There was no privy or basin, and all he could do was pull on his trousers over his shirt, which he left open-necked, and smooth down his hair with his fingers.
The drops were still falling from a vaguely obscene bag hanging from a beam: it was a muslin strainer for curd cheese. On the floor was a basin half-full of a yellowish liquid.
It was this and various other things that combined with his mattress to make the smell: heads of garlic tied together with raffia, onions, shallots and herbs unknown to him, medicinal perhaps, and so dried up that they crumbled if you touched them.
He went downstairs by what was partly a ladder, ending up in the kitchen where a few logs were glowing in the grate. The range was not yet alight in the morning. Near the ashes, he saw a blue enamel coffee pot with a large black scar on the side and, as if already at home, he took a bowl from the cupboard, helped himself to coffee and searched for the sugar, which he found.
It was six o’clock. There was no one to be seen in the yard, but he heard a sound from an open barn and found Tati pouring into a large pan ingredients which she was shovelling from their bins.
‘Come and give me a hand,’ she called, already used to having him around.
Then, looking at his shoes, which he had not laced up.
‘There’s some clogs in the wash-house. They’re Couderc’s. And bring me the warm water sitting on the stove.’
Because of the dew and the chicken droppings everywhere, the soil was muddy and the hens’ feet made crisscross patterns on it.
The sun had risen now, but there was still moisture in the air. A long skein of mist stretched between the two rows of trees along the canal. The old man must have been milking the cows in their shed, since he could hear the regular sound of milk hitting the pail: a warm animal smell came from that direction, and a hoof sometimes beat on the wall of the stall.
‘Try to remember the quantities. I’ve had to do this on my own for so long! A bucket of chopped grain, a bucket of bran, half a bucket of fishmeal. Then pour the water on, gently, just enough to soak the bran.’
She smelled of bed and flannel sheets. On top of the pink petticoat, in which she must have slept, she had thrown an old fawn overcoat without buttons or lining, and her hair was tied back with a kerchief. Her blue-veined legs were bare.
‘Now fill the buckets.’
She glanced at him from time to time, surreptitiously.
‘I did have this little girl from the welfare helping me. I had to let her go, because of Couderc, the old goat. He’d get her into the cowshed and start touching her up and it’s a miracle it didn’t go any further. Now, this way …’
And while he carried the buckets, she plunged the wooden trowel into them and filled the galvanized metal eating-troughs to which the chickens came running.
‘Pigs’ turn next.’
He was discovering animals everywhere, in all the corners, in each of the ramshackle buildings round the yard: some hens were broody; others were kept under wire netting, with their chicks. Then a set of hutches, one on top of the other, with mesh in front and rabbits moving around inside.
When all three of them were back in the kitchen, Tati climbed on a chair and cut three slices of ham, which she put on the hot stove. They ate in silence under the window.
‘Think you can go and cut some grass for the rabbits?’
‘I suppose so.’
She shrugged her shoulders. It wasn’t really an answer.
‘Come on, I’ll give you the sickle and a sack. You just have to go over the bridge. Between the canal and the Cher there’s all the grass you need.’
She called after him as he set off, the crescent-shaped sickle held at arm’s length.
‘And try not to cut yourself.’
He hadn’t yet realized it was Sunday. He wasn’t thinking about days of the week. So it surprised him a little to see two barges moored above the lock, hatches closed, as if the people were still asleep. Then he saw an angler get off his bike and settle down on the bank.
The lock was only about a hundred metres from the farm, and so narrow that he could have jumped across. The shutters were still closed on the lock-keeper’s small house as well. The water in the canal seemed be gently steaming; bubbles rose to the surface now and then.
Once he was over the bridge, he had a better idea of the layout of the place. Where there was a bend in the canal, he could see a village or rather the outlying houses of a village, about a kilometre away. In front of him, a meadow ran steeply down to the Cher, where the clear water tumbled over stones. Across the river, dense woods came right down to the bank.
The house where Félicie lived, the girl with the baby, faced the lock, between the canal and the Cher, surrounded by piles of pink bricks.
He bent down to cut the grass, still wet with dew. Occasional cyclists passed along the towpath. He saw the hatch of one of the barges open and a woman in a bathrobe came out to hang washing on a wire clothes-line strung the length of the boat.
A cow lowed. Old Couderc crossed the bridge, following his two cows who walked slowly, swinging their great bellies. As soon as they reached the green slope, they lowered their pink muzzles to the grass, while the old man stayed standing, unmoving, a stick in his hand.
Jean realized it must be Sunday when he saw a group of girls and boys in their Sunday best go past on bicycles, and then a woman, the lock-keeper’s wife no doubt, came out of her house and set off towards the village, a missal in her hand.
He approached the old man.
‘Everything all right?’ he said, as if the other were not deaf.
He winked at him too, but instead of responding to this approach, Couderc turned his head away suspiciously, possibly afraid, since as Jean came nearer, he took two or three paces towards his cows, as if to keep his distance.
So once his sack was more or less full of grass, he went back to the house. Tati, dressed in her best and wearing a hat, was putting a saucepan on the stove, by now well alight.
‘You won’t be going to Mass, I don’t suppose,’ she said without turning round.
It smelled of fried onions. She took some cloves and two bay leaves from a cupboard.
‘You can give the grass to the rabbits. And keep an eye on my stew now and then. If it catches, pour a little water on it, just a bit, mind, and move the pan to the side of the stove.’
There was a fragment of mirror under a calendar. She peered into it to adjust her hat and looked round for her missal in its black woollen cover. Then she turned to him.
