8
With Father gone, we grew to know Mothers bad spells almost as well as he had. As they began she would speak with a certain vagueness, and she would suffer tension around the temples, which she would betray by impatient little pecking movements of the head. Sometimes she would reach for something-a spoon, a knife-and miss, slapping her hand repeatedly against the table or the sink top as if feeling for the object. Sometimes she would ask, Whats the time? even though the big round kitchen clock was just in front of her. And always at these times, the same sharp, suspicious question:
Has any of you brought oranges into the house?
We shook our heads silently. Oranges were scarce; wed only tasted them occasionally. On the market in Angers we might see them sometimes: fat Spanish oranges with their thick dimpled rind; finer-grained blood oranges from the South, cut open to reveal their grazed purple flesh Our mother always kept away from these stalls, as if the sight of them sickened her. Once, when a friendly woman at the market gave us an orange to share, our mother refused to let us into the house until we had washed, scrubbed under our nails and rubbed our hands with lemon balm and lavender, even then claimed she could smell the orange oil on us-left the windows open for two days until it finally vanished. Of course, the oranges of her bad spells were purely imaginary. The scent heralded her migraines, and within hours she was lying in darkness with a lavender-soaked handkerchief across her face and her pills to hand beside her. The pills, I later learned, were morphine.
She never explained. What information we gleaned was gathered from long observation. When she felt a migraine approaching she simply withdrew to her room without giving any reason, leaving us to our own devices. So it was that we viewed these spells of hers as a kind of holiday-lasting from a couple of hours to a whole day or even two-during which we ran wild. They were wonderful days for us, days that I wished would last forever, swimming in the Loire or catching crayfish in the shallows, exploring the woods, making ourselves sick with cherries or plums or green gooseberries, fighting, sniping at one another with potato rifles and decorating the Standing Stones with the spoils of our adventuring.
The Standing Stones were the remains of an old jetty, long since swept away by the currents. Five stone pillars, one shorter than the rest, protruding from the water. A metal staple stuck out from the side of each, bleeding tears of rust into the rotten stone, where boards had once been fixed. It was on these metal protrusions that we hung our trophies; barbaric garlands of fish heads and flowers, signs lettered in secret codes, magical stones, driftwood sculptures. The last pillar stood well into the deep water at a point where the current was especially strong, and it was here we hid our treasure chest. This was a tin box wrapped in oilcloth and weighted with a piece of chain. The chain was secured to a rope, which in its turn was tied to the pillar we all referred to as the Treasure Stone. To retrieve the treasure it was necessary first to swim to the last pillar-no mean feat-then, holding on to the pillar with one arm, to haul up the sunken chest, detach it and swim with it back to the shore. It was accepted that only Cassis could do this. The treasure consisted mainly of things no adult would recognize as being of value. The potato guns. Chewing gum, wrapped in greased paper to make it last. A stick of barley sugar. Three cigarettes. Some coins in a battered purse. Actresses photographs (these, like the cigarettes, belonged to Cassis). A few issues of an illustrated magazine specializing in lurid stories.
Sometimes Paul Hourias came with us on what Cassis called our hunting trips, though he was never fully initiated into our secrets. I liked Paul. His father, Jean-Marc, sold bait on the Angers road and his mother took in mending to make ends meet. He was an only child of parents old enough to be his grandparents, and much of his time was spent keeping out of their way. He lived as I longed to live; in summer he spent whole nights out in the woods without arousing any concern from his family. He knew where to find mushrooms on the forest floor and to make whistles out of willow twigs. His hands were deft and clever, but he was often awkward and slow in speech, and when adults were near he stuttered. Though he was close to Cassiss age, he did not go to school, but helped instead on his uncles farm, milking the cows and bringing them to and from the pasture. He was patient with me too, more so than Cassis, never making fun of my ignorance or scorning me because I was small. Of course, hes old now. But I sometimes think that of the four of us, he is the one who has aged the least.
Part Two
Forbidden fruit
1
It was already, in early June, promising to be a hot summer and the Loire was low and surly with quicksand and landslides. There were snakes too, more than usual, flat-headed brown adders that lurked in the cool mud in the shallows. Jeannette Gaudin was bitten by one of these as she paddled one dry afternoon, and they buried her a week later in Saint-Benedicts churchyard, beneath a little plaster cross and an angel. Beloved Daughter19341942. I was a year older than she was.
