Love springs eternal

Rapide and Baccarat
April 11, 2008

Rapide was a mother. I don't know what exactly she thought about that, but Baccarat never let her forget it, except when she turned the table on her mother and mothered her. I am not used to seeing Rapide's body without some part of Baccarat's draped over her, but she won't have the littler cat, oh no. Rapide is not looking for any replacements, but I have started looking for a puppy.

How much time do you have?

I thought I'd just go see the breeder. I had emailed her to let her know how the surgery had gone, and then I didn't hear from her. I figured it was her Internet service. She is not of the generation that does not know how to live without it, and her cell phone number is on her website. If you are interested in a puppy she has available, or wish to reserve one if there has been a "saillie", well, you can call her. I am allergic to the phone.

That's why I have time to write.

She emailed me back to express her sadness at Baccarat's death, and she told me to call her; we could talk. I wrote back and said that I was thinking more of coming to see her, if that would be alright, as early as the next day, if it wouldn't be an imposition, and my husband could be convinced.

"Je ne comprends pas vraiment cette manip," he commented as I climbed up on the back of his huge motorcycle behind him. I didn't answer, and he started off toward Pont l'Evêque, which is not far from the breeder's little farm where she breeds Black and Chocolate Labrador Retrievers and thoroughbreds for the track and jumping in her own small operation. She has been there for 27 years, having left Rambouillet, and her husband, too, I believe, that long ago.

He did understand the "manip". He simply didn't want me to think that he was of the same mind and heart.

We rode through the rain in our matching rain gear and on to the village near her for lunch at a little restaurant and inn, Les Deux Tonneaux. The sky began to clear over the rolling green hills that had until recently been more evocative of Southern California than of the Pays d'Auge until the rain began in August as we ate a Norman lunch involving cheese, pork and apples in their brut cider form. It was delicious. It was nourishing. I was happy.

I was going to see puppies.

We got lost. We thought we remembered the way from the church across from the restaurant the last 2 or 3 kilometers, and we started out from the church twice before we finally tried one lane we had overlooked, passed a local family in their little car and heard directions we recognized right away. We were on the right road.

So much for phones that fail when you need them. Locals in a small agricultural community can be relied on every time, unless they happen to be nurturing a grudge, like they kind of do against the breeder for having come amongst them from Paris nearly three decades ago.

"Déjà ils ne s'entendent entre eux," said the breeder, shaking her head, "mais quand il s'agit de quelqu'un de l'extérieure qui vient parmi eux, ils mettent leurs disputes de côté pour se réunir contre vous." She chuckled. Already, she said, they don't get along between themselves. But, when it comes to a stranger coming amongst them, they put their disputes aside to unite against you, but they hadn't succeeded in making her go away in 30 years, and at 76, she wasn't contemplating picking up her house and farm and going anywhere else.

She showed us two litters of Jack Russells she had available, 5 and 7 weeks of age. She had intended to have one, but, oops. That's how it goes sometimes. She's a little less particular about her Jacks. And then, we fell to talking about Baccarat. She looked off toward a stable door, saying, "Bon, qu'est-ce que je peux faire pour ça?", and walked off to open it. A small black lab, just about as high as my knee (I am not very tall), cantered out and over to sniff the grass before trotting on over to greet us.

My heart clutched. I bent down as she looked up to me and took her snout in my hand just like I used to do to Baccarat. She let me. I leaned toward her and she met me with a little kiss, the lightest touch of snouts. Had she been briefed, I wondered? She was soft. I remembered how much softer their little bodies are, and how much cuter 5 months, for that was how old I heard her telling me she was, than 8 weeks. You can see the dog they will be and they puppy they are. I rubbed my hand up and down her back and then stood to participate in the conversation. She scampered over to explore the tall grass along the fence and hedge, trotting like a Royal Lippenstein, those gigantic, beautiful paws coming impossibly high up out of that country grass.

The breeder was explaining that she was the only one left from a litter this spring. She was keeping her to breed. A beauty. She'd come back over among us, and I looked again at those prized huge paws, her sleek legs, beautiful head and that stature. She was, I thought, more beautiful than Baccarat. More standard perfect. If you care about that sort of thing. Well, I do, but Baccarat had taught me a thing or two. But, I was confused. I thought she was going to offer her to us to buy, but she was saying that she was going to keep her to breed.

"C'est quoi son prénom?" I asked.

"Elle n'en a pas encore," the breeder replied. I thought she looked at me somewhat significantly, and I felt even more confused. Did I have to want her so much that she would bring herself to part from her? I thought that was it. She had talked about a fall while caring for her horses last winter, surgery for a blood clot, and her younger son, a doctor himself, wanting her to get out of the business "at her age". This not being quite her way of thinking. She was saying that this is her life. It gives purpose and structure to her days; she loves the horses and the dogs. My husband was nodding in agreement.

