«Blood», extract no. 2

Le Regard Libre N° 25 - Sébastien Oreiller

Chapter I: Loss (continued)

As he left, he followed the procession out of the village to the little chapel in the middle of the tall grass. It was the young people’s service, the St. John’s Day service, which takes place late in the evening, and where the priest celebrated the longest night at a small wooden altar on the rustic courtyard. He took his place among the faithful, standing among them, and like them, he was not yet thinking of the festivities being prepared in the village—the wine and the singing, the drunks and the pagans who were already waiting for them—and was not participating in the divine service. He wanted, for just a moment longer, to breathe in the light of this almost bright night, where hair shone in the twilight, and the pale skin of the young girls, and their eyes. The service began, and as he knelt in the grass, he was able, for a moment, to grasp how the plants grew under the Creator’s sun. It was beautiful that no one spoke. When the priest raised the host, he no longer thought of his youth, and forgot that he had lost it, just as dreams gradually fade away in the middle of the day, and the memory that was clear to us in the morning can no longer be grasped in the evening, even though it remains present. But he could not find the strength to stand up and go to receive Communion. The memory of his youth came back to him. He felt dirty. Perhaps dirty for having lost it, when he should have watched over it more carefully and cherished it as the sun cherishes the vine and gives wine. Perhaps she had hated his guilty selfishness, and had run away because he was a monster, or because he had simply become too old for her—without laughter or joy, doomed to weariness and regret. No, he wouldn’t dare step forward and receive Christ into his mouth, kneeling as he was, when his hands were so dirty—or were about to become so. Not without her, at any rate—not without her to hold his arm and support him. Instead, he mourned, shedding a tear on the grass, then stood up. The salt of the earth, he thought.

The fire was lit. The pyre scattered into scales of flame all around, like so many souls rising and then fading away. The heat was so oppressive that we feared the fire might set the surrounding world ablaze—the countryside and the crops. At that very moment, night finally fell, and from the flames rose the voices of little children and young maidens as they danced. They sang a hymn to the land they loved, to the clear sky, and above all to the generous earth—which we had been given and which did not belong to us— this earth of which they were perhaps the pagan bride, offered as a sacrifice for the fertility of the soil, who toiled for it and never grew old. He turned his back—barren as he was—and returned to the village.

His friend was waiting for him. He was fat, and like him, dressed in those coarse, heavy-cloth shirts that seemed soft only because they had been inherited from his father—just like those stockings that didn’t itch because his mother’s hands had sewn and mended them; there were no others. The friend was ugly. He knew it, and perhaps that was why he kept him around—to ease his worries for a moment, cruelly, by watching him clumsily make his way through the crowded streets, turning red and sticky with alcohol; the women’s gaze would rest on the friend for a few moments, without flinching. Then they would look away, meet his gaze, realize that he had seen, and lower their eyes in shame—shame at being made this way. But he also knew that ugliness begat ugliness and that it rubbed off on him in a certain way; perhaps it was better that way. Such were his thoughts as he sat on a bench on Main Street—thoughts as fleeting as the shadows of the torches on the men’s faces, to the sound of the drunken fiddler. It was already late, and his friend had fallen asleep beside him. He raised the cup of cloudy wine to his lips and watched the young girls pass by. It was the community’s wine, the kind everyone drank and loved all the same—almost bitter, a little thick with sediment. Later, he tasted the city’s wine—the kind reserved for special occasions, rich and fresh—and yet he could not recapture on his lips the childlike, almost earthy taste of the wine from here.

When he got up to fill his cup from the barrel, he ran into the girl everyone knew. «So you left your boyfriend after all?» she said to him. He told her to shut up and go to sleep. She’d go to sleep, all right, but not alone. That’s what she told everyone, he knew it, and he told her so, laughing in her face. He had already turned to leave, but then he turned back. Having changed his mind, he grabbed her with his big hand and led her off somewhere into the shade.

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