by C. F. Ramuz
At once he straightened himself; he looked up toward the Christ and his arms were wide open.
—My God! what’s the matter with him? said Marie.
And the girl with the mule was also there watching, with the worker, with some neighbors: his arms wide open, his body thrown back; then, as if under a weight that slowly reappeared, he fell forward once more; he pleaded again, fell back again; and the Christ hung from the wood, his hands, his feet pierced by nails, with his thin hollow body, a wound at his side, his crown of thorns; and Jean-Luc was screaming: “Let me go!” Then he took the bottom of the cross in his arms as if to beg for mercy, but it was most likely refused to him, for he continued aloud: “Must I? Is it possible?” And a passing woman heard him.
He prayed some more, he prayed; then at once he rose and returned with great strides, nodding his head; he was saying: “I must! I must!”
CHAPTER XII
NOON HAD JUST SOUNDED, Jean-Luc took some matches, two or three pieces of thick wood, a bit of rope; hid all of it in his shirt, near his leather belt; came out, locked the door, and went off in the direction of Tové.
It was the tenth of September; the sky remained clear, despite a few clouds resembling those in the morning, and a fine autumn mist hung somewhere in the heights of the sky, but the drought had caused a few trees to yellow, and on the bank slopes the grass was dry and brittle. He walked quickly, and, having left the village, went straight down to the fields below the church. Someone who worked in those parts cried to him: “Where are you going, Jean-Luc?” He didn’t turn around, on the contrary he hastened his walk, the other man thought: “His madness has got a hold of him.”
He was soon in the woods. A little ways down there’s a field that cuts through it; this is the place they call Tové. As he approached it, Jean-Luc slowed his pace, and he walked with precaution among the dead branches; you couldn’t hear a thing, not a crack; he went from tree to tree, grabbing on to the trunks, hiding behind them, and arrived to the field in this manner.
Christine was there. Of the second crop, she only had two squares left to dry, which she had scythed the previous night and the night before that; gray among the short lawn, she flipped them over, handling the rake, thrusting it forward, her hands slipped along the handle, and she lifted her arms in the daylight. The sun, already a little lower in the sky, illuminated her along with that part of the field, while the shadows of the woods fell at the other end; that’s where she had put the child down, having formed a little bed of dry grass for him, and placed a rolled up cloth under his head and a handkerchief over his face, because of the flies and the grasshoppers. The little one slept, he didn’t stir; as for her, she hurried, alone as she was.
Jean-Luc didn’t move either. From his hiding place, you could glimpse the back of the valley, as if veiled in muslin, pierced by the tips of rocks here and there; and then the slope came, rising toward him, and covered in fields and in woods—there was no one around, except for over there on the path, very far, from time to time, a man passing by; then a girl who sat on a mule that had a big stomach and skinny legs; she too disappeared.
Meanwhile, Christine, who was done flipping over the second square, went to the first one, saw it was dry, went to get a floor cloth, which she brought over and stretched out, piling the dry grass on top of it, then folded up the four corners and tied them together; it formed something like a great ball, which she took with her, bowing under it; beneath her camisole, you could see her strong waist extending and flexing.
She made a second, a third trip, coming back up the field, all red and sweating; from time to time, she went to see what the child was doing, and lifted the handkerchief, but he slept soundly; she returned straightaway, going off with a load again; and so, by the sixth time, the first square was brought in.
Following which, she went to see if the second square had sufficiently dried; she picked up a handful of hay that she crumpled between her fingers; undoubtedly it hadn’t fully dried, and she would have to wait, for once again she went to the child, took him in her arms and returned to the hayloft.
The sun was strong, she still had one or two hours left to work; it’s best to wait in the shade—and the wind had picked up, so that she returned; and Jean-Luc, watching her, saw her turn the corner of the hayloft. It was a very small hayloft, old, leaning to one side, made of blackened beams, with a large overhanging roof; it had in fact been repaired in the spring, and the remaining beams and planks were nearby. It was already nearly full, at least in the back, as was made visible by the wisps and clumps of hay that jutted out through the cracks; the largest pile was in the back, the second crop’s smallest heap was up front; and Jean-Luc knew this; yet he remained where he was for some time.
