“Yes... but I don’t see them very much.”
I have started to say “why” but stop; she had looked down again. I say nothing for a moment. She looks up at me again, gives me a pale smile and says:
“I’m less sad with Come.”
The afternoon draws to a close; I’m in my room with a book in my hand but I’m not reading. As Robur would say, I’m thinking...
Farm animals need to be looked after all the time. They give what they have; milk... The girl needs her mother, needs... All she has is her doll, which she cannot give...
Farm animals need to be looked after only because they have been put on the farm. They lived perfectly well without people; their life was full of danger and sometimes they got eaten. With people they are safe; they live without knowing danger, and will not be eaten before they reach the butcher’s shop.
The girl cannot live without people. And all she has is a doll.
The potatoes are ready to be harvested; it will be a long day. Robur is driving the tractor, without which it would have taken days, long and tiring days... and not always profitable. Demeter had said that school taught important things for another world than ours. Our world also contains tractors. Our world harvests quicker and better than centuries ago. And yet Meadowgrass fears the school-men. It is they who have made the tractor and, despite her ironies, she has no trouble putting up with it. What does she fear? Perhaps seeing a school-man driving the tractor instead of her brother; even if the harvest is the same. So where’s the difference?
“What they’re doing it for will be different,” Meadowgrass tells me.
We have left the field, the two of us, shortly before tea-time; she had asked me to help her with the subject she finds hardest to understand: maths. I have to explain an algebra problem. Meadowgrass knows perfectly well how to solve it but she doesn’t understand that descriptions can be added.
“Descriptions?”
“Sentences, if you prefer,” she replies.
“It’s not sentences, it’s what they represent that you add.”
“Yes, I get that; two fields make thirty acres.”
“So?”
“Sometimes you don’t know what you’re adding up.”
“You know afterwards.”
“Yes, afterwards...”
I suggest an analogy:
“When you sow wheat, you don’t know what’s going on underground. You only see the wheat afterwards.”
“The wheat is alive, you can trust it.”
She continues, as though answering a question inside her:
“The school-men may well know what goes on underground, like they know about algebra. I have no idea at all why they do what they do.”
The algebra problem is done.
“You’ve shown me why I knew how to do it. I never feel alone with you.”
History books litter the old oak table... The memory of humanity.
“The memory of those who wrote it,” corrects Meadowgrass.
“History can’t write itself,” comments Robur.
“Everyone can write what they want,” says his sister emphatically.
I temper her assertion:
“There are traces, witnesses, nowadays photos.”
She doesn’t budge:
“There are those at school who parrot the teachers so as to please them.”
“Shame the teachers don’t do the same with their pupils,” says Robur sarcastically.
I raise a doubt:
“Teachers ought to be serious.”
Robur snorts:
“Teachers were once pupils too. Giving people labels like teacher or pupil isn’t fair. They do a particular job, but they behave according to their nature.”
I go back to history:
“Even if certain facts are wrong, we learn how people lived.”
Meadowgrass doesn’t give up:
“Or didn’t.”
“Yes, or didn’t. In which case we learn how people would have liked to live.”
Robur shows surprise:
“I don’t need to know that in order to know what I want.”
“If you see how people got things wrong, you won’t want to make the same mistakes.”
My words set Meadowgrass off:
“And why not make them again? Are we sure they were mistakes? It’s the historian who tells us that.”
I protest:
“There are mistakes you can see for yourself. People have been killing each other for a very long time. They’re still at it now. And it’s not the historian telling us, it’s we ourselves, because we can see it going on around us every day.”
Meadowgrass answers with great calm:
“Yes, you’re quite right to say so; but I’m so afraid that then I’ll be told that because I agree with this I must also agree with that...”
My father is in no hurry on the road, yet I don’t have time on the way to see the old tree that shows where to turn, the little house that is struggling against encroaching age, the solitary and motionless bull that is perhaps dreaming of wide-open spaces, the lazy haystacks drying in the sunshine.
We have come to see our friends in the city. My father is talking business with his colleague. My mother is talking family with her friend. Their son is at home for the day and he is talking with me.
“Everything going well at school?” he asks me as usual.
He’s big and no longer goes to school. He speaks of it knowingly:
“Working hard? Good marks?”
I have good marks. Yes, the teachers are pleased with me.
“You’ll see later, it’s important for others to be pleased with you.”
The writer has already told me how to conduct myself in order to be well-regarded.
“Yes, it is important.”
“It’s good that you realise that,” he declares with satisfaction.
I am well-regarded.
“What do you want to do when you’ve finished school?”
I don’t know. Actually, I do know. I have to be man.
“The same as my father. I like what he does. He provides a service to people. They need what he does.”
He hesitates before answering:
“That’s very good, of course. But you also have to have a personal vocation. I preferred a technical career. There’s more variety.”
“How about running a farm? That’s pretty technical...”
“A farm!...”
“Oh, just saying, you know...”
“I mean, why a farm? It’s not an intellectual occupation. If you go to school, it’s not so as to...”
He fumbles for words. I help him out:
“... stay close to the earth and animals.”
“Of course. At school you acquire knowledge, you learn how to think.”
“Yes. People have to know. Man is made to think.”
He looks at me curiously. Is he reassured? Or worried, rather? Can you be both reassured and worried at the same time?
So man is made to think. So who is it that stays close to the earth and animals?
Yesterday evening I fell asleep very quickly. I really didn’t feel like thinking. The conversation came back to me as soon as I woke up. Was it really a conversation? How is one to answer questions to which everyone has given answers that everyone accepts? Who is everyone? People, of course. So people have secrets they don’t hide from me. They don’t hide them from me, no, they want to entice me into their secrets so that their secrets become mine, so that I’m separated from other people, from those who aren’t everyone.
Arriving at the farm, I get the feeling of coming from an alien and hostile world. I want to tell Robur, tell Meadowgrass, that I’m not coming as an enemy, that I haven’t changed. But the trusting looks with which they welcome me are like a new awakening for me. Yesterday’s conversation has evaporated. Meadowgrass, Robur, the farm, and the fields and the animals down yonder are there. I shout a joyful greeting, like someone who wasn’t sure of being able to make it back home.
I must have shouted very loudly because a magpie has suddenly flown away, chittering indignantly, and the hens have started running hither and thither, flapping their wings and cackling mightily.
“Goodness, what a racket!” exclaims Robur with a smile.
Meadowgrass has come up to me and is looking at me questioningly. I recount my conversation of the day before:
“Yesterday...”
I stumble over what I wanted to say: “I was told that a farm isn’t an intellectual occupation.” I continue differently:
“... I was told that there were no school-men on a farm.”
Robur nods:
“Each to his own.”
Meadowgrass is more caustic:
“You were told that on a farm you don’t think and all you do is work. I’ve already heard that. I may not be much good at algebra but I know how to feed my ducks. The school-men know algebra and can improve my ducks’ feed, that’s true. But you can only improve what’s already there.”
Robur nods approvingly. Meadowgrass is silent for a long while, then mutters:
“You can’t improve the stars.”
A duck has come and sat down near her to confirm that the feed is good. The cock scratches away conscientiously; the hens can feast. Little white clouds play at hiding the sun from us. The air is still.
Is it always necessary to have an intellectual occupation?
The vegetable patch is waiting impatiently; it would really like to be mulched. And the chives would really like to be cut. If we wouldn’t mind leaving off our thinking...
We do so. There was no need to make such a fuss; the work is soon done.
Robur’s mother calls us for our tea. His father has just come in from a field that wants its fences sorting. We’ll go after tea; there’ll still be a good couple of hours before the sun abandons us.
The day comes to an end; I will soon go to sleep. You also have to... There’s more variety in a technical career... You also have to have a personal vocation... There’s more...
My father has ordered a legal tome which I go to fetch from the nearby bookshop. I take advantage of the opportunity to buy a recording of a piano sonata by a musician I like very much. I have barely given the name of the work when I hear my music teacher, who had just come in, congratulating me on my choice.”
“You have good taste,” he tells me with satisfaction.
I don’t know what to say. My taste is probably his. Slightly embarrassed, I thank him. He goes on:
“Do you play the piano?”
I am rather more embarrassed. I had started to play, but felt that it required too much time devoted to exercises in digital dexterity. I answer timidly:
“I started last year. I’m not very good; it was too hard and I didn’t carry on.”
“Nothing can be done without effort, young lad. You have to persevere.”
Perhaps not persevering also takes effort. I answer, still timidly:
“I don’t hear the music when I’m practising the piano.”
He seems slightly surprised, then says suddenly:
“I understand. It’s normal not to hear when you don’t know the music well enough.”
“What if I never manage to know the music well enough?”
“As long as you haven’t done everything you can, you’ll never know whether you can know it well enough or not. And if you really like music...”
I don’t remember what he said after that. Did I hear it? Did I listen? Yes, I think he said something like “... make other sacrifices...”, but I don’t really remember.
I listen to the sonata I have bought. I like it very much. My music teacher spoke about sacrifices; yes, I’m sure of it now, I remember clearly. The pianist plays without making mistakes. I know what must be done to avoid mistakes. What sacrifices did the pianist have to make? Why? And what about the musician who wrote the sonata?
I listen to the sonata I have bought. I don’t need to make any effort. The composer and the pianist have made the effort for me.
I am on my way to the farm. The sun gives me its heat, the breeze gives me its coolness. I can’t give them anything back. The birds give me a concert. Have they made an effort to learn to sing? “If you really like music,” my teacher had said to me yesterday. The birds are singing, or are they just talking? I like to talk; I like to tell Meadowgrass and Robur what I’m thinking. The road descends towards the farm. In a few moments I will be talking with them. I haven’t done everything I can to find out whether I could know the music well enough. To do that I would have had to not come, I would have had to... sacrifice...
The hens are clucking softly. And yet they would bother a pianist giving a recital. They don’t bother my talking to Meadowgrass; they don’t bother her listening to me.
“Is something the matter?” the brother and sister ask me at the same time.
“The matter? Why?”
“You look lost.”
“Oh, that. It’s the music teacher...”
I explain what happened. Meadowgrass says softly:
“The hens speak to say they’re hungry.”
Yes, they speak; that I understand. And what about the effort? I say:
“They don’t make any effort for that. They don’t need to know a piece of music.”
Robur is not convinced:
“Nor does a nightingale, but you’d rather listen to a nightingale singing than a hen.”
I insist:
“Neither of them makes an effort...”
Meadowgrass interrupts me:
“If I just listen to my hens... singing, they won’t have much to eat. The nightingale doesn’t ask anything of us, it’s speaking to other nightingales. I don’t think it’s the song they listen to but what it’s saying to them. If the nightingale makes an effort, it’s so as to be well understood, not to sing better.”
“So I only need to make an effort for my piano if I make it speak, not if I make it sing?”
Meadowgrass hesitates a little before answering:
“You can also make it sing, if it sings like the nightingale.”
Robur is surprised:
“You don’t need a go-between in order to speak. The nightingale doesn’t spend all day making an effort to sing, so why should people?”
“Words aren’t always enough,” murmurs Meadowgrass.
“Is that so? And that’s why people have to spend all day making an effort?” says Robur indignantly.
“My father spends all day making an effort to work his farm. He doesn’t sing, he doesn’t say much, but he gives people food.”
This Sunday I have been invited to lunch by the girl and her doll.
In truth, it’s my parents who have... But I can easily convince myself otherwise because the girl and her doll greet me as though I were the real guest.
Before we go to table she says to me in confidence:
“I’ve left Come in my room; Mummy doesn’t want her to eat with us. We’ll give her some biscuits later, she loves them.”
Biscuits... Biscuits for lunch? I feel the need to tell her that you don’t have biscuits for lunch. The need surprises me, bothers me even. I say quickly:
“Oh, absolutely, otherwise she’ll be hungry!”
The girl gives me a big smile. I feel somehow in the wrong, without understanding why. It’s as though I can hear my father giving an opinion. That’s it: I wanted to give an opinion. I hesitate to accept the thought that tells me in a whisper “You’re becoming a man.”
Surely that’s not what being a man is all about, is it?
Since this morning the sky has been overcast with big, silvery clouds that the sun has trouble piercing. We cycle lazily along paths half swallowed up in the grass between the hedges where tangled clumps of brambles are blanketed with swathes of pink flowers that herald a feast of blackberries.
Yesterday Robur’s father came back with jars of Great-Aunt’s blackcurrant jam and, as promised, we are taking some to Simpleheart.
We are greeted by the happy grunting of the pigs she is feeding.
“The jam’s not for you!” Meadowgrass tells them with a laugh.
Simpleheart has put down her bucket and gives us a big smile:
“Oh, how lovely! Her blackcurrant jam is so good. Thank you!”
After storing the jam in the pantry she takes us out to the yard:
“I have to give the hens some corn, after that I’ll have a moment for myself.”
Meadowgrass helps her to scatter the corn. As for us... a poultry yard is no place for boys. Once the hens are fed, we all go and sit on the low wall by the well.
Simpleheart gazes out at the yard.
“The new hens are getting used to being here, they don’t scatter like they did to begin with,” she says to Meadowgrass.
“Are you happy with them?”
“Yes, they’re very good layers. My father chose them well.”
“With your help, I reckon,” comments Meadowgrass with a smile.
Simpleheart looks down modestly.
“Choosing hens isn’t easy,” says Robur. “I prefer cows; at least you can see them.”
The girls can’t help giggling.
The conversation continues. Simpleheart really knows a lot about the farm. It’s obvious that she takes an active part in everything that goes on there and that she really knows her stuff when it comes to what makes a farm work. She is lively and full of common sense in her analysis of day-to-day matters.
At school her teachers tell her she makes no effort to work and that if she doesn’t pull herself together she’ll never succeed, given her limited ability to understand. In a nutshell, her teachers tell her she’s thick and hopeless. That makes her sad and she often tells Meadowgrass she doesn’t feel as though she can live like other people.
What good is it being able to choose hens when you can’t do algebra?
Simpleheart’s hens and pigs have got together with Robur’s cows on the old oak table. Yesterday they were free, today they obey the books that describe them.
Meadowgrass is lost in thought:
“I’ve learnt a lot from these books, but when I tell my ducks about them they couldn’t care less.”
“You should take your ducks to school with you,” Robur teases her. “Maybe that would tickle their fancy!”
Meadowgrass remains lost in thought:
“What I learn at school ought to be useful for the things I do every day.”
“Everything?” I ask her doubtfully.
“No, not everything.”
She ponders, then goes on:
“I’ve learnt other things; with you, with my brother, with my parents, even with my ducks. And I do use them, all the time.”
She points to the books:
“This here, it’s important, the stuff we learn, it’s very important. But it’s useful most of all for those we call the school-men. It’s necessary, it’s necessary, my brother’s right, sure, but what about the others? Simpleheart, and me with my ducks?
She stops, as though exhausted. We say nothing. Suddenly she cries in a thick voice:
“It’s as though we ought to be ashamed of what we do apart from algebra, Simpleheart with her pigs, me with my ducks, and my father with his fields!”
