The Flood: Chapter 6

Chapter 6

VI.

Why am I still here? They tell me that people from Saintin came toward six
o'clock, with boats, and that they found me lying on a chimney, unconscious.
The water was cruel not to have carried me away to be with those who were dear
to me.

All the others are gone! The babes in swaddling clothes, the girls to be
married, the young married couples, the old married couples. And I, I live
like a useless weed, coarse and dried, rooted in the rock. If I had the
courage,
I would say like Pierre:

"I have had enough! Good night!" And I would throw myself into the Garonne.

I have no child, my house is destroyed, my fields are devastated. Oh! the
evenings when we were all at table, and the gaiety surrounded me and kept
me young. Oh! the great days of harvest and vintage when we all worked, and
when we returned to the house proud of our wealth! Oh! the handsome children
and the fruitful vines, the beautiful girls and the golden grain, the joy
of my old age, the living recompense of my entire life! Since all that is
gone, why should I live?

There is no consolation. I do not want help. I will give my fields to the
village people who still have their children. They will find the courage to
clear the land of the flotsam and cultivate it anew. When one has no children,
a corner is large enough to die in.

I had one desire, one only desire. I wished to recover the bodies of my family,
to bury them beneath a slab, where I should soon rejoin them. It was said that,
at Toulouse, a large number of bodies carried down the stream, had been taken
from the water. I decided to make the trip.

What a terrible disaster! Nearly two thousand houses in ruins; seven hundred
deaths; all the bridges carried away; a whole district razed, buried in the
mud; atrocious tragedies; twenty thousand half-clad wretches starving to
death; the city in a pestilential condition; mourning everywhere; the
streets filled with funeral processions; financial aid powerless to heal
the wounds! But I walked through it all without seeing anything. I had my
ruins, I had my dead, to crush me.

I was told that many of the bodies had been buried in trenches in a corner
of the cemetery. Only, they had had the forethought to photograph the
unidentified. And it was among these lamentable photographs that I found
Gaspard and Veronique. They had been clasped passionately in each other's
arms, exchanging in death their bridal kiss. It had been necessary to break
their arms in order to separate them. But, first, they had been photographed
together; and they sleep together beneath the sod.

I have nothing but them, the image of those two handsome children; bloated
by the water, disfigured, retaining upon their livid faces the heroism of
their love. I look at them, and I weep.

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