Philippe Claudel - Brodeck

—

he following day, Diodemus arrived at my house panting, his shirt unbuttoned, his trousers askew, his hair disheveled. “Come! Come quick!”

I was busy carving some clogs for Poupchette out of cubes of black fir. It was eleven o’clock in the morning.

“Come on, I said! Come see what they’ve done!”

He looked so panic-stricken that there was no possibility of discussion. I put down my gouge, brushed off the wood shavings that had fallen on me like down from a plucked goose, and followed Diodemus.

Along the whole way, he spoke not a word. He hurried on as if the world’s fate depended on his speed, and I had trouble matching strides with his long legs. I saw that we were heading toward the sharp bend in the Staubi, where it curves around the fields of vegetables belonging to Sebastian Uränheim, the biggest producer of cabbages, turnips, and leeks in our valley, but I didn’t understand why. As soon as we got past the last house, I saw. I saw the big crowd on the riverbank, close to a hundred people, men, women, and children, all of them facing away from us and looking in the direction of the water. A surge of panic made my heart beat faster, and I thought, rather stupidly, of Poupchette and Amelia. I say “rather stupidly” because I knew they were at home. A few minutes earlier, I thought, when Diodemus came to get me, they were there in the house. Therefore, they can’t have been involved in whatever misfortune has just taken place out here. Thus making myself see reason, I joined the silent crowd.

Nobody spoke, nor was there any expression on anyone’s face as I slowly pushed my way to the front. The scene was utterly strange: the expressionless features, the staring, unblinking eyes, the closed mouths, the bodies I jostled, standing aside to let me pass, and me going through them, as if they were insubstantial. After I passed, the crowd regained its shape and people popped back into their original positions, like rocking toys.

I was perhaps three or four meters from the water’s edge when I heard the moaning, a sad, wordless, one-note song that got in your ears and froze your blood, though God knows it was hot that morning; after the great deluge and the carnival of waterspouts and lightning, the sun had reclaimed its rights. I had come almost all the way through the crowd. In front of me were only the eldest Dörfer boy and, at his side, his little brother Schmutti, who’s simpleminded and carries on two rather feeble shoulders a disproportionately large head, as big as a pumpkin and as hollow as the trunk of a dead tree. I gently pushed them aside, and then I could see.

The crowd had gathered by the spot where the Staubi runs deepest. It can’t be much less than three meters to the bottom, but it’s a little difficult to gauge because the water is so clear and pure that the riverbed looks as though you could touch it with your finger.

In my life, I’ve seen many men weep. I’ve seen many tears flow. I’ve seen many people crushed like nuts between stones until nothing was left but debris. That was part of the daily routine in the camp. But despite all the sorrow and tragedy I’ve witnessed, if ever I had to choose one from among my memory’s infinite gallery of suffering faces, of persons who suddenly realized that they’d lost everything, that everything had been taken from them, that they had nothing left, the person who would spring to mind would be the Anderer , and the face his face as it looked that morning, that morning in September, on the banks of the Staubi.

He wasn’t weeping. He wasn’t gesticulating. It was as though he’d been divided in two. One part was his voice, his unceasing lament, which resembled a song of mourning, something beyond words, beyond all language, rising from the depths of the body and soul: the voice of grief. And then there was the other part, his trembling, his shuddering, his round head, which turned from the crowd to the river and back again, and his body, wrapped in a luxurious dressing gown, all brocade, totally alien to the landscape; the dripping skirts of his robe, saturated with mud and water, swayed against his short legs.

I didn’t understand right away why the Anderer was in such a state, why he looked like an automaton doomed perpetually to repeat gestures of stark madness. I stared at him so hard, hoping to discover something in his face, in his partially open mouth, in his plenipotentiary minister’s bathrobe, that I didn’t immediately notice his right hand, which was clutching something that looked like a hank of long, slightly faded blond hair.

It was the hair of his horse’s tail, which emerged from the Staubi like a mooring line with one end still attached to the quay and the other to an irretrievably sunken vessel. I could see two large masses below the surface of the water, calm, ponderous bulks which the river currents were very gently stirring. The sight was unreal and almost peaceful: the big horse and the smaller donkey, both drowned, floating underwater with wide-open eyes. Because of some unknown phenomenon, the donkey’s coat was decorated with thousands of minuscule air bubbles, as polished and shiny as pearls, and the horse’s full, flowing mane mingled with the algae which in that place grew in thick scarves. It was like looking at two mythological creatures performing a fantastic dance. An eddy made them execute a circular movement, a slow waltz, without any music apart from the intrusive and suddenly obscene song of a blackbird, which soon resumed poking its brown beak into the soft soil of the bank and pulling out long red worms. At first, I thought that a last reflex had made both horse and donkey curve their bodies and gather their legs so that all four hooves were nearly touching, the way one might curl up and roll himself into a ball in order to present nothing but a rounded back to danger or cold. But then I saw the cords and realized that in fact the beasts’ legs were hobbled and solidly bound together.

I didn’t know what to do or say. And even if I had spoken, I’m not sure that the Anderer , shut up inside his lamentation, would have heard me. He was trying to drag the horse out of the water — without success, of course, because the animal’s weight was so disproportionate to the Anderer ’s strength. Nobody helped him. Nobody made a move in his direction. The assembled multitude’s sole movement was a backward surge. The crowd had seen enough. Here and there, people began to leave. Soon no one remained except the mayor, who had arrived after everyone else, accompanied by Zungfrost , driving a team of oxen. Zungfrost contemplated the spectacle without appearing in the least surprised, either because he’d already seen it, or because he’d been told about it, or because he was in on it. As for me, I hadn’t moved. Orschwir looked at me suspiciously and addressed me without even acknowledging the presence of the Anderer .

“What do you think you’re going to do, Brodeck?”

I didn’t see why the mayor was asking me that question or how I could reply to it. I was on the verge of saying, “A horse and a donkey don’t tie their legs together all by themselves,” but I decided to keep silent.

“You’d best do like the others, Brodeck, and go home,” Orschwir continued.

Basically, he was right, so I started to do what he said, but before I could go three meters, he called me back: “Brodeck! Please take him back to the inn.”

Zungfrost had succeeded, I don’t know how, in making the Anderer release his grip on Miss Julie. Now he stood on the river-bank, unmoving, his hands hanging down, and watched the stammerer tie the horse’s tail to a heavy leather strap whose other end was attached to the oxen’s yoke. I put my hand on the Anderer ’s shoulder, but he didn’t react. Then I slipped my arm under his, turned, and started walking away. He let himself be led like a child. His keening had stopped.