by Jean Giono
“And when we’re close to him, in the streams of his saliva and in the wind of his words, he’ll say to us:
“ ‘My lovely little man, with your pretty little fingers that grab and squeeze, come here my man, let’s see if you remember how to soothe things with your hands. That’s what I taught you at the very beginning, when you were on my knees—a mere babe with your mouth full of my milk . . .”
Suddenly, the grand vision gets all jumbled:
“. . .milk. . .mou. . .mouth. . .plain, wool, milk, milk, milk . . .”
Then a rattling and a grating, as though you were jamming on the brakes of a cart racing downhill.
In one bound, Jaume is there beside the bed.
Janet is twisted, his head buried in the pillow. A darkish fluid gurgles at the bottom of his open mouth. If he’s going to die . . .
“Janet, Janet, hey!”
The eye, which had already been glancing back from beyond the land of the living, returns to earth, still trembling like a periwinkle tossed in the wind. He rallies, and his tongue rolls around:
“. . . milk, your mouth full of milk, and no blood yet on your hands.”
•
Silence.
You can hear Marguerite snoring.
“It’s over now,” Janet says to Jaume, “get a grip on yourself.”
•
When he went back to the ghost village to fetch water, Jaume found a woman’s comb: one of the tortoiseshell kind that sticks into a bun. He found it under the mulberry bush, where the grass was flattened as though somebody lay down there regularly. Certain words spoken by Janet came back to his memory, as well as Maurras’s remark. He put the comb into his pocket.
When he got home, even before he unhitched the mule, he went straight to his daughter’s bedroom. He left the comb on the dresser, between the glass-domed clock and the wicker alms basket full of buttons.
He glanced around this room as though he expected it would reveal the secret life of his daughter: petticoats hanging on the wall, an old corset on a chair, a lace on the bedside rug. From a half-opened dresser drawer, the tail of a coarse, yellow chemise spills out. On the headboard, a pair of women’s trousers is spread; a wide, oval slit gapes between the grey flannel thighs. An installment of a popular novel—Chaste and Debased—rests on the night table.
The comb is in a good spot. You can see it easily.
So now, this morning, Ulalie has been doing her hair in front of the mirror, and, naturally, she’s stuck the comb in her bun. But on her way to the meadow she’s come to a halt on the sunken pathway. In this spot, nobody can see you from any direction. She’s taken hold of the comb and examined it front to back, turning it over between her fingers.
She’s stood still for a long time, waiting for her thoughts to return from the place where she’s just cast them.
Ulalie returns home. Jaume glances sideways at her bun. The comb is there.
“Is it you, father, who brought this?” she says, pulling the comb out of her hair.
“This what?”
“This comb!”
“This comb? No, what would make you expect—”
“I don’t know. It was on my dresser. It’s not mine.”
“Then throw it away, if it’s not yours.”
“You can be sure I’m going to throw it away. What if it used to belong to a sick person? I wonder who could have put it on my dresser. I wasn’t paying enough attention this morning when I was doing my hair.”
And she throws the comb out the window.
•
And now, at noon, something happened as if by design. All of them were in the square, each one ready to take off on his own, since at this point they were as good as unconnected to each other. And all of a sudden, there it came, like a leaf the wind was trying to drag along the ground. All of them turned around together: It was the cat.
It crossed the little square in no hurry at all, just as though it was at home.
It was heading toward Gondran’s house. Through the open window of the kitchen you could see Janet’s bed and, in the middle of the bed, the mound that marked where Janet’s body lay.
The cat has gathered itself into a ball, leapt onto the windowsill, and gone in.
This apparition of the cat has brought them together again, in fear.
Since the row broke out between Jaume and Maurras, all four of them have lived completely cut off from each other. Maurras would go and get water for himself, the others would go and get water for themselves, separately. Each of them would set off alone on the mountain trails, and then the water barrow would be brought back to only one house. And when the barrow was empty, you wouldn’t ask for any water from your neighbor; you’d set off on your own again, along the mountain trails.