Nothing stirred anymore except for the hot air trembling over the field. It was completely deserted; little birds were letting themselves fall from the tops of trees into the grass (they barely opened their wings), and pricked where they fell with their beaks, sometimes turning their heads to the side: yellow butterflies fluttered languidly on the short lawn, seeking a flower they could no longer find, or took shelter in the swath; and the shadows of the woods had expanded little by little, expanding more and more toward the second square, which still needed to dry.
All of a sudden Jean-Luc rose.
He swiftly crossed the field to the back of the hayloft; he let himself fall to a crouch.
He listened: everything kept quiet.
Nothing but the susurrus of grasshoppers in the hay; he heard his watch tick too; he placed his hand over it as if to muffle the sound.
A crow cried over the woods—he thrust himself forward, he began to crawl to the door, and, gluing his face to the beams, watched through a little hole.
Christine was right near him, outstretched in the hay: she had nodded off; the child, who had slid from her arms, slept sideways on her skirts. Her head was slightly drooping and her upper body was leaning to one side, she napped quietly, with one hand under the nape of her neck, and dreams behind her forehead. Pretty to behold in this way, with her thin blue eyelids, lowered and taut over her big beautiful eyes, and the movement under her camisole, while her other hand hung limp by her strong leg, which was exposed up to the calf under the big blue cotton stocking.
Jean-Luc took the rope out of his pocket.
The door of the hayloft was of wood, with an iron ring; there was another ring on the mount, for a chain to slide through.
In one swift movement, Jean-Luc rushed forward, pushed the door, slid the rope through the ring, tied a first knot, a second, and she, woken with a jolt, did not even have the time to cry out: “Who’s there?” before Jean-Luc had already moved back, taken the matches out of his pocket. And she, thinking it was a joke:
—Let me get up first! This is no way to approach a sleeping woman.
He looked to see whether the hayloft was down-wind, yes, the wind came from the right direction; he had calmly started to arrange the wood. All of a sudden, a great scream sounded, Christine had seen him. She cried: “Jean-Luc! Jean-Luc!” And threw herself against the door, which she shook with both hands, having grabbed it by the crosstie; but her fingers kept sliding off, and the rope was sturdy; at that moment she no longer had the heart to go on, she said:
—Jean-Luc, what are you doing?
He didn’t answer. He struck a match, the strong wind extinguished it; he struck a second one, and, while the sulfur took fire, he kneeled upright, and shielded the match with both hands.
She understood.
—Jesus! Jesus! she cried, is this even possible?
And then:
—Jean-Luc, forgive me, I was wrong, I know that now, I won’t do it again. My big friend, my man, you’ll come home, we’ll kiss …
She went on, thinking of Augustin:
—Do what you will with him, I’ll help you if I have to, I’ll bring him to you, say, is that what you want? It’s true, I was with him, but I don’t love him anymore, you’re the one I love!
He didn’t listen. The fire started with difficulty; it seemed as if hours went by.
She opened her mouth, a scream came out again, hoarse and prolonged; then words returned to her: “Help! Help!” But nothing. In response, the wind in the trees, the cry of the crickets; nobody in the fields, nobody on the path either. Down in the valley, a train passed by once more; life goes on in this way. And so, seized by fury:
—Bandit! she cried.
Then she started to beg again: “Jean-Luc, please, because I’ve always thought: he has a good heart, let me go and I will thank you.” And, anger taking hold of her again, she threw herself at the door, running along the wall that she scratched and flayed with her nails, her hair fallen over her eyes, her camisole entirely ripped, her bare arm showing among the tatters of fabric, and the little one shrieked, having rolled away from her in the hay.
She grabbed him, she held him out to Jean-Luc.
