Heart

That day, despite the intense heat, I found her kneeling, weeding a square of beets. She sat back on her heels, abruptly flipped her straw hat behind her head, wiped her hands on her apron, and said to me:

"Well, how much prize money?"

"Six livres, Mother, and I've won the scholarship."

"Show me!"

I handed her the books, similar to all prize books, red with gilded edges. How ridiculous and trivial they seemed to me! I was ashamed of them, I despised them. Red, golden, false—colors of fake glory. Signs of my false knowledge. Signs of my servitude.

My mother stood up and went into the house. She took her key ring—a hefty bunch of iron keys where all the keys in the world seemed to have gathered.

"Give me the money!"

I reached into my pocket and took out the purse. She almost snatched it from me.

"Move along! Do you think I have time to dawdle? Get changed, then come help me finish the plot before dinner!"

I didn't respond. I looked at my mother, and a certainty settled within me, irresistible. I realized that I hated her.

She locked the money in the small desk.

"I'll write to the headmaster tomorrow to arrange your admission. Good thing you got the scholarship..."

"I won't be going back to school next year," I declared so clearly that I thought I heard someone else's voice. It was the voice of a man.

I saw blood rush to my mother's face, flooding her tanned forehead and neck. For the first time, I sensed her waver, hesitate! It gave me immense pleasure. I repeated:

"I won't be going back to school. I'll never go to the seminary! You'd better not count on me to restore your reputation..."

My mother sprang up like a tigress. Very lucid, I observed the scene. As I backed toward the door, I couldn't help but notice the supple strength of this tall woman. Her face was completely distorted, almost hideous. I thought that perhaps hatred and death would disfigure me in the same way one day. I heard the clinking of the key ring. She brandished it high. I glimpsed its metallic gleam, like a lightning strike descending upon me. My mother struck me several times on the head. I lost consciousness.

When I reopened my eyes, I was lying alone on the floor. I felt a sharp pain in my head. I had become deaf.

From that day on, a crack formed in my oppressed life. The heavy silence of deafness enveloped me, accompanied by a strange inclination to dream. No voice, no external sound reached me anymore—not the crashing of waterfalls nor the chirping of crickets. Yet, I remained sure of this: I could still hear the torrent within me, our home, and the estate. I didn't own the world, but it had changed: a part of the world now owned me. The domain of water, mountains, and cavernous depths had placed its sovereign mark on me.

I believed I had freed myself from my mother, yet I discovered other ties binding me to the land.

My eyes lingered on our house, low and sprawling, and, facing it, the outbuildings of the same austere style, the sparse patches of cultivated fields, and the rhythmically rugged forests stretching out against the wild mountains. And above all, the presence of water: the freshness in the air, the variety of plants, the frogs' croaking. Streams, a gentle river, clear or stagnant ponds, and near the house, bubbling within a rocky precipice—the torrent.

The torrent suddenly assumed the importance it should always have had in my life. Or rather, I became aware of its hold on me. I fought against its domination. It felt as though a perpetual spray rose from the falls, clinging to my clothes, books, furniture, walls, coating my daily life with an indefinable taste of water that tightened my chest.