by C. F. Ramuz
CHAPTER II
ON THIS SUNDAY IN MARCH, the carillon having rung around nine o’clock, the path that climbs from the bottom filled with people, for it was the season where nearly the entire village had moved down there.
They came from warmth, they headed for the cold, they found snow there.
There was still a rather thick layer of it, especially on this steep face of the mountain; it had barely melted around the tree trunks; in such a way that the trail, just wide enough for passage, was bordered by two little white walls.
Where people walked, ascending in a long line, men with their hands in their pockets, girls holding their shawls tight; and in the distance, through the slope, the sound of laughter and voices could be heard. Then suddenly, the slope breaks, and the entire village appears at once, raising its tall church in the air, at the bottom of which are houses tightly pressed together.
You’re in the village the moment you see it, so to speak; first comes the mill with its very old wheel, at a halt, because of Sabbath, then comes the wheat shed and barns; finally the road veers a little, to arrive between two rows of small gardens with gray gates, and in the back, houses, nearly all of them shut on that day. Yet, at one of them, a door occasionally opened, and someone came out in their Sunday clothes, mixing together with those on the road.
And the closer you got, the louder the carillon grew, composed of six bells, all six in movement, swinging and spinning through the air with their heavy tempo, and at times delayed, or else hurried, colliding and dividing.
Little by little, it stopped; other ringing followed, the biggest of the bells rang on the fly; the sound of voices was drowned out, as well as the crackle of ice fragments under large heavy shoes; there were still more people, late, who hurried; following which, the bells rang for the start of mass. And in the village and the fields, everything was calm and deserted as far as the eye could see.
Alone, near the cemetery, in front of an old house, five or six men had remained chatting on a heap of beams. It was warm there, the sun having just come out from behind sluggish clouds; it gathered the courage to heat up the dark wood and the wall. They had lit their pipes, belonging to those who still come up for mass, but no longer attend to it, except on days of great celebration; and thus do without the Good Lord, only remembering him at the hour of death.
They chatted, then remained a long time without saying anything. At times an idea crosses your mind and you take the pipe out of your mouth to make it known; following which, you take up the pipe again, you wait for another to come, as they did, with the organ’s stormy sound and the voices of cantors in the great silence. And they looked ahead of themselves, through the meadows that descended in soft beautiful folds, the small bare trees that seemed to be made of rusted iron, while a cloud hung over Le Bourni like a broken wing.
But the great wind of the organ picked up strongly once more, and, as if the clouds had obeyed it, at once the sun was covered again; the men buttoned up their jackets, or they beat their feet on the hardened earth; the organ died down once more: suddenly the hour of the Elevation rang; they took off their hats, all together they went to the church.
At the bottom of the big gray wall is a very small door, pierced and painted blue; there’s nothing on it, no windows or ornaments, nothing but the door; it was closed, and right against it, ears pressed, two leaning men listened. Opposite was the cemetery, large and square between its low walls of rough stone, with its black metal gate that bears a skull and crossbones, and no trees inside, but the colored crosses with their tops shaped like triangles, and in the back another tall cross made of stone. And the snow covered everything, except that it was now slightly slumped around the edges of tombs, which appeared in single file, like little white beds. It made you think: “At least they’re warm under there.”
The organ’s rumble now shook the walls, then the cantors’ voices started again, then came silence once more; then, the door having opened, the crowd began to emerge. And the others, having approached, were leaning against the cemetery wall, and watched. They emerged silently; the crowd of people, at first pressed together in the narrow opening, went on to scatter outside with difficulty: very old women weighed down by age, knotted with large bones under the dresses that had become too big for them, and the old men too wore clothes too big, clothes that had been made for their wedding day, the girls pretty in their Sunday dress and lowering their heads beneath their hats, the boys in black, the men, the women—and a few of these women holding their arms out, making the sign of the cross in the direction of the dead. Among them emerged Christine; she had her hymnbook, which she held flat against her apron, hands crossed over it; she had a plaid handkerchief around her neck, with a big bow underneath her chin, like a tie. She was alone; she walked quickly. Scarcely had she gone around the church corner than Jean-Luc emerged too.