—Take him at least, she said, he hasn’t done anything wrong; he’s an innocent! yes, you can keep me, but let him go. Look at his pretty hair and his little mouth, no teeth yet, that such a small child should die!
She started to weep, she kissed the child among her tears. Jean-Luc was not listening. The fire was rising; Christine rolled on the floor, she was writhing in pain. The flame had already grown; the wind fanned it now, it shot to the roof, it cracked, curving at the tip. Then, with another gust of wind, the blaze reddened from underneath, and suddenly regained in size. A white smoke rose, soon folding down, running across the roof, then spreading out; it turned blue and thinned out, the flame touched the edge of the roof; the twigs jutting out took fire one after the other. And Jean-Luc was happy and began to smile.
The screams diminished, now muted, as if exhausted; the screams ceased. For, having moved back and rolled into the hay, she no longer struggled now—knees up, hiding the child in the hollow of her skirt, she watched death come with wide eyes, and waited.
A burnt beam collapsed under the weight of the roof, and the wind dug into the bare haystack, forming a sort of red cave; again he examined his work, saw it was good, then went off running. And, once at the edge of the woods, he turned around: the fire continued to spread, erect like a column above the hayloft; the smell of smoke traveled far; he went off toward Le Bourni; he had already bypassed it, through the tunnel of the bisse, when the smoke bell started to ring.
CHAPTER XIII
A SCREAM SOUNDED IN THE VILLAGE, a race for help, but it was on foot; when they arrived, nothing was left of the hayloft; what did remain was the haystack, bare and blackening; they planted great metal hooks inside of it and they mowed it down.
And sometime before sunset, the four chosen men had already left, climbing up toward the mayens where they had seen Jean-Luc go off. There was his cousin Théodule, and old Romain, who were both in Sassette, the counselor Chrétien Rey, and a plainclothes officer.
They walked with haste. First the land is flat, you pass the sawmill, the wheel was stopped; the sawyer cried: “I saw him too, he went up through the meadows over there.” The officer said: “We’re going in the right direction.” Next you enter the woods; the birds were going to bed; the path turning narrow, the men walked behind one another. You go up, they went up; and all of a sudden, in the forest, you arrive at one of the ponds, calm and beautiful water, the canal on one side, and the whole way around, trees that had grown inside of it; you walk alongside the pond, and these parts resemble a park, with squares of grass, a fine grass like the one on lawns, and beautiful bouquets of larches that seemed arranged all around, as well as streams that flow through the moss; then a smooth trail, without stones, that looks covered in sand—which they continued to follow all the way to the second berm above. These vast plateaus are covered with thin grass, which advances like waves that move from one side to another, before dying afar between knolls. There the four men were caught in the fog.
And the night was on its way too; they saw it would be impossible to go any farther that evening, and went to sleep in a hayloft; they made a fire before the door, they sat around it. The flames lit the sky suspiciously, in the same way they flicker upon a ceiling, then quickly diminished; they pulled some bread and cheese from a bag they had brought, along with a bottle of eau-de-vie; they ate and drank.
Next, they went to sleep, lying down on the hay. Little by little the flames dimmed and the fog fell upon them like a lid smothering embers; the last cinders were already emitting black smoke. But the clouds still descended little by little, as sometimes happens when they form around the mountain peaks in the evening, and crept slowly all the way to the back of the valley. In the morning, the sky was immaculate. It turned white toward the Orient; and this first light, like a sheaf one releases, opened up at the base of the sky; then the brightness increased with, above, a flame shining on the tips of boulders; and the birds cried out in the great calm of the morning.
They were already up; they immediately set off. The trail crosses the forest once more, only it’s narrower, rockier, hollowed out by the rain, it veers, then climbs straight up: the fir trees dwindle, replaced by the larches and their light greenery; at once, on a new berm, where you can still scythe, the mayens appear, seven or eight of them, forming a very small village. Sometimes you can find a kitchen or a room there; a window will be shining under the shadow of a roof.
