Hill

by Jean Giono

  •

  Jaume is afraid.

  Ever since the morning when he found himself in charge, he’s been battling, sustained by hope. He’s been like a coiled spring: he absorbs a blow, and it propels him forward. Now, this evening, he’s plunged headlong into a torrent of despair, and the raging waters are carrying him away.

  He’s afraid. He’s no longer sure they’re going to win in this battle against the hills’ ill will. Doubt is bristling inside him like a thistle.

  It started with Maurras.

  A short time ago Jaume had said to him:

  “César, tomorrow you’ll be going for water.”

  And César shot back: “No!” It was the first time anybody had refused an order.

  “I’ll go when I want to, when I want to, you hear? You have no right to order me around. Do I owe you something? Because, if I do owe you something, just say so, and I’ll pay you. And if I don’t owe you anything, then leave me alone for fuck’s sake, you with your orders. We aren’t children, we know what we need to do—”

  “But César, we had an agreement.”

  “We didn’t have any kind of agreement. It was you who wrote up the list on your own. And who gave you the right, in the first place? Who are you around here, the pope?”

  “Good, that’s fine, I’ll go myself,” Jaume said, “I’ll go in your place.”

  And Maurras, as he was heading off, turned around to reply:

  “Send Ulalie. She knows the way.”

  •

  It can’t go on like this. With somebody in charge there was still a chance—when the one in the lead knew how to . . .

  A doubt grips his heart: Does he really know?

  “Do I have what it takes to wrestle the rage of these hills? I’m full of good intentions . . . and that’s all. I got everybody to stand on guard, but bad luck snuck in amongst them anyways. It flew right over our heads and picked out what it wanted, without a care, like it was at home: the fountain, Marie . . .

  “It’s always there. I feel like I can hear its giant wings moving at night. It’s lying in wait . . .

  “Who’s next?”

  •

  All night long he lay sprawled out on top of his hopes and fears. By morning he had only one thought: to go and see Janet. Janet must know the key to all of this.

  And daylight broke.

  •

  Marguerite, dazed with having to dance around the sick bed day and night, is stumbling around on inflamed feet. When Jaume comes in, she’s fallen asleep standing up in front of her open sideboard, with no idea what she’s come looking for.

  “Gritte, go and lie down if you want to,” says Jaume, “make the most of my being here. I’m going to spend a little time with your father.”

  •

  No sooner were they alone, than Janet spoke up first, as though he’d seen in advance, through the walls, that Jaume would be coming.

  “You’ll be staying till dark if you want to say everything.”

  “Janet, there’s nothing to make fun about this time. Listen to me. I hadn’t found the guts to talk to you yet, but now I have to. Listen to me: If you want to save us, you can. I’ve seen the cat.”

  Janet is dead wood. He can’t even shiver anymore. Suddenly he’s shut his eyelids.

  He reopens them. His gaze shoots toward Jaume.

  “Shift my head for me, I can’t see you properly, and for what we have to talk about we have to be able to see each other.”

  Jaume takes hold of Janet’s head and gingerly turns it toward himself.

  “That’s better. So you saw it. When?”

  “Three weeks ago.”

  “And it’s only now you’ve come to tell me?”

  “I thought I was strong enough to stand up to it, like they say you stood up to it once, but I’m afraid at this point things aren’t going so well.”

  “You’ve counted the hills’ teeth?”

  “Their teeth?”

  “You’ve looked to see if their coat is standing up straight, or laying down a little in the direction of the wind?”

  “. . .”

  “You’ve spoken in tongues with the crow’s wife?”

  “. . .”

  “You’ve squinted?”

  “. . .”

  “You’ve been to see the cat-witch’s nest on the other side of Espel Hill, where there’s nothing but broom-grass that the cat scorches with her own breath?”

  Jaume asks himself if this is the same man, so bitter and clipped just a minute ago, who’s talking this way.

  It is the same man: the same look, the same mouth stained with tobacco juice.