—Say! said someone, there’s Jean-Luc.
—Of course, said another, he’s come back up.
It was true, he had just come back up, returned to his household, after spending all winter at the bottom; he said hello to those who were there; upon which, he halted as if to speak to them, but did not speak to them, and descended toward the square. It was swarming with people, as it’s tradition to come there after mass to chat; the rest of the time is consumed with work, there’s no time to keep in touch.
On one side are the priory and the inn, on the other, the shop that’s just reopened; in the middle, a tall linden tree is planted, with a stone bench around its scaly trunk, a tree that gives the summer a beautiful round shadow, but this season looks dead. Out of habit, people stood under it, they could barely move, all of them talking, arguing, summoning one another; Jean-Luc remained there, without saying anything, his hands in his pockets.
For a first person had seen him, had come to him and said: “So, you’re back?” He had said: “Yes, here I am!” And a second and a third, coming too, had said to him: “So, you’re back?”; he had answered: “Yes.” Then they had left him alone, because they thought: “Things aren’t going well with Christine, he’s not in a good mood.”
But now the municipal secretary stood up on the linden tree’s bench with the Commune’s paperwork, silence filled the air, a large circle was formed, he began to read: “The rights holders to Biolleyres’s irrigation canal are convoked into session … Office of Legal Proceedings and Bankruptcy … Bankrupt … Creditors …” Jean-Luc thought: “Why have I come back up?”
And while names followed, along with phrases and still more phrases, he felt sadness gain within him, and an overwhelming emptiness: he asked himself: “Where must I go? Must I still go home while she’s there, who sneers and laughs when she sees me?” For he had not come back up on his own, she’d gone to fetch him.
At that moment someone cried out to him again: “Hey Jean-Luc!” He looked up, recognized his cousin Théodule, who shook his hand, then continued on with the others; he remained, asked himself: “What should I do?” Yet, little by little, the square emptied, soon the bells would announce noon, and people, one after another, came out of the shop with bags and parcels; he let himself go with the movement he left too, took the alley. Layers of snow, which had slid off the roofs, cut through it in certain places, all across it, mounds of snow hardened into ice; you had to go over them or else skirt them altogether by sticking close to the walls; the sky had lowered with the weight of clouds completely bound and stitched up, a child cried, chimney smoke hung in the muggy air, slackened, instead of rising up. He continued.
He halted, turned back, halted again; then took a right, went up a bit of the slope, saw the pond, his house—isolated, and turned to the north. He thought:
“It’s at the world’s end, why did father build here? They do say he was feral …”
All dressed in white on its thick layer of ice, now you could only distinguish the pond by its flat surface, whereas all around it the land went uphill and downhill, and in the back the great mountain zones of meadows and
woods were hidden under fog; the house appeared there, the angle at the bottom of its walls as if cushioned and softened by snow; wedged into the slope from the back, the cellar door opening around the front to nearly scrape the ground, built of wood that was already blackened on a bedrock of stone, the uncovered roof at the top revealing large tiles of slate. And across the façade, to the side, the stairs went up, ending with a stoop, from which you entered the kitchen; from the kitchen you went on to the bedroom. And above, beneath the roof pitch, there was a second room, but it was only accessible through a ladder and a trap drilled through the floor; no one lived there, it was crammed with old things.
And yet that was enough, which is what he thought, but happiness must also reside there. When you think you will find it at home, you never go fast enough; quite the opposite, the closer he got, the more slowly he went. From afar, he already heard voices, the kitchen door having been left ajar; he felt the desire to turn back, but what was the point? He went up the stairs. He encountered Ambroisine, a friend of Christine’s who had come to visit.
He was forced to speak a bit, he could hardly find the words, and Christine studied him, while Félicie, one of her sisters, sat by the fireplace. She was simple-minded, and it was impossible to guess her age, for she had a child’s laugh and an old woman’s wrinkles, with a wax figure and a round and hard goiter that hung around her neck, in a sort of bag of skin, like a cowbell. She had started to sing, and nodded her head while singing.
