‘Jean, Jean! Come up here a minute!’
He knew that she was listening to every sound and could tell what he was doing by his footsteps coming and going.
‘You’ll find some stakes in the shed, near the old cart. There are some chains there too. I don’t know where the mallet is, but it can’t be far off. Open the door for the cows, and they’ll take themselves off to the meadow across the bridge. What you do is you chain them each to a stake and leave plenty of slack.’
This was already getting more complicated and he felt a pang: would these enormous creatures with their staring eyes obey him? He followed them out. He had picked up a stick from the kitchen. He glanced across at the house with the pink tiled roof, outside which the old man was still sitting, and he hoped that Couderc would instinctively come out to help him. He felt awkward. The grass was wet and he had not put clogs on.
‘Come on, cows, don’t be scared. Why are you staring at me like the grocer’s wife this morning?’
He wondered if Félicie was behind the curtain, watching him and perhaps laughing at him. When he returned to the house, carrying the mallet, the doctor was knocking in vain at the front door, a thin little man with glasses.
‘Isn’t anyone here?’ he called out irritably.
‘Tati’s there. I’ve just been taking the cows out.’
The doctor did not seem to find the familiar smell of the kitchen to his taste, and put his bag on the table.
‘Have you got some boiled water?’
He soaped his hands slowly and carefully, and when he wiped them dry. It took an infuriatingly long time.
‘Where is she?’
Not an unnecessary word. A disapproving expression at everything he saw, the creaking stairs, Tati’s bedroom and Tati herself, who was watching him arrive with terrified eyes.
‘Can we not make it a bit lighter in here?’
‘I could light an oil lamp or a candle,’ Jean explained. ‘There’s no electricity.’
‘Open the window.’
Then, as Jean went on standing at the foot of the bed:
‘What are you waiting there for?’
Perhaps this was the doctor that his sister’s husband had been visiting on Sunday morning?
Jean used the pause to feed the chickens and rabbits. He had to go to the end of the garden to cut some grass and thought he could hear groans.
When he got back, there was no sound. The window on the first floor was still open. In the end, he was surprised by the silence, then suddenly there came the sound of a car driving off.
‘Are you there, Jean?’
And when he went into the bedroom:
‘Oh, my poor Jean. I don’t know how you’ll manage. Seems I’ve got to stay in bed a week at least.’
‘What is it that’s wrong?’
‘He didn’t say. He left a prescription on the table. He wanted to know how it happened. I said I fell going down to the cellar and hit my head on a bottle. Have you fed the chickens? When you went to the village, did you see Couderc?’
‘He was sitting in the doorway.’
‘They’re watching him!’ she said, with a satisfied air. ‘They know if they take their eyes off him for a second, he’ll be back over here. Well, he’ll come back anyway! I know him. Now, for the prescription. Listen. What you do, you go out to the main road. And when the bus comes, you give the prescription and the money to the driver. Take a hundred francs from the soup tureen. If you went yourself to Saint-Amand, I’d be worried, all by myself in the house.’
Her swollen head frightened her less, now that the doctor had been.
‘Look, Jean. They must have seen the doctor leave. They’ll be wondering what I told him. If I wanted to, I could get them sent to jail. But I’ll get them another way. Just go and see …’
‘Go and see what?’
‘What they’re up to. You don’t need to say anything to them. In fact, don’t. Good thing if they’re scared stiff. Pretend you’ve just gone to move the cows further on.’
He waited at the raised bridge for a barge to go through, and it glided past, on a level with him. A young woman was at the tiller, knitting, with a sack over her shoulders because of the rain.
From then on, the whole atmosphere felt of a piece, soft, fragrant and moist. The minutes, like the drops of rain, too fine to see, seemed to be taking their time to pass over people and things.
Félicie was standing next to her grandfather. She saw Jean and he noted that she was following him with her eyes. He had forgotten the mallet. He had to go back to the house to fetch it. He led the cows a little further away, thinking that by the end of the day they would be near the brickyard.
As for Eugène, he was standing near the lock, alongside the lock-keeper, and both men also kept looking his way.
Eugène did almost nothing all day long. His role as watchman was for all intents and purposes imaginary. But he took himself seriously. In the village café, he talked loudly and banged his fist on the table, staring at everyone with his bulging eyes, which seemed to say:
‘Anyone disagree? Anyone think they know better than me, Eugène Tordeux? Eh?’
Already in the morning, his eyes would be shining from the white wine. He bullied his women, as he called Françoise and Félicie. He’d sit down and order:
‘Bring me my pipe!’