  “No, I haven’t done any of those things.”

  “So what have you done, then?”

  “Me, Janet? I’ve said to them: ‘Keep your eyes on all the paths, in case anything wild, with bad intentions, happens to come along . . .’ ”

  •

  “So, while we were keeping our eyes peeled, something messed with the fountain, and it failed. I searched for the water, I rooted around in the ground, then I racked my brains. In the end we found water in that village way up there, you know where I mean? Now Arbaud’s daughter has taken sick. Something completely unheard of that even my book doesn’t know about, and she’s getting thinner and thinner, to the point where she’s as small as a bird. She can barely open her mouth to say ‘mama.’ It’s pathetic.

  “The most frightening thing is that it’s gotten inside people’s heads. Maurras’s already . . . Inside people’s heads where nobody can see a thing, where evil goes about its business, quietly, not revealing itself, not showing any sign, not even making a bump . . . ever so smoothly, ever so smoothly.

  “As long as we’re united, we can win. It’s hard to break through a bundle of sticks. But if it’s every man for himself, groping around blindly, nobody knowing anything, we’ll all be done for, one after another.

  “I’m afraid for the Bastides.”

  “Jackass.”

  “. . .”

  “You’re a jackass, I tell you. And he wants to be the leader, does he . . . Ah, so you’ve seen the cat; good. And you’ve posted the men out on all the paths?”

  He laughs—his mouth splits open like a block of wood.

  “And you’d rather I didn’t call you a jackass?”

  His voice is getting deeper and huskier. He’s made of stone. His eyes aren’t blinking. He’s like a hollow, windblown stone.

  “You’re fucked.”

  “Don’t say that, Janet. It sounds like you’re glad about it.”

  “I am glad. There are always way too many jackasses like you.”

  “Why are you talking like this? Do you have a problem with somebody?”

  “With all of you.”

  “What have we done to you?”

  “You’re always right there in my face, with your legs marching back and forth, your arms swinging around like branches, your bellies stretched tight. You’ve haven’t even thought of giving me a little bit of your life. Just a little bit. I’m not asking for much of it, just enough for me to fill my pipe and go and sit down under the tree.”

  “You know very well, Janet, that it’s impossible. You shouldn’t hold it against us. And on top of that, don’t you care at all about the Bastides? This bit of earth that’s ours, these houses where we’ve all been through so much—good times and bad. What about Marguerite? What about Gondran, who makes absinthe for you just the way you like it?”

  “ ’e doesn’t give me anymore since I’ve been sick.”

  “And Arbaud’s little girls, who have barely started out in life, and Babette, who came up here from Pertuis to live with us and never had a second thought. None of them are ready to give it up for good.”

  “I’m good and ready, I am.”

  “And your fields—those clearings in amongst the trees, your olives, your delicious cantaloupes. Don’t you think about all these things, even a little? Would you like it all to go back to being grassland? �
�

  “All of it. It’s a pain in the arse for me. I’m moving forward; all that’s behind. Where I’m going, I won’t have any need of it.”

  “You’re selfish.”

  “I don’t give a fuck.

  “And I’m saying to you one more time: it’s over. You don’t even have a month left. And you know, when I say something, it’s true.

  “Remember your wife? Hadn’t I warned you. True, or not? You found her hanging, didn’t you? And your daughter, getting herself banged by that slobberer . . .”

  Jaume started. The chair toppled behind him. He grabbed Janet by the neck.

  “You,” he said, and the words sprayed out between his clenched teeth, “I’ve had enough of your vicious tricks. You’re worse than a wolf. You know you haven’t a right to say a word about my wife, you of all people. Or about my daughter . . . If you were in your right mind I’d smash your face in. So, don’t go on asking for it.”

  Jaume gathers himself, gulps some air, turns his ear toward the bedroom where Marguerite is sleeping.

  He stands his chair back up and sits down. He’s regained control of himself.

  Janet looks dead, but you can hear his chuckles nibbling away at the silence.

