Philippe Claudel - Brodeck

We’d stopped counting the hours, the nights, the appearances of the sun through the cracks. In the beginning, such calculations had helped us, as had our efforts to orient ourselves, to say that we were traveling east, or rather south, or now in a northerly direction. But then we gave up what was only a source of sorrow. We made no more estimates and had no idea where we were. I don’t even think we hoped to arrive anywhere. The desire to do so had abandoned us.

Only much later, in thinking over that terrible journey, in trying to remember it, in trying to relive it, did I come to the conclusion that it lasted six days and six nights. And since reaching that conclusion, I’ve often thought that such a period of time was no accident. Our tormentors believed in God. They were well aware that, according to the Scriptures, it had taken Him six days to create the world. I’m sure they told one another they needed six days to start destroying it. Destroying it in us. And if the seventh day was the day of rest for Him, for us, when the guards opened the doors of the freight cars and drove us out with their truncheons, it was the end.

But for me and for Kelmar, there had also been the fifth day. That morning, the door of the freight car was opened a little and buckets of water thrown at us — warm, muddy water, which splashed over our filthy, jumbled, and in some cases dead bodies, and which, instead of refreshing and soothing us, did the opposite; it burned us and scalded us. That stale water recalled to our memories all the pure, clear, limpid water we’d drunk so avidly in days gone by.

The thirst came back. But this time, no doubt because our bodies were nearing extinction and our enfeebled minds were abandoning themselves to delirium, the thirst we felt made madmen of us. Let no one misunderstand me: I’m not seeking to excuse what we did.

The young woman beside me was still alive, and so was her baby. They were breathing rather feebly, but nonetheless they were breathing. It was their demijohn of water that had kept them alive, and in that demijohn, which seemed to Kelmar and me inexhaustible, there was still some water. We could hear it lapping against the inner sides of the bottle at every movement of the freight car, making a beautiful and unbearable music reminiscent of little streams, of flowing springs, of fountain melodies. The exhausted young woman more and more frequently closed her eyes and let herself drop into a sort of thick sleep out of which she would awaken abruptly, with a start, a few minutes later. Over the course of the past several days, her face had aged ten years, and so had her baby’s face, which took on the strange features of a little old man reduced to the proportions of a newborn.

Kelmar and I had long since stopped talking. Each of us was coping as best he could with the shocks and aftershocks in his brain. We were both trying to reconcile, if possible, our past history and our present state. The car stank of enervated flesh, of excrement and sour humors, and when the train slowed down, it was assailed by countless flies, which abandoned the peaceful countryside, the green grass, and the rested soil to penetrate between the planks and fall upon us, rubbing their wings together as a commentary on our agony.

I believe we saw what we saw at the same instant. Then we turned our heads toward each other with the same movement, and that exchange of looks contained everything. The young woman had dozed off once again, but unlike the previous times, her weakened arms had loosened their grip on her child and her big glass bottle. The baby, who weighed very little, remained attached to his mother’s body, but the demijohn had rolled onto the floor near my left leg. Kelmar and I understood each other without saying a word. I don’t know if we gave the matter any thought. I don’t know if there was anything to think about, and I especially don’t know if we were still capable of thinking. I don’t know what it was, deep down inside of us, that made the decision. Our hands grasped the demijohn at the same time. There was no hesitation. Kelmar and I exchanged one last look, and then we drank in turn, he and I, we drank the warm water from its glass container, we drank it to the last drop, closing our eyes, swallowing greedily, drinking as we’d never drunk water before, in the certainty that what was flowing down our throats was life, yes, life, and the taste of that life was putrid and sublime, bright and insipid, happy and sorrowful, a taste I believe I shall remember with horror until my dying day.

After screaming for a long time, the young woman died. Her child, the baby with the pale, wrinkled little body, the worried brow, and the swollen eyelids, survived her by a few hours. Before she died, she called the people around her thieves and murderers and struck out at everyone within her reach. Her fists were so small and weak that I felt her blows as caresses. I pretended to be asleep. So did Kelmar. The little water we’d drunk had given us back much of our strength and cleared our heads as well — cleared them enough for us to regret what we’d done, to find it abominable, and to keep our eyes shut, not daring to open them and look at her and look at ourselves. The young woman and her baby would doubtless have died in any case, but this thought, however logical it may have been, did not suffice to erase the ignominy of the crime we’d committed. That crime was our tormentors’ great triumph, and we knew it. Kelmar even more than I, perhaps, at that moment, since shortly afterward he chose not to go on. He chose to die quickly. He chose to punish himself.

As for me, I chose to live, and my punishment is my life. That’s the way I see things. My punishment is all the suffering I’ve endured since. It’s Brodeck the Dog. It’s Amelia’s silence, which I sometimes interpret as the greatest of reproaches. It’s my constantly recurring nightmares. And more than anything else, it’s this perpetual feeling of inhabiting a body I stole in a freight car with the help of a few drops of water.

—

hen I left the shed yesterday evening, I was drenched with sweat in spite of the cold, the mist, and the Graufrozt— the light frost, not white but gray, that occurs only around here — covering the roofs of all the houses. I had only about ten meters or so to cover before I’d find Fedorine in her kitchen, Poupchette in her little bed, and Amelia in ours, but the distance seemed vast to me. There was a light burning in Göbbler’s house. Was he by any chance watching me? Had he been outside the shed, listening to the sporadic clacking of my typewriter? I couldn’t possibly have cared less. I’d traveled my road again. I’d returned to the freight car. I’d written it all down.

In our bedroom, I wrapped my pages in the linen pouch, as I do every evening, and then I slipped into the warm bed; and this morning, as I do every morning, I tied my linen-wrapped confession around Amelia’s waist. That’s been my procedure for weeks and weeks. Amelia never puts up any resistance or pays any attention to what I’m doing, but this morning, just as I was about to remove my hands from her stomach, I felt her put one of her hands on one of mine and squeeze it a little. Not for long, nor did I see it, because it was still dark in the room. But I wasn’t dreaming. I’m sure it happened. Was it an involuntary movement, or could it have been something like a caress, like the beginning or the renewal of a caress?

It’s now a little after twelve o’clock, in the middle of a colorless day. Night has yet to depart completely. The day’s too lazy to hold on to its light, and the frost is still covering the roofs and the treetops. Poupchette’s pulling the skin of Fedorine’s face into grotesque shapes, and Fedorine smiles and lets her do it. Amelia’s in her place at the window, looking out. She’s humming.