by Jean Giono
Also yesterday morning when the planes passed over they dropped bombs on Forcalquier. Why? To jettison them? Why right over Forcalquier when there are a hundred square kilometers of open land right next to it? Why not imagine the sadism of the bomber who sees below him the beautiful, peaceful green countryside that I’m looking at this morning from my window. His modern response is to open the bomb doors. If one isn’t careful, it’s easy to fall prey to the various propagandas: those claims that the airmen are “drunk niggers” or, if they’re English, they’re scared shitless. No one has normal responses. This morning, the Sunday of Pentecost, is the first communion here. Tidying up, women in their Sunday best; when I went down to the post office, they were hosing off the terraces of the cafés. Beautiful light. In the meadow far below, men in white shirts slowly raking the hay.
The world seems to be collapsing into a general lack of quality.
In 1939–40 I was writing in Chute de Constantinople…“and their cries when they lose their footing in the abyss!”
Monday, May 29
(I often get the date wrong; yesterday was the 28th.) A telephone call late yesterday reassured me about E. and A. Safe and sound in Marseille. E. had gone down to take shelter in the hallway of the apartment building, but between two strikes he ran to hide in tunnel of the Gare de l’Est. He seemed very upset on the phone. He called me again this morning, still very shaken. A. as well. He repeated, “It’s a massacre, a massacre.” G. P. telephoned, too, to reassure me he was alright, he and Nini are both alive, and he also repeated, “It’s a massacre.” He reported more than 2,000 dead and more than 5,000 wounded. Because of his position, those figures are more accurate than the ones announced officially.
It rained, rather late in the day. A small storm. The sound of it seemed extremely peaceful. It brought comfort and peace. It was reassuring. It was Ahistorical.
Incapable of working. It’s irritating. Tomorrow, somehow or other, without fail, I have to force myself to get to work on Joseph Andrews and Deux cavaliers; Fragments can be put off until later, if I return to it at all. It may be a mistake that I’m getting over.
Ten dead in Forcalquier! Why? It’s so obviously stupid that the toadies claim it was a German fighter who did the bombing. I’d rather think it was sadism. No, I don’t distinguish between Germans and Anglo-Americans, one is the same as the other. The Germans machine-gunned those who were fleeing; the Anglo-Americans bombed Forcalquier for the fun of it. Hatred for green pastures, no doubt. They’ve simply found a substitute for love finally, something that takes its place, does not deceive (for the time being).
Thursday, June 1
I went to Margotte yesterday afternoon. Bombs fell 200 meters from the farm the other day. Mme. Salomé, the children, uncle, and aunt were thrown flat on their bellies in the fields. In Forcalquier, which is five kilometers from there, eleven bombs fell. Eyewitnesses say that they were all dropped by a plane that had broken off from the squadron and just circled above the town. In the police station, which was destroyed, an officer’s wife, looking out the window at the planes streaming over and talking to another woman on the street, exclaimed, “It’s the landing; this isn’t unlucky; I tell you there’s going to be one hell of a celebration.” Five minutes later she was crushed, she and her three children dead. The same squadron dropped bombs randomly over its entire route: Riez, Rians, Vinon, Valensole, Saint-Maime, Forcalquier, Vachères, Simiane, Banon, Saint-Christofol, Sault, everywhere. I received a letter from Thoret this morning and he also talks about sadism. In any case, as an expert on aviation, and what an expert, he’s hard on the flight crews. A few more strikes like this and sympathy for the Anglo-Americans is going to shift. But maybe they will be the ones to save Europe despite themselves. It would be quite fitting (considering the general spinelessness and filth) if it were filth and spinelessness that finally produced the great liberation movements. Because if we waited for grandeur…!
What Fragments lacks is form, that’s all – period.
Saturday, June 3
I now have the same money worries as in January. The sale of the two manuscripts was only enough for us to live on for six months. I can’t make a living. I’m going to have to sell other manuscripts. If I can do that. Otherwise, sell a farm.
My mother is sick and can’t breathe.
I have to redo Fragments in a form that allows for grand poetic departures. But I need time.
