It was a yard cluttered with rubbish, old hoops, slag, and extinguished fires. At one side had been erected a sort of roof of bricks supported at regular intervals by pillars made of rubble. The five or six artisans worked under that roof. Each one was supposed to have his own area: a workbench against the wall and in front of it a space where the barrels and wine casks could be assembled, and, separating it from the next area, a sort of bench with a rather large slot cut in it into which the barrelhead was slid and then shaped by hand with a tool that resembled a chopping knife,† but with the sharp side facing the man who held it by its two handles.
Actually this layout was not evident at first glance. Certainly that was how it had been originally designed, but little by little the benches were moved around, hoops piled up between the workbenches, cases of rivets lay here and there, and it took lengthy observation or, which amounted to the same thing, a long stay to see that everything each artisan did took place in his separate area.
Before he reached the shop carrying his uncle’s snack, Jacques could recognize the sound of hammering on the hoop-drivers that drove the metal hoops down around the barrel after the staves had been put in place, and the worker pounded one end of the driver while deftly moving its other end all around the hoop—or else Jacques would guess from a louder, less frequent sound that someone was riveting a hoop fastened in the shop’s vise. When he arrived in the midst of the hammering racket, he was greeted joyfully and the dance of the hammers would resume.
Ernest, dressed in old patched blue pants, espadrilles covered with sawdust, a sleeveless gray flannel shirt, and a faded old tarboosh that protected his handsome hair from dust and shavings, would embrace him and suggest that he help out. Sometimes Jacques would hold the hoop in place on the anvil where it was wedged while his uncle would drive the rivets in with mighty blows. The hoop vibrated in Jacques’s hands, and with each blow of the hammer would dig into his palms—or else while Ernest seated himself astride one end of the bench, Jacques sat the same way at the other end, holding the bottom of the barrel while Ernest shaped it.
But what he liked best was bringing the staves out to the middle of the yard for Ernest to assemble roughly, keeping them in place with a hoop. In this barrel, open at both ends, Ernest would place a pile of shavings that it was Jacques’s responsibility to set on fire. The fire caused the iron to expand more than the wood, and Ernest would take advantage of that to drive the hoop down with great blows of his hammer and driver, while the smoke brought tears to their eyes. When the hoop had been driven in place, Jacques would bring big wooden buckets he had filled with water at the pump at the end of the yard, then move aside while Ernest threw the water hard against the barrel, thus chilling the hoop, which shrank so it bit deeper into the wood, softened by the water, all amidst a great blowing of steam.p
At the break they left things as they were to have their snack, and the workers would gather, in winter around a fire of wood and shavings, in summer in the shade of the roof. There was Abder, the Arab laborer who wore Arab pantaloons, the seat hanging in folds and the legs ending in mid-calf, a tarboosh, and an old jacket over a tattered sweater, and who in an odd accent called Jacques “my colleague” because when he helped his uncle he was doing the same work as the Arab.
The boss, M. [],3 was actually an old barrelmaker who with his helpers filled orders for a bigger, nameless cooperage. An Italian worker who was always sad and always had a cold. And especially the joyful Daniel, who always took Jacques aside to joke and play with him.
Jacques would make his escape, wander around the shop—his black apron covered with sawdust, bare feet in worn-out sandals if it was hot, covered with earth and shavings—savoring the smell of sawdust, the fresher smell of the shavings, then come back to the fire to smack his lips over its delicious smoke, or else cautiously to try out the tool used to edge the barrel bottoms on a piece of wood he wedged in the vise, and he would delight in his manual skill, for which the workers would praise him.
It was during one of these breaks that he foolishly stood up on the bench with wet soles. Suddenly he slid forward while the bench tipped over backwards, and he fell with all his weight on the bench, his right hand squeezed under it. Immediately he felt a dull pain in his hand, but he stood up laughing for the workers who had come running over.
But even before he had stopped laughing Ernest rushed to him, picked him up in his arms, and dashed out of the shop, running as fast he could and stammering: “To doctor, to doctor.” Then Jacques saw the middle finger of his right hand had been completely squashed at the end into a shapeless dirty pulp that was dripping blood. His heart skipped a beat and he fainted. Five minutes later they were at the Arab doctor’s who lived across the street from their home. “It’s nothing, Doctor, nothing, eh?” said Ernest, white as a sheet.
“Go wait next door,” the doctor said. “He’s going to be brave.” He had to be; his strangely patched-up finger bore witness to that even today. But once the staples were inserted and it was bandaged, the doctor gave him a sweet drink and awarded him a badge for courage. Even so, Ernest wanted to carry him across the street and, in the stairs of their building, he embraced the child, sobbing and hugging him close till it hurt.
“Maman,” Jacques said, “someone’s knocking at the door.”
“It’s Ernest,” his mother said. “Go open it for him. I lock it now because of the bandits.”
When he discovered Jacques on the doorstep, Ernest gave an exclamation of surprise, something that sounded like the English “how,” and he straightened up and embraced him. Despite hair that was now entirely white, his face was surprisingly youthful, his features still regular and harmonious. But he was even more bowlegged, his shoulders completely rounded, and he walked swinging wide his arms and legs.
“How are you?” Jacques said.
Not so good, he had stitches, rheumatisms, it was going badly; and Jacques? Yes, all was well, he was in good shape, she (and he pointed to Catherine) was glad to see him. Since the grandmother had died and the children had left home, brother and sister had been living together and could not do without each other. He needed someone to look after him, and from that standpoint she was his wife, preparing meals, doing his laundry, caring for him when necessary. What she needed was not money, for her sons paid for her needs, but a man’s companionship, and Ernest had been watching over her in his fashion for the years they had lived together; yes, like man and wife, not in the flesh but in the blood, helping each other to survive when their handicaps made life so difficult, carrying on a mute dialogue lit up from time to time by scraps of sentences, but more connected and better informed about each other than many normal couples.
“Yes, yes,” said Ernest. “Jacques, Jacques, always she’s saying.”
“Well, here I am,” said Jacques. And here he was indeed, he was with the two of them as he used to be; he was never able to talk to them and he had never stopped loving them, them above all, and he cherished them all the more for his ability to love them when he had failed to love so many who deserved it.
“And Daniel?”
“He’s all right, he’s old like me. Pierrot his brother in prison.”
“What for?”
“He says the union. Me, I think he’s with the Arabs.” And suddenly worried: “Say, the bandits, that’s all right?”
“No,” said Jacques, “the other Arabs yes, the bandits no.”
“Right, I said to your mother the bosses too tough. It’s crazy but bandits too much.”
“That’s it,” said Jacques. “But we have to do something for Pierrot.”
“Good, I’ll tell Daniel.”
“And Donat?” (That was the man at the gasworks who boxed.)
“He’s dead. Cancer. We’re all old.”
Yes, Donat was dead. And Aunt Marguerite, his mother’s sister, was dead; that was where his grandmother would drag him on Sunday afternoons, and he was horribly bored, except when Uncle Michel, a teamster—who was also bored by these conversations in the dark dining room, over bowls of black coffee on the oilcloth table covering—would take him to his nearby stable, and there, in the shadowy light, while the afternoon sun was still warming the streets outside, first Jacques would smell the good smell of horsehair, of straw and manure, hear the harness chains rattle against the wooden manger, the horses turning their long-lashed eyes to him, and Uncle Michel, tall and spare with a long moustache, who himself
