Tidings. William Wharton

the rest of the material, I gussied up our tiny toilet room, considered by our neighbors a marvel of American ingenuity, and probably unhygienic. Our toilet was the first in town. I also braced this toilet so it won’t rock when one tips to wipe. The john’s now jammed tight by a small electric heater. This gives some solidity and welcome warmth where it counts.

      Unfortunately, one needs to turn off a heater in the main room before one turns on the toilet heater, or a fuse will blow. There’s only fifteen amps of 220 volts coming into the mill. This is mostly a summer place for us.

      The flushing system is much too complicated to describe; also ‘less used’ toilet paper is saved to be burned in the fireplace. This is not an energy conservation measure; although, normally, I’m a great energy conserver; could be part of my problem; which seems to be at the base of all our problems. It’s just that our septic tank can only handle so much; it’s almost thirteen years old now.

      I trim and arrange my holly in vases. Then cook up for myself a quick meal with cassoulet from a can. I soak this up with bread, wash it down with red wine. When I’m alone, that’s about the extent of my culinary effort.

      Next, I’ll be going out to cut a few branches from a nearby planted pine forest. This part requires the total darkness now upon us. The past twelve years we’ve stolen our whole celebration Christmas tree from this forest. Daytime, we’d hunt till we’d found the perfect tree, then mark it. In the night we’d sneak out, saw at ground level, cover the stump with dirt, drag our tree from the forest, through this sleeping town, and into our mill. There’s nothing quite so soul-satisfying as a stolen Christmas tree.

      In general, it’s a good trick putting together the precepts of Christianity with the ordinary American way of celebrating Christmas. It’s even more difficult with our particular family celebrations. We concentrate on the fantasy, the wonderful drama of Santa Claus and Christmas tree; yule log and gift giving, emphasis on star, snow and domestic animals; pure paganism. And, to top it all off, we steal our Christmas tree.

      But now those trees, our old Christmas trees, in this planted forest, are tall and thick around as telephone poles. No one in the family will help me with the cutting, sawing, dragging home and hiding. That wonderful forest outgrew us. So, this year, we’ll probably be reduced to buying our tree in Nevers. We’ll be there, with hordes of others, pawing through tree cadavers looking for just the right size, and fullness.

      I dress in my duffle coat and woolen hat again, pick up the saw and flashlight, drop down through our trap door carefully feeling in the dark with my feet. Before I’m even in the cellar, I’m met by a breathtaking blast of cold. I know cold air can’t flow up. Maybe the molecules are so cramped in this freezer of a cellar they’re forced up by sheer pressure of numbers into the light, airy, open space of the warm upstairs room. I pull shut the loose, swinging, hingeless trap door, stumble down the last steps and walk out into the blackness of night. There should be a crescent piece of moon up there somewhere, I think, but I move in virtual total blindness.

      Does the road seem to glow? I don’t know if the paleness I see is wet road or only something I want to see. The mind is a powerful force. I feel the hard surface through my rubber boots so I should sense if I wander left or right off the road. I can always flash my light, but then I lose what little night vision I have. Also, I don’t want the villagers to know I’m out stealing pine branches.

      Ahead is a halo around our next town, a ghostly haze of whiteness fills the misty air from the single town street lamp. I watch as forms loom out of the all-surrounding gloom. The light creates visions different from ordinary daylight scenes; it’s like snow, muffling, at the same time defining new shapes. I stare, entranced, at stone buildings standing bare in the night.

      I pass through the other side of this light and my shadow stretches ahead. I finger my flashlight briefly walking along, waiting for the road to curve. At the turn I step off into the forest, wading through broken branches. They’re so rotted, so damp, they don’t crack when I step on them.

      I begin cutting pine branches with my small handsaw till both arms are full. I stumble out onto the road, and scurry downhill through the dark wet air, back to my nest.

      Inside, I take off my coat and hat, staple my branches across beams and over windows to hide those staples in the drapes.

      Tomorrow I’ll drive into Nevers to pick up Loretta and Ben. They’re taking the seven A.M. train down from Paris. We’ll do our Christmas and food shopping there in Nevers then come back here to the mill. I hope we can make the trip home before dark. French country roads at night are treacherous, especially if this weather turns to snow.

      The girls and guest arrive the day after tomorrow, Ben’s birthday. Ben was our Christmas surprise baby, born the eve of Christmas Eve. In a certain way, each of our babies was a surprise, a minor miracle. Maybe that’s why Christmas means so much to us.

      Next morning, I wake at six. Whorls and swirls of snow spin through the path of my flashlight out our window. The ‘powers that be’ have miscalculated; snow was supposed to hold off at least one more day. So now I’m in for a sixty-kilometer drive in the snow, in the dark; driving a car with no snow tires, no chains, a malfunctioning heater and a driver’s-side window that won’t really close. Also, there’s no third gear on this four-speed, all slow, car, and the clutch started slipping irrevocably on the way from Paris. Fancy new sports car, my car is not.

      Then again, perhaps I won’t need to drive my wreck to Nevers. The battery has been failing. There are white encrustations on the zinc plates when I look through its translucent sides. Maybe if I shake it I’ll have a miniature snowstorm in there, the way it snowed with the tip-toys I loved so when a child.

      As a precaution, I brought down my battery charger. This is based upon several frustrating, Herculean, early morning efforts in Paris. Ben and I pushing the car with Loretta steering; she throwing it into gear then chug-churring down to nothingness. Finally, we’d have a frantic dashing off to the metro, book bags flying, tempers fraying, while I’d unhook the dead battery, haul it upstairs to the apartment and charge it. Gradually, morning’s cold grip would let up some and after two hours’ dialysis, I’d reinstall the battery and drive off to my ten-o’clock class. Normally, Loretta and Ben drive the car while I take the metro.

      So now I dress hurriedly in the clothes I’d set out on a chair the night before. I pull on gloves and hat, check my flashlight, lower myself carefully through the trap door into our granite tomb of a cellar. Mill machinery looms mute and massive in the dense molecule-packed darkness. I press the door latch, go up the few stone steps into wild, twisting whiteness. The street already has four inches of fresh, untrammeled snow. Icicles hang over the opening to our lower grange where I keep our car. Inside spread the remains of at least six motorbikes surrounding our car like an escort. These represent Mike’s progress from 50-cc pedal bikes to his current 500-cc love. Here in dusty, rusting machinery is revealed the remnants of one man’s personal passage through mechanized puberty displacement.

      In the car, I check that the lights and heater fan are off before turning the key. I pull the choke out a finger length, press down hard on the accelerator slowly, twice, following carefully the instructions of the man from whom I bought this car, a Mr Diamant.

      Then I turn the key. The starter motor sings in merry glee: ‘Here we go! Here we go! Here we go!’ The engine remains stone deaf (maybe that’s steel deaf), hearing nothing, not responding.

      I switch off, wait, in quietly surging panic, despair. I try again. Again: ‘Here we go! Here we go!’ But we don’t.

      I jam the accelerator once more to the floorboards, against Mr Diamant’s explicit instructions.

      This starter motor has no working relationship with the engine, lives a liberated, futile life of its own. Or maybe it’s the engine’s fault; it might not want to be turned on by this particular little starter motor. Gradually we move from ‘Here we go!’ to ‘I’m not making it’ to ‘I can’t make it’ to ‘I give up, quit’, the last in the slurred, tired tones of a staggering drunk or perennially discouraged lover.

      I’m