The old man was seeing to his cows. The vegetable patch was wet with rain. Tati didn’t want to waste anything, and as there were plenty of small gooseberries in the garden, she would take some to market.
She hardly ate anything, and remained standing, since she was always afraid of missing the bus.
‘Hurry up, Jean! And careful with the eggs!’
She frowned. Perhaps she thought he seemed too cheerful? He carried on whistling as he took up the heaviest baskets, and strode along the path through the hazels, where the earth was darker after the rain and the bushes gave off a powerful scent.
‘If she comes over here, don’t be afraid to show her the door … Oh, I nearly forgot. The insurance man might call. He always has to pick a Saturday. The money’s in the soup tureen in the dining room, it’s all there.’
For the first time since arriving, he saw once more the tiny house with the blue gate beside the main road, and this time the door was open.
‘Bye, Clémence,’ Tati called, though there was no one to be seen.
A movement inside the house. A woman washing her face leaned out of the door and shouted back:
‘Bye, Tati!’
Then they waited, looking back up the road towards Montluçon. The bus arrived after ten minutes. Tati got in. He passed her the baskets. The door slammed shut.
After that, hands in pockets, he sauntered back, thinking he would stop to check whether there would be many hazelnuts later that year.
He was not to know this would be a day unlike any other, nor that he was living his last moments free of care. And it was not just a matter of being carefree. Even more miraculously, the miracle had lasted a week or more. Hours, whole days of innocence!
He was no age. He was not this or that. Not even a Passerat-Monnoyeur!
He was simply Jean, like any child playing at the roadside, not worrying about the future or the past. Like a child, he cut a stick from a bush. And like a child looking forward to a game, he muttered to himself:
‘If only she’s there.’
And truly, since the heavy door back there at Fontevrault had clanged shut, while a man in uniform had called out ‘Good luck!’, ever since he had been walking along the road with no aim in life, nothing had attached him to anything, everything was offered, the days going past were uncounted, nothing mattered except the magnificent sun-warmed present.
He crossed the kitchen to wash in the yard, which he did carefully. The water was cool. He let it run down his neck and poured it over his thick hair. The soap got in his eyes, and he shook his head, then soaped his chest, his hips and his thighs.
Now and then, he heard the evocative sound of a tin bugle: on the toytown canal, a toytown barge was announcing its arrival at the lock, and the man with the wooden leg would limp over to open the gates.
He knew how he was going to make his approach. He had a plan. Too bad if the insurance man came to collect!
He crossed the canal bridge, then the one over the Cher. He plunged into the sloping bushes and, holding on to brambles now and then, made his way along the riverbank. When he saw the pink cube of the brickyard, he crossed back, using the stepping stones, and was afraid of only one thing: making a noise.
Then he lay down in the long grass and edged forward. He was annoyed with himself for being late, since Félicie was already there. He could hear her voice. He was in a hurry to see her and crawled more quickly, a blade of grass in his mouth.
‘Wolf, wolf, big bad wolf! Whoo, whoo!’
They were about twenty metres from the low-lying house, above which a thin column of smoke rose in the air, as there was not a breath of wind.
‘Look out, I’m the big bad wolf! Whoo, whoo!’
As usual, she was wearing her blue smock, under which she had almost nothing, perhaps just a petticoat, and she was crawling along, then pouncing.
‘I’m going to eat you all up!’
And the baby, sitting in the grass, would give a cry of mingled fear and joy, before laughing until he cried. She rolled him over and nibbled his knees, his calves, his thighs, and his plump little buttocks exposed to the sun.
‘Again?’
She got up, and Jean could see her now, standing, nostrils trembling and eyes glinting gold. She tossed back her hair. Taking a deep breath, she seemed to fill her chest with all the joy of summer, took a few steps, then crouched down with her hands on the ground.
‘Look out! Here comes the wolf, the big bad wolf! Whoo, whoo!’
The child, waiting, was holding his breath. He was anticipating the moment when she would bound forward. He spotted it immediately and let out another cry of fear and excitement.
‘Going to eat you all up!’
They laughed together. The child rolled about in the grass. His little fingers were twined round his mother’s auburn hair, then as soon as he had calmed down, he tried to say the syllables that meant: ‘Again!’
And Félicie would start again. Time stood still. You could hear the murmur of the river and sometimes the creak of a handle, as the lock gates opened, the thump of the lock-keeper’s leg. Françoise, behind the house, wearing a sack as an apron and her feet bare in clogs, was plunging her arms into a tub of soapy water, washing clothes which she piled on the grass in a soft heap.
‘Wolf’s coming, he’s coming …’
And then she froze, her eyes fixed and suddenly cold. Through the tall grasses behind her son, she had just glimpsed Jean’s face.
He thought she was going to grab the baby and run back to the house. And the idea that he frightened her was not so unpleasant. After all, everyone around here was afraid of him, because he was just out of Fontevrault and under legal restriction.
They didn’t know him. They couldn’t know. One day, when she had come round to him, he would explain everything to her, gently.
She was staring him in the eye. She did not seem to be at all afraid of him, since she was not protecting the baby, who was in between them.
Suddenly, when he was least expecting it, she put out her tongue.