Upon which noon rang, they ate; Jean-Luc did not speak. But from time to time he looked over at his wife, and the little one, whom she held, and he asked himself: “Why do I allow it?”
He quickly finished eating: he sat near the window. At the edge of the pond, on the steep bank, children were playing, sliding and falling on top of each other, screaming and laughing; it’s the age of happiness; there were three little girls in full skirts who were holding hands, halted near there, not daring to come any closer; then, on the embankment, a boy passed with a girl, going off toward Andogne, they disappeared around the bend. There was nothing else, over there, only the fog still descending, torn off by the treetops. Jean-Luc lit his pipe; once finished, he went to lie down on his bed.
He had closed the door, Christine and Ambroisine could be heard chatting, telling each other stories and repeatedly bursting into laughter; he was lying on his back, there were the dark beams of the ceiling, a low ceiling, with wooden knots and veins he let his eye travel along, and so his eye arrived at the other side of the room and the alignment of little windows, where a corner of the white meadow could be seen. Following which, his eye returned to the four or five pieces of furniture, old, his parents’, which had always been there; the table covered by a white cotton rug Christine had crocheted, the two chairs, the bench, the large gray-stone frying pan, the cradle (but this was new); and the bed where he lay, and had been born, where he would probably die, a two-story bed, with a red-checkered desk he had pulled aside to lie down; then, hanging at the bedside table, the great red and blue crucifix, and a tin stoup, with a twig of juniper wood.
Chatting could still be heard from the kitchen; he vaguely looked at these things. Finally weariness came to him, he fell asleep. He woke up around four, the house was empty. He sat by the abandoned fire, which he lit back up. He warmed his feet; he packed his pipe back up.
The wind had risen, a great mountain wind that seems to come with two hands, knocking over the people on paths. As it became more and more powerful, the entire house began to crack; the door shook. And a great darkness descended from the middle of the sky, but below the horizon, through a tear in the sky, came a false light, white, which glistened on the snow, blackening the clouds that hung against the mountain, and were torn off one after another.
And Jean-Luc blew out short puffs of smoke, asked himself once more: “Why did I come back up?”
For she had come down to fetch him on two different occasions: vainly; only on the third did he follow her. And did it make any sense? Pondering this, he went back over it all: that sunny day, that afternoon; he had been renovating a path toward Anzé, working there, lifting his pickax, when she’d suddenly called him from behind a bush where she hid. He had not moved, and she, once more: “Jean-Luc!” She’d come, he had said to her: “If you’re here because of me, you can be on your way!” She’d said: “It’s not because of you, it’s because of the little one, without whom I’ll die of boredom.” He had responded: “Ah! It’s not because of me!” And he had been shocked, had felt his blood stir, had said: “Well then, I’ll come up.”
With nighttime approaching, she and he had gone to his mother’s house; she had cried to her son: “If you go, you’re dead to me.”
However, together, they had gone up.
They had followed the path up to the roses that pierce through the snow, had found the key under the door, seen the fireplace; that was three days ago, and he still didn’t understand it.
He shrugged. Here was Christine now, on her way back. Through the little windowpanes, he could see her come, walking, all bent with the child tight against her and her skirts flying all about; once at the stairs, she was forced to hold on to the railing. Then was as if thrown into the kitchen, amid a swirl of air that abruptly put out the flame in the fireplace, and everything disappeared in smoke. She put the child down at one end of the bench, she undid the scarf tied firmly beneath her chin.
—It’s blowing hard out there! she said. Poor Ambroisine will have a hard time going down.
And then:
—You’re still sulking!
Next, touching her head:
—Yours is very hard, you know!
He remained despondent and closed off, the evening came, they ate again, the night fully arrived; when it was time to go to bed, she said to him: “Are you coming?” He said: “You go ahead!” He waited a while. Then, he pushed the door, he made sure Christine was asleep, and only then did he slide into bed. He did everything slowly, to ensure she wouldn’t wake; he lay down next to her, but could not fall asleep.