Better to die working and happy than bored and lonely in your arm chair, said myself. I was thinking quite the same thing.

Past her, the little Black Lab's attention had been caught by a dandelion flower. It brushed her cheek on another sally along the fence across the narrow strip of lawn between the stable and her yard. She raised her large forepaw and batted at it. I laughed.

She thinks it's a butterfly, said myself. We laughed quietly together, watching her swap it to the ground and eat it. I shared her escapade with my husband and Madame. They chuckled.

"J'ai pensé lui prénommer 'Full of Fun' et l'appeler 'Fun', ou quelque chose," she said.

"Ca serait un bon prénom pour elle," I replied, surprising myself. I don't love names like that, but it fit her to a t.

We went over to see the yearlings in the paddock that slopes down to a woods. Over the top of the pasture grass and the trees, you can see a couple of houses nestled into the little woods among the pastures on the farther hill. The little Black Lab came along, pushing her paws under the bottom fence wire to the deep mud from the rain that had turned Madame Legrand's lawn, fields and view green again. She removed them, wet up to her chest and trotted along to where the fence met the hedge and then on along the hedge, while Madame called to her yearlings.

"Ils doivent être là-bas en train de se protéger des mouches," she explained, gesturing toward a group of trees and their shade across the paddock and calling out to them.

"Ah, les mouches," I repeated, stupidly. I was trying to pay attention, but my eyes were following the little dog. In a moment, four one-year-olds appeared from around the little Tudor style building behind us.

"C'est fou qu'ils viennent comme ça, quand vous les appelez," commented my husband, visibly awestruck by the horses appearing at the call of her voice.

We talked about her work breeding them, the low-down things some people had done, like taking her race horses off to the tracks in England, where she cannot touch a royalty on their earnings like she does by law in France. She's not in the same league, she explained with a laugh, with the big Arab stables that can put down 30,000 to 50,000 euros for an insemination. No, she's in the 5,000 euros league, but her horses sell for a decent price, and they earn pocketbooks upwards of a quarter million for their owners at places like Deauville, and a little something in royalties for her, as well, to help her keep going. The little dog had come back, and I reached down to pet her again.

She's good at amusing herself, noted myself. I had noted that, too. She was free to explore the stables and play with the horses through the fence, when she wasn't in her stable. It was a rather idyllic life for a young Lab. About the same one I could give her here, like Baccarat had had, although she'd never been as big as this little girl in her time on that farm to be able to appreciate it the same way.

Then, we went to see the three almost 2-week-old Chocolate Labs that were still with their mother in the house. Don't come in, cautioned the breeder; the mother is very protective of her little ones. She went inside and came back out with a little wrinkly puppy with a face as flat as a Persian cat. We were careful to keep our hands to ourselves so as not to upset the mother, who appeared a moment once her puppy was safely back in the low box they share for a couple more weeks.

From there, we got back on the bike and followed her back to the road and down another rough lane to where she kept other pastures and where she was building a house according to the old carpentry methods for her younger son from a mill they had taken down to move there. The pastures swept down a slope toward a fold between the hills before us. Up behind was the other set of stables she had built. Her mares were over here, grazing on their acres. The son didn't think he wanted the house anymore, and she thinks it's a bit much for her. She's used to her place. We stood on the concrete slab filled with water, looking out between the ancient framing members and the newer ones, done in the old way, and we talked awhile about family, our kids, their lives, and then we made to say good-bye. My husband apologized for taking so much of her time, but he had already done that, and I knew she hadn't minded in the least. She had offered her time. As we walked back to the motorcycle, parked near her old black Mercedes four-wheel drive, we returned to the dogs available and she reminded us of our options.

My husband had, by now, fully understood the "manip", and he was preparing himself to give in. Not, as he pointed out, that we could bring a puppy back with us, gesturing to the bike.

There was a female among the Chocolate puppies that could leave in a few weeks, and there was a 7-year-old she was looking to place, as well as the 5-month-old Black Lab. I cut her off. Did she mean the one we had seen? The one she said she was keeping? She nodded. But, hadn't she said she intended to keep that one? Yes, she had intended to keep her, she said, but -- and now it was she who looked as confused as I did earlier and probably again -- she had to be reasonable. She had to consider selling her. Poised, as she was, I thought, between wanting to continue, and needing to stop.

My heart jumped. I could have her! So, she wasn't tiny puppy butt. She wasn't just able to leave the breeder. She had a few meters on her paws, but she was the sweetest thing and full of fun. I tried to wink to tell her that I'd get my husband in line soon enough and she'd be hearing from me. I didn't say it so that he couldn't hear. He knew the "manip" by now.

That was Saturday. Today is Tuesday, and I am in a lather. I have been on the Internet, reading sites about Labrador Retrievers all over again, looking up breeders, reading sires' and dames' names. I have contacted two other breeders, just to feel less impulsive.

