The Dream Maker

Europa Editions

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously.

Copyright © 2012 by Éditions Gallimard, Paris

First publication 2013 by Europa Editions

Translation by Alison Anderson

Original Title: Le gran coeur

Translation copyright © 2013 by Europa Editions

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

Cover Art by Emanuele Ragnisco

www.mekkanografici.com

ISBN 9781609451561

Jean-Christophe Rufin

THE DREAM MAKER

Translated from the French

by Alison Anderson

We were two, and had but one heart.

—FRANÇOIS VILLON

I.

IN THE LAND OF THE MAD KING

I know he has come here to kill me. He’s a stocky little man, and he does not have the Phoenician features of the people from Chios. He hides as best he can, but I have noticed him several times in the narrow streets of the upper town, and down in the harbor.

The nature is fine on this island, and I find it impossible to believe that such a setting could be that of my death. I have been so afraid in my life; so many times have I feared poison, accidents, and daggers, that I now have a fairly precise image of my demise. I have always imagined it would happen in semidarkness, at dusk on a damp and gloomy day of rain, a day like that of my birth, a day like all those of my childhood. These enormous prickly pear trees, swollen with sap; these purple flowers hanging in clusters along the walls; this still air, quivering with heat like a lover’s hand; these herb-scented paths; these tile roofs as round as a woman’s hips: how could all these tranquil, simple splendors act as instruments to absolute, eternal night, to the violent chill of my death?

I am fifty-six years of age. My body is in perfect health. The torture I suffered during my trial has left no trace. It did not even leave me filled with disgust for my fellow human beings. For the first time in many years, perhaps the first time ever, I am no longer afraid. Glory, unimaginable wealth, and the patronage of the powerful have stifled whatever ambitions I might have had, along with my fervid impatience and vain desires. If death were to strike me today, it would be more unjust than ever.

Elvira is at my side and knows nothing. She was born on this Greek island and has never left. She does not know who I am, and that is what I love about her. I met her after the departure of the crusade ships. She did not see the ships’ captains, or the knights dressed for battle; she did not see the pope’s legate conveying to me their affected respect or their hypocritical praise. They believed me when I claimed to be in pain, to have the flux in my belly, so they agreed to leave me behind on this island in order to recover—or, more likely, to die. I begged them to find me lodgings at an inn near the harbor and not in the old podestà’s citadel. I had told them I would die of shame if that nobleman of Genoa, upon returning from his journeys, were to learn I had forsaken war . . . In truth, I feared above all that he might find out I was in perfect health. I did not want to be under any obligation to him that might allow him to prevent me, when the time came, from leaving the island and regaining my freedom.

It was a ridiculous scene, with me lying in bed, my arms outstretched on the sheets, sweating not from fever but the stifling harbor air that entered the room. Jostling one another for space at the foot of my bed, and all the way to the wooden stairway and down to the lower hall beneath us, was a group of knights in their coats of mail, of prelates wearing their finest chasubles (unearthed from the chests on board the ship and still creased from such long compression), and captains with their helmets under their arms, drying their tears with their fat fingers. Each of them thought his awkward silence absolved the cowardice of abandoning me to my fate. My own silence strove to be one of absolution, of fate accepted without a murmur. When the last visitor had left, when I was certain I could no longer hear from the street the clanging of armor or the slap of boots and iron against the cobblestones, I exploded with irrepressible laughter. And laughed for at least a good quarter of an hour.

On hearing me, the Greek innkeeper initially thought my dying moments had put on a hateful mask of comedy. But after I pushed back the sheets and got to my feet he understood that I was simply happy. He fetched some white wine and we raised a toast. The next day I paid him well. He gave me some peasant’s clothes and I went for a walk through the town to prepare for my flight from the island. It was only then that I spotted the man who wants to kill me. I did not expect to see him. I was filled more with dismay than with fear. Alas, I am only too well acquainted with such threats, but they had almost completely disappeared over these last months and I thought I was free of them at last. Being followed again disrupted my plans. It would be more complicated now to leave the island, and more dangerous.

First of all, I must avoid staying in the town, where I might easily be unmasked. I asked the innkeeper to rent a house for me hidden in the countryside. He found one the very next day and showed me the way. I left at dawn, a week ago now. I did not find the house until I was already upon it, because it is protected from the offshore winds by thorny hedges that conceal it from outside gazes. I arrived at the hottest hour of the morning, soaked in sweat and covered with the fine dust of the limestone path. A tall, dark-haired woman was waiting for me. Her name is Elvira. The innkeeper must have thought what I had given him was a considerable amount of money, and he believed it was in error. So that I need not come and correct it, he had enhanced the service provided by adding a woman to the lease of the dwelling.

Elvira, with whom I could only communicate through facial expressions, welcomed me with a simplicity I had not known for many years. For her I was neither Argentier to the king of France, nor a fugitive protected by the Pope, but simply Jacques. She learned my family name when I took her hand to place it on my heart. The only effect this confession had was for her to take my hand in turn, and for the first time I felt her round, firm breast in my palm.

In silence she had me remove my clothing and she washed me with lavender water, warmed by the sun in an earthenware jug. While she scrubbed me gently with fine ash, I looked at the steep, gray-green slope of the coastline in the distance, covered with olive trees. The crusade ships had hoped for the meltemi to leave the port. They were slowly moving away, their sails slack in the sluggish breeze. How could this final nautical excursion still be called a crusade, so far from the Turks? Three centuries ago, when knights and priests and the poor were rushing to the Holy Land to find martyrdom or glory, the word had a meaning. Now that the Ottomans were victorious everywhere and no one had either the intention or the means to fight them, now that the expedition was limited to encouraging and arming with fine words the few islands still determined to resist, what an imposture it was to qualify this journey with the high-flown name of crusade! It was merely a whim on the part of an aging pope. Alas, that old pope had saved my life, and I, too, had joined in the masquerade.

Elvira picked up a sea sponge swollen with water. She rinsed me off methodically, neglecting not a single patch of skin, and I shivered at the touch of the sponge, its rough caress like that of a cat’s tongue. The ships looked sullen on the blue shield of the sea. They rocked to and fro, hardly moving, their masts tilted like a cluster of invalids’ canes. All around us the crickets chirred, expanding the silence and filling it with waiting. When I drew Elvira to me, she resisted and led me into the house. For the inhabitants of Chios, as for all the peoples of the Levant, pleasure is for shadows, in cool enclosures. Full sunlight, heat, and space are unbearably violent to them. We stayed in bed until nightfall, and that first evening we supped on black olives and bread on the terrace, in the light of an oil lamp.

The next morning, wearing my disguise, my face hidden in the shadow of a broad-brimmed straw hat, I went with Elvira to the town. At the market, behind a display of figs, I saw again the man who is here to kill me.

There was a time when such a discovery would have compelled me to act: I would have tried to flee or to fight. This time, withholding any decision, I was paralyzed. It is strange how, instead of propelling me into the future, danger now takes me immediately back to my past. I cannot see the life I will lead tomorrow, only my life today and, above all, yesterday. The sweetness of the present moment calls back the phantoms of memory, and for the first time I have felt an intense need to capture these images on paper.

I believe the man who is on my trail is not alone. As a rule, these killers work in groups. I am sure Elvira will be able to find out a great deal about them. She anticipates my every desire. If one of those desires is to stay alive, she will do everything to satisfy it. But I have told her nothing, given her no hint. It is not that I want to die. I have a confused feeling that my death, when it comes, will be in keeping with my fate, and what matters above all is to understand it. This is why all my thoughts take me into the past. Fleeing time has woven a tight web of memories in my mind. I must unravel it slowly, to discover at last the thread of my life, so that I can understand who, someday, is to cut it. That is why I have begun to write these memoirs.

Elvira has placed a wooden board beneath the trellis on the side of the terrace where, by morning’s end, there is shade. From morning to late afternoon that is where I write. My hand is not accustomed to holding a quill. Others did that for me for many years, and more often to line up numbers than words. When I discipline myself to make sentences, force myself to make some order of what life has thrown at me at random, in my fingers and my mind I feel a pain that is very close to pleasure. It seems that, in a new way, I am attending the difficult birth through which what has come into the world goes back into it, in writing, after the long gestation period of forgetfulness.

In the blazing sun of Chios, everything I have known becomes clear, colorful, and beautiful, even the dark and painful moments.

I am happy.

*

My oldest memory dates back to when I was seven years old. Until then everything is vague, obscure, uniformly gray.

I was born at the time when the king of France lost his mind. I was told very early of this coincidence. I never believed there might be the slightest link, even a supernatural one, between Charles VI’s sudden madness, which came about as he was riding through the forest of Orléans, and my birth not far from there, in Bourges. But I have always thought that the light of the world went out when the monarch lost his reason, as if it were the eclipse of a planet. And that was why we were surrounded by horror.

At home and abroad, all anyone spoke of was the war with the English, which had been lasting for over a century. Every week, sometimes every day, we heard tell of a new massacre, of some infamy suffered by innocent people. And we were fortunate to have the protection of the town. The countryside, where I did not go, seemed to be prey to every manner of vile deed. Our serving women, who had family in the nearby villages, came back with horrendous stories. My brother and sister and I were kept away from their stories of rape, torture, and burning farms, and of course we had no greater desire than to hear them.

All of this against a backdrop of dreariness and rain. Our fine town seemed to float in an eternal drizzle. It grew slightly darker in winter, but from the beginning of autumn until the end of spring the town knew every nuance of gray. Only in summer might the sun prevail, and then the heat subjected the town to a harsh treatment for which it was not prepared, and the streets filled with dust. Mothers grew fearful of epidemics: we were kept locked at home, where the closed shutters again brought shadow and gray, to such good effect that we never forgot what it was like.

I had acquired the vague conviction that the only reason the world was like this was because we lived in the cursed realm of a mad king. Until I was seven, it never occurred to me that this misfortune might be avoided: I could not imagine such a thing as elsewhere, worse or better but certainly different. There were the pilgrims on the Way of St. James, who had set off for faraway, almost mythical lands. I would see them coming up our street. With their satchels by their side, and their sandals in their hands, they would cool their feet for hours in the Auron where it flowed below our town. It was said they were going to the sea. The sea? My father had described it to me, a vast expanse of water, as big as an entire countryside. But his words were confusing: it was easy to see that he was merely repeating what he had heard from other people. He himself had never seen the sea.

Everything changed the year I turned seven, on the evening I first saw the creature’s red eyes and tawny fleece.

My father was a furrier. He had learned the trade in another small town. When he had become skilled at handling the simple skins of foxes or hares, he moved to the big town. Twice a year at the major fairs, wholesale merchants sold the rarer pelts of vair or gray squirrel. Unfortunately, the dangers of war frequently made the trip impossible. My father had to count on petty tradesmen to bring him the skins from the wholesalers. Some of those merchants were hunters and had trapped the animals themselves, deep in the forest. They would head off using the skins as currency; they exchanged them on their way for food or lodging. These men of the forest generally wore fur themselves. But they wore the pelt on the outside, whereas the craft of furriers like my father was to turn the skins so that the fur was on the inside, to keep one warm, only slightly visible at the cuffs or the collar. For a long time this was my only way of distinguishing the civilized world from barbarity. I belonged to a society of men who had evolved, and every morning I put on a doublet lined with invisible fleece. A savage man was like an animal, and could still be seen covered in fur. It mattered little that it was not his own.

Piled in the studio that opened onto the courtyard at the back of the house were bundles of several qualities of vair, martin, and sable. Their gray, black, and white tones were just like those of our stone churches and our slate roofs turned purplish black by the rain. The ginger highlights of certain pelts made one think of autumn leaves. Thus, from our homes to the deepest forests of faraway lands, the same monotonous colors reflected the melancholy of our days. People said I was a sad child. In truth, it was rather I was disappointed that I had come too late into a world from which the light had departed. I nurtured the vague hope that someday the light would return, because I did not feel I was truly disposed to melancholy. All that was needed was a sign for my true nature to be revealed.

That sign came one evening in November. Vespers had rung at the cathedral. In our new house, made all of wood, I shared a room with my brother on the third floor, beneath the eaves. I was playing at tossing a ball of wool to my mother’s dog. What I liked best was to see him dive into the steep stairway, his tail in the air, when I threw the ball. He would come back up holding it proudly in his jaws, then growl as I took it from him. It was a dreary evening. I could hear the rain pattering on the roof. My mind was wandering. I threw the dog his ball of hemp, but I had lost interest in the game. Suddenly an unexpected calm fell upon the room: the dog had scrambled down the stairs but had not come back up. I didn’t realize at first. When I heard him yapping on the floor below, I realized that something unusual must have happened. I went down to find him. He was standing at the top of the flight of stairs that led to the ground floor. Nose in the air, he seemed to have smelled something downstairs. I sniffed, but my human sense of smell did not detect anything unusual. The odor of baking bread, which the serving girl made with my mother once a week, covered the fustiness of fur we were all used to. I shut the dog in the storeroom where my mother kept linens and cushions, and went quietly down the stairs to see what was going on. I was careful not to make the steps creak, because my parents did not allow us into the downstairs rooms without a good reason.

A glance through the open door was enough to ensure that there was nothing out of the ordinary in the kitchen. The courtyard was deserted. I went over to my father’s workshop. The shop workroom that gave onto the street was closed, as on every evening, by panels of solid wood. That meant that the journeymen had left for the day, after the last customers. Yet my father was not alone. From where I hid by the door that led to the courtyard I could see a stranger, from behind. In one hand he was holding a burlap bag in which something was moving. The silhouettes of my father and the visitor stood out against the white background of a wall hanging made of squirrels’ bellies that was being assembled. A torch cast a bright light into the room. I should have gone back upstairs right away, as my presence there—during a visit, especially—was strictly forbidden. But I had no desire to leave, and besides, it was too late. Everything happened very quickly.

My father said, Open it, and the man let go of the neck of the bag. The animal that leapt out of it was the size of a small mastiff. A collar held it to a chain. The chain suddenly went taut when the beast pounced toward my father. It gave a stifled sound then arched its back. It looked in my direction, then with its mouth wide open, gave out a hoarse roar such as I had never heard. I abandoned all caution, stood up straight and went to stand in the doorway. The animal was looking right at me, and its eyes were a porcelain white fringed with a sharp line of black fur. It was standing at an angle to me and I could see its haunches. I had never seen such a color, and could never have imagined a coat like that existed. In the light from the candlestick its fleece was golden, and scattered against this background of motionless sunlight were round spots shining like dark stars.

My father initially seemed cross with me, then just as I realized the folly of my behavior, he reassured me.

Jacques, he said. You have come at the right time. Come closer and take a look.

I took a hesitant step forward and the animal reared up, straining against the chain, which the man held tight in his fist.

No closer! cried the stranger.

He was an old man, his thin, wrinkled face tarnished by a short, scruffy beard.

Stay where you are, ordered my father. But take a good look, you may never see another. This is a leopard.

My father, with his marten fur cap on his head, gazed at the feline as it blinked slowly. The man smiled, revealing his toothless mouth.

It come from Arabia, he whispered.

I kept my gaze fixed on the animal. Its golden fur merged with the word I had just heard for the first time. And the man sealed this union even tighter by adding, Is desert there, sand, sun. Always hot. Very hot.

I had heard of the desert at my catechism, but I could not imagine what that place must be like, where Christ withdrew for forty days. And suddenly that world had come to me. Today I can see it all, but at the time there was nothing that clear in my consciousness. Particularly as the animal, which had been standing calmly, almost at once began to roar and pull against his chain, knocking my father backwards into a bundle of beaver skins. The stranger took a stick from his tunic and began to beat the creature so hard that I was sure he had killed it. When the beast lay lifeless on the ground, he grabbed it by the paws and stuffed it into his bag. I saw no more, because my mother had laid her hands on my shoulders and pulled me away. She told me later that I had fainted. The truth is I awoke in my room in the early morning, certain it was all a dream until my parents, at breakfast, spoke to me about the incident.

In hindsight, I know exactly what that visit meant. The man was an old gypsy whose trade was to show his leopard wherever he went. There were times when he was received at castles by lords eager for distraction. More frequently, he haunted fairgrounds and village squares. He had bought the animal from a merchant on the byways of the Holy Land. Now the gypsy was getting old, and his leopard was sick. If I had had more experience, I would have seen that the animal was weak, toothless, and malnourished. The gypsy had tried to sell it to another traveler, but no one wanted to give him a good price. That was when he came up with the idea of selling the animal for its skin. He had happened by my father’s workshop and suggested it to him. But no sale took place and I never found out why. In all likelihood my father had no customers for such a piece. Or perhaps he felt sorry for the animal. For though my mother was a butcher’s daughter, my father never dealt with anything but an animal’s remains, and he did not have the soul of a skinner.

It was an isolated episode. It did not matter if it never happened again: it had left its indelible mark on me. I had glimpsed another world, a world that was here on earth and alive, not the hereafter of death which the Gospel promised us. A world that was the color of the sun, and its name was Arabia. It was a fragile thread, but I clung to it stubbornly. I questioned the priest at the chapter of Saint-Pierre, our parish. He told me about the desert, about St. Anthony and wild animals. He told me about the Holy Land; his uncle had been there, because he was from a noble family and acquainted with knights.

I was still too young to understand what he was telling me. But he did confirm that my premonition was well-founded. There was more to the world than rain, cold, darkness, and war. Beyond the land of the mad king there were other places I knew nothing about, but which I could imagine. Thus, the dream was not merely a gate to melancholy, a simple absence from the world, but much more: the promise of another reality.

One evening a few days later, my father, in a low voice, told us some terrible news: the king’s brother, Louis of Orléans, had been assassinated in Paris. The uncles of the mad king were intent on killing one another once and for all. John, Duke of Berry, who lived nearby and whose courtiers made up the bulk of my father’s customers, would not be able to remain neutral among his brothers for very much longer. Now war was breathing on us with its pestilential breath. My parents were trembling with fear, and not long before I, too, would have yielded to panic.

Just when the world was too full of pain, the animal had leapt out of his bag and stared at me with a roar. It seemed to me that if everything went dark, there would still be time for me to escape toward the sunlight. And though I did not understand what it meant, I said that magical word over and over: Arabia.

*

It took five years for the war to reach us. When it touched our city, I was no longer of an age to fear it; rather, I desired it.

I was twelve years old that summer when, allied with the Burgundians, the army of the mad king marched on us. The Duke of Berry, our good Duke John as my father used to call him, with a sorrowful smile, had been prevented from entering Paris, where he had a residence. Obliged to abandon his usual caution, he had sided with the Armagnacs. Armagnacs, Burgundians: I heard these evocative, mysterious names at the dinner table when my parents conversed. Outdoors, in our games, we took turns pretending to be a hero from one side or the other. We, too, fought among brothers. While we could not understand the politics in detail, we thought we had at least grasped some of its inner workings.

Rumor from the countryside had it that the Burgundians were coming closer. On her way to see her parents our serving girl happened upon a company of soldiers. Several villages around their own had been burned and pillaged. The poor girl wept as she told us of her family’s misfortune. She needed to confide in someone, so I let her talk.

While these events had happened very near to us, they aroused in me not fear but rather intense curiosity. I wanted to know everything about the soldiers and, above all, the knights. Our serving girl’s stories were very disappointing in that respect. The plunder in the countryside had been committed by vulgar ruffians; at no time did her parents see any real soldiers of the kind I had imagined.

My passion for the Levant meant I had heard many stories about the crusades. At the Sainte-Chapelle I got to know an old man who was a deacon, and who in his younger days had gone to the Holy Land to fight.

Thus, I shared the passion of many of my companions, although it was on the basis of a deep misunderstanding. They were yielding to their interest in weapons, horses, jousts, and every sort of violent deed or exploit considered prestigious among young men. For me, chivalry was rather a vehicle to the enchanted world of the Levant. If I had known of any other way to be transported to Arabia, it would have been equally fascinating. At the time, I was convinced that the only way to get there and to vanquish all the obstacles on the way would be astride a leather-clad steed, wearing a suit of armor with a sword at my side.

There were a dozen or so of us, all children of the same age, born in the same neighborhood of town-dwelling parents. The offspring of servants or peddlers occasionally joined us; the sons of noblemen ignored us. I was somewhat taller than the others but I had a fragile constitution. I spoke little and never really let myself go when playing. Part of me remained aloof. My detached attitude must surely have seemed superior to them. My presence in the group was tolerated. However, when the time came for secrets or naughty stories, my friends arranged to leave me out.

We had a leader. He was a fat boy called Éloi, a baker’s son. His curly, coarse black hair made me think of sheep’s wool. His physical strength was already impressive, but his power over the group was principally due to the fear his verbal boldness and bragging inspired. He was sure of victory before even beginning to fight, simply by virtue of his reputation.

At the end of June the Burgundians were at the walls of the town. We had to prepare for a siege. Herds were hastily brought within the walls. Every square was covered with barrels filled with salt meat, wine, flour, and oil.

Summer came early and was miserable. At the beginning of July the storms began. Pounding rain caused the drainpipes to overflow, adding to the chaos and panic. To the delight of our gang of kids, the streets filled with armed men, who began to prepare our defense. The court of Duke John had always paid more attention to art and pleasure than to combat. Nobles never went around dressed for war. Now the threat hanging over the town changed everything. Noblemen once again adopted the accoutrements that, in a bygone era, had signaled that their ancestors were entitled to the rank of count or baron. And one day, for the first time in my life, I saw a knight up close.

He was riding at a trot up the paved street leading to the cathedral. I ran to his side. It seemed to me that if I jumped up to ride pillion with him he would take me all the way to Arabia, to the land of eternal sun, with the vivid colors of the leopard. The horse was covered with a gilt-embroidered blanket, armor-clad feet in the stirrups. Inexplicably, I felt nothing for the man hiding beneath this carapace; what fascinated me more than anything was the way in which his armor had been designed to make him invulnerable—the hammered steel that went to make up the suit, the shining paint on the shield, the thick fabric covering the horse. A man in simple clothing on an ordinary horse would not have had the fabulous powers I granted this knight.

I was, alas, doomed to dream, for it seemed impossible that I might one day leave behind my station as a simple burgher, something I had only just begun to be aware of.

My father took me more and more often to the Duke’s palace when he had business there. He did not hope to make a craftsman of me, because I was extremely clumsy. He saw me, rather, as a tradesman. I loved the atmosphere of these visits—the rooms with their high ceilings, the guards at every door, the luxurious wall hangings, the ladies in their brightly-colored gowns. I loved the jewels in their necklaces, the shine of the pommels on the gentlemen’s hips, the light-colored wood of the parquet floors. My interest increased still further when my father explained, during a long wait in the antechamber of one of the Duke’s relatives, that the very particular perfume in these halls derived from diluted essences from the Levant.

These visits to the palace, however, had quashed for good any hope I might have of entering their world. My father was treated with despicable scorn, and he tried hard to teach me how to put up with it. In his opinion, it was an honor in itself to sell something to a prince. Nothing was too good for such a customer. Every gift, every effort, the nights spent stitching, cutting, designing models—none of it had any meaning or value until a rich customer voiced his satisfaction. I remembered the lesson and accepted our fate. I learned to find my courage in renunciation. When we left the palace, after a visit where my father had been coarsely treated, I was proud of him. I would take his hand as we walked home. He was trembling, and I now know it was from humiliation and rage. However, in my eyes, the patience he had shown was the only form of bravery allowed us, since we would never be called on to bear noble weapons.

Among my mates I maintained a distant reserve, following my father’s example. I rarely spoke, I agreed with what they said, and I played a modest part in the adventures that others conceived. They tended to scorn me, until something happened that changed everything.

In the month of August of the year I turned twelve, we had finished preparing for the siege of the town. We were indeed surrounded. The oldest residents recalled the English sacking half a century earlier. Stories of those ghastly deeds were making the rounds. Children in particular delighted in them. Éloi impressed us every day with horrible tales that customers left behind in his father’s shop along with their change. He had set himself up as our captain because, according to him, under these new circumstances we were now a body of troops like any other. He had great ambitions for this little army, starting with procuring weapons. In the utmost secrecy he organized an expedition. For several days he held clandestine meetings, sharing his knowledge and his orders with the members of the group, the better to keep control of it. Shortly before the great day, one of his muttered conversations must have been about me, because everyone but me took part. Éloi came at last to deliver the verdict: I could be one of them.

Under normal circumstances, summer was a time of freedom for the schoolboys of the Sainte-Chapelle. The war was yet another reason to set us free. We spent our days together, idle, sitting outside our houses. We were not allowed out at night, and the soldiers on watch would arrest anyone wandering in the streets. Therefore we would have to carry off the exploit in broad daylight. Éloi chose a hot, stormless afternoon, conducive to siesta. He led us down into the tanners’ neighborhood, and from there, by crossing a grassy slope, we came to a swamp. He had located a flat-bottomed boat, its pole hidden not far away. There were seven of us on board. With the pole, Éloi pushed the boat, and we drifted slowly out into the stream. The cathedral rose in the distance, towering above us. None of us knew how to swim, and I’m sure the others were terrified. I was afraid until the boat was well away from the shore. But once we were slowly making our way through the algae and the lily pads, I was filled with an unexpected happiness. The sun and the heat of August, the mystery of the water on whose surface all roads are possible, and the reverberant flight of insects all made me believe we were on our way to that other world, even though I knew it was incomparably far away.

The boat slid into a cluster of reeds. Éloi, still standing, leaned over and motioned to us to be quiet. We were still drifting down the narrow inlet bordered with the velvety tips of the stems when suddenly we heard voices. Éloi pushed the boat over to the riverbank. We jumped on land. I was given the order to stay and guard the boat. From behind a hedge we saw in the distance a group of men lying on the ground. They were surely écorcheurs¹ from the army of Burgundy. A dozen or so soldiers sprawled in the shade of an elm tree, near another bend in the river, most of them asleep. The grunts we had heard were what passed for conversation among those still awake. Their campsite was in full sun, and at some distance from the men. It contained an untidy collection of fur blankets, satchels, water skins, and weapons, spread around the charred circle of what had been a campfire. No one was guarding the camp. Éloi ordered the three smallest among us to crawl through the grass to the weapons, steal as many as they could carry, and then come back. The children did as they were told. They threaded their way to the campsite and noiselessly filled their arms with swords and daggers. Just as they were about to head back, one of the écorcheurs stood up unsteadily to go and relieve himself. He saw the thieves and raised the alarm. When he heard the shout, Éloi set off at a run, followed by two other boys who never left his side.

They’ve got us! he cried.

He jumped into the boat with his two right-hand men.

Come on, he commanded.

And the others?

I was standing on the bank, still holding the rope that served to tie the boat.

They’ll catch up. Come on, now!

As I stood there without moving, he grabbed the rope from my hand and with an abrupt shove of the pole, pushed the boat out into the reeds. I heard the stems snapping as the boat moved away.

A few seconds later, the other three showed up, sweating profusely. Each of them had made it a point of honor to keep one or two of the trophies they had stolen from beside the campfire.

Where’s the boat? they asked.

It’s gone, I answered. With Éloi.

Today I think I can safely say that it was at that very moment that my fate was sealed. I was filled with an astonishing composure. For those who knew me, there was no change with respect to my usual demeanor, that of a phlegmatic dreamer. But for me, it was very different. Habitually, my dreaming took me into another world, whereas now, I was truly in this world. I was acutely aware of the situation at hand. I could sense the danger, and identify all the protagonists of the drama. The privilege of knowing how to act like a bird of prey, overlooking everything, gave me a perfectly clear vision of both the problem and the solution. While my companions looked all around, trembling and distraught, without seeing a way out, I said, as calm as could be, Let’s go that way.

We ran along the narrow bank. The soldiers were calling out, their voices thick. They were not yet very near. They had to wake up, first of all, size up the situation, and agree among themselves, and in all likelihood these mercenaries did not all speak the same language. I saw clearly that our salvation lay in our small size and agility. I led my troop along the riverbank and eventually found, as I had sensed I would, a narrow wooden bridge to cross the inlet. It was a simple, rough-hewn tree trunk, already worn and sagging. All four of us stepped lightly across it. The écorcheurs would find it more difficult to cross and, with a bit of luck, it would break beneath their weight. We continued our flight and I kept up a steady rhythm, slower than my companions would have liked. It was out of the question to