In the village of Serizet, a lost prosperous agricultural cooperative somewhere between Bordeaux and the burning plains of the South-West, summer crushes everything. The air trembles above sunflower fields. The bitumen seems ramelir and yet today no one does not work. Today we celebrate a golden wedding, they say, the one we will tell for years.
The son of president of the cooperative, Hugo Delmas marries the most beautiful girl around, the librarian Élise Martin. In the party room, the tables are laid out in a large U, white tablecloth, stiff with starch, full plate, bottle lined up, laughing already fat, accordion music that vibrates the walls.
Women wipe away a tear tandree. The men unbutton their shirts and the smell of cold cuts and sweet alcohol sticks to the throat. At center, the bride and groom are enthroned. Hugo wears a new suit, too proud, too sure of him. Élise, she looks like a doll of porcelain. Dress sewn in town, skin pale, frozen posture, not a smile.
The guests put it down to emotion. He doesn’t see what his look already contains. Something closed, cold like a door that we have locked from the inside. Next to the groom, these two witnesses make noise for three. Victor Le Point and Nicolas le Balafré, fellows at the thick neck recently returned from afar and who behave as if the party belonged to them.
He laughs too loud, hits Hugo in the back, leans towards Élise with heavy winks, sure to be untouchable. Then Victor gets up, already red of alcohol, raises his glass and screams: “Quite chewy, concise for the bride and groom.” The room responds wholeheartedly, demanding the kiss. Hugo leans towards Éise, wet sweat and pride.
But Élise get up slowly and don’t kiss him. She takes a cara with a ruby glass bottom, elegant, almost precious and his voice soft but perfectly everything falls in silence. I want this toast to be for my main men. Hugo, Victor, Nicolas, to your friendship until butt. She fills three tall glasses of a dark, thick wine and the three Flattered men exchange a smile.
The glass tinting works like a signal. They drink in one gulp. The room wait for the kiss. He’s not coming. Hugo puts a hand to his throat. Sound expression changes. No comedy, no of embarrassment. A raw surprise, then a fear rising. Victor falters. Nicholas tries to laugh but the laughter breaks and Élise remains standing, motionless, go look like you look at a train leave the platform.
In the silence, she almost whispers: “You wanted this be amè then it will be amè for all.” To understand how this wedding took place transformed into a nightmare, we must rewind two weeks ago. Élise Martin never really looked like the other girls in this riset. While the village lived to the rhythm bullets, gossip and harvest, she spent her days in the small municipal library sheltered from dust and roads.
thin, long braid, gray eyes immense, she read novels like we open windows to breathe elsewhere. His father, Marcel Martin was carpenter, a hard, silent man, of those who believe in the principles more than excuses. He repeated the same to her sentence like a prayer. We protect our dignity as one protects a house because once cracked, everything collapses.
Élise had believed him. Deeply. She had grown up with this simple idea. Love had to be clean, safe, obvious. Hugo Delmas, he came from another world, son of the president of the cooperative, the son of the one we greets before even knowing him. He had the shiny motorcycle, the shirts which one does not find in the village, the assurance of people who have never paid for their mistakes.
In front of others, they were playing solid boy, in the future chief, to the local prince. But behind this varnish, there was above all a void worried. Hugo wanted us to fear him and that we respect him without having the strength inner to be. So he had clung to the most dangerous, those who commanded respect differently. This is where Victor entered the point and Nicholas the Scarred.
Recently returned, he had settled in the village as we plant a flag. We left them pass by, we avoided their gaze and even some gendarmes pretended to see nothing. They had understood one thing. Hugo was a passport, money, relationships, protection indirect. He drank at his own expense, was winding with his name and Hugo Flat called it friendship.
When he began to court Élise, cherry ignited. What a union! She, naive in her thirst for fairy tales, confused the learned gestures and promises recited with sincerity. Hugo gave her flowers, rode a motorbike read awkwardly verses written on crumpled paper. Élise fell in love, especially with the image she wanted to see there.
She doesn’t didn’t immediately notice the way Victor and Nicolas looked at her. When Hugo’s back was turned, she didn’t feel no danger in jokes too heavy, in the silences too long. She prepared the wedding as one prepare a new life. Three days before the wedding, Hugo appears in front of the library with a smile too wide. “Surprise !” he said.
“We’re going to the countryside to a house hunting near the woods, just you and me, one night to breathe before the party.” Élise felt her heart warm up. She wanted so much a moment together, far away sights, far from the noise. She put on her weighty light blue summer dress, untied her braid and climbed up behind him.
The wind whipped his face and for a few kilometers, she felt invincible as if the world started again. The hunting house was beautiful from afar, placed near an old farmhouse. But as she approached, Élise saw a detail who planted a thorn in his chest. Another parked two-wheeler in front of the steps with a criole.
