The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches Read online

  My next neighbour will be a surprise, people will wonder where I come up with these things or what. We only saw him once and, as fate would have it, it was on one of those days when papa and horse had gone to the village. Now, I can’t doubt this one’s existence because he spoke to me, he touched me, as true as I’m standing here. I was on the back veranda in my little corner I like so much, surrounded by planks, and I was writing with my dictionaries lying there unopened, spread out all around the pots and kettles, so I hadn’t seen him coming. My brother had gone to hide in the attic, too cowardly to warn me, as you might expect, it was a man dressed all in black. He was carrying a little satchel, his sudden appearance made me jump, and he said this amazing thing to me: “Is this mister soissons’s house?”

  I’d never seen one like that, cross my heart, not even in my head when I was reading, not even in the illustrations. He was older than us but definitely a lot less old than father, I offer as proof the memory I’ve kept of him. Nothing about his clothing was torn, not one hair of his short haircut was out of place, there was no dried pickle jam around his mouth, no moustache, nothing. He seemed to me to be streaming with brightness, the way father streamed with water when he came out of the lake in summer. He asked again: “Is this the house of mister soissons, the owner of the miner

  Now as you may well imagine, I wasn’t going to pretend I understood. I made as if I were still writing. But I could feel my lips quivering as if bees were buzzing inside. He came closer, his hand shook my knee.

  “Hey! I’m talking to you

  That was too much for me. I hunched my head into my shoulders, brought my legs up to my chest and fell to one side, like an owl suffering an embolism. I looked down at the ground between my fellow man’s shoes without seeing anything precise, and my eyes spread. I mean I had the impression that without bulging out of their sockets they were growing bigger and bigger, like the circles you make in the pond when you throw a stone. And my sheets of paper that had slipped into the mud, ah la la … My fellow man decided, and a good thing too, not to spend too long on my ashes and stepped aside because I was going to die a natural death if this went on, that was obvious to the naked eye.

  Speaking of an eye, I watched him out of the corner of one of mine, unmoving, breathing very quietly, inspired by my friend the praying mantis who was nestled within my folded wrists. The fellow man in question walked around our house and observed the neglected state of the premises, with perplexed grimaces and looks of amazement, as if the sight of the roofs, the outbuildings, the stable, the towers had chilled the blood in his prick. He leaned on the windowsill to cast an eye, another one, on the plank-lined kitchen and then, gazing at his glove, he wiped it with his handkerchief, disgusted. He returned to me, so this torture would never end. He spoke a final word to me but everything inside my bonnet was so dumbfounded and confused that I didn’t hear a thing, and then he went away. My god, can it be? I felt a tremendous relaxation in the full dignity of my person, I threw my neck back and exhaled a sigh. Some planks were missing from the wall so that it could go all the way to the roof, and that was where kid brother had stuck his chest and I saw his upside-down face snickering light-heartedly from the safety of the attic. On the days that followed I could hardly sleep, as soon as I lay down or stopped writing my heart would start beating eggs, and when my brother caught me in the middle of a stoppit, he’d point his finger and scoff at me with such jubilation that he had to fondle his crotch like when nature calls and you have to answer: “Ha ha, mister’s dreaming about prince charming! Ha ha, he’s in love!”

  And that drove me into such a frenzy that red tears sprang to my eyes, because what does that mean anyway, in love? I could have flicked blood at him. And that’s it for our neighbours, whom I’ll soon have more to say about and you’ll see why.

  ON SUMMER MORNINGS when he had an urge to pit himself against the lake, papa would first check the temperature with the tip of his toe, the way bears do, before diving in, and I made nearly the same move when I tested the rut in the road with the toe of my boot before setting out along it for the first time in my life, but the ground didn’t yield, the earth seemed able to support me there too, and I left without looking back, may god preserve my brother. Horse followed. There was no question of my mounting him because of the sensations I’d experience, and because father would disapprove if he were still on this side of the world, I’m sure of it. For that matter, over the years horse had got closer and closer to the ground, and if I had mounted him his belly would have been scraped by the rough parts of the road and I don’t like to see animals suffer for no reason.

