Hill, Page 7

  •

  With raised voices, they bid each other good evening. They walk across the square. Doors slam and, even more loudly than usual, shutters bang. They’ve got to make Gagou believe they’re going to bed.

  A light, evening breeze stirs in the foliage of the oak. A nightingale sings.

  •

  “There he is,” Jaume whispers.

  The moon plainly lights up the two mossy pillars and the sheet-metal shack. Gagou comes out. He’s wearing only his britches. His upper body is naked, and his oversized head tilts toward the moon. In the whitish light he stretches back his drooling lips. A varied kind of clucking issues from his mouth. He’s singing.

  He’s dancing too. The moonlight infuses him with mild agitation. He moves about lightly, as though he were gliding over the tips of the grass blades without even moving his feet. His hips sway. He totters, drunk with the dusk. He comes out from between the pillars.

  In a flash he takes off, as though he were launching himself into the night.

  •

  “Let’s let him get ahead a bit,” says Maurras, “he has a keen ear. This is definitely the way he comes back in the morning. I know he goes past La Thomassine. We won’t lose him.”

  •

  After you leave the clump of trees around the Bastides it’s just an empty plain on both sides of the path that Gagou’s following. It’s as naked as your hand and it rises gently toward the high ridge of Mount Lure.

  You can see him up ahead walking the whole way as though he were dancing.

  “Let’s go.”

  Jaume gets up, and so does Maurras. Arbaud and Gondran are going to keep watch over the women.

  “I would have been much happier to wait for Ulalie,” says Jaume. “She took off again this afternoon, and she’s been coming back late. She’s been out looking for water, too. Gondran, keep an eye on her, and tell her to sleep at your place. That way she won’t be alone.”

  •

  After you’ve gone past La Thomassine there are two roads. Two “roads”—that’s generous. Let’s say that, from there, you can head off in one of two general directions. On one side you drop down gradually until you reach a dry creek bed. You follow it and you come out at Plaines on the road to Reillanne. On the other side it’s nothing but another empty plain, but one that rises slightly. You pass through a cleft in the rock and you get to a big, hollowed-out bowl, directly below Mount Lure. Nothing but desert. In the middle of the valley you find the dusty remains of an uninhabited village. There are five of them like this below Lure. This one they abandoned because of the 1883 cholera. There were a hundred deaths here, ten in one day. There were only about twenty women and children left, who fled the mountain with bundles over their shoulders. At night, through the fields, they slipped into the towns on the plain below. Since then, not a soul. The houses are half fallen down. In the streets filled with nettles the wind rages, chants, bellows, howls its music through the cavities of the shutterless windows and out through the gaping doorways.

  Gagou heads off in the direction of this village.

  “Hey,” says Maurras softly.

  They stop. Gagou’s footsteps ring out clearly ahead of them.

  “He’s going up top.”

  “So it seems.”

  “Do you feel good about going there at night?”

  “Together, yes. Alone, I’d be heading back. But there’s two of us. More than that, we have got to know where he’s getting his water.”

  •

  The moon turns Gagou into an unearthly being. Instinctively, now that he’s out in the wild, he’s taken on the restless, slicked-back look of an animal. His spine is arched, his neck is drawn down into his shoulders. He advances with his head tilted forward. His lanky arms dangle almost to the ground, like paws. He’s doubled in this posture by a monstrous, quadruped shadow, which leaps forward by his side.

  He keeps on changing his song-like cry. At times his gait again takes on the air of a dance, and then his voice scatters farther afield, sharper and more ecstatic.

  •

  When they’re about to pass through the notch in the rocks, Maurras whispers “Hey!” one more time, and stops Jaume.

  “Listen.”

  “Yeah, just a moment ago, I did too.”

  “On the left?”

  “On the left.”

  “That’s weird. That’s over by Imbert’s End. Who could that be?”

  “No idea.”

  They can hear what sound like footsteps on the slope of the hill, as though somebody was walking beside them along a parallel path.

  Some stones roll down the slope. Gagou keeps moving up ahead.