She asked in a light voice to whom he was. Hugo looked away, replied too quickly. Victor and Nicolas just brought provisions. They leave again after. And at this precise moment, the Elise’s fairy tale made a noise discreet like fine porcelain which split. Inside the house of hunting, the air was thick, charged humidity, cold tobacco and alcohol overturned.
The light did not pass well through the yellowed curtains, drawing long shadows on the walls. Sitting around a table cluttered with bottles and leftover food, Victor and Nicolas gave no departure sign. They looked up towards Élise as we observe something something we were already expecting. The smile of Victor stretched slowly, discovering a golden tooth that caught the light.
He beckoned her to approach with a gesture. familiar, too familiar. Élise remained near the door. She looked at Hugo. He was busy around the table, went out glasses, spoke quickly and avoided his look. An invisible crack opened under his feet. The evening changed without transition to raw drinking. No walks under the stars, no romantic whisper, only the noise dry glasses that we fill and empty.
Hugo drank with urgency strange, as if trying to suffocate an insistent thought. His friends, drank little. They barely tasted. Their dark eyes fixed on Éise with a predatory patience. She remained sitting on the edge of the seat, back straight, hands clenched on his knees. She leaned towards Hugo and whispered that he should come home.
He answered too much loud with theatrical brutality that she should respect her friends. The your tone attracted attention. Victor stood up, walked around the table and pushed his hand heavy on Élise’s shoulder. His contact was hot, possessive. He complimented Hugo to have such a woman, her voice dragging, full of innuendo. Nicolas was absentmindedly playing with a knife, the blade catching shards of light.
He spoke of friendship, sharing, loyalty between men. Each word added weight to the already air unbreathable. A thick pause fell on the part. Élise pushed away the hand of Victor and ordered that no one touch her not. She called Hugo for help. He lifted eyes and in his gaze passed a brief but visible struggle. The fear of lose face in front of these two men.
Victor raised his voice transforming the joke challenge. Was he with them or against them? The trap was closing. Invisible but perfect. Hugo attempted a weak protest, recalling the near marriage. Victor burst out laughing and redefines the evening as a laugh between brother. Every sentence was a pressure calculated.
Élise saw Hugo shrinking before his eyes. His shoulders were slumping. His silence became answer. She stood up abruptly, overturned his chair and headed towards the door. Nicolas was faster. He closed with a sharp movement and slipped the key in his pocket. The smile that followed There was nothing friendly about it. Élise backed up to Hugo and fell to knee in front of him, his hands gripping his wrist.
She asked him to protect, to remember their promise. Hugo was trembling. His face was pale from the alcohol. He knew what that was going to happen. But the fear of these two men, afraid of being humiliated, struck, rejected, paralyzed all remains. Victor leaned down to her ear and murmured a few quick, tight words, promising public ridicule if he opposed.
[groan] Slowly, Hugo removed his hands from the Elise’s stools and did not push her away violently, just enough to break something essential. He tells her to bear that his friends were Gabians, that everything would pass quickly. These words had the effect on Élise of a sudden invisible.
The world around her seemed moving away as seen through a window thick. She understood that the person that she loved did not exist. In this inner silence, a version died out on its own. What remained was still, lucid. and already in progress to watch the scene as a memory future. What followed no longer resembled an evening, but to a slow fall in a space without landmarks.
Victor and Nicholas each grabbed her by one arm and led him towards the big berth covered with an old animal skin. Élise struggled with energy desperate, clawing, biting, screaming until he felt his throat tear. His movements were those of an animal caught trapped, but there were two of them, massive, methodical, used to crushing resistance.
A sharp blow cut her in its momentum. The world valoured. The sounds blurred. A few meters away, Hugo remained seated at the table. He was drinking directly to the bottle, his hands trembling, unable to let go. He pressed his palms against his ears, as if the breast does not hear could absolve him. When the screams of Élyse pierced despite everything, he increased the volume of the old station radio.
A light song fills the absurd piece in its cheerfulness. Time stretched. For Victor and Nicolas, it was only an act of domination, a demonstration of power raw. For Élise, it was a dissolution. She felt something in it withdraw very far, leaving his body become a foreign object. His eyes remained open, fixed on a crack in the ceiling.
She clung to it like an imaginary horizon line. When everything finally stopped, the silence fell suddenly. The two men straightened with cold satisfaction of those who believe they have reestablished a order. Hugo was approaching, awkwardly placed his jacket on the shoulders of Élise and murmured apologies broken. She didn’t answer.
Sound gaze did not even rest on him. She breathing slowly as if she learned to exist in a world completely new and deserted. At the oub, they took her back to the village. The car drove in heavy silence. Victor turned towards her, his expression now hard, stripped of all comedy. He calmly explained this that would happen if she spoke.
