The editor’s letter came to rest on a pile of envelopes he had not bothered to open. He stretched out on his camp bed and said to himself that this would be a good day to die.
He was drowsing, drowsing, and then, quite without warning, he opened his eyes and woke up as someone different, someone who was having nothing more to do with Sabine, in this life or the next. It had just struck four, and it was still light. The hard-boiled eggs still lay heavy in his stomach and so it occurred to him to aid his digestion by going for a short walk in the open air for the first time since he had arrived. The choice on leaving his place was simple: either you went left and after 500 metres you hit the main road, where the terrifying articulated lorries would be more than happy to flatten a pedestrian, or you went right, taking the path that wound past the church, up among the vines. Naturally, that was the one he took, whistling to himself. Not for long. The section leading out of the village presented no problems, but very soon the slope became so steep it felt like scaling a vertical wall. His smart tan suede loafers were far from suited to this kind of terrain, muddy, full of pebbles and deep cracks. Every other step he stumbled, tripped and slid, enjoying none of the benefits of nature. He had to sit down to remove a stone from his left shoe. Vine stalks, twisted like the hoofs of a sick billy goat, clung to grey wooden posts; banks of brambles coiled beside the path like barbed wire; straggly trees pleaded with the sky, an occasional mocking crow perched on a branch; and the worst of it was this bitch of a red, slippery soil. There was nothing to stop him turning back except men’s obstinate need to see things through to the very end. He set off again, sliding on this Way of the Cross with no station at which to get off.
A quarter of an hour later, exhausted and covered in mud, just as he was extracting a crown of thorns’ worth of spines from his palm, he heard the sound of a spring on his left. It was coming from a sort of gap in the undergrowth. Drawn on, as in a fairy tale, he ventured in. Despite the pitfalls, treacherous roots, half-buried stones, holes and mounds, nothing on earth could now have prevented him from getting closer to this primal gurgling; it had become as essential to him as a teat to a newborn baby. It was as he came round the final turn that he caught sight of it, new, exposed, gushing forth from the granite lips. The water, thick like a cordial, greasy like oil, flung the sky’s image back at it in a magnificent act of defiance.
From pool to pool it seethed, leaped, splashed the mineral formations, proud in its opulence, intoxicated with bubbles, furious, foaming. His eyes filled with tears. Deafened by the tumult of the ceaselessly roaring torrent, he moved forward cautiously on to the slippery rock in the slim hope of weighing the emerald liquid in his hand. Hold water! Pathetic scrap of a man. No sooner had he skimmed it with his fingertips than he lost his footing. Then it was coming down on him with its full weight, sweeping him along in its depths with bursts of laughter. Gasping as the cold bit, Brice struggled against the current, but it was so strong that after a few seconds he gave up the fight. He felt strangely relieved, as if he had been waiting for this moment since birth. He was tired of fighting, tired of facing up. Perhaps this was where Emma was waiting for him. He needed only to let himself go. In a whirlpool his foot hit a stone and pain ripped him out of the kind of torpor in which he was sinking. His hand shot out of the foam and clutched a root.
Crouching on the corner of a rock, shaking, stupefied, he watched his hat swirling away to vanish on the glistening back of a waterfall, whose thundering waters plummeted a good ten metres on to jagged rocks beneath.
Shamefaced, teeth chattering, he limped back towards the village.
Luckily the chemist’s shop was still open. Its green cross shone out against the rust-coloured sky. The pharmacist was busy attending to a customer. Taking in his pitiful state with one glance, she slipped out from behind the counter and rushed over to Brice.
‘What on earth’s happened to you, you poor man?’
‘I fell, up by the spring. I must have sprained something.’
‘I’ll just finish serving this customer and I’ll be right with you.’
Her gentle smile warmed his heart. He would have quite liked to call her ‘Maman’. The pharmacy smelled clean, of toothpaste and safety. With a sigh of relief, he stretched out his injured leg. The customer in question was none other than the strange girl he had met at Martine’s hair salon.
‘This is the last time, Blanche. You must go back to the doctor’s. I can’t give you any more of your medication if you don’t have a prescription. Do you understand?’
‘Yes. Two packets.’
‘No, Blanche. One, and then you come back with a prescription.’
‘All right, one.’
Blanche’s voice was, well, colourless, a wisp of a voice, barely audible, as if a ventriloquist were making her speak. As she was about to leave, she froze in front of Brice.
‘What a waste of time.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I waited and waited.’
‘You must be mistaken, I—’
‘Come now, that’s not kind. I’ve been worried. Well …’
She pursed her lips and shrugged, fiddling nervously with her little pearly purse. White stockings, white coat, white hat, white gloves. Only her eyes were black, as black as coal, almost aglow. Whipping a card from her pocket, she held it out with a feverish hand.
‘Tomorrow, five o’clock, for tea.’
Without waiting for him to reply, she left the chemist’s, as stiffly as a wooden soldier. The pharmacist crouched down in front of him. The gaping neck of her overall revealed two huge breasts, like the smooth rocks forming the mouth of the spring.
‘That’s quite a sprain you have there. I’ll put some ointment on and bandage it, but perhaps you should have it X-rayed as well.’
‘All right. Tell me, who was that, the white lady?’
‘Ah. Blanche Montéléger, from the big house on the edge of the village. She’s a little … eccentric. I thought you knew each other.’
‘No.’
‘It’s just that you look so much like her late father. I’m not hurting you, I hope?’
‘No, not at all.’
The card was not printed but handwritten in curly old-fashioned script. No address or phone number, just Blanche Montéléger.
Emma and Brice had been arguing non-stop since the moment they woke up, about everything and, especially, about nothing. It was the first time this had happened to them and neither knew the reason for it now. Maybe it was because of the storm which was circling over the city without ever getting round to breaking. Every object seemed to be charged with electricity and made their hair stand on end as soon as they touched it.
‘I’ve told you a hundred times to put the bread away in the basket. It dries out and gets thrown away, and I hate waste.’
‘And you might change the toilet roll instead of