De mes mains

I was born on a farm in Bresse, where the fields are flat and the sky takes up all the space. The house was long, made of rammed earth, with a fireplace so wide you could have sat inside it. In winter, that's where we all lived, crowded together around the fire, and in summer we lived outside, from sunrise to sunset. My father trusted the sky more than the almanac. He would look at the horizon in the morning and he knew whether we should make hay or wait. We had cows, a few pigs, and the Bresse chickens that my mother cared for like princesses, because they were the ones that brought in money from the market. I can still see my mother talking to them in patois as she threw them grain. What I hold onto most is the smells. Freshly cut hay drying, it smells like sugar and dust at the same time. The bread my grandmother made once a week in the wood-fired oven, and that we weren't allowed to touch until it had cooled, which was real torture. Warm milk in the morning, the stable in winter, the soup that simmered all day in the corner by the fire. When I close my eyes, these smells come back before the images. My grandfather spoke little. He would take me with him to the fields and he would show me, without explaining. How to hold a scythe so you don't tire out your back, how to tell good soil from exhausted soil just by its color. He said that a man who knows how to work with his hands will never be entirely lost. I thought about that phrase my whole life, and I still think about it, especially now. We weren't rich, but I never felt poor. There was always food, there was work, and there were Sundays when my mother put out the clean tablecloth. For a child, it was an entire world.

I was small during the war, but you don't forget these things. In the Ain, there was the Resistance, in the woods and on the plateaus. They didn't say the word in front of children, but you felt it everywhere. Certain nights, men would come. They would knock twice, then once, at the kitchen door. My father would open without turning on the light. My mother would put an extra plate on the table, some soup, bread, sometimes a bit of bacon we kept for that. The men would eat quickly, without taking off their jackets, and they would leave before daylight. In the morning, the plate was washed and put away, and nobody asked questions. I understood very early that there are things you do without talking about them. Once, German soldiers came to the farm in broad daylight, for the animals. My father stayed calm, his hands laid flat on the table, and he answered slowly, as if he had all the time in the world. I remember holding my mother's skirt so tight that she had to make me let go afterward. They took a pig and they left. My father didn't say anything that evening, but he put his hand on my head, and that was worth all the words. When Liberation came, I saw men cry for the first time. Hard men, peasants, who never cried. There were flags in Bourg, songs, wine brought out from the cellars where we had hidden it. I didn't understand everything, but I understood that something heavy had just fallen from everyone's shoulders. They asked me, at the workshops, to tell about this time. It's strange, the dates escape me sometimes now, but those nights, the two knocks then one, the extra plate, that I find without effort. They say it's normal, that what made your heart race holds on tighter.