A Strange Country

ALSO BY

MURIEL BARBERY

The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Gourmet Rapsody

The Life of Elves

Muriel Barbery

A STRANGE COUNTRY

Translated from the French

by Alison Anderson

Europa Editions

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New York, N.Y. 10001

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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 © Editions Gallimard, Paris, 2019

First Publication 2020 by Europa Editions

Translation by Alison Anderson

Original title: Un étrange pais

Translation copyright 2020 by Europa Editions

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

ISBN 978-1-60945-585-9

Book design by Emanuele Ragnisco

www.mekkanografici.com

Cover image: iStock

For Sébastien

For Gérard, my father

A STRANGE COUNTRY

in the final hour of loving

everything shall be empty

and full of wonder

BOOKS

WAR

There was a time when a great war, the grandest strategic game ever played, consumed two fraternal worlds.

I would like to tell you the story in the proper way, because it cannot be written in one single book. In fact, mankind and the elves would be more at peace with one another if they knew the four Books.

The four Books came from the four Sources, but they are customarily united in two motifs: murder, on the one hand; and poetry, on the other.

Book I—Those who have never prayed at night shall be denied the understanding of the price of desire—

Book II—Those who mistake force for courage shall be denied the privilege of striding through the realm of fear in peace—

Book III—Those whose eyes have never been burned by beauty shall be denied the right to die in the sun—

Book IV—But those who set conditions on love shall be granted the right to know the boundlessness of misfortune—

Who has time to think about the great Books when war is raging and the living are dying? And yet, their pages blend with the song of the earth and the sky, and can be heard in the very heart of battle.

ALLIANCE

In these tragic times, a company of elves and humans could hear the winds of dreams and believe in the rebirth of the four Books.

Among them were two young women, a priest, a painter, and a most remarkable elf, although the memory of centuries would not have retained his name—given his minor ancestry—had he not, during this long war, been the constant catalyst of encounters.

What follows is the story of the last alliance between humans and elves.

TALE

However, before we begin, let it be known: we who live under the land of Spain are only responsible for the tale of the West. I know that in the East our people do not reside in the depths of the earth, but on the crest of a mountain, in the North on the shores of a frozen sea, and in the South on a plain inhabited by wild animals.

Who can hear us? We have neither heralds, nor tribunes, nor a face, and we listen to the dead telling us the story we murmur into the ears of the living.

ALLIANCES

1938

PREAMBLE

At the beginning of this tale, the human world had been at war for six years.

The war was started by a coalition, the Confederation, led by the Italy of Raffaele Santangelo, and which also included, in particular, France and Germany. The rumors of war that had been circulating for several months were swept aside by a large-scale invasion, which flooded the members of the League: Spain, Great Britain, and the countries of northern Europe.

Spain was an unusual case: the king was the League’s natural ally, but part of his army, which had long been preparing this betrayal, broke away and allied themselves with the Confedera­tion. At the beginning of the war, the regular Spanish troops loyal to the Crown and the League found themselves surrounded by the renegade generals, and Spain was cut off from her allies.

A remarkable event occurred in 1932, during the first year of the conflict, when an independent civilian resistance was organized in the countries belonging to the Confederation.

Santangelo’s intentions were clear right from the start. In reaction to the League’s refusal to renegotiate the treaties from the previous war, he set out to redraw Europe’s borders by force. In the name of Italian pride and racial purity, he implemented a policy of mass displacement of the peninsula’s inhabitants. In 1932, he passed laws on ethnic exclusion that would soon be enshrined in the Italian constitution; by 1938, there were camps all over the Europe of the Confederation.

FOR YOUR DEAD

Alejandro de Yepes was born in the land he was now defending in the snow. Others were fighting for the outcome of the war, but General de Yepes waged war for the tombs and acres of his ancestors, and hardly cared whether the League eventually triumphed or not. He was the native son of a region so poor that its noblemen looked flea-ridden to the rest of Spain; and indeed his father, in his lifetime, had been both thoroughly noble and thoroughly poor. People were starving as, from the promontory of the castillo, they admired the most sublime view in all Extremadura and Castile and León combined, because the fortress was situated on the border between the two provinces and with a single gesture one could release one’s eagles toward Salamanca and Cáceres. Good fortune saw to it that Alejandro would return there after six years of fighting far from home, at a time when Extremadura was becoming pivotal to the major offensive which, it was hoped, would bring an end to the war. What’s more, that same good fortune had enabled the young general to come home a hero, for he had displayed a strategic acumen that defied the understanding of his superiors.