Yesterday in broad daylight, men armed with submachine guns broke into the law office of M. Borel, made him sign a check for the full amount in his bank account, accompanied him to the bank, took 300,000 francs and ran off. In the center of town, at ten o’clock in the morning. Ach. the teacher, the gang leader apparently, was walking around with a gun in plain sight, hanging from a belt under his jacket, and the day before yesterday, men from a rival gang fired at his automobile three kilometers from Manosque. He escaped. It seems there are several gangs: Ach.’s gang, Mar.’s gang. Mar.’s gang just raided a garage for its gasoline six days ago. They took the gasoline and paid saying, “We aren’t Ach.’s gang, we’re another one.” But no one knows if it was the same gang that robbed the oil reserves; without paying that time.
With the heat, it seems there’s an unbearable stench of corpses in Marseille. More than two thousand are still in the process of rotting under the rubble.
Sunday, June 4
Ten o’clock in the morning, the alert sounds. Immediately followed by violent rumbling at the far end of town, then silence. We’re listening. The most beautiful possible weather. Sun, powder blue sky, a little cool, light wind. Since the other day when ten bombs fell a hundred meters from Margotte, the hens have laid only small eggs, hardly bigger than quail eggs; they have no yolks. Imagine the panic there must be in Marseille now. All is quiet for the moment.
Tuesday, June 6
Charles returns from town with news. First, the Germans are said to have arrived. He didn’t see a single one, but someone told him that they had commandeered a villa on Boulevard Saint-Lazare. Then, the landing has supposedly begun. Where, when, how, no one knows. There’s no trace of it, no indication, but it has begun, no doubt about it. A collective hallucination? Anyone declaring in the empty city today that the Germans haven’t arrived and the landing hasn’t taken place would be torn to pieces.
Cool weather, clouds, overcast sky, crosswinds, still no rain.
Yesterday Mme. X. arrived. For at least three months she’s left me in perfect peace. “If I don’t come anymore,” she said, “it’s because I’m afraid of becoming attached to you.” She makes stupid faces. I answer dryly, “There’s no danger of that.” She protests. I move on and consider how to drive her away.
Began working on Deux cavaliers again.
Serious money worries. Still nothing from Paris, no letters. Wrote to Dambournet, L’Argus du Livre, to propose selling three manuscripts to him, Batailles dans la montagne, Le Poids du ciel, Les Vraies Richesses.
A difficult period to get through morally. What I would need is to succeed at some incontestably beautiful work. What I’m writing doesn’t satisfy me. Not enough real work even though I stay shut up in my office the whole day. Irritated by difficulties that I can’t seem to overcome. I’ve hardly written more than a few pages for weeks. And even those aren’t as good as the ones I was writing three months ago.
Decided to give up tobacco, I smoked my last bag of it. I won’t buy anymore on the black market. Totally eliminating personal expenses.
Noon. So, it’s true. The landing at least. Fighting southwest of Le Havre, we learn from a badly broken up radio broadcast.
Camoin came to see me this evening at about seven o’clock. I told him about all the mistakes that Vigroux made in his translation of Joseph Andrews. Camoin told me they killed Ach. Pétain and Laval speaking on the radio about the landing. The bad days have come. According to Camoin, 11,000 (eleven thousand) planes supposedly participate
d in the attack. Insane times! What’s going to become of us? That’s what they keep asking below, my mother, my wife, my mother-in-law, shelling peas for canning.
It’s what I’m asking myself as I write this note.
The wind has turned to the north and is blowing in gusts. Sick today. Even the light is agonizing.
