Читать книгу Tidings - William Wharton, Уильям Уортон - Страница 6

Out on the quai, I’ve just about given up, I’m beginning to think of phoning Paris. My mind’s spinning wildly through all the bleak alternatives; then I see them, the last ones off the train.

I should have known. It’s not Loretta’s way to fight through a crowd just to be first or tenth or thirtieth, or three hundredth. She’ll sit unruffled till everyone’s struggled, fought, scrambled themselves away with their luggage; then, unhurriedly, graciously, as if it’s her private car, as if there were no such thing as time, she’ll dismount, nice smile for the conductor on the way out. Ben’s the same, I’m not. I’m a pusher-shover. The two of them drive me nuts; I hate to imagine what they think of me.

So there they are, lightly luggaged, drifting dreamily along behind the crush. They find me and I think we’re all glad to see each other. Christmas is actually beginning. I sneak some looks at Lor to see how she’s holding up, but she has her ‘isn’t the world lovely’ smile pasted on her face so I can’t tell anything. Mike has a smile like that, too; but his is amateurish and childlike compared to Lor’s.

First we drive out to a large market, two kilometers from town, called Carrefour, French for intersection. It’s almost like an American supermarket, huge parking lots, grocery carts, Christmas music playing. We’ll stock in the bulk of our perishable groceries here and perhaps buy some gifts for our neighbors.

The big purchase will be the turkey. It needs to be large enough for six with enough left over for turkey soup and a hot turkey sandwich meal.

I’ve already bought all the nonperishables in Paris and carried them down in the car, extra goodies such as Nova Scotia smoked salmon, chocolate bars, several cookies: Russian cigarette, chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin. Also a bottle of Cointreau, some Poire William, Cognac and Champagne. These are the superlatives. There are also eight hundred francs’ worth of the necessities, apples, flour, rice, cheeses, sugar, butter, canned goods, onions, matches.

Lor, Ben and I push our cart through the aisles, agreeing, disagreeing, picking, weighing, gradually filling up. We buy more tangerines, oranges; walnuts for the Christmas cookies. A sack of peanuts in the shell, endive, lettuce, tomatoes; celery, stalk and root, for the turkey stuffing. That turkey isn’t the only one who’s going to be stuffed.

I also buy a ten-liter can of spar varnish and a new paint brush. This costs over three hundred francs right there. My mind glistens just thinking about that varnish.

I sneak in a Cuisinart food processor for Loretta. We also fulfill Ben’s greatest Christmas wish: a Russian-built, clip-loaded 22-caliber rifle with a seven-power telescopic sight. Rifles are a minor mania with this peaceful, shy, almost fifteen-year-old last child of ours. He, through his Guns & Ammo magazine, is our only contact with a whole world to which neither of us relates. Lor is concerned about the appropriateness of a rifle on a festival of peace. But it’s also a festival of love. A good part of love, to me, is respecting the uniqueness of another, especially when his preferences are different from yours. God, I’m a great one to talk about love!

Ben is as much concerned with trajectory, accuracy, optics as anything. A rifle to him is a magnificent tool for projecting an object at high speed over a considerable distance with accuracy. It isn’t far removed from his passion for model airplanes and gliders. He has a horror and fear of actual hunting, or flying in a real plane. Hang glider, or hunter, or soldier he’ll most likely never be.

We also buy log cabin logs, two dolls, baby doll carriers, a spinning top with a tiny train inside which goes around and whistles when the top spins, plus a sack of grain to feed the ducks on the pond. For Madame Le Moine we buy a potpourri of plants all in one pot. For her son, Philippe, thirty-seven years old and unmarried, a set of small glasses, each with a different fruit sealed in eau de vie, also one of those dogs which wags its head when you put it on the back shelf of an automobile.

On the way out of the market we see some Christmas trees. These trees are small, none taller than six feet, but they’re cheap, only eighteen francs. They’re unloading the truck with a new supply. We choose the bushiest, tallest tree. Ben’s in a state of shock as I tie it to the roof of our car.

‘Gosh, Dad, that’s not a Christmas tree, it’s a branch.’

I assure him I’ve found a stand of most beautiful trees in the woods near Mike’s cabin. Philippe told me this part of the forest is owned by Monsieur Boudine and I can probably make a deal with him to cut down one of the trees for us. All year we let him pasture his donkey. Pom Pom, in our field when we aren’t there, so we should come to some arrangement. Paying to have someone cut down a tree for us in plain daylight is a long way from stealing one in the secret of night but a sight better than what we’re hauling on our car.

We drive into central Nevers, it’s almost two o’clock and the traffic is a muddle. By sheer luck we see a woman with two kids coming out of a parking place on a one-way street behind the post office. We’re on the wrong end of the street. I gallantly let the woman out, then wildly start backing up the narrow passage between close-parked cars. I am notoriously one of the world’s worst backer-uppers. I’ve always considered it a special skill like juggling or tightrope walking and I don’t have it. Some people can safely back up at full speed using only the rear-view mirror. I need to twist all the way around and look directly back to have even half a chance.

Loretta’s up on her knees, rubbing the rear-view window clean, trying to give directions in a calm but clear tone of voice so she won’t spook me. Ben is scrunched down in the seat beside me, avoiding flying glass. I’m going fast as I can, twisting my bad back, rushing to get to that place before a car entering the correct direction gets there. We just beat out a Peugeot 505; the driver smiles grimly and waits while I make a messy four-swing park, then he zooms down the street past us. We sit a moment while I recoup my calm.

Shopping in Nevers is always fun. The old streets are decorated, but nothing too gaudy. There are no loudspeakers playing Christmas carols. The main streets are blocked so there are no cars. The stores are old-fashioned, mostly with creaky, shined hardwood floors. The elevators are wire cages which jiggle, then bounce when they stop. They only take people up; you walk down.

We go our separate ways, agreeing to meet by the car at three. That way we can hope to get home before dark. At this latitude, this time of year, with clouded skies, five is almost night. I find a good, practically prebuilt but put-it-together-yourself, rubber-band model of a Sopwith Camel World War I airplane. I buy a waffle iron for the family, and an electronic game of Battleship for Ben. We’ll leave the waffle iron at the mill where there’s always time for leisurely breakfasts. I find an easy-to-operate Polaroid camera for Lor and buy two packs of film. I buy some holders and candles for the Christmas tree.

I’ve arranged with a painter friend in Paris to paint portraits of the girls. He’s good, they’re the right age to be painted and he could use the money; a triple-threat Christmas present.

Ever since the girls reached thirteen, I’ve had no chance at all of buying them a present they like. Buying any clothing is catastrophic, witness the orange raincoat I bought Maggie for her fifteenth birthday, the knee-length boots for Nicole on her fourteenth Christmas. Apparently I’m the same problem for them. I’d hate to be buying anything for me, I can’t think of one thing I want; at least anything someone could buy. Nobody can buy time, or love, or understanding. They’re too perishable, difficult to transport.

We congregate at the car. Even Ben’s bought a few things so we’re almost as packed as I was coming down from Paris. Loretta climbs in the back seat and we pile packages on her; Ben with his long legs can’t fit back there and Lor’s afraid of the suicide seat in a car.

When we turn off the main Nevers road into the back country it’s past four o’clock, darkness is coming on and although the fields and trees around us are still covered with snow, the narrow roads are relatively clear. I switch up to my high beams, not because it’s that dark yet, but to compensate for my lack of horn going around curves. The local driver in this area still thinks he’s the only automobile within fifty kilometers and hogs the crown of the road. Death by deux chevaux is far more common than impalement by wild boar around here.

We happily come down the icy Vauchot hill and pull up in front of our place. The mill is unique in that it’s built into the dam forming the pond; this road on which we’re arriving is about fifteen feet below dam level. The grange-cum-garage and the cellar open onto the road. The portion of the mill we’ve converted for living, where I’ve spent the past three days hustling, trying to get it into living order, opens onto the top of the dam. Our door up there is only ten feet from the pond itself, practically level with it.

