Roux the Bandit

by Chamson, André;

  “ ‘Your boy is going off, Finiels, but mobilisation isn’t war. They’ll be afraid at the last moment when they see that we are ready.’

  “ ‘Of course they will,’ I said to him. ‘Of course they will.’

  “ ‘If nobody were willing to go to war,’ said Roux to me, ‘it would be still more certain.’

  “My blood boiled and I lost my temper.

  “ ‘Would you rather stay behind and let the others go in your place?’

  “ ‘What I wish is that men wouldn’t kill one another.’

  “Just then my boy, who was passing with a group of young men, called out:

  “ ‘Well, Roux, so we are going off together?’

  “But Roux began quoting Scripture and making a sort of sermon on war and on righteousness. All around us the young men listened to him. But this was not a day for patience. They called to him:

  “ ‘So you’d like them to come here and take your farm and your sisters and your mother away from you?’

  “Everybody knew Roux. They were all his friends, but for a moment I thought they were going to give him a bad time of it.

  “ ‘You’re talking nonsense,’ I said to him, and thereupon we ended the conversation and went up to the farm to get the boy’s bundles ready.

  “Roux went up with us and did not open his mouth the whole way. When we arrived he left us and went on his way to Sauveplane.

  “ ‘See you soon,’ my boy shouted to him.

  “Roux turned around and made a gesture with his arms, like this, as if to say ‘au revoir,’ and was gone.

  “We made up the bundles, the accounts, everything that had to be done, and went down with the boy to the station. … You know Saint-Jean: it is just one long narrow street, so small that the tradesfolk have only to come out on their doorsteps for the town to seem full of people. The square they have made at the end of the street, just this side of the station, is scarcely larger, and the boys and girls almost fill it on summer evenings when they come in bands to wait for the ten o’clock train. … But this day was indeed the greatest day that people had ever seen in this place. The townsfolk, the people of the three valleys, and even those from the mountain were all there together. … We looked for Roux in this crowd, I asked everybody for news of him. Nobody had seen Roux of Sauveplane.

  “ ‘I’ll find him again at Nîmes,’ said my boy. ‘He has followed the short cuts down and ought to be in the train already.’

  “After this we thought no more of Roux. … You understand that we had plenty of other things to talk about.

  “When my son was gone, I went up to the farm again. There was no lack of work to be done there. … The young men had left us all alone for the heavy work of the summer: on the hills the harvest was not yet entirely in, and down in the valley bottoms it was already time to think of gathering the grapes.

  “Some time afterward, I was in my terraced garden above the road, when the police-sergeant from Saint-Jean passed with a gendarme.

  “ ‘Good day, Finiels.’

  “ ‘Good day, gentlemen.’

  “I came down from my terraces and asked them if they were going up to Sauveplane.

  “This was no sort of question to ask them, for by this road you can go only to Sauveplane or to the mountain, and surely I thought that at that season there was nothing to take the gendarmes to the mountain.

  “ ‘Exactly,’ the police-sergeant replied. ‘Roux has not signed up. We are going to see if he is at his farm.’

  “I thought of my son who had left us without news for two weeks, and anger seized me. I began to say: ‘The monster …’ The sergeant answered:

  “ ‘He is a deserter.’

  “Deserter? That is not a word that means anything to us. It is a school-teacher’s word, a school-book word. I said to the sergeant:

  “ ‘Deserter, if you wish, that is quite possible; but he is a monster.’

  “The sergeant, who was not from this neighbourhood, looked at me stupidly, then he replied:

  “ ‘Exactly, he is a deserter.’

  “But as for me, I repeated in patois to the sergeant who understood me very well, since he has been in the canton for more than ten years: Daquéu mounstre, ai, daquéu mounstre.’ After a moment the sergeant asked me with an air of embarrassment:

  “ ‘There is nobody at Sauveplane but his mother and his sisters?’

  “ ‘So far as I can tell you.’

