Claire Sainte-Soline: Green Tobacco

Claire Sainte-Soline

Green Tobacco

Translated by Peter Newmark

WHEN the alarm rang, it was not yet half past five. The pale light ws visible below the shutters which were slightly ajar; the night was over but it wasn’t yet dawn. Freddy got out of bed at once and put on the light. He was completely naked, tall, well-built, with firm muscles. His skin was the colour of gingerbread, with a lighter strip between the belt and the top of the tights.

He pulled on his corduroy shorts, put on his large rubber boots and thus dressed, without a shirt, he was ready to go down to work. Before putting out the light, he said:

‘No need for you to get up at once. You can go on resting a bit longer. I’ll call you.’

She didn’t answer, but just made a long whimpering noise, her voice small, smothered and complaining.

Outside, the mist suggested it would be fine. The air had a sickly sweet smell of mushrooms and crushed apples. He took the pails hanging on the pump and went into the cow-shed where four cows were chewing the cud side by side at an empty rack. When he came in, three of them looked round towards him; the fourth, which had huge flanks, went on chewing, looking vaguely in front. He tied the first one’s tail, slapped her on the rump and called her: ‘Blackie, Blackie’, and sitting on a one-legged wooden stool, he got hold of the large teats. Two milk jets crossed each other and rang out on the metal.

He rather thought milking was a woman’s job but he felt he couldn’t give it to Léa to do so early in the morning. She was too slight, too fragile, still too unaccustomed to farm work. As he pulled the udder with a regular movement, he organized his day’s timetable as he did every morning during the milking: cart soya beans, pick the ripe tobacco leaves, take the light plough behind the beehives, repair the disk harrow. However much he slogged away from the first hours of dawn till dead of night, he never came to the end of the jobs he had set himself. Whatever the time of the year, the days were too short. This must have been the reason for his tempers and his violent headaches: all this work, which in spite of his efforts still remained to be done.

When he had finished milking, he went into the kitchen and filled a large saucepan with milk. At that moment he heard the imperious sound of a motor horn from the valley. Then he took the pails and quickly rushed down the stony slope.

‘You’re coming earlier every morning,’ he said. ‘If you go on like this, you’ll soon be coming in the middle of the night.’

‘It suits the customers.’ said the red-faced boy driving the van. ‘And then don’t forget I begin my round here. Today perhaps I started off earlier than usual because of the weather. The radio said there’d be storms.’

‘In these parts?’

‘Violent storms, they said. They didn’t say where.’

Freddy went back to the farms swinging the empty pails, and gave the cows an armful of fodder. According to the kitchen clock, it wasn’t six-thirty yet. When he was going in and out on his own, the hands turned astonishingly slowly. He went up to the bedroom again, opened the shutters and as the light was still dim turned on the lightbulb.

‘It said on the radio there’ll be storms today. It’s a bloody nuisance with the tobacco. Almost all the leaves are ready for picking. The downpour will ruin them and afterwards those filthy slugs will make holes in them. The crop will be done for.’

‘You mean you want me to get up and help you collect the leaves?’ Léa asked.

He didn’t reply but stood there, like a sentry, at the bottom of the bed.

_____

She sat up, pulled her legs out of the blankets and got up.

The only nightdress she wore was a pyjamas jacket hardly covering his hips. She was small, but shapely and had a milky skin; she was like a pretty doll which had been knocked about a bit. Her hair was half down and strands of it were falling over her ears. She looked moist, warm, still heavy with sleep. Freddy wanted to seize her in both arms and swing her back on to the mattress. But he remembered the tobacco. He retreated to the window while she slipped on a pair of blue cotton trousers and a woolen jersey.

‘I’m ready…’ she said, going barefoot to the stairs. ‘But we must have some breakfast before starting on the tobacco.’

While he went off to open the henhouse door and let the poultry scatter in the fields, she warmed the milk in the saucepan, put the bowls on the table and pressed the corner of a wet towel on her eyelids, her freckled cheekbones, her narrow stubborn forehead.

They sat down opposite each other and began eating. He cut himself several slices of bread, spread a thick layer of butter on them and drank three large bowls of milk. She wasn’t hungry. Seeing her husband eating with such an appetite satisfied her hunger. Besides, it was too early. She looked as though she was awake; in fact she was still half sleep.

‘It’s Saturday,’ she said. ‘I’m surprised your father didn’t come up last night. We didn’t even see him last week, he didn’t write. It’s not normal for him to leave us without news like this.’