Superiors who were very worthy. These men knew how to lead and how to fight and they found it easy to hate an enemy who was even more abject than the ones they had fought in the past. They claimed to serve the League as much as they served Spain, divided as she was by treachery, and they had waged both battles at the same time with the bravery that comes with the conviction of the heart. Surprisingly, most of the officers hailed from rural parts of the country, while the cities had sided primarily with the enemy. It was an army made of men accustomed to handling rifles since childhood, and the harshness of their land had made them rugged and wily in action. They chose to side with the League because they shared an allegiance with their ancestors and with the king, and had no qualms about fighting their turncoat brothers. The fact that they were outnumbered ten to one did not worry them; as such, temerity had been their first mistake: a sense of panache inherited from their fathers had compelled the officers to fight in the front line, until voices—including Alejandro’s—insisted they could not send soldiers into battle without leaders. And since those leaders had amply demonstrated their courage, they did without the serenade of honor from then on. No one doubted, anyway, that true honor consists in paying respects to the earth and sky, and that to honor one’s dead, one must live.

The Franco-Italian confederation had taken Europe by surprise, putting an unprepared Spain to fire and sword by releasing cartloads of men carelessly sent to die. The generals committed to the League knew that while the best officers had remained loyal to the king, their strength overall was a farce and they would not find salvation in numbers, but through a volley of miracles. However, during the weeks it took the allied forces to regroup, Lieutenant de Yepes accomplished a miracle. When his soldiers joined forces with the friendly troops, they discovered that the subordinate who was the most poorly equipped in men and arms in the entire army was the one who had lost the fewest men and inflicted the greatest losses on the traitors. In those days, there was a remarkable general by the name of Miguel Ybáñez, now deceased, who was serving as army chief of staff. He deliberately promoted valorous young officers at the same time as he disgraced those who did not manifest any tactical gifts and who, moreover, lacked all strategic sense. Proper tactics are the backbone of an officer, strategy is both his lungs and his heart. And since no one, when outnumbered ten to one, can afford to lack either spirit or ardor, Ybáñez wanted strategists, above all.

In Alejandro, he found one of high quality.

During the early days of the conflict, Lieutenant de Yepes was cut off from his command. His hands were free and his line was simple: he had to save on men, time, ammunition, and supplies. The regular troops were more spread out than they were and communication by land was impossible. They were about to run out of supplies and everyone was imagining imminent disaster: pulverized like rats, the isolated units would perish, surrounded by troops that were largely superior in number. Without communications, knowledge of the terrain is an army’s only chance of survival. With a heavy heart, Alejandro sent valiant men out as scouts—more than he would have liked—and lost far more than he would have wanted. But enough men came back to give him a clear picture of the theater of operations, something to which the enemy, confident of their strength in numbers, paid only moderate attention. In constant retreat, Alejandro infiltrated wherever he could, like water trickling down a slope among roots and rocks. He sought out the best locations for provisioning and resistance, and harassed his adversary with lightning actions that made it seem he was everywhere at once. In combat, he held back his artillery, and his men came under fire when they were saving their own resources—to such a degree that one day in December, he immobilized the gunners for nearly half an hour. The enemy shells fell like rain and Alejandro’s men prayed to the Madre, but when the enemy general, convinced all he had to do now was wipe up a handful of ghosts, launched his infantry on them, the same men who not that long ago had been praying now blessed their lieutenant for saving their fine ammunition from being too hastily deployed. They were spread through the valley in loosely-knit groups, and not as many men perished as the concentrated enemy fire would have liked. In the end, retreating once again to a place where they could withstand a long siege, they inflicted heavy losses on the other side. As day fell, the stunned adversary could not understand why they had not prevailed, and they realized that they had neither won nor lost the battle.

At the request of Alejandro—now promoted to major—Ybáñez appointed a man from the ranks as lieutenant, who would later become a major himself when Alejandro was made general. His name was Jesús Rocamora and, by his own admission, he hailed from the asshole of Spain, a little town in Extremadura lost between two deserted expanses of earth to the southwest of Cáceres. A large lake was the only source of subsistence for the poor wretches in the region, who were fishermen and went to sell their catch on the Portuguese border, which meant that their lives were spent between fishing and an equally exhausting walk beneath the evil summer sun and the biblical cold of winter. There was a priest there who made a similarly meager living, and a mayor who fished all day long. The curse of the times, for a decade now the lake had been shrinking. Prayers and processions did no good: the waters were evaporating and, whether it was the wrath of God or of Mother Nature, the subsequent generations would be reduced to leaving or to perishing. And now, through that irony of fate that transforms suffering into desire, those who once cursed their village came to feel a wrenching attachment to it, and although there was not much to like about their life, they had chosen to die there with the last fish.

Most men prefer death to change, said Jesús to Alejandro one evening when they were bivouacked on a shady little plateau, musing that they themselves would probably be dead by the next day.

