A Film (3000 Meters) Read online

  “I would like to know …”

  “What … ?”

  Well, just about everything. Who his parents were … Where they lived … Why they took him to the Orphanage, why, after so doing, they hadn’t ever returned to reclaim their son, to restore the rights they’d taken away, if they’d been forced to go to such extremes. Once and for all, he needed to know the nature of his birth. He could stand it no longer. He had to know, he simply had to … he’d been living and working to that end alone, to be restored to his rightful place, and he believed such a longing was humane, just, and natural …

  Matron was still young and romantic in a saintly fashion, with an ingenuously pure heart, despite the painful years spent confronting the depravation and misery that rivers of debauched desire landed on the Orphanage’s doorstep. She was moved by Nonat’s plea. Perhaps that poor boy, so keen to know his origins, was merely expressing a secret impulse of nature … She must respect that. After a moment’s reflection, mentally committing the matter to the mercy of Our Lord, she ordered a search of the Orphanage’s archives. She even ventured the possibility that a clue, a sign, might come to light in that first round of enquiries, but it wasn’t to be, and they were both disappointed. They found only Nonat’s date of entry, a mention of a bastard’s baptism from the parish of Sant Pere de Ruelles, and a silver Montserrat medallion on a blue silk cord.

  Cold sweat beaded Nonat’s forehead; his lips quivered like a young child’s about to burst into tears. Those clues were scant; he was utterly downcast. Later he poured out this bitter, rancorous bile.

  It was beyond belief! Bringing children into the world only to throw them away, to cast them in the Orphanage like people ditch a new-born puppy on the dung heap to save themselves the bother of killing it … ! Unbelievable! He sensed his parents were well-to-do, people with clout … He was absolutely convinced of it because a mysterious, inner voice kept telling him … and he pounded his chest with a hand already callused and hardened by work, the only visible stigma of a lowly birth. “If that was the case, how could they want to close down my future and sentence me to a life of slavery and deprivation, in total silence … ?”

  Hurt by his tone and the abrupt, demanding force of his un-Christian recriminations, Matron initially protested, but then, moved by the suffering she felt at the heart of his violent outburst, she tried to temper him with motherly advice.

  “You shouldn’t take things like this to heart. I’m sure it seems quite wrong at first sight that people don’t confront their guilt with courage, if guilt there was, or misfortune, if misfortune there was, but you cannot make righteous accusations when you don’t really know of what you are accusing someone … Sometimes, what one imagines isn’t everything it seems! Who knows? Perhaps your parents aren’t as responsible as you think. You think they were prestigious, but what if they weren’t? There’s no evidence to show that the opposite wasn’t true …” and I’ve heard that in ninety-five percent of cases, bastards weren’t any kind of perversion, but blind acts by poor, ignorant individuals who behave instinctively, quite unaware of what they were doing, like little animals, and then, afterward, must conceal the damaging consequences by finding a solution that conceals the horrors of their crime as well as their shame from the public eye, which is so unmerciful toward everything that exceeds the limits of the law …”

  But Nonat vehemently rebelled against those humiliating insinuations, which pierced his heart like the most treacherous thrust the dagger of fate could deliver. No, he refused to accept the obscure parentage they wanted to foist upon him with every ounce of energy he could muster, as if it were unbearably shameful.

  Whenever he reflected on the enigma of his origins, a kind of magic loom surged before his eyes, as if in a hazy dream, where silvery spiderwebs crisscrossed, weaving an array of carpets that quietly undulated, like layers of gauze blown by the wind of fantasy, and he would stop and draw breath, watching the different, changing scenes come together—now picaresque, now bawdy, now romantic—but always graceful and in good taste … They were fragments of novels, hewn and framed by a dark strip of mystery that made them even more luminous and attractive … They were pristine, lordly visions, imprinted on that intangible gauze, which vibrated, shaking off a delicate dust, as from a butterfly’s wing that hovered in an atmosphere shot through by the sun’s rays, before slowly settling on his benignly distracted spirit, leaving a delicious sediment of poetry. Perhaps a decisive part was played in those scenes by betrayal, licentiousness, infringements of the law, even crime, if you like … but never the grossest, elemental acts of bestiality that was so repellent and disgusting, and was relegated to the terrestrial graveyard of all debasement …

  And that arbitrarily immaterial substance nourished his own dreams of grandeur; in a sudden about-face, he, who had only just attacked his parents as unnatural, now defended them so as not to lose his grip on that resplendent, fabled world he so admired.

