‘You said it.’
‘Tell me, Kate, is –’
‘Later. Careful, it’s spilling. Okay . . . we’ll leave the eggs, that’s Nedra’s special treat.’
‘What about Nedra, then –’
She turned around: ‘Do you like really good whisky?’
‘Uh . . . Yes.’
‘Okay, later. Now . . . This is the old bakehouse. Which we use as a doghouse. Careful, the smell is unbearable . . . and here’s the storeroom . . . This was a stable. Transformed into a garage for bicycles . . . There’s the wine cellar . . . Don’t look at all this rubbish . . . That’s René’s studio.’
Charles had never seen anything like it. How many centuries were accumulated here? How many skips, how many arms, and how many weeks would it take to get rid of it all?
‘Have you seen all these tools?’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s like the Museum of Folk Art and Tradition, it’s extraordinary . . .’
‘You think so?’ she grimaced.
‘They may not have the telly but they can’t ever be bored, not for a second.’
‘Not one second, alas.’
‘And that? What’s that?’
‘That’s the famous motorbike that René has been fixing up ever since . . . the war, I imagine.’
‘And that?’
‘Not a clue.’
‘It’s incredible.’
‘Wait . . . there’s better, if you’ll follow me into the shop . . .’
They went back out into the daylight.
‘Here you have the rabbit hutches – empty. I have my limits . . . This here is a first barn for the hay, the fennel . . . Over there, for straw . . . What are you looking at?’
‘The roof framework . . . It’s amazing . . . You cannot imagine the theoretical knowledge you need to create something like this . . . No,’ he said again, thoughtful, ‘you cannot imagine . . . Even me, even when it’s my own field, I . . . How did they do it? It’s a mystery. When I get old I’ll take classes in carpentry . . .’
‘Mind the cat –’
‘Another one! How many do you have?’
‘Oh . . . there’s a big turnover . . . One dies and another kitten takes its place . . . Mainly because of the stream. Those idiots swallow hooks that still have the bait on them and they don’t make it . . .’
‘And how do the kids take it?’
‘A tragedy. Until the next litter . . .’
Silence.
‘How do you do it, Kate?’
‘I don’t do it, Charles. I don’t do it. But occasionally I do give English lessons to the vet’s daughter in exchange for a few visits . . .’
‘No, I meant – I was referring to everything else.’
‘I’m like the kids: I wait until the next litter. That’s one thing life has taught me. One day’ – she turned the lock – ‘after another. That’s more than enough.’
‘You’re locking the cats in?’
‘Cats never go through doors, don’t you know that?’
They turned round and saw . . . the rogues’ gallery.
Five mongrels, each one more battered than the next, were waiting for their dinner.
‘C’mon, me beauties . . . Your turn now.’
She walked back through to the pantry and filled their bowls.
‘That one, there –’
‘Yes?’
‘He only has three paws?’
‘And he’s missing an eye . . . That’s why we call him Nelson. Here’s where we store the wood . . . That’s another barn over there, with the old granary . . . For the grain, obviously . . . Nothing special. What a mess. Another museum, as you say . . . This one is even more tumbledown than the others . . . But look at those lovely double doors . . . that’s because this is where they kept the horse-drawn carriages. There are two left, in appalling condition, though – come and see.’
After they had disturbed the swallows, Charles said, ‘But this one still looks fine . . .’
‘The little trap? Sam restored it. For Ramon . . .’
‘Who’s Ramon?’
‘His donkey,’ she explained, rolling her eyes skyward. ‘His bloody ass of a donkey . . .’
‘Why the look?’
‘Because he’s got it in his head to take part this summer in a local harness race.’
‘And? Isn’t he ready?’
‘Oh, yes, he’s ready! He’s so ready that he’s had to stay down a year at school. But let’s not go into that, I don’t feel like being in a bad mood.’