‘The reason he doesn’t write is probably because he’s got nothing to say; and the reason he’s not coming is that he doesn’t feel like it,’ Freddy said.

He cut himself another slice of bread.

‘You were waiting for him last night,’ he went on. ‘I saw you go down the road the bus was due.’

‘I was near the hives; I thought that if he came I’d help him carry his suitcase. The climb is difficult for him with his bad leg.’

‘He’s had it since the war, he must be used to it,’ Freddy said.

‘I have the feeling he’s been keeping out of our way for some time now. Perhaps because you no longer mention getting the bakehouse ready for him to move into.’

‘I have the feeling he’s been keeping out of our way for some time now. Perhaps because you no longer mention getting the bakehouse ready for him to move into.’

Before this, they were always talking about these conversions; Freddy made plans, asked for estimates, had discussions with builders and then suddenly he stopped, not another word.

‘I’ve been thinking…’ Freddy said. ‘He’s my father; we don’t get on too badly. That’s all right. But if we meet every day of the week, we might not get on so well. And then supposing we had a succession of misfortunes – when you’re to be ready for anything – and had to sell. He would have lost his job and left his lodgings in town. What would happen to him? No, I’ll drop the idea.’

‘That’s your business. You’ll do as you like.’ Léa said. ‘Where shall we begin’

‘With the top field.’

‘All right, come on. You look for the wheelbarrow while I give the rabbits an armful of grass.’

She put on her boots, went to the rabbit-hutch and briskly climbed the hill. The fresh air was last waking her up, she loved its freshness and dampness. She had been married for over a year, but still wasn’t used to country life; being up so early in the fields surprised her, and seemed an achievement. She was still playing at being the farmer’s wife.

She got to the plot at the same time as Freddy who had come by another path. At the top there were several rows of tobacco plants about a hundred yards long. As it had been a rainy season, the plants were strong with large, dark green leaves and lighter coloured shoots, some of them about to flower. It looked like a patch of tropical vegetation that had gone astray on the hillside. The sun was struggling through the mist; one could see just enough to work by. The grass was damp but the tobacco leaves on their tall stems had not been touched by the dew from last night, and so picking was possible.

‘I’m thinner than you are; I’ll go between the rows; I’ll do less damage…’ Léa said.

He agreed and warned her to be careful to remove the buds. The inspector would come soon and if he saw shoots he wouldn’t give the bonus.

Both of them were working at the same level, breaking off the stems and the soft leaf stalks which wee full of sticky sap that made their hands brown. She went on chatting

‘How much do you think they’ll give us for the crops?’

‘I don’t know exactly. I hope and hundred and fifty thousand; but it’s a good year for everyone. The prices will go down. They’ll be hot on quality.’

‘A hundred and fifty thousand, that’s quite a large sum.’

‘You’re forgetting all the time we’re spending on this filthy tobacco, not to mention all the manure to put down.’ He went through the round of jobs as though talking to himself: sowing, transplanting, weeding, picking, curing, grading, tying tobacco-leaf hands.’

‘I like tobacco fields,’ said Léa. ‘They look quite different from potato or beetroot ones. They make the farm beautiful, don’t you think so?’

‘I’m not concerned with beauty; I’m working for money.’ The whole year he cursed this filthy tobacco and then he thought that a hundred or a hundred and fifty notes would be worth having, they’d fill a gap, and when the spring came, he asked for seed again.

‘What colour are the flowers?’ I’ve never seen them yet,’ said Léa.

He didn’t hear the question. He had gone ahead several yards, and conversation had become impossible.

As he was getting ready to roll the third wheelbarrow load of leaves, Léa appeared from the tobacco rows. The sun had emerged from the mist and the shadows of the peach trees had already shortened a lot.

‘I’ll follow you,’ she said. ‘I’ve got work to do in the house.’

_____

They both went back; him in front, pushing the wheelbarrow full of tobacco leaves; she behind, skipping about in her rubber boots; the water had made them shiny like patent leather.

‘Look at the sky, Freddy. I think your milkman was imagining things.’

‘You never know where you are with storms.’

Taking great care, he stood the leaves up in heaps along the kitchen walls while Léa buttered a piece of bread for herself. The fresh air had given her an appetite. From time to time as she ate she looked up at the clock on the wall over the sideboards or through the window at the yard which was surrounded by a fence and father on, at the stony land which went down towards the main road. Suddenly she called out:

‘Your father. Here’s your father coming.’

She got up and went to go out. Freddy merely looked round towards the yard, then she stopped still, standing close to the table and bit into her bread and butter. Marcelin opened the door.

