She parks her car under the linden tree, near the tractor. The farmworkers have already arrived, and are sitting here and there on the edge of the farmhouse. They’re smoking, having a chat before work. There’s about ten of them, in tank tops, mainly regulars, young ones and less young ones. A few women, all Arabs, including Kadija. Two students, no more. The old man has always favoured professionals. The old man isn’t a natural-born teacher; and besides, he hates amateur kids: they can’t understand how a team works, they adapt but don’t grasp its complex harmonies and what’s at stake in power relations. Like they give him dirty looks when he hauls a guy of sixty over the coals or checks the Gypsies’ pockets whenever a tool is missing. Let them go back to their lecture halls and scrape scholarships to pay for their studio apartments. No way is his harvest going to be an exotic laboratory for shitty little intellectuals. He’d sooner have Arabs and Gypsies. There’s a better understanding with them, even through hatred.

When Séverine and Céline walk past the workers, there’s an outburst of greetings. The locals are glad to see Séverine, since they’ve known her for ever. But that’s no reason for her to linger, although of course she responds, and there’s a smacking of kisses. While Céline exchanges a few words with Saïd, Séverine gives a special smile to Pascal, who she’s fond of, with who she went out in the fifth year, but with her daughter trailing behind her, her mother in the kitchen and work waiting, she doesn’t feel like dragging her heels. Besides, she has no use for this little whirlwind of moments experienced a thousand times, departures and returns, family visits. Most of the time she just puts up with them, and sometimes tries – in vain – to ignore them.

They go into the house.

Céline kisses her grandmother. Séverine kisses her mother. All that barely touching with their lips. There’s such a thing as reserve, after all.

Séverine’s mother fills a flask of coffee and hands it to Céline, who takes it and turns back to serve coffee to the workers. Without looking at her daughter, the old woman washes her hands in the brown sandstone sink. She takes a long time to dry them. Séverine wonders why she has come in, why this stupid weakness, then remembers; she goes to get two Algerian-style mugs and puts them down on the oilcloth. She feels the slight softness under the canvas, the rubber tablecloth supposed to cushion blows and protect the varnished wood of a table that’s too chunky. Séverine dreams of fine lines and glass tables, aware that even in her own home she hasn’t been able to take on new tastes. She presses into the material with her fingertips, resisting the urge to dig her nails into it.

“Stop that,” her mother hisses, as she pours the coffee and sits down opposite her daughter.

Laughter, livelier since Céline has joined the team, can be heard outside, along with Céline’s voice.