  “No, they aren’t hicks! Hicks don’t go out of their way to do things without purpose … It’s only in other spheres, when other plans for the future exist, that people take precautions. And surely the baptism certificate, the medallion, and indelible mark were all signs that pointed to their eventual return?”

  Matron turned her head, smiling sweetly but skeptically. “Many children come to the Orphanage with marks, but nobody ever returns to ask after them. They reflect scruples, fleeting remorse that life’s hardships, prejudice, and the corrosive acid of new passions or preoccupations later erase, slowly or swiftly, but usually leaving no trace … And it is in those cases, when nature acts as a heartless stepmother, that Charity appears as a tender-hearted Mother … No, the Orphanage isn’t a stinking dung heap for human beings, but a blessed sieve of impurities, from which cleansed souls emerge rid of the original stains that sullied them. That’s why it is best to cherish hopes and jealously preserve them than to know for sure … So many hopes have been dashed by the rash desire to delve into depths of doubt!” And, believing such a presumptuous obsession might be bad counsel for that youngster, she tried to drive it from his mind.

  “Better not to worry yourself. If your parents were as you believe, they will eventually appear and do their duty, and, if they don’t, you must forgive without judging them … Human beings know nothing of the distant reason behind things or the designs of Our Lord … If He wished, for example, to finally pull the veil from the circumstances around your birth, it would be an act He’d have to consent to, so it’s best to resign yourself to His divine will …”

  She rounded off her speech with words to curb his impulses: “We shall later see what God’s designs may be …”

  In the meanwhile, she would be so good as to give him whatever information she could find, and he could then decide what he must do.

  He walked out of the Orphanage in a rage, much paler than when he’d entered. He stared deep within himself, as if expecting something to come from outside the world of the senses, and he felt he’d aged ten years.

  At supper, his boss, though he had little insight into anything outside his trade, did notice that he was upset.

  “What’s wrong, lad? Aren’t you feeling well? You don’t seem yourself. You’re not eating, not talking …”

  He put the locksmith off with a few words and a grin. “I have a thick head because I’ve been studying a clock’s complicated mechanisms …”

  And Nonat left his master gawping at the head of the table, went to his bedroom, and climbed into bed. At least there he wouldn’t be subject to inquisitive looks and an interrogation, he’d be able to ruminate at will. And for one, two, and three hours he ruminated, his mind spinning around thousands of times … He wasn’t happy with the nun’s counsel, or her parochial perspectives; they would poison his longings, rather than offer any balm … He had to investigate, all alone, on his own behalf. He felt with searing clarity that nobody ever showed an interest in their neighbor’s plight, and that maybe nobody would ever be sufficiently en
gaged to sense his needs, to identify with his joys and his sorrows. Every individual’s woe is theirs alone: baggage that can’t be transferred. And that’s why the tag “look after yourself”—encapsulated real wisdom, which he now grasped for the first time. The desire to find his parents was his, felt by him alone, and he was the only person destined to seek them out …

  And as if the path he must follow was now lit by a clear, well-defined idea, he suddenly felt released from his obsession and truly liberated from that inner struggle, his mind calm and free. He smiled, just as he did when girls stared at him at the Locksmiths’ Company, breathed deeply, turned on his side, and slept like a log.

  In the morning, the moment he got up, he went to find his boss and ask for a few days leave of absence.

  His boss was surprised because he had never before left the shop.

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “To Sant Pere de Ruelles …”

  “And where on earth is that?”

  “I’m not sure …”

  His boss’s eyelids flickered.

  “It’s where I was baptized …”

  “Where you … ? And what are you hoping to do there?”

