Hill, Page 3

  It’s the best situated of the four. It guards the road and has a view of the hill. It’s right beside the slope that runs down to the lowlands. From the terrace you can make out the switchbacks all the way down to La Clémente.

  At one time Les Monges belonged to Janet, the oldest resident of the Bastides. Janet has lived here since he was thirty. He moved up after he’d done a stint on every farm down on the plain. Nobody wanted to hire him anymore, because he fought with all the other hands. Three times a week they’d have to send for the gendarmes and break out the sticking plasters. His wife died here; his daughter grew up here. Now he’s in his eighties. He’s straight-limbed, tough as a laurel trunk, and his thin lips barely crease the sculpted boxwood of his face. From his beady, chestnut-coloured eyes his blank stare flits into the sky like a moth. That’s where he divines the weather and knows when trees will come into leaf. That’s where he predicts sickness, sees faces. And that’s where he detects, he of all people—supreme liar and trickster—lying and treachery. He’s never left the Bastides, but you don’t say “Janet’s place” anymore. You say “Gondran’s place.” Gondran is his son-in-law. Janet has had to go along with all of this. You say: “Gondran’s house, Gondran’s fields. The horse, the cart, the hay—they’re all Gondran’s.” Gondran has entirely taken over from Janet. Gondran is broad across the shoulders, tall, rosy-cheeked. The plough runs true in his hands. Once, he tamed an unruly mule with a single blow to its ear.

  Deep down, Janet does hold something against Gondran. He begrudges him mainly because of his daughter. It’s because of her, after all, that Gondran has taken over his place.

  Since then, to his way of thinking, she’s done nothing worthwhile.

  “Back in my day, they knew how to make real bean soup.”

  “The hare is good, but you’ve put ten times too much water in the sauce.”

  He’d be happy to see her beaten.

  “If I were you,” he says to his son-in-law, “I’d tan her hide.”

  “Bloody well right!” Gondran replies, with a laugh.

  Stout Marguerite trots in on her stubby legs and, putting on a pout, raises her eyebrows good-naturedly: “There you go, papa, you’re never satisfied.”

  •

  Today Gondran steps out onto the terrace. In one hand he holds a bottle and two glasses. With the other arm he cradles a clay pitcher full of fresh water that’s trickling all the way down into his pants. He shifts the table with his foot, sets down the jug and the glasses, and then, with great care, the bottle.

  Six o’clock on a summer’s evening. They’re singing over at the wash house.

  With his arms swinging he stretches twice. Spade work has bent his stocky frame. At the end of the second stretch, he farts. It’s his ritual.

  He sits down, drags a glass across the table. He holds the bottle up against the daylight. It’s half full of greenish liquor, and at the bottom there’s a mat of herbs, leaves, and tiny brown seeds. This is an absinthe he makes at home with artemisia from the hills, aniseed that he orders from the postman, and his own aged eau de vie.

  Drop by drop he adds the water. He’s gripped the jug by the neck in his hefty, dirt-caked hand and he holds it effortlessly, tilted above his glass.

  Two puffs on his pipe, then the still air carries him a hint of a sound.

  He leans over, and stares at the bend in the road at Les Ponches, down there among the hawthorns. That’s where he’ll be able to see it the best.

  Now he’s spotted it.

  “Gritte, he’s here!” he shouts toward the kitchen.

  It’s a cabriolet that’s climbing. Swaying in the ruts like a stout little cargo boat. The nag is ringing its bell.

  Maurras passes by, dragging some bundles of olive branches.

  “César, come over and have a glass.”

  “Pour me one. I’m going to feed the goats. I’ll be right back.”

  •

  By now the horse’s bell is ringing just behind the embankment. At last the carriage appears. It slides into the little square, like a snail. The horse knows how to take care of itself—it goes on its own to the watering trough. The man makes his way up to Gondran’s.

  As he steps on to the terrace, he says in astonishment, “Hey, what’s that you’re drinking?” Then, right away, “Come on, let me have a little.”

  There is an empty glass sitting there waiting for him, after all. Before he arrived, Gondran had winked to César, “Wait and see how he knocks it back.”