The officer said: “Watch out!”; the four men walked a little farther through the woods. Then, at the border, they dispersed, but not high enough, they couldn’t see anything; which is why Théodule walked a little bit farther to the side, climbing up a bank; and once higher up, suddenly waved to the others, who came. And so it was that, from where they stood, they discovered Jean-Luc’s mayen, small and a little closer than the others, with Jean-Luc in front of it.
They saw him clearly, they recognized him without hesitation due to his beard and his untidy shirt, but they thought: “What is he doing?” There he was, sitting in front of the door, not on the steps, but on the ground; and at times he looked up, and laughed, as if he were talking to someone, at times he kept his head down as if he were busy with a task. He had made little piles of dirt, all tidy in a row; he had planted green branches and flowers in these little piles; all around, with fir tree needles, he had built a sort of fence: it was a little garden. They understood; they thought: “He thinks he’s found the little one.”
And they noticed, too, how happy Jean-Luc now seemed, for he smiled the entire time, or laughed, his mouth open; and went on with his task, now beginning to build a second garden. Then, standing up, he went to a nearby spring, filled the inside of his hat with water and emptied it in a little channel dug for this purpose; and it became a stream, and underneath, there was a dyke with a wisp of straw: it formed a fountain.
—You see, they said to each other, it’s taken hold of him again.
And one of them:
—That’s why he started the fire.
And the other men:
—You think?
—Yes of course, to get him back. And he’s happy about the fire, because he has him back now.
And so they asked themselves:
—What should we do?
They went back to where they’d been standing. Then, coming out all together, they approached the mayen. Théodule cried:
—Give yourself up, Jean-Luc!
But he, having seen them, suddenly stood up, he answered:
—He’s mine, you won’t take him from me.
And escaped, clutching the child, clutching the void in his arms, running uphill with all of his strength, on the slope, where the others chased him; but he ran with a strength beyond the strength of an ordinary man; so that they quickly gave up, and having regrouped once more, held council. For they were drawn into the chase and thrilled by this latest escape, which they now discussed, one of them saying:
—He’ll get away if he gets to Les Roffes.
Another one:
—If we aren’t the ones to grab him,
there will always be someone to stop him over there.
Théodule:
—I think he’s gone to the chalet.
Upon which, they decided to go to the chalet and have a look. There is another steep hill, another forest to cross, where the first boulders appear; and there on top, like a wall, the pastures begin to show. And even farther, the grass ceases at once, and the rockery begins, upon which the last ridges rise, with their great precipitous walls, with no further trails, or else impassable, except in one or two places, where there are cols with marked passages. So, toward the Orient, the pastures unfurl in the distance; toward the Occident, on the contrary, they’re abruptly cut off by a deep notch, which is the top of the gorges of La Zaut. There, a saber has slashed into the mountain; it falls apart stone by stone and crumbles through the wood passages, molded by the frost, with, above, what look like leaning towers, mined by the foot, along with some cracked rocky grounds. But the snow lasts in the folds, which explains why the gray stone was stained white in certain places.
Through the last larches and the mountain pines that surfaced, they urged each other on once more. The sun was strong, for the shade had made itself sparse, large treeless areas and only a few miserable branches left to those that remained. The great buzzing of flies sounded, and from over there, toward La Zaut, there rose, similar to a great wind, the roar of water, which you could see hanging from a knoll a little higher up, in waterfalls, forming a bend and awakening. The nails on their shoes screeched as they gnawed into the stone; because they had picked up their pace, the four men did not speak anymore. They passed near a great larch that had been struck down by lightning, with no remaining branches, with nothing but its big blackened trunk, hollow in the middle; and all around it the thin ground was dressed in clumps of juniper, with here and there, on the banks of stone that pierced through, blocks of compost glued together; and soon even the mountain pines were smaller, now stunted and rocky; then there’s a tiny path, carved into the rock, with a cow fence running alongside the void, and, from there, you arrive at the pasture.