‘Good morning, children. I know you’re not expecting me. How are you? You look well.’

He was tall and thin and used a stick to walk with. He held himself rather stiffly like an old soldier or a disabled person who doesn’t want people to pity him. He had rather irregular features but his face was sensitive and expressive, and he had fine eyes. father and son were nothing like each other; the one had a natural, slightly sickly distinction; the other a healthy, powerful, rather coarsely built body.

Marcelin kissed Léa and Freddy on both cheeks.

‘This morning when I woke up I suddenly wanted to see you. I set out at once and couldn’t let you know.’

He was laughing, but there was something forced in his gaiety.

‘We were half expecting you last night, weren’t we, Freddy?’

Freddy behaved as though he hadn’t heard anything. he went back into the field.

‘The milkman warned him there’d be a storm, he’s worried,’ Léa explained. ‘He’s afraid for the tobacco crop.’

Marcelin sat down in the straw chair in the kitchen and stretched out his bad leg.

‘Has the climb tired you, father?’

‘No, when the road is dry, it’s all right. It’s worse when it’s muddy.’

He finished, lit a cigarette and was silent for a few moments, watching Léa peel potatoes. Then he asked abruptly:

‘Tell me, daughter, has Freddy something against me?’

‘Nothing, nothing at all. What do you think he’s got against you?’

‘I don’t know. I feel he’s in a bad mood when I come.’ He was silent for a moment and then went on: ‘He never mentions the bakehouse anymore. Before, that was all he ever thought about; I was the one who kept restraining him, who hesitated to set up home here. Finally, I agreed. Now, the thing’s never mentioned.’

‘Freddy’s got too much work, father, you can’t imagine what a lot of work he’s got. I’m well aware I’m not much help to him. Running a farm like this without a servant is too difficult. It’s killing him.’

‘I said I’d pay for the workers.’

‘They’d have to be supervised. It would mean a whole lot more work, and more worries. He’s got too many already.’

The father admitted he was not really in a position to help his son; at the most he could be of some use to him with the upkeep of the farm implements.

‘That’s what I say, but as he doesn’t think that way now, let’s not talk about it any more. How you got something for me to do? You’ve got your handyman at home, make use of him.’

The iron had broken. She went and fetched it. He took a knife with several blades from his pocket, put on his glasses and started on a screw.

As he worked, eh watched Léa moving around at the kitchen stove. She had changed a lot since she had been at the farm. She used to wear skirts billowing around her knees, silk blouses, dainty shoes; her hair was well combed, not a strand escaped from her chignon. Still, this boy’s costume suited her too, it was original, provocative, that was undeniable. She was pretty enough not to have to bother about her dress, and feminine enough to wear trousers.

‘You don’t miss the town too much.’

‘No, except in the morning perhaps, when I have to get up and there’s no light yet.’

‘I was afraid you wouldn’t be able to get used to the country.’

‘How come you kept encouraging me to marry Freddy? You certainly knew I’d have to live here, in this lonely farm.’

‘It was an unexpected piece of luck for him, and as for me, I’d never have found a daughter-in-law like you.’

_____

Freddy came back twice and brought tobacco leaves into the kitchen. He kept the wheelbarrow outside the door and brought in great armfuls and stood them up along the walls. He didn’t say a word to his father. When his father asked if the crop was good, he merely grunted evasively.

The meal afterwards was almost silent. All three were hungry and though they didn’t talk much, at least they ate heartily.

‘She’s going to be a good cook,’ said the father.

‘You don’t have to be a cordon bleu to cook a slice of ham,’ retorted Freddy.

He took some more potatoes and turned to Léa.

‘You haven’t even combed your hair. You could go to the hairdresser.’

‘I meant to go down today, but it was said that the storm will break and we must hurry and collect the tobacco. So I can leave my hair for another day.’

She was clearly trying to be humorous, to change her husband’s mood, but her efforts were in vain.

Freddy was the first to leave the table. Léa began clearing away and stopped to take down and mirror which she put in front of her, against a pitcher. She tried various hairstyles, but her smooth fine hair, which was either too long or too short, wouldn’t go up at all.

‘Let me try,’ said Marcelin.

He put his stick against a chair and first let her locks fall round her head, and then tucked up the ends, so as to make a kind of bonnet. This silky bonnet with its reddish lights exaggerated the curve of her cheek-bones, refined the chin and made her eyes narrower.

‘That’s how it would suit you. Naturally you’d have to cut it all round.’

So that she could see herself better, he stood behind her and kept her hair firmly in place with both hands.

