Lovers on All Saints' Day Read Online Free Page B

air, love. We need to forget it all for a little while.”
    “Forget it all,” Michelle repeated.
    I told her I loved her. I told her we’d come back and keep talking. Look at the afternoon, I said. The sun’s not shining, but there’s lots of light, and I want you to come with us.
    Michelle ended up accepting, and while we put on thick wool socks, sitting on the coach-house steps, she told me she was confident. For a moment, it seemed like she really believed it. She turned on the light in the little room and a moth flew outside. She got two pairs of boots out and looked for our jackets while I prepared the Browning and the ammunition. On the gravel courtyard, Pierre was playing with the dogs. He already had his rifle slung over his shoulder.
    “It’s difficult,” said Michelle. “I suppose that’s normal. These things have to be difficult.”
    “We’ll try,” I said.
    “I know, I’m the one who wants to try. But I don’t know if it can work. Be honest: you don’t believe a word of what we talked about.”
    It was true. I’d imagined the moment of separation so many times that I was now able to vary the details or the settings as if I were planning a film. Sometimes it would happen at night, after a fierce argument; other times, I’d leave before dawn, like a coward or a thief, aware I could no longer bear Michelle’s sadness or the burden of her tears. Now I was assailed by the certainty that it would all happen sooner than expected. At any moment we’d look each other in the eye and understand there was no longer any solution. That’s what I was expecting: a blow, painless and sharp. Then, as difficult as the moment might be, we’d each start over again on our own. And it would all, undoubtedly, be best for both of us.
    —
    T HE PATH WAS COVERED in fresh mud. I felt the same pleasure as always, the pleasure of setting out from an open space where the stone buildings of Modave were visible, and advancing bit by bit, without changing paths, into the oilseed fields, through those crops of tall stems and yellow flowers where I used to get lost as a boy. Going hunting in the afternoons was different. Mornings meant large groups of old hunters, unavoidable rituals, solemnity. In the afternoons, it wasn’t like that. One went out hunting to breathe the mountain air and to feel the silence and the solitude and the coolness in the trees. Pierre walked in front of us. The dogs ran several meters ahead, stopped to wait for us, then bounded ahead again. Michelle looked beautiful. Her hair changed hue against the corduroy collar of her jacket. The sky was a single cloud the color of smoke, smooth and uniform. Behind Michelle, almost at shoulder height, the stalks of the crop formed an even wall beside the path. A string of black ducks flew overhead, but too high.
    “What did you bring?” asked Pierre.
    I showed him the barrel of my rifle. The ducks were beyond our range.
    “Doesn’t matter. It’s going to be a good day,” said Pierre. “If it’s like this here, imagine what we can find in the woods.”
    Pierre was superstitious. He wore the same socks every time he went hunting, and believed the first moments of a day determined what the rest would hold. The dogs loved him. They trotted along at his side, not mine. I said so to Michelle, and she smiled.
    For about ten minutes we walked in silence. The landscape around us changed, and after we’d passed the Morés’ place, we crossed the field toward the woods. Pierre split off from us.
    “Where’s he going?” said Michelle.
    “He’s going around the woods. He’ll go in from the other side, to scare the animals.”
    “Toward us?”
    “Toward us,” I said.
    “I want us to talk,” said Michelle.
    “Well, let’s talk now,” I said jokingly. “When we go in the woods, we’ll have to keep quiet.”
    “I feel strange. I’m cold.”
    “In the woods it’s not so cold, you’ll see. There’s no wind.”
    “Are we going to break up?”
    I