Before I can feel embarrassed, Meadowgrass is already reassuring me with a weak smile:
“I said we need school-men; your father’s one, and you will be one too, no doubt.”
She hesitates:
“I’m glad you come.”
I will be a school-man. I woke up filled with the thought that is now wandering about in my still uncertain mind.
What will I have to do? What will I have to undo? School-men have always existed, I think. And those who tried to stop them are no longer there to do so.
What will I have to do? Help to give people what they want. What will I have to undo, if people start wanting the opposite of what they have wanted? Meadowgrass likes being beside her pond with her ducks who don’t expect her to recite algebra. Meadowgrass isn’t going to change, I feel; she is full of what she is. But if Robur wants a bigger tractor I will have to help get rid of the narrow path she likes to take.
Let’s quit school! Let the path stay! Here it is, guiding Meadowgrass’s feet; the grass cushions her steps, the soft foliage caresses her as she passes. The years pass; the foliage grows. One day a bough, cross at being disturbed, whips her face. She had noticed that the foliage was spreading but as she walked carefully she didn’t think she was being a bother. The years pass; the foliage grows. One day the path turns its back on her. “It’s me,” she says. Through the thick foliage, all she can see on the path are a few slender stems that have taken its place. The song of invisible and unknown birds is the only answer.
Thursday. Large grey ships are floating in the sky which splatters us with spray. We have taken refuge in the barn, which the hens had already invested. Nothing seems to hurry us. We stay there, not talking, nested in the hay.
Meadowgrass indicates a hen brooding under an old cart in a corner of the barn:
“Look, it doesn’t like the henhouse any more.”
After a moment’s silence Robur adds:
“At least we’ll know where to go looking for its eggs.”
The hens move around slowly, stop, peck... One of them is sitting beside its chicks. Everything is quiet in the barn.
Meadowgrass gives a little sigh:
“We’re pretty lazy today.”
She half turns towards me, as if to tell me something... I answer:
“I’m happy to be here.”
We stay in silence. The hens are still pecking away. Meadowgrass murmurs:
“They never get bored.”
Robur wants to be sure he’s heard right:
“The hens?”
His sister gives him a wan smile:
“The hens...”
She adds almost immediately:
“The ducks, the cows...”
Then pensively:
“They’re always hungry.”
The silence returns. A thought bothers me. I ask Meadowgrass:
“Do you think the school-men will make a world in which people get bored?”
She looks at me without saying anything. I go on hesitantly:
“If I’m to be a school-man...”
I continue more firmly:
“I’ll only be one if I can make a world in which people don’t get bored.”
Meadowgrass looks sceptical:
“There’ll always be some who get bored.”
I say stoutly:
“I never get bored here.”
Gently, she has given me a smile.
The sun, more in a hurry in recent days, goes off to rest. I have to go home. Near the marshy patches beside the stream that runs down from the hill, the concert given by the frogs accompanies me.
We climb up the path that goes to Demeter and Snail’s farm. The sun has come to chase away the big grey ships that were sailing in yesterday’s sky. A procession of small white clouds encourages us up the steep slope. From the top of the hill we can still make out the farm, and glimpse that of our friends through the trees that surround our spring, down below. We descend via the field. Their cows have seen us from afar and the whole herd rumbles over to meet us.
Demeter is spreading out the washing on the grass so that the sun can get rid of any last stains that might be lingering. She greets us joyfully. Snail has heard us from deep inside the barn and runs up. “No geometry today, I haven’t got a field to measure,” he tells me with a laugh.
Meadowgrass and Demeter have finished spreading out the sheets.
“Can you stay for tea?” asks Snail.
“Oh, absolutely!” we chorus.
“Well, let’s go and get some tomatoes and radishes from the vegetable patch,” says Demeter.
We add a lettuce and a cucumber. Snail suggests picking some raspberries.
“You’ll only stuff yourself with cream again,” says his sister sarcastically.
“Your carrots and leeks will soon be ready,” comments Meadowgrass.
“Yes, you’re right, we’ll be picking them next week.”
Demeter glances around her and adds:
“And we need to pick and dry the herbs. The farm-hand hasn’t had time to do it yet.”
“Well, with all of us it won’t take long,” suggests Meadowgrass.
The sun, quieter in recent days, watches us gathering sage, thyme and bay leaves.
There’s still a while to go before tea-time. Snail takes us into a nearby field; one of the cows got hurt a few days before and he wants to see if it’s still on the mend. The animal comes over to its master of its own accord to show him the wound; it’s much better. “Another couple of days and it’ll be right as rain,” comments Snail, reassured.
We sit down on the short grass. “We’ll have to move them to another field in a day or two,” remarks Demeter. We continue sitting in silence. Suddenly Snail exclaims:
“I really like the holidays. It’s not like when we’re at school, at least we can do something useful!”
Robur protests:
“At least school has taught you how to read. Don’t you think that’s useful?”
Snail is having none of it:
“I could have learnt how to read at home. People who went to primary school knew how to read.”
I come to Robur’s aid:
“You’ve got a tractor, right?”
Snail looks worried. I continue:
“It’s at school that people learn how to make them.”
He pulls a face:
“I don’t want to make tractors.”
Robur disapproves:
“You want someone else to do it.”
“Not everyone needs to make tractors, though,” mutters Snail.
Robur insists:
“You could say the same thing about cars...”
Snail breaks in:
“Yes, yes, you’re right. That’s not what I meant.”
He takes his time. We wait without saying anything. He goes on:
“I understand that people make cars and tractors and that they learn how to do it at school; but as I said, not everyone makes tractors. Or cars.”
I try to explain:
“School teaches what will make it possible to make tractors, or other things, later.”
Demeter chips in:
“Not everyone is capable of making a tractor, even if they’re told how to go about it. So why bother explaining it?”
She ponders, then adds:
“You don’t learn everything that exists at school. You don’t learn how to understand cows. You can learn how to work better, but can you learn how to...”
She stops suddenly, then goes on:
“I don’t really know how to put it in words. No doubt I would’ve learnt it at school, if talking to cows were on the timetable.”
Nobody says anything. She goes on again:
“There didn’t use to be tractors; life was much harder then. People needed animals, they had to live with them. Nowadays people talk more to tractors than they do to animals; school has become essential.”
After a silence that no-one breaks she stands up, goes to stroke a nearby muzzle that was looking at her, sits back down and says:
“How could I learn how to do that?”
Tea-time is drawing near. Demeter and Meadowgrass are helping to get everything ready. The father comes in from a distant meadow. Could he have come without a car? Should we understand cows, or should we have better food? And perhaps, if the books are to be believed, have food at all?
The omelette is delicious; their eggs are really tasty. And I eat some excellent ham, a memory of the nice pig with such considerate eyes.
The father is tired. He eats heavily, leaning on the table. He talks to the mother about what he’s done with his day. He remains still between courses, staring at a point in front of him, an imprecise point that seems a long way away... The mother bustles about, listening as much as she is able. Towards the end of the meal the father asks us what we’ve been up to. “How is she?” he asks, and Snail tells him about the injured cow. The mother compliments us on our hard work; the father nods even though we haven’t done much, and not out of politeness either; they’re both happy that we’ve been doing our bit.
My father has to finish a project today for one of his clients. It involves drawing up a contract to be signed with a company in another country. On the basis that I have good marks in the language concerned at school, my father has asked me to help him translate some parts of the draft. He will take care of the legal language, I will be responsible for the accuracy and clarity of style.
I enjoy the work. In class our subjects are literary, with ideas presented by the writers; the teacher reads only my translation. Here I’m on my own; someone will read what I write, trying to find out what I’m trying to say to him. The words I know in my language will be of no use to me, since he doesn’t know them. I have to think like him, with his words, which I have merely learnt. And for me it’s an adventure, an adventure that my curiosity pushes me towards.
With Meadowgrass I exchange thoughts and feelings. Here I have to talk about facts, reasons, arguments. Meadowgrass seeks to understand me through the words I say to her. The person I am writing for seeks only to gain an advantage. The adventure has dissipated; the translation is done. My father has congratulated me.
The contract has been filed away. Other projects are there waiting. They regulate people’s lives. My father has studied these texts, he knows how life should be. But does life accept the rules that have been set for it?
Near the wall round Simpleheart’s farmyard, a creeper found itself one day hemmed in by a plank someone had laid up against it. Little by little, without anyone noticing, it had insinuated itself into the gaps between the stones and ended up on the other side of the wall.
My father studies texts; Simpleheart does what life asks of her. Can people neglect one or the other?
Sunday. Notables from my town are coming to have lunch. The talk will be about notable things. I will be bored. In the morning I went out to buy coloured inks for my geometry set – we have geometry tomorrow. A schoolmate I meet asks me what I intend to do with them:
“You make ink drawings?”
I explain. He shows surprise:
“But you’re not at school! Who are you doing it for?”
This time I don’t try to explain:
“I like drawing...”
He interrupts:
“You don’t draw for nothing!”
I think about not answering:
“What about the great painters?”
He looks at me pityingly:
“Great artists paint so as to show their paintings.”
“And what if I show them to my friends?”
“In that case, why not. But you don’t show geometric drawings.”
“Our teacher shows us them.”
“You’re not a teacher,” he snaps back. “There’s no reason for you to do what he does. And in any case you don’t have his qualifications.”
“No, I don’t have his qualifications, that’s true. But haven’t you ever helped a friend...?”
“Not on holiday, in any case!”
We take our leave of each other. Is he cross?
A large drawing board is placed on the old oak table. Meadowgrass is very pleased to see the coloured inks I bought yesterday.
“You chose them well,” she congratulates me.
She adds straight away:
“At school we only have black. Do you have colours, in your class?”
“Oh, no,” answers Robur, “we only have black too.”
Meadowgrass beams at me:
“It was a good idea of yours; our drawings will be the prettiest in the world!”
“You have to get them right first,” her brother teases her.
His sister seems to want to do just that. She has taken over the compasses and drawing pens and artfully chooses inks to draw complex geometrical figures. They have everything: arcs, perpendiculars, complex bisectors and heaven knows what else. The colours bring the different lines to life and make proving theorems a pleasure.
Or not. As far as theorems are concerned, it’s much less straightforward. Robur has learnt them but only wants to apply them in cases where they’re of use to him. I try to show him the reasons behind the examples found in the textbooks:
“You may come across a case you haven’t prepared for.”
“Well then, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”
“And what if you don’t have time?”
Robur doesn’t answer. Meadowgrass has other ideas:
“You can see it in the drawings in the textbooks. All you have to do is compare them with what I’ve done.”
She adds with a laugh:
“Especially if the drawings are so good!”
“You can say that again,” I say stoutly. “The prettiest in the world!”
She looks down. Has she blushed, just a little? After a second she says brightly:
“Thanks to your colours!”
Robur harks back to his theme:
“I’m never going to make cars. There are theorems that I’ll never use and that will never be of any help to me in any other way.”
“Are you sure about that?”
He shrugs wearily:
“No, I’m not sure. But you can’t learn everything.”
He sighs:
“The school-men don’t learn how to move cows from one field to another.”
I smile:
“That’s not very hard.”
“That’s true, you’re right.”
He pauses for a moment then goes on:
“If you have to learn everything, you also have to learn things that aren’t hard.”
He heaves another sigh:
“I have a younger sister who is very good at drawing; her drawings immediately show what the textbook asks for; the lines she has drawn in colour are those that we were supposed to find.”
He has fallen silent. Meadowgrass finishes up for him:
“You mean my lines only explain the book...”
Her brother interrupts:
“No, that’s not it, your lines show much more than that. They show that when you don’t understand something you should never give up. You have to look for the lines; perhaps they exist.”
We say nothing. After a while, Meadowgrass says wistfully:
“The cows found the paths they take along sloping fields.”
Sleep overcomes me... Cows don’t need to learn geometrical theorems... If I want to be a man, can I look for paths without using a compass?...
Demeter may have to wait a couple of days for her leeks, but here on the farm they’re ready now. After picking them we straighten up a few wobbly stakes then give the patch a good watering – the few clouds are being regrettably stingy.
After that we have to take a tractor part to a neighbouring farmer who had a breakdown while harvesting his potato crop. The garage in town didn’t have the part, but fortunately Robur did.
“You’re a real specialist,” I say. “You should open a repair shop!”
“I applied a theorem,” he says sardonically. “When a part is fragile, you always need a spare.”
Meadowgrass comes to my aid.
“What’s your theorem called?”
Her brother looks at her with surprise.
She continues unperturbed:
“You won’t get a good mark if you don’t give it its proper name.”
I laugh. Robur mutters:
“I’m right to learn only what I can use. Our neighbour will be delighted if I bring him the theorem’s name. He’ll surely give me a good mark.”
He scowls:
“Or a good something else, more likely!”
We both start laughing. Robur feigns a hurt look but soon joins in.
We set off. As the neighbour doesn’t need his tractor until the next day, there’s no need for us to hurry.
A steep slope leads to the hill, on the other side of the road I usually take to come here. We rarely go that way, where there’s a big field up at the top that doesn’t have any animals in it. Meadowgrass would rather have gone through the meadows but Robur has suggested taking this route to check up on the haystacks that his father has to bring in. The clouds are coming to see us more and more often, and if the haystacks are dry he’ll be able to collect them soon.
Up at the top, the little straw houses are basking in the gold the sun has strewn on them. We go from one haystack to the next; Robur is satisfied. Meadowgrass looks at the grazing land on the other side of her farm...
We go back down the other side of the hill. It’s not a long walk. Reaching a crossroads, we can hear a cock’s victory song, while a small stone statue shows us the farm; the farmer is in a field just next to it. After thanking us, he asks us why we needed such a big bucket to bring such a small thing.
“It’s so that we can put lots of little things in it!” we answer him with a grin.
His surprise doesn’t last long:
“Oh, I see! You’re going to catch crayfish! You do right, there are plenty about these days.”
We follow a small path down the field. The stream that passes by Robur’s farm is there, a bit wider and lined with big willow trees. We wade into the cool water, observed by dragonflies. Near some frogbit, the crayfish have huddled together under the stones to sleep. In order to catch them without scaring them away, we have to lift the stones as gently as possible. One day I started putting my hand under a rather heavy stone to lift it but Meadowgrass stopped me with a sharp tap on the arm. “Water rats and snakes bite!” she warned me.
The catch is good. The farmer and a cow that has followed him have come down to the bottom of the field to admire our prowess. Not mine, though. While the crayfish don’t get away from Robur, who can pick the right stones, or Meadowgrass, who plucks them out before they can get away, most of those I try to catch just scoot away with a big splash.
“You were right, there are loads of them!” Meadowgrass shouts to the farmer.
Charitably, he makes no comment about my technique and hopes we get a good haul.
The bucket fills as we make our way upstream. It’s nearly tea-time. We go home, taking a short cut through the fields beside the stream. We’re in for a real treat!
