“It’s settled.”
“On Sunday, then.”
“On Sunday.”
“All right; goodbye, Victor.”
“Goodbye, Madame Houlbrèque.”
III
That Sunday was a feast day in the village, the yearly feast of their patron saint, called in Normandy the Assemblée.
For a week, strange vehicles were seen coming by every road, dragged along by grey or roan hacks, and housing the travelling families of regular showmen, with gambling-outfits, shooting-galleries, and amusements of all kinds, and men showing curiosities, for whom the peasants had a curious name of their own.
Dirty caravans, with flapping curtains, and accompanied by a melancholy dog slinking with hanging head between the wheels, drew up one after the other in the village square. Then a tent was put up before each travelling house, and shining objects, glimpsed through holes in the canvas, roused to fever pitch the cupidity and curiosity of the village youngsters.
Early on the morning of the feast, all the booths were opened, displaying their glories of glass and porcelain; and the peasants on their way to Mass were already casting open complacent glances on the unimposing stalls which were the same they saw year after year.
The square was crowded from early in the afternoon. Farmers with their wives and children came in from all the nearby villages, jolting along in two wheeled carts that rattled like old iron and rocked like seesaws. They unharnessed at friends’ houses; and the farmyards were filled with strange covered wagons, grey, lofty, narrow curving wagons, like long-legged deep-sea beasts.
And each family, infants in front, grownups behind, walked quickly to the assemblée, with smiling faces and hands hanging open, great red bony hands that were accustomed to toil and seemed embarrassed to have nothing to do.
A sleight-of-hand man blew his trumpet; the harmonium belonging to the wooden horses wafted its jerky wailing notes into the air, the wheel on the gaming-table ground round with a noise like tearing cotton; rifle shots rang out in rapid succession. The slow-moving crowd ambled past the booths like a mass of slowly oozing paste, pushed about like a herd of beasts, and moving clumsily round like lumbering animals accidentally let loose.
The girls, arms locked together in rows of five or six, twittered and sang; the lads followed them round, bandying jests, caps over one ear and blouses stiff with starch and puffed out like blue balloons.
The whole countryside was there, masters, labourers and servants.
Old Amable himself, clad in an ancient and greenish frock-coat, had come to see the assemblée, for he had never missed a single one.
He watched the gambling, halted in front of the shooting-galleries to criticise the marksmanship, and took particular interest in a very simple game that consisted in throwing a big wooden ball into the open mouth of a fat man painted on a plank.
Suddenly someone tapped him on the shoulder. It was old Malivoire shouting: “Eh, dad, come and have one with me.”
And they sat down at a table in a drinking-booth set up in the open air. They drank one brandy, then two brandies, then three brandies; and old Amable began to wander through the assemblée again. His thoughts were becoming a little confused, he smiled without knowing why he did, he stood smiling in front of the gaming-table, and the wooden horses, and most of all in front of the coconut shy. He spent a long time at that, overcome with joy when a player knocked over the policeman or the priest, two authorities that he instinctively mistrusted. Then he went back and sat down in the drinking-booth, and took a glass of cider to refresh himself. It was late and night was falling. A neighbour said warningly: “You’ll get home too late for your supper stew, dad.”
Then he set out for the farm. A pleasant dusk, the warm dusk of spring evenings, stole slowly over the earth.
When he reached his door he thought he saw through the lighted window two people in the house. He halted, very surprised, then he went in and saw Victor Lecoq sitting at the table before a plateful of potatoes, eating supper in the very place where his son had always sat.
He turned abruptly round as if he meant to go out again. The night was quite dark now. Céleste stood up and shouted at him:
“Come here quick, dad, we’ve got a good stew to celebrate the assemblée.”
At that he obeyed her mechanically and sat down, looking slowly round at the man, the woman and the child. Then he began to eat placidly, as he did every day.
Victor Lecoq seemed to be quite at home, he kept talking to Céleste, and took the child on his knees and fondled it. And Céleste gave him another helping of food, filled his glass, seemed quite happy to be talking to him. Old Amable regarded both of them with a fixed stare, unable to hear anything they said. When he had finished his supper (and he had hardly eaten anything, so upset did he feel), he got to his feet, and instead of climbing to his attic as he did every night, he opened the door and went out into the fields.
When he had gone, Céleste, a little uneasy, asked:
“Now what’s to be done?”
Victor answered indifferently:
“Don’t worry. He’ll come back when he’s tired.”
Then she tidied the room, washed the plates and dried the table while the man calmly undressed. Then he slipped into the dark cave-like bedroom where she had slept with Césaire.
The yard door opened. Old Amable reappeared. As soon as he got inside, he looked all round the room, like an old dog with his nose on the scent. He was looking for Victor Lecoq. As he did not see him, he took the candle from the table and brought it near the dark nook where his son had died. In its dark recesses he saw the man stretched out under the clothes and already asleep. At that the deaf man turned softly away, put the candle down,
