Juan Gabriel Vásquez - Lovers on All Saints' Day

I pointed to the spot where we’d wait, the place where the hill started down toward an open field. From there, kneeling on the damp earth and feeling its coolness, we overlooked the place the prey would run across, frightened by Pierre from the other side of the woods. I loaded my rifle. It was something Michelle had never seen me do. I tugged a piece of bark off an oak tree and gave it to her to sniff. Michelle inhaled deeply and a bit of dirt stuck to her cheek. She didn’t feel it, because the cold air had numbed her skin, and I wiped it off with one finger in a movement that was very similar to a caress. I motioned to her to kneel down in front of me, so she could get a better view down the slope of the hill and the fallen tree trunks that had been caught up in the undergrowth. She liked the idea and crawled on her hands and knees without worrying about getting dirty. This, I didn’t know why, made me feel sad. Seeing her like that, moved by the shapes and colors that moved me, her eyes open wide like a little girl, made me regret what hadn’t yet happened. When had we failed at this? What words would which of us use to close off the possibilities? I thought back to the time when I’d fallen in love with Michelle. When I met her, she was a distracted and slightly brusque woman who was taking English courses at the University of Liège, but her only interest was in drawing letters to adorn the openings of books like Le Morte d’Arthur and Lancelot du Lac . This contradiction was emblematic of her way of going through life. On her T-shirts there was often a caricature whose outline, when it was cold, stood out from the pressure of her nipples. She used to ask me to pose for her, and she’d draw deformed figures in which my cheeks were like red peppers and my black hair, as in the Mandrake comic strips, appeared tinted with streaks of navy blue. At that time I loved her and everything was simple, clear, as evident as this uneasy reality, which would conclude with solitude, a necessary solitude but one requiring a sacrifice, a ghost sleeping between us like a small child. Realizing then that everything declines, that nothing lasts, made me think that living on my own would be less difficult. That’s how I was feeling, midway between sad and resigned, when we heard three shouts from Pierre. I looked at my watch. We’d been kneeling on the ground and the moss for half an hour.

Michelle turned and looked at me with her big eyes, asking me wordlessly what that meant.

“That he’s reached the end of the run,” I said out loud.

“The run?”

“He’s run out of woods, Michelle. And not a single animal came out.”

“So? We’re going now?”

“We’re going now.”

“What a shame. It’s so nice here, all so fresh.”

“We didn’t come to look at the landscape. We came to hunt,” I said. “And we haven’t even seen a rabbit.”

—

WE FOUND PIERRE sitting beside the path, playing with the dogs. Isis was biting the sleeve of his jacket and Pierre was letting her. Othello was lying in a puddle to cool off, and his fur looked like a vagabond’s blanket. Pierre stood up when he saw us coming. He told Michelle he was sorry, that not all days were like this, that it was a shame she’d been bored.

“But I wasn’t bored,” said Michelle. “Just the opposite.”

“Ah,” said Pierre. “Well, well. But next time will be better, I’m sure.”

“I was just fine,” said Michelle. “We had a nice time. I don’t know about you guys, but I was breathing and I felt alive.”

Michelle was walking with her shoulders raised, looking at the sky.

“I want a nice hot coffee,” she said. “Come back and have some tarte au riz , Pierre.”

She didn’t want us to talk anymore or, at least, she’d voluntarily forgotten. I was grateful. Michelle felt light. With a bit of luck, it might be contagious.

“A nice big piece, some good coffee, get the fire lit,” said Michelle. “What time is it? I can’t believe there’s still light.”

“It’s starting to get dark now,” I said.

“That doesn’t matter. There’ve been years when you can’t see a thing by this time.”

“I’m glad you came.”

“Me too, love. I feel different now.”

Suddenly, Pierre moved his arm in the air. He pointed at the planted field next to Michelle. I raised my rifle. Pierre snapped his fingers and the dogs understood.

Isis and Othello broke through the curtain of yellow flowers, barking. Then a pheasant took flight and I aimed and the sight traced its movements and the barrel followed its desperate flapping and when the shot rang out the pheasant’s left wing was broken in midair, paralyzed, and I knew I’d hit it, then the body turned sideways and fell slowly, like the silhouette of an airplane, into the yellow flowers. The dogs were barking, but I heard the thud of the body hitting the ground. It all happened in a couple of seconds.

“I’ll get it!” said Pierre, and ran toward where the body had fallen. “I’ll bring it!”

“Come on,” I said to Michelle.

I jumped over the shoulder of hardened earth between the path and the field and began to look for the pheasant. My boots got tangled in the stalks and sunk into the damp soil.

“Where are the dogs?”

“Isis!” shouted Pierre. “Isis! Cherche! ”

“Do you see it? Pierre? Can you see it?”

I’d only wounded it. A pheasant is very fast on the ground. The flowers reached our waists, and it was impossible to find, unless we stumbled across it or it tired itself out, or its heart had stopped and it was already dead. I tried to look for traces of blood, but all I could see was the earth under my feet. It was like wading across a muddy river.

“He’s going to get away,” said Pierre. “Isis! Cherche-le, merde! ”

The barrel of the gun was like a machete and I used it to move the stalks out of my way. The damp soil at my feet came suddenly into view and then disappeared again. But the pheasant was nowhere to be seen. We couldn’t hear it, the dogs hadn’t found it, and they leaped among the flowers and kept looking.

“Shit,” said Pierre. “Shit, we’ve lost him.”

“We haven’t lost him,” I said. “Othello! Find him!”

“Useless dogs. We’ve lost him.”

We stopped running. Pierre and I looked like bronze busts on a yellow carpet. We started to walk back to the path. Pierre called the dogs again.

Michelle was waiting for us.

“You didn’t come,” I said. “Looking for it is the best part.”

“I didn’t want to,” said Michelle.

“We lost him. It was a magnificent pheasant and we lost him.”

“You’re not hearing me. I didn’t want to.”

“What’s the matter?”

“The shot hurt my ears.”

I tried to stroke her hair. She dodged my hand.

“It hurts. I can feel the shot inside.”

Michelle touched her head. Her hand was pale in the cold air. The gunshot had upset her.

“Here inside.”

—

PIERRE LIVED NEAR the Rue des Trois Maisons, in Modave, so he turned off before we did on the way home. Michelle did not reiterate her invitation to drink coffee by the fireside. We took a few minutes to get away because the dogs refused to follow us when we called.

“I can’t wait to get back,” said Michelle.

“I don’t know if there’s any wood.”

“What?”

“We’ve had the fire burning all week. If there’s no wood, I can go get some.”

“Ah,” Michelle said. “No, it’s not that. I feel dirty. I want to get out of these dirty clothes. I can’t stand wearing dirty clothes.”

It was getting dark when we reached the house. Michelle went in, turned on the courtyard light, and left her boots on the step. I picked them up and carried them into the coach house. In the coatroom, I brushed them off on the doormat, cleaned the caked mud off the soles with an old screwdriver, unloaded the rifle, and looked on the shelf for the.20-caliber box, because in hunting season I accumulated bullets of all kinds in the pockets of my jackets, and sometimes had to go from pocket to pocket and get my ammunition back in order. Then Michelle came in.