Philippe Claudel - Brodeck

“The next week, the knights returned. The third knight came forward and knocked on Bilissi’s door. He ordered a suit from Bilissi for his master the King, a suit of green brocade. Bilissi hesitated, tried to refuse, said that he had too much work, but the knight had already drawn his sword from its sheath. In the end, Bilissi accepted the order. He produced the most beautiful suit he had ever made, much more beautiful than the suit of red velvet, and much more beautiful even than the suit of blue silk. When the knight returned to pick up the suit, he said to Bilissi, ‘The King will be happy. In two days, you shall receive your reward.’ But Bilissi replied, ‘Let the King keep the suit, but I want none of his reward. I’m very happy as I am.’

“The knight looked at Bilissi in surprise. ‘You are wrong, Bilissi. The King has the powers of life and death. He wished to make you a father by giving you the little daughter you have always desired.’

“‘But I already have a little daughter,’ Bilissi replied, ‘and she’s the joy of my life.’

“The knight looked at the tailor and said, ‘My poor Bilissi, the King took from you what you had, your mother and your wife, and you did not grieve overmuch, but he wished to give you what you do not have, a daughter, for the little girl whose father you believe yourself to be is naught but an illusion, and you are all bereft. Do you really think that dreams are more precious than life?’

“The knight did not wait for Bilissi’s reply, nor did the tailor make any. He told himself that the knight had sought to deceive him. He went back into his house, took his child in his arms, sang her a song, gave her some nourishment, and ended by kissing her, without realizing that his lips touched only air and that he had never, ever, had a child.”

I won’t go back over events I’ve already described in the beginning of this long account: my arrival at Schloss’s inn, the mute gathering of all the men in the village, their faces, my fright, my terror when I understood what they’d done, and then, the ring of their bodies closing in upon me, their request, and my promise to write the Report on my old typewriter.

The Report is finished, as I’ve said. I have therefore performed the task they assigned to me. Nothing remains to be done, apart from delivering the Report to the mayor. Let him do with it what he will; it’s no longer my problem.

—

esterday — but was it really yesterday? — I delivered the Report to Orschwir. I tucked the pages under my arm and went to his house without letting him know I was coming. I walked across the village. It was very early and I saw nobody except for Zungfrost: “Not too huh … huh … hot, Brodeck!”

I gave him a little greeting and continued on my way.

I entered Orschwir’s farm. I passed his farmhands and I passed his pigs. Nobody paid any attention to me. Neither the men nor the animals looked at me.

I found Orschwir seated at his big table, where he’d been sitting when I came to see him the morning after the Ereigniës . But yesterday morning, he wasn’t busy with his breakfast. He was simply sitting there. His hands were joined on the table in front of him, and he seemed to be lost in thought. When he heard me, he raised his head, looked at me, and smiled a little. “Well, here you are, Brodeck,” he said. “How are you doing? You may not believe it, but I’ve been waiting for you. I knew you’d come this morning.”

On another occasion, maybe I would have asked him how he could possibly have known such a thing, but oddly enough, I found that I was indifferent to or, rather, detached from a great many questions and their answers. Orschwir and the others had played with me enough. The mouse had learned to pay no more attention to the cats, so to speak, and if they needed entertainment, they had only to scratch one another with their sharp claws. They could stop counting on me to amuse them. They’d given me a mission, and I had accomplished it. I’d told the story.

I placed before the mayor all the pages containing my presentation of the events in question. “Here’s the Report you and the others asked for.”

Orschwir picked up the sheets absentmindedly I’d never seen him so distant, so thoughtful. Even his face was missing the brutal features it ordinarily presented to the world. A kind of sadness had erased a little of his ugliness.

“The Report…,” he said, scattering the pages.

“I want you to read it right away, right here in front of me, and tell me what you think. I’ve got time. I’ll wait.”

Orschwir smiled at me and said simply, “If you wish, Bro-deck, if you wish … I’ve got time, too …”

Then the mayor started reading from the beginning, from the first word. My chair was comfortable, and I settled myself in it, prepared to wait a long time. I tried to tell what Orschwir might be feeling by scrutinizing his facial expressions, but he read without betraying the smallest reaction. Nevertheless, from time to time he passed one big hand over his forehead, rubbed his eyes, or pinched his lips, harder than he seemed to realize.

From outside came the sounds of the big farm waking up. Footsteps, cries, squeals, bucketfuls of water striking the ground, voices, the shriek of axles — all the noises of a way of life resuming its course, beginning a day which would be, all in all, like the other days, during which some people would be born and others would die, everywhere in the world, in a kind of perpetual motion.

The reading took a few hours — I couldn’t say exactly how many. My mind seemed to be at rest. I let it roam as after a great effort, free to relax a little, to loaf, to go where it would.

The clock struck. Orschwir had finished his reading. He cleared his throat — three times — gathered up the pages, jogged them into an orderly stack, and brought his big, heavy eyes to bear on me.

“Well?” I asked.

He waited awhile before answering me. He rose to his feet without a word and started walking slowly around the big table, rolling up the papers until they formed a kind of little scepter. Then he spoke: “Brodeck, I’m the mayor, as you know. But I don’t think you know what that fact means to me. You write well, Brodeck — we were right to choose you — and you love images, maybe a little too much, but still… I’m going to talk to you in images. You know our shepherds well — you’ve often observed them in the stubble fields and the meadows. Whether or not they love the animals entrusted to them, I have no idea. Besides, how they feel about them is none of my business, and I don’t think it’s any of theirs, either. The animals are placed in the shepherd’s care. He must find them grass in abundance, pure water, and sheep-folds sheltered from the wind. He must protect his flock from all danger and keep it away from excessively steep slopes, from rocks where the animals could slip and break their backs, from certain plants which would cause them to swell up and die, from various pests and predators which might attack the weakest of them, and of course from the wolves that come prowling near the flock. A good shepherd knows and does all that, whether he loves his animals or not. And what about the animals, you may ask. Do they love their shepherd? I put the question to you.”

As a matter of fact, Orschwir wasn’t putting any question to me. He continued walking around the big table, keeping his head down, tapping his left hand with the rolled-up Report, which he held in his right, and talking all the while. “Furthermore, do the animals know they have a shepherd who does all that for them? Do they know? I don’t believe so. I believe they’re interested only in what they can see at their feet and right in front of their eyes: grass, water, straw to sleep on. That’s all. A village is a small thing, and a fragile one, too. You know that. You know it well. Ours nearly didn’t survive. The war rolled over it like an enormous millstone, not to extract flour from it but to smother and flatten it. All the same, we managed to deflect the stone a little. It didn’t crush everything. Not everything. The village had to take what was left and use it to recover.”