by Jean Giono
“And you will find someone. Someone who will go down? You know what the plumber said. He did not want to kill himself. It is an old well, and so, in this weather, you will really find someone?”
“Listen: there are two men down below asking for something to do. They look like men in need.”
“Well we should make the most of them,” said Martha, “because you know that the plumber will never go down. He told me so. If they are in need, then we should make the most of them.”
“This is what’s the matter,” said the Curé. “We have a pump, and the iron end was stuck against the side of the well. The attachment, or the attachments must have slipped. The end is unstuck, you could say, and it sucks up thin air. It is suspended like that from the bolts on top and that could have come completely out. I have the attachments right here. You have to go down…”
“Is the well deep?” asked the large man.
“No,” said the Curé, “No. Yes. At least not very, you know, it is a house well: fifteen, twenty meters at most.”
“Is it far?”
“No. It is right there.”
The Curé walked to the side of the courtyard and the large man followed him, and the other followed in his greatcoat. There was a gate in the wall and, below, a trough of old stone worn by water. He opened the gate, the hinges squealed and two or three scales of rust fell on the tiles.
“There you see.”
The well blew a bitter breath of nocturnal plants and deep water. There was the “sssglouf ” of a detached stone that fell. The Curé, very much in back, leaned and at the same time pulled back his rump, and one heard his toes slosh in his shoes.
“There you see.”
He seemed as if he wanted to excuse himself.
“As there are two of you,” he said.
Then the large man looked at his companion. He was there still floating in his grey greatcoat. He did not have a face except for his eyes, cold blue eyes, always fixed on the black soutane of the Curé but looking through it and beyond it like the sad soul of the world.
He trembled and painfully swallowed his saliva with great bobbings of his Adam’s apple.
“Good, Monsieur le Curé,” said the large man, “that will do, I work alone, but that will do.”
Martha appeared on the balcony of the gallery.
“Monsieur le Curé, it is about time for your music lesson.”
At just this moment someone rang. He went and opened the door: it was a little blond youth in a beautiful wool coat.
“Go on up, Monsieur René,” said the Curé. “I am coming.”
He came back toward the men.
“The wall might be just a little bit bad,” he said.
“Set yourself there, old man,” said the large man.
There was a door in the back of the courtyard. Behind it they could hear rabbits running and crying out.
“Set yourself there. Sit down. You are not cold, too cold?…”
Then he sat to one side and began untying his shoes.
“I prefer to do it barefoot. You catch yourself with your toenails…”
Then he unbuttoned his hussard pants and pulled them off.
“Barelegged works better, and besides they’re heavy. Put them on, and they will keep you warm.”
The exhalation of the well steamed-up into the cold air of the courtyard.
“If I need to, I will call you,” just when he stepped on the rim.
He still held himself up by his hands and you could see his head. He looked down into the blackness; and you could tell that he was busy trying to secure his feet.
“I see the holes old man. It’s going to fly.”
He disappeared.
One heard the sound of a harmonium: a spiral of ascending notes which stuck together in threes and slowly darted, so it seemed, towards the sky like the swaying of a serpent’s head.
It was played rather well by Monsieur le Curé, then taken up again after a silence by the wide hands of Monsieur René.
The daylight faded.
On the wooden gallery, up there on the second floor, there was a row of cactus plants and a pot with a tuft of violets. The man looked at the flowers. The night flowed into the courtyard like water from a fountain; soon the flowers were no longer visible; the night rose up to the third floor.
The man stood up. He approached the well, looked for the opening by feeling with his hand. He leaned over. Down below one could hear, it seemed, a sort of scraping.
“Hey,” he called.
“Hey,” responded the other from below.
It came after a short pause, stifled by a cushion of air.
“Take care of yourself,” said the man.
“Yes,” replied the voice. Then it asked, “and you up there. How goes it?”
The man went back and sat down at the moment when Martha opened the door and appeared in the gallery of the second floor with a lamp in her hand.
“You can see the way Monsieur René?… Close the door.”
The blond youth closed the door. Martha looked out into the courtyard.
“I think that they have gone,” she said.
The large man walked in shadow. His muddy feet were heard squishing on the cold tiles.
“Are you there?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Give me my pants. It’s over.”
“It’s cold out,” he added once he was dressed again.
The house was all silent except for the sizzling of a fried fish which flowed from the second floor.
He called out:
“Monsieur le Curé.”
The frying kept him from hearing. He cried out:
“Monsieur le Curé.”
“What?” asked Martha.
“It’s done,” said the man.
“What?” asked Martha again.
“The pump.”
“Ah! Good, I will come and see.”
She went back into the kitchen and tried to give a push on the pump to the well. The water flowed. Monsieur le Curé was reading by the stove, and there was the sizzling of the frying.
“It’s flowing,” she said.
He hardly raised his eyes.