She was leaning against a shaft: ‘You can tell, can’t you . . . Everything’s a mess here . . . all wonky, coming apart, falling down . . . The children go around barefoot in their boots all day long – that is, if they even have any boots. I have to worm them twice a year, they run around everywhere, they come up with a million idiot things a minute, and they invite all the friends they like whenever they want, but there’s one thing that still really really matters: school. If you could see us in the evening, all round the kitchen table, it’s no joke. Dr Jekyll transformed into Mr Hyde! So with Samuel, now, this is the first time I’ve failed . . . I know, I shouldn’t say that I’m the one who failed, but there you are . . . It’s complicated . . .’
‘It’s not that serious, is it?’
‘No, I suppose not . . . But . . .’
‘Go on, Kate, go on, tell me . . .’
‘He started at the lycée last September, so I had to send him to boarding school. I had no choice. The school here isn’t great . . . So this has been a disaster. I didn’t expect it at all, because I’ve got really fantastic memories of my years at boarding school, but, I don’t know, perhaps it’s different in France. He was so relieved to get home at weekends that I didn’t have the heart to make him work. So this is the result . . .’
She gave a crooked smile.
‘I might have a champion of France in donkey harness racing instead . . . C’mon, let’s go, we’re frightening the mothers . . .’
True, there was some serious cheeping in the nests above their heads.
‘Do you have children?’ she asked.
‘No. Yes. I’ve got a Mathilde . . . she’s fourteen . . . I didn’t make her myself, but . . .’
‘But that doesn’t change much.’
‘No.’
‘I know. Look . . . I’m going to show you a place you’ll really like.’
She knocked on the door of the umpteenth building:
‘Yes?’
‘I’m with Charles, can I show him round?’
Nedra opened the door to them.
If Charles thought he’d reached the limits of his capacity for amazement, he was wrong.
He stood in silence for a long while.
‘Alice’s studio,’ Kate whispered.
He was still speechless.
There was so much to see . . . Paintings, drawings, frescoes, masks, puppets made of feathers and bark, furniture made of bits of wood, garlands, and foliage, models, and lots of extraordinary animals . . .
‘So she’s the one . . . the mantelpiece?’
‘That’s Alice.’
Alice sat with her back to them at a table beneath the window; now she turned and handed them a box.
‘Look at all the buttons I found at the fair! Look at that one, isn’t it gorgeous? It’s mosaic. And that one . . . a fish in mother-of-pearl. It’s for Nedra. I’m going to make her a necklace with it to celebrate the arrival of Monsieur Blop.’
‘And who, may we ask, is Monsieur Blop?’
Charles was pleased that he was no longer the only one asking stupid questions.
Nedra pointed to the end of the table.
‘But . . .’ said Kate, ‘you’ve put him in Granny’s lovely vase?’
‘Well, yeah . . . That’s what we wanted to tell you . . . We couldn’t find an aquarium . . .’
‘That’s because you didn’t look properly. You’ve already won dozens of goldfish, and you’ve never been able to keep them alive longer than a summer, I might remind you,
and I’ve already bought loads of bowls. So . . . figure it out yourselves.’
‘Yes, but they’re so tiny . . .’
‘Well then, just build an aquarium! Like Gaston!’
She closed the door and turned to Charles with a moan: ‘I should never have said that, “just build one”, it’s always a sign that there will be exhausting consequences . . . C’mon. We’ll finish with a visit to the stables and the museum shop is on the left. Follow me.’
They headed towards another courtyard.
‘Kate? May I ask one last question?’
‘Go ahead.’
‘Who is Gaston?’
‘You don’t know Gaston Lagaffe?’ she deplored. ‘Gaston and his fish Bubulle?’
‘Yes, yes, of course.’
‘It was in order to understand Gaston that I really worked at learning French when I was ten. And I had a really tough time of it . . . because of all the onomatopoeia . . .’
‘But . . . How old are you? If that’s not indiscreet . . . Rest assured that I insisted to Yacine that you are in fact twenty-five, but . . .’
‘I thought we already had the last question,’ she said with a smile.
‘I was wrong. There will never be a last question. It’s not my fault, you’re the one who –’
‘Who what?’
‘I feel really stupid, but . . . it’s like discovering the New World . . . so, it’s unavoidable, there are lots of questions.’
‘Oh, honestly . . . you’ve never been to the country?’