But this selfishness, while separating them from each other, has restored their concern for earth and put some distance between themselves and the overwhelming fear. They’ve been at the point of coming back to life.
Arbaud has been to look at the neglected grain fields. The overripe ears have buckled the stems, and thistles have erupted through the yellow mat. Patiently, with his sickle, he’s cut a sheaf, happy to be alive and out in the open air, far from Babette’s groaning and Marie’s frightening body. Gondran, far removed from Janet, has picked a basket of grapes in his vineyard. There, too, it’s nothing more than a vast republic of wasps, field mice, pillaging birds. On the village forge, Jaume has straightened out his ploughshare. The flailing of his arms and the rhythm of his hammer blows have, little by little, laid his anxiety to rest. Maurras, far removed from Jaume, has eaten fresh figs. “Tomorrow,” he’s been thinking, “I’ll say to him: Let’s make peace. I have a quick temper, but it’s over. I’ll go get water for everybody.”
They were at the point of coming back to life, I tell you. It wouldn’t have taken much. And then, the cat came. It came out from the mulberry bush, it strode out into the sunlight, it jumped onto Janet’s windowsill. It didn’t take more than five minutes altogether to get from the one place to the other, but at the same time, just like that, both earth and sky took on an ugly cast.
•
The cat reappears. From the windowsill it jumps onto the fig tree. The fig tree takes it up to the roof. It walks across the tiles. It heads toward Maurras’s house. Fear has abruptly reunited Maurras with the rest of them. He’s touched Jaume’s arm.
“What do you say I bring it down?” And at once he’s slipped the bandolier off his shoulder.
“No, leave it alone. Anything but that.”
Maurras has obeyed.
•
From now on they’re bound together, right to the bitter end. One by one the grains of wheat will sift through the matted stems, down to earth and the ants. Magpies will devour the grapes and the figs, and the coulter blade will rust in the autumn rains.
Now they’re nothing more than one big, fearful body.
•
The cat has come back two or three times. It always comes out from under the mulberry bush. It walks on the tips of its claws, paws rigid, head held high. It passes by without seeing the men.
And then, another time, it shows up writhing, and its whiskers test the air, and its tapered ears seek out sound within the silence.
Or yet again, when you’re securely locked inside your house, you suddenly see it appear on a windowsill.
This is what happened to Madelon Maurras. She’d gone to get some potatoes from the loft. She was picking them out from the pile and putting them into her apron. She wasn’t moving too fast. When you’re as old as she is . . .
You know what it’s like, an attic? It’s full of things that are as good as dead—old, broken-down armoires, worn-out shoes, blouses that have seen better days. All in all, things you’ve left there to die a quiet death. When you see them again, it’s as though they’re reproaching you. It’s always a little sad.
On top of that, on this particular day the weather was gloomy.
•
&nbs
p; She heard some plaster crack. She lifted her head: The cat was curled up in the frame of the skylight. It was licking its paws and cleaning one of its ears.
Ma Maurras dropped her potatoes and, quick as her old legs would carry her, she ran, lickety-split, downstairs to the kitchen. She swallowed a big draught of water to calm herself down.
•
Gagou’s the only one who doesn’t look scared. When the cat goes by, he laughs and bares his horsey teeth. Lips drooping, he lifts his wrinkled nose toward the creature. Sweetly he says to it “Ga gou, ga gou,” sweetly and tenderly, with so much attention and tenderness that the strands of silken saliva ripple under his chin.
At the same time, something’s bothering him, too. But what?
As soon as it’s dark he comes out to prowl between the barricaded houses. For the first time, he alters his usual call. A muted whimpering leaks out of his mouth, like the moans of a lost dog.
He watches the windows of the bedrooms, where the shadows of women in their nightgowns, their hair loosened, pass by.
The lamps go out.
Gagou waits, motionless, in the dark.