“Good. Go pay them.”
“How much should I give them? After all it was done quickly.”
“…and close the door tightly…”
But she accompanied them, watched them leave, then firmly set the latch, pushed the lock, and set the bar.
A cold and tenacious rain was falling.
Under the streetlight the man opened his hand. It was ten cents. The blue eyes looked at the little coin and the hand all marked with scrapes and mud.
“You will get tired,” he said, “I am a chain around your neck, me, sick. You will get tired, leave me.”
“No,” said the large man. “Come.”
Prelude to Pan
It happened on the fourth of September, the year of those big storms, that year when there was misfortune for everyone in our land.
If you will recall, it began with a sort of landslide by Toussière in which more than fifty pines were knocked head over heels. The ravine carried away the long cadavers of the trees, and it made a lot of noise… It was a shame to see all of those trunks of good wood thrown against the rocks, and all that getting washed out in shreds like meat from a sick person. Then there was that gushing of the spring at Frontfroit. Do you recall? The high prairie was suddenly all wet, then that spring mouth which opened up under the grasses, and you heard the black water splashing, then this retching which took hold of it on the mountain and in the valley which wailed under the heavy load of cold water.
Those two things made people talk; they were entranced by them. More than one person got up in the middle of the night and went barefoot over to the window to listen, in the depths of the darkness, to the mountain quaking like a sick child. Still we had a little peace. But the days were not in their usual health. On the border of Léchau a green fog floated; there was this fog stuck to all
the corners of the mountain as if the wind was heavy with sea grasses. Towards Planpre it smelled like crushed gentian. One day a forest girl came with a beautiful mushroom, larger than a hat, pale and spotted with black like a dead man’s head.
All of that should have set us on our guard, and, to tell the truth, we were on guard against all of it; but life is life; go ahead try and stop the flow, you get used to anything, even fear.
The fourth of September is our votive festival. It made our reputation, as they say. From my younger years it united three or four communes. They came from Vaugnières, Glandages, Montbran, crossing the ridge… At the time in question they had largely stopped celebrating with us; there was no longer anyone coming but folk from the high farms, tall woodsmen, and shepherds who came on the sly and entered the village in the evening to have a glass. They left their herds alone on the Oches’ pastures.
As I said to you, there was a great calm. Above us there was a round patch of blue sky all spread out, perfectly neat, all clean. On the circumference of the horizon there was a thick bar of heavy, purple clouds; it was there mornings and evenings, without moving, always the same, breaking the backs of the mountains.
“It will get the others,” is what they said.
“It should rain in Trièves.”
“It should be bad on la Drôme.”
We said it, but even so we looked at the round blueness which weighed on the village like a millstone.
Now that we know, we know that it was the mark, the sign, that we were destined for something, that by this circle they had wanted to indicate our village and make it shine in the sun in order to designate it for evil. So it was, we were happy.
“The weather purged itself before. You will see that it will be nice for the festival.”
“It should be for once.”
The son of the blacksmith went around to all the houses with a list, and one gave, perhaps a hundred cents, perhaps three francs, so that our festival would be a nice festival and not make us be ashamed. By the school there was already a booth which smelled of caramel candy.
For a night or two there were noises in the sky.
“That is, if, all the same…”
But no, the mornings were blond with ripe grass; the wind smelled of gramineal, there was the circle of blue filled with sunshine which fooled us. The ground was warm beneath our feet and elastic like a fruit.
This fourth of September then, one opened the shutters, and it was fine weather. The people from the Café du Peuple had planted a May tree before their door, a young pine that was all glistening. In its branches were hung the red scarf which one won at boule, the blue scarf which was the prize for the girls’ race, and the money which was the prize for the men’s race. All of them were floating on a stream of joyful, scented air that played like a young kid.
The folk from the Café du Centre had installed trestles all the way down to the Liberty tree. The washhouse was filled with bottles that were cooling in the water. The baker had ordered a case of tarts from his cousin du Champsaur, and he was on his doorstep waiting for them saying to people passing by:
“You know, I am going to have tarts.”
And we thought:
“Good, that will be a good dessert.”
Apollonia waited for her nephews du Trièves. Brother Antoine was supposed to come from Coriardes with his whole family. The boule players from Trabuech wrote down their names and they were the great players… From Montama six came, from Montbran three, and we knew that the shepherds from Oches would come, but we did not say anything.
The first rough characters that were seen were the Coriardes folk. They put the mule in the stable, looking under it without a word, and, immediately afterwards, the father whispered to Antoine:
“You have to arrange for us to sleep here tonight, we do not want to go back at night.”
Then the father said:
“We’ll have something strong to drink.”
The Coriardes folk were asked what they had.
“Nothing.”
And there was a black mystery in their eyes which stayed for more than two hours.
The folk from Trièves were soaking.
