He was holding a letter in his hand, he raised his eyes looked at me then the letter again then once more at me, behind him I could see the red mahogany ochre blurs of the horses being led to the watering trough, the mud was so deep you sank into it up to your ankles but I remember that during the night it had frozen suddenly and Wack came into the bedroom with the coffee saying The dogs ate up the mud, I had never heard the expression, I could almost see the dogs, some kind of infernal, legendary creatures their mouths pink-rimmed their wolf fangs cold and white chewing up the black mud in the night’s gloom, perhaps a recollection, the devouring dogs cleaning, clearing away: now the mud was grey and we twisted our ankles running, late as usual for morning call, almost tripping in the deep tracks left by the hoofs and frozen hard as stone, and a moment later he said Your mother’s written me. So she had done it in spite of the fact that I told her not to, I could tell I was blushing, he stopped and must have tried to smile but probably that was impossible, not being friendly (he certainly wanted to be friendly) but eliminating that remoteness: the effort merely stretched the hard little pepper-and-salt moustache somewhat, he had that tanned lustreless skin of people who live outdoors most of the time, something of the Arab in him, probably the traces of one Charles Martel had forgotten to kill, maybe he claimed descent not only from His Cousin the Virgin, like his neighbours the petty nobility of the Tarn, but even from Muhammad into the bargain, he said I think we’re cousins more or less, but in his mind I suppose that as far as I was concerned the word probably meant something more like mosquito insect midge, and I could feel myself blushing with fury again the way I had when I first saw that letter in his hand, recognized the stationery. I didn’t answer, he must have seen how furious I was, I wasn’t looking at him but at the letter, I wished I could snatch it away and tear it up, he gestured with the hand that was holding the letter folded, the corners fluttered like wings in the cold air, his dark eyes showing neither hostility nor contempt, cordial even but distant too: perhaps he was only as annoyed as I was, resenting my irritation while we went on with our little ceremony standing there in the frozen mud, both of us making that concession to custom to convention out of regard for a woman who unfortunately for me was my mother, and finally he must have understood for his little moustache moved again while he was saying Don’t hold it against her It’s only natural for a mother She was right Personally I’m delighted to have the chance If you ever need, and I Oh thank you Captain, and he If something goes wrong don’t hesitate to come and see, and I Yes Captain, he waved the letter again, it must have been around minus seven or minus ten degrees that early in the morning but he didn’t even seem to notice it. After they had drunk the horses trotted off again in pairs, the men running between swearing and hanging on to the bridles, you could hear the noise the hoofs made on the frozen mud, he repeating If something goes wrong I’ll be happy to do, then folding the letter putting it in his pocket looking at me again with an expression that in his mind must have been a smile and that merely pulled the pepper-and-salt moustache to one side again after which he turned on his heel and walked off. From then on I simply made sure I did even less than I was doing already, I had reduced things to essentials, unhooking the stirrups when I dismounted, unbuckling the harness after I had changed the water once or twice and then taking off the whole bridle, dipping it in the trough while the horse was still drinking, and then the horse went back to the stable by itself while I walked beside it ready to grab an ear, and after that all I had to do was wipe off the steel and now and then use sandpaper when it was really too rusty, but it didn’t matter much anyway since my reputation on that point had been established long since and no one bothered me about it any more and besides I suppose that as far as he was concerned he couldn’t have cared less and to pretend not to see me when he inspected the platoon was a favour he did my mother without too much bother, unless the polishing was also one of those futile and irreplaceable things for him, one of those reflexes and traditions so to speak ancestrally maintained at Saumur and then later reinforced, although according to what people said she (in other words the woman in other words the child he had married or rather who had married him) did everything she could in their four years of marriage to make him forget or in any case forswear most of these traditional traditions, whether he liked them or not, but even supposing he had given most of them up (and probably not so much because he loved her but because he had to or better still because he had to because he loved her) there are some things that the worst renunciations the worst capitulations can’t make you forget even if you want to and usually such things are the silliest or the most senseless ones the things you can’t reason about or have any control over, for instance his reaction of drawing his sabre when that burst of gunfire came from behind the hedge: there was a second when I could see him that way his arm raised brandishing that useless ridiculous weapon in the hereditary gesture of an equestrian statue which had probably been handed down to him by generations of swordsmen, a dim figure against the light so that it looked as if he and his horse had been cast together out of one and the same material, a grey metal, the sun glinting for a second on the naked blade then everything—man horse and sabre—collapsing together sideways like a lead soldier beginning to melt from the feet up and leaning slowly to one side then faster and faster, vanishing sabre still held outstretched behind the carcass of that burnt truck abandoned there, indecent as an animal, a pregnant bitch dragging her belly on the ground, the punctured tyres slowly rotting, giving off that smell of scorched rubber the sickening stink of war hanging in the brilliant spring afternoon, floating or rather stagnating, viscous and transparent but somehow visible like putrid water in which the red-brick houses the orchards the hedges had been standing: for an instant the sun’s dazzling reflection caught or rather condensed all the light and the glory on that virginal steel . . . Only, it was a long time since she had been a virgin, but I suppose that wasn’t what he asked, desired of her the day he had made up his mind to marry her, undoubtedly knowing perfectly well from that moment on what lay in store for him, having accepted in advance having assumed having so to speak consumed in advance that passion, with this difference that the site the centre the altar wasn’t a naked hill but that smooth and tender and hairy and secret crease in the flesh . . . Yeah: crucified, agonizing on the altar the mouth the cave of . . . But after all wasn’t there a whore at the other crucifixion too, presuming that whores are indispensable in such things, women in tears wringing their hands and penitent whores, supposing that he had ever asked her to repent or at least expected hoped that she would that she would become something else than what she had the reputation of being and so expected of this marriage something else than should logically follow from it, even foreseeing or at least having perhaps imagined as far as that final consequence or rather conclusion, that suicide which the war gave him the opportunity of perpetrating so elegantly that is not melodramatic spectacular and nasty like the housemaids who throw themselves under the Métro or the bankers who dirty their whole office but disguised as an accident if you can still consider being killed in the war an accident, somehow taking advantage with discretion and a sense of the opportune of the occasion provided in order to finish off what should never have begun four years before . . .