We start unloading. Ben helps me untie our mini-Christmas tree. I delay putting our car in the grange so I can be inside the mill when they first see all my refurbishments, drapes, rehung cabinets, general cleanup, holly, pine boughs, decorations.

Loretta and Ben walk around to the damside door with some of the provisions. I dash through the cellar, up those steps through our hingeless trap door, into the main room. I turn on the lights, put a match to my preset fire and turn up the new butane heater before they arrive. I open the damside door from the inside and step back without comment.

Ben moves to his guns which I’ve hung beside the fireplace.

Lor is wonderfully appreciative; makes it all worthwhile, remarks on the drapes, the clean windows, ‘even in the dark they glisten’. She exclaims over the decorations, comments on the general order and cleanliness. I was lucky enough to marry a woman who has good nesting feelings. But I still have the uneasy feeling she’s only going through the motions, play-acting, pretending, trying to make me happy. I hope I can hold onto her somehow. I hate to think of life without her.

The fire took on perfectly with one match and isn’t smoking. Lor even notices I cleared out those damned ashes.

Ben and I haul the rest of our things from the car while Loretta puts them away. I make my mad, sliding run through the snow and slushy mud, maneuvering our car into the garage without hitting any motorcycles or motorcycle gas tanks, carburetors, extra wheels or rusting tools. I manage to match and close the interlocking device securing the big doors, wiggle through the small door and miss the greater part of the mud. On my way through the cellar, I gather an armful of dry tinder to start our fire next morning.

It’s a strong, good feeling having the nucleus of our family together again. Stone walls, heavy wooden beams, even a glowing fire, a shimmering pond and a splashing waterfall, can never replace or compensate for feelings of love and loving. I know my sleep tonight will be different than it’s been these past three nights. When I sleep alone, I sleep deeply, dreamlessly; the night seems to just disappear. Sleeping with Lor, I dream, I wake for brief periods. I know I’m sleeping and I don’t feel alone.

After dinner, we light the red candles in a silver candle holder I found and shined. They look beautiful on top of our new red remnant tablecloth. Lor and I sing Christmas carols; Ben listens. I’ve jammed the small Nevers tree into the center hole to one of the reserve millstones. This stone is flat on the floor just to the left of the door as you come in from the dam. Once there were two stones in that place, one on top of the other; but I moved the upper stone as a base for our fireplace.

It took three automobile jacks, two levels, several inclined planes and half a heart attack moving that stone against the wall, then constructing our fireplace on it. The fireplace is heavy, more or less squared-off stone, rounded, projecting into the room, sort of a Dutch oven, with a throat resembling the entrance to a cave.

The smell of the fire, our mini-tree, the pine boughs, burning candles fills everything. The second night of Christmas is upon us. And I still don’t know what to do. I’ve got to tell Lor, it isn’t fair to just let it go on like this.

Later, when we’re tucked in bed listening to the roar of the waterfall from the pond, the crackling of our fire, the deep breathing of Ben sleeping on a cot in front of the fire, Lor does her usual just-before-going-to-sleep ‘sigh’ and says ‘I guess we’ll hear from the girls tomorrow; they should be in Paris today.’

I think to myself that in less than an hour Ben will be fifteen. It won’t be long before we’ll be having all our Christmases alone, if we’re lucky enough to stay together. Right then, for the first time, I realize I’ve lived with Lor almost twice as long as I’ve lived with anybody else in my life. Since my parents are dead, and I’m an only child, I’ve known her longer than anybody else. She’s the closest thing to a ‘reality’ I know.

The day after Christmas will be our thirtieth anniversary.

Next morning, while we’re having breakfast, Madame Le Moine peers into the damside door and knocks. She’s come all the way around up onto the dam and down our narrow, slippery, stone steps. I’d made arrangements for her to get the number if anyone phoned and tie a dish towel on her door handle. I can see her door easily from our west window and I’ve been checking regularly for it the past few days.

Madame Le Moine recently celebrated her eightieth birthday. Five months ago, she had a stroke which left her partially paralyzed and with failing memory. She’s almost completely recovered now, but definitely shouldn’t be running around delivering phone messages in this mud and snow.

We’re bullheaded about not having a phone. We dislike the invasion of privacy a phone, a TV or a radio allows. We were the first to have a toilet but are now the only ones without a TV, a phone or a radio. We’ve given Madame Le Moine’s phone number exclusively to our kids and a few friends. I know it has to be one of ten people when Madame Le Moine stutters out – ‘Tell-ey-phon.’

I invite her in. Loretta skims along the dam to Madame Le Moine’s house. It almost has to be Nicole just as Nicole knows it’s Lor who will answer. I could go into my aversion to answering phones here, but I won’t. I think it has to do with voices from anywhere out of nowhere.

I seat Madame Le Moine in the rocker before the fireplace beside our miniature tree. I give her a cup of tea with two lumps of sugar, whip out my cuff and take her blood pressure. Madame Le Moine is rocking and smiling.

Lor introduced tea into this village. Before we arrived, it was coffee, strong, or, un canon, a glass of wine, also strong, or naöle, super-strong one-hundred-proof alcohol made from fallen fruit; a regional version of marc de Bourgogne.

When the villagers did get hooked on tea, only the women, I should say: that is, Madame Calvet, Madame Le Moine and Madame Rousseau; Lor was shocked to find they were pouring her Christmas gifts of Twining’s Earl Grey breakfast tea into the bottom of a teakettle, and boiling it. They’d all be dead in a few years from tannic acid poisoning.

After that, Lor initiated the village women into the entire routine: start with cold water, stop just as it comes to boil, rinse out pot with hot water, dry pot, the correct amount of tea, three minutes steeping. She’s even got them drinking it straight, without sugar or cream, something she hasn’t even seduced me to, a very seductive woman in many ways, but not that seductive. Next thing she’ll have them knitting tea cozies.

My contribution to the village, besides toilets and septic tanks, has been ‘blood pressure’. Every day, whenever we’re here, I have informal morning clinic, taking blood pressure, pulse, listening to old hearts rattling along behind shriveled titties. Once in a while, one of the men, Pierre Rousseau, Claude or Philippe, will sit for me. I think they feel it’s good for them, healing; therapeutic blood-pressure measuring.

Madame Le Moine is convinced she wouldn’t have had her stroke if I’d been around that summer instead of off in America. I do feel somewhat guilty.

Whenever she’d be more than eighteen over ten (the French measure in centimeters not millimeters) I’d pop her with a fivemilligram Valium and a diuretic. It’d usually bring things around in a day or two. It’d also bring around other things: eggs, a fresh-killed rabbit, lettuce, potatoes, tomatoes, string beans. It’s hardly worth our running a garden. Pumping a rubber blood pressure machine bulb’s a hell of a lot easier than hoeing hard earth and hauling water.

I roll down Madame Le Moine’s sleeve, give her the good news – dix-sept sur huit, 170 over 80 (maybe the stroke helped), look up and see Lor come smiling through the door, humming and singing.

Anyone who didn’t know Lor would assume she is the bearer of good tidings. After years of experience I’m reserving judgment. Loretta could interrupt a little song to announce the fall of Rome, the death of the president, the onset of terminal cancer or the end of a marriage. She tends to sing when she’s scared, depressed or confused, to buck up flagging emotions. The trouble is, she also sings, hums, skips when she’s happy about something. It can be very disconcerting. It’s skipping which gives the real clue; she came down those stairs rather light-footedly for a woman in her late forties, so I’m not expecting the worst.

‘It was Nicole. They’re all fine. But Nicole’s luggage got lost in the transfer at Frankfurt so they won’t be down until tomorrow morning.’

I’m sorry they won’t be here for Ben’s birthday but perhaps it’s better this way. We can give all our attention to him.

Actually, at the functional level, Ben is an only child; he has practically no remembrance of the other kids living at home. They’re more in the order of distant aunts or uncles.