  It’s the doctor. Reddish hair and blue eyes. His left eyebrow, exaggeratedly long and pointed, sticks out of his forehead like a little horn. His broad, hairy hands are covered with freckles.

  “Here’s to your health.”

  He drinks, wipes his wickerwork moustache, and says, “Well, then, what seems to be the matter?”

  Gondran pushes away his glass and coughs. Once. He coughs again. He draws his glass back, leans on his elbows, and says, at long last, “It’s my father-in-law. He came down with it the other night when we were watering the meadow. I’d sent him to the far end to shout out when the water got there. I was keeping an eye on the sluice. I knew he’d gone back to the house for a few nips—I could see him going back and forth in the moonlight. But then, for a long time he didn’t move.

  “I shouted: ‘Janet! Hey, Janet!’ Nothing. No answer. At first I didn’t think much about it. I know him. He’ll lie down in the grass, and right until the water tickles his nose he won’t wake up. It’s his way. I’ve told him a hundred times: ‘One of these days you’ll drown.’ Which, now you can see, did him about as much good as . . .

  “So, no answer. I was thinking: ‘Whatever, it’s incredible the water isn’t there yet.’ But with all those bloody mole-holes you never know. So I busted open the main channel with my spade.

  “The water rushed out. It was making the grass on the banks hiss like the wind. A minute later I called out again. Nothing. Now this was beginning to get rather peculiar. So I go down and look around. I didn’t have a lantern. To tell you the truth—I was scared. What if I found him dead? At his age.

  “He was stretched out on the ground, stiff. The water was up to an inch from his mouth. To get him out of there wasn’t easy, believe me. I was buried up to my knees in mud.

  “We put him into his bed. And afterward he ate, he drank, he chewed his wad of tobacco, he talked, he could move his fingers and the lower parts of his arms. But the rest of him is as dead as a tree trunk.

  “So, go take a peek at him.”

  “That’s why I’ve come.”

  The doctor savors the rest of his drink in little sips, smoothes out the horn of his eyebrow, then goes into the kitchen, where Marguerite’s tuneless voice immediately kicks up a fuss.

  •

  “Another shot, César?”

  “Another shot.”

  The doctor comes out.

  “So?”

  “He’s old. What age exactly?”

  “In his eighties.”

  “When you’re that far along, there isn’t really any more medicine you can take. Purge him. Give him whatever he wants. I don’t think he has much time left. He’d had a bit to drink, eh?”

  Gondran smiles. He glances at César, then at the doctor.

  “A bit? Papa Janet? Maybe he wasn’t a champion drinker, but he did knock back his six litres every day. I’m only talking about the wine, eh, I’m not counting the eau de vie—that’s something else, or the bubbly, or the rosé, or the cherries in brandy—the night he got sick he’d sucked back half a jarful.”

  “All this comes out in the wash, in the end. I don’t believe he has much time left. But with a carcass like his, anything’s possible. Do what I told you. However, in my opinion, it’s like putting a bandage on a wooden leg. If he gets any worse, come and get me if you want, but it is a long way. It took me three hours to get up here.”

  •

  Night is already pouring into the valley. It washes over the haunch of the hil
l. The olive groves raise their song, under the shadow.

  Gondran accompanies the doctor to his cabriolet and holds the horse by its bit.

  “See you, Doctor.”

  “See you. Don’t forget to purge him. He may have a bit of delirium. With alcoholics you always have to be ready for it. Don’t let it scare you.”

  With the first squeak of the wheels he changes his mind:

  “You know what—there’s no point getting me to come back. It’s going to run its natural course. There’s nothing to be done about it.

  “You don’t know if you can take a carriage through the Garidelles shortcut, do you?”

  •

  “Sometimes they hang on longer than you could possibly believe,” says César. “Look at Papa Burle. It got the better of him last summer, but he lasted all winter and another summer, and oh my goodness, did he ever stink in the heat. We had to change him three times a day. He had worms right up his crack.”