  “Janet, I didn’t come here to argue. You see, I’m calm now. It’s not just me who could suffer, it’s everybody. Think about it. If you know what we need to do, say it.”

  “I’m about to tell you . . . It’s a bit complicated. You have to see things from above, like you were at the top of a tree, as though the whole of earth were spread out underneath you.”

  Janet is panting—the rapid panting of a bird. He’s closed his eyes. He’s looking inside himself, at the cellar in his chest where so many things have piled up over eighty years.

  And all of a sudden it comes unblocked. It flows—thin, thick, thin again, lees and wine mixing together, as if a neglected barrel had popped its bung.

  “You want to know what you need to do, only you don’t even know what kind of world you’re living in. You realize something’s against you, but you don’t know what. And all this because you’ve been staring at what’s around you without really seeing it. I bet you’ve never given any thought to the great power?

  “The great power of animals, plants, and rock.

  “Earth isn’t made for you alone to keep on using the way you’ve been used to, on and on, without getting some advice from the master every once in a while. You’re like a tenant farmer—and then there’s the landlord. The landlord in his handsome, six-button jacket, his brown corduroy vest, his sheepskin coat. Do you know him, the landlord?

  “You’ve never heard him hissing like the wind across a leaf, a leaflet just unfolding, a newborn leaf on a dappled apple tree. It’s his loving voice. He talks that way to animals and trees. He’s the father of everything. He has the blood of all things in his veins. When rabbits run out of breath, he lifts them up in his hands:

  “ ‘Ah, my lovely one,’ he’ll say, ‘you’re soaking wet, your eyes are rolling around in your head, your ears are bleeding, have you been running for your life? Settle down here, between my legs. Don’t be afraid, you’re safe now.’

  “The bittersweet sanctuary, and the stream of . . .

  “Then it’s the dogs who race up.

  “When you say to yourself: ‘My dog’s gone off hunting on his own,’ it’s because he’s shaken you off to go see the landlord.

  “The handsome, six-buttoned jacket, and the bowl of the bell on the neck of the sheep.

  “And in the shelter, between his legs, the dog and the rabbit get friendly, nose to nose, coat to coat. The rabbit sniffs your dog in the ear, your dog shakes its ear because the rabbit has breathed into it. He looks around and he has the air of saying: ‘It’s not my fault if I’ve chased it all day through broom-grass, and up and down furrows, and the pools in the stream. There are weeds in there, like twine, that bind your hands and feet.’

  “That’s when everybody turns up: the turtledove, the fox, the snake, the lizard, the mouse, the grasshopper, the rat, the weasel, and the spider, the moorhen, the magpie, everything that walks, everything that runs. There are roads full, you might even go so far as to say streams full of animals. It’s a stream that’s singing and leaping and it flows and rubs at the sides of the path and tears away lumps of earth and carries away whole limbs from hawthorns the stream has uprooted.

  “And they all come because he’s the father of caresses. He has a word for each one of them:

  “ ‘Tourturtle, take route, tooraloo; fox, phlox, flame-in-a-box.’

  “He teases tufts of fur toward himself.

  “ ‘Lachrymizard, muse, musette, calf’s muzzle wedged in a bucket.’

  “Next he’s going to take a stroll through the trees.

  “For the trees, it’s the same. They know him. They’re not afraid.

  “You—you’ve never known anything but trees that are on their guard. You don’t know what a tree really is. Around him, they behave the same as they did during the first days of the world, before we’d cut a single branch.

  “. . .There were woods, and no sound of the axe yet, or of the pruning hook. No knife blade yet on the hillside. The woods on the hillside, and no axe.

  “He passes alongside, in his sheepskin jacket. Linden trees make sounds like weeping cats, the chestnuts sound like women moaning, and the plane tree creaks from inside itself, like a man begging for charity.

  “He sees their wounds—the knife stabs and the clefts from the axe—and he soothes them.