It’s tough for Ben having his birthday jammed up so hard against Christmas, especially with our anniversary the day after.

Also, it’s good they’ll be late because I want to varnish; I feel a strong varnish mania coming on. I varnish the way some people clean out garages or attics, wash cars or windows, shine shoes or silverware. It’s a way to smooth life, straighten raging emotions out when I’m mixed up.

And I know I’m really confused. Right up to lately, I thought I was handling things okay, that it was going to be all right, but now I’m not so sure.

I keep telling myself it’s only because I don’t want to hurt Lor. But it’s more than that. I don’t even want to think what my life would be like without her.

At bottom, I’m very selfish. I’m afraid of the words, the words that will be said. I know they can never be taken back. I’m not sure I can trust myself and I don’t really know what Lor has on her mind, what she’s thinking.

Something in me just doesn’t want to close in on the reality of what’s happening. I hate to think of myself as a coward but I guess I am. Lor seems to be taking all this so much more easily than I; I’m sure she’s suffering, it’s more than I can bear, just watching her. It would be so much better if she’d bring it out, talk about things with me. That’s more the way she usually is. I’m the one who’s usually evasive, who can’t bite the bullet, or whatever you’re supposed to do.

I pry open the lid on the varnish can. The thick, virtually clear varnish is like concentrated glass. I’ll be spreading it, making the surfaces seem permanently wet, as if it were all new, not old and crumbling.

I sweep and clear out the area by our beds and the wash table. I begin brushing away. The varnish sinks into the dull, dry, roughened wood and brings out the warm colors, the natural grain. My soul glows again; I stroke with the length of the boards, long even sweeps.

I’ll only be doing a portion of the floor at a time. This is a fast-drying varnish; I might finish in one day.

As I carefully brush varnish into the corners, I realize varnishing is much like my personal ethic and aesthetic. It’s a way of taking what’s there, or seems to be there, and making it more visible. I don’t know how this fits into the Camus theme of ‘cherish your illusions’, but somehow I feel it does, in an American sort of way. I’m protecting the surface of things, preserving; at the same time making things look better than they really are. That can’t be all bad, can it?

I work my way around the room in bliss. I varnish the ragged dish cupboard I built a dozen years ago from wood salvaged while tearing down an old shed beside the mill. I varnish our bread holder, the barometer, the millstone boom. Long ago it was used to lift and move the millstones, and is now supporting a suspended five-light chandelier.

I do the mantel over our fireplace. I varnish the huge table we built across the original millstones, still in place. I varnish our food cabinet; the door to the upper grange and, of course, all the floor; putting down planks so we can go from one part of the room to the other. I’m varnishing one of the supporting beams when Ben taps me on the shoulder.

‘Hey, Dad, look here, you forgot the firewood.’

That does it. The knot in my psyche is loosened up a little; also I’ve run out of varnish. We’ll have one half-shiny beam for Christmas.

Now, the mill smells like one of the ateliers around our place in Paris, where they fake original Louis Quinze and Louis Seize furniture.

After we eat lunch we give Ben his airplane. He’s thrilled. Together, we get it constructed by three o’clock. He says he wants his birthday dinner at Madame Le Page’s, the local restaurant up on the hill, but his dessert must be a real mother-baked cake down here in the mill. His preference for the main dish, if it’s possible, is pintade, French guinea hen. Lor goes across to Madame Le Moine’s to phone and see if it’s possible. She comes back smiling, humming, singing and skipping so I don’t even ask.

‘They’re also going to have french fries and jambon du Morvan for him. Madame Le Page is so considerate.’

Ben and I are up on Maggie’s hill adjusting angles of wings, turning ailerons and finger-winding the rubber-band-driven propeller, when Monsieur Boudine comes along the path up to us.

Actually, at that moment, I’m on a ladder trying to detach Ben’s airplane carefully from the high branches of an oak tree. As a result of bitter experience we always have a ladder and long stick up there with us. The stick has a forked V on the end of it to push gently up under the airplane and dislodge it. Trying to shake a fragile model plane out of a tree or pull it down through the branches can have disastrous effects.

In summer, we design and build our own, both gliders and power-driven. We’ve experimented with motor-driven planes, free-flight and U-control, but the noise, the smell of the gasoline, the thrust and speed of the machines weren’t what we wanted; our planes must be as much like birds as possible.

I’m up on our ladder with the stick, nudging the plane loose when Monsieur Boudine arrives. Ben is afraid of heights, so the really high hang-ups are usually for me. Finally I get just the right leverage and the plane comes fluttering down. Ben starts to run after it.

‘Wait a minute, Ben; let me down off this ladder first.’

Ben’s been holding the foot of our ladder so it won’t slip from the tree crotch where it’s wedged. I’m not too crazy about heights myself. I jump the last two rungs, walk over and shake hands with Monsieur Boudine.

I’m always uncomfortable with this man. Loretta is afraid of him and I understand why. There’s something wild there, something untamed, a slyness, secretiveness like a hunting animal. Loretta told me once he’s the archetype of what all women fear in all men, a genealogical throwback to a maleness which can’t be conditioned to society.

His family lives in the next village. He’s fathered nine children; seven girls and two sons. One of the sons, a really likable boy, would, every summer, give Ben and other children of the village, rides in an old-fashioned donkey cart. His name was Thierry but he was killed six months ago in a motorcycle accident.

When I first contacted Monsieur Boudine about our Christmas tree, I tried commiserating with him. The worst thing in the world I can think of is outliving any of our children. It’s ten times worse than what’s probably about to happen to us now.

Monsieur Boudine lifted his hat, a weather-beaten old-time brown felt hat with a light part where there was once a silk band. He wears it brim down, all the way round, so you can scarcely see his soft, deep-sunken, yellow-brown eyes. It’s as if he’s perpetually protecting himself from either the sun or a rainstorm.

He ran his hand over his full head of wavy gray hair and shook his head once, the way Pom Pom, his donkey, would shake off a single fly in his eye. Sometimes I think Monsieur Boudine’s feeble-minded, a fecund throwback of some kind. Lor might be right, she usually is. This head shake was his only response.

Mike claims Monsieur Boudine’s the original nature boy, knows every bush, tree, root, mushroom along all the paths through all the woods in the area. He spends entire days tromping alone through deserted countryside.

At this point, I can see Monsieur Boudine might know his plants, but he doesn’t have much idea what a Christmas tree’s all about. He’s dragging behind him a two-foot-high spindly pine spine that wouldn’t make a proper table ornament. He’s all smiles, for him. Most times his face is set in a passive, resistant mope, like a mule. He and Pom Pom are a natural pair.

I take the Christmas tree branch and try to act enthusiastic; Ben has turned away in total disgust. I try to give him some money but he declines because Pom Pom uses our fields. Uses is right. He ate the only sweet corn crop I’ve ever been able to grow and nibbled to bare sticks three young apple trees, two peach trees, an apricot and a cherry tree.

I take his olive branch of a tip to a pine tree. After all it is Christmas. But my mind is racing. Where can I get a genuine eight-to-ten-foot Christmas tree at this last moment? Can I con poor Ben on his birthday eve into a treenapping? It doesn’t seem fair, also he’s deathly afraid of the dark.

But, can I present a bush, a branch, a twig, as Christmas tree to our two daughters after transporting them six thousand miles, away from California and Arizona sunshine, their parties, their friends, their comfort and ease; dragging them unwillingly into this cold, winter-dark, lonesome valley in a stone-hard, wood-heavy, primitive mill beside a pond?

Something must be done! Monsieur Boudine clumps off into the woods, self-satisfied with his gift. I decide tonight’s the night and it’s probably best if I do it alone.

We are about a thousand feet above sea level here in the Morvan. About two-thirds of the hardwood forests, birch, ash, beech, has been cleared for pasturage; the rest, in steeper, less accessible sections, has been left intact. Formerly these woods were used as a source of wood for burning. Now, however, most of the people in the valley have shifted to oil for heat, very few still burn wood, even in the kitchen stove.

