The Brethren (8 page)

Barberine placed the oil lamp on the night table and came to tuck us into our beds with the care, caresses and kisses with which she always dosed these rites, her deep, lyrical voice finding sweet words for each one of us (including Samson, though she’d never suckled him), calling little Hélix “My big rascal! Little devil! Sweet sorceress!”; Catherine “My little golden écu! My pearl of God!”; Samson “My little fox cub! My curly little St John!”; and me “My sweet! Dear heart! My little rooster!” These are only examples of her nicknames for us, for she imagined new ones every night, each one perfectly fitting the person and the occasion, never calling one of us by a name she’d used for another on another night, which, I’m sure, would have wounded us no end.

Catherine and Samson fell asleep during this rite, but not little Hélix, who, leaning on one elbow, and behind Barberine’s spacious back, made her last faces at me. I did not doze off either, but only pretended to do so, and, turning on my side, one eye closed, seemingly the innocent angel, I watched Barberine undress, while her gigantic shadow, projected by the lamp onto the curved tower wall, made its final preparations for sleep.

I now understand that Barberine was not as colossal as I’d believed at the age of six. She was, however, a large woman with luxuriant black hair, a round face, large mouth, round and robust neck, wide shoulders, huge bosom with firm and abundant white breasts from
which I had drunk life, and which now dazzled me in the lamplight as, sighing, she unlaced the red bodice which imprisoned them. And they seemed to swell, impatient for liberation, as Barberine undid with her large fingers the last knots holding the lacing firmly in place. Finally they made their appearance, milky and round, fabulously enlarged by the shadow on the wall, as if the tower itself had become a huge breast which would come to rest on our cheeks during the night. Barberine carefully folded her red halter and her corset, and then her skirt, her apron and finally her green velvet petticoat, striped with three red bands, one at the waist, a second around her thigh and the third at the hem. Then she pulled on an ample white sleeveless nightgown, cut very low so that her liberated bosom could undulate freely. As her body came to rest on her woollen mattress she sighed with sleepy content. I had only this brief moment to ask a question or make a request, since only seconds later the lamp would be extinguished and she with it, sinking into a sleep so deep that ten arquebuses firing simultaneously in the tower room would not have stirred her.

I slipped out of bed and ran over to hers to curl up and snuggle in her arms.

“And who is this pretty little mouse?” asked Barberine in her low sing-song voice, squeezing me tight. “What could it want?”

“Barberine, why did my mother make my father so angry?”

“Because she was upset herself,” said Barberine, who never lied.

“Upset about what?”

“Because the notary called Samson ‘Samson de Siorac’.”

“Isn’t that his name, then?” I asked astonished.

“Now it is, yes.”

“And what was it before?”

“He didn’t have a name.”

I couldn’t believe my ears.

“But he’s my brother!”

“Of course!” replied Barberine. “And a handsome, strong and honest lad he is, like a shiny new coin. It would have been a great pity not to name him Siorac and God bless him!” And, between her teeth, “And the Virgin Mary, too. Go on, my little mouse, back to your hole. I’m dousing the lamp.”

And even before I could get back to my bed, she blew out the lamp, so that I “lost my way” in the dark and found myself in little Hélix’s bed, who, all ears, was wide awake and whose arms encircled me with astonishing force.

It’s true that she was already ten years old and I don’t know why we called her little Hélix, for she was no longer little, far from it and almost completely formed already.

“Aha, I’ve got you!” she whispered. “And now that I’ve got you, I’m going to eat you right up like a she-devil.”

“S’not true!” I hissed. “I don’t believe you, you don’t have teeth like a wolf.”

“What about this?” she said, rolling me over on my back and putting her full weight on me. “Me,” she continued half-scolding, half-laughing, trying to nibble my ear, “I always begin with the ears, because they’re the best morsels, like the coxcomb or the artichoke heart! But after the ears, I eat everything else, bit by bit, right down to the bones.”

“Not true, I tell you, and you’re crushing me! Get off me! Or I’ll call Barberine!”

“My mother’s asleep,” she laughed shamelessly. “So, my little mouse, you’ve met your cat. Keep still or you’ll feel my claws.”

“If you’re a cat,” I answered bravely, “tomorrow I’ll take my father’s sword and cut you in two, from the guzzle to the zatch!”