‘It’s not the place I find so impressive, it’s what you’ve done with it.’
‘Oh, really? And what am I supposed to have done with it, in your opinion?’
‘I don’t know . . . made it into a sort of paradise, perhaps?’
‘You’re just saying that because it’s summer, and the light is lovely, and school is over . . .’
‘No. I’m saying that because I’ve seen children who are funny, and intelligent, and happy.’
She stopped in her tracks.
‘You – you really mean what you’ve just said?’
Her voice had become so serious . . .
‘I don’t mean it, I’m convinced of it.’
She leaned on his arm to remove a pebble from her boot: ‘Thank you,’ she said, making a terrible face, ‘I . . . shall we go?’
Stupid: the word wasn’t strong enough. Charles felt like a complete and utter idiot, that was it.
Why had he just made this adorable girl cry?
She walked ahead a few steps, then said, more cheerfully: ‘That’s right . . . almost twenty-five . . . Not quite . . . Thirty-six, to be exact . . .
‘Well then, as you see, the long avenue of oak trees wasn’t for this modest farm, but for a château which belonged to two brothers . . . And, can you imagine, they burnt it down themselves, during the Terror . . . They had only just finished building it, they’d put all their heart into it, all their savings, well, all their ancestors’ . . . and when they started stringing them up in the region, according to legend – but the legend is enchanting – the brothers conscientiously took their time and emptied out the wine cellar before setting the place on fire and stringing themselves up all on their own.
‘I heard the story from a real nutter who showed up at the house one day because he was looking for . . . No . . . it’s too long a story . . . I’ll tell you some other time. So, to get back to the brothers . . . they were old bachelors and all they lived for was hunting . . . By hunting I mean fox hunting, horses therefore, and nothing was too good for their horses. Judge for yourself . . .’
They had just come round the corner of the last barn:
‘Look at this, isn’t it wonderful?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Nothing. I was just grumbling because I didn’t bring my sketchpad.’
‘Huh . . . you’ll be back. It’s even lovelier in the morning.’
‘You should live in here.’
‘The children live here during the summer. There are all these little rooms for the grooms, you’ll see.’
His hands on his hips, breathless, Charles admired the labours of his long-ago colleague.
A rectangular building with a faded ochre coating that revealed the cornerstones and the cut-stone window arches, with mansard roofs covered in fine, flat tiles, a rigorous alternation between dormer windows decorated with volutes and oeils-de-boeuf, and a large arched door framed by two very long watering troughs . . .
A simple, elegant stable, built in the middle of nowhere for the sole pleasure of two petty noblemen who did not have the patience to wait their turn at the tribunal: this in itself was eloquent testimony to the spirit of the Ancien Régime.
‘These guys had delusions of grandeur . . .’
‘It would seem they didn’t. According to the same nutter, it would seem that the design of the château was actually rather disappointing. It was horses they were mad about. And now,’ she said with a guffaw, ‘it’s fat old Ramon who gets to enjoy it. Come along . . . look at the floor . . . These are pebbles from the stream.’
‘Like on the bridge.’
‘Yes. So that the horses’ hooves wouldn’t slip.’
It was very dark inside the stable. Here, more than anywhere else, the beams and joists had been colonized by dozens of swallows’ nests. The space must have measured roughly ten metres by thirty, and consisted of six stalls separated by very dark wooden partitions that were fixed to columns topped by small brass globes.
Pegasus, Valiant, Hungarian . . . Two centuries, three wars, and five republics had not sufficed to efface their names . . .
The coolness of stone, the numerous antlers covered with cobwebs, the light piercing in round circles through the oeils-de-boeuf projecting long beams of phosphorescent dust; and the silence, suddenly, disturbed only by the echo of their hesitant steps against the uneven surface of the pebbled floor – it was . . . Charles, who had always been horribly frightened by horses, felt as if he had entered a religious edifice, and dared go no farther than the nave.