Recently, entrepreneurs, mostly Parisians, have been buying up the woods, bulldozing out the hardwood, selling it off to paper mills, or as firewood, then planting these woods with Douglas fir for Christmas trees. This had been going on for over fifteen years now.

Five years ago, to protect the area from this and other depredations, one of the first large parks in France was established. Le Parc Régionale du Morvan. Our mill is just included on the western edge. West of us, the forests are still being massacred. Young pines, five to ten years old, abound. The Morvan is becoming known as the Christmas-tree capital of France.

I’ve decided to snitch my tree from one of the Christmas-tree farms outside the protected park. I’ve worked up a whole rationale to defend my action; however, I don’t think it would hold in a French court.

But I’m desperate.

When I show our Monsieur Boudine ‘Christmas Tree’ to Lor she’s as disgusted as Ben and I are. Already we’d decided to trim our wings from the usual fourteen-foot monster we’ve always had jammed in the corner on the right side of the fireplace. It was impossible to trim, blocked the food cabinet, and overlapped the steps up to the toilet. This year we’ll have a smaller tree, maybe ten feet, and set it in the millstone on the other side. Right now, we’re not even close to ten feet.

Loretta says she’ll drive into Château Chinon and look for a tree. She also has some shopping to do. Fat chance, the French idea of a large tree almost reaches the navel. While she’s gone, Ben and I get out the decorations, wipe off the balls, unwind garlands, untangle electric lights. We’re preparing to decorate a giant tree no matter what. Irrational persistence can be a powerful force.

We also clean off and set up our crèche on the sill of the west window. I string one set of lights around it. Ben goes out to gather moss from trees and rocks for the inside and roof of the stable.

What we’re doing doesn’t have much to do with religion in a Christian sense. We’re playing dolls, acting out our husbanding, parenting impulse, making sure that baby is cozy and warm, surrounded by father and mother, warm breathing animals, the steam of urine and manure-soaked hay giving off the heat of fermentation. We live with it, this is not too far removed from the life all around us here.

When Lor comes back, no singing, humming; no skipping. No tree. There wasn’t a tree over three feet tall in the whole town. She says she almost stopped and gnawed down a tree beaver-style on the way home. I tell her I’m going out tonight to liberate a tree for us. She isn’t fighting me too hard. Loretta for all her seeming airs of gentility is a practical, pragmatic person when the going gets tough. It’s what makes her an effective first-grade teacher. It would also make her a good president or chairman of the Ford Motor Company.

That night we walk up to Madame Le Page’s for Ben’s dinner. It’s dark as it was when I went out to cut pine branches. All the better. On the way out from the mill our thermometer shows three degrees and there’s moisture in the air. I tell Ben it could easily snow again. He wants snow more than anything else for Christmas. I’m hoping it will hold off till the girls get down here. They’re driving our other car, a 1969 Ford Capri. This wreck makes my failing Fiat seem like a new Cadillac.

The meal is terrific; the pintade cooked perfectly. Ben has an entire liter of lemonade to himself while Loretta and I splurge with a 1976 Pouilly Fumé. The dining room is all ours; heads of deer, sanglier mounted around us. The restaurant is called La Fin de la Chasse and its main clientele are local hunters.

We walk down in the overwhelming dark and get home at about nine o’clock. I push the wood around in our fire to get it burning again, throw in another log, slip on my boots and prepare myself for the great adventure. Ben knows what I’m about to do but doesn’t volunteer. I don’t press; who wants to spend the evening of his fifteenth birthday in a French jail, and besides he’d probably spook me with his jumpiness. I’m bad enough, myself. With Ben along we’d probably wind up jumping into each other’s laps simultaneously.

I take our car key from the nail over the mantel, pick up a flashlight, let myself down into our cellar through the trap door, grab the saw from where I’ve hung it over the wood pile. I go out the door and slush my way through mud to open the door into our garage.

This time I wouldn’t mind too much if the car doesn’t turn over; but that engine has its ear tuned directly to the starter motor and coughs into life on the second try. The engine has become as easy to arouse as a nymphomaniac. But how would I know? My sexual experience so far indicates that even a certified nymph would just ho-hum me into insignificance. But I can get that Fiat going now, maybe it’s a good sign of things to come. That’s an accidental joke.

I get out to open the big doors, hoping the motor will conk while I’m doing this, but it keeps humming away. I back out slowly, maybe I’ll get stuck in the mud, but those tires grip like tractor wheels. All the omens say I’m in for it.

I drive up through Vauchot and out toward Corbeau. Five miles along I turn toward Monçaron. On my left looms a young pine forest, trees planted about two feet apart, mostly only about twice the size of the tree we already have, but several approach my ideal. I turn down the car lights to just parking indicators. It’s dark. I can scarcely see the road. I shut off my motor and coast the last fifty yards or so. This is a road with practically no traffic. Just ahead is a bridge so narrow one car can barely pass over it.

I sit there in the dark. I roll down both windows and listen; nothing but wind in the trees, the dripping of water from branches, and, now and then, the mew of a night hawk or the whoo-whoo of an owl. Maybe we should just use that Nevers tree, tie Monsieur Boudine’s tree to the top for extra height.

I reach back and get the saw. I let myself quietly out the car door, gently easing it closed.

I have Ben’s flashlight in one hand. It’s still so dark I can’t see anything. I’ll need to do everything by feel. I stumble, creep, crawl, crouch, my way off the road between trees. I try not to step on the smaller ones, while feeling left and right for high trees, higher than my head. I can’t be sure of anything.

I stop and listen. Would anybody actually be hiding in these woods in this wetness, in the dark, just to stop a failed philosopher from snitching a tree? I believe it! But I’ve got to flash my light. I should have come out earlier and marked a tree as usual, but with that damned Monsieur Boudine and his branch there wasn’t time.

I put my hand over the flashlight so just a beam escapes through my fingers. I spin slowly around, carefully scanning for a proper tree. I see one, just the right size, and bushy, twenty yards to the right. I switch off my light, expecting a voice from the dark, or the sound and feel of buckshot. I work my way over, doing the last ten yards on all fours. I hand gauge the thickness of the trunk, give one quick flash to make sure. It’s the right one, over ten feet tall. I scrape and clear away pine needles, dirt from the base of the tree, till I’m below ground level. When I’m finished cutting, I’ll spread dirt, pine needles, leaves over the ground-level stump, expert testimony to years of experience in knavery.

I pull out my saw, then lie on my back quietly, listening, looking up into the gloomy night. There’s nothing to be heard but those hawks, owls and the wind. I start sawing. It’s soft pine and not more than four inches in diameter; I saw through in less than a minute. Nothing like when we took down the last one, a veritable ship’s mast. That time, Mike and I took turns cutting and leaning back on the tree to keep our saw from binding. We were definitely pushing our luck. When we got home, Mike, vehemently, almost in tears, swore he’d never go treenapping at Christmas again.

As the tree starts to wobble, I steady it with my left hand and take the last two strokes one-handed. It falls over easily – right onto me. I lie back and smell greenness, feel cold drops of water, ice and snow drip onto my face. I’m totally sweated up, not so much from exertion but from nervousness. I’m also experiencing a sudden, deep sense of depression. Why am I here, what fear of life drives me on with this ritualistic fantasy? Where did I lose contact with reality as others perceive it? What can I do to make things right or, at least, learn some tolerance when they seem wrong to me? I drift back to my real situation under the tree. I’m trying not to cry.

I’m not even sure just which way it is to the road. I think it’s slightly downhill but I’m not positive. I can’t make out anything in the dark. How am I going to stuff this monster tree into my tiny car and drive home without anyone seeing me? I’ll take the back roads, past where Mike’s Geneviève and her family have their home.

I start crawling through the small trees, dragging my tree behind me like Little Bo Peep’s sheep’s tails. I flash my light once to make sure I’m going downhill. I’m totally lost and am convinced I’m going deeper into the forest.