Meadowgrass has cleaned and cooked the crayfish herself, with thyme and bay leaves I brought back from the vegetable patch. We’re not the only ones to enjoy the feast; Meadowgrass’s mother congratulates her on her cooking. The father approves:
“You’ve chosen them well; it’s not easy to find such big ones.”
I venture a small amendment:
“I wasn’t much help, I’m afraid, as usual.”
“That’s not true, he caught loads!” claims Meadowgrass in the face of all likelihood.
Her father is not taken in:
“Don’t worry. Bit by bit, you’ll get to catch more and more.”
“I found it hard to catch them at your age,” the mother consoles me.
Robur and his sister exchange a quick glance that says otherwise.
The father concludes:
“They’re very good!”
It’s true, they are very good. They come from the stream, the thyme and bay leaves come from the vegetable patch, Meadowgrass has prepared them and I have eaten them at my friends’ table. Yes, they are indeed very good...
Up on the hilltop over there, Robur and Meadowgrass are bringing in the hay...
I’m having lunch with my parents and a cousin of my mother’s who has come to visit. The cousin is in the army and looks after horses all day. Excuse me, I mean he’s an important horse-riding instructor. Dressage is his thing. In a riding school. In a very important riding school.
Dressage is just another word – a foreign word – for training. Training used to be part of farm life in days gone by; Robur’s father told us that. The animals had to become good at the work they were intended for; it was a great success. Working animals got on well with their trainers. Oxen, dogs, horses. Horses, like those the cousin trains. Nowadays there are tractors. Why does the cousin train his horses? What work are they intended for? What work has Simpleheart been trained for?
The cousin has fastidious manners; he is very attentive, very affectionate. He loves his horses. He is careful not to hurt them, or even to hurt their feelings. He speaks with kindness and wisdom about how to train: “You have to be skillful and not too strict; you never have to ask them to do things that are beyond them; you don’t only have to train them, you also have to try and enhance their abilities by educating them to repress their instincts.”
Yes, it’s true, wolves have become dogs.
The farm dog has nothing of the wolf I was thinking about yesterday. He’s lying there stretched out, muzzle between his paws; you never hear him, barely even see him. Does he dream about his ancestors’ forests?
“Talking to the dog, are you, then? That’s not like you.”
I turn round; Robur is looking at me curiously.
“Yes. No. Yes,” I answer distractedly.
Robur says nothing but seems even more curious. Meadowgrass has just come up. She looks at us in turn.
“What’s going on?” she asks with surprise.
“We’re interrupting an important interview,” says Robur sardonically.
“I wanted to know what the dog was dreaming about,” I say wistfully, “but he didn’t tell me.”
Meadowgrass comes closer.
“Is it important?” she asks.
I suddenly realise the absurdity of the situation and start to laugh.
“No, no, not at all!”
Yet I feel discomfited. I go on without laughing:
“It may be important. It’s yesterday. It’s not straightforward...”
Meadowgrass breaks in:
“Let’s go to the clearing, then, and you can tell us.”
She adds brightly:
“We can take some biscuits and some chocolate!”
The frogs have quickly dived into the marshy patches that line our stream. We cross it to go up to the wood where the clearing is. The birds have recognised us and greet us with a concert. I ask Meadowgrass for a piece of chocolate. She says with concern:
“Already? What happened yesterday?”
I munch. Do I really have anything to tell? And yet they are looking at me questioningly, insistently. I make up my mind:
“A horse trainer came to our house yesterday.”
Robur is full of curiosity:
“Yes, you told us your parents were expecting a cousin for lunch. Does he train horses in a circus?”
I am surprised by the question. I wasn’t expecting such an assumption.
“No, absolutely not!”
I have spoken emphatically. Robur seems embarrassed:
“I thought you told me...”
He doesn’t finish. Meadowgrass is listening attentively. I go on again:
“Yes, yes, I didn’t really...”
I break off for a second. An idea comes to me without my realising:
“A circus... It’s a big ring. With horses.”
I turn towards Robur and add:
“You may be right; I hadn’t thought of that.”
“How very mysterious!”
How very mysterious indeed; Robur is not wrong. After all, there’s nothing... Nothing what? I blurt out:
“Yesterday one of my mother’s cousins...”
I’ve already mentioned that. I start again:
“But you already know that.”
“We’re here,” Meadowgrass says to me in a soothing voice.
I look at her. I look at both of them. I give them a grateful smile. Almost a weary smile. I look at Meadowgrass again. I smile at her. I am calmer now. It’s time to tell my story:
“The cousin is in the army... horse-riding...”
That’s it. A long silence. Robur is the first to speak:
“Not a circus, then. No, not a circus.”
He takes his time, then says:
“A circus is a big tent where horses do tricks to amuse children.”
The silence returns. Meadowgrass asks me dully:
“Are you afraid that school is a circus?”
Nobody says anything. We eat the biscuits and the chocolate. Robur talks of the hay he brought in yesterday. Meadowgrass reminds us that we were supposed to go and pick raspberries at Great-Aunt’s. In that case, right-ho, we’ll go tomorrow!
Over the abyss in which the sky loses itself, a barely visible veil woven of threads filled with light has risen silently from the depths of the earth.
We are cycling along the path that takes us to Great-Aunt’s.
“Just as well we’ve brought in the hay,” comments Robur, “’cos in two or three days it’s going to be wet.”
“It’ll be good for the grazing,” points out Meadowgrass.
She adds straight away:
“And we’ll have picked the raspberries.”
We cycle. At an easy pace, as though we needed to relax. We talk of the sun, which is getting more and more tired, of the air that has still retained all its warmth, of Snail’s injured cow, of the neighbour’s tractor, of... We stop to have a word with the farmer we pass on the way... And exchange deep thoughts with the geese we meet on the path as usual... Our path reassures us; we feel no adversity there. Little by little we start talking more freely, more brightly. Hello, Great-Aunt!
The raspberries are magnificent. We pick, and Great-Aunt with us. Even Great-Uncle has come to give us a hand – there is so much fruit... He’s feeling a bit better even though he hardly rests. We chatter about this and that. Neither she nor he ask any questions... of a philosophical nature. They certainly never have, in fact.
Certainly... Is it all that certain, then? Moving cows from one field to another is not particularly philosophical, but it is wise. Both have spent their time pondering these questions, because their life depended on their ponderings. Mere ponderings...
The raspberries are magnificent. Life is often made of raspberries. Great-Aunt will make jam. We’ll eat it some day without thinking.
We leave. Simpleheart’s farm is on the way back. We go in. We like her sweet, gentle smile. She comes to meet us, happy to see us. We compliment each other on our respective jams. She talks about the farm, the animals, as always. Yes, she always talks about her farm and her animals. The cousin would never listen to her. The cousin is an important man who is used to being listened to; he always talks about the horses at his great riding school. The maths teacher always talks to us about maths; we ourselves ask him to.
We don’t ask Simpleheart to talk to us about riding schools, which she probably wouldn’t understand, or about maths, which are a bit of a closed book for her. And even if we don’t ask her to, she knows we like to hear her talk about her farm and her animals, which are her life; and Meadowgrass will talk to her about the same life.
Simpleheart’s farm is her home, her country; the people who live in that country are her farmer neighbours. At school, no-one talks to her about the history of her country; there’s no-one to write the history of such a small country, and even if someone did, which class would it be studied in?
Somewhere, in the cities, men – she knows we call them school-men – tell her to go to school, tell her to learn what she has to do for the other inhabitants of a bigger country, a much bigger country, which she lives in too, and without which she would not live in the same way. But whatever that way might be, she can’t talk about it with her hens. Do people have to live two lives?
I’m with my parents in the city. My father is in discussion with his colleague; my mother is in discussion with her friend. I’m listening to the son who preferred a technical career. He doesn’t talk to me about animals, or horses for that matter. For the cousin, horses and animals are nothing. As for yesterday and Simpleheart’s hens... forget it.
The son has been travelling; he’s visited an art city. That’s a city where you see art things – works of art, they’re called. I ask him a question:
“You used to like art a lot, I guess?”
“Yes.”
He hesitates, then says:
“I still do. When did you mean?”
“At school.”
“At school? What do you mean, at school?”
“You must have got good marks.”
He seems indignant:
“That’s nothing to do with it. It’s not about learning. It’s not about exams.”
He splutters:
“I travel. I discover new things.”
“My teacher told me about the city you went to.”
“I went there. I stayed two days.”
I don’t insist. He goes on:
“You’ve no idea how beautiful it is.”
I do, though. It’s there in my textbook. I say nothing.
“The castle...”
He describes the castle, making a few mistakes and leaving some details out.
“The museum...”
My textbook says that the museum contains an impressive number of paintings.
“I stayed there for at least three hours. It’s extraordinary.”
I ask him what was extraordinary about it. He recites the names of great painters.
“You see?” he concludes.
He tells me about a monument he would have liked to see, of which he saw only the ruins. I tell him that according to my textbook the monument has recently been rebuilt identically.
He splutters again:
“Maybe, but it’s not of the time.”
“What time? If a cabinet-maker made an armchair in his youth and it got broken and he made another one in the same style when he was older, are the two armchairs of the same time?”
“That’s different, it’s the same person.”
“There are lots of monuments like yours, it’s not the same person who built them all. It’s just one more person who built the recent one.”
I can see him casting around for an answer.
“Travelling is fun,” I say with a smile. “You bring back good memories.”
The journey to Demeter’s is much shorter than yesterday’s. And her farm wouldn’t pass muster as a monument. But for her and Snail I reckon it’s a castle full of wonderful things. The grass has grown and no-one knows why. The cows graze mysteriously. Not so, do you say? Explain, then.
We’re going up the big hill that leads to Simpleheart’s farm. Around us the fields have lost the lovely deep colour in which the animals take pleasure. When we pass by, the cows come over to tell Meadowgrass it’s time to move them to another field. She does what she can to tell them that the grass isn’t greener anywhere else, that they just have to be patient and wait for the rain that is bound to come soon. Tomorrow perhaps, in a couple of days for sure. Meadowgrass can read the rain in the clouds, and the tiny little white bundles nuzzling up to each other way up high tell her when the grass will turn green again.
At the crossroads half-way to Simpleheart’s we catch sight, a bit lower down, of the little village where her house is. We turn towards Demeter’s; another hill reveals our farm and suggests the crayfish stream. Then all we have to do is go down towards the wood that conceals our spring, from which a path leads to Demeter’s.
The path runs between two hedges abounding with hawthorn, elder and brambles. Just a few paces later and we run into the black dog who has come to inspect the berries that will soon be his delight. We continue our walk together. The black dog happily stops to contemplate a bush, then another; we do the same. A last field that we run down and across in front of startled cows, and now we’re at the spring near the great oak trees, and now we’re at Demeter’s.
Our journey is over. Are the fields and hedges works of art?
Demeter’s mother comes out to meet us.
“The children will be pleased to see you. They’ve been working hard this morning, they’ve nearly finished. Have you picked the onions? The weather’s changing.”
“We picked them this morning,” Meadowgrass reassures her. “My father’s laying them out to dry.”
Demeter, who arrives with her brother holding a basket full of yellow flowers, calls:
“And we’ve just removed the last flowers from the tomatoes.”
Meadowgrass nods:
“The flowers are fading quickly these days, the bushes at ours had loads of them.”
Demeter takes us into the kitchen:
“I’ve made us a good tea; I think it’s going to be the last day we’ll be able to go to the spring before the rain comes.”
“I hope it’ll rain tomorrow,” sighs Snail. “When I leave a field, the cows follow me right up to the gate.”
“As we were passing by just now,” says Robur, nodding, “our cows came up to us and my sister did her best to tell them to be patient...”
Snail pulls a face:
“That must have made them happy.”
We arrive at the spring. The clouds, still distant, have a sad colour. The sun has not left us but is no longer promising to come back tomorrow.
We have our tea on the still-warm grass; in silence, as though waiting. Yesterday the school gates shut; today the sun is leaving us. The grass will be better for the cows, until the next day without rain; our tea will still be the same.
Snail breaks the silence, sounding worried:
“I can’t be here when I’m at school.”
I really want to tease him by pointing out that that is self-evident but I don’t dare because everyone seems to find what he says important and even worrying. So instead of teasing him I ask:
“What won’t you be able to do here while you’re at school?”
He doesn’t answer straight away. I go on:
“Your parents will take care of the animals...”
“You’re right,” he cuts in. “I’m not essential.”
He pauses for a moment then goes on:
“The animals may very well not need me...”
He stops again; Demeter finishes for him:
“We were born with our animals. Of course we can live without them...”
She hunts for words. Meadowgrass finishes for her:
“Living without them is as if we had just been born somewhere else, without memories.”
Robur mutters:
“We can also not live.”
So people can be stopped from living?
I cycle up the hill that starts at the farm and goes towards my town. The clouds have invested the sky. The setting sun lights them on fire. From time to time a slight breeze leaves a cool caress on my cheek.
I wake up early in the morning. Meadowgrass had rightly understood what the clouds were telling her yesterday. The sluicing of heavy, unrelenting rain tells me it’s here to stay for the day. Dawn has broken with difficulty but the daylight has forgotten to come with it, as though the sun were cross. My room is still warm, yet I can feel the damp cold trying to force the bare glass of my window.
Meadowgrass and Robur arrive during the morning, brought by their father in the car. Seeing the rain on its way, we had decided yesterday to spend the day at my house, studying books about the history of civilisations in which people have lived.
The books talk about history; the books talk about civilisations; the books talk about people who belong to civilisations. The books never talk about people.
So it’s not people who created civilisations?
“Is civilisation thought?” asks Meadowgrass.
“Civilisation is everything that makes up people’s lives,” says her brother.
“So savages are civilised, then.”
Robur can’t help goggling at her. I chip in:
“She’s right. Savages have their life too.”
“In that case, why do we talk about savages who’ve become civilised?” he responds.
“No doubt some are more civilised than others. It’s a simplification.”
Meadowgrass corrects what I have said:
“Most of all it’s so that some people can decide things instead of others.”
Robur is surprised:
“Why would they do that?”
“So as not to do the same as those who it’s been decided should be called savages,” she replies sarcastically.
She ponders for a moment then adds, nodding:
“How is Simpleheart treated at school?”
Robur tries to be optimistic:
“And what if savages were to become civilised?”
“How does one become civilised?”
My question leaves us all stumped. Robur takes a stab at finding an answer:
“They’ll all... to start a new civilisation...”
He flounders...
“They’ll all what?” we both ask him, laughing.
He pulls himself together:
“Well, they can just do what the others did before them!”
“You what?” we both exclaim in unison.
Robur unashamedly joins in our laughter.
“You’re merry!” says my father, coming in.
Meadowgrass fills him in:
“We’re civilising savages!”
My father opens his eyes wide:
“Well then, the future of the world is in good hands.”
He adds with a smile:
“Are the missionaries ready for some lunch?”
We jump up, yelling like starving savages.
Once we’re at table my father says invitingly:
“Well, then, tell us about your far-off expeditions.”
He reveals our plans to my mother:
“Just think of it! They’ve decided to civilise the savages!”