  “He speaks to the linden, the plane tree, the laurel, the olive, the olive grove, the savory, and the newly planted vine, and it’s for all this—the pomegranate too—it’s because of his compassion that he’s master, and that they love him and obey him.

  “And if he wanted to wipe the Bastides right off this tiny bump of a hill, ’cause humanity has done too much harm, it’s no big deal for him. Just like it’s no big deal to let himself be seen by jackasses. He just puffs a little breeze into the daylight, and it’s done.

  “He holds the great power in his hand.”

  •

  “Animals, plants, rock!

  “It’s strong—a tree. A hundred years it’s spent holding up the weight of the sky, with a hopelessly twisted branch.

  “It’s strong—an animal. Especially the little ones.

  “They sleep curled up in the grass, all on their own in the wide open world.

  “All alone curled up in the grass, and the whole world circling ’round.

  “They have stout hearts. They don’t cry out when you kill them. They fix your eyes and then they pierce them with their own, like needles.

  “You haven’t spent enough time watching animals die.

  “It’s strong—a rock, one of those big rocks that part the wind in two. Standing for who knows how long? A thousand years?

  “One of those rocks that have been in the world forever—long before you, Jaume, before the apple and olive groves, before me, before the woods and the rest of the animals. Before the fathers of all this—of you, me, the apple. Before the time, Jaume, when the father of all of this might have been nothing but a swelling in his own father’s loincloth.

  “One of those rocks that was around on the first day and have always been the same, never changing, for who knows how long? That’s what you have to know to get at the remedy.”

  •

  Jaume listens. He feels the world rocking under his feet, like the floorboards of a rowboat.

  His head is full of images of earth: He sees trees, plants, animals—from the grasshopper, to the wild boar—and for him it’s all part of this truly solid world, where he moves along familiar grooves.

  And now?

  There’s no way he would have believed that Janet could be so strong. To begin with, it’s this glimpse of power that’s frightened him. This time, somebody in the know is talking.

  And him, he really does know. Everything that was obscure till now
is becoming clear. Incomprehensible things are being explained. But what’s coming to light in this way is terrifying.

  The old ways were so straightforward. There was humanity, and all around, but underneath, animals and plants. And things were going along well that way. You kill a hare, you harvest a fruit. A peach—it’s nothing but sweet juice in your mouth; a hare—it’s a heaped-up plateful of rich, dark meat. And afterward, you lick your lips, and you smoke a pipe on the front step.

  It was simple, but it left a lot of things in the dark.

  From now on it’s going to be necessary to live in a lit-up world, and it’s painful.

  It’s painful because it’s not just humanity anymore, with everything else underneath, but there’s a giant ill will and, way down below, humanity tossed in together with the animals and the plants.

  He can feel the hill—alive and terrible—moving under his feet.

  •

  “Now, I’m going to tell you the secret.”

  Jaume would be happier if Janet kept quiet for the moment.

  •

  “I’m going to tell you. Everything’s sickly sweet, like a corpse.

  “There’s too much blood around us.

  “There are ten holes, there are hundreds of holes in the flesh of living creatures and in living wood, and out of them the blood and the sap flow over the world like a gigantic river, like the Durance.

  “There are a hundred holes, there are a thousand holes we’ve made with our hands.

  “And the master no longer has enough saliva and soothing talk to heal them.

  “When all is said and done, these animals, these trees, they’re his, they belong to him—to the landlord. His sheepskin jacket—it’s the sheep who gave it to him, without having to skin itself, without bleeding, just so; and the sheep-bone buttons, just so, without bleeding; the button-bones, the sheep . . .

  “You and I, we belong to him too. Except that for some time now we’ve forgotten the way to get to the shelter of his knees. We’ve tried to heal and comfort ourselves, all on our own, but we really needed to be able to find this path again. To find it under the dead leaves. There are leaves on the path, you have to pick them up with your hands, one after the other, carefully, so that the moon doesn’t scorch the slender path that leaps like a kid goat under the moon.