Finally, I feel a strong decline and know I’m coming onto a road, some road at least. But the car isn’t there! I must’ve come out at a different angle from the one I went in. I can’t imagine anybody stealing that car without my hearing them start the motor. Yes, right, I even have that thought. I might be the world’s biggest worrier, the least effective one too. Or maybe I don’t worry enough. I know Lor is convinced I don’t pay enough attention to things; I probably don’t.

Is the car to the left or right? Is it even on this road? I peer into darkness. I stash my tree in a ditch. It’s most likely getting smeared with mud but I’ll wash it off later.

I peer and think I can make out a dim shape to my right. I walk along the road in that direction till I’m sure it is the car. Then I come back for my tree. I can’t find it. Right here is when I make my final decision never to go in for bank robbery, or murder, or anything serious.

But, I do finally find the tree, a bulge in the ditch, without flashing my light. I drag it and the saw behind me in a low crouching rush to the car. Now I’m vulnerable. If a car comes along, or anybody turns a flash on me, there’s no excuse I can think of for being out here running to my car along a road with a fresh-cut tree in one hand and a saw in the other.

I have no rope for tying this tree onto the car roof; that’s my kind of careful planning. I open the offside door and push the butt of my tree back in; over the seats, as far as I can into the back. I bend the top of the tree so it sticks out through the window and I can close the door. I carefully squeeze all the branches in, then ease the door shut. I lean the door tight closed and the inside floor light of the car goes out. I’m in the dark again.

By feel, I know the tip of the tree sticks out three feet past the windshield. I start edging around the other side to get in; I trip over my saw where I’ve left it leaning against the car. If I hadn’t tripped over it, I’d have left it there, driven off without it. Two wrongs do sometimes make a right, like negative numbers in algebra; that is, if stealing a Christmas tree can ever be considered a right.

I start the car, no problem, thank God, or whomever. I drive a hundred meters with just my parking lights on, then turn up my highs before I get to the narrow bridge. Now I’m away from the scene of the crime. I’ll just blind anybody who gets in the way with my highs. Ruthless, that I’ll be.

I cross the bridge, turn off onto the back roads, only slightly more than paths; twist, turn, up and down through what we used to call the enchanted forest, a veritable fairyland of ancient, hoary, moss-covered oaks, now a barren wasteland of three- or four-year-old Christmas trees. The shutters at Geneviève’s house are closed as I go by; but the grange door is open and some light seems to be coming from one shutter. Geneviève’s mother must be there; it’s going to be a tough Christmas for her. I just don’t have the guts to do what she did; I hope Lor doesn’t either. Maybe continuity means too much to me. I’m too inertial, not courageous, creative. It explains a lot.

I speed by and promise myself I’ll walk over the hill soon to wish her a Merry Christmas. I power my way in first gear up to Vauchot. There’s almost no snow on the road but some places are icy. I stay in first and glide down those last two kilometers to the mill. I’ve left the grange doors open; I’ll swing the car straight on in.

I get into town without seeing anyone. I twist and slither through mud into the grange; stop, turn off the motor, turn out the lights and sit a moment, quiet in the dark, giving my blood pressure a chance to arrange itself.

Then I get out, close the grange doors. Using my flashlight, I wend my way through motorcycles past and present, to the other side of the car, open the door; free the top of my tree from the window, and carefully work the bushy part from inside the car. I stomp the stump on the grange floor, holding it by the middle.

I open the little door-in-a-door to see if anybody’s out in the street. No one. I skip over the sill, through the mud, clutching the tree under my arm like a bride. I get through the cellar door and start pushing the tree backward up our steps ahead of me. I don’t want to break any branches going through the trap door. Lor holds the trap and pulls the lower end of our tree, helping me through. I come along behind and take it from her; the pillaging, rampaging, returned, conquering hero; crumpled, dripping, bristled, tousled, white hair in a flying mane.

I lift that mini-Nevers tree from the millstone, push it out the damside door onto our porch, then jam my newly cut tree into the millstone hole. It fits perfectly, tightly, stands straight up, buttoned-top tip almost touching the log ceiling under the loft; branches, glistening wet, spread to fill the space. It’s not too bushy and hasn’t a bare part; somehow there’s no mud either. Ben stares, he flashes his pulled-together squint which serves for a smile.

‘Now that’s a real Christmas tree, Dad. It makes me want to believe in Santa Claus again.’

Lor puts her arm around me, gives me a hard hug.

‘It’s okay with us if you want to, Ben, there probably is anyhow you know. Just ask your father; he’s the expert.’

‘No, I don’t think I could do it any more, it’s too hard. People don’t really want fifteen-year-old boys to keep believing in things like Santa Claus. It isn’t fitting.’

Lor pours me a small glass of Poire William. We light the candles on our table and turn off all the other lights. There’s only a glow from the two butane heaters and the light from our fireplace. It’s warm enough so we don’t need the electric heaters any more. Our inside thermometer on the newly varnished barometer says twenty degrees. The outside thermometer registers two above, still snow temperature. In my varnishing mania, I varnished the plastic match holder by the sink, including the striking surface on one side, so now we have a hard time striking matches. But we do get the candles lit.

Slowly, softly, Lor and I begin singing Christmas carols. Ben hums along with us. He has a deep melodious voice, perfect pitch, but it’s the first time he’s actually joined with us in singing. Only last year, he would’ve quietly absented himself, going out in the grange, or for a walk. Ben has a horror, an intense dislike for overt performance. It’s a feeling I understand, appreciate. There’s something sad, hard to be around, when people perform in a desperate attempt to prove that they are. I often cry at concerts or in a theater. It has nothing to do with the music or the play. I’m feeling sorry for the musicians, the actors, all those for whom that public performance of private fantasy is a way of life.

The temptation is strong to comment, congratulate, thank Ben for his participation on these, the last moments of his fifteenth birthday. But I don’t, it would be a violation. Not doing those things is most of what I’m trying to learn. I seem to lack a certain sensitivity, respect, for the inner needs of others; Lor always seems to know just what to do. It might be a part of what makes me a piss-poor philosopher and her an outstanding first-grade teacher. She almost always seems to do the right thing without trying.

We continue through the carols, very low-key, whispering, and I’m surprised how many of the words Ben knows, as he begins to sing with us; convinced it isn’t a competition or a command performance, but a mutual expression of good will. The tree stands mute, deep, dark green, mysterious; our representative from the great outdoors; an unwilling martyr to our desire for expression of oneness with the world, with all living things.

I feel calm inside. I resolve to hold tight the promise I made Loretta and keep my mouth shut when our daughters start working their thing off. Both our girls are heavily committed to the emancipation of womankind. Brothers and fathers are automatically guilty and are expected to absorb the brunt of the assault. Assault I can usually handle but directed insult triggers me if I’m not careful. The problem is, after twenty-five years of philosophical nit-picking, I’m a veritable demon at dispute, and it’s frustrating for the girls, especially Nicole.

This is what happened two Christmases ago in California. Loretta walked away and went to bed, she refuses to let herself get involved in nonproductive, noncommunicative conflict situations. I wish I could be so smart, I think it’s the contentious Irish in me. Nicole gets especially hostile after she’s had too much white wine. She’s so much like Nora, Loretta’s late sister, it can be frightening.

That Christmas, Nicole started insisting we’d ‘fucked up’ her life. I guess all parents are shocked, concerned when one of their children comes to feel this. But having evolved from difficult backgrounds ourselves, Lor and I’d convinced each other we’d honestly tried not to do just that. It’s so hard to show love, especially when you really love, respect and admire the loved one. It’s almost as if they want you to violate them, force them to behave by some standard of your own not related to their desires. Maybe they want a chance to manifest their love for you by submission. I don’t know. It’s beyond me.