“Just make sure the boot isn’t on the other foot!” she comments with a laugh.
“No risk of that,” says Meadowgrass sardonically. “My brother’s already found an infallible path to success.”
My parents turn towards Robur, who protests energetically:
“She’s exaggerating. I haven’t found anything at all. I only said that savages could perhaps become civilised.”
My father nods approvingly:
“Why not, with such engaging missionaries?”
“Don’t mock them,” my mother tuts. “I’m sure they were looking for interesting things.”
And after a moment:
“Weren’t you?” she says, turning towards us.
My father has turned serious again:
“If savages work hard to improve themselves by learning techniques...”
I wait until I’m sure he’s finished:
“Only techniques?”
My father gives me an offended look:
“No, of course not. They have to be educated as well. Schools have to be built for them...”
I wait likewise:
“So they’ll learn what we learn.”
“Yes, of course.”
“So they’ll have our civilisation.”
My father freezes for a moment:
“Whatever do you think they...”
He checks himself and says sharply:
“Our civilisation doesn’t suit you?”
“I don’t know,” I answer calmly. “I’m not familiar with it yet. You asked me one day to be a man; I’m not quite there yet.”
“You will be,” my mother says hurriedly. “You’ll be a man soon enough.”
And what if the savages want to make another civilisation than ours?
We are once more leaning over the old oak table. The rest of the lunch went off well, Meadowgrass having successfully changed the subject.
I talk about my idea, which I had thought it best not to elaborate upon at lunch.
“So who, among the savages, is going to think of making a civilisation?” asks Robur.
“We can put forward ideas at school,” suggests Meadowgrass.
“Yeah, but when you put forward an idea that isn’t the one you’re supposed to learn...” replies her brother bitterly.
He adds almost immediately:
“Does Simpleheart put forward any ideas?”
I step in:
“She thinks most of all about her farm, it’s not the same thing.”
Meadowgrass says wistfully:
“So you’re not allowed to think of other things or think differently.”
Robur is down-to-earth:
“You can’t live together if everyone thinks differently; and if they think of other things, you can’t ask them anything.”
Her sister is equally down-to-earth:
“So either they’re forced or they’re punished.”
She stops suddenly, then goes on:
“And above all they’re told they’re bad!”
Another short pause, then:
“They give Simpleheart bad marks and then go and buy hens from her.”
Robur tries to argue:
“But if you’re absolutely sure that something is bad... For example, a fish mustn’t leave the water.”
Meadowgrass interrupts him sharply:
“I learnt something very strange at school: the ancestors of humans weren’t humans.”
I know the theory; I explain. Fish became reptiles by adapting to air. She has listened attentively, her brother too. She goes on, still briskly:
“I get that it’s not certain. But it’s possible. And what comments were made to the first fish that came out of the water?”
“None. It was dead,” retorts Robur sarcastically, but his heart isn’t really in it.
Meadowgrass ignores the sarcasm:
“Yes, dead, maybe. And others too. Lots of others, no doubt. And now we’re here.”
A long silence followed, broken after a while by Robur:
“So without fish we wouldn’t be here. If it’s true, it really is extraordinary. All power to fish!”
We chuckle, a bit. I talk some more about savages, about savages who are fish:
“These fish made another civilisation, different to the one they had before...”
“You’re right,” breaks in Meadowgrass. “You’re absolutely right.”
She stares without focus for a moment, then goes on with agitation:
“Fish... Why do you say fish?”
Robur steps in:
“The fish are the savages he was going on about just now, I think.”
I was going to confirm that but Meadowgrass got in first:
“It’s not fish in the plural, it’s the first fish. It’s not all fish, it’s the other fish, the ones that died. The fish discussed what they were absolutely certain about, that leaving the water was bad, that a fish who left the water was bad, that it had to be forced or punished. Now everyone says it’s fish – fish in general – that left the water.”
She stops, breathless.
The insistent rainfall fills the silence. What book can you find the story of mankind in?
I wake up. The sky has not returned. The rain has not left. Friends of my parents are coming for lunch. Some schoolmates are coming to see me after lunch.
Will the story of mankind also be my story if I become a man? Is that why I have to be a man? And if not, will I have to stay with the fish?
Lunch. The conversation is pleasant. My parents’ friends are pleasant. They compliment me on my success at school, on the studies I am doing during the summer. And of course I have to have a bit of fun, at my age. It’s very good that I go and play with my chums at the farm. The conversation is pleasant. My parents’ friends are pleasant. The conversation isn’t wearisome. It’s very pleasant.
My schoolmates have come to see me after lunch. We go to my room. I pass my father’s library, where the heavy oak table stands. We go to my room.
The conversation stays the same. The subjects do not touch on the customary occupations of grown-ups – work, leisure, culture; they touch on the customary occupations of people of my age – work, leisure, culture. Of course, we talk more about leisure than about work or culture; grown-ups talk more about work when they are actually doing it and of culture when they have to remember what it is so that they can remind us how essential it is. I’m exaggerating, of course. Grown-ups can be cultivated; there again, so can we. Our culture is appreciated, what’s more, always provided that it remains that of the fish.
And yet there is a big difference between our conversations and theirs. Those of the grown-ups possess power and can have consequences, especially for us; the power of our conversations is subordinate and their consequences likewise.
Which doesn’t stop my schoolmates from adopting firm positions and making combative assertions, disapproving everything that is done and everything that is said. I’m not always against what they assert, but I do wonder if the thing is possible. I explain.
One of my schoolmates doesn’t like to get bogged down in details and is concerned only with the essentials, as he says himself.
“I’m entitled to my own opinions!” he says in a peremptory tone of voice.
“And so are we!” chorus two others.
My ideas are not as clear-cut as theirs. I answer cautiously:
“Having an opinion is one thing, whether it is any use is another.”
A scruffy lad who doesn’t like deep thinking – you get caught up, he explains – cries sarcastically:
“What wisdom!”
He adds, sounding pessimistic:
“And what’s your opinion good for anyway? We can talk about it amongst ourselves. But elsewhere...”
The one who has not yet said anything gets irritated:
“Elsewhere! Ha! Elsewhere they say about me: he’s always got something to say. I tried to take it as a compliment – so I did have my own ideas, then – but it seems I was saying unpleasant things. So in that case...”
The Essentialist takes a second bite at the cherry:
“If opinions are no use, why does everyone give them?”
Irritated says:
“Everyone gives them to everyone, or else gives them to themselves.”
Laughter. Irritated shrugs:
“Yes, it’s not very clear.”
“Are you really sure?” exclaims Scruff, looking serious.
“It’s not because it’s not clear that you have to not understand,” Irritated says serenely.
The Essentialist is sympathetic:
“The holidays have tired you out.”
“And you’re missing school,” retorts Irritated. “I’ll take the trouble to explain it to you.”
“Oh, in that case please make a special effort and explain it to me too,” says Scruff.
Irritated strikes a dignified pose:
“It’s simple.”
We grimace at each other meaningfully. He goes on quickly without giving us time to say anything:
“When you’re with people, the opinions they are given are the ones they give you, otherwise they don’t listen to you or else they tell you you’re the only one to have that opinion. When you’re one of a kind, you say you have a clear conscience. It forestalls discussion in both cases.”
Scruff nods:
“I get it. If I get good marks I agree with the teacher; otherwise, it’s me who was right.”
I make a comment:
“There are times when it may not be possible to have an opinion.”
My schoolmates look at me curiously. I go on:
“In maths, for example.”
“Yes, that’s true,” they all agree, nodding.
I have a doubt; I think I had been told... I go on:
“And yet new theorems are discovered.”
The Essentialist says firmly:
“That’s not an opinion, it’s a proof. And if it’s proven, there’s no opinion to be had.”
I wake up in the middle of a proof. It’s not an opinion... There are no opinions to be had... It’s proven.
The birds are singing. The birds are singing their joy at seeing the sun come back. The sun which nonetheless no longer has the splendour of the days when school left us. The sun which lies in in the morning, gets up with less vigour and, soon tired, goes to sleep covered in clouds.
We are treading on the first golden leaves on the path that leads to Simpleheart’s, where Demeter and Snail are to join us. The fields intoxicate us with the scent that the rain has left behind; the morning mist has disappeared but we can still feel its coolness.
We have a great design: to make wicker baskets with which we will go and pick the first mushrooms that should be here soon – “within a week”, Meadowgrass has told us. None of us is short of baskets, of course, and Simpleheart’s grandfather, who lives a few houses away from hers, has been making baskets forever. But ours will be finer! And Simpleheart will help us, and Meadowgrass and Demeter have already made some very nice ones – I’ve seen them. The wicker couldn’t be any better: it comes from Robur’s farm, where the willows were planted a long, long time ago.
So here we all are, at Grandfather’s. He looks really happy to be brushing off skills that he had somewhat neglected, albeit not forgotten. He congratulates us on our keenness. Grandmother agrees with him and promises to help us with the rim that decorates the basket. “Mine were always the prettiest, back in the day!” she adds with a teasing note in her voice, turning towards Grandfather, who pretends not to have heard. “Enough chatter!” he exclaims. “Back to work!” Grandmother holds up the sheet she is embroidering and replies with a smile: “Back to work? I’m already at it!”
So now we are starting to make the base, with good round switches. The girls have quick fingers; we, the boys, are struggling a bit and Robur is not really any more at ease than I am. The quick fingers shape patterns with smaller switches and twigs. Our thick fingers provide the solid base without which nothing is possible. “We’ve done the hard bit,” we tease the girls. Grandmother advises us to tightly weave the strips that will cover the basket, without which the mushrooms would soon take their leave of us. After a number of more or less successful attempts, we resign ourselves to asking the girls for help. “Come on then, it won’t take us long, since you’ve done the hard bit!” says Meadowgrass smoothly. The girls giggle and Grandmother gives us a mocking though kindly look. “You can get your own back with the handles, they need a strong hand,” she reassures us. We puff out our chests. Grandfather has not said much but without his constant help the baskets would have ended up rather wonky.
It’s nearly tea-time; Simpleheart’s mother calls us. The baskets aren’t quite ready yet, we’ll finish them later. The conversation at table is lively. Is it like grown-ups’ conversations? I don’t think so. And yet Simpleheart’s parents and grandparents... Why, then? Here, the talk is about country matters; there, at my house, the talk is about town matters. Both are worth talking about. But there, things couldn’t be seen; here, on the other hand... I can see the cow; I can’t see the contract, even if I’m shown it, even when I translate it. Yet both exist, both are important. Does that mean grown-ups only talk about things that cannot be seen? It is said that animals talk; what do they talk about? I know what they see, I know what they want. I also know about Meadowgrass; I’ll give her my basket. I think I know about those who are at table with me. Am I capable of knowing about grown-ups from town? Do I want to? Do you have to be a man to be capable of it? Or to want it? The conversation continues, each talking to each...
I think the sun must have taken offence; it appeared this morning, resolved to chase away the few clouds that were playing at following it. The pretty flowers in the garden that I can see from my room blossomed to please it. Does it look at them? It sees them, the way it also sees the hills, the stream, the grass in the meadows. Is the grass in the meadows pretty? It grows on its own, there’s no-one to get it ready; the cows eat it when the sun has finished preparing it.
My parents are having friends over for lunch. As usual, my father works with his colleague and my mother talks with the colleague’s wife – after lunch, of course. There is also a son who is due to become a literature teacher this year.
“What do you want to do when you’ve finished school?” he inquires of me kindly.
I’ve already heard that question, I don’t know how many times; always the same. The idea comes to me of pinning a notice to the front door saying “The child doesn’t know what he wants to do.” But it wouldn’t be accurate because it’s my future that concerns the universe, not the present. Too bad! In any case, I’ve been taught – in literature lessons – that the present could speak of the future. Consequently, as my father often says...
I have to respond. As my previous answers to this type of question have not been productive, I decide to change my method:
“I don’t know,” I say.
It would be more amusing to put ‘say I’, and what’s more, it’s the kind of thing you learn in literature at school. And talking of the kind of thing you learn at school, what’s it for anyway? My deep thoughts are abruptly cut short because my answer was still not the right one. The budding teacher, who knows what his future will be, is scandalised:
“What do you mean, you don’t know what you want to do?”
That’s what I’ve just told him, isn’t it? Huffily, disapprovingly, he renders his silence for mine. In for a penny, in for a pound. I continue:
“To answer your question, I’d already have to know who I am myself.”
Aghast. He is aghast. I insist:
“In literature you come across lots of characters who ask themselves that type of question. You must have come across them, since you’re going to teach literature.”
He strikes a pose of indignant incomprehension and scolds me:
“You’re not a character in a novel!”
“Why? Are characters in a novel supposed not to be able to exist in real life?”
“No, of course they can exist, but they are complex characters who are there to be studied.”
“It’s true, at school you always have to study.”
“Don’t you like studying?”
His question annoys me. You can like studying and still want to do something else. So I answer:
“Yes, I do, but a novel isn’t only something to be studied.”
“No, of course not, it can be a distraction.”
“In that case, someone who exists can be a distraction, since characters can exist.”
“Yes, of course; someone you play with, for example.”
“I don’t...”
I was thinking out loud. I start again. I was going to say “I don’t play with Meadowgrass; she isn’t a distraction.” I start again:
“I don’t play with a cow...”
“A cow?” he cries. “Who on earth’s talking about cows?”
“A cow isn’t a distraction; it waits to be taken care of and it gives milk.”
“And so what?”
“If one of my schoolmates is a distraction...”
Cutting me short, he says mockingly:
“He won’t give you any milk!”
I answer, rather sadly:
“And won’t be able to ask me for anything.”
“Well, that way you won’t be bothered!”
I take a while before replying:
“What about me? Am I a distraction?”
He looks at me without saying anything. I go on:
“I told you, didn’t I, that I didn’t know who I was.”
He still says nothing. I continue:
“So novels are there to be studied or for distraction, with characters who can exist and be a distraction. And when you’ve read a novel, you’ve learnt how to look at people as characters.”
This time he protests:
“You’re getting everything mixed up. Novels are one thing, life is another.”
“So a character in a novel can ask himself questions that I can’t ask myself?”
He answers me in a very patient tone of voice:
“The novel depicts the life of people we don’t know. It’s a window onto a world we don’t live in ourselves.”
“What’s the point of it, then, if we don’t live in it?”
“It makes a subject for homework,” he retorts mockingly.
“Must be great, being taught by you...”
He goes on, without taking any notice of my sententious comment:
“If you don’t look any further than the people you live amongst, you’ll never get to know other people.”
“Why should I want to?”
“You’ll see, there are people who don’t think the same way as you, and perhaps you may even come to realise that your thoughts aren’t necessarily the best. It’ll help you to live better.”
After a moment he adds:
“The story you’re reading may very well happen to you one day and make you want to either have the same qualities as the character or avoid their faults.”
Is that what you need in order to become a man?
“What do you think?”
His question takes me by surprise. Why is he asking me questions when he doesn’t know whether I think the way I ought to? I seek a tangent:
“You talked about a story intended to distract.”
