The Serpent of Stars

by Jean Giono

  All this time, the Sardinian has remained with his hand raised in greeting and the music has made that sound of water and tumbling earth. You saw the hills walk. You heard their big feet slap in the mud, in the rot of the streams of fruit. Now the narrator lets his raised hand fall. The aeolian harps are all alone trying their hand at the great Sunday. There’s the sound of sheets flapping on the clothesline, whirlwinds of swallows, the wind coming from far away in one long slide, now caught in fistfuls in the trees.

  A dry music begins, made up of just the tympon, those tries at joy along the scale and the loud notes sounding like calls. With a wing beat of his arms, this is what the Sardinian did: he changed character. He is no longer the anonymous narrator, he is the earth-narrator. He is the Earth. From now on, he is going to tell us of his anxiety; the drama opens.

  THE SARDINIAN. The great grasses have eaten all my strength. I realized this because I wanted to leap into the sky and I couldn’t, and I remain stuck here, powerless.

  I’ve been too lax with all these beautiful trees. Already everything that ran and danced over me, the hills and the mountains, and the high rocks, everything has stopped, hindered by forests and undergrowth.

  Oh! I wanted to go much farther and I couldn’t, and I turn, and I turn again, but it’s all clamped together in me by hooked roots. I’m like a moldy apple.

  The summers came upon me like huge bees, and they sapped my moisture. They didn’t budge. They were upon me, wings open.

  I knew it: I had seen the great marshes of squash withering on the waters. The squash drifted off and then, suddenly, they plunged into the water’s depths. And then, other times, I saw bubbles rise, and then, other times, all the water moved.

  The summers’ swarm drank up nearly all the lovely depth of the water. And then, I saw the great serpent’s back.

  There is that great serpent who is a creature of the mud. Then there are those who have four feet and are made according to the model of the sky because they have teats to drink from. There is one of those who is almost nothing but a mouth; it swallows huge platefuls of pines and birches and whole cherry orchards along with the ground underneath, covered with grass and shadows. There are many others, too.

  And I was lighter with grass, but I was heavier with meat and I sank into the sky like a lead weight because all these beasts were stepping over each other, were mounting each other, making little ones who were making little ones.

  And then, one fine moment, I stopped drifting because the beasts began to eat meat. There were some who ate grass and others who ate the ones who ate the grass. And that created balance.

  And I am in balance.

  But, now, I feel this balance coming all undone again, and it’s swaying. Something else has happened. Oh, what a worry it is to have skin and a belly!

  I’m very nervous because of that one, I’ve heard he wants to take charge.

  And yet, he is small; I raise and lower my eyebrows and I widen my eyes, and I turn them about, and I turn them about again. I see nothing.

  Nevertheless, this thread of balance is swaying. I have to ask . . .

  Since he became the earth-narrator, the Sardinian was clearly hurrying to reach those words by which the drama opens. At first, he added a bit of polish. Then, he abandoned his images as he went along. He spoke of the summers like bees. I saw the Sardinian again a little later. He told me very beautiful things about the summer: the summer that alights on us like a swarm; the summer that covers the land with a hot flayed skin.

  Moreover, the whole circle of shepherds had begun to talk and near me I heard repeated “And you, what will you say?” After “I have to ask,” the Sardinian stood for a moment not saying anything. All the music stopped.

  THE SARDINIAN (He calls). The Sea!

  Nothing. Silence. Shepherds who squeeze close to each other like sheep who are afraid.

  THE SARDINIAN (in another, natural, voice). So, there’s no one to do the sea?

  Over there, in back, there’s a group where a little dispute is bubbling and you can hear “Go on,” “Go on,” in low voices.

  He goes forward.

  It’s a short, fat shepherd. He takes two or three steps, then he turns around and flings his big felt hat to his friends. He is bald, with two little wings of white hair above his ears.

  I learned afterwards that his name is Glodion and that he’s from Le Bachas, a country of complete wilderness: nothing but stones, nothing but stones and thistle.

  GLODION. I’m the Sea!

  He and the Sardinian face each other like two men who are going to dance.

  THE SARDINIAN. Sea.

  Tell me if you know what is worrying me.

  Look at me swinging to and fro.

  Who knows where I am going to go now?

  Things went better for me when I was young.

  But then my worries started.

  And I am much more afraid of what is coming than of what has been.

  GLODION. What is it you want me to say?

  THE SARDINIAN. Tell me if you have seen man.

  GLODION. Man?

  Stop swinging me from side to side for a bit. You are hurling me into the mountains with the goats; you are throwing me from the flat sand as far as the eye can see, all the way to where the monkeys live.

  Wait!

  I don’t have time to look around.

  Man?

  You mean that fish who is all planted with grass like a big meadow and whom all my purple rage can’t budge, and who sleeps stretched out on the grill of a thousand of my waves?

  THE SARDINIAN. Maybe.

  What does this fish do?

  You say that he sleeps on a thousand waves, so he is big?