“Fie then!” cajoled little Hélix. “No bragging little mouse! Listen once and for all: if you don’t sleep in my bed I’ll eat you all up.”

I answered neither yea nor nay, so astonished was I to find her at once so plump and so strong, gave up the struggle and fell asleep in her arms. At daybreak, however, she woke me with a violent pinch and, pretending to be angry at finding me in her bed, sent me off to my own with dispatch.

My father’s departure deprived us as well of Cabusse, who, among other duties, was our cook. He enjoyed an easy familiarity with Cathau and Barberine. Neither one, however, tolerated his advances for fear of being sent away, though Cathau would have been hard pressed to resist if the master’s eye hadn’t kept her in line, for she found herself attracted to Cabusse’s formidable moustache, his great size, his coaxing ways and his Gascon accent. Alas, now, when she came down of a morning to fetch hot milk for her mistress, Cabusse would no longer be there to say in his warm voice, “Greetings, my sweet! How fare you this day? And how could you not fare well, fresh as you are, with cheeks as red as apples and lips like cherries! How you make the kitchen shine just by comin’ in! They say ‘A lass who’s pale seeks her male,’ but I don’t believe it! It’s just the other way round! Whoever saw a turnip fall in love?”

But even Cabusse, as hardy a soldier as they come, spoke in a whisper to Cathau, so fearful was he of being heard by the captains.

To replace Cabusse as cook, they tried Barberine, but Barberine, who had nourished so many children in the natural way, turned out to have no culinary talent whatsoever for nourishing grown-ups. So Sauveterre called on la Maligou, wife of the man who had had such trouble guarding Mespech against the evil schemes of Fontenac. La Maligou came and stayed. As voluminous as Barberine, she lacked our nursemaid’s strength, and possessed not the least grain of common sense or reason in her great ruffled head, being all vanity and chatter,
as credulous and superstitious as they come, genuflecting twenty times a day, crossing her fingers to conjure fate, throwing salt over her shoulder and in front of her pot (which she somehow cooked to perfection), always careful to draw a circle with her finger on the kitchen floor behind her to prevent the Devil from whipping up her skirts and cowling her while she was bent over her fire.

She brought with her daughter, named Suzon, but later we turned to calling her “Little Sissy”, a name which stuck. At the time of her arrival she was a little devil of three years, with the skin of a Saracen, thin and graceful as a blade, her close-set eyes liquid and malicious enough to damn you, yet of a good heart all the same. At six, already tall for my age, I carried her on my shoulders, leaving Catherine to pout on her little chair, her two blonde braids encircling her scowling face, while little Hélix wrestled with her barely contained fury, for no one dared lay a finger on Little Sissy, since la Maligou had a sharp eye and a fast hand.

Her mother made a great mystery of the birth of this girl, whom she elevated in importance over all her other children, husband, father, mother and grandparents—with endless fussing, signs of the cross, and frequent pinches of salt thrown in the fire (a practice which, with salt so expensive, Sauveterre was quick to condemn). But, of course, unable to hold her tongue, she revealed that secret at least once a month, with murmurs, expressions of the greatest confidence, and a mixture of hidden pride and contrition. Little Sissy was not, alas! (this “alas!” was so hypocritical!) her husband Maligou’s daughter, but was the daughter of a Gypsy who had taken her by force one night four years previously. La Maligou claimed that this Gypsy captain’s armed band had pillaged their house, demanding all the cured meat hanging from their rafters, and threatened to burn their entire field of wheat, cast spells on the cows and cut down their vines. At the mention of the vines, Maligou gave in immediately. But once
they had the meat, the Gypsy captain, a tall handsome brute who looked like a prince, put his evil eye on la Maligou and, drawing a cross on her breast with his thumb and another on her stomach, he said in his half-Catalan, half-Provençal patois, “I’ll return for you tonight in the barn when the owl hoots. If you aren’t there, I’ll burn your body with the fires of hell from your womb to your lungs till the end of time.”