So, there, in the pleasant dark, I reaffirm my determination to listen, not to be provoked, to make the most of this which, I’m convinced, will be our last Christmas together. I feel a pang again because Mike won’t make it, but then again, we can’t have everything.

Before going to bed, I heat some water and scrub myself thoroughly in the washbowl. I stink from nervous perspiration and it’d be no fun for Lor sleeping beside someone who smells like an escapee from a metro or a zoo. I even shave. Ben sets up his bed before the fire, then when everybody’s settled in, I blow out the candles and crawl into bed.

As I’m going off to sleep, wrapped close to Loretta’s back, I think again what a big mistake our species made when we started building houses with sleeping, eating, cooking, washing, all separated into different compartments. Virtually everybody in this village lives as we do, in one room. It’s surprising how comforting this can be. I won’t try to defend that one with the girls. There’s no reason to.

I wake at about seven thirty for a pressing morning piss. I don’t usually take a diuretic before sleeping, but last night I did, along with my usual Valium. I could feel signs of elevated blood pressure, a slight tightness under my left arm, a throbbing in the temples.

Two good things came of my medicating. One, I got up twice during the night and each time threw a good-sized log on the fire to keep it going, so now it’s burning merrily. Starting a new fire in the ashes on a freezing morning with cold, damp wood is not my idea of a great way to begin a winter day.

I let my eyes drift around the room, enjoying peace and the coming dawn.

The second good thing is the blood pressure is down and I’m feeling very content, undisturbed inside, in tune with the world. I run through again what has to be done, as I see it, and my only concern is for Lor. But it’s a concern, not an anxiety.

For me, Christmas Eve day is even more important, more exciting, than Christmas Day itself. The sense of anticipation, of expectant readiness, is magic. I hear, feel, Lor breathing beside me. Ben is stretched out, overlapping his cot by the fire, arms hanging over the sides. He sleeps deeply, calmly, no tossing, no teeth grinding, no startled nightmares, no thumb or finger sucking. We like to think it’s because we never let him cry himself to sleep, never left him alone in the dark when he wanted to be with us. Until he was seven, he spent at least half of each night in our bed, usually cuddling with me. I didn’t mind, I liked it; I don’t think sleeping alone is natural. With our first three we were young and foolish enough, vulnerable to rigid conditioning theories then prevalent, to insist they stay in their own beds, so now each is an erratic sleeper. I myself only became capable of deep, full, refreshing sleep when I was about forty. I can’t always manage it, now, even with meditation or Valium, but then things have been hard lately.

The skylights in the ceiling are beginning to lighten. It almost looks like blue sky, clear, behind tree branches hanging over our roof. The room is starting to quicken with light.

I ease myself out of bed, slide my feet into cool slippers, adjust for the failing clasp on my pajamas, turn the butane heater up to high, fill the tea kettle with water. I love filling this kettle through the spout, might even be a sexual thing, some compensation for my failure as a lover to my loved one.

I light the stove and put on water for washing. I sneak past Ben, turn over the log burning in the fire and jam another log next to it. I check the inside temperature, fourteen Celsius, we should have that back up to twenty within the next hour. I go to the door and pull back my thick red drapes so I can look at the outside thermometer.

I’m startled by a white, just lightening sky over the frosted trees, blending to a fragile, transparent white-blue overhead. I’m transfixed in wonder.

I break my eyes away enough to look at the outside thermometer through the frosted window. Twenty-two degrees below freezing. The sun still hasn’t risen. I’m torn between waking Lor and Ben or enjoying this special moment to myself. They’ll be up late tonight with the Reveillon at Madame Calvet’s, plus all the excitement of the girls arriving; they need their sleep, so I take the selfish decision.

I dress quietly, turn off the stove under the hot water, slip on boots, jacket, gloves, wool knit cap. I carefully open the door, let myself out, then pull firmly so it latches behind me.

I look left and there is magnificent ice sculpture from the falls. Every splash, every flowing current is frozen in twisting glossy forms like transparent, clear toy candy. The ivy growing along the sides of the sluice gate is wrapped in ice, inches thick, drooping gracefully with the weight of each leaf captured green in transparent ice cages. There are giant icicles, four feet long, three inches thick hanging from the stone, temporary stalactites. I walk across the frozen, ice-creaking wooden porch, up the slippery steps onto the dam to look out over the pond.

It’s frozen absolutely clear without a ripple. If you didn’t know it was winter, if there were green leaves to reflect on its perfectly calm surface, you’d think it was five thirty in the morning of a June dawn; halfway around the calendar from now.

The glow of the sun is still hidden by the eastern edge of our valley-bowl. There are no clouds. It’s so empty, one could easily wonder if there ever had been, ever would be a breath, a breeze again.

I do my usual thing, the summer ritual, standing on tiptoe, reaching up high as I can, pulling myself out of myself, trying to let some of that glorious empty sky come into me. In the interest of my sleeping family and the neighbors, I repress the desire for a grunting howl.

With one boot toe I kick loose three small, flat stones from the dam surface, two smooth, one ragged. I pick them up; they feel like ice even through my leather gloves. The first, the ragged one, I throw full-force directly down at the ice. I’m standing now on the small wooden platform from which, in summers, I slip quietly into the water for my after-run-before-breakfast swim.

Those summer mornings, I slide in quietly so as not to disturb the fishermen halfway around the pond. This morning, the platform glistens with ice crystals, but doesn’t seem slippery under my boots. The stone glances from the ice, making a small crazed dent, then bounces and skims another thirty or forty feet. The entire pond surface screeches and echoes from edge to edge, hallowed, hollow, deep-throated. A scientist friend told me once how the crackling howling sound is due to ice cracking along the surface faster than the speed of sound, so it causes a minisonic boom. That’s hard to believe, but it is a magic sound.

Holding onto an overhanging tree branch, I ease one foot over the edge from my platform to test the ice. It cracks slightly, the cracks spread crazily in all directions away from my toe. The ice appears to be about an inch or so thick. I take one of the smooth stones, cock my arm and skim it underhand across the incredibly water-clear ice. It bounces, slides; almost without friction, seemingly endlessly, accompanied by echoing reverberations of the ice. It continues, until, almost out of sight, it enters the cattails, marshland and reeds at the far end of the pond, then stops against one of the domed muskrat dens out there.

I’m about ready to skim the last stone, feeling it icy cold, smooth, sucking heat through my gloves, when the sun begins to glow white fire over the eastern edge of our valley. It shines almost pure white, like a communion wafer painted by a Spanish eighteenth-century painter.

This is time, happening. I can feel it passing through me. When one thinks about time, and I do too much; it’s part of what makes me a philosopher I guess; but when one thinks about it, it’s the most mysterious phenomenon we know.

We try to define it with clocks and calendars which are, more or less, based on movements of sun, earth and moon, but that’s only measuring. All we can really guess about time is it’s probably related to space and matter, whatever they are. If space and matter just became, it’s when time began. But time can’t begin because ‘begin’ is a time word, beginning-ending.

But this sun seeming to come over those hills, time or not, is practically pure light, cutting through ninety-three million miles, the source of virtually all earth’s energy.

I feel it already warm on my cold face before it’s halfway over the hill. It lights my soul. I put the last stone back in my pocket, take off my gloves, allowing my hands to be healed by these magic rays. I close my eyes, face the sun directly. I can feel, see, the red insides of my eyelids lighten; redden; warm with the blush of life. I want to hold my breath or sing; dance; something, some way to say thanks.

Instead I put my gloves back on, open my eyes and watch till the sun is finally detached from the earth, free-floating, a heavenly body again, giving us all for nothing. I vow to express my thanks by showing love for my loved ones. I wish I could somehow transmit to Lor, to the kids, my intense joy in them, the way they are. But dumb events, happenings, keep getting in the way, blocking my true feelings. But I’m going to try.

But first I want to walk, to hear, feel the crunch of frozen grasses under my feet. I walk around the pond toward the Rousseaus’. The trees are coated with ice, thick, clear, natural varnish, crackling in the sunlight as rounded prisms, a myriad of colors reflected from hoarfrost on the ground.