•
This evening, just after nightfall, before people’s eyes were used to the dark, Marie went into convulsions.
This happened all at once. Her mother heard her grinding her teeth. She touched her, and she could feel she was cold, rocked by big waves that made her bones creak.
Babette lets out a howl. Arbaud gropes in the shadows, looking for the lamp. At last he has it. But the glass globe rolls across the tablecloth and stops just short of the edge. He looks for his matches. No matches. Yes—here they are, at last. He strikes them so hard they don’t light but merely score the darkness with a blue streak.
You can hear Marie’s bones cracking. Babette moans, “Her head, Aphrodis, oh my, my, her head.”
Finally, the lamp.
The little one is in her mother’s arms. Within the space of a moment, between the last glimpse of daylight and the lighting of the lamps, both of them have become unrecognizable. Babette is nothing but two round, crazed eyes and a blackened mouth, like the mouth of a spring, ceaselessly moaning. Marie . . . Is this really Marie she holds in her arms? Or is it a gigantic heather root, full of knots, twisting and turning tortuously in a blaze? Two tiny, stiff hands claw at the shadows.
You can’t hear anything but Arbaud’s heavy breathing and the song-like modulations of the smoking lamp, as Babette fiercely kisses the heather root with her mouth wide open.
•
They’ve laid the girl down on her parents’ double bed.
“Pull her legs apart, gently.”
“Rub her with vinegar.”
“Where is it—that vinegar?”
“There, on the mantelpiece.”
“No it isn’t.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Ah, right, I’ve got it.”
They fuss around the bed, run into each other, pull apart, hang on, stretch their hands out toward Marie, and moan.
They undress her. Papa tries to unbutton her little nightgown. The tiny, mother-of-pearl button slips out of his fingers, resists, pops back, dances, plays; then, in one swoop, he rips the gown open from top to bottom.
Her poor little body is exposed. And then it’s like a storm breaks inside Babette:
Her Marie!
Pink like a rose she was, and plump, and now look what she’s become!
Has she turned into this motionless thing you poke at, thrown down on her parents’ bedspread?
The lamp sings.
They rub her sad, yellow flesh with lavender- and hyssop-scented vinegar. Her body relaxes. Her head rolls around on a softened neck. Her mouth opens, and you can see her teeth unclenching. One after another her delicate fingers stretch out, spread apart, and bend back to their usual position of a hand at rest. Now it’s their Marie again, their flesh and blood, their two faces blended, their daughter restored.
“Lay her in her own bed,” says Arbaud, “and put a warm stone at her feet. It’s over.”
He straightens his stocky frame. He takes two steps, and his broad hand moves toward the lamp. He adjusts the wick. The lamp quiets down.
•
“And what if it isn’t true,” Jaume thinks, all of a sudden. He’s tried to accustom himself to Janet’s view of the world, and the more he thinks about it, the more he has his doubts.
“What if it’s just a lie to trick me, to take me in even further?”
He listens to the languid life of the trees around him, but it seems more hostile than friendly.
There’s grass growing in the little square—tufts of yellow grass, same as on the hill. Their square’s on its way to becoming part of the untamed hill again, the way it was before. The road to the flatlands is almost completely blocked by a huge, broken-down clematis. In a less unsettled time they would have quickly cleared the road. The world of trees and grasses is slyly attacking the Bastides.
“Tenderness! He said ‘Tenderness.’ Like it’s that easy.”
But if you don’t go at it with your spade, if you don’t go at it with your axe, if you don’t clear a space around you, if you let the blade fall away from your hands just one time, then the whole mass of green surges over your feet and right up over your walls. It turns everything back into dust. Jaume raises his head. In front of him, on the other side of the square, a shadow slides into the shade of the oak: a wild boar! A wild boar out in broad daylight in the Bastides!
The beast barely conceals itself underneath the foliage. It’s headed for the fountain. It sniffs the empty basin. It scratches at the ground with its hoof.
