as night
follows day
Pierre Moinot
Two men are found murdered in a little village in the Poitou
region of western France, a baffling, inscrutable killing that infects the lives
of its inhabitants who are suddenly forced to regard each other with suspicion
and fear. Set in the wake of WWII,
in a region sacked and settled by marauding tribes since time
immemorial (by the Celts, the Romans, the Vandals, the Visigoths, the Franks,
the Vikings, and most recently the Nazis), this short novel is a powerful,
often exceptionally tender depiction of the weight and trauma of the past. Shifting between the perspectives of
seven different villagers, male and female, young and old, the story that
unfolds is distinguished by the author’s intimate knowledge of and abiding affection
for these humble, rough-hewn folk—farmers, shepherds, and guildsmen—who, for
all of their fatalism and poverty, are richly illuminated by their propensity,
their capacity, to love.
In the opening section of the story an elderly woman named
Maria, perhaps my favorite of the many characters, reflects upon a former lover
of hers in a language and phrasing typical of Moinot: “Maybe the effect that he
had on me, the stone, there, in my chest, maybe that was jealousy after all.
But never a word. I would have gotten nothing but cajoling from him; he did not
know how to hide what he tried to win forgiveness for. And maybe I never, never forgave
anything…” Moinot’s description of these people is never condescending, but he
invests them with an intelligence—however unschooled—that is often blithesome, poetic: “Early in the morning,
closing the little valley gate, Lortier gradually concealed behind one of the
thick doors the image of his happiness: over there, in front of the house, Mo
was folding a sheet with one of her girls and both of them were laughing
because one of them had pulled too hard at the wrong time on the folded cloth,
and the other had let it go; behind them a very old rosebush was studded with
white blossoms, and the structure of the arbor bending into the flower and
vegetable gardens marked off a verdant foreground. At the center, the brilliant whiteness of the sheet
contrasted dramatically with the golden stone of the old walls and seemed to
reflect the sun into Mo’s gray hair so she appeared blond. This timeless scene erased forever the
wars, the murders, and the cruelties that the fortified house had withstood.
Lortier gently closed the door again behind him, as though to protect it.”
While particularly adept at tracking the emotional lives
of his characters, their fears and joys and failings, Moinot devotes a
significant part of his power to describing the natural world around them—the plants
and animals, the seasons and cycles to which these villagers are bound, quickening
this otherwise dark and fallow tale with a lyricism that is often sublime. The countryside of small farms
and shallow valleys is alive with blackbirds and cuckoos, with calyxes and
violets, with foxes and weasels and hares. The characters themselves have a special affection for such georgic
details, noting with pleasure, as they sit alone or cross a field or wood: “the
vibrant trembling of the dragonflies”, “the little fox and badger trail”, “ “the
perfect sphere of a leek flower gone to seed”.
Described by Booklist as a “masterful literary thriller”, As Night Follows Day is nothing of the sort,
that is, unless the thrill you seek is the thrill of language itself, in which
case you will speak with wonder about this adroit and compassionate tale.
Pierre Moinot, born in 1920, is the author of
over a dozen novels as well as works for
the stage and television.
Friend of André Malraux and Albert Camus, Moinot was elected in 1982 to
the prestigious Académie Française.
As Night Follows Day (Le matin vient et aussi la nuit,
Editions Gallimard,1999) is published in New York by Welcome Rain
Publishers. http://www.welcomerain.com/
Peter Adam Nash
No comments:
Post a Comment