‘It’s certainly true that it improves my looks,’ she said. ‘But Freddy would never let me do my hair like this. He’d say I don’t look respectable enough.’

Marcelin said nothing and pressed her little head closer between his palms. Léa remained motionless as though petrified; she went on looking in the mirror at something further away and apparently much less distinct, not her reflection anymore.

A cloud of flies came in through the window and began buzzing on the ceiling. The sun clouded over; the room, at first light, was now suddenly filled with shadow. Then Léa shook her head lightly to release herself from the embrace and Marcelin let her hair fall.

That very moment Freddy came into the room without them hearing him. He looked at Léa with her locks on her neck, on her f ace and his father standing behind her.

_____

‘They said it was coming, and now it is, their fine storm.’ She said after a silence, during which the buzzing of the flies seemed louder.

Freddy left the room without answering.

‘I’ll ldo the washing up there,’ Léa said. ‘The tobacco is more urgent at the moment.’

She tied her hair at the back of her neck with a bit of shoelace and went out with Marcelin.

They walked towards another field behind the house near the orchard. The father had some difficulty in walking on the uneven ground in the lucerne field. The grass was still damp in the shady places at the bottoms of his trousers were soon soaked.

‘I should have lent you Freddy’s boots…’ Léa said.

She wasn’t skipping around anymore. Her face had a serious worried look.

‘I mustn’t hold you up, child.’ Marcelin said. ‘You go in front, I’ll follow you.’

Freddy had already had filled the wheelbarrow. He gave his father orders in the same tone of voice as if he were ordering about an inexperienced servant.

‘Pick from the bottom… leave four leaves… careful you don’t make any tears… remove all the shoots… You understand?’

‘I think so.’

The sky above their heads was still blue but in the west it was turning a dark threatening grey. The sun had already disappeared behind the clouds rising above the horizon.

Léa and Freddy went between the rows whilst Marcelin went round the plot. He had to use his stick for each step forward. Then he dug it a bit into the ground so as to have his hands free to work with. Freddy supervised him through the gaps between the plants and sometimes criticized him unsparingly:

‘Come on, they should all be in the same direction… you’ve left out a shoot. You must break them off lower otherwise at the first gust of wind the stem-eds will rip the leaves’

The father would have never thought green tobacco required such care. He tried to obey, but he felt he was being slow and clumsy. Still the work would have been enjoyable if he hadn’t had to stand and if Freddy hadn’t been so bad-tempered. The luxuriant vegetation seemed to remove him from his normal surroundings, and the slowly penetrating and intoxicating smell helped to give this impression. And Léa was there; she was doing the same job, she was making the same movements as he was. The plants were too high for him to have a hope of seeing her; but sometimes he sensed her presence between the leaves.

After about an hour, he got cramp in his leg.

‘I’d like to sit down a little now,’ he said. ‘I could string the leaves if one of you would show me how to do it.’

Léa followed him to the house. He sat down at the kitchen table while she threw a sack down near the wall and settled down away from him, on the stone floor. The strings were ready. They had to thread the leaves on face to face and back to back, with a long, flat, sharply pointed needle. As soon as the leaves were pressed against the needle, they were slid along the thread.

‘I don’t care about the flies,’ said Léa. ‘I’m opening the window. This smell makes me dizzy.’

After the leaves had been handled and pricked they spread a more and more powerful scent into the room; it was bittersweet, making the air thick, substantial and barely breathable.

_____

Whenever he came to unload another wheelbarrow, Freddy surveyed the work and didn’t once find it to his satisfaction. Marcelin was putting in the needle too close to the midrib, or the edge of the knife hadn’t been quite parallel to the fibres and the leaf had cracked.

‘He’s just as strict with me you know, father,’ Léa said when Freddy had gone again. ‘He’s right. I knew nothing about farming; I’ve got everything to learn and I’m afraid and not very gifted.’

‘He wasn’t at all gifted for study,’ the father said. ‘He might remember that and have a little patience.’

‘Before a storm, no one has any patience…’ Léa said.

She remembered she hadn’t given the mash to the young turkeys and went out into the yard.

‘Where has she gone now?’ Freddy asked when he returned with fresh armfuls of leaves. ‘She hasn’t been able to stay in one place since this morning.’

The picking was now over. Freddy shut the window to avoid draughts and began taking the heavy fragile garlands of leaves up to the loft. He put one on each shoulder. His naked bronzed torso emerged from the broad leaves and his corduroy shorts were no longer visible. He looked like a god richly dressed and spreading a heady perfume around him. When he returned from the loft he threw back at his father two leaves that had come off on the way. He didn’t say that they had been badly strung, but the reproach was implied.