The candle burned on the table with its little pointed flame, slightly smoky at the tip. And he saw her there so near, whom he had so loved; her loose braids hung on the pillow; from which came out her little ear and, pulled back, her forehead was smooth and glowing; ah! he would have liked to plant a kiss on it, but he contained himself; and then, because in dreaming she had taken out her bare arm, he couldn’t stop himself, he stretched out his hand, but almost at once pulled it back, as if burned by that touch; he began to shiver, he blew out the candle.
Are you so weak?—that’s what he asked himself; and he searched for sleep, but was long in finding it; the night’s hours, counted by the church tower and its big voice, passed one by one, through the wind that kept rising then falling in waves on the roof, and so its sound covered everything; then there was an interval of silence, the cracks of the ceiling beams sounded.
The following days, having harnessed the sled to his cow Foumette (which means “color of smoke”), he took care of spreading the manure. Because Foumette was in calf, she only barely fit into the shaft. He pushed her back, he fixed her in place with the tight ropes; upon which, he cried: “Giddy up!” and they left, he and his beast.
There was still fog, but it stopped right at the edge of the flat land around the village, and you entered it like you enter a door that shuts the moment it’s opened. And Foumette, neck outstretched, pulled through the path of melting mud; Jean-Luc walking by the cow’s side at a slow pace, leaning forward, the rope of his whip placed around her neck, the handle that beat against his pants. He had put on a worn felt hat with lowered edges, his jacket had holes through the elbows, his gray shirt showed his neck with the prominent bulge.
In one place, a little above the pond, he left the path and started up the slope sideways. There, the layer of snow was still thick. Foumette’s short legs sank in, while the sled began to tilt under the broad weight, and, in the great silence, the wooden steel-tipp
ed ice skates whistled. Jean-Luc cried: “Giddy up, Foumette!” and cracked his whip.
And, at times, during a sunny spell, lower toward the village, or higher up toward the slopes, other men who worked like him appeared with their little carts, then everything was covered up once more and disappeared.
And so Jean-Luc, digging his pitchfork into the load, spread it in even piles on the surface of the piece of the meadow he owned, a very small piece as they usually are in the region, and still split everywhere, due to too much sharing of the land; he made his piles. Then, his sled emptied, he headed back.
But often, he rested a moment, standing next to Foumette, and at the bottom he looked at his house, now exposed and all diminished in the nook; beneath the window some pink washing dried, the door was shut, the chimney smoked; once again he thought: “I’ve come back up!” Once again he asked himself why.
To which he answered: “Because of the property, which still has to be taken care of regardless.” But he felt that he was lying to himself. “Because of the little one.” Yet he thought: “It would be better for him not to have a mother at all than to have this one.” “No,” he went on, “it’s because of what she said, I felt anger.” There was pride in him. And so, going deeper, to where one hardly dares to look: “Could it be that I need her?” But he stiffened immediately: “Never!” he said. “I came back, what’s done is done and I’ll work for her and she for me, and we’ll live together, but as for forgiving her …” He repeated: “Never!”
He went on looking at the house where he had been happy, for under that little roof two hearts had fully given themselves, and the door, at night, shuts on the day’s contentment for the nighttime kiss, and you are broken with weariness, but you think to yourself: “I do have a little wife, that’s the poor man’s pleasure, and she’s rather attached to me.”
He shook his head, and went back the way he came, now sitting on the sled and making his way little by little. He didn’t stop working until nighttime, looking to forget through weariness, the way others do through wine. Raising his hat, he scratched the back of his neck; and back home, kept quiet and smoked, spitting on the hot ash where the dark embers sat whistling. Outwardly his life had remained the same, with Félicie who came and sat in the same place the entire day, nodding her head and singing her songs; and old Simon, Christine’s father, who sometimes came; all contorted and paralyzed, leaning on his large cane like a tree on its stake, wearing a blue frock coat with tails and copper buttons from bygone days; and, while he traveled from his house to his son-in-law’s, the sundial’s gnomon nearly had the time to move from one digit to another.