Philippe Claudel - Brodeck

Orschwir came to a stop near the big blue-and-green tiled stove that occupied a whole corner of the room. A small, carefully laid stack of firewood stood against the wall. Orschwir stooped, picked up a log, opened the door to the firebox, and thrust in the log. Lovely flames, short and agile, danced around it. The mayor didn’t close the door right away. He gazed at the flames for a long time. They made a joyful music, like the sounds a hot wind sometimes draws from the branches of certain oaks covered with dry leaves in the middle of autumn.

“The shepherd always has to think about tomorrow. Everything that belongs to yesterday belongs to death, and the important thing is to live. You’re well aware of that, Brodeck — you came back from a place people don’t come back from. My job is to act so that the others can live, so that they can see tomorrow and the day after that…”

That was the moment when I understood. “You can’t do that,” I said.

“Why not, Brodeck? I’m the shepherd. The flock counts on me to protect it from every danger, and of all dangers, memory’s one of the most terrible. I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, am I? You who remembers everything, who remembers too much?”

Orschwir gave me two little taps on the chest with the Report, either to keep me at a distance or to drive an idea into me, like a nail into a board. “It’s time to forget, Brodeck. People need to forget.”

After those last words, Orschwir very gently slipped the Report into the stove. In a second, the pages, which had been tightly wrapped around one another, opened up like the petals of a strange, enormous, tormented flower, writhed, became incandescent, then black, then gray, and collapsed upon themselves, mingling their fragments in a red-hot dust that was quickly sucked into the flames. “Look,” Orschwir whispered in my ear. “There’s nothing left, nothing at all. Are you any unhappier?”

“You burned a stack of paper. You didn’t burn what’s in my head!”

“You’re right, it was only paper, but that paper contained everything the village wants to forget — and will forget. Everyone’s not like you, Brodeck.”

When I got back home, I told Fedorine the whole thing. She was holding Poupchette, who was taking a nap on her lap. The child’s cheeks were as soft as peach-flower petals. Our peach orchards are blossoming now, the first to gladden our early spring with their very pale pink bloom. People here call them Blumparadz , “flowers of Paradise.” It’s a funny name when you think about it; as if Paradise could exist on this land, as if it could exist anywhere at all. Amelia was sitting by the window.

When I finished my account, I asked Fedorine, “What do you think?”

She didn’t reply, apart from a few disconnected words that made no sense. Then, after a few minutes, she finally did say something: “It’s up to you to decide, Brodeck. You alone. We’ll do what you decide.”

I looked at the three of them, the little girl, the young woman, and the old grandmother. The first was sleeping as if she hadn’t been born yet, the second was singing as if she were somewhere else, and the third was talking as if she were already gone for good.

Then I said in an odd voice that didn’t sound much like mine, “We’ll leave tomorrow.”

—

got out the old cart, the one we arrived with, Fedorine and I, a long time ago. I never thought we were going to need it again one day. I never thought there would be another departure. But maybe there can only be departures, eternally, for those like us, for those made in our image.

Now I’m far away.

Far away from everything.

Far away from the others.

I’ve left the village.

Then again, maybe I’m nowhere anymore. Maybe I’ve left the story. Maybe I’m like the traveler in the fable, in the unlikely event that the hour of fables has come.

I left the typewriter in the house. I don’t need it anymore. Now I write in my brain. There’s no more intimate book. No one will be able to read it. I won’t have to hide it. It’s nowhere to be found, forever.

When I got up this morning, very early, I felt Amelia lying against me and saw Poupchette asleep in her little bed with her thumb in her mouth. I took both of them in my arms. In the kitchen, Fedorine was ready and waiting for us. The bundles were already made up. We left without making any noise. I took Fedorine in my arms, too; she weighs nothing, she’s so old and frail. Life has worn her thin, like a cloth that’s been washed a thousand times. I started walking, carrying my three treasures like that and pulling the cart. There’s an old story, I think, about a traveler who left this way, fleeing his burning city and carrying his old father and his young son on his shoulders. I must have read that tale somewhere. Yes, I must have read it. I’ve read so many books. Could it be something Nösel told us about? Or maybe I heard it from Kelmar or Diodemus.

The streets were quiet and the houses asleep, and so were the people inside those houses. Our village was like unto itself, like a flock, as Orschwir had said, yes, a flock of houses pressed against one another, tranquil under the still-black but already starless sky, and as inert and blank as every stone in their walls. I passed Schloss’s inn. A little light was shining in his kitchen. I passed Mother Pitz’s café, Gott’s forge, and Wirfrau’s bakery, and I heard the baker kneading his dough. I passed close to the covered market and the church and in front of Röppel’s hardware store and Brochiert’s butcher’s shop. I passed all the fountains and drank a little water as a sign of farewell. All those places were alive, intact, preserved. I stopped a moment in front of the monument to the dead and read there what I’d always read: the names of Orschwir’s two sons; the name of Jenkins, our policeman who died in the war; Cathor’s name, Frippman’s name, and mine, half effaced. I didn’t linger, as I felt Amelia’s hand on my neck. I’m sure she was trying to tell me to go on; she’d never liked it when we passed the monument and I stopped to read the names aloud.

It was a beautiful night, clear and cold, a night that seemed to have no desire to end, wallowing in its own darkness, turning round and round in it, as one sometimes likes to remain between warm sheets on a cold morning. I skirted the mayor’s farm and heard the pigs moving about in their pens. I also saw Lise, Die Keinauge , cross the farmyard, holding a bucket that seemed to be full of milk and overflowed at every step, leaving a little white trail behind her.

I went on. I crossed the Staubi on the old stone bridge. I stopped a moment to listen to the murmur of the water one last time. A river tells many stories, if you know how to listen to it. But people never listen to what rivers tell them, or forests, or animals, or trees, or the sky, or the rocks on the mountainsides, or other people. Nevertheless, there must be a time for listening as well as a time for speaking.

Poupchette hadn’t woken up yet, and Fedorine was dozing. Only Amelia had her eyes wide open. I carried the three of them along without any trouble. I felt no fatigue. Shortly after we crossed the bridge, I saw Ohnmeist about fifty meters away. He seemed to be waiting for me, as if he wanted to show me the way. He started trotting as I approached, and he went ahead of me like that for more than an hour. We climbed the path in the direction of the Haneck plateau. We passed through the great conifer woods, with their pleasant aromas of moss and needles. Snow formed gleaming corollas at the feet of the tall firs, and the wind swayed the tops of the trees and made their trunks pop and creak. When we reached the upper limit of the forest and started to cross Bourenkopf’s stubble fields, Ohnmeist broke into a run and climbed atop a boulder. The first rays of the dawning sun shone on him then, and I perceived that he was no longer a masterless dog, no longer the Ohnmeist that walked down our streets and through our houses as though everything were part of his realm, but a fox, a very handsome and very old fox as far as I could judge. He struck a pose, turned his head in my direction, gazed at me for a long time, and then, with one agile, graceful bound, disappeared among the broom.