Well, here we are, father and son, in the rain. I wish we could have shared our lives. You might have been a pretty fair provincial lawyer. The rain has had you a long time. If I'm killed in my tank I'd be carted here ... I guess we like it in Ermenonville.
So long, Bob.
He had never called his dad Bob. He had no memory of him except from photos: one of them came to mind, young face, maybe like his own. Moustache. Blond moustache. A tall man, lean, a horseman, dead for twenty-seven years. Tall man who had taken years to die the invalid's death.
So long ...
A swan, on the little lake, close to the poplar planted shore, moved without any apparent effort, its reflection now bright, now dark, now in the rain, now in the clear.
There were swans here when Jean Jacques Rousseau lived here ... swans ... château swans ... and when Rousseau said we should return to nature, had the swans influenced him?
Walking toward his aunt's house, Orville felt undercurrents as a boy in E, when the wind vane on Lautrec's house had thrilled him, when the spire on the stone church had prodded more than clouds. In those days there had been frogs to spear in the Nonette, kites to fly, boats to sail on the Petit Lac.
He passed the bronze statue of Rousseau in the village, a rain beaten thing. Cobbled streets fanned out from the figure. The statue was unchanged. The cobbles were the same. Smoke from peasant houses climbed as it had years ago.
The rain was coming down as it had years ago: a beautiful scene.
He tried to raise his umbrella but had no luck; it banged against his leg as he began to walk faster, hustling into the wind, his aunt's home a few blocks away.