Suddenly I felt as if a gulf had opened beneath me, a hot, deep hole like a giant mouth. If Jeannette could die, then so could I. So could anyone. Cassis looked down from the height of his fourteen years in some scorn: You expect people to die in wartime, stupid. Children too. People die all the time.
I tried to explain and found that I could not. Soldiers dying even my own father that was one thing. Even civilians killed in bombing, though there had been little enough of that in Les Laveuses. But this was different. My nightmares worsened. I spent hours watching the river with my fishing net, catching the evil brown snakes in the shallows, smashing their flat clever heads with a stone and nailing their bodies to the exposed roots at the riverbank. A week of this and there were twenty or more drooping lankly from the roots, and the stink fishy and oddly sweet, like something bad fermented was overwhelming. Cassis and Reinette were still at school they both went to the collège in Angers and it was Paul who found me with a clothespin on my nose to keep out the stench, doggedly stirring the muddy soup of the verge with my net.
He was wearing shorts and sandals, and held his dog, Malabar, on a leash made of string.
I gave him a look of indifference and turned back to the water. Paul sat down next to me. Malabar flopped onto the path, panting. I ignored them both. At last Paul spoke.
Wh-whats wrong?
I shrugged. Nothing. Im just fishing, thats all.
Another silence.
Fors-snakes. His voice was carefully uninflected.
I nodded, rather defiantly.
So?
So nothing. He patted Malabars head. You can do what you like.
A pause that crawled between us like a racing snail.
I wonder if it hurts, I said at last.
He considered it for a moment as if he knew what I meant, then shook his head.
Dunno.
They say the poison gets into your blood and makes you go numb. Just like going to sleep.
He watched me noncommittally, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.
CCassis sez that Jeannette Gaudin musta seen Old Mother, he said at last. You know. Thats why the snake b-bit her. Old Mothers curse.
I shook my head. Cassis, the avid storyteller and reader of lurid adventure magazines (with titles like The Mummys Curse or Barbarian Swarm), was always saying things like that.
I dont think Old Mother even exists, I said defiantly. Ive never seen her, anyway. Besides, theres no such thing as a curse. Everyone knows that.
Paul looked at me with sad, indignant eyes.
Course there is, he said. And shes down there all right. M-my dad saw her once, way back before I was born. B-biggest pike you ever saw. Week later, he broke his leg falling off of his b-bike. Even your dad got-
He broke off, dropping his eyes in sudden confusion.
Not my dad, I said sharply. My dad was killed in battle.
I had a sudden, vivid picture of him marching, a single link in an endless line that moved relentlessly toward a gaping horizon.
Paul shook his head.
Shes there, he said stubbornly. Right at the deepest point of the Loire. Might be forty years old, maybe fifty. Pikes live a long time, the old uns. Shes black as the mud she lives in. And shes clever, crazy-clever. Shed take a bird sitting on the water as easy as shed gulp a piece of bread. My dad sez shes not a pike at all but a ghost, a murderess, damned to watch the living forever. Thats why she hates us.
This was a long speech for Paul, and in spite of myself I listened with interest. The river abounded with stories and old wives tales, but the story of Old Mother was the most enduring. The giant pike, her lip pierced and bristling with the hooks of anglers who had tried to catch her. In her eye, an evil intelligence. In her belly, a treasure of unknown origin and inestimable worth.
My dad sez that if anyone was to catch her, shed hafta give you a wish, said Paul. Sez hed settle for a million francs and a look at that Greta Garbos underwear.
He grinned sheepishly. Thats grownups for you, his smile seemed to say.
I considered this. I told myself I didnt believe in curses or wishes for free. But the image of the old pike wouldnt let go.
If shes there, we could catch her, I told him abruptly. Its our river. We could.
It was suddenly clear to me; not only possible, but an obligation. I thought of the dreams that had plagued me ever since Father died; dreams of drowning, of rolling blind in the black surf of the swollen Loire with the clammy feel of dead flesh all around me, of screaming and feeling my scream forced back into my throat, of drowning in myself. Somehow the pike personified all that, and though my thinking was certainly not as analytical as that, something in me was suddenly certain-certain-that if I were to catch Old Mother, something might happen. What it might be I would not articulate even to myself. But something, I thought in mounting, incomprehensible excitement. Something.
Paul looked at me in bewilderment.