Jaume’s rifle is right there against the wall. All he needs to do is reach out his hand. Jaume doesn’t reach out his hand. This is something new and disturbing.
The wild boar has seen the man. Calmly, it chooses its resting spot and sprawls out in the dust. The rifle stays against the wall. Jaume, with his forehead thrust forward, his hands clasped between his knees, looks straight ahead as if he weren’t seeing a thing. And the last thing he’s thinking about is the gun. He’s afraid. Fear has pierced him like a splinter, and his whole body hurts around it. He’s afraid. That’s why he hasn’t stretched his hands out toward his gun. He’s no longer thinking about his power as a human, he’s thinking that he’s afraid, and he’s shrinking back inside his fear, like a nut into its shell.
The beast grunts as it rubs its back. It gets up, sniffs around, shakes itself heavily, and then, at an easy trot, takes off again into the woods.
•
It’s a beautiful afternoon. The moon pebble rolls along the sands of the sky. At the same time, down toward Pierrevert, an odd, reddish mist is rising.
•
Jaume gets up. Over there at Gondran’s the window is open. That white mound under the sheets, that’s Janet.
“Aah, Janet, now I really see it—the harm that you do. It’s right in front of me, like a mountain. You’re on the other side of the barricades, with earth, trees, animals—all lined up against us. You’re a dirty swine. My wife hanged herself up in the attic one night while I was out chasing hare. It was you who did that. Not with your hands, you can be sure, but with your tongue, your whore of a tongue. You have all the sweet taste of evil in your mouth . . .”
Jaume draws nearer. In front of the window, a fig tree forks into two twisted limbs. He climbs into the crotch. From here he can see inside the room.
Janet is stiff. His gaze threads through the shadows right to the wall where the post-office calendar hangs. He’s mumbling in a low voice. Is he by himself?
No.
Next to him on the bed: the cat.
•
Someone’s scrambling across the rocks on the hillside. Who? Maurras. Elbows tucked in, head lowered—driven by what? He’s breathing so hard you can hear it from here.
As soon as he gets to the square he throws himself, screaming, at Jaume. But before
he’s able to speak, he stands there gesticulating, red in the face, streaming with sweat. And as soon as he opens his mouth he takes a gulp of air so huge that it chokes his words up inside him.
Finally he gets it out:
“Fire, fire . . .”
He stretches his arm toward the hill.
That mist they saw a few minutes ago, now it fills the sky. You can look at the sun right through it—round and ruddy as an apricot.
Jaume’s moustache gives a twitch. He licks his finger and holds it up in the air: “The wind’s coming from there, quick . . .”
They race from house to house, bang on doors with feet, hands, shoulders, yelling.
•
“Whoaaa, whoa, I’m here!” cries Arbaud as he tumbles downstairs, tying up his woolen belt. Gondran, Marguerite, Madelon, the valet, Ulalie, all of them burst out of their doorways in a rush of skirts and corduroys. Their faces are pocked by the heightened color of their eyes and the gaping pits of their mouths. Babette opens her bedroom window: “What’s happening, what on earth is happening now?”
“The fire, the fire!”
Maurras is hopping up and down, between his mother and Gondran: “. . . it’s swallowed up Hospitaliers woods, and farther, toward Les Collines, it’s all over, burnt to the ground, nothing left. When I got up to the Espel heights and saw all of this . . . ah me, good God, good God!”
“And Garidelle?”
“It’s headed there.”
“And Gaude?”
“It’s burning it all up.”
“Son of a whore!”
•
Jaume is holding back a little from the others. He’s a bit off to the side, on his own. He feels himself growing tall and solid like a tree. All at once, his heart has been freed of dread. He listens to it beating, deep down inside himself, naked and exposed, beating away with its precious cargo of blood.
“Good, this time we know where it’s coming from. We see it for what it is, and we know what we have to do. It could have been a lot worse. We’re ready for it. I’m ready for it, yes, I am. Things are going well now, things go well from the moment you know what you’re dealing with.”