  •

  To begin with, they laid him down in his own bedroom, but he called out a hundred times a day for his daughter, Marguerite, with a pleading voice like a little girl hailing her goats.

  First to uncover his feet, then to lift up his head, then he’s hungry, then he’s thirsty. Then he wants his plug, and Marguerite slices the tobacco with her sewing scissors.

  There are three steps leading up to his bedroom, and Marguerite’s feet are swollen from all the to-ing and fro-ing.

  “What if we set his bed up in the kitchen? It would be a lot better, and I wouldn’t get so worn out.”

  Finally they set it up next to the fireplace. If he leans over the edge, he can catch a glimpse of his daughter getting supper ready over the fire pit, where a spiteful-looking eye glows from the embers.

  And he talks.

  Nonstop, like a fountain, like an underground stream springing out from the very core of a mountain.

  “. . . the Mane fair was the best by far for the whores from the whole district. There was a guy named Lance who got us all betting on numbered balls. If you didn’t choose the right one, you’d end up having to do it in the hayloft.

  “. . . at the first inn on the right I always used to eat onion soup. You know, like clockwork. I’d arrive at Volx at dawn. I’d hammer on the door with my brake rod. The lady of the house would open the window. ‘Is it you, Janet?’ She knew my knock. She’d come down in her chemise to let me in, I’d give her a little squeeze on the ass, and the rest would take care of itself. . . .

  “. . . he was in there, huddled up in the straw against the grain bin, with his back arched like a cat. I knew he had his crook with him. ‘Is it you, you old bugger?’ I asked him. ‘It’s me,’ he said, ‘and what the hell, is it against the law now to take a nap in your own house?’ So I grabbed the pitchfork. ‘I’ll show you, you’ll see . . .’ ”

  He laughs, softly, and then his steely eye turns toward the cauldrons: “Gritte, my bean soup, is it for tomorrow, or for today?”

  •

  This evening Marguerite hasn’t had time to cook. Gondran is eating a raw onion for supper. He’s sliced it down the middle. One by one he peels the concentric layers, dips them in the salt cellar, and downs them.

  It’s a sickly kind of evening. The wind has picked up from the Rhône. A storm must be blocking the Mondragon gorge.

  All day long the river of wind has been sweeping through the Drôme basin. When it reached as high as the chestnut groves, it blew through the big branches to beat the devil. It swelled out little by little till it flooded over the mountains. And then, having crossed that brink, it roared down right on top of us, wreathed with bunches of leaves.

  Now it’s whistling around the Bastides, through the fluted chambers hollowed out in the rock by primordial torrents.

  The woods are dancing. Shreds of storm flit by. A sharp bolt rumbles and flashes. The air bears scents of sulphur, gravel, and ice. A liquid light tints the windowpane, where an ivy that’s come away from the wall is banging its arm, laden with leaves.

  The attic door jumps on its hinges. You’d think somebody was stomping out an unwanted litter of kittens up there. Night is thickening. The wind is starting to yowl. The sky resounds like corrugated metal in a hailstorm.

  A long moan travels the length of the house. It can’t be the skylight—it’s fastened down. The window? It’s rattling, but it’s not moaning. And the bolt is new.

  So what can it be?

  Gondran eats. The onion crunches between his teeth. Which prevents him from really hearing the moaning that’s intriguing him. So he stops chewing.

  The moaning is coming to life. It’s bearing its own piercing body from the flesh of the shivering house.

  •

  Janet is stretched out under the sheets, stiff and straight. His slender body lifts the gray blanket into a furrow-mound. Bird’s breath flutters across his chest. You might even say that it looks like a seed wanting to break through its casing and unfurl its leaves into the sunlight. This is what Gondran imagines as he munches his onion.

  Janet has a forbidding air this evening: skin blue as granite, hardened nose bones, nostrils translucent like flints. Out of the shadow, his one open eye glints with the glimmer of stone, like one of those outcrops hidden deep in the ground, which a big, polished ploughshare, one that usually runs true, will buckle up against and flip over.

  “What if this lasts all summer and all winter, like it did with Papa Burle?”