Last year’s blackberries, most still unpicked, now dried, hardened on the frozen bushes, are, each one, surrounded, enveloped in an irregular-shaped, perfectly clear ball of ice, like insects caught in amber. They hang their heads the same as they did in summer when filled with sun-sweetened purple juices.

I turn and look back over the pond to see our mill reflected, frozen, in the still ice. Even on a perfectly breezeless day in spring or summer it is never so completely mirrored. It has the look of someone in a tintype, long dead.

I stare transfixed by this temporal transmutation, then stamp my chilling feet and start back, jogging lumpishly along the top of the dam to our mill. I’m ready for this year’s Christmas Eve washup. I’m having my two daughters arrive today, I want to look my best, which isn’t much, but what I’ve got, what I am. Oh how I wish I could be different, be what Lor wants, what the kids want. It’s a terrible feeling inside when you’re seen as a ‘flake’, a ‘wimp’ by others when you’re personally convinced you’re not one.

Everybody’s still asleep. I turn up the water to heat again. I strip down to my long johns. The water, already warm, heats quickly. The room temperature is now seventeen degrees. I pull back the drapes on our east window to let in the sunlight. I pour hot water into the washbowl, regulate it to just right with cold water from the pitcher. I wash my face, scrub soap into my hair. I hang my head over the sink, pour the rest of the cold water from the pitcher over my hair to rinse it. If I weren’t completely awake, aware, before, I am now.

Then I strip off the top part of my long johns and do a good soaping and rinsing off of my whole upper body, not just under the arms. I scrub up a good lather in the hair on my chest, arms and back.

I dry vigorously with a towel, then strip off the bottoms to the long johns, scrub all my vital parts. I actually lean over the bowl on our table to let them float in the water so I can do the job properly. I think this part of a man has less density, floats more easily, than other parts. It should, there are no bones, despite romantic claims to the contrary. I stare at these complicated organs of mine and wonder what music they should play to be heard. I rinse and towel myself off again, pull the long johns back on, mostly for Ben’s sake. He’s at an age where nudity bothers him. He even goes into the cold toilet room to dress. The new heater in there might save him from pneumonia.

Now I put the bowl on the floor and the towel beside it. One at a time, I carefully wash my toes. No wonder the washing of feet is such an intrinsic symbol for so many religions. There’s such comfort in it.

I resist overstimulating a minor case of athlete’s foot on my left foot between the little and next toe. No sense starting something.

I carefully dry each foot and slide on the socks, the ones I washed last night, along with my underpants. I’d hung them on the mantel to dry. They’re somewhat crinkly stiff, but still soft and warm. There are some small luxuries in life, hard to describe, but which give it texture, and for me, having washed the socks and underwear by hand, myself, drying them by a fire I kept burning all night, makes it a better, deeper experience. I’ve got to be careful not to try forcing the ones I love to love the things, the ways of living, I love. It’s an easy mistake to make. It might be called the philosopher’s folly, or maybe everybody’s folly. It would be so great if we could show our love by enjoying those we love for what they are, not what we want them to be. It would be the ultimate mutual emancipation.

I’m just exploring that thought, pulling my dark blue Shetland wool sweater over my head when I hear Lor waking up; yawning, mmmning, lip sucking. She gave me this sweater for my birthday, she knows the kinds of things I like. She should, after thirty years, but some women wouldn’t. I don’t really know what she wants sometimes; I hope she really wants the girls here for Christmas. I hope she even wants to be here herself. She has every right, every reason to want to be somewhere else right now. But it all came about so fast.

‘What time is it, dear?’

I look at my watch tipped sideways on the table, beside the bowl of dirty water.

‘Quarter to nine. Wow, is it ever beautiful outside, Lor. Look at that sunshine, and it’s twenty-two below! Everything’s frozen. Except for the sun coming up, it’s almost as if time’s stopped.’

Lor rolls over on her stomach, props her chin on her elbows, looks past me out the new washed window into the icy world. I think there are tears on the outsides of her eyes. It could only be from sleep or the strong light from the window. She quickly wipes them away with the backs of her wrists.

‘You should have wakened me. What a beautiful day. Happy Christmas Eve day, darling.’

‘Happy day to you too, Lor. There’s still plenty of hot water to wash up if you want.’

I look at the inside thermometer.

‘It’s between eighteen and nineteen now, practically like California.’

She’s turned over and is sitting up; spreading covers, making the bed as she slides out. She’s wearing a dark blue flannel nightgown. Sexy sleeping gowns are not her thing. Lately Lor has been much more sexy in the clothes she wears and the way she makes up and does her hair, but she still sleeps in old-fashioned flannel, usually dark blue.

‘Not quite California, dear. I’m not complaining; I think it’s wonderful how you keep this place warm but for a Californian this is Arctic hardship. Gosh, I wonder how the girls are going to manage? I did tell them to bring plenty of warm clothes.’

I dump my bowl of dirty water into the sink, wipe it out with a paper towel, fill it with steaming hot water and some cold, while Loretta makes the freezing trip up to the toilet. I stretch out on the made bed. She doesn’t have time to unplug and plug heaters, just one quick morning piss, or maybe with a woman that’s pee. I know a man’s piss and a woman’s pee sound different; in a toilet bowl anyhow. It’s amazing how much stronger piss smells in the cold. I wonder if she notices that too, probably it’s in the great area of things too vulgar to discuss.

When she comes back, she walks past me, pulls her nightgown up over her head, splashes water over herself, toweling dry as she goes. I try not to let her know I’m watching, but this is one of the best parts about being at the mill. Her skin is still smooth as when we married, transparent pink, no moles nor warts, her stomach bulges slightly under the belly button from four kids but her body is odalisque, especially her back. Ingres, Matisse, Cézanne would love to paint her. Our relationship is such that I find myself more aesthetically pleased than sexually aroused. I don’t know why. I don’t really think either of us wants to rock our boat; broad-beamed, slow-moving, hard to tip over, or at least I always thought it would be hard to tip.

I’ve come to believe nothing fouls up a successful long-term man-woman relationship more thoroughly than rampant sex. One or the other, or sometimes both, sooner or later, get to using withheld intimacy, physical satisfaction, as a weapon; sexual blackmail. Even now, with everything that’s happened, I still feel that way. Maybe that’s part of what’s wrong with me.

At school, over the years, I’ve had many chances at flirtations with students and fellow teachers. I always back off, the rewards don’t seem to match the involvements, the complications, the expectations. I just don’t seem to have the sexual drive needed. I’m much more the romantic than the stud.

Lor squirts herself with deodorant and starts dressing. I get up, push logs around on the fire, then snuggle another one in. We have enough logs cut to get through the day but not enough for tonight. It’s probably time for me to induct Ben into the art of hauling and cutting wood. It’s a very Christmasy thing to do. I hope he’ll see it that way.

Behind me, Ben has wakened. He reaches for his glasses on the table beside him and looks at his digital watch, also on the table. He’s very nearsighted. When we go back to Illinois next time we’ll try fitting him with soft contact lenses.

He’s weird with his watch and his sense of time. He has a flat credit-card size combination computer-watch. He can’t even tell time with a regular handed analog watch. Don’t ever tell him it’s quarter to three instead of 2:45. That’s sacrilege.

Ben swings his feet out of bed and slides them into his slippers. These slippers are the largest size made in France. He stares into the fire. He’s a slow waker, coming from some deep place of rich, imaginative dreams which he’ll sometimes share with us at breakfast, but not now. We all know better than to try much communication with Ben at this point. He told me once he doesn’t mind getting up but he hates to stop dreaming.

‘Morning Ben, have a good sleep?’

‘Uh uh.’

‘It’s a beautiful day out, clear and cold. The pond’s frozen.’

‘That’s good. Did it snow?’

‘No. It’s too cold to snow now.’

‘Uh huh.’