  “I reflected a moment, then added:

  “ ‘If you wish me to go with you, I am your man. I know the family and the ways of the house.’

  “ ‘Come along then, Finiels, you can speak to these women. You will frighten them less than we would.’

  “ ‘Of course we are neighbours, and in a way it is doing them a kindness.’

  “Saying this, I took my jacket and we went up together.

  “It is our custom to have a finger in everything that goes on at Sauveplane, and the people of Sauveplane do the same with us. It has been so from old times, and of necessity because of our solitude: let a misfortune happen at Sauveplane and we go up there at once, and when something happens to us down come the people from up there.

  “The first time I went up to Sauveplane it was with my grandfather, when I was not yet eight years old, and because of an accident that had befallen Roux’s great-grandfather. While cutting down his wood, he had been bitten by a snake, in his side, through his shirt.

  “At this time, there was another family at Sauveplane, who lived in the abandoned hut beside the spring. … Since then, these people have fallen on hard times, they have gone off to die in the towns, and the daughter has ended by selling herself to men for a trifle. That day this same girl came running down crying:

  “ ‘Roux has been bitten by some poisonous creature.’

  “My grandfather, who knew a lot about plants and remedies, took his jacket and called to me:

  “ ‘Come with me; you can come back and get things if necessary.’

  “And I set out with my grandfather. We reached Sauveplane: the old man lay on the straw, in front of his door, all blue and puffed up like a toad, with his shirt unbuttoned and a great wound in his side. The women had burned it with a red-hot iron, but too late, for he had been twenty minutes running home with the creature’s poison under his skin. He was already losing consciousness. My grandfather looked at him and said to me:

  “ ‘Go down to the farm and tell your father to come up and tell the women not to wait for us this evening.’

  “Of course he was already thinking of putting the dead man in his shroud and watching beside him. … So I took the road down and came back alone from Sauveplane for the first time, which was not very difficult since there was only one road that always followed the course of the valley. …

  “The same evening, Roux’s great-grandfather died of his snake-bite, and my grandfather and my father watched beside him, while I did not sleep from fright. And since then it has always been the same: we do not go up to Sauveplane except in time of trouble or, now and then, for festivals, such as the marriage of a daughter. …

  “Moreover, at the change of the season, we always go by with the cart to see if the roof of our sheepfold still holds and to carry up a few straps. … At other times, when we go up to the mountain without the cart, we take short cuts, going straight up over Sauveplane through the midst of the beeches and over the meadows of Roquelongue. …

  “All these stories bring me back to my story today: I went up, then, with the gendarmes as I had done at the time of the other misfortunes. On the road we talked about the war, and the police-sergeant, who knew a great deal, had a far from confident air. Eight hundred metres from the farm, at the last turn before you reach the fields, the police-sergeant said to me:

  “ ‘Go on ahead, Finiels; the bird can’t be in the nest; go and talk to those women a little…’

  “No doubt he was sorry for them and did not wish to upset them too much. I hastened my steps and reached the farm
. The old woman was on her doorstep and the two sisters were working in the garden. I said to the old woman:

  “ ‘Where is the boy?”

  “ ‘Do I know?’

  “ ‘Perhaps not. But there may be others who do.’

  “ ‘What others?’

  “ ‘The government, perhaps.’

  “ ‘Well, let them look, the boy is where he should be.’ And not another word was to be got out of her.

  “The two daughters went on with their work and were carrying greens to the rabbits. I thought to myself: ‘They are hiding him; they know very well that he has not signed up.’ And I felt myself losing my temper again.

  “Roux’s mother is a saintly woman, pious and upright, a hard worker and kind to the neighbours: she had taken care of my wife during an illness which she had got from a chill, but in my anger I was already forgetting these things. …

  “All of a sudden up came my two gendarmes.

  “ ‘Good evening, ladies and all the company,’ said the sergeant politely.

  “ ‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ replied Finette (the name they gave to Roux’s mother). ‘Are you going up the mountain?’

