Chapter One
We were drinking a light punch, the kind we had when I was young, and all sitting around the fire, my Erard cousins, their children and I. It was an autumn evening, the whole sky red above the
sodden fields of turned earth. The fiery sunset promised a strong wind the next day; the crows were cawing. This large, icy house is full of draughts. They blew in from everywhere with the
sharp, rich tang of autumn. My cousin Hélène and her daughter, Colette, were shivering beneath the shawls I’d lent them, cashmere shawls that had belonged to my mother. They asked how I could
live in such a rat hole, just as they did every time they came to see me, and Colette, who is shortly to be married, spoke proudly of the charms of the Moulin-Neuf where she would soon be
living, and “where I hope to see you often, Cousin Silvio,” she said. She looked at me with pity. I am old, poor and unmarried, holed up in a farmer’s hovel in the middle of the woods. Everyone
knows I’ve travelled, that I’ve worked my way through my inheritance. A prodigal son. By the time I got back to the place where I was born, even the fatted calf had waited for me for so long it
had died of old age. Comparing their lot with mine, the Erards no doubt forgave me for borrowing money I had never returned and repeated, after their daughter, “You live like an animal here,
you poor dear. You should go and spend the summer with Colette once she’s settled in.”
I still have happy moments, though they don’t realise it. Today, I’m alone; the first snow has fallen. This region, in the middle of France, is both wild and rich. Everyone livesin his own
house, on his own land, distrusts his neighbours, harvests his wheat, counts his money and doesn’t give a thought to the rest of the world. No châteaux, no visitors. A bourgeoisie reigns here
that has only recently emerged from the working classes and is still very close to them, part of a rich bloodline that loves everything that has its roots in the land. My family is spread over
the entire province—an extensive network of Erards, Chapelains, Benoîts, Montrifauts; they are important farmers, lawyers, government officials, landowners. Their houses are imposing and
isolated, built far from the villages and protected by great forbidding doors with triple locks, like the doors you find in prisons. Their flat gardens contain almost no flowers, nothing but
vegetables and fruit trees trained to produce the best yield. Their sitting rooms are stuffed full of furniture and always shut up; they live in the kitchen to save money on firewood. I’m not
talking about François and Hélène Erard, of course; I have never been in a home more pleasant, welcoming, intimate, warm and happy than theirs. But, in spite of everything, my idea of the
perfect evening is this: I am completely alone; my housekeeper has just put the hens in their coop and gone home, and I am left with my pipe, my dog nestled between my legs, the sound of the
mice in the attic, a crackling fire, no newspapers, no books, a bottle of red wine warming slowly on the hearth.
“Why do people call you Silvio?” asked Colette.
“A beautiful woman who was once in love with me thought I looked like a gondolier,” I replied. “That was over twenty years ago and, at the time, I had black hair and a handlebar moustache. She
changed my name from Sylvestre to Silvio.”
“But you look like a faun,” said Colette, “with your wide forehead, turned-up nose, pointed ears and laughing eyes. Sylvestre, creature of the woods. That suits you very well.”
Of all of Hélène’s children, Colette is my favourite. She isn’t beautiful, but she has the quality that, when I was young, I used to value most in women: she has fire. Her eyes laugh like mine
and her large mouth too; her hair is black and fine, peeping out in delicate curls from behind the shawl, which she has pulled over her head to keep the draught from her neck. People say she
looks like the young Hélène. But I can’t remember. Since the birth of a third son, little Loulou, who’s nine years old now, Hélène has put on weight and the woman of forty-eight, whose soft
skin has lost its bloom, obscures my memory of the Hélène I knew when she was twenty. She looks calm and happy now.
This gathering at my house was arranged to introduce Colette’s fiancé to me. His name is Jean Dorin, one of the Dorins from the Moulin-Neuf, who’ve been millers for generations. A beautiful
river, frothy and green, runs past their mill. I used to go trout fishing there when Dorin’s father was still alive.