But I love her! wails myself, receiving a sympathetic audience from me.

She won't be a present, that much I can say, and it isn't easy to impose the cost on my husband, who lovingly did everything for Baccarat. There's the purchase price, and back to vet, food and flea and tick protection bills for two dogs. Of course, I'll also have to find place for another dog bed (and my husband is already mécontent about the new one for Rapide... ahem).

And, am I ready to leave the dumps, the dreariness of no Baccarat to be cheered by a dandelion swatting little girl?

Oh, oui.
....

Lidocaine for the soul

The mother frog,
or yellows

The past couple of days, I have gotten up early so as to be able to be extra unproductive. This morning, I gave up. Too bad. It was a nice morning, and the afternoon is not so nice. In fact, I think it will rain again.

This must be another phase of mourning. It's unpleasant. You don't even have the benefit of the exquisiteness of pain and tears, just nothing. It's like eating the hollow fine dark chocolate Easter bunny and getting to the middle part. Your heart hurts, but as diffusely as your most acute thought, which never gets beyond something you can't quite identify tapping on your consciousness in gloved hands. Your brain seems to be wearing gloves, too, or just all the gauze you looked for when you burned your stomach ironing the skirt you were wearing.

The steam might burn you.

"Yeah. I know."

And you don't care? That was myself speaking. You probably recognize the voice by now.

"Well, of course." My thought trailed off to follow every other one I had attempted in the last three weeks.

You lift the hem of your skirt, just to get that area at the zipper that is all puckered, the one you didn't do, taking some care to step back as far from the ironing board as possible. You press the steam button and feel the pain.

So, you cared, you say?

You lift your skirt to look at the white skin of your abdomen and see the spot turning pink.

"Shit." Myself wandered off to more promising things.

By evening, you can tell your husband when he comes home what you did.

"On entend ça des femmes enceintes --" He was chuckling. He is, if you recall, an Ob/Gyn. I didn't even have that excuse.

"Oui. Le ventre. J'imagine." I hoped for him not to press quite how I accomplished this. He was content enough to continue to be amused, thinking of all those women whose bellies surprised them. Later, getting ready for bed, I showed him.

"Mais, c'est mauvais," he said, surprised. He has admired my courage since Baccarat was hospitalized and died. I can feel my value rising.

"Oui, je sais." The skin was coming up over an angry red spot now where the elastic of my panties had rubbed it. I had chosen to ignore it rather than bandage it from the first. No wonder, I thought, it hurt.

Finding no tape for the gauze, I got out my precious Neosporin with lidocaine, squirted some liberally on the wound and applied a sports Band-Aid for the knee. I wouldn't have to tell anyone of the misuse of the Band-Aid, but I might look even worse in a bikini once we left for vacation.

Maybe I'll just stay home.

Today, I saw a tadpole. We wondered why we hadn't seen any, since we had observed the behavior characteristic of their arrival. I thought I saw one the other day. They don't move through water in quite the same way as fish, but please don't ask me to describe the difference to you. It's something you sense more than analyze. It is already quite large and probably about to develop rear legs, so it has been around for some weeks, which makes sense, given what we observed, my husband actually calling me over to see. As though with the time I spend at the bassin I had never had this opportunity for observation or frog reproductive behavior.

Meanwhile, I pray I get back to normal (better than normal, actually) soon. I don't think the house and garden can take much more of my mental absence.

And, I forgot to turn off the hose and I burned the plums the neighbor left yesterday that I was simmering into a compote.
....

I have breathed my soul

Evening,
An arc-en-ciel for the duck
From the balcony, August 4

"'Death is coming to me as the divine kiss which is both parting and reunion -- which takes me from your bodily eyes and gives me full presence in your soul. Where thou goest, Daniel, I shall go. Is it not begun? Have I not breathed my soul into you? We shall live together.'"
-- George Eliot, "Daniel Deronda"

Death has been the oppressing theme of this summer. The unwelcome visitor who would not leave.

Three close friends have lost their parents, one losing both and their 10-year-old Golden Retriever to cancer, like our Baccarat, whom we lost, and I have lost count of the number of birds, including the duck, who have died here. Another small bird expired in my hand the day before yesterday, and Eliot's words, spoken by Ezra to Daniel, provide comfort in speaking what I felt the last days and moments I spent with Bacs; she breathed her soul into me. She had been doing that ever since I first saw her when she was 8 weeks old, and I realized, really, I am taking you home, to our house. You are my dog. This, on top of several other friends who lost parents this year, some at the same time as they lost their Golden Retriever or their cat, too.

Have I not breathed my soul into you? We shall live together.

