Fable, A - William Faulkner [211]
A little more than four hours, but perhaps it should have been. The town was dark now, and the bistro they had started from, a clump of shadow detaching itself from a greater mass of shadow and itself breaking into separate shapes as the nine others surrounded the cart, the cart itself not stopping but going steadily on toward where the carriage in its black pall of bunting had vanished completely into the night. But it was there; the ones who had remained in town had even drawn the nails again so that all that was necessary was to lift off the top and drag the ground-sheeted bundle through the window and dump it in and set the nails again. 'Drive them in,' Picklock said. 'Who cares about noise now? Where is the brandy?'
'It's all right,' a voice said.
'How many bottles did you open?'
'One,' a voice said.
'Counting from where?'
Why should we lie when all you've got to do to prove it is to count the others?' the voice said.
'All right,' Picklock said. 'Get out of here now and shut the window,' Then they were on the ground again. The stranger had Tomorrow never quitted his cart and this time surely the horse was going home. But they didn't wait for that departure. They turned as one, already running, clotting and jostling a little at the carriage door, but plunging at last back into their lightless catafalque as into the womb itself. They were safe now. They had a body, and drink to take care of the night. There was tomorrow and Paris of course, but God could take care of that.
Carrying the gather of eggs in the loop of her apron, Marya, the elder sister, crossed the yard toward the house as though borne on a soft and tender cloud of white geese. They surrounded and enclosed her as though with a tender and eager yearning; two of them, one on either side, kept absolute pace with her, pressed against her skirts, their long undulant necks laid flat against her moving flanks, their heads tilted upward, the hard yellow beaks open slightly like mouths, the hard insentient eyes filmed over as with a sort of ecstasy: right up to the stoop itself when she mounted it and opened the door and stepped quickly through and closed it, the geese swarming and jostling around and over and onto the stoop itself to press against the door's blank wood, their necks extended and the heads fallen a little back as though on the brink of swoons, making with their hoarse harsh unmusical voices faint tender cries of anguish and bereavement and unassuageable grief.
This was the kitchen, already strong with the approaching mid-day's soup. She didn't even stop: putting the eggs away, lifting for a moment the lid of the simmering pot on the stove, then placed rapidly on the wooden table a bottle of wine, a glass, a soup bowl, a loaf, a napkin and spoon, then on through the house and out the front door giving onto the lane and the field beyond it where she could already see them-the horse and harrow and the man guiding them, the hired man they had had since the death of her sister's husband four years ago, and the sister herself moving across the land's panorama like a ritual, her hand and arm plunging into the sack slung from her shoulder, to emerge in that long sweep which is the second oldest of man's immemorial gestures or acts, she-Marya-running now, skirting among the old craters picketed off by tiny stakes bearing scraps of red cloth where the rank and lifeless grass grew above the unexploded shells, already saying, crying in her bright serene and carrying voice: 'Sister! Here is the young Englishman come for the medal. There are two of them, coming up the lane,'
'A friend with him?' the sister said.
'Not a friend,' Marya said. 'This one is looking for a tree,'
'A tree?' the sister said.
Tes, Sister.