Wednesday, June 7
A crystal clear day. The mistral has swept away all the fog. From here the hills on the far side of the valley look close enough to touch. I can make out juniper bushes on the Mirabeau hills and, more than fifty kilometers away, the details of the rock face at Sainte-Victoire. I didn’t listen to the radio at seven o’clock. It was on very loud below but I wasn’t up, and only got up later when the telephone rang. It was Mme. Meyssonnier leaving for Mison for the funeral of a cousin who was crushed by the train, to tell us she would probably return this evening by train, if there was one. We are looking after her daughter in the meantime and will be for quite some time, I imagine. We also have André with us whose wife left for her son’s first communion in Banassac, hasn’t been heard from since, and must have broken down somewhere. There are no more trains, no more letters, no more telephone. In addition to the family, I’m now responsible for little Marguerite, André, and Guy. We’re considering the possibility of having to take refuge at the Criquet farm. Aline, Guy, and I would leave on bicycle, the women in the cart, and André and Charles on foot. For the moment, I calm them down and make them stay here. There’s absolutely no reason to rush off madly on adventures, as if to a picnic. The idea that we’ll have to learn to be nomads again fills the children with joy, and the adults as well. As long as the danger is far away. It is still far away. Apparently the fighting is furious and the outcome is far from decided. Those at the head of the Anglo-American front near Saint-Vaast were thrown into the sea. The other front, on the contrary, seems to be growing.
Getting to work. And being careful about knowing too much or going too deeply into the science of things. Martel’s example. Retaining a freshness of heart and hands. That’s difficult.
Ten o’clock. The siren is sounding. Even so, the wind is terrible.
Thursday, June 8
Yesterday afternoon I went to Margotte by bicycle. The land empty, the world empty; it seemed like an empty Sunday. I passed households fleeing, one after another, belongings heaped precariously in trucks, heading for Marseille. At Bois d’Asson, the mine wasn’t operating. I learned at Margotte that the terrorists had forced the workers to close it. At the crossroads, groups of young men idly swinging their arms. The sweet smell of linden trees in full blossom tossed by the wind. When I arrived at Margotte, Mme. Salomé told me immediately that the Anglo-Americans had taken Paris. It turns out she had mixed up what she heard on the radio, that they were in Boulogne, but: -sur-Mer. As for Salomé, he went to look at his automobile, out of gas now for four years. He told me that he was going to go have it serviced immediately. He’s expecting the return of 1936 before long. The return to before the war. It would be useless to try to make him understand first of all, that wouldn’t be enough, and secondly, it probably won’t happen, and finally, that what will happen will only happen after horrible catastrophes. He caresses his auto, jubilant, and all ready to dive back into any post-war whatsoever, so long as he has gasoline and can rev up his engine and go backfiring down the roads.
Returned home about seven o’clock. On the dissident radio station, they’re giving orders for civil war to the gendarmes, the jailers, and even the resistance fighters. They’re ordering them to take to the maquis with weapons and supplies and to open the prison doors.
As I’m writing this down this morning, Ch. arrives from town with news. The reports are strange and contradictory. Groups of maquis fighters have supposedly seized the town hall, the post office, and the police station. But he saw armed Germans at the town hall, the post office is functioning, and the police chief, whom I know to be a Francist, is still there. More news from Charles: fighting in Sainte-Tulle. Now from my window I can see Sainte-Tulle which, at six kilometers away, is in clear sight. It’s calm, peaceful, not a sound coming from it. Third piece of news: the Anglo-Americans are supposed to have landed at Cette. Élise is nervous and asks me if we shouldn’t leave for Criquet. I don’t think so. Why do that? Let’s wait. It’s through obeying last evening’s orders that the game will be played. To what extent and in what fashion will the country obey? And on the other hand, what is there to fear?
In any case and as a precaution, I told Guy, who was heading to Criquet by bike to get milk, not to leave. And I advised Ch. simply to return to town to get enough bread for a small supply for us.
I’m doing my best to continue working on Deux cavaliers.
After leaving again for town, Charles returns. Now he’s saying that the dissidents didn’t take the town hall last night, but they came to arm those who were members of the organizations (that seems true, or at least plausible). On the other hand, the prefecture’s office in Digne was supposedly stormed. But then I wonder why there aren’t new administrators already. I just had a calm telephone call from Blavette who asked me to meet him this afternoon, so the post office is alright. Real news: a German was killed tonight at the public house and a police officer killed himself while loading his gun badly. Waiting.
I destroyed three bad pages of Deux cavaliers written over the past few days.
Mme. Meyssonier returned from Mison last evening. She had to go fifteen or twenty kilometers on foot, just this side of Sisteron, before meeting a truck that left her not far from here, where she was able to find help again.