I had taken to lying on my back on the sofa or in my room, reading Daniel Deronda, when I was not wielding pickax and sledge hammer, knocking the rest of the paving someone before us had installed at the foot of the house years ago. This last bit was hidden under the skirts of the gigantic evergreen shrub at the corner of the house, where it turns into the small entry courtyard, and shielded us from the neighbors' eyes. I had forgotten about it until I went to clean up the pile of chaux the workers left in a mound where the tree-sized shrub had been.

And, I was lying just so on the sofa reading when I heard the birds begin to chirp and squawk with what seemed like more than their usual energy. It was enough, anyway, to distract me from the terrible Duke Alfonso, the Duchess and Daniel and make me listen. Then, an animal went tearing up the staircase over my head. I looked up from the page.

It had to have been Wisp, judging by the sound of the paws on the wood stairs and the speed. She is much faster than Shadow, although I maintain that Shadow is not fat; she is large of frame. I bolted up off the sofa and ran up the stairs after her, and there she was, hesitating on the landing, wondering whether to turn left toward the bathroom or run into the nearer piège of Sam's room. Would she, she was surely asking herself, measuring the possibilities and the probabilities, be more likely to find a means of escape with her prize in one room, or the other? It didn't matter; she knows me too well by now. I always win.

She turned her head just to glance at me and measure my progress on her, enough to show me that it was not a mouse as I had first thought when my eyes took her and the object in her mouth in from behind, but a bird, and took off straight into Sam's room.

Of course it was a bird, said myself. Hadn't you heard them making a ruckus? Did you think it was over a mouse?

I didn't answer. There was not time. I chose to ignore the snide chortle and pursue Wisp.

She had made it to just in front of the French windows. It was open. I clapped my hands and shouted, "Wisp! Mauvaise chatte méchante!" She dropped the bird and swiveled her head to look at me in the same motion. Thinking fast (George Eliot's locution is excellent preparation for mental quickness), I grabbed the cat and dashed her into the nearby laundry hamper, bringing the lid across it in case she could jump and get in my way.

Cat neutralized, I turned my attention back to the little bird. It was just disappearing under the bookshelves, behind the plastic bins of Sam's miscellaneous Lego bits and pieces.

He had far too much Lego.

Dropping to my knees, I moved the bins around, trying to trap it gently into a corner where I had a chance of getting my hands around it without smushing it (or scaring it more than necessary).

Oh my God, look at the dust balls! They are as big as the bird, said myself. Didn't you just vacuum in here?

"Yes, I did. I waxed the floor, too." Myself drew her brows together and shook her head. "Alright, I did the parts where it was visible, and under Sam's bed. Could you please let me concentrate on this bird now? Please?" I shifted a bin, and the bird scuttled beyond it and into the other corner. I pulled out another and shifted the one nearer it into the farther one. The bird was faster, and scuttled back past both bins to hide in the first corner. I removed both bins and the bird blinked at me.

"I've got you. Please don't fight." It blinked again, and then it was in my hands, staining my fingers with its blood.

I turned it gently to see how bad it was. There was blood below its left eye, and possibly an injury to the neck, just above the breast, but nothing else. It jerked its head from side to side, cocking it to look at me, and blinked.

"I think you might make it, little one," I said, heading downstairs for a bit of paper towel and wet it to dab the blood from its injuries, and then we went outside to see if it could fly.

I set it down in the grass in front of the French door. It spread its wings, flapped and rose about a foot above the grass, coming to a rest about two feet from where it had started, before hopping and trying to launch itself again. After three tries, I aborted its efforts as futile at present time and thought about what to do. I could not forget at that moment that I have not had great luck saving birds. You can click on any number of recent posts, and you will see for yourself. I believe I am some 1 for 7 or 8.

That one was the jogging bird.

We went inside, where I picked up the camera, and headed back outdoors, where it had the best chance to take off, or at least do it where it had the best chance of escape, and I took a few pictures while it jerked its head left and right and finally came to a rest looking straight at me. I sat down the camera and looked off across the terrace to the field, aware of Rapide sitting by my side. The bird sat warm in my hand, and then it was taking off. Just like that, it was in the air, winging out under the branches of the linden tree toward the twin sentinels, the yews at either side of Baccarat's old lookout, and then it dipped, and a dark form rose and snapped its white paws together. Just like that. No bird flew on. Shadow fell to a crouch, and I sprang forward, screaming.

"Shadow! Nooooooooo!"

Her head twisted around to face the fullness of my fury, and she didn't think twice before abandoning her catch and sprinting to the top of the second set of stairs. I looked down. The little beak was opening and closing, the chest heaving.

"Shadow, you bad, bad, bad, bad, bad cat!" I hissed at her, dropping to my knees to lift the badly injured bird. She looked back at me, perfectly collected and calm, but I think I saw something of Mrs. Glasher flashing in her eyes.

