Read Online Lovers (9781609459192) by Howard (TRN) Daniel; Curtis Arsand - Free Book Online
Authors: Howard (TRN) Daniel; Curtis Arsand
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12
B althazar is staying with his friend Saint-Polgues, who owns both the moor and the village. The Créon chateau is leagues away. He will return home across the plains, following improbable roads, plunging into the dark forests, but this time it will be an uneventful journey, in other words a safe journey. Because the trees and animals he encounters will be the same as those that surround them now, in this place where they have been meeting for days. There will be nothing out of the ordinary.
They have already met several times. Some of the villagers have seen them in conversation, one manâs shoulder resting on the otherâs thigh, in a kind of embrace. Tongues have started wagging. The Faures are dismayed at having a buggerer as a son. He is regularly whipped, with insults added to the lashes. They scorn their son, although they cannot bring themselves to hate him. They predict that he will burn at the stake one day, as will that ogre Créon, with his powdered hair and satin bow. Those two wretched buggerers should have their throats cut, roars père Faure. Everybody knows Sébastien is seeing that bastard with a noble name every cursed day. Both should be killed, one after the other, but which to kill first?
There will be no killing.
One October evening, the coach with the Créon arms comes to a halt outside the Fauresâ house. It is as a prince that Balthazar crosses their threshold. Faure yells and screams with anger, with the disgust he feels for sodomites, his humiliation at having fathered one. But his rage subsides as soon as BaltÂhazar puts a heap of gold crowns down between the two of them. During her husbandâs outburst, and then while the deal is being concluded (Sébastien will live with Créon, everything possible will be done to make him a doctor of renown, he will go to Court, he will treat the King of Franceâpredictions that reduce his father to silence), Ãlise Faure does not leave the dark corner to which she withdrew when Créon arrived. Henbane, hemlock, digitalis, she mutters. An incantation that no longer works, Elise knows, she has been defeated, and that is something new to her.
Iâm ready, says Sébastien.
13
T he curtains have been drawn, the seats are padded with cushions, from a basket there wafts a rich smell of roast poultry, fresh bread, and pears.
The coach is a trundling cage, a swaying cradle, a cave.
It is dark and cold. Yes, the trees that line the road are doubtless the same as on Saint-Polguesâ property, and so are the animals that loom up out of the darkness, little owls and roe deer, but to Sébastien this world, however familiar, is imbued with a sense of the unknown. In a state of elation, he says farewell to this thing and that, a bridge, a wood, a fallow. What traces will these surroundings leave in him? Do some things sink into oblivion forever? Landscapes, feelings, habits.
14
I n calm but unequivocal words (though Sébastien has stopped hearing him: his head nods, his body sags, his eyes close, and he falls asleep), Balthazar ventures declarations, dares to announce what his protégéâs future will be, wonders about the indestructibility of all friendship.
You will be my pupil, you will be my master, you will achieve fame, you will be faithful to me, you will abandon me, you will always come back to me.
And at dawn we will say to each other: We are together.
15
C réon will forget nothing of this journey, the only one that will ever truly matter to him.
Amid the reds and silver of the cushions, their silk smelling of chalk, and against the damask covering the window, a fifteen-year-old boy, thin, frail, very frail, but beneath his rough clothes his flesh is warm. A young peasant, a boy exceptionally gifted to feel love. Créon will often tell himself that.
He will never forget the darkness glimpsed through the chinks in the curtains. Soot studded with slivers of moonlight, blackish-brown
B althazar is staying with his friend Saint-Polgues, who owns both the moor and the village. The Créon chateau is leagues away. He will return home across the plains, following improbable roads, plunging into the dark forests, but this time it will be an uneventful journey, in other words a safe journey. Because the trees and animals he encounters will be the same as those that surround them now, in this place where they have been meeting for days. There will be nothing out of the ordinary.
They have already met several times. Some of the villagers have seen them in conversation, one manâs shoulder resting on the otherâs thigh, in a kind of embrace. Tongues have started wagging. The Faures are dismayed at having a buggerer as a son. He is regularly whipped, with insults added to the lashes. They scorn their son, although they cannot bring themselves to hate him. They predict that he will burn at the stake one day, as will that ogre Créon, with his powdered hair and satin bow. Those two wretched buggerers should have their throats cut, roars père Faure. Everybody knows Sébastien is seeing that bastard with a noble name every cursed day. Both should be killed, one after the other, but which to kill first?
There will be no killing.
One October evening, the coach with the Créon arms comes to a halt outside the Fauresâ house. It is as a prince that Balthazar crosses their threshold. Faure yells and screams with anger, with the disgust he feels for sodomites, his humiliation at having fathered one. But his rage subsides as soon as BaltÂhazar puts a heap of gold crowns down between the two of them. During her husbandâs outburst, and then while the deal is being concluded (Sébastien will live with Créon, everything possible will be done to make him a doctor of renown, he will go to Court, he will treat the King of Franceâpredictions that reduce his father to silence), Ãlise Faure does not leave the dark corner to which she withdrew when Créon arrived. Henbane, hemlock, digitalis, she mutters. An incantation that no longer works, Elise knows, she has been defeated, and that is something new to her.
Iâm ready, says Sébastien.
13
T he curtains have been drawn, the seats are padded with cushions, from a basket there wafts a rich smell of roast poultry, fresh bread, and pears.
The coach is a trundling cage, a swaying cradle, a cave.
It is dark and cold. Yes, the trees that line the road are doubtless the same as on Saint-Polguesâ property, and so are the animals that loom up out of the darkness, little owls and roe deer, but to Sébastien this world, however familiar, is imbued with a sense of the unknown. In a state of elation, he says farewell to this thing and that, a bridge, a wood, a fallow. What traces will these surroundings leave in him? Do some things sink into oblivion forever? Landscapes, feelings, habits.
14
I n calm but unequivocal words (though Sébastien has stopped hearing him: his head nods, his body sags, his eyes close, and he falls asleep), Balthazar ventures declarations, dares to announce what his protégéâs future will be, wonders about the indestructibility of all friendship.
You will be my pupil, you will be my master, you will achieve fame, you will be faithful to me, you will abandon me, you will always come back to me.
And at dawn we will say to each other: We are together.
15
C réon will forget nothing of this journey, the only one that will ever truly matter to him.
Amid the reds and silver of the cushions, their silk smelling of chalk, and against the damask covering the window, a fifteen-year-old boy, thin, frail, very frail, but beneath his rough clothes his flesh is warm. A young peasant, a boy exceptionally gifted to feel love. Créon will often tell himself that.
He will never forget the darkness glimpsed through the chinks in the curtains. Soot studded with slivers of moonlight, blackish-brown
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