Somewhere in the distance I could hear the sounds of New York traffic, the blaring of horns getting closer.
“Oh my, oh don’t eat that, it’s poison,” squeaked Reynaud shrilly, but Armande went on gobbling candyfloss with both hands, her face glossy and self-possessed. I tried to warn her about the cab, but she looked at me and said in my mother’s voice, “Life’s a carnival, cherie, more people die every year crossing the road, it’s a statistical fact,” and went on eating in that terrible voracious way, and Reynaud turned towards me and squeaked, in a voice made all the more menacing for its lack of resonance, “This is all your fault, you and your chocolate festival, everything was all right until you came along and now everyone’s dying DYING DYING DYING?”
I held my hands out protectively. “It isn’t me,” I whispered. “It’s you, it’s supposed to be you, you’re the Black Man, you’re – ” Then I was falling backwards through the looking glass with cards spraying out in all directions around me, nine of Swords, DEATH. Three of Swords, DEATH. The Tower, DEATH. The Chariot, DEATH.
I awoke screaming, with Anouk standing above me, her dark face blurry with sleep and anxiety.
“Maman, what is it?”
Her arms are warm around my neck. She smells of chocolate and vanilla and peaceful untroubled sleep.
“Nothing. A dream. Nothing.”
She croons to me in her small soft voice, and I have an unnerving impression of the world reversed, of myself melting into her like a nautilus into its spiral, round-around-around, of her hand cool on my forehead, her mouth against my hair.
“Out-out-out,” she murmurs automatically. “Evil spirits, get thee hence. It’s OK now, Maman. All gone.”
I don’t know where she picks these things up from. My mother used to say that, but I don’t remember ever teaching Anouk. And yet she uses it like an old familiar formula. I cling to her for a moment, paralysed by love.
“It’s going to be OK, isn’t it, Anouk?”
“Of course.” Her voice is clear and adult and self-assured. “Of course it is.” She puts her head on my shoulder and curls sleepily into the circle of my arms. “I love you too, Maman.”
Outside the dawn is a moonshimmer away on the greying horizon. I hold my daughter tightly as she drifts back again into sleep, her curls tickling my face. Is this what my mother feared? I wonder as I listen to the birds – a single craw craw at first then a full congregation of them – was this what she fled? Not her own death, but the thousands of tiny intersections of her life with others, the broken connections, the links in spite of themselves, the responsibilities? Did we spend all those years running from our loves, our friendships, the casual words uttered in passing that can alter the course of a lifetime?
I try to recall my dream, the face of Reynaud – his lost expression of dismay, I’m late, I’m late – he, too, running from or into some unimaginable fate of which I am an unwitting part. But the dream has fragmented, its pieces scattered like cards in a high wind. Difficult to remember whether the Black Man pursues or is pursued. Difficult now to be sure whether he is the Black Man. Instead the face of the White Rabbit returns, like that of a frightened child on a carnival-wheel, desperate to get off.
“Who rings the changes?”
In my confusion I take the voice for someone else’s; a second later I understand I have spoken aloud. But as I sink back towards sleep I am almost sure I hear another voice reply, a voice which sounds something like Armande’s, something like my mother’s.
You do, Vianne, it tells me softly. You do.
20
Tuesday, March 4
The first green of the spring corn gives the land a mellower look than you and I are used to. At a distance it seems lush – a few early drones stitch the air above its swaying, giving the fields a somnolent appearance. But we know that in two months’ time all this will be burnt to stubble by the sun, the earth bared and cracked to a red glaze through which even the thistles are reluctant to grow. A hot wind scours what is left of the country, bringing with it drought, and in its wake, a stinking stillness which breeds disease. I remember the summer of ‘75, mon pere, the dead heat and the hot white sky. We had plague after plague that summer. First the river gypsies, crawling up what was left of the river in their filthy floating hovels, staying stranded in Les Marauds on the baking mudflats. Then the sickness which struck first their animals and then our own; a kind of madness, a rolling of the eyes, feeble jerking of the legs, bloating of the body though the animals refused to take water, then sweating, shivering and death amongst a heaving of purple-black flies; oh God, the air was ripe with them, ripe and sweet like the juice of a foul fruit. Do you remember? So hot that the desperate wild animals came off the dried marais to the water. Foxes, polecats, weasels, dogs. Many of them rabid, flushed from their habitat by hunger and the drought. We would shoot them as they stumbled onto the river banks, shoot them or kill them with stones. The children stoned the gypsies too, but they were as trapped and desperate as their animals and they kept coming back. The air was blue with flies and the stench of their burning as they tried to halt the disease. Horses succumbed first, then cows, oxen, goats, dogs. We kept them at bay, refusing to sell goods or water, refusing medicine. Stranded on the flats of the dwindling Tannes, they drank bottled beer and river water. I remember watching them from Les Marauds, the silent slouching figures over their campfires at night, hearing the sobbing of someone – a woman or a child, I think – across the dark water.
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Some people, weaklings – Narcisse amongst them – began to talk about charity. About pity. But you stayed strong. You knew what to do.
At Mass you read out the names of those who refused to co-operate. Muscat – old Muscat, Paul’s father – barred them from the cafe until they saw reason. Fights broke out at night between the gypsies and the villagers. The church was desecrated. But you stood fast.
One day we saw them trying to hoist their boats across the flats to the open river. The mud was still soft and they slid thigh-deep in places, scrabbling for purchase against the slimy stones. Some pulled, harnessed to their barques by ropes, others pushed from behind. Seeing us watching, some cursed us in their harsh, hoarse voices. But it was another two weeks before they left at last, leaving their wrecked boats behind them. A fire, you said, mon pere, a fire left untended by the drunkard and his slattern who owned that boat, the flames spreading in the dry electric air until the river was dancing with it. An accident.
Some people talked; some always do. Said you had encouraged it with your sermons; nodded wisely at old Muscat and his young son, so nicely placed to see and hear, but who, on that night, had seen and heard nothing. Mostly, though, there was relief. And when the winter rain came and the Tannes swelled once more, even the hulks were covered over.
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I went round there again this morning, Pere. The place haunts me. Barely different to the way it was twenty years ago, there is a sly stillness to the place, an air of anticipation. Curtains twitch at grimy windows as I walk by. I seem to hear a low, continuous laughter coming at me across the quiet spaces. Will I be strong enough, pere? In spite of all my good intentions, will I fail?