He ponders for a moment, then says:
“There are people whose life is sad; the writer offers them another life to live.”
“It’s not a true life.”
“It’s a pleasant life.”
“When a person finds themselves in a life that isn’t theirs, you can get them to do what you want because they think they’re only a character.”
The budding teacher revolts:
“There you go, getting everything mixed up again! If you make them do something that doesn’t fit in with who they are, they will immediately stop being a character.”
“And what if they don’t?”
“That’s not possible. They know that they are themselves. It’s obvious.”
“But what if they don’t?”
The budding teacher looks at me as though I were something peculiar. Then, shrugging his shoulders, he says, as though it were self-evident:
“Then they must be mad.”
Yes, perhaps they are mad.
“Do you think I’m mad?”
My question makes him laugh. I insist:
“If I tell you that I don’t want to have the same qualities as the character, what would you think?”
“I would ask you why.”
“And what if I don’t know why?”
He answers with a hint of impatience:
“I think you’re doing this on purpose. Is it a game?”
If it were a game, it would frighten me. I say:
“How can you know that his qualities actually are qualities?”
He bursts out laughing:
“Well, now, it’s obvious: qualities are faults!”
“And what if I don’t want to avoid his faults either?”
Now he ridicules me:
“And why would you do that, since they’re qualities?”
Perhaps...
“What if my thoughts are the best.”
“What if...”, he answers mockingly.
“What would happen if everyone found my thoughts wrong?”
The budding teacher smiles, amused:
“Well, you would just have to... to accept that... Ah! You’re making me say silly things, with your silly questions. You would no doubt end up having to accept that your thoughts are wrong.”
“It’s happened to others and they lost their life because of it. Later, much later, it was acknowledged that their thoughts were the best. It was even said that their life had been a well-lived, successful life.”
He tries to be conciliatory:
“They are indeed things that you will learn at school. School teaches you how to live in a community.”
“You mean it teaches you not to have thoughts considered wrong, whatever might be said of them later.”
He hesitates. I conclude:
“So if I obey the precepts of school, it is possible I may waste my life.”
The budding teacher is perplexed:
“You really are a strange one,” he says, sounding disheartened.
I laugh, with a hint of mockery:
“I’ve already told you I didn’t know who I was!”
He bridles:
“Come off it, there’s nothing special about you; you’re just a man like any other.”
So if I already am one, why has my father told me I have to become one?
Reaching the farm, I catch sight of Meadowgrass out in the vegetable patch, deep in the broad leaves of wild chicory. I hail her joyfully:
“Are you hiding?”
She answers me in similar vein:
“Yes indeed! And successfully too, since you didn’t manage to see me!”
We laugh brightly. I plunge into the chicory.
“Are you going to make a salad for tea?” I tease her.
“If I make you a salad, greedy-guts, there’ll be nothing left for the animals!”
“Too bad. I’ll just have to starve, then.”
“In any case, it’s not ready yet. Come and gather the apples instead, they’re already really good.”
“I don’t mind if I do!” I exclaim avidly.
“Don’t eat them all, I’ll need some to bake for tea.”
I grab an apple. Meadowgrass drags me away.
“Let’s go to the fruit cellar and make sure the racks are in good condition. If they’re not, I’ll ask my brother to see to them. After that we can store the apples ready for winter.”
She adds after a short silence:
“And that way there’ll be some for you to eat later; you like that.”
The racks don’t need much doing to them. We go to tell Robur, who is deep in the innards of the tractor.
“I’ll see to it right away,” he says, “but after that I’ll be busy with the tractor until tea-time.”
He adds with a grin:
“Don’t eat them all!”
I tell them about yesterday’s discussion with the budding teacher.
“As far as he’s concerned, a book is either a distraction or else something to be studied at school. And you have to think the way you ought.”
Robur pulls a face:
“Well, I’m going to go and distract myself with the tractor.”
We laugh heartily.
Now here we are under the apple tree, Meadowgrass and I. The apples look really lovely and taste very good too, if the one I have just scoffed is anything to go by. But you have to be careful choosing the ones for the fruit cellar: in perfect condition and not too ripe. Meadowgrass has a keen eye, and once we’ve gathered the apples under the tree she points to the ones that are hanging on the higher branches.
“Those ones are riper,” she warns me, “they’re nearer the sun. Choose them well!”
And adds immediately:
“Be careful when you climb. Put your feet on the branches gently, otherwise you’ll shake the ripest ones loose.”
I play the clever-clogs:
“If they fall, all we have to do is gather them up.”
“And they’ll be bruised! And then you’ll tell me my baked apples aren’t good.”
“Even if they weren’t, I’d still be happy you’d made them.”
She gives me a quick smile and pulls herself up into the tree. We climb. It’s pleasant to stroll about the branches of an apple tree. Looking closer, it’s a pretty short stroll, and more a matter of threading a passage through the tangle of branches that bar our way. Meadowgrass is more supple than I am, and now she’s swinging slightly on a thinner branch. The last apples are in the basket at the foot of the tree. We rest after our exertions, sitting on two twisted branches that make comfortable seats.
“Winter’s on its way,” says Meadowgrass pensively.
She stays silent for a moment, then adds slowly:
“We’ll soon have to plough up the big field.”
I know that ploughing comes after the middle of the summer. But winter’s still a long way off...
“Why are you talking about winter? It’s still a long way off.”
She gives me a long look. At last she answers, still slowly:
“The seasons change quickly. You have to get ready for them.”
We sit there in silence. After a long while she turns towards me, gives me a calm, perhaps slightly sad smile and says in a voice that tries to be bright:
“I hope the baked apples will be good; the apples are very good.”
I look at her closely and ask her:
“Why are you sad?”
She doesn’t answer. I go on:
“You know I’m happy that you’re going to make me baked apples. I’m always happy when I’m with you.”
More silence. I continue:
“You told me I could eat the apples this winter. I’ll come and do just that, even if the snow tries to stop me.”
She grips my hand with all her strength, then jumps down quickly from the apple tree and cries:
“Hurry up, we have to go and make the baked apples!”
At dinner, my mother says worriedly:
“You seem elsewhere...”
I look up. Elsewhere... I’m not... And yet it’s true, I’m not really present. Not here. There. There, in the apple tree. I’m still sitting in the apple tree.
“Where are you then?” my mother repeats.
I’ve left the apple tree. I answer my mother’s question:
“I was wondering whether Robur had managed to mend the tractor.”
My mother has looked at me curiously. My father expresses surprise:
“Weren’t you with him?”
Wasn’t I with him?... Yes, I was with him. No... No, I was... I don’t want to talk about the apple tree.
My father is waiting for my answer.
“He hadn’t finished when I left,” I say. “Not yet.”
“Was it something serious?”
Why don’t I want to talk about the apple tree? I have no reason... My father is looking at me; he is waiting for my answer.
“No, nothing serious,” I say. “But quite time-consuming. There are lots of parts to check.”
“Did you stay to help?” asks my mother.
“Yes...”
I didn’t help. It’s true, I didn’t help him. I rectify:
“Yes, a bit. But I don’t know much about tractors.”
So what did I do?
“We talked as well...”
What about?
“The usual...”
I search for something else to say.
“You seemed worried; I wondered if there was anything the matter,” my mother says softly.
Is she reassured? My father is already talking to me about something else. What?
Sleep evades me. I am a school-man. Does Meadowgrass see me, one icy winter, in a big school in a city, perhaps even in a big city even further away? How do you come back from a big city a long way away? In a car, I suppose. But in what state, fed with what thoughts? A school-man has to go to school. He can choose, of course, but there are not many schools and they are all schools... of course they are. At that kind of school there are no cows to talk to, there are professors you listen to – that’s what you’re there for. You listen and you learn – that’s what you’re there for. And you become a school-man. That’s how you come back. Is that what becoming a man means? No, no and thrice no! Perhaps I will become a man – when I’ve found out what that means – but I will never, ever become a something-or-other-man. Meadowgrass will recognise me; did she think I wouldn’t recognise her?
Robur’s father has come to get a new cow from the farm near the big river we like to swim in. We have come with him in the car because we want to spend the afternoon in the boat the farmer sometimes lets us use. We will doubtless go swimming as well, although the heat we had last time is just a distant memory now. The boat takes on water. What? No, that’s nonsense! The boat takes to the water... Yes, that sounds better – I’m no sailor, as you can see, or read. Whatever... we’re afloat.
We loll in the farmer’s spacious boat, idly drifting on the current – we’ll have to row back – under the interested gaze of the cows that have come down to the river to drink. The landscape unfurls slowly before us, unhurried just as we are unhurried. The landscape is never the same; a great willow tree wraps us in its shade, a large root has poked its head above the surface to find out who’s disturbing its water, long grass bends towards us, nettles stand proud, small insects dance on the water near the river bank, little round ripples betray a fish that has come to see what’s going on, a cat with big eyes spies on us from the branch of a maple tree and the meadows stretch away on either side.
A feeling of peace settles over me. I’m with my friends, far away from those who want me to be... I don’t even know what, but something other than simply what I am. A cow can only be a cow. I have to be a man. Aren’t I one, then? Anyone can tell anyone to be “a man”. So am I the only one? No, others are told the same thing. Those doing the telling don’t even know who they’re telling it to. “Be men!”, just because there’s a chief and there are warriors. And that’s not enough. I have to be a particular type of man. A school-man, for example. And that’s not enough either. I have to choose one school and not another. And think the way that school thinks. And think the way I ought to, what’s more. What way is that? Doubtless the way of the person who tells me and has the power to do so. It’s true that nobody has ever told me to think the way I ought, but I’ve already been told not to think the way I didn’t ought. A cow can only be a cow. Nobody tells cows anything. They eat them. Do I have to think the way I ought in order not to be eaten? I’m with my friends, far away from those who want me to be... A feeling of peace settles over me.
“Where were you?”
Where was I? Where...? I don’t know what to say to Meadowgrass. She is giving me a slightly anxious look.
“I was thinking about everything we don’t know... and have to learn.”
She finds my answer unconvincing.
“We often talk about those things...” she says insistently.
“Not half,” interjects Robur with a sigh.
Meadowgrass pays no notice:
“... and you’re usually happy to talk about them with us.”
Robur resumes:
“D’you reckon the things they teach us aren’t useful, then?”
“No, I do,” I reassure him, “I think they’re very useful; only, I was wondering who they’re useful for – us or others, and in that case which others?”
I add, for Meadowgrass:
“When we talk about this stuff together, we each give our own opinion and then we discuss them...”
She interrupts me:
“At school it’s the teacher who decides.”
Her brother says:
“The teachers know more than we do.”
Meadowgrass is doubtful:
“Oh, yes, they know all right. They know where they’re taking us. We don’t.”
She turns to me:
“Is that what you were thinking about?”
I nod while Robur questions her:
“If they don’t take us, will we find the way on our own?”
We leave it there, saying nothing more; we drift with the current. Meadowgrass murmurs:
“The current is taking us towards the sea.”
Then, more loudly:
“What will we do in the middle of the oceans?”
The sun is playing hide-and-seek with the clouds great and small that are running around the sky. We’re going up the stream on the hill. That is to say, we’re walking up and the stream is running down, of course. We would never be able to head up this stream in yesterday’s big boat that wanted to take us to the middle of the oceans. And we know where the stream goes: it goes to Demeter’s.
Demeter and Snail are waiting for us impatiently: the blackberries have started to ripen. Not everywhere, we’ll have to check every hedge, and there are plenty of them on the hill. Demeter will make a huge pie for tea and a few pots of jam. The five of us set off – well, six, actually, because the black dog is with us. What’s more, the black dog knows the best places better than we do, having already had a sneak preview a few days earlier. Fortunately it’s satisfied – through laziness no doubt – with the fruit on the branches closest to the ground, otherwise there’d have been no blackberries for us.
We have started picking. Demeter is already dreaming of other feasts.
“I saw a couple of mushrooms in the wood near the spring,” she tells us.
“Oh, I saw more than a couple, I saw at least four or five!” boasts her brother.
Meadowgrass concludes:
“It’s going to rain in a few days; we’ll be able to fill our new baskets.”
“To the brim!” exclaims Snail.
“If you can only manage to see them – your mushrooms, I mean,” says Robur sarcastically.
“If your basket’s empty I’ll leave you a few,” counters Snail.
“In the meantime his punnet’s fuller than yours!” his sister says to him with a twinkle.
We all laugh and carry on blackberrying. The black dog is done; he’s lying on the ground near us and observing us with amazement: “They pick the berries and then don’t eat them!”
We’ve got what we need for today. Other berries are getting ready for another day’s harvest; we’ll leave them to make their bargain with the sun. We make our way back through the steep meadow that leads to the spring and Demeter’s farm. The girls disappear into the kitchen to make the pie and the jam. Snail takes us to the field where the cow that injured itself three weeks ago is grazing. The animal is fine now and Snail has only come to fix a wooden stake that had given way the previous day. “It’ll be easier with the three of us,” he has explained. “Admit it, you just didn’t want to make the effort! You were waiting for us!” Robur has teased him, and we have all had a good laugh.
From where we are standing we can see, above the spring, the sun that has slipped between the branches of the great oak tree to let us know it’s nearly tea-time. We hurry back to the farm.
The pie was delicious. The blackberries are promising. “You could mention that it was all Demeter’s work!” Meadowgrass lectures us. We immediately compliment the pastry chef on her outstanding achievement – her parents are always amused by the names we have given ourselves, which they don’t really understand.
The father nods approvingly.
“It’s good that you all get along so well,” he says deliberately.
The mother agrees:
“They do get along, don’t they? They’re good children.”
The father asks Robur for news of the tractor. “Hasn’t it been a problem for the ploughing?” he inquires. “No, we’re due to plough the big field tomorrow morning,” Robur answers him. “Just as well,” the father comments. “There’ll be rain soon.”
The mother asks Meadowgrass for news of the farm, the vegetable garden... “We’ve just sown some cover crops and picked tomatoes for the preserves,” Meadowgrass answers her. The mother approves: “You’ve done right, we have to think about winter.”
Tea-time draws to an end peacefully, as peacefully as when we were drifting on the current in the boat yesterday.
There are not yet any books on the old oak table this afternoon. We don’t know what to do and I haven’t prepared anything.
“Why should we always know? Why not just take something at random,” says Meadowgrass.
Robur entirely agrees:
“Perhaps we’ll find something that’s close to our life.”
“Or something unforeseen,” murmurs Meadowgrass dreamily.
We open books at random. History, literature, maths, law, geology...
“Geology!” cries Robur. “Now there’s something that’s close to our life!”
He leafs through the book and adds:
“I remember now; my sister once drew a wonderful map. You could see the land where we live as if it were living with us.”
Meadowgrass is leafing through another book; she seems absorbed. Her brother is intrigued:
“That looks pretty interesting. What is it?”
She answers hesitantly:
“I don’t know...”
She turns to me:
“What’s philosophy?”
I start to explain:
“Philosophy is the study of thought...”
