A Fable

‘So,’ the blind woman said. She had nothing to blink for or from, yet there was nothing else to call it but blinking. Then her face began to turn rapidly between the girl’s and the woman’s carrying the child. Even before she spoke, the girl seemed to shrink, staring at the blind woman in terrified anticipation. Now the blind woman’s voice was silken, smooth. ‘You too have kin in the regiment, eh? Husband—brother—a sweetheart?’

‘Yes,’ the woman carrying the child said.

‘Which one of you?’ the blind woman said.

‘All three of us,’ the woman carrying the child said. ‘A brother.’

‘A sweetheart too, maybe?’ the blind woman said. ‘Come, now.’

‘Yes,’ the woman carrying the child said.

‘So, then,’ the blind woman said. She jerked her face back to the girl. ‘You,’ she said. ‘You may pretend you’re from this district, but you dont fool me. You talk wrong. And you—’ she jerked back to face the woman carrying the child again ‘—you’re not even French. I knew that the minute the two of you came up from nowhere back yonder, talking about having given your cart to a pregnant woman. Maybe you can fool them that dont have anything but eyes, and nothing to do but believe everything they look at. But not me.’

‘Angélique,’ the old man said in a thin quavering disused voice. The blind woman paid no attention to him. She faced the two women. Or the three women, the third one too: the older sister who had not spoken yet, whom anyone looking at her would never know whether she was going to speak or not, and even when she did speak it would be in no language of the used and familiar passions: suspicion or scorn or fear or rage; who had not even greeted the girl who had called the sister by a christian name, who had stopped simply because the sister had stopped and apparently was simply waiting with peaceful and infinite patience for the sister to move again, watching each speaker in turn with serene inattention.

‘So the anarchist who is murdering Frenchmen is your brother,’ the blind woman said. Still facing the woman carrying the child, she jerked her head sideways toward the girl. ‘What does she claim him as? a brother too, or maybe an uncle?’

‘She is his wife,’ the woman carrying the child said.

‘His whore, maybe you mean,’ the blind woman said. ‘Maybe I’m looking at two more of them, even if both of you are old enough to be his grandmothers. Give me the child.’ Again she moved as unerring as light toward the faint sound of the child’s breathing and before the other could move snatched the child down from her shoulder and swung it onto her own. ‘Murderers,’ she said.

‘Angélique,’ the old man said.

‘Pick it up,’ the blind woman snapped at him. It was the cloth-knotted bundle; only the blind woman, who was still facing the three other women, not even the old man himself, knew that he had dropped it. He stooped for it, letting himself carefully and with excruciating slowness hand under hand down the crutch and picked it up and climbed the crutch hand over hand again. As soon as he was up her hand went out with that sightless unerring aim and grasped his arm, jerking him after her as she moved, the child riding high on her other shoulder and staring silently back at the woman who had been carrying it; she was not only holding the old man up, she was actually leading the way. They went on to the old arch and passed beneath it. The last of sunset was gone even from the plain now.

‘Marthe,’ the girl said to the woman who had carried the child. Now the other sister spoke, for the first time. She was carrying a bundle too—a small basket neatly covered with an immaculate cloth tucked neatly down.

‘That’s because he’s different,’ she said with peaceful triumph. ‘Even people in the towns can see it.’

‘Marthe!’ the girl said again. This time she grasped the other’s arm and began to jerk at it. ‘That’s what they’re all saying! They’re going to kill him!’

‘That’s why,’ the second sister said with that serene and happy triumph.

‘Come on,’ Marthe said, moving. But the girl still clung to her arm.

‘I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid.’