  GLODION. Yes.

  It’s because he’s too big that he sleeps. What use would it be for him to go anywhere? With one stroke, he’s on this side, with another stroke, he’s on the other. He is just one big pocket of skin. When it’s full of water, he sinks into my shade, toward the coolness because it’s hot. When it’s full of air, he climbs back up, he is over me like a meadow of grass. Big pieces of ice come to plant themselves in him, and then they melt there.

  THE SARDINIAN. No.

  That’s not the one who makes me nervous, then, if he only sleeps. Look harder.

  GLODION. What is it I feel in me?

  It’s anger or maybe it’s great distress that twists me in its pains?

  The wind suddenly put its foot in the middle of me and that’s what made me leap up to the clouds.

  Oh, this anger, you don’t know how bad it can be, because it’s anger against nothing.

  It swells in me like a bad hurt; it makes a kind of heavy pus that sleeps for a long time deep inside me.

  Then, all of a sudden:

  With one of those swings that you make me take when you throw me against my shores, this anger rips me apart.

  And then, first of all, I become full of huge flowers like the wide open flowers of carrots.

  I swell like abscesses on bad meat.

  I explode, I groan, I weep, I gnash my huge sand teeth.

  I twist and turn and I endure the great death.

  THE SARDINIAN. That’s because the cold despair of the whole universe has rested upon you.

  It’s because he’s unhappy that the god made the world.

  He wanted to get out of himself and each time he thought of something, the forms began to clarify everything he thought.

  Thus, I was conceived in the belly of the sky, and you, sea, you were that side of me that rested against the sky at that place in its flank where it keeps its bile and its bitterness.

  And you became the bile and the bitterness of the world.4 But look again and tell me . . .

  GLODION. What?

  Why should I tell you and what should I tell you . . . ?

  All this bitterness is exactly what I feel, and I would like to scatter it into the whole universe, and for the sky, that other ocean that is above me, to become bitter waves to its very depths
and to go off tossing salt on the beaches of the stars.

  Earth, do you remember the time of your youth, when you ran, water squash, in the great prairie of the night, and how, with my depths, I soaked the wide route?

  In those quarters of the sky where, alone, we could live: me, the sea, them, the mountains, our immense life which goes from one side of life to the other, without stopping, slowly, slowly, slowly.

  And you desired to carry more rapid lives, and you rolled over the blue slopes, and you crossed the quarter of fruits, and you were in the sky like a ball of sugar, like a ripe melon.

  I heard you laughing.

  But the slope threw you into the great region of beasts and there you are all covered with that mildew of blood, and there you are getting nervous over a new animal, and there you are like a girl who’s rolled in the hay with men and who’s looking at her belly.

  THE SARDINIAN. There!

  Calm down, Sea!

  Let that high tongue of water that you raise to the sky come down. Make yourself flat.

  Who knows what life the god has imagined for me?

  Who can know in advance all the forms 5 which are still only air waiting ready in the darkness?

  This course of mine, it was written in the stars. I was delighted with the fruits; I listened to the lowing of the beasts and now, there before me, opening wide, is this region of man, and my course can’t avoid it.

  Because the god has bound into my flesh this curse: the capacity to produce.6

  Make yourself flat, Sea, make yourself smooth and sleep.

  I am going to ask the Mountain.

  Mountain!

  As before, silence. But this time, someone is ready, stands up, and waits. He respects the order of the play. You have to leave time for the aeolian harp players above to understand by the whistle that the sea’s scene is over.

  Besides, that sound of the sea which continues to diminish, and then falls still, coincides with the gestures of Glodion the shepherd. He parts with the Sardinian, takes two steps backwards, and remains there.

  One gargoulette, just one, very slowly plays the song of “O bellos montagnos.” It makes it into a kind of formidable monster, full of waterfalls, ice collapsing, the sound of the north wind, grinding, spitting, and it all ends in silence into which pipes a little tune from the tympon, only the scale notes, the little streamer of music that floats on the lips of the shepherd walking ahead of the sheep.

  THE MOUNTAIN (The man moves forward, salutes, stands facing the Sardinian as if for a contredanse). Earth!

  Are you worried?

  Because someone came to look in at the gate and then, when you turned around to see, you saw only quick movements as they hid.

  And now, in the great afternoon, you sense a presence over there behind the pillars, and everything is turning cloudy around you as in a stream when a big fish dies at the bottom, disturbing the mud.

  And you call out, and you ask . . .

  Earth, I don’t know!

  I don’t know, but I can feel your anxiety moving under my feet.

  I expected it.

  For a long time, I had my pasture of solitude and silence and already I was bound by the weight of all the grasses, the weight of trees, this mud of big, rotten fruits.

  I learned to know the sound of the life of the plants. One day, a shadow came over me, a cold shadow that crossed me slowly.

  It was the shadow of a bird.

  And under it, I was colder than under the shadow of the night.

  It was then that I felt your anxiety moving.