The bird lay in my hand and gasped. It went on and on. Her claw had to have pierced its lung, but how long would it go on before it finally died? I thought about crushing it. I heard a voice.

You can't do that. You know you can't do that.

"It would be kinder, wouldn't it?" I replied to myself.

Of course, but you can't do that. You know you can't. It was true. I thought about Old Yeller and pioneer farmers' sons who could.

"How long? How long will it take it to die? This is awful," I said to myself, watching the beak, the half-closed eyes, imagining the lungs filling with blood.

The gasps gradually became fainter, the beak closing, opening less and less with each breath. It continued, and then it was still. It took its last breath and then not another.

I stood there with it in my palm, wondering what I'd do. It stayed warm a long time, and I finally lay it down in the dirt of my window planter with the basil and the coriander.

"I'll decide later," I told myself.

Wisp sauntered past my, glancing up and quickening her pace almost imperceptibly when her eyes met mine.

I imagined that I was now resembling Mrs. Glasher, and I wondered how she would do in the part of the drowned Duke Alfonso. Along with Shadow.

When Audouin came home that evening and asked how my day went, I could say, "Oh, tu sais, rien de nouveau. Une journée comme les autres."

"Encore un oiseau mort alors?"

No, I joke. I told him that death had come to me again, but there is no mystery.

"Non, ça c'est sûr," he said, turning to scold Shadow, "Vous êtes les vrais méchants les chats," he said in his sternest, most deprecating tone. "Vous ne tuez pas pour manger mais pour le plaisir de tuer."

I couldn't argue against that. I imagined he in turn was imagining them drowned and gone, the birds safe to swoop without fear of a leaping body and severely sharp claws snapping together around their fragile bodies, flying on as they would.

"C'est la memoire génétique. Ils ne sont pour rien," I said, "Pas que je cherche à leur faire des excuses," I added hastily. There is no excuse to make for them in their meanness.

Later that night, Wisp came and curled up around my neck, purring into our ears.

The struggle over life and our affections goes on.

Oh, did I not mention that I left Wisp in the laundry hamper to stew awhile and went back to take a picture? Not easy to focus with a small bird in your hand.
....

Her grave

Thistles and field grass

My husband came home last evening from a day of work, followed by a night on duty and another day of work and asked had I buried the cane. "Cane", pronounced (to Anglo-Saxon ears) like the city of red carpet on the Mediterranean where the champagne flows and some girls in gowns tread those red fibers on the arms of men whose careers, and nothing of their own accomplishments, set them there. I had not.

"Où est elle?" he asked, curious. He knows me enough to be a little worried, too.

"Dans un sac en plastique dans la courette,"I answered, not surprised by his look of distaste. I sometimes leave dead things I am not ready to bury lying about until I know what to do. "Je ne sais pas où l'enterrer, ou si je veux juste l'amener à la Seine."

"Mets-la dans la poubelle," my husband said, perfunctorily, without a real thought that I would do that. I went on to tell him that I had slept badly again, watching over the cane -- a Colbert, as it is called here, or a Mallard as the English-speaking know them (which could give a whole other understanding to the name of that storied Paris brasserie) -- and having bad dreams.

I had been awakened after I last sat her down in the cat travel cage (it has many grills and air holes, being only a little less open than closed) at 4:30 am, knowing I had to remove her from my chest, where she seemed to do best, and try to get some sleep, at 7:15 am by the alarm clock I had forgotten to turn off, again a little later by my own cries from another nightmare, and finally by the sounds of Rapide moving around, whining a bit, reminding me it was past time to take her out and feed her breakfast.

"La cane, elle a dormi sur toi?" he asked, looking like he'd like nothing better in all the world than for me to assure him that there had not been a duck in our bedroom, much less in our bed. I could not. He knew that.

I nodded. He held peace.

"Elle était si faible, et tu aurais-du la voir. C'est comme si elle voulait le contacte, la chaleur humaine. Je me demande d'où elle venait, cette cane." I fell off, wondering less about her seeming wish for human contact and whether ducks nestle together in their nests in the wild for comfort, than about from where she had come to arrive in our closed garden, already injured or injured after. "Je n'aurais pas du la remettre dans la cage," I picked up after a moment, "Elle aurait peut-être survécue la nuit, peut-être." I was already asking myself, And the next day then? "Je ne pouvais rien remarqué pour expliquer le fait qu'elle ne put ni marcher ni voler mais seulement nager. Il n'y a eu aucunes traces sur elle, rien d'évidemment cassé."

I could not, I explained to him, see any evidence of an injury, an attack, anything to explain why she could neither walk nor fly, only swim for a time before seeking the "nest" she discovered and made of the skimmer basket.

"Elle a probablement fait une hémoraggie interne, si elle était si faible," said the doctor sitting en face, my husband. I nodded again.

"Probablement."