Kate roused him from his torpor, swearing: ‘Look at this jumper . . . Too late . . . The mice have eaten it. Fuck. This way, Charles . . . I’m going to tell you everything the gentleman from Historical Monuments told me the time he came . . . It may not seem so, but we are in an ultra-modern stable here. The stone of the mangers was polished, for the comfort of the horses’ chests – breasts?’
‘Breasts sounds good,’ he smiled.
‘. . . for the comfort of the nags, then, and carved into individual troughs so that they could keep an eye on their daily rations. The racks seem to be worthy of Versailles. All in turned oak wood and mounted at either end with little sculpted vases . . .’
‘Acroters.’
‘If you say so . . . But that’s not the height of refinement . . . Look . . . Each bar turns on itself in order to – how did he put it? – “so that the fodder could be pulled out without meeting any resistance”. The fodder was always getting soiled with dust and mouse droppings that could cause disease, and that’s why these racks, unlike the ones in the other hicks’ stables, are not inclined but almost vertical, with a little hatch, here at the bottom, to collect the bloody dust . . . And since the horses were facing a blind wall, they put grilles between each stall so that they wouldn’t get bored, and could have a chat with their neighbour: Hello dear, did you see the fox today? Look, aren’t they lovely? Like a wave, breaking against the column . . . Above your head there are several openings to bring the hay down from the loft and –’
She pulled on his sleeve to make him follow: ‘This is the only box stall. Very large, with panelling . . . They would put the pregnant mares here, and their foals . . . Look up . . . That oeil-de-boeuf up there was so that the stable boy could keep an eye on the birthing from his bed . . .’
She stretched out her arm: ‘You cannot fail to admire these three lanterns on the ceiling. They gave practically no light, and were incredibly complicated to manoeuvr
e, but far less dangerous than hand-held lamps set on windowsills and . . . What is it? What’s so funny?’
‘Nothing. I’m amazed. I feel as if I’ve got a special guide all to myself.’
‘Huh.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘I’m making an effort, because you’re an architect, but if I’m boring you, just tell me to stop.’
‘Tell me one thing, Kate –’
‘Yes?’ She turned around.
‘You wouldn’t by any chance have a bloody bad temper?’
‘Oh yes,’ she eventually conceded, after a series of little pouts that were very much in keeping with the era, very 18th century, ‘it is quite possible . . . Shall we carry on?’
‘I’m coming.’
He put his hands behind his back, and his smile on standby.
‘Here,’ she continued, learnedly, ‘look at this stairway, for example: isn’t it sublime?’
‘Indeed.’
There was nothing extraordinary about it, however. A winding flight of steps which, as it was not intended for the darling nags, had been constructed in a very ordinary type of wood. It had gradually taken on the colour of the stones and been worn down by boots, but its proportions – and wasn’t this what it always boiled down to – were absolutely perfect. To such a degree that it did not even occur to Charles to appreciate the proportions of his pretty guide as she went up the steps just ahead of him, holding onto the banister; he was too busy defining the height of the risers in comparison with the width of the steps.
What idiots, these intellectuals, with their big heads . . .
‘Here are the rooms, four of them, well, three actually, the last one’s been condemned.’
‘Is it collapsing?’
‘No, it’s expecting baby owls. What’s the proper word, anyway, owlets?’
‘I don’t know . . .’
‘You don’t know a great deal, do you?!’ she teased, walking right by him to open the second door.
The furniture was fairly basic. Little iron beds with worn, gaping mattresses, wobbly chairs, mouldy leather straps hanging on hooks. Here was a blocked-off fireplace, and there, well, it might have been a beehive, then a little farther along was an engine all taken to bits, and some fishing rods, and piles of books read and reread by generations of enthralled rodents, then whole sections of peeling plaster walls, another cat, boots, old issues of Agricultural Life, empty bottles, a radiator grille from a Citroën, a hunting rifle, boxes of cartridges, a . . . On the walls, cheap naïve prints being led astray by naughty posters, a Playmate pulling on the knot of her bikini and eyeing a crucifix that was already hanging rather crookedly, a calendar for 1972 courtesy of Derome fertilizers and, wherever you looked, everywhere, the same wall-to-wall carpeting, dark and thick and patiently woven by tens of thousands of dead flies . . .