Marcelin’s needle slipped on the leaf fib and went deeply into the base of his thumb. He pressed the flesh and was surprised to see a little pink liquid slightly oozing from it.

‘I’ve pricked myself, but it’s not bleeding.’

‘If it was serious it would bleed…’ Freddy said.

And as the garlands were all hanging in the loft, he went off to inspect the disk harrow.

Marcelin was glad Léa hadn’t seen her husband dressed in tobacco leaves. It was an absurd feeling; she must have already watched him many times transformed into the god Pan; but he preferred her not to be here.

‘I’ve just stuck the needle into my thumb,’ he said when she came back from the hen-roost. ‘It’s odd, it’s not bleeding. Perhaps it’s because of the nicotine.’

She took his hand which he was holding out to her and examined it.

‘I can’t see much, with sticky juice like this,’ she said.

And she dropped her hand which he had hurt. A few weeks earlier, in the middle of the summer, when he had been stung on the shoulder by a bee which had got under his shirt, she had been much gentler. She had pulled out the sting and had sucked the wound for a long time, drawing in the poison. Freddy had come while this was going on.

‘Father has just been stung by a bee,’ Léa had said.

Nothing new had happened but everything had been revealed darkly, everything had gone wrong that day.

The light had dimmed and although it wasn’t late, night was already falling. Absorbed in the work, Marcelin only noticed it when Léa put the light on.

‘I wonder how you can go on shut up in this room,’ she said. ‘The smell makes me sick. I’ll open the window.’

_____

When Freddy came back, she was breathing deeply and watching the dark deserted yard.

‘Having a rest? Enjoying the fresh air?’ he said sharply. ‘Is there nothing for you to do in the house?’

‘It’s the tobacco smell. The storm. I’m stifling….’ Léa said. ‘I think I’m going to be sick. There was silence. She added: ’The tobacco leaves are under cover now.’

‘They are under cover, but they’re not all strung and they’ll rot along the wall, as you know. You’ve been wasting your time since this morning. Yet there’s plenty of work for you to do. It’s no good my slaving away by myself; I can’t do everything on my own.’

Léa took a bucket and went out. Her face had become quite expressionless and very pale.

‘Perhaps she’s tired…’ the father said. ‘Farm work is hard; she wasn’t used to it.’

‘Mind your own business. That’s the advice I’m giving you…’ Freddy said:

Marcelin waited for Léa’s return. Then he got up and said that an old friend from his regiment was due to come early the next morning. He had forgotten about this visit. He would have to return at once on the evening bus.

‘You’ve only just got time,’ said Freddy.

The father displayed both of his hands stained with tobacco juice.

‘Let me wash them at least…’ Marcelin said.

Léa’s eyes became shiny.

‘That smell!’ she said. ‘I can’t stand that smell any longer.’ Her voice was weak, hesitant, as though she was going to cry. ‘The air would do me good perhaps. I could go with father and carry his suitcase.’

‘No, you won’t!’ said Freddy. ‘It’ll go. I’ll use the time to kill a few crows, if there still are any over the ploughed fields.’

He took down his gun, slung it across his shoulder and picked up his suitcase.

‘Goodbye, father!’ Léa mumbled.

She touched one of Marcelin’s cheeks with her lips.

‘Quick!’ Freddy edged his father on. ‘There’s no time to lose.’

On the stony lane Marcelin found walking difficult as he couldn’t see the ruts or the pebbles in the dim light. In front of him Freddy walked quickly and triumphantly. A flash of lightning, the first one, lit up the sky which was full of rainclouds in the west. A roll of thunder followed almost at once and re-echoed in the valley. And then the rain began falling; big drops, but scattered. When the main road came into sight, a pale trail at the bottom of the hill, the father said:

‘Go home, there’s no need to get wet. I am quite capable of doing the rest of my own.’

He took the suitcase, waited a moment hoping for a word, for a handshake; but Freddy said nothing and made no gesture.

‘Go home quickly!’ Marcelin repeated. ‘There’ll be a downpour any minute…’

He took a dozen steps and heard a shot at his back. He turned around. Freddy was brandishing the gun at arm’s length like a trophy and bursting out in a huge wild laugh.

Marcelin, the father, started walking again. He had to take are not to bend his back, not to hurry, and this prevented him from thinking, prevented him from suffering. His stick rang out on the road at regular intervals while above him the storm was finally breaking.