And indeed, as midnight sounded, hearing the hooting of the owl (her husband sleeping drunk as a log beside her to forget the loss of his salamis), la Maligou, shuddering as she slipped on her clogs, went, against her will, to the barn, where in the inky darkness of the night the Gypsy captain threw her into the hay and had his way with her no less than fifteen times. “But there was no sin on my hands,” la Maligou was quick to add, “because I was forced by magic to do it.” So often was this story told that no one at Mespech or any of the surrounding villages (except perhaps for a few virgins who grew dreamy at its telling) was the least moved by it. Whenever he heard it, my father always laughed to split his sides, and I realized only later why he found it so amusing.

Among the new arrivals at Mespech were my cousins Benoît and Michel Siorac, sons of my Uncle Raymond, who had perished in the plague at Taniès. It was a great blessing for my cousins to live in the chateau. The curate of Marcuays, whose parish included the towns of Sireil and Taniès, had forbidden burning the corpses under threat of eternal damnation and so everyone feared another outbreak of the epidemic from the bad vapours from the earth of Taniès where the pestiferous lay buried.

Benoît and Michel were twins, and no two peas ever looked more alike in the same pod. They were merry lads in their thirties who spoke little and were secretly unhappy that neither knew which was the elder, since their mother and midwife had passed away and no
one in Taniès could tell them which of them had been born first. Neither could lay claim to their small domain, and consequently neither could take a wife since the domain could support only one family.

La Maligou always said, out of their earshot, that they were fools not to take one woman to the altar before a priest, since no woman could ever tell them apart and thus there could be no sin where there was no knowledge of sin. In this way, the twins could have shared the pleasures of a wife without having the expenses of two families.

But these ideas would have seemed sacrilegious to the pious brothers. They were so dependent on each other that they simply accepted their celibacy and their coexistence. Indeed, if one were alone, he would search about, asking everyone anxiously, “Where is Michel?” By which we could recognize that it was Benoît who was speaking. Otherwise there was no way: they were the same size, the same breadth of shoulder, had the same black curly hair, same features, same way of sitting, sniffing the wind, spitting, breaking bread or supping soup.

Sauveterre had a blue ribbon sewn on Michel’s shirt collar, and a red one on Benoît’s, but since they slept together, their clothes thrown pell-mell onto the bed, Michel might easily slip on Benoît’s shirt by mistake in the morning, so it was of no use. As pious as they were, the Siorac brothers were not terribly clever and should one of us, meeting one of the twins in the courtyard, ask “Which one are you?” the twin in question would invariably reply, “I’m the brother of the other one.”

Jonas, our stonecutter, was unhappy to have to leave his cave to come to the defence of Mespech. He bit his nails worrying about his beautiful cut stones lying at night alone in their quarry. But for all that, the new company changed him for the better, especially
the women, whom the poor hermit devoured with his eyes at the dinner table every night, most of all Barberine, whose abundance and milky complexion caught his fancy. With our three departed soldiers, the two Siorac twins and Faujanet, Jonas made the seventh bachelor, not counting all the young men of the neighbouring towns who were unable to marry since they possessed no house to lodge a family nor lands to nourish one. It was a great shame that so many of the girls of our countryside had to enter convents for lack of an earthly husband. I make these observations at an age where I myself, though born into a well-to-do family, am but the second-born and am unable to marry the woman who has enchanted me since I have no means of supporting her. Sadly, filthy lucre seems to dominate everything, even the sweetness of life.

Sauveterre became quite bilious at the news that an armed band of Gypsies were roaming the countryside around Belvès, taking advantage of the absence of the nobility and their men at arms to besiege the chateaux. For the strongest chateau is only as strong as its defenders, and these were too often too few or too cowardly, since the call to arms to save the kingdom had skimmed off the cream of the soldiery from our region.

The Gypsies were not a people who dreamt only of blood and carnage. If victorious, they raped the women, to be sure, but did not kill them afterwards. It was rumoured that they never touched children either, but seemed to love them so much that they often stole young ones if they found them beautiful. Before attacking, they would always enter into negotiations with the chateau or the farm and, in return for a pledge of neutrality, would carry off arms, silver and provisions. But it sometimes happened that, after receiving a ransom, they would break their word and attack anyway. It was said that they castrated the men they killed, which was very much an affront to our own customs, although I have seen it done by our
soldiers—both Huguenots and Catholics—during the great civil wars of the kingdom.