I felt relieved. If it had been an internal hemorraghe, there was truly nothing I could have done to help her. I could have held her until she died, but I had to sleep. And my husband would have been pretty upset had he ever learned from my inability to keep anything from him that she had poohed in our bed.

This afternoon, I finished lunch and I decided to bury her. Sam had spent his first night in his first place of his own, his really tiny chambre de bonne in Paris, and would fly later to Barcelona. Audouin was at work. I had spent the morning reading Daniel Deronda, and now I knew where I would bury her. I would not take her to the Seine and let events do as they would with her beautiful limp body and fragile neck, her closed serene dark eyes, and I would not bury her in our garden, where she might get unburied by a future gardener with no foul intent -- how dare I a pun at this moment? No, I would bury her alongside the field down across from the lower gate and the pool, by the fence that separates it from the pasture where someone here grows hay for their horses.

I went and donned my gardening hat and gloves, picked up the square-nosed shovel for breaking into the ground and the cane in one of the miserable Carrefour plastic shopping bags I use for garbage, and I headed down to the gate. Rapide was not behind me when I closed it. I did not want her company. She had already shown enough interest in the duck when it was alive; were she to know where it was buried, I risked never seeing an end of the desecration of the poor thing.

I tried to break the ground in several places, and found it hard, full of stones. I couldn't bury her too close to the field, or the tractor would uncover her when next they till. They had just harvested the wheat they planted this year. Some years it is corn. Those are the years we like least, preferring the grassier grains that flow in the wind and turn from emerald to gold with the seasons. I arrived at a tuft of wild grass and brought the edge of the shovel down. It gave. I shoved my foot in my rubber gardening clogs down onto the top of the shovel and felt both my sole and the ground give a little. I could dig a hole here, enough of a hole, while she waited at the edge of the gravel lane.

I left a clump of field grass dangling by its untorn roots at the edge of the hole and used the sharp edge of the shovel to cut away blades from a clump nearby. These, I placed across the bottom of her hole. I would make her a last nest to protect her from the dirt. Remembering they take feathers from their own chests to line their nests, I took thistles gone to seed to line hers, and added some that were still light purple to give it color, like the bands on the wings of her light-brown body. I added Queen Ann's Lace and went and got her to lay her down.

I regretted the flies that had gotten into the bag and tried to sit on her eyes.

Her body was still soft, and her neck fell from the position in which she had arranged it to sleep, or to die. It fell limp as I removed her, and I caught it, trying with one had to hold it where she had placed it and lower her onto the grass and tufts of thistle seed.

I crossed the field again and went for my pruning sheers. I would give her a rose from our garden to which she had somehow come, although something from the pool made more sense, and I returned with a pink bud, placing it in the curve of her neck on the swelling of her chest.

There were spikes of the recently harvested wheat lying about and piles of the seed hulks the harvester left behind. I covered her with these, thinking of the local men who own and the others who work these fields and purchase the fowl to shoot. They were not responsible for her, I did not think. And then, I covered the wheat with the dirt I had removed, setting handfuls of wild grass I had torn up from along the lane over her, patting the clumps of hard soil around any roots that might be able to take hold in it.

I thought, while I worked, of Baccarat. It is consoling to create a grave, I thought. To add the things that comfort its maker. I thought about burying Chloé and how I had had to walk away and sob three times before I could finish, and how much better I had felt when it was done by my own hands. I had had no choice for Baccarat, and having her ashes to take to a favorite place, perhaps some to keep or to bury when I know what to do with them, was alright. It seemed that it would be alright for me one day, too.

"Je m'en fou de ce qu'on fait de moi," my husband had said when we talked about it last week. That's what he always says. He doesn't care what becomes of his body when he is gone. That is for those who remain to decide as best comforts them, he adds.

"Je me rends compte à quel point c'est personnel," I had said. "Et ce ne serait pas forcément pareil pour chaque animal, ou personne," I had added, musing more than speaking out loud. It was occurring to me that death is as personal as it is universal.

I told the cane that I had done the best I could by her. I asked her to give my love to Baccarat should she see her, and the tears came again, standing in that field, seeing Baccarat with her gold Christmas ribbon on the shorn gold field on which she ran.
....

The nature of Nature and Meaning

Meet the duck

I wish I were a philosopher, but in truth, all I would better know is how to construct the questions that puzzle me and that have taken unassisted sleep away from me.

The sound of the garbage truck reached my Somnifère clouded consciousness and roused me from the sleep it has offered since the night Baccarat would never come home again. Shit! Monday. It's Monday, and we didn't put out the garbage can, sent me flying from bed, grabbing my old terry robe from the bath on the way and down the stairs, past Rapide stretched out at the foot of the stairs and Shadow on her way to her food bowl. The space beyond the table and last chairs to the door to the entry courette is tight, like everything else around here, but I hate missing the garbage truck more than I hate risking a bruised thigh. Especially in the summer, even if the hot weather seems past us now and the garbage really could wait until Thursday.