Ben’s a bit of an old man in his ways. Each night he carefully folds his clothes and stacks them on a chair beside him. It’s hard getting him to surrender clothes for washing. He’s not enthusiastic about change of any kind, even changing his socks. If happiness is being satisfied with what you have, then Ben’s the happiest person I’ve ever met.

He gets up, stretches, pokes the fire with his favorite stick poker, gathers together his pile of clothes and heads up the small, steep, four-step stairway toward the bathroom.

‘Ben, you can turn on the heater in there if you want, I’ll turn this one off here.’

‘Thanks. That’s all right. I don’t get cold.’

But I turn off the heater anyway. With the fire blazing away, we’re almost up to twenty. Lor’s dressed. She dumps her water into the sink, wipes out the bowl, puts the bowl and pitcher on the dresser.

‘Dearest? I wish Ben would wash in the morning. He’s beginning to smell like a dog kennel from playing with all those dogs in the village. That, combined with his own smell, it’s enough to turn anybody’s stomach.

‘I snuck in new socks last night. It was one of the times you got up and went to the toilet. What’d you do, take a diuretic and your Valium? Is it that bad?’

‘Not really, just getting ready for the onslaught; bracing myself, packing in reserves of passivity, nonresistance, paternal permissiveness, mellowness, coolness. I’m okay. What’re we having for breakfast?’

‘How about pancakes? I have syrup already made and there’s Roland’s honey. How’s that sound?’

‘Great. I’ll straighten things up and sweep while you’re whipping them together.’

I’m tempted right here to reveal the Christmas waffle iron. Waffles would be great this morning. I roll up Ben’s sleeping bag and spread it at the bottom of our bed. I haul his mattress up the stairs and tuck it in his old toy corner out in the upper grange. I come back and fold his cot, store it under the stairs going up to where the girls will sleep. I guess I should wait for Ben to come back. He always puts his bed away, carefully, slowly, but I’d like things cleared away for breakfast.

Actually, the stairs are more a ship’s ladder than a staircase and not so sturdy at that, but they’ve lasted almost fifteen years now.

I built the first step two feet off the floor so Ben couldn’t climb up it when he was little. I’ve been meaning for the last seven years to put in this missing step but never have. It’s little things like that I tend to let get by, or maybe it’s because putting in that step will be one more proof we don’t have a baby any more, aren’t going to have any, any more.

The grandchildren thing doesn’t look so hot either; both Mike and Nicole say they’re not going to have kids and Maggie seems in the process of terminating the father of the one she does have. I’m not about to wait for Ben to come through; although he’s physically precocious in his sexual development, he doesn’t show much interest at the functional level. The things young girls do to attract young boys all seem silly to him. He told me once he’d really like having an interesting girl to talk with but the girls at school are only boy crazy.

‘They aren’t dumb, Dad, they just act that way.’

Could be in his genes. Maybe we’ll have a sequel, ‘Son of the Vanishing Man’. This is one of Nicole’s inventions that caught on. She claims I’m really invisible sometimes, that when things get tough, I turn off my mind and vanish inside myself. She could be right. I don’t know.

But I’d probably better nail in that missing step anyway; the girls would appreciate it since they’ll be sleeping up there.

Lately, I’ve been trying to work out some semantic progression through all the steps, conditions, below satisfaction. Right now it goes something like: acceptance, tolerance, accommodation, acquiescence, resignation, resentment, surrender, revolt. I’ve been practicing, trying to figure out just where I am.

I’m not sure that last one belongs there, but building that step on the stairs fits pretty well with accommodation or maybe acquiescence. I do actually have to build the step, find the wood, nails, hammer, saw; cut the wood, fit it, hammer it in place. Accommodation. Yes, we have accommodations. Or, ‘No, we have no accommodations, you may sleep in the stable.’

I find our broom and start sweeping over by the firewood corner to the right of the fireplace. Loretta’s pouring pancakes on the griddle, the smell of them fills the room. She talks to me over her shoulder.

‘Dear, could you hold off sweeping until after breakfast?’

‘Honest, Lor, I promise I’ll just take little six-inch strokes; I won’t raise any dust at all. Promise. Besides, Maggie’s even worse than you are about dust; if I don’t get it done now, we’ll be walking around in dust up to our ankles before they leave.’

‘Peg, dear; remember it’s Peg. You know how upset she gets. Anyway I don’t think she’ll stay more than three or four days at most. She’s always hated the mill.’

Lor turns over the pancakes, puts syrup and butter on the table. I continue sweeping with mini-strokes trying to keep the dust down. I sweep off the front of the millstone in front of the fireplace, sweep up my first pile, throw it into the fire.

Ben comes down the steps from the toilet, his pajamas carefully folded. He goes over and tucks them under his sleeping bag.

‘Oh boy, pancakes. That’s one of the best things I like about the mill, we always have time for a real breakfast.’

He stops, pauses.

‘Thanks for putting away my bed, Dad. I would have done it though.’

He goes to the dish closet and pulls out dishes to set the table.

‘Ben, dear, I’ve got the dishes there warming on the heater. Be careful you don’t burn yourself.’

Lor pushes another batch of pancakes into the oven to stay hot. Ben fastidiously lifts the dishes off the heater, spreads them on the table each to our accustomed spot, me facing the fireplace, Loretta on the side with best access to the kitchen, Ben, his back to the fireplace. I wonder how it will work out when the other three arrive. I can take any place and Lor can move over a place to make room, but Ben will be immutable.

Generally he doesn’t even like to eat with other people; says it’s hard to concentrate on the taste of the food, and he doesn’t like the sounds of people chewing, swallowing, banging forks and spoons against their teeth.

Normally, on non-school days, Ben finishes two or three books a day. I say finishes because he’s often reading four to five books at a time, something like Nero Wolfe. He told me once he likes to be reading one funny book such as Mad or Mash, one violence book like an Executioner series or MacDonald, one science fiction and one serious book, a technical book on airplanes, or automobiles or geology, botany, anything. He’s also usually reading or rereading one of the perhaps five-hundred old National Geographic magazines we have stacked around the mill, or the apartment. Oh yes, I forgot, he’s also a dedicated reader of the wonderful French hardcover comic books, bandes dessinées, Tin Tin, Astérix and Obélix, Lucky Luke. He says that’s where he really learned French, not at school. I believe it. Ben’s one of those wonderful people who doesn’t need school. He’s a natural learner-thinker.

But he does generally accommodate and share meals at the same table with Lor and me. We accommodate, too. I’ve learned to eat the way I’ve learned to sweep; small, short, inconspicuous bites and swallows. Actually the food does taste better that way and I don’t eat so much. I can be a real gulper if I’m not careful, and it is amazing how many times a fork bangs against the teeth if one doesn’t make an effort.

Then, also, Loretta and I are great chatterers during a meal and Ben’s made us very self-conscious about speaking with food in our mouths. Tucking it over to the side, hamsterlike, is out. I must say, all the careful chewing, swallowing, mouth clearing, slows down conversation; but then, it’ll probably keep our digestive systems functioning properly a little while longer.

I look out the window at a car going past. It’s still incredibly beautiful, blue sky – white, icy trees drawn against the heavens. Except for the cold, the girls certainly can’t complain about the weather, not today anyhow. I notice Loretta looking out the window, too. We’re both nervous. Even if they started at eight in the morning, which is well within the range of the impossible, and drove the entire trip in only three hours, which is within the range of the possible, but not in that old Ford, not if it’s driven by anyone with two cents worth of common sense. But then, the friend might be driving, so who knows.

No, we’ll have time for our breakfast. I don’t think the girls are exactly breaking their necks to get down here in a hurry. After all, they’ve already missed Ben’s birthday. Maybe they’ll only come down for Christmas Day. Who knows? It could be better that way. Then they can have fun in the apartment up in Paris while Lor and I try to work things out. Ben will stay out of the way or not pay attention. War could be being declared right beside him and he most likely wouldn’t even notice.