Robur interrupts with a laugh:
“So we have to study thought now, do we? I can’t even think in peace without someone talking to me about studying!”
In peace... I think back to the boat. Where does thought take us peacefully off to?
Meadowgrass reproaches her brother in a tone of gently mockery:
“And yet you’ve already told me that studying gave the cows more milk.”
Her brother stares at her wide-eyed. She goes on:
“Don’t you remember? We were talking about nature that the school-men had changed.”
Robur is no longer laughing:
“You’re right, I remember.”
He freezes for a moment, then adds in a tired voice:
“So do you think they’re going to change the way I think?”
Meadowgrass has suddenly become anxious:
“No, that’s not what I... Nobody’s going to change the way you think!”
A heavy silence descends. I try to respond:
“There’s no harm in changing an idea. In maths, for example, you can change your reasoning if you can’t find the solution to a problem.”
Robur confirms:
“You don’t sow wheat where the grass is lush.”
Meadowgrass looks even more anxious:
“And what if it were true? What if they really did want to change the way we think?”
She turns to me:
“You mentioned an idea. An idea is something; the way we think is us.”
Robur is up in arms:
“You’re right!” he cries to Meadowgrass. “Nobody’s going to change the way I think!”
Has Meadowgrass heard? She says uncertainly:
“How will I know that I am no longer myself?”
And if I become a man, how will I know that I am still myself?
Silence has returned. Meadowgrass leafs through her book without reading it. Robur suddenly gets agitated:
“What a load of old rubbish we spout! School-men may give more milk, fine, but they don’t change cows into goats!”
“Or bulls into oxen.”
Meadowgrass has spoken curtly. It affects us... somehow... I don’t know how. Robur gets more agitated:
“It’s not about the way they think...”
He stops, seeing the look his sister is giving him. Silence again. Meadowgrass sits up straight, considers us one after the other and says in a firm voice:
“If one day I no longer feel like being with you, that will mean I’m no longer myself.”
We are walking briskly along the path that goes to Great-Aunt’s. We’re walking briskly because Robur is walking briskly, like someone who has decided not to think any more about yesterday’s philosophical discussion. The fields are there, no need to ask them if they are themselves; the grass grows, the cows eat it.
Robur has calmed down a bit and, passing by Simpleheart’s farm, we go in to say hello. She welcomes us in her usual kind way, happy to see us, as though we were doing her a favour. There are people about whom people often say without really thinking: “They’re always true to form!” or “They never change!”, which isn’t always a compliment, especially if it refers to someone like Simpleheart. So never changing isn’t always well-regarded; if the school-men manage to change our way of thinking, we will therefore be well-regarded. By school-men. And by Simpleheart? No matter, because she will not be well-regarded. And how is she supposed to change her way of thinking anyway? For that to happen she would have to talk with the school-men, not with hens and pigs. Or with us, for that matter.
We talk with Simpleheart. We talk about hens and pigs, and about Meadowgrass’s cows too. And about how it’s going to rain tomorrow and we’ll go gathering mushrooms with our new baskets. We’ll all go together, Simpleheart, Demeter, Snail and the three of us. Simpleheart is happy to be coming with us, she’s happy we’ll be taking the baskets she helped us to make, she’s happy her hens have got used to her. And her parents, her hens and her pigs are happy with her. At school, her teachers are not happy with her.
We race down the field with the chestnut trees. Great-Aunt welcomes us with open arms; we throw ourselves into them, nearly bowling her over. “The raspberries are waiting for you!” she cries with a big smile. We go to the vegetable patch. The delicate raspberries are bursting with sunshine. “It’s going to rain tomorrow, it’s a good job you’ve come over today,” comments Great-Aunt.
Here we are, covered in raspberry juice; the harvest was good, all we have to do now is wait for the jam. While we were hard at work, Great-Aunt was using the first pickings to make a pie for our tea. The tea wins a round of applause. Great-Uncle is there too, back from the fields, and not the last to appreciate the pie. Apparently he’s like us: he finds it very good indeed. Teatime passes in high good humour. Nobody seems to be thinking about philosophy any more. Meadowgrass has suddenly stood up, has gone to give Great-Aunt and Great-Uncle a hug and has said to them softly: “I love you both!”
It’s raining. Great-Aunt was right, it’s a good job we picked the raspberries yesterday. It’s raining. My parents have invited my two friends for lunch. “It’s no weather for being outside,” my mother has said. “Did the missionaries manage to civilise the savages?” my father has asked. My two friends arrived during the morning; their father drove them over.
There are no books on the old oak table. We don’t really know what to do. I cast around for a subject that could please us:
“I’m afraid that philosophy...”
“Philosophy,” Robur cuts in briskly, “can’t just be about changing the way someone thinks.”
Meadowgrass turns towards me:
“You said yesterday that philosophy was the study of thought. Studying thought doesn’t mean changing the way people think. But when I study something at school, I’m expected to apply it afterwards. Take Snail, for example: he studied geometry and his teacher told him to use it to measure fields. What do you apply the study of thought to?”
“To thought, of course!” Robur says impatiently.
“Which thought?”
Silence follows Meadowgrass’s curt response.
Lunch calls us. At table my mother asks Meadowgrass for news of the farm, or rather of the kitchen or the vegetable patch. On which subject, Meadowgrass had brought fruit and vegetables, much to my mother’s delight. “Oh, it’s all so fresh!” she had exclaimed. Tomatoes from the farm reign supreme on the table. My mother talks about the different varieties. “These are the best,” she says. My father waits for a lull in the conversation to talk to us about... “missionaries”.
“How far have you got with your civilisation?” he asks us.
Meadowgrass fills him in briefly on our most recent lines of thought:
“We’re trying to work out how to think.”
“How to think?”
“Yes... you know, philosophy.”
My father looks surprised:
“You have philosophy lessons in your...?”
He turns to Meadowgrass, giving her an incredulous look:
“They teach you philosophy in your class?”
“N... N... No...” stammers Meadowgrass.
She doesn’t know what else to say. I come to her aid:
“She saw a book about philosophy in the library...”
“Oh, I see. Which book?”
None of us could remember, for the good reason that we hadn’t looked at the book’s title. I answer quickly, as though I hadn’t really understood the question:
“It started us off wondering whether philosophy could change the way people think.”
My father must have found what I said so incongruous that he didn’t notice I hadn’t answered his question. He looks at me with surprise, not saying anything. My mother has stepped in before he has had time to react:
“Philosophy changes the way people think so much that they lose sight of reality.”
My father has finally found his voice:
“The very purpose of philosophy is to try and improve human thought. And it’s obvious that if you improve something, you change it.”
He turns to my mother:
“I don’t see why better thought should mean losing sight of reality.”
My mother doesn’t usually continue arguments when she finds them too long for her taste, yet this time she does:
“In real life people are very different from each other. For philosophy they’re all the same.”
Meadowgrass butts into the conversation:
“Does that mean all people will think the same thing?”
She blushes slightly, seeing my father and my mother turning to look at her. I chip in quickly:
“Those are the ideas we were talking about.”
However, my mother has nodded at Meadowgrass’s words:
“That’s what I’m worried about.”
My father looks disheartened:
“In which case human thought will stay just like it was thousands of years ago.”
I react, judiciously:
“In which case why are we taught about the ideas of philosophers who lived thousands of years ago?”
My father says condescendingly:
“Precisely because they brought new ideas.”
“And there haven’t been any others since?”
“No, of course there have. And you are taught about them too.”
“If the new ones are better than the old ones, why tell us about the old ones? It could give us ideas thousands of years old, which you say have to be abandoned.”
“It’s so as to know the history of human thought.”
“So to educate a child you teach them everything that’s wrong as well as everything that’s right.”
“Of course, so that they know. It’s what’s called education.”
“Why do they have to know what is wrong? What is right ought to be enough.”
“So that they can recognise what is wrong.”
“They can’t know anything wrong if they’re not taught what it is.”
“Others could show it to them.”
“If everyone is the same, there aren’t any others.”
My father answered that one by telling me I couldn’t talk about philosophy until I’d learnt it at school. I concluded from this that there were two types of thought, one at school and the other... was there even another? If education is philosophy, to become a man you need to become a philosopher. The idea made me smile. I didn’t put it to my father.
There are still no books on the old oak table. Meadowgrass and Robur are silent; my argument was complicated, I think, and they had trouble following it. Robur finally asks, sounding worried:
“What must I do to mend my tractor? I can’t invent myself.”
I don’t know what to say. Meadowgrass steps in:
“What matters as far as your tractor’s concerned is that it works. There’s nothing to stop you from asking; after that, you can see for yourself whether it’s right or not.”
Robur is pacified.
“That’s true!” he says with a laugh, then adds more seriously:
“For a tractor, the philosopher’s the person who made it.”
Meadowgrass continues:
“Maybe philosophy’s a bit like geometry...”
Robur looks taken aback but makes no comment. I think I know what she means but let her carry on all the same:
“The figures we study, we’re told that they don’t exist, that they’re simply perfect. And yet they can let Snail measure his field, even though his field isn’t perfect.”
She has pondered quite a long time while we were waiting, then goes on:
“At school I can calculate the surface area of a rectangle; but Snail’s field will never be a rectangle, and Snail will never know the surface area of his field.”
I am cycling quickly towards the farm. It’s still dark. The air is warm. The rain has gone, leaving only a few strands of still-damp mist behind.
At the farm, yesterday’s stew awaits me. The cock has announced my arrival. We breakfast without wasting time. The sky, seeing us coming, has awoken to light the path we will take as we go to meet the sun, which is taking its time.
With our new baskets on our arms, we head for the sun – or should I say the mushrooms! They should have sprouted in quantity during the night. Simpleheart, Demeter and Snail will meet us in the wood by the spring.
We reach the top of the hill that overlooks the spring; the sun has just appeared, keeping the appointment we had made. The wood is not very far off now and we make our way there, keeping to the crest; the wood tumbles down the hill to the spring as fast as it can and we would rather do our picking on the way down than on the way up. Call us lazy if you like.
Demeter and Snail are already there and greet us with much waving of arms and wagging of fingers. “We’ve been waiting for you for hours!” they cry to us from afar. “Where? Over the breakfast table?” we cry back, followed by much laughing and hugging. On the other side of the wood we can see Simpleheart lightly climbing the steep path that will bring her to us. More hugging. The sharp morning air pricks our faces, making us bright and cheerful. Lively discussions ensue about the best place for finding mushrooms. I don’t make much of a contribution, since I quite often confuse mushrooms with the fallen leaves that have begun to litter the ground over the last few days.
Firmly planted on the steep slope, we hunt mushrooms – the girls looking for the best ones, the boys (except for me, of course) hoping to find a few that are not too bad all the same.
Demeter and Snail know the wood like the back of their hand – it’s theirs after all – so have no trouble at all finding the mushrooms that have returned to their usual haunts. Yet the other baskets too fill before our very eyes; there are lots of mushrooms about, apparently, though I wonder where on earth they can be. Anyway, I’ve found a trick: I walk behind Meadowgrass and look to see if she hasn’t overlooked one or two here or there; and my basket fills, and fills... Unfortunately, I have finally worked out that she was doing it on purpose and am likewise filled... with shame. Actually, on reflection, I feel no shame at all. I have even given her a discreet little smile to show her I knew what she was up to, and appreciated it. I think she appreciated it too. Our mission draws to an end; the baskets are full to overflowing. Even mine is far from empty. “How on earth did you manage that?” Robur joshes me. “I called them and they came,” I reply, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. He gives me a pitying look. Now all we have to do is climb back up the wood’s steep slope, because without realising it we have ended up quite a long way down.
Demeter’s mother congratulates us on our crop; even I am entitled to a few flattering remarks – she really is very kind to me. She promises a feast for lunch. The girls hurry to help her but she bats them away: “I’ll make them with my special recipe,” she tells them, taking hold of her daughter’s basket.
We go into the large dining room to wait for lunch, which we fully intend to devour – a morning like that makes you hungry – like wolves emerging from the wood by the spring.
“See? You picked loads!” Demeter says to me kindly.
I don’t dare betray the secret of my success and feel myself starting to blush.
“Oh, I was lucky enough to find some without really looking,” I reply airily.
My brilliant reply makes me blush harder. Fortunately Meadowgrass comes to the rescue:
“He found a good path under the chestnut trees, there were lots of them there.”
Which was absolutely true – with one qualification: Meadowgrass had gone before me under the chestnut trees.
Robur and Snail have embarked on a deep discussion of a botanical nature:
“I bet you’ve never seen one that big before!” exclaims Snail.
Robur answers with supreme calm:
“I prefer the smaller ones, they’ve got more taste.”
They continue their fencing match. Simpleheart, however, is anxious.
“Do you think I should go and give your mother a hand in the kitchen?” she asks Demeter in a low voice. “I could clean them, I’m used to it.”
Demeter reassures her:
“My mother likes to make her little recipes in secret.”
She giggles and adds:
“Though in fact everyone knows them.”
Simpleheart is even more anxious:
“You’re not going to tell her, are you? It would upset her.”
Demeter reassures her again:
“No, don’t worry, no-one’s ever said anything...”
“I’ve already made them like that,” Meadowgrass butts in with a laugh.
She turns to me:
“You fry them up in butter, you add flour and stir, you...”
“You forgot the hot water,” Demeter interrupts her, “otherwise he wouldn’t be able to stir anything!”
“Yes, you have to make it easy for him,” says Robur placidly, “he’s not very strong.”
It’s true, I’m not very strong.
“You’re just saying that so we don’t notice your sister got it wrong,” Demeter mocks him, half-laughing.
The sister protests:
“The sister can speak for herself! Anyway, if no-one’s interested...”
“Oh no!” we all chorus. “Tell us, tell us!”
“Well, then, I’ll continue, since you’re all so keen.”
“Oh yes, oh yes!” cries the chorus.
“When the sauce is clear enough you add salt and pepper and simmer gently.”
“How long? How long?” cries the chorus.
“Until it’s ready,” replies Meadowgrass nonchalantly.
“What then? What then?” cries the chorus.
“Some cream to bind it...”
“Oh yes! Oh yes!” cries the chorus.
“... with egg yolk, then...”
“How many? How many?” cries the chorus.
“Just enough,” says Meadowgrass unperturbed.
Laughter.
“A squeeze of lemon juice to finish off with, and some fried bread. Delicious!”
The chorus is dumbstruck, lost in admiration.
“Do you think that’s how your mother...?” Robur asks Demeter greedily after a moment.
“You’ll see...” she answers mysteriously.
“Is that what you did with your mushrooms?” Simpleheart asks Meadowgrass.
“My mushrooms?”
“Yes, from the wood at the top of your great-aunt’s chestnut field.”
“Oh, that! Yes, there are lots of mushrooms there, and they’re easier to pick, the slope’s not as steep.”
Snail has heard.
“It’s more fun on a steep slope,” he says, puffing out his chest. “But of course you girls couldn’t manage it.”
“And who had to rescue you last year, near the clearing?” his sister mocks him.