  “Speak to my godmother …”

  And Nonat told him some of his preoccupations. His boss listened attentively, and watched as something like thick mist gradually rose and wrapped his thoughts in a cloud. “What a lad he is! He’s one clutch of great expectations!” And just like Matron, his first instinct was to warn Nonat off, to tell him to ditch his silly ideas, to forget about ready-made parents or ones selected in a lottery … What did it matter if you were sired by this man or that; we all come from the same root: Adam the father, and all end up in the same place: the ossuary … What did it matter if the steps leading from one end to the other were hewn rock or clods of soil? Things are what they are, everyone passes through the same strait and nobody can escape … What was important wasn’t knowing who had given you life—it was living, breathing, running, working … feeling the blood coursing through your veins, and joy through your heart … All else was window dressing, stuff and nonsense … a vain desire to squeeze blood out of a stone …

  But his boss didn’t have the gift of gab and couldn’t think of a word to say.

  So his young tradesman left the following morning and reached Sant Pere de Ruelles on that windswept evening.

  “And now, godmother,” Nonat exclaimed, as he finished explaining himself, smiling as ever, “by now you must have understood why I’m here. I want you to tell me everything you know about me, everything I imagine only you can tell me. One makes one’s bed and lies in it, and one doesn’t expect others to foot the bill. And it can’t be right if my parents, after bringing me into the world, aren’t called to account, and enjoy a life of leisure while I break my arms beating hot metal, and sentence my children, whenever I have any, to be the lowest of the low, like me, and suffer all kinds of misery and privation, when perhaps, by rights, I could be offering them a comfortable life.”

  As soon as Nonat stopped talking, a deadpan Maria, who’d been listening to his tale, seemed to wake up from a dream, as did Jepet, who, elbows on table, hands gripping the bar from the door, had been all ears, in a blissful haze, like a child listening to a nursery rhyme.

  A minute’s silence followed. Once the spell was broken, Jepet put down the bar, stretched his arms, flexed his shoulders, which tingled as if drops of cold water were streaming down, and opened his mouth in one big yawn.

  In turn, Maria quickly wiped her forehead, as if to remove something that was irritating her, and brightened her stern, blank features, as if donning a mask, preened, and tidied her skirt that didn’t need tidying, a sign she was about to make a move.

  “Praise the Lord! I can’t see straight after listening to what you just said … That never happened in the stories and romances they read in the barbershop when I washed their linen … That old dear who never wanted to die was right …”

  She stopped for a second, and, as nobody said a word, she asked innocently: “So what are you going to do?”

  Nonat stared at her.

  “What do you expect me to say when I’m still in the dark? First, I must get to know … my parents.” (He hesitated, but didn’t dare say “pa and ma”; despite all his swagger, he felt uneasy after what Matron had insinuated)

  A harsh, obsessive idea haunted his eyes and voice, as it had when he talked to that pious nun.

  “And then it depends. If they are who I suspect they are, I’ll force them to do their duty …”

  “And what if they can’t, my son?”

  “So what if they can’t? They ought to have thought about that before … !” He paused, then continued: “Dear godmother, I’ve been neglected and forgotten for twenty-two horrible years, and that’s quite long enough!” and, trying to temper the harshness of his words, he smiled again, “Please tell me all you know …”

  But La Gallinaire had already made up her mind. She laughed out loud: “Good God, my lad, you go straight to the point! Like a gust of wind …” And she parroted: “‘Tell me all you know!’ Just like that, as if I’d thought only about you from the day I took you to the Orphanage … Just imagine! All those years and my poor memory … Everything gets so mixed up inside this head of mine!”

  Jepet interrupted his yawn and stared at her. Why was she saying she had a poor memory, when she never lost track of anything that entered her head, however trivial? But, as he was used to never challenging what his wife said, he hid his surprise and completed his yawn.

  Meanwhile, Nonat, distressed, gave a start in his chair.

  “Are you saying you don’t know … ?”

  Maria’s face was as placid and ingenuous as could be.

  “I’m not saying I don’t know … I think I must know what happened to me and that sinner …”

  Nonat calmed down.

  “But what I’m saying is that, put on the spot like this, I can’t remember anything clearly …”

  The young man shouted anxiously: “For God’s sake, godmother, make the effort … ! Think …”

  But La Gallinaire stopped him mid-flow.