  They go back to walking gingerly, with their ears cocked.

  “It’s somebody who knows the way.”

  “Can’t you see anything, you with your sharp eyes?”

  Maurras can’t see a thing, but he stays put and holds Jaume back by the arm.

  “Jaume, let’s go back. Listen to me. Other than the two of us and Gagou, who could be out at night, walking toward this village, in this wasteland? Who? Unless . . .

  “You know as well as anybody. It’s no fairy tale—since the cholera, things happen up here that it’s better not to stick your nose into. You saw that shepherd from Les Campas when they carried him back down on some fence-posts. You saw him? He didn’t die an easy death. Did you see his eyes? And his neck twisted up like a well-rope.”

  For a moment, Jaume is taken back there, not saying a word. Maurras’s voice lingers, living on inside of Jaume’s head. He did see the dead shepherd, did see the twenty dead sheep, the dead dog, the clouds of flies swarming through the deserted street.

  He bleats out, in a muffled voice:

  “I know, César, but what about the water?”

  •

  He’s spoken the word that needed to be said, for Maurras, and for himself. It’s water—the memory of water—that pushes them on. The night air brushes their cheeks like a refreshing promise. In front of them, the body of Lure looms up, massive: the mother of waters, the mountain that stores water in the dark recesses of her porous body. Somewhere in the distance, the flute-like song of a spring is quavering. From amongst the grasses a big, flat rock shimmers like a watery eye. Moonlight pours down from the top of the heavens and sprays back upwards as a white mist. Gagou’s shadow swims through it like a fish.

  •

  “You didn’t hear anything more?”

  “No. Maybe it was somebody from Villemus on his way home.”

  “We’d better hope so.”

  “It’s not far from there to the Eyries road. Maybe it was somebody from up top coming back by the shortcut. Yesterday was fair day in Manosque.”

  “Once in a while there’s a fancy-ribbon man out on the road.”

  “Once in a while.”

  •

  And right there, across their path, lies the skeleton of the village. It’s nothing more now than a pile of broken bones lashed by the wind. The long, drawn-out current of the air howls through the vacant houses. Fragments of bone gleam beneath the moonlight.

  In the wind’s hollow the village lies motionless. Grasses swell around it like the sea.

  •

  Gagou follows a well-worn path through the nettles. Now he’s fluttering and leaping like a dead leaf, as though the wind were toying with him.

  Maurras and Jaume straddle the fallen beams and stones with care. But they still can’t stop the canteens slung over their shoulders from clattering.

  “This is the worst time to make any noise, laddy,” says Jaume, who’s halted flat on his stomach, on top of a mound of rubble. “I think we’ve found it. Let’s leave all the tins under the brambles. We’ll come back for them in a minute.”

  The houses cast a shadow, shaped like a saw, onto the street. From time to time it seems as if a window is lit up from within, but no, it’s only one that’s open more directly to the moonlight. This same cold light inhabits hearths long since bereft o
f crickets. It sharply defines shadows shaped like hooded men, who keep vigil in rooms with sunken floors, amid the riot of nettles and hawthorns.

  There’s a barn, almost intact, with an arch-topped door, and a bit of straw sticking out. It’s through here that the shepherd of Les Campas disappeared that evening, in a heavy downpour, along with his flock and his dog—the whole lot of them, just as they were hurrying by on this side.

  Gagou takes a single leap and vanishes.

  Jaume lifts his nose, takes a long sniff.

  “I smell water.”

  As they arrive at the top of the climbing street, suddenly they see: It’s a square.

  The facades of the houses are still standing upright. A lopsided balcony supports a broken flagpole and a placard where you can still read “Republican Club.” Grass is growing in between the paving stones. A mulberry tree makes cooing sounds as it’s tousled by the moon’s wan hand.