It's sort of a principle.

The sounds were coming from my left. They hadn't gotten here yet. They were just up the street. I pulled the bin out from behind the telephone booth (quaint, I know), and went back in to make coffee. Awake is awake, no matter how many grams of active ingredient might yet be in the system; I even made scrambled eggs, noticing that my three coriander plants' production is not keeping up with my demand. And there were little bugs on them. Or something. I ate them, too, took my coffee mug and wandered down to the pool to see if the pH Plus and turning the skimmers back on had done the trick.

They had.

But, there was a sound. Movement somewhere in the pool. I looked past the two cypresses in sad need of pruning and treatment for arachnids for some seasons now, and there was a largish bird swimming about. One of those big country pigeons that live in couples, and whose name I can never remember? No. It only took another instant to see that it was a duck. A duck, swimming in my pool. I sat down my coffee mug and ran back up the stairs for my camera and a telephone. It was still there when I returned and sat down with my feet in the water at the steps that take you gradually down into the water at the shallow end, if you are a chicken, and not a duck, and began to take pictures. Shadow appeared, with Rapide, who was quite worked up about this event, close on her heels.

I decided to film it with the only thing I have, my old digital camera.



It was just after my minute of filming ran out and I had just pronounced the unlucky words "we can be happy it's too big to get sucked into the skimmers", or something very close to that, that I happened to look away, and when I looked back, there was no duck, not anywhere to be seen.

I stood up and peered under the pool crown nearest me. No duck.

I thought. There had been no noise. No movement of feathers and flight. Or, could I have missed that? And, how could I if I could hear it swimming? Which left one option. I walked over to the nearest skimmer and lifted the top. Leaves.

I walked over to the other skimmer and lifted the top. Duck. It was full of the duck, sitting there over the basket. Concerned, I took a picture, and then I lifted it gently out, taking care to support its head and fend Rapide's intense interest off at the same time.

"Rapide, it's only supposed to interest you dead, and it's not dead, so go away. Now!" I commanded her. She listens when her interest is not piqued better than when I have a duck in my arms.

The neck appeared limp. I sat in a nearby chair and lectured myself for my irresponsibility. I had sat and filmed it, talking about the skimmers and assuming they would pose no danger, and here the poor thing probably had a broken neck on account of my entertainment and amusement.

It lifted its head.

"So! It's not broken!" I said, rising to see what would happen if I put it back in the pool. Not much at first, and then it began to move away, swimming like before. So much for a sort of broken neck. I had suspected that it couldn't be completely broken if it could sit on my lap and blink, look at me, at Rapide, at the disinterested Shadow and the hydrangeas nearby that I had revived with a lengthy watering Saturday. They really looked much better. Thinking about all this, I watched it glide down the pool and into the skimmer.

Easy as that. Like the boat in the shape of a swan disappearing into the mouth of the Tunnel of Love. I rushed down to recover it again, thinking the pool might not be such a great place for a duck, but why was it here? Why was it not in the Seine, which is right over there, past the garden wall and the field? I picked it up again, and this time we sat for a long time in the chair and tried to teach Rapide to sit, this seeming like as good a time as any to catch her up on her learning, and I wondered. Why? Why was this bird here, and what it going on with animals in general and birds in particular and I?

I stroked its head and tried to determine if anything in the cast of its eyes and the set of its head reminded me of Baccarat. I saw only that it was accepting, gentle and has an exquisite line from the long neck across the top of the head to the curved-under tip of the long beak. Why, I wondered as I told Rapide to "sit" for the 20th time, do we s'ecstasie for the swan, when the duck is so lovely, too? I looked at the colors shimmering on the band across its wings, shades of Kingfisher blue, deep purple and teal green, and decided I really was right to give that eye make-up away as soon as I had misspent a fortune on it at Bloomingdale's on Lexington Avenue back when I thought make-up was less expensive and more effective than clothing.

"Such colors really are better suited to you and tropical fish," I told it.

Rapide sat down.

I wondered what I had to do with these animals, and why they were showing up in my garden, or along my runs, this year in such greater number. Baccarat needing me, returning the sick koi I had been told was good for a plastic bag and the freezer to the fish basin, triumphantly, which I have not even mentioned here in these pages, managing to release one bird from the chimney flue and save the last one I found on a run, or the baby toads brought by the neighbor's small daughter and her somewhat bigger cousin from their sandbox to our garden to live. We could go back to Eugénie G, who I do not believe I have seen again, but at least she didn't fare as poorly as the frog I had to deposit in the weeds along the field, fighting despair for the cruelty of our pool.