  “You must understand, my son … I won’t beat about the bush … I’m shocked by what you’ve said … Besides, it’s late and we don’t usually stay up … When I’m feeling sleepy, I’m good for nothing … as if I were already in the land of Nod …” (That was also news to Jepet, who’d always found her awake and lively as a rooster at any time of the day). “Please believe me! Let’s go to bed. Tomorrow, when I’m wide awake, when I’ve revived and am clear in the head again, I’ll think back on everything that happened, I’ll put it all together from A to Z and tell you every little detail …” And, seeing the orphan was about to protest, she continued, “I’m telling you, if you try to force me to talk now, I’ll get it all wrong, make a mess of it, and nothing will make any sense … Right now, I don’t know what’s wrong with me! I feel all queasy!”

  And there was no shifting her. She went to get the tin candleholder with the still colorful length of altar candle, and holding it in one hand and an oil lamp in the other, Maria and her husband accompanied their visitor to his bedroom, and after showing him everything he might need and wishing him good night, they retired to the barn.

  Jepet looked at Maria, an alarmed expression on his rough, granite face.

  “Don’t you feel well?’

  “Me?” his wife retorted, taken aback.

  Jepet was even more confused: “You said you felt queasy!”

  Maria grinned mischievously.

  “You know, I didn’t feel like chatting with him,” then, on a more serious note, “What can I say, Jepet? I’m not too sure about that young man … At first, I liked him, but then … I mean, I found him rather odd … And it didn’t seem right to tell him things straight out that might bring a lot of distress to the families … Don’t you agree? It’s better to think things through before putting your foot in it …”

&n
bsp; And while Nonat, gripped by more devastating soul-searching, leapt acrobatically over his hosts’ imposing bed and crashed down on the squeaking, protesting mattress—which was unused to such athletic agility—Maria was in the barn clutching the bed rail to avoid falling on Jepet, who’d comfortably placed his whalelike bulk of becalmed flesh in the dip of the sheet. She herself spent a sleepless night reviewing the ins and outs of that distant episode when fate had forced her to intervene a lot or a little.

  What she knew of those events: just over twenty-two years ago, a stranger by the name of Donya Tulita had come to spend the winter months in Ruelles—for health reasons, they said at the time. She lived on the outskirts of town, past the main gate, in the only large house to rent in the village. Donya Tulita had a six-year-old daughter. The young child’s wet nurse, the sister-in-law of the Ruelles midwife, stayed on in the house after the child had been weaned to take care of her, so her mother, a delicate, simpering lass, didn’t need to worry about a thing.

  However, one day, the wet nurse caught typhus and her relative, the midwife, was summoned. The latter traveled to the city to make the acquaintance of her sister-in-law’s master and mistress. The sister-in-law was recovering, chatted to all and sundry, and had started to eat, when she overtaxed herself and had a relapse that would be the death of her. Subsequently, the midwife returned to the village, bringing a secret with her; a secret known only to the ailing woman who had confided in her. Her mistress had a lover, a military man. As a very young girl, the Senyora had worked as a maid in a magistrate’s house. Back then, her name was Tuietes, and she liked a spot of fun. One of the sons of the family, a student, fell in love with her, she returned his love, and the moment the magistrate found out, he sacked the maid.

  Tuietes moved on to the household of a childless, well-to-do couple from South America. The wife was consumptive; she struggled for months, then died. Tuietes never left her side, and her master was very grateful, became infatuated, and married her. The gentleman was twice her age and had big business concerns in South America. He took her there on their honeymoon and she became terribly homesick and after their daughter was born, it was even rumored she’d been affected mentally. They returned to Europe. Soon afterward, chance brought Tuietes’s—now Donya Tulita’s—old flame to her side—the student, now a first lieutenant in the army—and they resumed their relationship, and it was much less innocent than before. When the husband next spoke of returning to South America, where his enterprises were in urgent need of his presence, his wife resisted the idea of accompanying him, and in a veiled, though tenacious manner, alleged that her state of health didn’t allow her, cleverly drawing on medical opinion. In the end, her husband was obliged to leave by himself, and when he returned, after a long absence, the same issue arose, in the same terms, and he was forced to agree to a compromise and resign himself to spending one year in South America and the next in Spain, subsequently alternating on an almost regular basis.