  That reminds me of a thing my brother did one time, poor birds. You can think what you want about partridges but you have to try to understand them. Brother had captured four or five of them, I don’t know how he’d gone about it or what. Be that as it may, he had painted them with essence of turpentine, if my memory for that kind of word is correct, and after giving them a prior caress with the flame of a match he let them loose into the countryside one by one, you see it’s as if the only thing my brother thinks about is causing pain. The partridges, what can I say, they panicked, it’s only human. They took off pretty damn fast and in single file knocked themselves senseless against the windows of the chapel, to put an end to the torture and their distress at seeing themselves in such fiery trappings, and I’d have done the same, guaranteed. As for papa, when he found out about this act of fucking cowardice you can imagine what he served my brother by way of a homemade thrashing, because it turned out that father had a holy terror of fires, I don’t know if it’s passed through my bonnet to write that down. But that day’s whacks, ah la la, poor kid brother. Stretched out in his birthday suit as if defunct. It’s all ancient history now, like everything else on this blasted planet.

  I entered the pine grove. I didn’t experience the fear I might have legitimately expected, it was weirder than that, I felt as if horse’s breath were propelling me forward, strange isn’t it, and at the same time I was dreading some exceptional phenomenon — the sky bursting open and depositing at my feet a blast of lightning that would keep me from proceeding farther; or suddenly encountering, at any turn in the road, a precipice seething with tremendous purple smoke — but nothing like that happened and I continued to advance, thinking, to hell with it. I was also struck by the confusion of odours. They rose up suddenly from god knows where, and I jumped, because I always jump when an unexpected perfume nips my nostril, like the time when I dozed off over my dictionaries and then jumped onto my legs because under my nose brother was sticking his two fingers he’d just coated with the ooze from his sausage and then he ran away laughing, and I raced after him flicking blood and calling him false brother. But along the edge of the pine grove, among the wild roses, there were pleasant odours, as if a fairy were amusing herself in surprising me by taking perfumes from her bag of wonders, the way petals are scattered where a prince will walk. Which struck me as a good omen.

  And at the same time it left me feeling bereft, for nothing is unalloyed beneath the salt of heaven. I had never left our estate since I was old enough to remember what was happening to me, and such abstinence should have brought me more astonishments, it seemed to me, but aside from the perfumes I’ve mentioned there was no solution of continuity, I was walking in a space that caught up with me at every step, and for the first time I understood something that heretofore I’d only sensed thanks to my dictionaries — namely that the earth is round like an onion. Had I spied our house, which I’d just left behind, at the far end of the road, I would hardly have been surprised. I’d brought along the spade in case I had to defend myself against serpents or lions, just imagine, and it made the same scraping sound as I dragged it along the road beside me as if it had been sliding across the pebbles three steps from our front stoop, it’s hardly worth the trouble of going on a trip, I told myself.

  But so it goes. I’d had the perfectly respectable idea of providing us with a rope, which I’d wrappe
d around horse like a girth, and because of the weight of his belly, which I’ve mentioned before, it formed two little concave bulges of worn flesh, with the end of the rope hanging down like a prick. Once the coffin had been purchased I could simply attach it to this rope and then horse could tow it along behind him like a toboggan, giving me all the time I needed to frolic in the spinach at will, hey ho! he’s no fool, our sec-retarious. And then all at once the village appeared on my left behind a veil of trees, and I was so stunned that I came to a halt and horse, whose mind was in the clouds, plastered his warm nose between my shoulder blades, for he walks with his head down, as do beasts that have seen all there is to see on this planet and have gotten over it.