  “ ‘Not exactly; we are coming here for something. …’

  “After a moment’s silence the sergeant asked Finette:

  “ ‘The boy isn’t here?’

  “ ‘Of course not. … He went off long ago.’

  “Anger and also pity for these women went to my head. I felt that now I was embarrassing the gendarmes a little, so without saying good evening to anyone I took the road down and set out. The gendarmes remained behind to tell these women what they had to tell them. …

  “I was going down then without haste when, about half way, the gendarmes overtook me. …

  “ ‘The boy is not at Sauveplane,’ the sergeant said to me, ‘but he has not signed up either. He must have gone over into Spain, or perhaps …’

  “ ‘Or perhaps?’

  “ ‘… he is hiding on the mountain. … In any case the women know where he is, but they will not say anything, and there is no way to make them. …’

  “ ‘It is quite true perhaps that he is hiding on the mountain, for this is the good season. But in a month from now the nights will be sharp, and in two months it is quite likely to start snowing.’

  “ ‘In two months the war will be over … but we shall certainly have caught our man.’

  “ ‘Don’t imagine it; the mountain is big and that boy knows it better than anybody. He may have difficulty finding anything to live on, but there will be no lack of hiding-places.’

  “ ‘The best thing will be to watch the farm,’ said the sergeant to the gendarme, while I repeated as I walked: ‘What a monster, what a monster!’

  “We arrived here: everybody already knew the news and the women had been repeating for an hour:

  “ ‘Roux of Sauveplane has not signed up and the gendarmes are going to search for him.’

  “Everybody was furious with Roux; they were saying:

  “ ‘The Prussians might easily get to Montpellier, and even to Nîmes, if everybody acted like him.’

  “ ‘They say that a great many of the rich have got out of it, but just the same the manager of the spinning-mill has enlisted.’

  “Old Sanguinèdes—who died last year—was repeating to everybody:

  “ ‘In 1870 the men had more courage. I almost went myself. I even got as far as Nîmes, and that was a different sort of war; it was a war in winter, and a bad winter.’

  “People haven’t any too much love for the gendarmes in our country, because of the wood and the fishing and hunting and the wagon lanterns, and a lot of other things as well, but just the same I made them come inside that day and take a glass of something strong. Almost all the men of the village came too, those at least who were not off to war. … There were Liron, Panard, Berthézéne, and others who have died since.”

  In his corner, old Liron approved and remembered. Finiels continued:

  “Then, after drinking, I said to the gendarmes: “ ‘You might say this boy has done something that isn’t good.’

  “ ‘That’s quite true,’ added the others.

  “ ‘He is a deserter,’ said the gendarme who was new in the country and who looked at us as if we were animals.

  “Seeing us all so well disposed, and myself particularly, the sergeant said to me:

  “ ‘Finiels, that boy is not honest, he deserves to be sent to prison. … If he is hiding on the mountain, you will see him some day in the woods; then you will give us a sign, won’t you?’

  “ ‘That may very well be,’ I answered, as I went back with him along the road. And on that we parted as good friends.

  “We were all furious with Roux and I perhaps more than the others, because of my boy; but just the same the sergeant’s question had done something to me. … Gendarmes are gendarmes and the rest of us work on the land; everyone has his own trade. Nevertheless, we were so angry with that boy that for once we might perhaps have helped the gendarmes. Panard kept repeating:

  “ ‘If I meet him with my gun, I’ll kill him like a wild beast.’ ”

  “I was angry on account of my son-in-law who had gone to war, and because all our affairs were going to the dogs,” broke in Panard, “but just the same I would perhaps have done him a bad turn just then.”

  “And I too,” went on Finiels, “and all the men of the valley likewise. We had all agreed about this war: in our mountains no one had even thought of saying that we ought not to enlist, and we had let the young men of our families go without a moment’s hesitation. You will understand, therefore, that we could not approve of a man who had not wished to do what all the others did. … But what made us still angrier perhaps was to know nothing certain in this affair.”

