Small Lives by Pierre Michon Page A

dismembering another victim limb by limb, meticulously, but only for the sake of doing it, and without pleasure. He persisted in this sickening toil well beyond study hours, until meal times, and during recess in the playground where, stoic, curled into the roots of a chestnut tree, in a noisy corner of the shelter, he lost himself in some Quo vadis or other children’s saga of ancient Rome, which tormented him. He had a hard fist; he flew off the handle at the least presumption of offence and, no less sickened but more cheerfully, hammered the offender; if his ludicrous vice and eternal grimace inspired laughter, we hid it behind our sleeves. Thus he read; he walked toward the small library at the end of the playground shelter, not far from the dark corner where I had seen him bare his teeth for the first time; if he encountered his brother, they hissed like cats, frozen, treacherous, and violently deaf to the world; then passed on their way or once again seized each other, passionately clouting the other’s ears.
    I wondered what their shared Sundays could have been like, over there in Saint-Priest-Palus, from which they had emerged with difficulty, on the rocky plateau toward Gentioux, under the roof of a poor farm on that barren soil where heather and springs hardly scratch the surly breastplate of lean granite with pink and coolness. To read Salammbô there was inexplicably comic; and what collection could have germinated there, what idea of a collection even, other than the unhoardable and unchanging series of the seasons that sweep over you, the weary oaths of the father, the heads of a herd of sheep? But I could see them, their odds and ends left in a jumble on the big table six o’clock on a winter evening, books and spinning tops spattered by the fresh milk in the big pail under the mirage of the lamp, I could see them as easily as their mother could see them through the window, on the moor in the coming night, relentlessly pursuing, approaching, recognizing, and seizing each other, devoting themselves, blow upon blow, to one another, offering their thrashings to the black pines, the first flight of owls, the dogs tied to the ground, howling at those birds soaring upwards, pious, bashed little sacrificers, their lips split, their tears bitter. And the old wind in its stormy beard of pines casts a favorable eye upon which of the two? Perhaps someone chooses one and destroys the other, or chooses one to better destroy him, we do not know which.
    Thus Achilles, according to one of those strange, sad fantasies that give ruined lives passion and even a point of honor, took a liking to the older Bakroot brother. When the bell released the tired old scholar from his little hour of hell, when, unaware of the taunts of the little devils darting between his legs, he crossed the wide courtyard withhis very dignified step, always slow and as though benumbed by some calm dream, it often happened that by some rigged chance, Roland was suddenly there, not right in his path, but a few meters to the side of that dreamy trajectory, that they might thus meet. And, although they immediately perceived each other from the corner of the eye, the old man leaving the courtyard (concealing perhaps a delighted, teasing smile) and the young boy over the pages of some classic saga that sickened him, although they awaited one another without surprise, they made a show at the last minute of recognizing each other and being astonished by the unforeseeable good fortune that brought them face to face. Achilles came to a stop, then drew closer, raising his loud, suddenly cheery voice; he rested his hand heavily on the shoulder of the boy who reddened, tenderly roughing him up; he questioned, patient and ironically scolding, inquiring about his current reading; the boy stammered, and awkwardly, a bit ashamed, showed him the book’s title. Then Achilles theatrically released his shoulder, and stepping back, regarded Roland with wide