by Jean Giono
“You see?” Félippe says to me. “He is not alive, the sheep. He must be dead, as you say.”
He remains silent a moment, then:
“Don’t contradict me, but it really looks like a sheep doesn’t it?”
Then he continues his thought, or perhaps his mind leaps to something else, or perhaps…one never knows with Félippe.
“I brought my knife-saw. You see the fourth tree down there? That is always the whimsical one; I am going to cut a few branches off it, that’ll show it that I am the boss.”
In the Land of the Tree Cutters
There was an olive tree. Ah! In the valley all soft with greenery there was also a pine alley, a copse of cypress, and, in town, a boulevard under the elms.
Saturnin said to me one day:
“That olive tree, look at her, how pretty she is! Things like that hurt my eyes. The last time, I can’t even remember what made me look. Would you like for me to tell you about it today? It makes me think of Africans. You see: little Africans who are not fat, Africans from the countryside with, all of them, full pitchforkloads of straw on their heads. You see: they are going up the hill. They are going up the hill, you see, with their grain; they are on their way to feed some big animal from their country. One of those animals that has thick skins like stones.”
The pine alley, set off from a field, ending in the middle of a field, without purpose, like that… But there was in the east a perpetual whisper of wind. It sounded like a beautiful underground stream with its cavernous rumblings. It was fresh, dark, supple.
The cypresses, when one entered the copse, were like a chalice of flowers with a white pistil: a pedestal of old stone all alone which sufficed. And they say, “Long ago it was…”
They cut down everything. Everything. And since the olive tree was troublesome with deep roots, they used petards with black powder to blow them out. They had the last word. Boulevard!
These elms clothe it. You could see, here and there, the old and flaccid skin of the houses and even the disturbing sanies, but beyond the trees, beyond the birds… Ah! The birds. Wait, I’m thinking of them. On summer nights, these elms shelter two owls; they coo a tremolo which makes all the water in your heart shiver. At sixteen they consoled me after a heartbreak.
They cut down the elms; the boulevard is bare. It is there, now, yellow and dirty, all pimpled with a tumor of factories that sweat vapors and thick waters.
All of our entire land passed through the fine shears: the land had just been condemned to forced labor in perpetuity.
I went for a walk on the hill with Jérôme, the old shepherd who makes forty cents a day.
“Jérôme,” I say to him, “you know a lot of things, do you see that ruin of a farm? And the lovely cypress next to it? I wanted to ask you: in the hills, that tree next to the farm is still standing, do you know why?”
“Ah! My good Monsieur, yes, I know, I will tell you. First of all, this farm, they called it: The Beans because there the earth was good for beans. If you had smelled its perfume in the spring with all that in bloom! And I am going to tell you in general and then in particular about that farm. In general, look: in my day they planted cypresses. Do you know why? Because it is a tree that sings well. That was the reason. They did not have to look very far. They liked the music of the cypresses. It is deep, it is a bit like a fountain, by farms, it flows and flows, it makes its noise, it has its way, it lives, it keeps you company better than ten men and ten women whom we need not mention. Here, we could not afford the luxury of letting the water flow so much, and besides that, here we would measure water by the can. And also, we craved the companionship of things that are not human. As an aside, I’ll tell you that, but me, I have thought things over quite a bit in my pasture: he who does not have this craving, make the sign of the cross to him and go on your way; that is someone who is lacking something; his mother made him a miser; he does not make good company. So, to replace the fountain we planted a cypress by the farm, and just like that, in place of the water fountain, they had a fountain of air with just as much companionship, just as much pleasure. The cypress, it was like that stake that you drove into the moist slope to create a flow of water. They stuck the cypress in the air and they had a current of air. They came to sit beneath it, to smoke, to listen. That sound on top of the worries in your head, ah! How fine.
“Now for what is special about this particular cypress, I will tell you; I was a shepherd there, I know about it. We went to get it, Firmin and I, down there at the bottom, you see? It was already a beautiful tree and heavy. It was a lot of trouble to bring it up here. We did that together, Firmin and I, the day that Firmin’s wife had her child. What use were we there, and besides that, we couldn’t take her cries. We went down, and we both sat down beneath the tree, and push against push and slide against slide and swear against swear, one against the other, and both of us against everything we dragged up there. The little one had just been born. It went well. They had the baptism down below.
“Firmin died. Madelon died. The little one did not come back from the war. The tree remains.”
The Great Fence
I just saw one of the great dramas of the earth. I made the necessary gestures. You should understand: not just any, not those of someone who does not know; the gestures which I learned slowly, with all the tenderness of my heart, the gestures which crept into my nerves and my muscles, little by little, by drops you could say, well-learned, well in my blood, the exact gestures. They were the poor gestures of a man. I did not believe it. I knew it, because, despite them, I had been stopped by the great fence.
Ever since I have said: “Even I…”
Ah yes, even I.
It was a pretty rain. One of those April annoyances: with great gestures of wind, then the lashings of cold water like the thousand strokes of a whip, a low sky showing all the swellings of its muscles.