  In the middle of the square a venerable fountain thrusts out the belly of its basin. Aside from Mount Lure and the trees, this must be the most ancient thing in the whole district. Harness bits have rubbed and worn away its rim. A pillar with bronze spouts rears up above the circular basin. Four marble-cheeked cherubs are blowing with their mouths around the pipes . . . and there’s no water coming out. Even so, the basin is brimming with clear liquid. In its abundance it streams over the paving stones, and its force has undermined them. Huge horsetails have sprung up through the pavement. This pillar, it’s alive, like somebody shivering inside a coat. Spring water oozes from the moss up and down its whole length. There’s nothing dry except the four cherubs’ heads, whose marble masks gaze at the lifeless houses.

  •

  Gagou is there, sprawled over the water. His arms are churning away like a millwheel, and water is gushing up around him. It’s getting all over him—his hair, the down on his chest, his scrawny back. And you can hear it sluicing down the legs of his canvas pants.

  Now he’s drinking.

  With outstretched arms he grabs hold of the basin, this gigantic, overflowing goblet, and presses his mouth against a crack in the rim. Between mouthfuls he moans with pleasure like a nursing infant.

  •

  The two men observe this manic glee. Their own joy is more restrained. It ripens inside their minds like a giant sunflower.

  “We’ll have to clean out the basin,” breathes Jaume.

  “And fix the pipe,” says Maurras.

  “We’ll come with the canteens and take turns,” says Jaume.

  “Take turns, just like in the army,” says Maurras.

  There they are, in the shadows, twin statues in the recess of a shrine. As they breathe words back and forth, the bloom of their joy spreads out wider than the sun’s rays.

  “I’m going for the canteens,” says Jaume.

  •

  “And, all things considered,” says Maurras, drawing his absinthe toward him, “it’s just as well that Jaume didn’t see what I saw.”

  He drinks. Gondran takes the opportunity to drink too; he wouldn’t have wanted to break the thread of the story.

  “There and back—to the fountain and back to the brambles—takes almost a quarter of an hour. By then, the moon was shining full on the square. It was just like daylight. Between where the club used to be and the old bakery, there’s a little laneway, short and straight. The moon had filled it with light. You’d have said it was a bar of pure silver. Jaume had just left, and at the far end of the lane I saw a black shape coming toward me, tall, thin, so thin that at first I thought I was dreaming. Then it got bigger and, just like that, it was right in front of me, ten yards the other side of the fountain. I stayed still for a moment, you know, ’cause I was pounding away pretty hard under my shirt.

  “This skinny thing was looking at Gagou. Little by little, I got to saying to myself: ‘But, César, that’s not Ulalie, is it?’ It sure seemed like it was her, anyways.

  “And go fuck yourself if she doesn’t whistle, and my boy Gagou lifts up his nose. Right then and there, as though it was all set up in advance. He lifts his head, he sees her, he runs toward her. They must be used to it. It was as regular as clockwork.

  “She leans her gun against the wall . . .”

  •

  Maurras goes silent. He looks mistrustfully around him. He’s alone with Gondran for sure, in the kitchen where Janet is sleeping with his eyes wide open. Janet doesn’t matter, but the door to the bedroom is ajar, and you can hear Marguerite beating out a mattress.

  He winks: “Go shut the door.” Gondran comes back and sits down.

  •

  “So, she leans her gun against the wall. She lies down, hauls up her skirt, spreads her legs, and there you have it—my man Gagou’s on top of her.”

  “That!” says Gondran, dumbfounded. He strikes the table with his fist. “That, now . . . no.”

  “It was just the way I’m telling you. I got a good look from where I was. Gagou was lying on top of her. They knew the drill. And this business must have been going on for a while.”

  “That, now,” says Gondran, “that, you know . . .”

  As he watches him wrestle awkwardly with the overwhelming news, Maurras savours Gondran’s astonishment.

  “Between you and me,” Maurras goes on, “Jaume’s daughter—she may be stupid, worn-out, whatever you want to call her, but when you come right down to it, she has the skin of a woman, like any other. To do it with her you’d have to have served in the Foreign Legion. She found somebody who’d have her . . .”

  “I’m not saying that,” grumbles Gondran, “I’m not saying that. But to do it with Gagou . . . Somebody must have diddled that girl. And, so, what did you do?”