  You’d think Janet was moving his fingers. Now what’s he up to?

  With difficulty, he’s uncovered his hands. He’s spread them out on the sheet. He looks at them with his one open eye, which, gradually, widens in a stupor. His right hand moves slowly toward his left hand.

  It’s the movement of a growing branch, the movement of a plant.

  His right hand seizes his left, squeezes it, stretches it out. It looks as if it’s trying to pull off a glove or some kind of binding. Next, slowly, ponderously, as though inflated with appalling force, but still having to strain to lift an enormous weight, the hand advances toward the edge of the bed and makes a throwing motion. And then it begins again, always the same, like a machine.

  Gondran moves nearer. From here, closer up, he can see the veins quivering in Janet’s hand. They’re like the ropes they use to tie up baby goats.

  “Papa Janet, what are you doing?”

  Janet is as stiff as a wooden saint. He draws his marble pupil into the corner of his eye.

  “The snakes,” he says. “The snakes.”

  “What snakes?”

  “The snakes, I’m telling you. The ones in my fingers. I have snakes in my fingers. I can feel their scales scraping inside.”

  He chuckles, like a pine nut crackles when you crush it.

  “I’m on the lookout for them. When a head sticks out from under one of my nails I grab it, I yank on it, the whole stinking vermin comes out, and then I toss it on the ground. Meanwhile, another one comes up through my finger. I pull it out and I toss it down too. It’s a tiresome job, but when my hands are clear of them I won’t feel so rotten anymore.”

  Gondran, flabbergasted, looks at Janet, then at the bedside rug. Nothing there—just red and blue flowers.

  “You’re raving,” he says.

  “I’m raving? Look . . .”

  The action begins again, slow, methodical. Janet wants to prove it. His clenched fist stretches out from the side of the bed, opens up . . . His pupil gleams victoriously from the corner of his eye.

  Gondran has seen nothing. And now he’s a bit more sure of himself.

  “You’re raving, I tell you. You’re sick in the head. There aren’t any snakes in your hands. There aren’t any there on the ground. If there were any snakes, I’d see them. I’d see them,” he repeats, scraping the thick soles of his shoes across the bare tiles.

  The shutter leaps; the ivy beats against the windowpane. The moaning descends from the attic, plunges into the thick air of the room below, cleaves through the
odor of onions, cold ashes, and sweat, and vanishes under the vibrating door.

  “I’m ‘raving.’ And who do you think you are, to say I’m ‘raving’?”

  Janet is talking to the shadows, to no one in particular, and couldn’t care less about Gondran, who’s watching him intently and drinking up his weird words.

  “So you think you see everything, do you, with your pathetic eyes? Can you see the wind too, you with your tremendous powers?

  “When you come right down to it, you’re incapable of looking at a tree and seeing anything but a tree.

  “People like you believe trees are dropped straight into the ground, with their leaves and all, and that’s the end of it, right there. Oh boy, if only it were so, it would be so easy.

  “You don’t see anything there, under the chair?

  “Nothing but air?

  “Do you really believe it’s empty, the air?

  “Come on now, you really believe the air’s completely empty?

  “Well then, look—there’s a house over there, a tree, and a hill, and you really think everything around them is just empty? You believe the house is a house and nothing more? The hill, just a hill and nothing more than that?

  “I didn’t know you were such a useless bugger.

  “There, under the chair, just a second ago, I tossed three of them. One was a teeny green one, a grass snake. He looked like he had three braided oat stalks on his back. I have no idea why, but when he flipped out of my finger, he called out ‘Hey, Auguste!’ My name isn’t Auguste. My name’s Janet.

  “There was another one, thick, and short, the kind we call an ass’s prick, and another one that was whistling music that sounded like it was coming from a mouth organ. That one was a female. The skin on her belly was swollen. She’s going to have babies. She had a hard time, that one, squeezing out of my finger.

  “Look, look quick now, there’s one climbing up the side of the cauldron to get at the milk. Big bubbles of milk are sliding down its gullet.

  “You don’t see it?

  “So then, do you still think the air’s empty?