But you left, said Alejandro.

It wasn’t because I was afraid to die, said Jesús.

What other reason did you have?

It is my fate to know nakedness and to suffer for mankind. It started in the village, and so it must go on in the outside world.

Alejandro de Yepes kept Jesús Rocamora by his side throughout the entire war. This son of hell’s fishing grounds was one of the few men to whom he would have entrusted his life without flinching. The other was General Miguel Ybáñez. Chief of staff of the king’s army, a little man so bow-legged that people said he’d been born on horseback, he was reputed to be the best horseman in the realm, a rider who leapt rather than climbed into the saddle. From his perch, he would stare down at you with his shining eyes and nothing could matter more than pleasing him. From what fabric is the skill for command cut? Yet in his gaze there was weariness and sadness. Most of the time he listened attentively, made few remarks, and gave his orders as if complimenting a friend, his voice devoid of all military sharpness—in response to which his men went out ready to die for him or for Spain, it was all the same, because the specter of fear had vanished, for a time.

One must imagine what it means to inhabit the province of life and death. It is a strange country and its only strategists are those who speak the language. They are called on to address the living and the dead as if they were all one, and Alejandro was well versed in that idiom. As a child, no matter the path he took, he was irresistibly drawn to the walls of the cemetery at Yepes. There, among the stones and crosses, he felt he was once again among his people. He did not know how to speak to them, but the peacefulness of the place rustled with words for him. What’s more, even when it meant nothing, the music of the dead reached him in a place in his chest that understood, irrespective of words. In these moments of great fulfillment, he saw an intense sparkling in the periphery of his vision, and he knew he was seeing the manifestation of an unknown and powerful spirit.

Ybáñez was also an initiate, and drew the strength therefrom that made him such a singular leader of men. In the month of November of the third year of the war, he came to Yepes to meet Alejandro. The young major had left the North and gone to the castillo not knowing why he had been summoned. A few snow flurries were falling, Ybáñez seemed gloomy, and the conversation was unusual.

Do you remember what you said the first time we met? asked Ybáñez. That the war would last a long time and we would have to track it down behind its successive masks? Everyone who failed to understand this is dead now.

Others died who were aware of what was at stake, said Alejandro.

Who will win? retorted Ybáñez, as if he had been asked. I’ve been endlessly harassed, both about the war and about victory. But no one ever asks the right question.

He raised his glass in silence. Despite its wretchedness, the castillo boasted a cellar of perfectly aged wines, vintages once offered to Alejandro’s father Juan de Yepes, as well as to his grandfather, his great-grandfather, and so on up the line to the dawn of time. This is what happened. One morning, somewhere in Europe, a man would wake up and know that he had to set out for a certain castle in Extremadura, a place he had never heard of until now. It did not occur to him that this notion was either fantastical or impractical, and not for a moment did the voyager hesitate or doubt when he came to a crossroads. These men were prosperous winemakers whose cellars contained the fruit of their talent, and now they selected wonderful bottles that they would once have reserved for their sons’ weddings. They arrived at the gate of the castillo, handed the bottle to the father, the grandfather, or one of Alejandro’s ancestors; they were given something to eat and a glass of sherry; then without further ado, after standing for a moment at the top of the tower, they went away again. Back in their own land, every morning they would think of the glass of sherry, the generous bread, the violet ham; the day went on and their servants could see how greatly they were changed. What had happened at the castillo? As far as the counts of Yepes were concerned, nothing differed in any way from the usual customs of their rank, and they were unaware of the strange ballet by which others were lured by their castle. No one was surprised, the event occurred and was forgotten, and Alejandro was the first ever to concern himself with it. But when he inquired, no one knew what to reply, and he spent his childhood feeling like an anomaly within the anomaly of the castillo. When the feeling grew so strong that it caused a pain in his chest, he went to the cemetery and engaged once again in his commerce with the dead.

One must be grateful for this inclination for tombstones, for twenty years earlier, he was in the cemetery on the November day when his entire family perished. Men had attacked the castillo and killed everyone they found. No one knew how many of them there were, how they had come, or how they left. No lookouts—by which we mean the eyes of old women and shepherds—had seen them coming; it was as if they had come out of nowhere and returned there in the same way. Alejandro left the cemetery that day because the strange light tasted of blood, but as he headed back up to the castillo the only traces he saw in the snow were the pawprints of hares and deer. Yet before he even went through the gate into the fortress, he knew. His body urged him to fall to his knees, but he continued on his way, down his path of suffering.

He was ten years old and the only surviving descendant of his clan.