The words were precise, built to lock up. Nicolas acquiesced without look. Hugo drove with his eyes fixed on the road, confirming with a sign of head every threat. És listened to sencillé. The sentences slid over her like a frozen surface. When the car stopped in front of her house, she went down without a word.
His mother welcomed him with worry about his equimoses. Elise recounted a motorcycle crash. The explanations were accepted with tears and clumsy care. In her room, the wedding dress hung on the wardrobe door, white, light, unreal. She contemplated for a long time. She didn’t see no longer a symbol of promise, but a hanging shroud. Hugo’s face stood out in his memory, not that of the seducer, but that of of the man sitting in the dirty light of the radio, motionless while it called his name.
She understood with a icy sharpness that she could neither forget or escape. The world she had known was over. Another began, built on a just a simple idea. The balance should be restored. Not by law. The law would be suppressed by the influence of Hugo’s father, by a older, more intimate justice. Élise went down into the shed.
In a old chest rested a large cup in crystal inherited from his grandmother, silent pride of the house. She took it carefully, weighed it in his hands then wrapped it in a thick canvas. The first shot of hammer sounded like a bell deaf. She knocked again, methodically, transforming the crystal in fragment then almost in powder invisible.
Each impact was regular, detached from any hitation. When only dust remained fine, she collected it carefully. In the cellar, she found a caraffe of wine dark cherry. She poured the powder into it and slowly stirred the ruby liquid until death dissolves there entirely. She looked at the carafe for a long time then whispered a few words if low that they were lost in the air motionless.
The wedding day arrived under a sunny blinding. Sizet buzzed with horns, ribbons colorful and too loud laughter. In his room, Éise stood in front of the mirror while her mother adjusted the veil with hands trembling with emotion. His mother cried with happiness, speaking of comfortable future and luck. Élise looked at her reflection as one observes a stranger.
His face was pale, perfectly calm. She put a lipstick on her lips intense, almost violent color against the white of the dress. When she said yes to the town hall, his voice came out clearly, mechanical. Hugo next to her was breathing finally. He had expected a scandal which didn’t come. Victor and Nicolas, official witnesses exchanged satisfied smiles.
For them, everything had come together the order. The ballroom exploded with music and of toast. The hours passed in a mixture of dancing, alcohol and heat. Hugo was becoming more and more noisy, trying to kiss Élise every opportunity. She dodged with politeness, speaking of fatigue. Victor and Nicolas ate and drank with winner’s assurance.
Then Élise felt the moment had arrived with perfect clarity. She leaned towards Hugou and whispered to him that she wanted make a special toast to him and his friends. He accepted enthusiastically. Élise took out the ruby glass carafe hidden under the table. Slowly, she fills three large glasses ensuring distribute every drop of the dark wine.
The music died down when she stood up. She spoke of friendship, loyalty, lessons learned. His words were polite, almost tender, but his gaze remained fixed. She invited the three men to drink until the last drop. They raised their glasses laughing and drank without hesitation. Élise followed the movement of their throat content in silence.
The mechanism was launched. Nothing could stop him anymore. The first to react was Hugo. He posed his glass with a grimace. All that as if the wine had burned his throat. He tried to laugh but the sound stuck. Victor suddenly doubled over, one hand pressed against her stomach. Nicolas grazes visibly, his lips taking a purplish tint.
For a second the guests believed to a bad joke. Then Hugo vomits on the white tablecloth, not wine, but a dark, thick liquid. The crises burst, the chairs scraped the ground. Victor collapsed, rolling himself in animal pain, clawing at his shirt as if to tear which tore him apart from the inside. Nicolas remained seated, motionless, wide eyes, a pink foam flowing from his mouth.
In the center of chaos, Éise did not move. She took calmly took a towel and wiped a drop of blood falling on her dress. The Hugo’s father rushed, calling his son, demanding explanations. Élise looked up at him clearly and replied in an even voice that the three men were dying. These words crossed the room like an icy current.
Hugo, lying in his own dark pool, stretched out his hand towards her. In his eyes understanding was finally evident. He formed a silent question. Elise leaned close to his face and whispered that looked at him without intervening as she called his name. Now it was his turn to look. She wanted to hear every breath break.
The mermaids arrived too late. When help passed through the doors of the room, he only silence remained cut from sob. The bodies of the three men were motionless, their faces frozen in a painful stupor. Élise let herself taken by the police without resistance, crossing the crowd, his white dress splashed with red and almost smiled imperceptible.
The inhabitants cross themselves when they see it pass. Later, we will talk for a long time about this wedding that became a dark legend. But in At the moment, there was only the echo of a brutal truth. Some betrayals open abysses of which no one spring intact.