Friday, June 9
After a day of true madness yesterday, today promises to be calmer. It seems someone was pulling the wool over our eyes. Last night everyone in town left their houses and went to camp in the hills. The rumors circulating predicted terrible, mysterious events for the night. André and Angèle came to spend the night with us. There were huge numbers of false reports, each more outrageous than the last. By the end of last evening there was not a single cool head among us. I had to reprimand Guy, calmly and sensibly, for wanting to take extreme measures. Today everything is back to square one. In my opinion, a premature attempt, one of those terrible blunders that’s enough to destroy the best of causes. A lack of cool heads in the command. It seems the real leaders were very displeased that these initiatives were taken. It seems to be confirmed as well that all this unrest was only regional. So I was seeing things clearly when I advised caution. Why can’t we be more English in the good sense: “Wait and see.”
Guy is determined despite what I said to him, and I told him that if he had been too quick to accept my reasons, I wouldn’t respect him as I do. One must lose one’s illusions as quickly as possible, so, yes, go where you can lose them the fastest. That’s the law of war. For the moment, all they see is a big country outing. In place of the old “unfolding of things,” now there’s the appeal of cowboy and gangster movies. Big House, Zorro, sports. Obeying the rush of blood. Permission to play a grand version of cops and robbers. A big playground. What an idiot I was to write Le Grand Troupeau. The simplest solution is to calmly accept that butcher shops exist, and even to go there to buy good meat.
Yesterday, thirteen dead in Forcalquier, according to rumors. Those who went to occupy the town hall, or I don’t know what, clashed with, I don’t know, either the Germans or the militia who killed thirteen of them.
“What I want most of all,” says Guy, “is equipment.” The desire for a parachute harness. Not once, it must be acknowledged, do they speak sentimentally, as in 93, 48, or 70. They are thrilled with (laugh at) the idea of jumping. Not one speaks of grandeur or country. Oh, no. Never of country. These are political armies built on the misconceptions of youth who want to practice piano in china shops.
It’s a beautiful day, clear, full of color, a little wind.
I understand all that very well. I just don’t like it, that�
��s all. Behind them are others who want to be brought armchairs so they can die sitting down, from old age, cancer, their prostate.
Still no real news about the landing. Neither the English nor the Germans.
Saturday, June 10
Finally it’s cloudy and overcast. It hasn’t rained yet but the humid air already offers relief to the body, relaxes it. Peace, and the songs of birds. Nightingales are calling in the tall chestnut trees.
My neighbor Maurel, a miner at the coal mine in Gaude, hasn’t returned. He’s been dragooned, surely against his own wishes. He’s peace-loving, a gardener, family man, conformist, easily astounded by the tiny flash of a lighter. What purpose does it serve to make a man like this into a soldier? If this picnic lasts a few days he’ll hold out, but all the time thinking of his daughter, wife, rabbits, hens, his garden, and his new potatoes. But this is certainly not the man to fire the last shots. If the country holiday lasts too long, he’ll end up saying to himself, “Now let’s move on to serious things.” And he’ll return to the bosom of his family.
The young men, like Guy, don’t talk about battles, combat, fighting, they talk about “scuffles.” “There are terrific scuffles.” They don’t want to fight but to “scuffle.” In one sense, that’s to see clearly, already.
It’s raining hard, a beautiful heavy rain. My limbs feel light and well-oiled. My head feels at ease in the humidity. Despite new troubles, my eyes take great physical pleasure in looking at the dark blue day. The sound of rain is pleasing to my ears like music and suddenly, having taken up a book, I see magical seeds bursting forth from all sides.
In addition to the thirteen young men killed on the square in front of the church in Forcalquier, there was a drama at the police station. Captain Faucon killed the son of the police captain who wanted to arrest him and the police captain killed Captain Faucon. As for the young men, they were from the Bois d’Asson mine and still following that insane plan, they were occupying the town hall, pure and simple. A truckload of Germans arrived. The young miners advanced, naively thinking that, at the sight of their friendly faces, it would all be settled, pure and simple (which was stupid!). They were massacred. Two minutes later, absolute calm “reigned at Varsovie.” What madness! Who organized all this stupidity? Who pulled the wool over our eyes in the first place? Salomé, who told me all this, has backed off from his revolutionary declarations. He’s already recanting them.