Which brings me back to the duck. I stroked its feathers and remembered making the trip by myself by bus to the church and monastery of Saint Francis of Assisi. It was a long time ago, when I was much more romantic and impressionable and still wrote letters home full of descriptive language of sunsets and solitary moments. That was just one such, sitting on the top of the hill, looking over a plain scattered with roads and villages below to the farther hills beyond which the sun sat and turned the prospect gold. A moment later, I would rush to get my bus back to Peruggia, an evening walk in search of sausages and bread for my dinner, and my bunk in the pensione where the showers were cold, but most of the other residents honest, it being October and the off-season, and at the bottom of the village, I realized I had left my gloves in another, and ran against all earnest advice back up the streets I had climbed at a tourist's pace earlier in the day, past the post office where I had sent a postcard home, to the piazza at the top, where the bus was still sitting. My gloves were there, and I was able to catch the last one back.

Did that afternoon in Assisi and Saint Francis have more meaning for me, outside of being one of my most recurrent and fondest memories of a moment when I felt free and confident, than I had ever realized? Does anything hold any meaning we are supposed to divine?

Birds. Les oiseaux.

We had seen a house on Saturday evening that my husband had spied in his occasional perusal of the real estate magazines for our area. There was one that had caught his eye, and he brought it up enough that I called and made an appointment to visit it. The agent wanted to know our budget -- "à peu près ça," said my husband, the price of this house we wished to see -- and showed us others for a little more.

"Non," I told her. None of them please us. We are only interested in moving if we have a coup de coeur for another.

It was lovely. Old. Charming. Picturesque. Stone with an old tile roof, a tiny area of garden in front of it, a leaded window in the living area and in the kitchen, visible beams and roof trusses, or charpente, and rethought with intelligence and taste by the owners. Smaller in height, but not necessarily in footprint, than our own, it was part of a series of four contiguous houses facing another building containing two made of the old farm of the Château de Verneuil, now Notre-Dame des Oiseaux. Or, the school Sam determined to refuse last summer, when they offered him a place in the literature baccalaureate program for his last year. They had sternly cautioned him against continuing in Economic and Social Sciences. His math was far too weak, they said. He knew better. He had a strategy and believed in it, and he was right. "Les Oiseaux", as it is referred to, was just around the corner.

Was this a sign that we are supposed to give greater consideration to that house? Or that I am supposed to remain here, where the real birds come? My own sort of Notre-Dame des Oiseaux.

Last evening, after a light supper alone and an afternoon in which my husband roused himself, and I with him, to taking the petit balcon project back up, he proposed that we finish this house minimally and quickly, find out how many weeks of the year we can likely rent it -- aux anglais, is his idea -- and for how much, and if it is interesting, empty our bank accounts and all our savings to buy it. I had to get up from the table abruptly, overwhelmed by the scope of what he was proposing on the very evening we had signed a lease for a chambre de bonne for Sam.

"Si tu ne veux pas faire ça, il faut oublier l'autre," he intoned. I knew that. I didn't know what to think about all that, but I knew that.

I had been thinking of my fish outside the front door that I couldn't have "aux Oiseaux", but I could return between renters to say hello and make sure the company we hire to see to the garden had done as I had asked. I thought of the weeks when both houses would be ours, and how absurd that is.

"On pourrait chercher plus loin de Paris pour quelque chose avec le même charme, mais plus grande," I had leaned forward to speak into my husband's ear as we crossed les Mureaux, heading back to the A13 and Moosesucks on Saturday evening.

"Comment?" he asked, sounding perfectly astounded. "Plus loin de Paris?" He might as well have asked, "Further from Paris? What has come over you?" The point of the exercise, as he understood it, was to move closer to Paris, not further away.

"Bon. C'était une idée."

I looked back at the gentle curve of its head, its quietly blinking calm, dark eyes, slid my hand back under it and felt the softness and vulnerability of its breast, and myself spoke up.

Can you eat maigret de canard again? Can you, in fact, eat any meat again? I sighed. Myself has a knack for showing up with awkward questions.

"I don't do well with carbs, you know that, and, well, it's not the same. They are raised for consumption by people who manage to keep perspective."

That's what I thought, said myself. I didn't, once again, quite like her tone.

Now, it is raining, and I have a duck falling asleep in a box next to me on the sofa. Wisp came to see, decided ducks are out of her league and went to nap on her favorite chair back. Rapide's attention itself intense but short in span. I cannot return it to the pool, unless I stop the skimmers, which isn't a good idea for the pool, or find a way to place netting across them. I cannot either return it to the Seine because it does not appear able to fly after its encounters with the skimmers. Or the chlorine. I have been wondering if it is the chlorine, and if it will just suddenly get better enough to attempt flight without falling off the sofa like it did earlier.

Anyway, my garden recovery plans for the day are wrecked, but I could take the house project back up, and we'll see about the duck.


....