But towards evening I put on my cloak, I took my beret and I went out. In that room filled with pipe smoke, I began to have what seemed to be hallucinations of the bottom of the sea. Two strokes of the wind put me back in order. I see the weather like it is, and I tell myself: “You can climb the hill,” and I climb it.
It is that hill over there, round and beautiful and smooth like a breast. But it has a name: hill of Aures, hill of the wind. That is to let you know that I was not seeking shelter.
Towards the summit, the wind and the rain whipped up in swirls that were seen drowning themselves in the trees. A black air flowed with a torrential fury. A shapeless thunder rattled up above like in a giant toad. The olive trees were suffering beautifully. And yet the olive is a hearty plant which has seen pain and disappointment. That is the sum of it.
There was a moment of calm. A great, clear day fell on the countryside like a fisherman’s net. In the sky, suddenly depleted of rain but still shivering, a stuttering groan floated by.
It had the effect of a fist in my face. I stopped. I looked. I looked especially in the direction of some high grass where it seemed that the cry was coming from. Two great crows flew up from the grass. I recognized them. They were the old savages of the plateau. The old, hard ones who hunted rats and marmots during winter and who fly in the spring towards our gentler slopes, towards more savory prey.
They rose above the grass, with a simple shrug of their shoulders. Just enough to set themselves in the olive tree.
The groaning began again. The crows watched me. They began crackling like breaking branches. It was a warning. Then, from the grass, a rook flew up. A big rook heavily built, with a soft flight, which caught himself in a shaft of wind, wobbled on its two wings and fell like a wave in the emptiness of the valley. There was no mistaking it: it was a satisfied animal.
The cry again.
I chased away the crows with stone throws. I approached the grass. The cry had stopped. I looked: there was a little shivering of fur which guided me. It was a hare. A magnificent beast in pain and confused. She had just given birth to her little ones
, all new. They were two bloody sponges all pockmarked by beak thrusts, torn apart by the bill of the rook. The poor thing. She was lying on her side. She, too, was wounded, her living flesh torn. The pain was visible like a large living thing. It was stuck in that large wound of her belly and you could see it moving inside like a beast wallowing in the mud.
The hare no longer moved.
On my knees beside her, I gently caressed the thick fur burning with fever and especially there on the spine of the neck where caresses are gentlest. All that was left to do was give compassion, it was the only thing left: compassion, an entire heart filled with compassion, to soften, to say to the creature:
“No, you see, someone is suffering from your suffering, you are not alone. I cannot cure you, but I can protect you.”
I caressed and the creature did not complain any longer.
And then, looking at the hare in the eyes, I saw that she was not complaining any longer because I was even more terrible to her than the crows.
It was not appeasement that I had brought there, next to this agony, but terror, a terror so great that from that point on it was useless to complain, useless to call for aid. All that remained was to die.
I was a man, and I had killed all hope. The creature died of fright beneath my misunderstood compassion; my caressing hand was even crueler than the beak of the rook.
A great fence separated us.
Yes, at the beginning I said: “And even so, I…” It is not out of conceit, it is out of surprise, it is out of naïveté.
I, someone who knows how to speak the language of the titmouse, and there they are on the stairway of the branches, all the way down to the ground, all the way to my feet; I who the lagremeuses approach until they have me painted backwards on the golden globes of their eyes; I whom the foxes watch and then, in a moment, they know who I am and pass by gently; I who do not scare up partridges—they peek without raising their beaks; I who am an animal among them all on the great weight of the hills, the junipers, the thyme, the wild air, the grasses, the sky, the wind, the rain that I have inside me; I who have more compassion for them than for my fellow men, if there was someone for whom the great barrier should fall…
No, it is there. It took our evil accumulated over the centuries to make it this solid.
I believe that these are useful reflections for Easter time.
The Destruction of Paris
I am back from Paris. Yesterday in the night, the little path took me on. I felt its wet grass on my ankles; the bare branches clung at my coat. I pushed my door. My mongrel leaped towards my face lapping the air with great strokes of his tongue; my cat jumped on my shoulder. My cat! My new cat! A strange animal fiery and black, a tree limb cat, a wild cat that arrived a month ago from beyond the terrestrial world, through the branches of a tree to me as I walked in the hills.
There was a beautiful full moon just for me.
I recall that man who I met on the Boulevard St. Germain. He had just taken a newspaper from a hawker. He had precise gestures for it. Hand stiff, fingers sharp, a concern for the five cent piece, no concern for the newspaper, and now he was running along the sidewalk, the paper in his fist. He had a curled-up face, eyes which looked far ahead but with a sadness and a full weariness in his mouth. He ran. The run of a city man. I followed him with my great steps. I said to myself: “He is in a hurry, where is he going? What is his goal?” With a jolt he stopped on a streetcorner. No haste. The end. The goal was there. A streetcorner somewhere. Not even somewhere, next to a cheese merchant; as for myself, accustomed to country smells, I was stifled by that odor of Camembert. I wanted to know the last word. I waited. The man read the newspaper. He was still sad and weary. The bus arrived. With a jump that I did not think him capable of, the man threw himself into it. Through the windows I saw him sit down, look vaguely around, take up his newspaper again. The bus took off at the sound of a bell.
