The Sorcerer's Apprentice

by FranCois Augieras

  I slid into the water and was surprised to find it almost hot compared to the coldness of the air. I rid myself of my clothes, which I attached firmly to a piece of dry wood with my belt; slipping my bayonet through it, I walked on along the pebbles until I lost my footing and began to swim. The Vézère’s powerful current was carrying along branches and leaves, and various kinds of dross. I would have felt fear if my bundle had not supported me so well. The river was giving me respite from living, it was carrying me back to the land of men. Springs murmured, birds sang, I drifted.

  Fish leapt and fell back heavily into the silent, dead parts of the river, the deepest parts, where the Vézère became so calm that it seemed motionless. I imagined that I was just a sort of rat, swimming with the current. A smell of decomposition was coming from the muddy banks, planted with dark clumps of trees.

  Milky-white mist drifted across the surface of the river. Birds’ humble gazes followed me; the sound of beating wings accompanied my journey, and, here and there, cries, squabbles. Pushed along by the current, with no need to swim, I moved among the shadows. Ten metres of water were moving downstream beneath me, carrying me towards my bed. I held my breath, I lived only faintly, I was nothing but a pair of eyes, among those of the birds, in the peaceful night.

  My feet met the solid ground of an island. I stretched out in the grass which grew there among white pebbles covered with a fine film of grey mud, now dry and cracked, which the floods had brought there; and I rested. It was a low-lying island, which the shining, round moon lit up with its glow. Here and there, sandbanks broke the surface of the Vézère, whose waters boiled and sang.

  I turned my gaze downstream. There was a gap in the trees, revealing three tall rocks crowned with bushes, towering more than twenty metres above the river’s course; they had stood there forever, since the beginning of the Earth and of Man; among the green leaves, before the stars, they were beautiful, like immense patches of whiteness; they looked just like large pieces of fabric, drying in the moonlight. I closed my eyes, opened them again, still astonished to see so much calm splendour.

  As I lay on the stones of the island a soft light touched my bayonet and my wet bundle, which lay next to me. I got into the water, seeking sensual pleasure; I found it among the cool flowers which floated on a sort of marsh. I washed myself in the river, no longer sure if I was Man, or Woman, or Nymph.

  A sandbar, which stretched across the current, forced me to paddle about among the wild grasses, stirred by the passage of the water like long skeins of green silk spread out on the round, smooth stones, where I lost my footing and scrambled back to my feet. I walked, then threw myself back into the Vézère and it carried me off in its tides with my bundle, which danced on the waves, my bundle which I clung to tightly; and swiftly, very swiftly, the river drew me on towards my bed.

  TREMBLING WITH FEVER and cold, I got into bed. Once I was between the sheets my strength of character quickly asserted itself over my tiredness and after a little warmth and rest I was soon myself again. It must have been around three in the morning. My priest did not seem to have returned and I was not displeased to find myself alone. No desire for sleep closed my eyes; on the contrary, the desire to take up pen and ink kept me awake. Delighted, worn-out, home again, I could think of nothing but writing.

  The night air touched the flame of my little candle but it scarcely quivered. Exquisite moments at the end of the night. Not a breath of wind. You can see nothing of the World. It is an absence of everything; the seconds are no longer composed of anything; everything seems suspended. The motionless air doesn’t shake a single branch; not one bird sings. All you can feel is the intense, all-pervading spell of the supreme life of earth and sky, so powerfully, that all you have to do is dip into it to draw out what you want. From my bedroom, with the window open, I could only discern the nearness of our trees from faint scents of sap, and the presence of the vast Sarladais from other scents carried by the river, whose whisperings I could hear.

  My candle spread a halo of calm light, soft and golden. I watched, and saw myself as being like that little flame, whose glow stood in stubborn opposition to the tranquil shadows.

  Is a book born when the idea you already have of it drives away sleep? My solitude and that mad side of me which came from my errant ways presaged nothing good. Knowing myself as I did, I was expecting nothing but the worst. I had read few books, and always at top speed; I was keenly aware that my knowledge of French was rather poor; I spoke it as I heard it, according to sound, hearsay, music, without spelling and without grammar. I lived beside the springs and the woods, with just enough learning to write humbly; this did not give me much hope of creating a work I could feel vain about, which could give a reader pleasure and gain his attention.

  In my head, old sentences drawn from old books were mixed up with village expressions, curious provincial turns of phrase, the artless candour of common folk. A tissue of weaknesses run through with follies and naïvety, that was the sort of book I could be the author of.

  Despite the keenness of my joy and the possibility that I might wrest it from oblivion, my ability to achieve it seemed to me to be particularly feeble. My isolation plunged me into despair. Can you imagine that: extreme solitude? The only people who had shown me friendship were beings as lost as myself, a priest and a child, and what a priest! It was enough to make me believe that this most ancient land of ghosts and fairies was holding me prisoner; that so much happiness must be paid for with a degree of loneliness which I would have accepted, were I not afraid that I might see what I had to say perish along with myself.

  From this perspective I suddenly saw nothing but enemies: myself, with this worrying lack of learning, and other, pitiless men. And what could I hope for, what hope was there, for what unknown solitude? Not a hand to help me, nothing but black, sad silence. I even saw myself as odious, too far removed from other men ever to unite with them.