  “ ‘He is in Spain. He has been caught on the frontier,’ some said to us, while others came and said: ‘He is hiding on the mountain, behind Luzette, towards the forest of Oubrets. He comes down at night to Sauveplane to eat, and he never lets go of his rifle.’

  “The guard of Luzette let it be understood that he was keeping his eyes open for him and he repeated ten times a day:

  “ ‘I’ll lead him to Saint-Jean by the ear.’

  “But this was only gossip, and nobody knew anything certain

  “The gendarmes however often prowled about Sauveplane, sometimes even in the middle of the night. … One morning, on my way to the station at dawn, I met them coming down from the mountain, as frozen as fishermen. But no news of Roux.”

  II

  “Meanwhile, the war was going on: winter drew near and the nights became long and cold. On the mountain there was already snow in spots, and the clouds came down over the upper pastures almost every day.

  “If Roux was on the mountain, bad times were beginning for him, and we were well pleased, because for a long time misfortunes had begun to fall upon our families. Finiels of Vernède had been killed, Buffart of La Borie had had his leg cut off, there had been no more news from Randon the roadman for a good month. All these misfortunes had increased the anger of the countryfolk against Roux and even against his family. Finette and her two daughters remained shut up at Sauveplane: they no longer came down either to the market or to church… Just once the elder of the girls came to Saint-Jean to get some wool; they snubbed her perhaps twenty times in the shops, so much so that she went up again without buying anything. …

  “Everybody was wrapped up in his own troubles. Finette and her daughters no longer left their farm, and, since nobody had anything new to tell about Roux, people were beginning to forget him a little when one day, just before the beginning of the severe winter, two women from the mountain who were carrying cheeses to Saint-Jean met him as they were coming down the short cuts of Roquelongue.

  “This settled the matter. Roux was on the mountain, like a wild beast, like a mad dog that runs away from its master. It was natural to suppose that only fear could have driven him to this crazy deed, a
nd this was no reason for us to excuse him. If he had been unwilling to go because his crops were not in or because he had to care for his beasts, and if he had stayed quietly at his farm, or, when things came to the worst, if he had received the gendarmes with rifle-shots, and if, in the end, he had hidden on the mountain to save his life, we would perhaps heve been able to understand him. I don’t want to say that we should have thought he did right, but we should not have felt the same anger against him. But, in these first months of the war, we could not guess the reasons that had driven him to hide on the mountain, and on the face of things we could only despise him for having acted like a wild beast driven by fear, that does not know how to do anything useful either for others or for itself. …

  “It was then that people began to call him ‘Roux the Bandit.’ You know, of course, that in the country you find ‘Roux,’ like ‘Finiels,’ on all the farms, at all the dairies, in all the villages. So, in order to avoid mistakes, you say ‘Roux of Sauveplane,’ ‘Roux of Malet,’ ‘Roux of Vernède.’ Consequently, we began to say ‘Roux the Bandit’ as before we had said ‘Roux of Sauveplane.’ We did not mean by this that he had murdered or stolen, but simply that he no longer belonged to any farm or village, and that he was something like a poacher on the mountain. …

  “We felt sure that he must come down from time to time, in the middle of the night, to his mother’s house, for a bite to eat and to lay in a few provisions. Without this manœuvre, he could not have lived a week on the mountain where there was nothing to be found but wild bayberries and raspberries at the height of the warm weather. But we were sure that the watchfulness of the gendarmes and the neighbours must often prevent him from descending as far as Sauveplane and oblige him to get his daily dole of food on the mountain. And now that the winter had set in for good and cold would be added to hunger, we thought he was going to be punished for his folly and his evil action. During the first bad days of that year, this idea recurred to me every time I looked at the mountain. … Perhaps you don’t know just what winter is like on the mountain?”

  I flatter myself that I know the mountain well, almost as well as these men who know it profoundly. These words of Finiels vexed me and I contradicted them immediately, at the risk of interrupting the story he was telling me.