  It was then I understood from the taste of the sky that we had passed the threshold that opens onto the region of men.

  Listen to me.

  I can no longer move and I am too high to see below.

  But I have sent someone to explore it.

  He already left a good while ago; he won’t be long in coming back.

  Without another call, a man stood up, not very far from the spot where I am and where I’m scribbling this down. Césaire let out an “Eh, look!” and I felt Barberousse against me turn to look. Césaire’s girl leans the whole weight of her hand on my knee and stands up. I remain seated; I don’t want to upset my writing board and my papers and, in the movement of the girl’s head, in her gaze, I follow, from below, the one who moves forward into the play. I hear what someone says to him: “You, who are you?” He answers, “You’ll see.” He has entered the stage area; I can see him. He is tall and thin, all shaven. He has a slight limp.

  THE MAN. Here I am. I’m back. I am the River.7

  GLODION–THE SEA(who until then remained motionless, moves forward in greeting). Ah! The one I was waiting for!

  For a long time I’ve been hearing you rolling in the fields and the marshes.

  Finally, here you are with your dead trees, your dead beasts.

  You have crushed a lot of things to get here!

  Ah! Earth! If you believe that one, we’re not done laughing yet.

  He drags himself along beating his head everywhere he goes like a blind snake. He has knocked down hills, he has slashed the great skin of grass. He’s a carrier of dead things.

  He only knows reflections.

  THE SARDINIAN (He raises his hand. There is no more music except the sound of the harps). Don’t say anything bad about reflections!

  Or about death!

  The universe is a globe of reflections.

  GLODION–THE SEA. Yes!

  But this river that’s before you and that comes to tell you: “I’m the one who knows!”

  I’m telling the truth, now: he doesn’t know the worth of reflections, and he takes them and leaves them. He doesn’t carry them.

  THE SARDINIAN. He carries them.

  In a thousand times a thousand years they will find in his mud the reflection of that little willow leaf which is mirrored this day.

  That reflection which is like a seal in wax, like a good or bad thought that leaves its mark.

  THE RIVER. Why try to debate with the Sea?

  Look at the beasts: they come forward, they sniff, they smell this odor of salt; then they turn tail and run off in the other direction.

  You know what I call her?

  The sweaty one.

  There she is with her big breasts, leaping and sweating.

  But me, the beasts come to me, and they drink.

  GLODION–THE SEAThey drink!

  I know.

  I heard the cries of those you forced to drink in the recesses of a high hill. And then, I heard the silence.

  THE RIVER. We have ways that are written from eternity in the script of the stars.

  And we have our work all laid out.

  Do you want the world to shift places because the does and the stags are there in the cul-de-sac of the rocks?

  Yes, they drank, and beyond their thirst.

  But it was decreed that I had to push my head against that rock and make that pocket of earth into a great whirlpool.

  That was done.

  What are a thousand stags in the wheels of the world?

  THE SARDINIAN. Tell me, River.

  Did you encounter man?

  THE RIVER. I encountered what he left.

  Here it is:

  You know that I’m made of sky; you can believe me. In descending from the mountain, I got tangled up in a large forest and for a long time I looked for my proper course, and I slept there, laid flat, under the trees, and I was eaten by the big green flies.

  There, I remained a long time, my muscles building up for nothing. Everyday, my flesh swelled a little more all along the length of my skin, but that was all.

  The trees lay over me; long grasses pushed through me as through a dead snake and I began to smell bad.

  It was a mountain forest and, from one place, it leaned over the steps of the mountain.

  When I learned that, in the fold of the grass, I inflated my head. It became round and glistening, and all my weight, all my strength inflated my head. It beca
me like one of those big drops which are the stars; it weighed down, it tore itself away, and finally it made the leap toward that wide hillocky plain, greenish-gray as an old cauldron, and my whole body followed.

  During the leap, I saw the great herds of beasts running and, there in front, a beast who walked on its two hind feet.

  And I threw out my huge arms from all sides and I ripped out great trees by the fistful, and I saw wolves who climbed into the oaks and chamois who ran in the flat grass with the regular trot of horses, heavy bears who leaped, like bubbles, over the marshes, mares and forests of foals so thick you could only see their backs and heads, and all of that trembling like leaves in the wind.

  And I forced myself to catch up with a wide forest that fled before me. There were branched stags and so many does they seemed like clouds pushed by the wind. At the end of the world there was a high red hill and it barred the route and I hit it with all the strength of my white forehead and my idea.

  It was to this that the Sea referred earlier with her bitter words, typical of those who have green lips and tongues of salt. It’s true, I made the great forest of stags drink, but listen, Sea, and learn, Sea, what the law is, and the good balance:

  They turned toward me, and head to head, we battled.

  Me, with my soft blue head. Them, with their heads of stone and those pointed branches that spread out above them like the branches of oaks.

  And I began to climb over the does and the fawns, softer than the limp new branches of the fig tree and I packed all that under me till I felt the quivering of its blood.