Page 53 of The Strawberry Thief
Yannick’s mother gave a shrug. ‘I know it’stechnicallyyour land,’ she said, ‘but this is important. I mean, what good is sixteen hectares to you? Unless you mean to sell it, in which case it won’t matter to you whether or not we had a peek.’ She turned to Yannick. ‘Don’t just stand there! Pick up the metal detector. There’ssomethingin this clearing besides bottle tops and loose change, and we have a right to know what it is. We’re hisfamily, after all. He had no right to hide this from us.’
Yannick gave me a mournful look, as if to sayI’m sorry. But I didn’t have any time for that. I was feeling dizzy with anger. Little red motes danced in my eyes, like the sparks from a midsummer bonfire.
Oh, this is bad, I thought. This is bad. This is hurricane territory. I could see Bam in the oak trees, swinging madly from branch to branch, his fur like flames. It was coming.
I signed at Yannick.You need to leave.
‘Oh, don’t give me that,’ said Madame Montour. ‘I know you can speak when you want to. And I know what you stole from me, while I was talking to Reynaud.’
I said: ‘Go away,’ in my shadow-voice. The leaves on the trees were starting to shake. The wind was growing stronger. It was only a little wind, but it was already getting cold, and I could feel the clouds drawing in, circling the clearing like water going down a drain.
Madame Montour didn’t seem to notice. ‘You broke into my house,’ she said. ‘I could report you to the police.’
I said: ‘You stole Narcisse’s file.’
‘I did no such thing,’ said Madame Montour. ‘Reynaud had no right to keep it from me. Narcisse wasmyfather, not yours, and I have a right to know exactly what he left you.’
‘Please. Just go away,’ I said. ‘Go away, or I’ll tell Maman.’
Yannick’s mother scoffed. ‘So we had a look in your private wood. It’s hardly a crime to be curious. We won’t be long – will we, Yannick? Just another hour or so—’
By then I was starting to feel panicky as well as furious. ‘Go away. Both of you. Go away and don’t come back.’ And this time itwasn’ta shadow-voice, but something that rattled the leaves like tin sheets – the voice that summons the Hurakan. Above us, the clouds were getting dark. I could feel them turning like wool onto a spindle. I knew I was causing an Accident, and yet I couldn’t stop myself; at that moment I didn’t care if both of them were blown away.
This wasmyplace, Narcisse’s place. This was my private refuge. And Madame Montour had broken in, searched with a metal detector, jimmied the grate off the wishing-well, dugholesin the strawberry clearing. And worse, Yannick hadhelpedher. I felt as I were made entirely from little red seeds, held together by heat and smoke, ready to disperse on the wind—
Yannick was looking nervous. ‘Maman—’ Above him the trees were columns of smoke, their leaves like pieces of shining brass. Big drops of rain began to fall, hard and hot as pennies. ‘Maman, I really think we should go.’
A branch creaked menacingly over their heads. Bam was bouncing on it, making screeching noises.
‘We shouldgo,’ he said again, then, turning his small dark eyes to mine, said: ‘It’s not my fault. She made me—’ before turning and heading for home at a run, the metal detector under his arm.
‘Yannick! You come back right now!’ cried Madame Montour, but the rain was really coming down, though I was still dry, in the eye of it all. Above her, the tree branch creaked and swayed.
‘Go now, before something bad happens,’ I said, in the voice of the Hurakan, and Madame Montour gave me one of her looks and said:
‘You’re a dangerous lunatic. You keep away from me and my son.’ Then she followed Yannick down the path, not running, not quite, but those little black heels tapped briskly against the baked-earth path, and the big branch came down just behind her –BAM!– in a crash of metal and firewood, and the little black heels tapped faster, until both she and Yannick were gone.
I sat down in the strawberries. My everything was shaking. But the flurry of wind was over now. The rain had stopped. The sky was blue. Even the leaves in the trees were still, though some of the new buds had been ripped off, and littered the ground like pale-green rags.
Bam was back on the ground again, his tail curled neatly around his feet. I made a reassuring noise, to tell him the danger was gone – for now. And then I took the spade that Yannick and his mother had left, and started to fill in the holes that they had dug in my clearing, and put back the torn-up strawberry plants, and stamp the loose clods back into place, so that when I’d finished, you could hardly tell where the holes had been, or that anything had changed at all.
But the wishing-well was a different matter. There was no putting back the grate, or mending the broken stones round the edge. Now you could look right into the dark, and see the circle of sky looking up, like the pupil of a great big eye, thinking its thoughts of vengeance.
7
Thursday, March 30
I barely slept at all last night. My dreams were worse than the torments of Hell. And so this morning I went to the church to pray by the feet of Saint Jérôme. It has been years since I visited the patron of our village church, but by now my need had grown so great that I was willing to consider even this solution.
A rather belated confession,père. I am not a great believer in the teachings of Saint Jérôme.Youvalued his work immensely, I know, and for many years I too was a disciple. But his vitriol against women, his disgust of their bodies and contempt for their minds, has latterly made me suspicious, both of his words, and even of his Vulgate translation of the Bible. I also remember how hard I prayed after the fire in Les Marauds, and how you quoted his words,mon père: ‘Better to marry than to burn.’
The way you said it seemed to suggest that the couple who died in the riverboat fire somehowdeservedit for being unwed, for being asleep, perhaps for being drunk, and that I was merely the instrument of some greater intelligence. I prayed that if I were,père, the dreadful cup would fall from my hand; that God would return to His place in my heart; that I could be a boy again. But you made it clear that I owed God a debt, a debt that could only be paid with my life, and so I exchanged my guilt for a life devoted to His service.
But you thought you could have more,says the voice that has been with me since I opened Narcisse’s folder. I’d thought it was Narcisse’s voice, but since then I have begun to wonder. Narcisse was a man of few words, and this voice is both fluent and articulate.You thought you could hide behind God, it says, as I kneel at the feet of the plaster saint.But as time passed, you realized that God was only a shadow over the Sun, and that it was just a matter of time before you were standing in the light.
I don’t even know what that means,père. I used to think Godwasthe light. I thought that if He could forgive me, then anything was possible.
Including your friendship with Joséphine?says the dry voice with a touch of humour.You thought you could play the innocent in her eyes. What would she say if she knew what you did? How do you think she would look at you then?