Robur springs to his defence:
“The slope on the big hill is quite impossible; it’s really brave even to have tried!”
He adds emphatically:
“And he did manage to gather a few mushrooms...”
“All right, all right,” says Demeter with a grin, “my brother’s a hero!”
Snail raises his arms in triumph and cries:
“I’m the hero of the hill!”
We all laugh merrily. Simpleheart has even added:
“It’s true, you have to hold on to the trees if you don’t want to tumble down the slope; it’s not easy at all!”
Snail has blushed with pleasure.
We are in an industrial plant. No mushrooms here. I still have the taste of yesterday’s in my mouth. Robur too. Meadowgrass has promised to make them again for me. “Will you let me have some?” Robur has asked me, which has given us a good laugh. We are in an industrial plant. My father has to meet the director, who has offered to give me a guided tour. “He needs to know about the modern world,” the director has said sententiously. On to the modern world, then. The mushrooms were yesterday and the meadows the day before. I have asked my father if Robur could come too. My father has found it a very good idea. “He’s a smart boy, he’ll see things that are new to him and may give him ideas about his future.” Robur was indeed very interested and has thanked me warmly for arranging the visit. “It’s a world I know nothing about,” he has said. “It’s your world,” he has added pensively before continuing, this time with a merry laugh: “I’ll end up a real school-man, you’ll see!” We have both laughed at that. We are in an industrial plant. No meadows here. I still have the taste of the day-before-yesterday’s in my heart.
The industrial plant contains a rolling mill. It is big. Much bigger than a field in which you can graze half a dozen cows. And yet if Snail were to make his geometrical measurement, he would find a surface area thirty times greater for the field. There are no trees to shelter under here, no animals to go to; everything is distant. The emptiness seems vast.
“Are you looking at the rolling mill? Would you like me to explain how it works?”
The man the director has appointed as our guide is very pleasant and is doing his best to interest us in what goes on in the industrial plant. He is the master of the objects situated in the place we are in. You can feel that each object is there to... no, not to obey him; objects don’t obey; no, it is there to... no, as... as a tool so that the man can do what he has decided to do and would not be able to do without it. An extension of the hand. In the great room we are in there are no trees, no animals; man is alone.
In the background, the furnace roars; fire dances in the furnace, a frightening dance. A sort of large boulder – it’s metal – comes towards us, threatening, its colour somewhere between a red that dazzles me and a black that worries me. The rolling mill rumbles and throws itself on the boulder, which collapses with a moan. The objects have no pity; there is no boulder any more, only a big sheet savagely crushed by a heavy, large and round tormentor.
“We have a one-millimetre sheet,” the man tells us.
He is satisfied; the result of his work is there, in front of him; he can give it to whoever needs it. When the time comes he will leave, without fearing the wetly affectionate lick of a cow that is not there.
We are in the director’s office. My father asks us if we have seen things that interest us. Robur says he has been impressed by the power of the machines. “Now I know how the body panels for my tractor are made,” he has added. “You have seen what people are capable of doing if they only take the trouble and don’t lose heart when they come up against problems,” the director has declared. My father has said flattering things about our courage and our hard work. The director has congratulated us. “I think you’ll do well at school and after. We have good people here. Perhaps one day you’ll come and join us,” he has concluded.
At dinner time, after the report, my father and my mother wished me all the best for the future.
Robur’s parents have come to meet me and tell me that I made them very happy by taking their son to visit the industrial plant the previous day. “It’s really good that he was able to see a different life to the one he’s got here on the farm. It could be useful for him later, when he has to make choices,” the father has commented. After a moment he has added in a low voice: “And if he has to live in town, he’ll be more...” He has fumbled for words, said nothing, then thanked me again.
The sun, a bit sad in recent days, waves to us from above the hilltop where our clearing stands; its invitation makes up our mind. Meadowgrass quickly prepares the tea we like to take with us. We set off on what Robur had yesterday called the big hill’s impossible slope. It is very steep to start off with, it’s true, and I can soon see the square tower of the farm, the stream where we caught crayfish, the field with the little straw houses, all Meadowgrass’s neighbouring fields, and the hedge on the hill overlooking the spring and Demeter’s farm where we had gone blackberrying.
The hill is in the distance, it would take time to go blackberrying, it would take time to go to the crayfish stream, and yet it is all there, near me, close to me, and I don’t get that feeling of vast emptiness I experienced in the rolling mill.
“It’s not as steep as all that!” puffs Meadowgrass, entering the clearing.
“Snail must have slipped last year,” chuckles Robur. “The hero of the hill needed a helping hand!”
“That’s true, he looked in rather a bad way,” adds his sister.
I chip in:
“Especially as he’s usually pretty nimble. It was really hard luck on him!”
The joke having done the rounds, we make ourselves comfortable on the grass. Meadowgrass talks to me about yesterday:
“My brother was really happy with his visit to people capable of taking trouble.”
“You’re exaggerating!” Robur cries. “All he said was...”
“Yes, yes, I know. But he didn’t say!”
There was a brief hiatus. I finally got what she meant. Robur, impetuous, protests:
“What do you mean, he didn’t say? He said...”
Meadowgrass cuts him off:
“He didn’t say that when people aren’t in his mill they also have the right to live.”
“Nobody said anything about that!”
“That’s right, nobody...”
“So why are you bringing it up?”
“For no reason, I suppose,” Meadowgrass answers wearily. “It’s true, I have the right to live.”
Robur is silent. I say:
“What the director meant to say is that at the mill too...”
She has understood. She doesn’t let me go on either:
“No, that’s not what he said. He knows perfectly well that people everywhere take trouble, only for him, trouble isn’t of the same quality everywhere.”
Giving a twisted smile, she finishes up:
“And it’s not worth the trouble of taking trouble if it’s not at the mill.”
After a moment’s silence she adds:
“At the mill... or elsewhere, with the school-men.”
Robur is still silent. He seems a little sad. His sister takes his hand and gives him a warm smile:
“Don’t lose heart. School-men are very useful, they help us to live better, I know... I know. But...”
She leaves the end of her sentence hanging, then concludes in a voice that takes its time:
“But we’re the ones doing the living.”
She has looked me right in the eyes:
“And you live with us.”
Sunday. Buttercup is going to calve. Meadowgrass’s father has come to fetch me after dinner and take me to the farm. No-one will be getting any sleep tonight. Buttercup is a big beast and things may well not go smoothly. The vet is called shortly after midnight. He arrives soon afterwards and heads straight for the cowshed. Buttercup is lying on her side, not moving, not saying anything. She has turned her heavy head towards the vet and looks at him for a long moment. He has understood. “She’s in pain, poor thing,” he says softly. He has come close to her, observed her carefully, then stroked her muzzle. The father asks if everything is all right. “We need to get her upright,” answers the vet calmly. Buttercup is now standing up. “The calf should come out now,” Meadowgrass whispers to me. The vet is still calm, his movements measured and precise. The calf does not come. The vet has plunged his arm into the cow. “He’s going to grab the calf,” Meadowgrass whispers to me again. The vet has braced himself and pulls with calm and steady strength. She hasn’t moaned. The calf comes out, inert. “It’s not dead,” Meadowgrass reassures me. Now it’s standing upright; it staggers, slips, falls, gets up again... and stays there, trembling. The vet scrubs it with clean straw, talking to it in a soothing voice. Buttercup has swivelled her head and is looking at her little one.
We’re not sleepy. Meadowgrass has gathered some food – hard-boiled eggs, apples, bread and jam – and we’ve gone to wait for sunrise in the barn, buried in the hay.
We say nothing for a while, munching our apples and listening to the chorus of frogs which bring the silence to life.
I hear Meadowgrass sigh:
“The vet took the trouble...”
Do the frogs take the trouble to croak? And trouble of what quality?
“The vet is a school-man...”
“Why do you say that?” Robur asks his sister.
She seems surprised:
“Why?...”
She stares sightlessly without answering. Then, after drawing a deep breath:
“He’s not from the mill, and yet he’s a school-man. So his trouble is of the same quality as at the mill. One has produced a one-millimetre sheet, the other has produced a calf.”
Her next words are deeply sarcastic:
“Each one has produced something, haven’t they?”
We say nothing. She goes on:
“And what if I produce carrots? What will the quality be?”
She has stopped. Robur mutters:
“How will they live without carrots?”
I finish off:
“Without carrots, no tractor, no calf!”
We stay there in silence. Meadowgrass turns to me:
“You said to me one day: men can do nothing and we don’t have a clue.”
“I remember it very well,” I reply. “You even said: there’s no point just standing still and watching the cows eat grass.”
She gives a crooked smile:
“And what is the quality of that?”
She suddenly looks absorbed and says in a serious tone of voice:
“And that’s called living too? Do people also have the right to live like that?”
The cock comes to let us know that dawn will soon be slipping into the sky: promising smells will soon be calling to us from the kitchen.
The early meal gives us all comfort – it has been a busy night. The hot stew reminds us that the nights are no longer as warm as they used to be. Fortunately the hay in the barn had kept the chill off.
Daylight has invaded the sky while we were eating, a weak daylight that the uniform grey overcast seeks to extinguish. We have decided, with our respective parents’ consent, to spend the whole day together. “We won’t have time to rest, even after staying up all night,” Meadowgrass has said with a grin. “There’s simply too much to do!” “A girl’s bound to be tired after a sleepless night,” I shoot back. “Go and get some kip, your brother and I will do what has to be done.” The brother has raised his eyebrows and grinned. The sister pretends to sulk. We both rush over to tell her that we wouldn’t know what to do without her. She magnanimously agrees to come with us and we all have a good laugh.
Filling our clogs with straw, we set off to work. There is indeed plenty to be done. Not all the fences are in good condition and it’s better to fix them before the onset of winter, which could be a rough one. Some walls have lost stones that have gone off to seek their fortune elsewhere and we have to bring them home.
The morning drifts by. The repairs gradually take shape: a stake to drive in here, another to be adjusted there. The stones return one by one to their walls. A few briars are asked not to scratch us too badly and to get back into their hedge. It’s no great deal, our handiwork; no-one will come to admire it. Yes, I know, a cow has come over to give Meadowgrass a lick, but I reckon it would hardly make a subject of study in a literature lesson. No matter, a lick from a cow in its field can bestow more courage than a passing admirer.
Conversation at lunchtime is lively. We talk about the calf that’s just been born; it’s doing well, the mother too, it’s a good thing because we had been a bit worried – Buttercup’s a very good cow...
After eating we go back to our fieldwork. The fences have finally been fixed and the stones are back in place on the walls. The brambles, with no hard feelings, have yielded us their finest berries; yes, they are indeed succulent, and we gather plenty of them for our tea.
Tea-time is coming soon but not quite yet, so we return lazily to the hay barn. No, we’re not silent, but is talking about walls, brambles, meadows and calves really talking? Is talking about Demeter, about Snail, about Simpleheart really talking? The conversation is as idle as we are ourselves; our words are few and far between, our sentences peter out, silences complete the thoughts we exchange. At school we would have been given a very bad mark indeed for such a poor effort. Then why do I feel so strongly that I am fully understood by Meadowgrass, by Robur, and that I fully understand them too?
Lunch at home. The feeling is not at all the same. Friends of my parents are there, they’ve come back from a long leisure trip – that’s what it’s called. They said they enjoyed it very much, and that is clearly what they think. And as pleasure depends only on what you think...
So they have been away for a long time. What became of their animals during all that time? I’m only joking, of course; he is a colleague of my father’s, his work never gets hungry and the only animals he would ever have would be pets, which you can put out to board – boarding isn’t only for children, you know!
So they have been away for a long time. What became of their friends during all that time? I’m only joking, of course; their friends never get hungry, and the only friends they would ever have are the kind you can put in a rolodex – a rolodex isn’t only for customers, you know!
The tale of their trip takes me with them. I’m a long way from home, in unknown lands full of unknown things. Forget about their pets and their friends; I will discover wonders! I have already read tales of travels which have made me want to know more about... there, wherever there is. My geography teacher has taken me far away, made me live there; but he has never been able to go there himself, and his tales also came from his reading, from discoveries that were not his. These people’s wonders are in their eyes; they have seen them! I listen.
The landscape fails to take shape; I can’t have been listening properly. It’s not very easy to listen, the trip often breaks off and returns to our town, in which they also live. But I finally noticed that I was wrong – they were indeed still travelling, only what they saw and did was what they would have seen or done here, in our little town.
The landscape fails to take shape, and yet I have been listening properly. Their tale talks of a place where I can’t find room for me, can’t find... I don’t know, I can’t quite make it out. I can vaguely see some kind of sky – no, actually, I think the weather was fine – lands where the wonders I expect are doubtless to be found – “Oh, the views: splendid, unforgettable!” – but where I cannot make out whether there is wheat or livestock, magnificent trees that are lacking only a name – “They’re really tall, you know!” – trees that I cannot conjecture, rivers in which I see neither the little round ripples that give fish away, nor the splashes that save crayfish – how ever have I managed to see these rivers that no-one is talking about? – cities in which there are probably people – “Oh, the crowds!” – and whose dwellings merely provide a backdrop – “If you could only see the beauty of it!” – oceans on which ships sail off into the unknown and disappear at the infinity of the horizon – “We really enjoyed swimming, the water was great!”
What tales could I tell of my long journeys? The road to the farm where all you can see is the joy of meeting up with Meadowgrass and Robur? The meadows, which all look so much the same, and yet the cows prefer the grass of one rather than another? The spring, beside which the great oaks listen to our conversations? The hedges, where the black dog greedily feeds on berries? The laundry that Demeter stretches out on the grass so that the sun can caress it? The path that wends its way peacefully to Simpleheart’s farm, along which we dawdle, listening to the geese cackle as we pass by? The hay that smells so good in the barn? My town, where I buy crayons from the old shopkeeper who’s known me forever, where I meet my schoolmates in familiar streets and where school soon awaits me? My house, where I dream in the library about all the discoveries that Meadowgrass, Robur and I will make together? Long journeys, so close to me and to those I love. How can I recount them to those who are never there?
The old oak table is covered with music. My parents have lots of recordings and I sometimes buy some myself. I love the piano; so does Meadowgrass, but she prefers the violin. “What a pity you don’t play, I would have played with you,” she told me one day. It had encouraged me to try, but my attempts were unsuccessful. “Not to worry,” she consoled me, “I could never have learnt either.” Another day, while talking about music, she said: “There are so many other things to do, without which...” She didn’t finish, but a sad little smile appeared on her lips. It had made me want to try again but she wouldn’t let me: “The birds in the clearing have never learnt how to sing; they sing because they have to. There are things you have to do too, and those things count more in your life.” She had moved her lips as if to add something else.
Robur also likes music; he listens attentively, with the same attention he gives to his cows lowing. No, I mean it, he really does listen to what his cows tell him.
“Music can’t talk about things that don’t exist.”
We are surprised, Robur and I, by Meadowgrass’s sudden statement. She smiles at our surprise and goes on:
“It can’t, because it doesn’t talk.”