  “I watched them kick their legs up in the air for a minute or two, then I thought it would be better to make them leave before Jaume got back, so I fired a shot into the air.

  “I told him I’d fired to make Gagou take off. But between you and me, Médéric, eh, between you and me, for goodness’ sake, it’s not really worth his putting on such airs and graces about her.”

  •

  It was Gondran who made the first trip to the ghost village to fetch water for everyone. He went in broad daylight, with the cart and the mule. He brought back five big earthenware jars full.

  Now Jaume has drawn up a list of names: ARBAUD, GONDRAN, JAUME, MAURRAS, in alphabetical order. He’s nailed it to the trunk of the oak. That way, there’s no argument. When your turn comes up, you go.

  Even so, it’s Gondran who’s ended up going first, because today Arbaud can’t even think about water. His little girl is sick—Marie, the older one.

  For two days she’s been shivering, in spite of the sultry, stagnant air. She must have swallowed a bellyful from the cistern that’s only safe for the animals. It came over her just the other evening, and her cheeks are already hollow. It doesn’t matter how often she runs her tongue over her cracked lips to soften them, the fever keeps hardening them again. There are big dark rings circling her sparkling eyes.

  This morning she’s started to perspire. They’ve had to change the sheets on her bed—she was completely sticky with sweat.

  Babette has to be there next to the bed, to cry over and over: “My little one, my little one, my little one,” as though she’s trying to force blind fate to understand what an injustice it is to make her little one suffer.

  Arbaud has gone to find Jaume, who’s come with his book, a Raspail covered with wrapping paper.

  This book had won its reputation on the strength of Jaume being heard to say: “I bought it the year I got married, after I’d been wanting it for three years.”

  He flips through the pages and runs down the index with his finger:

  “That’s it, you see.”

  He thrusts the page where it’s listed under Arbaud’s nose.

  “That’s it, definitely, you see . . .”

  They read together, spelling out the words. From time to time Jaume lifts his head and stares at the ce
iling, like a person who’s struggling to make sense of something.

  “So, what is it?” asks Arbaud. “Is it serious?”

  “No, you can see, it’s written right here. A doctor would stick you with fifteen francs worth of drugs, and then order you to fast—what more could you possibly want? Now this, this here is the poor people’s doctor, and a tough one too, take my word for it. Let’s see what he says: ‘Tisane of borage . . .’ Do you have any borage?”

  “Yes, yes,” says Babette.

  “. . .‘toast a slice of bread, soak in sweet wine and apply it to the soles of the patient’s feet’. . .that’s not hard to do!. . .‘Scutcheon: a cotton compress sprinkled with eau de vie and impregnated with incense smoke . . . Also apply a scutcheon to the patient.’ Here, I’m marking everything down for you on this piece of paper. If you can’t remember it properly, come back and see me, I have the book.”

  •

  “So you’re sure it’s nothing then?” asks Babette, accompanying Jaume to the doorway. “Are you sure?”

  “Don’t worry, I’m certain of it, it’s all written down right here.”

  He taps the book with the flat of his hand, to vouch for it.

  •

  “We have got,” says Babette coming back in, “to buy one of those books.”

  •

  Notwithstanding the scutcheon and the borage tisanes, Marie is still sick. Her tiny hands look like porcelain. She gazes out from deep within herself.

  Through her skin you can see the fire that’s consuming her, licking at her bones. She’s flat out, thin as a crucifix. She can’t even lift a hand to chase away the flies, and lets them wander over her face. When they come close to one of her eyes, she moves her lids a little.

  Red-eyed, Babette battles alongside her daughter. She’s overturned all the boxes of medicinal plants—the dried herbs folded in newspaper: camomile, mallow, sage, thyme, hyssop, agrimony, aspic, artemisia . . .

  She’s opened all the packets and spread them across the table. Her daughter’s well-being is bound up in these flowers. Water is already bubbling in the saucepan over the fire. All it will take is to throw the right herb in, and tomorrow Marie will feel better. As Babette shuffles through them on the table, the paper packets sound like ripe wheat shaken by the wind.