Nature Stories (9781590175682)
Page 8
Dusk is being prolonged by the dusk of russet leaves. The tops of the poplars are on flame; that surely will burn all night.
The first leaves start to fall just after a white frost; a light drizzle makes them fall faster.
I can’t feel the slightest breeze. Why do the chestnut leaves start falling as they now are, one by one, at regular intervals? Is it because the tree is silently telling them to? Is he counting how many leaves he’s handing over? Look closely and guess which one is about to fall. It’ll always be some other leaf.
To make that one fall, you’ll have to tug its ear.
The poplar that is standing upside down in the canal will be attracting the leaves of the poplar standing on the bank, rightway up.
The leaves are falling into the river and being carried away by the current. They’re migrating, too.
Is that birch shivering with cold? Or is it having a dream?
All the branches of that one are asleep. Only up there at the very top, a little branch, newly arrived this year, is waving about in the air and refusing to go to sleep.
An apple tree that was going to sleep gives a start: it’s felt its bark being cut.
It’s the gardener who, unthinkingly, has hung his sickle on it till tomorrow.
A leaf was coming into the house through my open window. I caught it and set it free.
You can hear the sound of a leaf lying on the ground: it’s trying to fly, like some poor bird who’s got only one foot and one wing.
Suddenly, there’s a headlong flight: troops of birds are making off madly, as if the winter had arrived over there, just round the corner of the wood.
That leaf’s running away, like a rat trying to find its hole.
Everything has come to a halt: the last leaves are still hanging on, just as people at the bedside of a man who’s taking a long time to die think they’ve given up hope too soon. You’re still sad but you start thinking, a bit, about other things...and you keep on waiting.
Is everything going to be wiped out?
For its mysterious metamorphosis, nature is hiding itself in a thick veil of fog; the crows are swimming in it, crying for help.
In the night, a flight of cranes passes overhead; I recognize their call.
I can’t see them clearly but I can hear the beating of their wings. The only thing I can see is stars. A shooting star flashes across the sky and its trajectory seems to me to be cutting through the cranes’ flight, that their rallying calls are increasing and that, during their journey, they’ll be shot at by the stars, so there’ll be no sound, no smoke.
An autumn violet is more modest than any other; you have to go along all the garden paths, bending over till your back aches, before you get a piddling little bunch of them.
Who’d be selfish enough to pick an autumn strawberry for himself? You only dare pick it to put it into the mouth of a beloved innocent little girl.
A last rose is getting undressed, in order to die.
A forgotten pear lets go of everything and falls on its backside.
The gaps in the hedge show where our animal friends got away. This is where the hares went, there the red partridge.
A thrush flies off, chirruping out of the side of its beak.
Every hedge is revealing its dainty carcasses of nests. It’s easy to see which hedges in the field the birds have liked best. Its impenetrable leaves provide shelter from any eye, any wind and also offer an abundant harvest of a variety of seeds, fleshy fruit, blackberries, red haws, and ruddy rose hips.
Nests to let.
Our true inner life is beginning. The unexpected shiver—cause unknown—fluttering briefly from one tree to the next, penetrates into the human heart, and suddenly, we become serious, for a long, long time to come.
Work has its own reward: it enables us to look at nature; the lazy man doesn’t see anything.
My last walk was an act of gratitude. I was saying “thank you” to the trees, to the streets, to the fields, to the canal and to the river, to the tiles on the roof of my house.
That’s where I’m living as I’d like to live.
And when I leave our wild brothers to go to Paris with Gloriette, I’ll be leaving more than half of me behind.
THIS IS A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOK
PUBLISHED BY THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS
435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014
www.nyrb.com
Translation and introduction © 2011 by the estate of Douglas Parmée
All rights reserved.
Cover design: Katy Homans
The Library of Congress has cataloged the earlier printing as follows:
Renard, Jules, 1864–1910.
[Histoires naturelles. English]
Nature stories / by Jules Renard ; translated and with an introduction by
Douglas Parmée.
p. cm. — (New York Review Books classics)
ISBN 978-1-59017-364-0 (alk. paper)
1. Animals—Fiction. I. Parmée, Douglas. II. Title.
PQ2635.E48H513 2010
843'.912—dc22
2010041770
eISBN 978-1-59017-568-2
v1.0
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