“There’s words when you sing,” her brother remarks.
“Words aren’t music,” I say, “you add them if you want.”
“You already said to me yourself, about a sonata just for piano, that the music told you what the composer was feeling,” Robur remarks again.
“Well,” exclaims Meadowgrass, “feelings exist!”
“Yes, but you say that music doesn’t talk at all,” her brother answers.
“It doesn’t talk, it conjures up feelings.”
She pauses for a moment, then goes on:
“I can talk about a planet that doesn’t exist by giving it a made-up name.”
She stops, thoughtful, then adds:
“I don’t know any feelings that don’t exist.”
We say nothing.
“There are only feelings in music.”
Meadowgrass has said this harshly.
“Aren’t feelings important?” I ask her.
“Oh, yes, they are. They are even so very important that people don’t think it’s enough just to conjure them up without adding anything else.”
Robur is not convinced:
“If you add something... you will talk.”
“When you feel your cows are short of grass you don’t talk, you move them to another field.”
I say:
“You mean that after listening to a sonata you have to do something?”
“If you wanted to make believe in feelings, you have to...”
She stays for a moment as if suspended on a thought. She goes on harshly again:
“You mustn’t deceive feelings!”
Robur frets:
“When I listen to music, I don’t think about all that stuff.”
“A cow asks by mooing.”
“If it’s asking, it’s talking.”
“Babies ask without talking.”
Their dialogue has given me an idea:
“So a request is a feeling. Why do we talk, in that case?”
No-one can find anything to say, myself included. Meadowgrass ends up by saying hesitantly:
“It’s true, the birds understand each other through their song; perhaps we too...”
She breaks off suddenly, then adds urgently:
“Yes, like us, with gestures!”
“We need more things than birds do,” Robur comments.
I have another idea:
“If feelings are indeed so important, the first thing is to express them the best we can, before doing anything else.”
Meadowgrass has understood:
“And so you have to make an effort to play the piano, isn’t that right?”
I don’t know what to say.
“What about me, then!” Robur exclaims. “If that’s the case, I’ll start composing music!”
Why not? I say to him earnestly:
“And why shouldn’t you be able to?”
“And you’ll look after the tractor while I’m at it,” he retorts with a laugh.
Meadowgrass is perplexed; it is she, not me, who answers him:
“You go to school, don’t you? You go to school to learn things; there are schools where you learn music.”
We are taken aback; she adds:
“And there are also schools where you learn how to train horses; and not even to entertain children, either.”
After a moment’s pause she finishes up:
“I don’t know any schools where they tell you what you have to sacrifice.”
A light and pleasantly warm breeze has come to support the sun, which is getting sadder and sadder. We have stopped off at Simpleheart’s on our way home from seeing Great-Aunt; we had been helping her to take cuttings from the blackcurrant bushes. Simpleheart is there in the farmyard, at one with her hens. She hails us joyfully:
“You’re just in time, I’ve nearly finished, just this last bag of corn to put away and I’m done!”
Robur hurries over brightly:
“Let me do it!”
Simpleheart smiles kindly; she is quite capable of carrying two bags that size. Once the strongman has finished his task we clamber onto the wall near the well where we like to sit. The pigs have started up a conversation, all we have to do is follow their example.
“Back to school soon...” sighs Simpleheart, sounding downcast.
I try to cheer her up:
“Don’t worry, it’s not that soon, there’s still plenty of time left.”
She forces a smile:
“You’re right.”
After taking a small breath she adds:
“I’m so happy here.”
Meadowgrass has taken her hand; they have looked at each other without saying a word. Robur has looked down. I feel embarrassed; aren’t’ I a school-man? Has Simpleheart felt my embarrassment? She gives me a big smile and says in a voice that she tries to make sound bright:
“It’s because I’m lazy, that’s all. I’ve just remembered that at school we were told to read a book over the summer...”
“Oh! That’s right!” breaks in Meadowgrass brightly. “It had completely slipped my mind!”
They look at each other and burst out laughing. I wait for them to quieten down before asking:
“What book were you supposed to read?”
I had been given the same one the previous year.
Simpleheart explains hesitantly:
“The teacher told us that the book shows what you have to do to finish what you’ve started.”
Yes, that’s true enough. And of course what had been started was a good thing. Obviously, otherwise nothing would have been started. I don’t say so though. Simpleheart goes on:
“When I start feeding my hens, I know what they’ll say to me if I stop before I’ve finished!”
Meadowgrass laughs brightly, gives Simpleheart’s shoulder a friendly shake and adds with conviction:
“When my ducks dive, they never come up empty-handed!”
Robur seems utterly mystified:
“It’s a really stupid book,” he grumbles.
He takes a deep breath and mutters between clenched teeth:
“If you don’t finish what you started, it’s because there was no point finishing... or even starting, for that matter.”
He shakes his head and goes on:
“You don’t start watering the vegetable patch when the sky’s gone all dark and the wind’s got up.”
I attempt to defend the book:
“The writer wanted to show a case where the hero didn’t have enough determination, even though it was important to finish what he had started.”
Robur mutters again:
“If he lets his cows die this time, he’ll have more determination the next time.”
“Always supposing he’s read the book beforehand...”
He interrupts me curtly:
“OK, fine. You’re right. For example, if I want to mend my tractor I have to read a book, or someone has to tell me how, it’s the same thing. And to understand my geometry theorem, and to... and to live... to live right, the way you should, not live wrong, the way you shouldn’t. OK, fine.”
He stops, as though he didn’t know what else to say. We wait. He goes on urgently:
“OK, fine. There are lots of other cases...”
He hesitates:
“You can’t read everything...”
He hesitates again; a moment later his voice is firm again:
“You don’t only read in order to learn how to do something. When I read an explanation about my tractor, I learn how to mend it. You can’t learn how to mend determination. And if I need to learn determination in a book... I’ll no longer be myself... no... it’s not easy for me to say what I mean clearly...”
He says nothing for a moment, then ends up slowly:
“If I need to learn determination from a book, it’s as though I’d never been born.”
We stay silent for a long while. Simpleheart seems lost.
“Are books only useful for learning how to do something, then?” she asks Robur.
He answers, sounding unsure of himself:
“No, no, we also learn... how the world is... the stars... what the earth is made of...”
She gives an amused smile:
“The earth is made of earth.”
We all give an amused smile.
I venture a commentary:
“The earth isn’t the same everywhere. That’s what the books tell us.”
“Oh, yes! I remember,” exclaims Meadowgrass. “Geology!”
Simpleheart remembers too:
“Geology? Oh, yes, you told me about it: the earth isn’t the same, for cows or for wheat.”
After pausing for thought she asks:
“Would we never have known that, without books?”
I resume my commentary:
“Those who found it out wrote the books.”
She laughs softly and says with a touch of sarcasm:
“So I too could write a book about how to care for hens?”
“And why not?” seethes Robur. “I bet you know much more than a book!”
He shakes his head and finishes up in the same tone of voice:
“Otherwise your hens would already be dead!”
Simpleheart says:
“At school, it’s true, books tell us so many things... Unfortunately I just can’t manage to remember everything.”
“Me neither!” cries Meadowgrass, nodding.
“But you still get better marks than me.”
“Yes, but I’m sure you’d have better marks too if you weren’t afraid of getting things wrong all the time.”
“You know why I’m afraid of getting things wrong.”
Robur is still seething:
“It’s not your fault if others take advantage of your mistakes to say horrible things about you. You’re too nice, that’s what it is. Everyone knows you never complain.”
Simpleheart pulls a sad little face:
“I know I’m not good enough to go to school. Don’t the teachers know that? I really shouldn’t have been sent, and if I have been sent all the same, I just have to get on with it. I can’t do any better, the teachers know that. So why criticise me...? I do what I can, at school as I do here.”
She falls silent. We say nothing. She takes a long look at her farmyard then finishes up:
“Who does it bother, that I’m so happy here?”
We don’t know what to say. We are well aware of Simpleheart’s misfortunes... Meadowgrass gives her a big, affectionate hug.
“I prefer your hens to good marks, you know,” she says to her softly.
Simpleheart gives her a long smile then, looking down slightly, says under her breath:
“And what if one day there’s no need for my hens...”
The sadness Simpleheart had felt yesterday is still with us as we arrive at Demeter and Snail’s, bringing a few books. The black dog has looked at us benevolently without saying anything; perhaps he thought we looked as though we had our tails between our legs, so to speak.
Demeter and Snail have run out to meet us, happy to see us, but they too have seen... “What’s up?” Demeter has asked with concern. “Is something the matter?” Snail has said. We give them a wan smile that is supposed to reassure them. It doesn’t, of course, not at all; rather the opposite, in fact. They drag us off to the spring and we settle down in the meadow, out of the shade of the oak trees, to take advantage of a still-valiant sun.
It doesn’t take long to tell them about our visit to Simpleheart. Snail is troubled:
“And what if one day there’s no need for our cows...”
So is Demeter:
“And what if one day there’s no need for our earth...”
Meadowgrass rounds off the prevailing pessimism:
“And what if one day there’s no need for us...”
We sit there in silence. Near us the cows graze peacefully; do they have to trust in us? I try to soothe our spirits:
“People will always need eggs and milk.”
I don’t get the impression I’ve convinced them. But Robur has recovered some strength:
“The cows are there, the hens too. And it’s the earth we’re sitting on. If all that is not to disappear, we mustn’t be the first to want to leave.”
Courage has returned to Demeter too:
“Simpleheart won’t leave her hens, nor we our animals.”
Meadowgrass declares firmly:
“We can live like that without needing school-men!”
Robur is more cautious:
“We’d have to do without a lot of things.”
“Yes, you’re right,” his sister answers, “but I think they’ll be more bothered than we are.”
She adds after a moment:
“Yes, I know, we will be too; and our parents are worn out come evening.”
She ponders and adds again in a low voice:
“No books on the old oak table...”
Robur goes on:
“All the cows do is graze, drink, chew the cud and sleep. For them, we’re the school-men. They don’t have bikes, and they talk a lot less than we do. If we’re happy to be what we are and not cows...”
“I am happy to be what I am,” Snail cries, “but I don’t want to leave.”
His sister squeezes his arm:
“No-one’s chasing us away...”
He interrupts her brusquely:
“They chase us every day to get us into school.”
“That’s spreading it on a bit thick. You don’t go to school in the holidays.”
He doesn’t give in to his sister:
“In the holidays! You see? There has to be a special word so that I can be given the right to... to live freely.”
He gives a disenchanted laugh:
“I’m busier here than when I’m at school. I don’t leave at the time I’m told to. I’m not at school at night when a cow gives birth to a calf.”
He waves his arms around as he speaks. Demeter tries to calm him:
“You do interesting things at school; you’re often happy with what you’ve learnt.”
“That’s true,” he answers, calmer now. “And I learn stuff here too. I often hear it said that we’re always doing the same thing. Well, it’s the same at school. At school we have different subjects; here it’s an animal that needs looking after, hay to be brought in, a gate to mend, the stew to make... and then there’s the spring, the fields, the hills up there in the sky, the sun, the wind, the rain... and us, us all together.”
Lunch with the parents. Simpleheart’s despair and Snail’s revolt are a long way away. A long way away, lost, no-one will listen to them. I can still hear them, in the large and comfortable dining room. I can hear them, like a mist that envelops what my father is saying to me: “Back to school soon... You’ve been working hard to get ready... You’re well aware of what you need... It would be good for you to read some specialist books about... The future has to be prepared...”
The mist has dissipated; my mother has just asked me: “Why aren’t you eating? Aren’t you hungry? Perhaps all this gadding about has tired you out. You should stay at home a while and rest.”
I eat. It’s very good. The conversation picks up again, pleasant, without danger. Why without danger? What a silly thought! The conversation picks up again, about weather, friends – the parents’ friends, I mean – my father’s work, “which you will get to know better and better”, the food, “Was it good...?”, the client my father has to see in the next few days, “It’s a really tricky piece of business”. I like listening to my father talking about his work. He talks about it... as a man. Is that what I have to do to be a man? That or...
The mist has returned. My parents have moved into the sitting room. I go to my room. Through the window I can see our large garden. Lovely old trees, loads of flowers, quiet, restful; no brambles, or even raspberry canes, no tomatoes climbing up towards the sky, no marrows or lettuces to pick, even though they’re in season. We’ll have to sow the onions tomorrow, Meadowgrass has told me.
The mist has dissipated again. A schoolmate I was expecting has just arrived. He’s mightily pleased about a game he has won. Why do we never see you? he asks. “The cows can do without you!” he exclaims mockingly. Without me, yes... Can you win without having an opponent? Is it a victory, to bring a calf into a life that it might never have known? The conversation continues. He tells me about what he has done; I listen. What could I tell him? I’ve already tried, with other schoolmates... So do I have no other horizon than my country? Yet how many adventures come and alight on the old oak table... And why don’t I have the courage to talk about even these adventures? No, not have the courage, but want. My schoolmate tells me about what he has done; how can I tell him about what I think? He, like other schoolmates, asks me to come with him, with them, to do... What will be left for me, after doing what they do? Yet I too love to run aimlessly in the field that goes down to the spring. Why not run with them? And they even have a purpose: to win. To win... pointless, no doubt. And what about running in the field near the spring? What about walking along the path that goes to Simpleheart’s instead of getting there quickly by road? And it’s not true that there’s nothing left of what they do; one of them paints, the other... I don’t remember, but... oh, yes! The piano. Whereas I myself have been incapable of learning how to play. So what would be left for me after doing what they do? And what will be left of my country? Of Meadowgrass’s country? Of the country we are all afraid of not seeing any more? The conversation continues, but for a while now the mist has once again enveloped what my schoolmate has been saying.
The sun has climbed as high as it could so that I don’t forget it, and the warm wind has returned to push me along the road that takes me to the farm. We have sown the onions; Robur has gone off with his father to the neighbouring farm to retrieve the tractor part we had taken to the farmer there. Meadowgrass and I go to sit near the pond, beside the ducks that have come to keep us company. We are silent; what is there to say about our perhaps imaginary frights? Robur is right: the earth is there and we are not cows, we can act, we are people. We can act so that others need our hens, our cows, us. Us... like at my father’s or like at Meadowgrass’s? If I have to be a man, which one is it?
“And why do I have to be a man?”
Meadowgrass, surprised, gives me a questioning look.
“My father said ‘Be a man!’ to me one day. I didn’t know what that meant.”
“And now?”
“I still don’t know. Perhaps I have to accept what I’m told is right without trying to make sure about it myself.”
Meadowgrass answers pensively:
“So when we’ve become men, does that mean we will no longer think for ourselves?”
We sit in silence. I say slowly:
“It’s tempting not to think...”
Meadowgrass takes my hand:
“I’m not scared of thinking when you’re with me.”
She adds softly:
“You’re not always with me.”
We sit in silence. I take her shoulder and press her tightly against me:
“When I’m not with you, it’s you I think about.”
T H E E N D
Meadowgrass’s country
(author’s map)
Photos of Meadowgrass's country
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