LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT
We left at seven. The day rose painfully on the deserted countryside, a pale sun, almost sick as an endless winter. Yes, we went to seven that morning. An idea of Claire, haunting; an idea stubborn as the cold that had not left the plain for two months: a hike, because it was what we used to do when winter was falling on us and our houses, a hike in this landscape frozen.
I had told Claire that it was crazy, that the winters had become so severe that we would have done better to stay by the fire, warmly under our blankets, instead of shutting ourselves up in this cold, hostile nature. , almost dangerous. But she did not want to give up, arguing that the weather was good and that we could regret it later if we did not do it now, one last time. Pierre was going to leave us, we knew it for a long time. He would settle so far, take care of so many wounds and sorrows, so far from us that he would not come back. Never. And that we all knew.
So we left with our equipment, our dreams and our hopes that flew away as the years passed: a strangeness that resembled the march of the world and life. When we arrived at the Pic de la Glacière, I heard Claire's voice. She was screaming:
- Another effort! We're almost there ...
- Do not scream, Claire! It's dangerous !
- Nothing is dangerous, Pierre ... you should know it better than me!
Suddenly, there was a flash, an intense and brief light that surprised us all, except Claire. She added, at Pierre's address: "You see, it was like a thunderbolt ...". And his eyes suddenly darkened, sweeping Sophie's face, then Pierre's. I watched this scene almost incredulously: I had long suspected that something was going on between Claire and Pierre, unknown to Sophie. All of us, to tell the truth, had the exception of Sophie, the caring, loyal and credulous wife ... We all suspected that and we had said nothing, naively assuming that Pierre's departure would a term to his affair with Claire, if there was any connection.
Max and Pierre said nothing. I suddenly took the floor, with a fixed idea in mind: to calm the game.
- We'll all rest. We will stop here, put our bags down and calm down. All, and you too, Claire.
Claire stared at me in a curious way: there was something unspeakable in her eyes, something I did not recognize, something that frightened me without my knowing why. Dare I say it seemed strange, almost possessed? Was it the lack of oxygen, due to the altitude, that gave me the impression of a thick mist suddenly enveloping us? The impression that the immaculate landscape was rocking, that the horizon was crumbling? Yes, a curious sensation, as if we had lost ourselves, unable now to find our way ... But what path should we take, exactly?
So, we sat, somehow, cluttered with our heavy equipment. And the silence settled down, barely interrupted by our jerky breaths. I felt that I had suddenly no strength to continue, continue our way or turn back, that it became indifferent to me. We were there, sitting in the frozen snow: five people and two dogs, seven in total but I felt lonely suddenly, so alone, almost foreign to what surrounded me. I had hoped so much that Claire saw me, instead of Pierre ... And what could she find him?
Max was silent too. What could he add? Sweep a drama as one removes the snow that obstructs the pace of a door?
At the end of a long moment, Pierre proposed to return, and rose. It was then that the dogs began to bark, a sort of long howling, more and more tenuous, then an almost desperate moan that seemed to end no more. Claire says:
- Dogs know it ...
- What do you want the dogs to know, Claire? Are you delirious?
- No, Pierre. They know it ... they know we will not go back ...
- What is this story? Of course we're going home ... Come on, come on, Sophie! We're going back !
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Sophie got up at the same time as the wind, a violent wind that moved packets of crazy snow, and I looked up: then I saw a darkened sky and yet white, tinged with mad bursts and snow, a madness we would not go out not alive, I understood it then.
Sophie began to scream:
- A snowstorm! You said the weather was good, Claire ... you said it!
- Yes, Sophie ... A snowstorm ... You see, it's as violent as love at first sight, and you can die ...