The funerals were remarkable. It was as if all of Extremadura had gathered in Yepes, their numbers swollen by travelers from the past who had managed to reach the village in time. It made for a strange crowd and, anyway, everything was strange that day—the mass, the procession, the burial, and the homily given by a priest cloaked in a wind-ravaged cassock. The wind had begun to blow when the coffins left the castillo, and stopped abruptly with the last word of the funeral oration. And then silence fell all around, until the bells tolled the angelus, and there was a feeling of departing an unknown land—this is what had quietly filled people’s hearts all day long, this inner crossing, this aimless wandering along unfamiliar paths, undisturbed by the priest’s Latin gibberish or the ridiculous sight of a procession of toothless old folk. Now they awoke as from a long meditation and watched Alejandro walking back up the steep slope to the fortress. Only one man was with him, and the village council was praised for its decision to entrust the child to his wise hands. Everyone knew he would take care of the castillo and treat the orphan well; they were glad that he would initiate him into certain higher things and, above all, they were relieved that they would not have to take charge of the matter themselves.

Luis Álvarez must have been in his fifties and, whether from the stubbornness or the negligence of the gods, was altogether a little man, somewhat bent and very thin. But when he removed his shirt for the hardest tasks, it was to reveal taut and astonishingly vigorous muscles flexing beneath his skin. Similarly, he had an ordinary, unexpressive face, shining with deep blue eyes, and the contrast between the anonymity of his face and the splendor of his gaze summed up everything there was to know about the man. His position was that of steward: he supervised the upkeep of the domain, collected the rent from the tenant farmers, bought and sold wood and kept the ledgers. His soul, on the other hand, made him the guardian of the stars of the castillo. In the evening when they dined in the kitchen of the deserted fortress, Luis spoke with his pupil at length, for this man who was dedicated to serving the powerful and dealing with trivial commerce was in fact a great intellectual and a masterful poet. He had read everything, then reread it, and he wrote the sort of lyrical poetry that only a fervent soul can produce—a poetry of incantations to the sun and murmurs of stars, love, and crosses; of prayers in the night and silent quests. It was in his poetry, during the hours when he wrote it, that he perceived at the edge of his vision the same light Alejandro received from his dead, and he alone, more than anyone, would have been able to answer the boy’s questions about pilgrimage. However, he kept his peace.

And so, for eight years, every day at noon, you could see him come down from the fortress in the company of the adolescent and sit at his table at the inn, wearing the same white shirt with an officer’s collar and the same light-colored suit, the same worn leather boots and the same wide-brimmed hat—straw in summer and felt when the first frosts arrived, in winter adding one of those long overcoats that shepherds on horseback are known to wear. They would serve him a glass of sherry, and he would stay for an hour while everyone stopped by, asking about his latest poem or the estimated price of cattle. When he was seated he seemed tall because he held himself straight, one leg over the other, one hand on his thigh, elbow propped on the table. He would take a sip intermittently, then wipe his lips with the white napkin folded next to his glass. He seemed enveloped in silence, although he spoke a great deal during these meetings that passed for banal conversation. His elegance was not intimidating; it was elevating, comforting. Next to him, Alejandro sat quietly, and learned the life of poor men.

A lesser-ranked man can hold an entire country together. Blessed are the lands which know the comfort of such a being, without whom they are doomed to languish and die. In fact, everything can be read in two opposite ways; one has only to see grandeur in the place of wretchedness, or ignore the glory that shines through decline. Poverty had not made the place indigent: it evoked a calming fragrance of splendor and dreams, made all the more remarkable by deprivation; and as long as Luis Álvarez was managing the fortress, it was considered a place to be proud of, despite the knowledge that its land was no longer fertile and its walls were crumbling. And so, after the murder of the Yepes family, the steward naturally took over the tasks they had once performed. He presided over the first village council meeting after the tragedy, and later, when people looked back, it appeared to them as a moment of great dignity; in our collapsing world, such memories are almost more precious than life itself. He opened the meeting, then said a few words to honor the dead, and there can be little doubt that these words kept Alejandro from the madness of sorrow and made him a sane man—in particular the final words, which were addressed to him, although Luis refrained from looking in his direction: the living must tend to the dead. The child was sitting to the right of his steward, his gaze was feverish, but stiller than a stone. However, after he had heard these words, the feverishness of his eyes flickered out and he wiggled on his chair like any boy his age. Then the steward called the votes in the manner of the ancestors, naming the families and striking with his hammer at each decision. When everything had been examined and voted on, he adjourned the meeting and asked the priest to say the prayer for the dead. As the old priest was stumbling over his words, he continued for him, and at the end the entire council voiced the responses—nevertheless, one should not suppose that Luis Álvarez reigned over the land solely because he respected the organization of its rites: if the steward of the castillo had a natural authority, it was because he had created bonds with everyone, bonds that were rooted in a soil