Jacques the Fatalist: And His Master (29 page)

JACQUES
: It was a wedding feast. Friar Jean had married one of our neighbour’s daughters and I was a groomsman. I was seated at table between the two jokers of the parish. I looked like a right booby, but I wasn’t as much of a fool as they thought. They asked me a few questions about what happens on wedding nights and I gave them some pretty dumb answers. They were splitting their sides with laughter and the wives of these two jokers shouted down from the other end of the table: ‘What’s the matter with you? You’re having a good time over there.’

‘It’s just too funny for words,’ one of them replied to his wife. ‘I’ll tell you about it tonight.’

The other wife, who was just as curious, asked her husband the same question and got the same reply. The meal continued. So did the questions and my stupid answers, the bursts of laughter and the surprise of the women. And then, after the meal the dance, and after the dance the nuptial bed for the happy couple, the giving away of the bride’s garter and bed for me. And bed for the two jokers as well, who told the incomprehensible unbelievable fact to their wives that at twenty-two years of age, hale and hearty as I was, good-looking, alert and sound in mind, I was as pure, as pure as the day I came from my mother’s belly. And then it was the turn of the wives to marvel as much as their husbands had done.

But the very next day Suzanne beckoned me: ‘Jacques, have you nothing to do?’

‘No, neighbour. Can I be of service to you?’

‘I would like… I would like…’ and as she said ‘I would like’ she
squeezed my hand and looked at me in a singular way… ‘I would like you to take our bill-hook and come with me to the common and help me to cut two or three sheaves because it’s too hard for me all alone.’

‘Certainly, Madame Suzanne.’

I took the bill-hook and off we went. On the way Suzanne let her head fall on to my shoulder, tickled my chin, pulled my ears and pinched my sides. We arrived. It was a sloping field. Suzanne stretched herself out at the top of the slope, her arms behind her head, her legs wide apart. I was beneath her cutting on the slope. Suzanne bent her legs drawing her heels up to her thighs. Since her knees were in the air her skirts didn’t come down very far. I was still cutting away on the slope hardly looking where I was cutting and missing most of the time. At last Suzanne spoke: ‘Jacques, you will finish soon, won’t you.’

And I replied: ‘Whenever you want, Madame Suzanne.’

‘Can’t you see’, she half-whispered, ‘that I want you to finish?’

So I finished, got my breath back and finished again. And Suzanne…

JACQUES
: That is true, but she wasn’t fooled and smiled at me and said: ‘Well, you certainly fooled my husband. God, you’re a rogue.’

‘What do you mean by that, Madame Suzanne?’

‘Nothing, nothing. You know very well what I mean. But fool me again a few more times and I forgive you.’

I tied up her bundles, put them on my back and we came back, her to her house and me to ours.

JACQUES
: Perhaps she would have been worth more to another man or on another day. Every moment has its price.

Some time after that Marguerite, the wife of the other joker, had some grain which needed milling and didn’t have the time to go to the mill. She came to ask my father if one of his boys could go for her. Since I was the biggest she was sure that his choice would fall on me – which it did.
Marguerite left. I followed, loaded the sack on to the mule and drove it to the mill – alone. Her grain milled, we started on our way back – the mule and I – sadly, because I thought I would be left unrewarded for my pains. I was wrong. The road from the mill to the village passed through a little wood. It was there that I found Marguerite sitting by the roadside. Dusk was falling.

‘Jacques,’ she said to me, ‘there you are at last! Do you know I’ve been waiting here for a whole interminable hour?’

– Reader, you are being far too pedantic… Very well, interminable hour is what a society lady would call it and damned hour is what Marguerite would call it.

JACQUES
: Madame Marguerite, I’d like that…

And so there I was seated beside her to chat and all the time we were silent. So I said to her: ‘Madame Marguerite, you’re not saying anything to me and we’re not chatting.’

JACQUES
: The other one wasn’t fooled by me and I wanted to make sure that this one was. On my reply Madame Marguerite burst into fits of laughter which seemed as if they would never stop. I was speechless and asked her what she found so much to laugh about. Marguerite said she was laughing at my innocence.

‘Are you telling me that at your age you really don’t know any more than that?’

‘No, Madame Marguerite…’

At that Marguerite fell silent and I did the same: ‘But, Madame Marguerite,’ I said to her, ‘we sat down here to chat and you haven’t said a word and we’re not chatting. Madame Marguerite, what’s wrong with you? Are you dreaming?’

MARGUERITE
: Yes I’m dreaming… dreaming… dreaming…

As she was saying ‘I’m dreaming’ her breasts were rising and falling, her voice growing weaker, her limbs trembling, her eyes closed, her mouth half open. She let forth a great sigh and I pretended I thought she was dead and started shouting in a tone of terror: ‘Madame Marguerite! Madame Marguerite! Speak to me! Madame Marguerite, are you ill?’

MARGUERITE
: He’s used to it…

Marguerite came out of her faint little by little and said to me: ‘I was dreaming that at the wedding night eight days ago my man and Suzanne’s made fun of you and I felt sorry for you and then I felt all peculiar.’

JACQUES
: Ah, Madame Marguerite, teach me, I beg you. I will be ever so grateful to you. Please teach me…

While I was begging her I was gripping her hands and she was gripping mine. I was kissing her eyes and she was kissing me on the mouth. By now it was quite dark so I said to her: ‘I can see, Madame Marguerite, that you don’t care about me enough to teach me. I am very hurt. Come on. Let’s get up and go back.’

Marguerite became quiet. She took hold of one of my hands. I don’t know where she put it but the fact is I cried out: ‘There’s nothing there! There’s nothing there!’

JACQUES
: No, no. The fact is that I took one name for the other and instead of saying Marguerite I said Suzon. The fact is that I made Marguerite realize that it was not her who was teaching me on that day but Suzon who had taught me – a bit differently, it is true – three or four days earlier. The fact is that she said to me: ‘What, it was Suzon and not me?’

The fact is that I replied: ‘It was neither of you.’

The fact is that while she was all the time making fun of herself, Suzon, their two husbands, and throwing little insults at me, I found myself on top of her, and consequently she found herself underneath me, and while she was admitting that she enjoyed it a lot like that but not as much as the other way round she found herself back on top of me and consequently I found myself underneath her. The fact is that after some moments of rest and silence I found myself neither underneath nor on top of her and consequently she found herself neither on top of nor underneath me, because we were both on our sides, her head was bent forward and her two buttocks were stuck against my two thighs. The fact is that if I had not known so much, the good Marguerite would have taught me everything there was to learn. The fact is that we had a lot of trouble getting back to the village. The fact is that my sore throat has got much worse and there is no sign of me being in a position to talk for the next fortnight.