It is for that man that I want to write this evening.
Monsieur, my dear friend, man. Man, that’s how I’d like to address you, if you’ll permit me? Man, do not run any more, do not hurry anymore, I saw your goal. I saw your goal because I have new eyes, because I am like a child, because I understand, like children. Do not run any more, you went the wrong way. I watched you, I saw you; I know how to watch men, and I do not want to believe that the goal towards which you ran was that corner of the sidewalk with the smell of cheeses where the bus stops at a square filled with mud. It was because you looked far away with your sad eyes. Listen to me, I am going to say it gently to you:
You saw, in the evening, that phosphorescent blot of autos that turn around the Place de la Concorde. One might say that something kneads this dough with great blows; it cries, it turns, it does not rise, it does not have any yeast, it turns then it flows like clear water and it will stagnate in the fine depths of houses. All of that, the entire city, all Paris hastens and runs like you towards the goal. Blind men! You are blind men. Run, you can run: the goal is behind your back. There is no bus for that direction. You have to go on foot. We would have to take you by the hand and say to you: Come, follow me!
Man, listen to me, I am going to take your hand and say to you: Come, follow me. Here I have my vineyard and my vines; my olive trees, and I am going to supervise the oil myself in the old mill all steamed up among the naked men. Have you seen my dog’s love? It makes you think, doesn’t it? This evening in which I write to you, the sun just set in a striking splashing of blood. The original myth of the death of the sun, I have never read it in books. I read it in the great book, the one around us. I was slightly annoyed yesterday morning because I had three extra pigeons in my pigeonhouse. Three ring pigeons all proud and cooing who came to submit themselves to the seeds in my hand. I have here under my window the fountain of a water that I went looking for with a pickaxe.
That is the goal, that is what you saw with your sad eyes, there in the depths of the air. Come, follow me.
Follow me. There will never be any happiness for you, man, except for the day when you are in the sun standing beside me. Come, tell the good news to those around you. Come, come all of you; there will only be happiness for you the day when the great trees burst up through the streets, when the weight of the wild vines will make the obelisk crumble and bend the Eiffel Tower; when in front of the ticket windows of the Louvre you will not hear anything but the light sound of ripe pods opening and the wild grains falling; the day when wild boars will emerge from subway tunnels wiggling their tails.
Magnetism
I met, en masse, these men charged with great strength. I only had to push the door of the little café run by Antoine…
For a long time I have been coming to this slender mountain village. It is on the outskirts of my land; it is on the border of the mountains, besieged by foxes, boars, forests, and icy waters. The high pastures sleep among the clouds; the sky ebbs and flows beneath the great wind; up there, only the empty grey and the silent flights of eagles like passing shadows remain.
The men who live there are hardly numerous: ten, twenty, call it forty by counting those from the lost hamlets and the travelers, those who enter by one road, take a breather there within the shelter of the houses and leave by the other road. And the earth, all around is wide open. The width of the land, precisely, is terrible, the nudity of the land, the solitude of the land around there. For, you see: ten, twenty, call it forty, that makes only a few men to inhabit all of that. Every day you have to go to work: trapping animals, cutting trees, reaping the harvest in some lost valley; or even, suspended on the grey shoulder of the Garnesier, walking in the warm footsteps of some strange mountain beast made of rocks and clouds.
So there is a lot of sky, a lot of air between these men when they leave the village for their work. What they inhale does not have the odor of having been previously inhaled. The air that they breathe does not come from the gut of other people. It is pure and from the source. It is good on the one hand, but it is bad on the other, given t
hat this purity has to be bought with solitude and desperation.
You, me, and I say me out of politeness, because truly my greatest pride is to have this magnetism which I will tell you about, we would be there, all year, playing our games like they do; a strange fear would take hold of us, no longer daring to dip our full pitcher into the spring or hack a tree with an axe.
I pushed the door of the little café run by Antoine and, all together, I had them there, with me, those men charged with great strength, those men who carry the magnetism of the earth, the men who have steeped too long in the thickness of the sky and who now, are like sponges heavy with sky. The sky is there under their tongue and by merely opening their mouths, out flows the sky with all of its wisdom, so that their breath is cut short.
Ah! Just before coming here, I was with other men—if one can put the same name on a noble animal, my brother, covered with hair, who plays his accordion there, before his bottle of wine and the artifice of over there, so hollow under his beautiful vest that he resounds like a pipe.
And I was saying to myself: If some spasm of the earth, suddenly, made everything but this place cave in, if right now, going out for the “evening” one found the virgin forest at the door, the virgin land, the sky, the wind, the rain all virgin; if everything was lost of the discoveries and the sciences and art, if we were suddenly back at the beginning, how many true men would there be in there? Of those who know how to select a slope, choose the grass, make traps for meat, walk with the stars, propel themselves by the wind, vanquish the cold, live in the end, to live with all this would demand courage. How many? Maybe you, I say to myself; maybe your friend who is there and who is like you, that would make two. What pride!