“It is raining on the ridge, quite a lot…”
Only at that moment we were not thinking on our feet any longer. There was in the sky, like a hand spreading the pile of clouds, a little breeze flowing which smelled like meadow sweet. The sun spread out on the earth and began resting while blotting out the clouds. There only remained a threat in the direction of Montama where the clouds were still shining and dark like a heap of egg-plants.
The Café du Centre was filled to the rafters. In the kitchen there was the sound of dishes and water so that you would think a stream was flowing through there. People were inundated with beer and wine. On the floor, when you moved your feet, they made a mark in the coating of spilled beer and wine. Outside there were people all the way to the Liberty tree. Marie went to the washhouse and filled her arms with streaming bottles of fresh water, and she carried them, shivering, because they wet her breast and in time the water ran down onto her stomach.
When she arrived to serve them, people pinched her haunches and slapped her rump, and there were even those who stuck an arm all the way up her dress.
“Ah, leave it there, it’s so warm,” she said.
For drink, there were already those who were sick and who sang “Poor Peasant.” Others quickly left the benches to go throw up in a corner. There were those who laughed about who knows what, but with such laughs! Those who pissed sitting up, and who became serious again when they felt themselves moistened between the legs. Then they began laughing and drinking again. In the Café du Peuple it was the same, except for in a corner in the back at the little table where the trio from Trièves were. They had crossed the ridge in the morning. It was not hard in September, but they said:
“It’s funny. It’s not natural. Who knows?…”
They had pipes and big glasses, and they tried to dispel their uneasiness.
At noon something happened which would pull everyone out of there. They were in the middle of discussing the defeat of Polyte at boule, and my Polyte was all somber, right in the middle, chewing his mustache. We spoke as if we were haranguing the housewives… For the youths, again it was easy. They were excited with their hands on the servants’ buttocks, nothing to do but to sniff the scent of their wives. It made them rise, but the others would have to be told about it!
“Go on big bags!” “Then come!” “You are already well taken care of.” And “at your age” and “You are cute, go” and even men slapping women and women slapping men, sort of among family.
And those who responded:
“Go to bed, you old bloodsucker.”
But, even so there were those who got up and left.
Finally, there was room once again with empty spaces in the road and in the two cafés where people were dining. There was also in the sky, like a bird, a thick silence, heavy and solitary. In this silence there was not a puff of air nor the sound of a footstep, not a whisper of grass, nor the hum of a wasp; there was only silence, round and weighty, filled with sun like a ball of fire.
It was in the middle of this silence that a man arrived by the forest path. He came in the shadow of the houses. He seemed to enfold himself in their shadow. He took two steps, then looked around, then he took several more light steps along the walls. He saw our poplar tree. Then he dared to cross a great swathe of sun, and he came towards the tree. He stayed there for a moment sniffing. He checked the wind. He had a round back, like a hunted beast. With his hand he caressed the old skin of our tree. In an instant he lowered a branch and placed his head in the leaves to smell them. Finally, he moved on to the Café du Peuple. He drew back the curtain and softly entered.
I saw it all from my window. I was just about to take my siesta. The party did not mean much to me, I was alone in the house, as you know.
Now, the story is Antoine’s, who served him.
He was thin and all dried out, seemingly ageless. He was without a vest in his shirt of blue thread like the sky; he had rolled up his sleeves and his wrinkled, black elbows were visible like the wounds of branches on a tree trunk. He had hair on his chest like a sheep dog.
He asked for water. Nothing more. And he said:
“I will pay for it.”
Once it had been said it did not seem like something that one could contradict. He was given his water. He wanted it in a bucket.
Antoine told me about it:
“I went into the kitchen, and I was very curious. I did not say anything to the folk from Trièves who were eating there; I did not say anything to the woman, but I looked at him through a tear in the curtain. He even drank from the wooden bucket like an animal. Then he took three pine cones out of his pocket, took them apart on the table, and began eating the nuts. He picked them up with his fingertips, and chewed them with the ends of his teeth. From where I was watching him, he seemed like a big squirrel.”
The noon meal lasted for hours because they had prepared all the foods in creation. First they had taken sausages out of the vat of oil and laid them there on the plate, white and fat, like big caterpillars. They had put on a rooster to braze, and the rabbits stewed in their own blood. They had killed goats. Everywhere it smelled like crushed meat and dead grasses. They had drunk various wines…wine from the mountainside, wine from the rocky area, a two-year-old wine…
“This one, what do you say?”
“Ah, my friend!…”
Old wine from fine bottles, one only had to reach out one’s hand, even without a candle, and it was there right away. The serving folk brought the bottles down. That was the festival in our town. They crammed their mouths with pieces of white chicken meat which hung from the end of their forks like strips of ash bark.
In the end, in the houses, one could smell all of the smells, except for the good ones.