  Stunned because nothing about the village conformed to what I’d imagined, and what it was was unimaginable, I’d expected a palace with a drawbridge and flying carpets overhead, like fireflies in japan, with sandals and sheep and sparkling armour like joan of arc’s at the very least, but there were only houses analogous to our own except prettier, less old and smaller, as if they were baby houses if what I think is a baby is correct. I spotted the church right away, as you can imagine, you don’t teach an old dog new theology. I left my spade against a tree, telling myself I’d find it there on my way home, since the village didn’t seem to be swarming with ferocious beasts.

  And the first amazing thing that happened to me, cross my heart, was the bells, because they were ringing and I’d never made the connection. Let me explain. I said you don’t teach an old dog et cetera because churches and all that, after all, I knew a thing or two about them, ever since I’d been old enough to remember being hit, father had taught us all the things in a church inside and out, using pictures in the dictionary — the nave, the rood screen, the transept, the steeple, and all the rest. Papa forced us to learn that and he was in no laughing mood, as proof I’ll just mention the whacks, do you think we enjoyed them? To the question: What do bells do? I invariably replied do-o-o-ong … do-o-o-ong …, because you couldn’t trip me up and that was the right answer, but I’d never made the connection with the reverberations we’d hear now and then if the wind was blowing from the pine grove towards the house, I’d always thought that the sound came to us from the clouds, that they made a kind of music by merging together or bumping into each other like well-rounded bellies, what can I say, but now I realized that it had actually been the well-known do-o-o-ong … do-o-o-ong … of church bells, and how on earth could I have guessed that? There are no bells in the steeple of the chapel on our estate and I’m no prophet. I was so moved by my discovery that without further ado I plunked myself down on the steps of the church like one man, I thought it was such a sad sound, and I sobbed a little at the sadness of the sound, because it came to us from the earth and the clouds told us nothing, they just boomed. But I didn’t come here to have fun, I told myself.

  And the second amazing thing, I hadn’t set foot in the village for more than three minutes when I saw a neighbour and somehow or other I guessed that neighbour was a blessed virgin or a slut. The creature was dressed in black, something a number of my neighbours seem to have in common if I’m any judge, and walked hunched over, so much that it was a pity, she must have spent even more time on earth than father, for a comparison between the condition of her face and a wrinkled potato suggested itself powerfully to one’s mind, that’s the way it is. She looked at me with let’s say astonishment, the way you look at something that’s not a pleasing sight, or so it seemed, and she folded her arms to hold her purse against her inflations, which didn’t strike me as vital because I had no desire for that purse and anyway she was across the street from me and horse was between us, you see.

  “Papa is dead!” I shouted at her. But did she even understand the sounds I was making with my mouth? I couldn’t decide what sex she was just from looking at her, whether she was a blessed virgin or a slut or et cetera, because of my lack of experience and so forth, and because dictionaries can’t explain everything, because, you have to believe me, I know my limits. Nor can you trust inflations on something like this, I myself am walking proof of that. All the same, I wanted to show her my irreproachable intentions as best I could, I don’t like to see suffering for no reason. I shouted at her again: “May god be with you, old slut!” Because I had one chance in two.

  But I wasn’t there to bless my neighbours, so once my tears had run dry I set out farther along the village road. I don’t know where this audacity came from, I think I was sustained by my feeling of duty towards father. What reasons had I had before to address any neighbours when my late father was there, but now that he was no longer around to defend himself someone was going to have to take on the job, as well as find him a pine suit, and that put the wind into every one of my sails. I noticed moreover that, having disobeyed papa by stepping outside the enclosure of the estate, once that boundary had been crossed I could pass through the others as easily as I passed, in summertime, in the little woods, through the spiderwebs set with silver droplets that stayed in my hair like morning stars, so there.

