Jacques was unable to get any more out of him.
In any case, Ernest would often take the child with him. His energy and vitality, finding no outlet in speech or in the complex relations of social life, would explode in his physical life and its sensations. Even on awakening, when someone shook him out of the hermetic sleep of the deaf, he would rear up wild-eyed, bellowing “huhn huhn!” like a prehistoric beast that wakens each day to a strange and hostile world.
But once he was awake, his body and its functioning made him secure on his feet. Despite the hard labor of his job as a cooper, he liked to go swimming and hunting. When Jacques was still a child,a his uncle would take him to Sablettes beach, make him get up on his back, and immediately set out to sea with a rudimentary but powerful stroke, making inarticulate sounds that translated first his surprise at the coldness of the water, then his pleasure at being there or his anger at an errant wave. “You not scared,” he would say from time to time to Jacques.
Yes, he was afraid but did not say so; he was spellbound by the solitude where they were, between the sky and the sea, one as vast as the other; when he glanced back, the beach seemed like an invisible line, and an acid fear would grip his stomach and, with the beginnings of panic, he pictured the immense dark depths below where he would sink like a stone if ever his uncle should let him loose. Then the child would clutch the swimmer’s neck a little tighter. “You scared,” his uncle said right away.
“No, but go back.”
Docile, the uncle turned, took a few breaths, and set off again as confidently as if he were on terra firma. On the beach, and hardly out of breath, he rubbed Jacques vigorously, with great gusts of laughter, turned aside to urinate with a loud splash, still laughing, then would congratulate himself on the fine functioning of his bladder, slapping his belly with the “Good, good” that accompanied all his enjoyable sensations, among which he made no distinction, whether they were of excretion or of nutrition, stressing in each case and with the same innocence the pleasure they gave him, and always wanting his family to share his pleasure, which at the dining-room table would provoke a protest from the grandmother, who accepted that these things were discussed, and even spoke of them herself, but, as she would say, “Not while we’re eating,” though she put up with his watermelon act; the fruit had a great reputation as a diuretic; Ernest adored it and he would begin his consumption of it by laughing, by mischievous winks at the grandmother, by an assortment of sounds of inhaling, regurgitating, and slurping, and after the first few mouthfuls that he would bite right down to the skin, he would perform a whole pantomime in which with his hand he would repeatedly demonstrate the journey the handsome rose and white fruit was supposed to make from his mouth to his penis, while he made faces and rolled his eyes to illustrate how spectacularly he was enjoying himself, all this accompanied by: “Good, good. Washes you out. Good, good”—until it was so irresistible that everyone would burst out laughing.
This Adam-like innocence caused him to attach exaggerated importance to a series of fleeting ailments he would complain of, frowning, his gaze turned inward as if he were scrutinizing the mysterious night of his organs. He claimed to be suffering from a “stitch,” its location varying widely, or a “lump” that wandered all over the place. Later, when Jacques was attending the lycée, his uncle would question him, in the belief that there was one science that applied equally to everyone, showing him the small of his back: “Right there, it pulls,” he would say.
“That’s bad?” No, it was nothing. And Ernest would go out relieved, descending the stairs with his small hurried steps to join his comrades in the neighborhood cafés, with their wood furnishings and zinc bar, smelling of anisette and sawdust, where Jacques sometimes had to go fetch him at dinnertime. It was not the least of the child’s surprises to find this deaf-mute at the bar surrounded by his comrades and talking his head off while they all laughed, laughter in which there was no mockery, for his friends adored Ernest for his good nature and his generosity.b c d e Jacques would be well aware of that when his uncle took him hunting with his comrades, all of whom were coopers or workers at the port or on the railroad. They got up at dawn. Jacques was responsible for awakening his uncle, whom no alarm could rouse from his sleep.
Jacques himself responded to the ringing, his brother turned over in bed grumbling, and his mother, in the other bed, stirred softly without awakening. He got up groping his way, struck a match, and lit the small kerosene lamp on the night table that stood between the two beds. (Ah! the furnishings in that room: two iron beds—one single, where the mother slept, the other double, where the two children slept—a night table between the two beds, and, across from the night table, a wardrobe with a mirror. At the foot of the mother’s bed was a window that faced the yard. Below that window was a cane trunk covered with a crocheted blanket. While he was still small, Jacques had to kneel on the trunk to close the shutters of the window.
And no chair.) Then he would go to the dining room, shake his uncle, who bellowed, looked up in terror at the lamp over his eyes, and finally came to his senses. They dressed. And Jacques heated leftover coffee on the little alcohol burner while his uncle packed sacks with provisions: a cheese, sobrasada sausages, tomatoes with salt and pepper, and a half loaf of bread cut in two where a big omelet made by the grandmother had been inserted. Then the uncle for the last time checked the double-barreled shotgun and the cartridges, over which a great ceremony had taken place the night before.
After dinner they had cleared the table and carefully cleaned its oilcloth cover. The uncle had seated himself at one side of the table and gravely set before him, by the light of the big kerosene lamp lifted down from its hanging position, the pieces of the disassembled gun that he had painstakingly greased. Sitting at the other side, Jacques waited his turn. So did the dog Brillant. For there was a dog, a mongrel setter, boundlessly good-natured, who couldn’t hurt a fly, the proof of that being that if he happened to catch one on the wing, he would spit it out with a disgusted look accompanied by a great display of outstretched tongue and smacking of his chops.
Ernest and his dog were inseparable, and there was a perfect understanding between them. You could not help thinking of them as a couple (and only one who neither knew nor loved dogs would see that as ridiculous). And the dog owed the man obedience and love, while the man agreed to have only this single responsibility. They lived together and never left each other, sleeping together (the man on the dining room couch, the dog on a skimpy bedside rug that was threadbare), went to work together (the dog would lie on a bed of wood shavings, made just for him, under a workbench in the shop), went out to cafés together, the dog waiting patiently between his master’s legs until his performance had come to an end.
They spoke in onomatopoeia and relished each other’s smells. One must never tell Ernest that his seldom-washed dog gave off a strong odor, especially after it had rained. “Him,” he would say, “no smell,” and he would lovingly sniff the inside of the dog’s big quivering ears. Hunting was a spree for both of them, their night on the town. Ernest had only to bring out the knapsack for the dog to race madly around the little dining room, setting the chairs to dancing by bumping them with his rear, and thumping his tail against the sideboard. Ernest would laugh. “He understands, he understands,” and he would calm the animal, who would then place his muzzle on the table and watch their minute preparations, yawning discreetly from time to time but never leaving the delightful spectacle until it was over.f g
When the shotgun was once more assembled, his uncle handed it to him. Jacques received it reverently, and he shined its barrels with an old linen rag. Meanwhile the uncle was preparing his cartridges. He had before him some brightly colored cardboard tubes with copper bases in a sack from which he also removed gourd-shaped metal flasks containing the powder and shot and brown felt wadding. He carefully filled the tubes with powder and wadding. The tubes would be fitted into a small machine he also took from the sack.
A little crank worked a cap that crimped the tops of the tubes down to the level of the wadding. When the cartridges were ready, Ernest handed them one by one to Jacques, who devoutly placed them in the cartridge belt he had in front of him. In the morning one knew they were leaving when Ernest put the heavy cartridge belt around his belly, which had already been augmented by two layers of sweaters. Jacques buckled the belt behind his back.
