Wind Drinkers by Franck Bouysse

Author:Franck Bouysse [Bouysse, Franck]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2023-01-17T00:00:00+00:00

Matthew had always been happy enough with his lot in life. All through the long workdays, he thought of nothing more than finding himself back by the river, amid the silence he was deprived of by all the men. The only voices he could stand were those of his brothers, his sister, and his grandfather. He didn’t need much in order to live, wasn’t chasing after any sort of manufactured happiness, having never experienced that word within a human community, not even his own family. He wasn’t looking for anything that wasn’t completely separate from these hardworking men whom he worked next to every day at the quarry, with their ludicrous aspirations, born of sterile jealousy and stunted desire for the most part. Matthew wasn’t jealous of anyone. He envied the birds, capable of ascending to a considerable height, simply because of the thought of being able to see the world differently. To be able to soar high above his house, the quarry, the plant, the dam, and the town, all the structures that Matthew had for a long time relegated to the rank of evils.

No one was suspicious of him. Since the death of Renoir and Salles, tongues had loosened up some. This would only last until other spies in Joyce’s employ came to take their place. Then silence would reign once more. Matthew never involved himself in the conversations. Listened to them at times. In doing so, he was quick to note that by ridding the earth of the noxious presence of the two men, he had contributed to fertilizing certain minds, to kindling some doubts. Some were speaking in terms of signs, not venturing much further. If they had known that Matthew had meted out justice in the names of all, they would probably have looked at him differently, but instead they still didn’t see him at all.

Matthew regretted no part of what he had done, only that he had lied about it to his brother. He often thought of the moment he had aimed at the crate of explosives and pulled the trigger, becoming the bullet himself, the extension of his will. It had taken him nights of chaos and sweat-drenched awakenings to finally admit to himself that he had even enjoyed that instant. Judge and executioner in the same fraction of a second. He felt no guilt, and worried even less about who might judge him, about who would pronounce the sentence his mother had promised for any transgression, according to her simplistic conception of good and evil. He couldn’t entertain the idea that men could judge him, and he didn’t venerate the same god as his mother. He had slammed shut the door to one heaven. He preferred a different one, peopled by trees and animals and earth and rocks and water. He kept all of this to himself, hidden behind his dark scowl.

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