«Blood», extract no. 11

Le Regard Libre N° 35 - Sébastien Oreiller

Chapter III: Mother's departure

En carrying the coffin, his mother's weight on his shoulders, he didn't even think as he entered the old stone nave. He didn't think that perhaps he had caused her death, the grief distilled in her heart by the events on the mountain, the sudden disappearance of her son. He knew that she knew everything, that she had never said anything, but that she knew. He had lost his youth; a month later, his mother had died. There was nothing to understand. The service began, and he sat in front of it, with the little brothers and sisters, who were crying without really realizing it. What was he going to do with them? Send them to boarding school, to the city, to the priests? He couldn't afford it. For them, boarding school meant orphanage. Or he could educate them, as best he could, but he couldn't be both father and mother. He'd have to get married, and have hands to sew clothes and make coffee, while he did the menial chores. If only for a few years. After that, the older children would have to go out to work, followed by the younger ones, and they would definitely replace mother and father in the big bedroom. These were his real, trivial thoughts: the children, the house and the approaching winter. The mourning would come later, when the brothers and sisters had left home, and he had raised four or five beautiful children to succeed him, and take his place in the fields. Then, tired but serene, he would have time to think of the past, and of his mother.

She'd come to the funeral, alone with her daughters; the boys hadn't accompanied her. Why had she done this? It was all her fault. Not to support him, certainly, but to get closer to him. It would have been better if she'd stayed at home, in her icy house, with her dead in her cellar, stinking boys and all. It was the last time he'd see the mother, and she'd come to spoil it. He hated her even more. He hated these good women who vampirize you to the core, to the point of invading the most precious moments, and filling them with sorrow and worry. It had to end. When the coffin had to be blessed, and she passed him in a kind of dark dress that wasn't really a mourning dress, he didn't look at her. He didn't understand until it was too late that she'd put it down to decency, busy as he was blowing the noses of the little ones, crying their eyes out, while the older ones said nothing, watching the long procession of neighbors, cousins, acquaintances who'd forgotten their quarrels and rancors, this poor and merciful rural community. She would never understand. She wouldn't understand that these were just fantasies, that he was too afraid of the future to offer a little wine and bread to the faithful who came to the funeral, that when you don't know how much you'll have left after winter, you can't think about the vanities of kisses and oaths. She wouldn't leave him alone; her anger burned like incense and spread through the church, over the congregation, soaked the wood of the coffin. He hated himself.

When the service was over, the mother was placed in the cold ground, and he left without saying a word.

Write to the author : sebastien.oreiller@netplus.ch

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