Маргерит Дюрас - The Impudent Ones

Maud went back into the house, leaving the large front door open to the grounds, which the light of the moon was probing. But the breeze that had earlier revealed the passing of the stranger kept her from sleeping for a long time. Maud fell asleep as soon as the breeze died down of itself in the forest, as if it had lost its strength, but she woke up abruptly as soon as a fresh breath of wind carrying all the surrounding fragrances returned and made the curtains shudder. It had swept the great depths of the valley, carrying with it, as a result, the scent of bitter algae and decayed leaves.

THE DOOR OF THE LARGE DINING ROOM AT UDERAN HAD been left open. The day workers and tenant farmers were eating in the kitchen. Their wives and daughters served the meal, barely finding a minute, here and there, to eat themselves. They brought out the dishes, their mouths full, their foreheads damp with perspiration, flushed and happy with their exhaustion, which wasn’t the same as their everyday fatigue.

In the dining room, the notables and farmers lined each side of the long table in a dignified fashion. The latter, being landowners of The Pardal, were born there and would probably die there; in their view, the tenant farmers were of an inferior status, similar to that of mercenaries who worked the land. Thus, being conscious of the respect being paid to the permanence and stability of their own condition, the farmers sat there proudly, although a little awkwardly, in their best clothes. In total, there were at least thirty who had come as a group. Under their eyelids, creased by the sun, they wore a mocking look, showing that they mainly regarded this invitation as the windfall of a good meal. Certainly, they would never have thought of doing this themselves. At the time of the grape harvests, when the people of The Pardal went to one another’s places to eat, it was always with the expectation of something to be done in return, usually the exchange of a few days of work; but of course, you didn’t just invite people over for nothing, for the pleasure of it…

At the beginning of the meal, they felt ill at ease, and even if some of the bolder ones tried to make a few jokes, they got little back for their efforts. The noise they made in loudly slurping their soup barely made up for the seemingly endless silence.

Caught up with the scene, Maud clearly recalled a past as lasting and inalterable as the features of their faces, which for the most part had not changed. Despite the efforts made to gain her attention by the young Pecresse, seated near her, she remained distracted.

At each end of the table, two big oil lamps lit up the guests who presided over the dinner. Mrs. Taneran chatted with the pharmacist of The Pardal, a big man whose hands appeared pale in comparison with the sun-scorched hands of the farmers. On the other side, in the middle, in consideration of his status, was the schoolteacher of The Pardal. His former pupil Henry Taneran, placed at his left, interacted with him with as much feigned or naïve sweetness as before, when he was a child.

It wasn’t long before everyone started talking with his neighbor, although no one dared speak to the whole group yet. In the growing buzz of the conversation, one could pick out a few asides muttered in the thick dialect of the Dordogne area.

The Pecresse mother, sitting at Maud’s right, was twisting and turning with nervousness. From time to time, she murmured a few words to her son, who immediately started in on Maud with his stuffy politeness. But his nasal voice, covered up by the other voices, failed to hold Maud’s attention.

The rowdiness grew. When it got to be a terrible racket, with people raising their voices as loudly as they could, the din became deafening and monotonous, and yet Maud was no more overwhelmed than the night before, in the tremendous quiet of the grounds.

They were all there around the table, stingy, lumbering, unsociable workers, from the tall, good-natured Pellegrain, whose colossal stature dominated the crowd, right down to Dedde, the short tenant farmer. But they knew how to have fun by alluding to something or telling a story. To loosen up their tongues, which were usually tied (as if speaking during the week were a sin), the wine of Uderan worked wonders—a white wine, a bit dry, that had taken on the mineral taste of the plateau. Mr. Dedde had kept it for ten years, it seemed, in readiness for the return of the Tanerans; with time it had acquired a deep and treacherous sweetness. As rough as they were, the farmers tasted the wine with finesse; after each swig, they sniffed it and claimed they would have recognized it anywhere; they compared it to this or that other wine and gave advice to Dedde: “Be careful. You shouldn’t let it age for more than five years. It’s delicate—you may lose it.”

After they had begun, it became a sparring match in which each one claimed some authority the others didn’t have, launching into nuances that would have seemed insignificant to the uninitiated. At the end of an hour, however, there was a bit of a lull in the conversation, as they began to lack for topics.

“Now they’re going to start talking about Uderan,” thought Maud. They were going to repeat stories she knew word for word, which would serve to tie together scenes that the customary progress of their jubilation or state of well-being called to mind, one by one.

“Do you remember, Maud?” one of the men began… “Maud, someone’s speaking to you! Do you remember the terrible fear you had, ten years ago…?”

She gave a start. What was happening? Everyone was looking at her. Mrs. Pecresse, at her right, and John Pecresse were overjoyed to have drawn all the guests’ attention toward her. Everyone was quiet, suddenly ashamed that they had shown a lack of propriety by forgetting to turn the conversation toward Miss Grant that night. Mrs. Taneran, for her part, was annoyed at the stupefaction one could read in her daughter’s eyes. As for her brothers, they shrugged their shoulders in a barely noticeable way, whose meaning only she could guess. “What an idiot!” was what it meant. “What I think about it is just for the family!”

When Maud answered at last, a bit of defiance punctuated each of her words. “Oh, I remember! But there’s a lot you don’t know. Picture this! It happened one day when I was bringing back the cows from the field by the Dior and the train went by in the middle of the herd. Brownie was left with a huge red hole in place of one of her horns, and she pooped and bellowed. My teeth were chattering with fear. You thought I was very courageous. But after the accident, I spent the night crying, because they were going to put the animal down. You’re the one that told me, Alexis, that evening. You were drunk, but I believed you anyway.”

Alexis, who had the head of a Gascon, with a narrow mustache, blushed with delight at hearing his name mentioned, but, recalling his drinking binges, everyone made fun of him. Mercilessly, Maud continued, finding a cruel pleasure in her words. Why did she persist this way?

“Christmas night, do you remember, Alexis? It was in the woods at the Paulins’. You were lying in the mud, hanging on to your shotgun as if it would actually keep you from falling into an abyss. We bumped into you with our feet and you hollered like a crazy man. Was it the cold that got you fired up like that, eh, Alexis?”

“Yes, Miss Grant,” he answered, his eyes pleading with her.

But the others now sided instinctively with Alexis. They all felt exposed by the subtle irony of this girl who until now had remained silent and all at once showed herself to be so aggressive. What she said baffled and embarrassed them at the same time. So Maud gave up that approach from that point on, and only joined in the conversation to liven it up, giving a word of praise or approval here or there that would cause people to listen to the person with whom she was talking. She already knew the weight of her smile, of her attentive look, and immediately they were grateful for the goodwill that she showed.