Catch her? he repeated. What for?
Its our river, I said stubbornly. It shouldnt be in our river.
What I wanted to say was that the pike offended me in some secret, visceral way, much more so than the snakes: its slyness, its age, its evil complacency. But I could think of no way to say it. It was a monster.
Sides, youd never do it, Paul went on. I mean, people have tried. Grownup people. With lines and nets an all. It bites through the nets. And the lines it breaks them right snap down the middle. Its strong, see. Stronger than either of us.
Doesnt have to be, I insisted. We could trap it.
Youd hafta be bloody clever to trap Old Mother, said Paul stolidly.
So? I was beginning to be angry now, and I faced him with fists and face both clenched in frustration. So well be clever. Cassis and me and Reinette and you. All four of us. Unless youre scared.
Im nots-scared, but its im-im-impossible.
He was stuttering again, as he always did when he felt under pressure.
I looked at him.
Well, Ill do it on my own if you wont help. And Ill catch the old pike too. You just wait.
For some reason my eyes were stinging. I wiped them furtively with the heel of my hand. I could see Paul watching me with a curious expression, but he said nothing. Viciously, I poked at the hot shallows with my net.
S only an old fish, I said. Poke. Ill get it and Ill hang it on the Standing Stones. Poke. Right there. I pointed at the Treasure Stone with my dripping net. Right there, I said again in a low voice, spitting on the ground to prove that what I said was true.
2
My mother smelt oranges all through that hot month. As often as once a week, though it was not every time that a bad spell ensued. While Cassis and Reinette were at school I ran to the river, mostly on my own but sometimes accompanied by Paul, when he could get away from his chores on the farm.
I had reached an awkward age, and separated from my siblings for most of those long days I grew bold and defiant, running away when my mother gave me work to do, missing meals and coming home late and dirty, my clothes streaked yellow with riverbank dust, hair untied and plastered back with sweat. I must have been born confrontational, but that summer I grew more so than I had ever been. My mother and I stalked each other like cats staking out their territory. Every touch was a spark that hissed with static. Every word was a potential insult, every conversation a minefield. At mealtimes we sat face-to-face, glowering over our soup and pancakes. Cassis and Reine flanked us like frightened courtiers, big-eyed and silent.
I dont know why we pitted ourselves against each other; maybe it was the simple fact that I was growing up. The woman who had terrified me during my infancy now took on a different light. I could see the gray in her hair, the lines bracketing her mouth. I could see now with a flash of contempt that she was only an aging woman whose bad spells sent her helpless to her room.
And she baited me. Deliberately-or so I thought. Now I think that maybe she couldnt help it, that it was as much in her unhappy nature to bait me as it was in mine to defy her. It seemed during that summer that every time she opened her mouth it was to criticize. My manners, my dress, my appearance, my opinions. Everything, according to her, was reprehensible. I was slovenly: I left my clothes unfolded at the foot of my bed when I went to sleep. I slouched when I walked: I would become a hunchback if I wasnt careful. I was greedy, stuffing myself with fruit from the orchard. Otherwise I had little appetite: I was growing thin, scrawny. Why couldnt I be more like Reine-Claude? At twelve, my sister had already ripened. Soft and sweet as dark honey, with amber eyes and autumn hair, she was every storybook heroine, every screen goddess I had ever imagined and admired. When we were younger she would let me plait her hair, and I would twist flowers and berries into the thick strands and circle her head with convolvulus so that she looked like a woodland sprite. Now there was something almost adult about her composure, her passive sweetness. Next to her I looked like a frog, my mother told me, an ugly skinny little frog with my wide sullen mouth and my big hands and feet.
I remember one of those dinnertime conflicts in particular. I remember we had paupiettes, those little parcels of veal and minced pork tied with string and cooked in a thick stew of carrots, shallots, tomatoes in white wine. I looked into my plate with sullen disinterest. Reinette and Cassis looked at nothing, carefully detached.
My mother clenched her fists, infuriated by my silence. After my fathers death there was no one to temper her rage, and it was always close by, boiling under the surface. She seldom struck us-very unusual in those days, almost a freak-though it was not, I suspect, from any great sense of affection. Rather, she was afraid that, having begun, she might not be able to stop.
Dont slouch, for Gods sake. Her voice was tart as an unripe gooseberry. You know that if you slouch, youll end up staying that way.