  General Store was written out in full in black and white. Sorry, excuse me, but the secretarious knows how to read. It was a house with big windows where you could see all kinds of goods. I left horse in the middle of the road, I went inside with my cents. There were a lot of things you see at home but in very large quantities, food for instance, in cardboard boxes, and a thing you don’t ever see at home, which was a bambino, that’s what it’s called, it came up to about my knee. I asked it if I could trade my cents for a grave box, but I might as well have asked the pile of white pebbles the colour of father’s corpse that were at the bottom of the dried-up stream. I put my hand on the bambino’s skull where it was blond and soft, and that did something to me, I swear. It’s because more than once in the illustrations my brother and I had seen bambinos rising up into the air like balloons because of the little wings on their backs that they keep for a certain number of years as a reminder of limbo, as long as they haven’t been shed, and hang on, honey bee! — you’re not pulling the ascension trick on me before I’m done with you. So as I was saying, I put my hand on its head, but maybe it couldn’t comprehend the sounds that sprang from my tongue as if from an amazingly bouncy springboard, who knows? Words form within the enclosure of my cheeks and my tongue sweeps them outside with unimaginable swiftness, and perhaps it all went over the head of the bambino, which even though it had wings only came up to my thigh. And so, in an attempt to mimic mortal remains to make myself understood, I stood there all stiff with my eyes shut, I pointed to my upper lip because of papas moustache et cetera, and then I indicated some boxes with the tip of my nose, hoping it would make the connection, but as you can imagine. And then along came a slut.

  Who appeared out of the back of the shop, which is what it’s called. She was wearing a black dress as you might expect, on her head was a little hat that I thought was the strangest object in the world in this country, with a grey veil that fell down over her eyes as if there were things that she didn’t want to see or that she agreed to see only if they were muffled, like when you put your hand in front of a light that’s too bright, and she “was pulling on a glove. She told me that she was closed on account of the exceptional reason of the burial and I replied, well that’s just it, thinking: News travels fast. Not seeing her eyes prevented me from determining whether she was of my calibre in the intelligence department or whether she came up no higher than kid brother’s cap, which set my teeth on edge because, apart from the eyes, what is there to distinguish someone from his future mortal remains, I ask you? And there I was doing my utmost. But just try explaining to a slut that before you can bury, you need a grave box to put in the pit! She said again, I’m closed, I’m closed, you don’t understand. Being closed is no reason not to do your duty, I told her and, exasperated as I had every right to be, about to explode then and there and any old way, like a shell, I nonetheless controlled myself and declared:

  “It’s very simple. You
and your bambino give me the coffin, I give you my cents, we put the mortal remains inside, and then we dig the pit that goes with it, on the edge of the pine grove.”

  And wham. Her sudden sobs bewildered me. I couldn’t see how father’s death could drive her to such sorrow, because papa spent almost all his time on earth with us, so nothing justified this slut’s being attached to him to the point of weeping at the news of his corpse, had I cried? — yet I was his son, as true as I’m standing. She disappeared into the back with a handkerchief to her nose, taking the bambino with her, which was looking at me with its finger in its mouth, and I heard her say: “You deal with it, please, I can’t take any more.” Ah la la. I saw two men arriving, that’s fate. I sighed inwardly at the thought that in this life it’s absolutely pointless to try to explain yourself, I’ll let you guess what colour their suits were. How strangely everyone was dressed, in fact! I can’t help adding a word about this. It was as if they weren’t living in their clothes. I don’t know if they donned new ones every day or what, they must not be used to the sight of individuals who’ve lost their father, they looked at me as if I had a horn in the middle of my forehead. One of them came up to me. He took hold of my shoulders gently, in fact his gentleness did something to me, to push me towards the exit I’d come in through, and these are the very words he said:

  “Try to understand, she’s burying her husband.”

  He gave me the name of a special death shop at the other end of the street, where I could find a coffin if that was what I was looking for, but he also told me that it was closed today on account of the funeral, ditto for the town hall where I apparently had to register my own dead. He also discreetly handed me a card which I’m pasting in here, after wetting it with my long ox-tongue: