The Christening
In front of the farm-gates the men were waiting in their Sunday clothes. The May sun shed its burning light on the flowering apple trees which roofed the whole farmyard with blossom in great round fragrant bunches of pink and white. Petals fell round them in a ceaseless shower, fluttering and eddying into the tall grass, where the dandelions glittered like flames and the poppies were splashed in drops of blood.
A sow slumbered on the side of the manure-heap, and a band of little pigs with twisted, cord-like tails ran round her huge belly and swollen dugs.
Far away, through the trees behind the farmhouse, the church-bell suddenly rang out. Its iron voice sent up a faint and distant cry to the radiant heavens. Swallows darted arrow-like across the blue spaces bounded by the still shafts of tall beeches. A faint smell of stables mingled with the soft sweet fragrance of the apple trees.
One of the men standing by the gate turned towards the house and cried:
“Coom quick, Mélina; t’bell’s ringin’.”
He was about thirty years of age, a tall young peasant, as yet not bowed or deformed by long labour in the fields. His old father, gnarled like the trunk of an oak, with scarred wrists and crooked legs, announced: “Women, they bean’t never ready first.”
The two other sons laughed, and one, turning to the eldest brother, who had shouted first, said: “Go fetch ’em, Polyte. They’ll not be here before noon, I’m thinkin’.”
The young man entered the house.
A flock of ducks near at hand began to quack and flap their wings, and waddled off down to the pond.
Then at the open door appeared a stout woman carrying a two-months-old child. The white strings of her high bonnet hung down her back, streaming over a shawl as violently scarlet as a house on fire. The child, wrapped in white garments, rested against the nurse’s protruding stomach.
Next came the mother, a tall strong girl barely eighteen, fair and smiling, holding her husband’s arm. The two grandmothers followed, wrinkled like old apples, weariness apparent in their bowed backs, long since bent by rough and patient toil. One was a widow; she took the arm of the grandfather waiting at the gate, and they left at the head of the procession, just behind the child and the midwife. The rest of the family followed, the younger ones carrying paper bags full of sweets.
The little bell rang ceaselessly, calling with all its strength to the tiny mite it awaited. Children clambered on the dikes; heads appeared at gateways; milkmaids set down their pails and stood between them to watch the christening go by.
And the nurse moved on triumphantly with her living burden, stepping between puddles on the road which ran between the tree-crowned banks. And the old people advanced with ceremonious steps, walking a little crookedly, because of their age and infirmity. And the young folk were eager to dance, and looked at the girls who came to see them go by; and the father and mother walked with graver mien, following the child who would take their place and carry on their name in the country, the honoured name of Dentu.
They emerged on the plain and struck across the fields, avoiding the long roundabout road. Now the church came into view, with its pointed steeple. Just below the slate roof was an aperture, within which something swung swiftly backwards and forwards, passing and repassing behind the narrow window. It was the bell, still ringing, calling the newborn child to come for the first time to the house of God.
A dog had begun to follow the procession; they threw sweets to it, and it frisked round their feet.
The church-door was open. By the altar stood the priest, a tall fellow, slim and strong, with red hair. He too was a Dentu, the child’s uncle, another brother of the father. And he duly bestowed the name of Prosper-César upon his nephew, who began to cry when he tasted the symbolic salt.
When the ceremony was over, the family waited on the steps while the priest took off his surplice; then they started off once more. They went fast now, for there was the prospect of dinner before them. A crowd of urchins followed, and whenever a handful of sweets was thrown to them they struggled furiously; they fought hand to hand and pulled one another’s hair; even the dog dashed into the fight for the sweets, more stubborn than the children who tugged at his tail and ears and paws.
The nurse was tired; she turned to the priest walking beside her, and said: “How’d it be, sir, if you was to carry your nevvy for a stretch? Ah’m that cramped in the belly, ah’d like a bit of a rest, like.”
The priest took the child in his arms, the white clothes making a broad white stripe over the black cassock. He was embarrassed by the little burden, not knowing how to carry it or set it down. Everyone laughed, and one of the grandmothers shouted: “Aren’t ye ever sorry, passon, that ye’ll never have one of your own?”
The priest made no answer. He went forward with long strides, gazing intently at the blue-eyed baby, longing to kiss the rounded cheeks. He could no longer restrain the impulse; raising the child to his face, he gave it a long kiss.
The father shouted: “Hey there, passon, if ye’d like one, ye’ve only to say so.”
They began to jest, after the fashion of peasants.
As soon as they were seated at table, the rough peasant merriment broke out like a tempest. The two other sons were also to marry soon; their sweethearts were present, invited just for the meal; the guests perpetually alluded to the future generations foreshadowed by these unions.
Their words were coarse and pungent; the blushing girls giggled, the men guffawed. They shouted and beat upon the table with their fists. The father and grandfather were not behindhand with scandalous suggestions. The mother smiled; the old women took their share in the fun and thrust in obscene remarks.
The priest, inured to these rustic orgies, sat quietly beside the nurse, tickling his nephew’s little mouth. He seemed surprised at the child’s appearance, as though he had never noticed it. He contemplated it with deliberate intentness, with dreamy gravity, and a tenderness arose in his heart, a strange, unknown tenderness, sharp and a little melancholy, for the frail little creature that was his brother’s son.
He heard nothing, saw nothing, but stared at the child. He wanted to take him once more upon his knees, for still in his breast and in his heart he retained the soft pressure of the infant’s body, as when he carried him back from the church.
He was touched by that scrap of humanity as by an ineffable mystery of which he had never before thought, a mystery sacred and august, a new spirit made flesh, the great mystery of newborn life, of wakening love, of the undying race of humanity going on forever and ever.
The nurse was eating; her eyes shone in her red face. She was worried by the child, who prevented her from getting comfortably near the table.
“Give him to me,” said the priest; “I’m not hungry.” And he took the child. Then everything around him faded and disappeared; his eyes were fixed on the chubby pink face. Little by little the warmth of the tiny body penetrated through the shawls and the cassock to his legs, like a caress, so light, so good, so pure, so sweet, that his eyes filled with tears.
The noise of the revellers became terrific. The child, disturbed by the uproar, began to cry.
A voice sang out: “Hey there, passon, feed your baby.”
And a burst of laughter shook the room. But the mother had risen; she took her son and carried him into the next room. She came back a few minutes later announcing that he was fast asleep in his cradle.
The meal went on. From time to time men and women went out into the yard, then returned and sat down again. The meat, the vegetables, the cider, and the wine coursed down their throats, swelled their bellies, excited their spirits.
Night was falling when the coffee came in.
Long before then the priest had vanished, his absence arousing no surprise.
At last the young mother rose to see if the child were still asleep. It was dark now. She entered the room on tiptoe, and advanced with arms outstretched, so as not to knock against the furniture. But a strange noise made her stop, and she hurried out again in a fright, sure that she had heard someone move. Pale and trembling, she regained the dining room and told her story. The men rose noisily, drunk and angry, and the father, a lamp in his hand, rushed out.
The priest was on his knees beside the cradle, sobbing. His forehead rested on the pillow, beside the child’s head.