  Then a gleam of light sprang out of that dark night. I told myself that old sentences, from the times of the kings, run through with rustic artlessness, together with my skilfully-woven madness, might weave an astonishing kind of fabric, worthy of survival. A little book, well and badly written at the same time, that is what I might be capable of. A sort of tapestry. It came to me to weave it in coarse wool mixed with fine silk. This idea of a book worked in the manner of a curiously woven fabric pleased me. My solitude immediately seemed interesting to me, my vices too. I could visualise my project clearly, and planned to accomplish it as quickly as possible; I was already entertaining myself with the mischiefs and tricks I intended to cram into this text, which would be made up of a thousand ruses and little weaknesses. I would endow it with all my pleasure in living, the love which burned in my heart, my true nature, and my soul, and the tireless river, and my priest, and the child. Before even beginning it I could already see it, for the idea precedes everything, the rest is only attentive patience, weaving, a game of shuttles; for it is the man of the night who invents, the man of the morning is nothing but a scribe.

  I now positively welcomed my solitude. I loved this state of abandonment in which I had been left, loved it as if it were the best part of my being, the most real, the most emotional. Silence no longer terrified me. Once again I sensed that the World was there, next to me, like an intact reserve of delicious forces which I had only to dip into to write a book unlike any other. But what a strange book this would be, created in this way, by a boy like me who lived in a priest’s house! A galant, almost magical little book, one whose like no one else would ever write. This unique opportunity exhilarated me in the great silence and the darkness, not so much of the sleeping countryside but of my life, so poor and lonely. Whole sentences came to my lips, sleep took hold of me; I closed my eyes tightly in the warmth of my bed as I listened to my own voice for the first time, my voice which sounded as if it were lost in the woods, but more human than so many other voices less humble than mine.

  ALL THE SAME, I did not forget the
child, nor my soul, hidden in the spring. I placed a stone outside the door of the church, as a signal that I was alone, and entered. The spiral staircase hewn into the wall, and feebly lit every ten steps by narrow loopholes, curved upwards towards immense beams. These were arranged in such a way that they intersected each other and seemed almost infinite in number under the semi-darkened, haunted stone roof onto which rain was falling. After once again exploring this little nook which seemed just right for us, I was about to go back down when I glanced out of the topmost spyhole on the stairs, and saw the child climbing the church steps.

  He was well-proportioned, bold, with a laughing face and a hint of flame in his eyes. He stepped lightly, as if he were walking on the tips of his toes. He looked like an angel; quite simply he was my friend, and I loved him. I was exhilarated by the idea that my image would appear in his mind; that in the very same moment he both would hope to see me, and be noticed by me. He entered the courtyard, saw the stone, walked on a little further and disappeared from view. I went down the stairs a little way to try and see him again through a better-placed slit. I was more in love with him than ever.

  Not a sound echoed from the church flagstones, nor from the over-narrow, winding staircase. Yet I was sure he was very close by, because of the extraordinary feelings of excitement which flooded into me. Yes, I heard the sound of a light footfall; then silence. More footsteps on the stairs. Then nothing more. And then, as calm and natural as ever, he appeared in front of me and took my hand.

  “I have come back,” he said.

  The rain had plastered his hair to his forehead. I kissed his face. He only appeared calm; his little heart was beating fit to burst. He spoke again: I love you. His embrace was gentle and strong. He was the living, divine incarnation of a spirit full of friendship and courage. Everything conspired with us, places, circumstances; I shall remember my whole life that I saw this, I thought, that this existed; and the face which I loved, which loved me, engraved itself deep in my heart. Standing within the staircase’s inconvenient spiral, one shoulder pressed against the cold stone, I held him tightly in my arms. A gentle heat rose from his wet clothes, from his throat, glimpsed through his open-necked, short-sleeved shirt. He had the magical charm of France, of a very ancient France. I had seduced the being most worthy of inspiring love. As usual, there was scented pomade on his hair.

  “You must go.”

  “We have won now, you know,” he told me.

  He turned his beautiful face towards me. He had learned to kiss; I have never known more tender, more passionate kisses than his; he gave me his brand-new, virgin lips; he was doing this for the first time and putting all his heart into it. When he had gone I stayed on the staircase, leaning against the stone, in the same place where he had tenderly pulled away from my arms. Some of his strength remained on my face, some of his magic; my heart was still beating to the rhythm of love; it would take me several hours to pull myself together, to be myself again.

  I did not light a fire, I dared not eat. I filled a big cauldron with soup and went up to my room. It was raining. In bed, I spent the day pleasantly, with his sweet smell still on my face. All I had to do was close my eyes to bring the most delightful memories to life, and to hear his voice telling me: We have won now, you know. I stayed there all afternoon, nice and warm under my blankets, listening to the sound of the rain, breathing in the smell of the leaves, leaning out of bed to drink soup from a ladle, reading fairy stories. The smell of damp tobacco leaves which impregnated the house made me mildly drunk; the far-off storm thundered dully. It remained both close and distant, unwilling to leave us.

  Evening came. When my priest arrived, the stern look on his face warned me that it was not good news.

  “I don’t know if you realise the danger you are running in seeing the child again,” he said. “He will talk. I am afraid for you; come, I can save you from the vengeance of men, but you must die. For one single night you must disappear from the number of the living and pass over to our side.”

  I saw the desire to kill me cross his eyes. Killing for pleasure, if he killed someone it would be me. Strange night. He took oars and disappeared in the direction of the river, swollen by the rain of the last few days. Should I follow him on to the dark Vézère, which growled beneath the branches? A powerful, swift current ran downstream. Our boat was tied up and thudding dully against the river bank. He waded into the turbulent waters; throwing the chain into the bottom of the boat, he strained to push it into the current, which threatened to capsize it immediately, and flung it back violently under the low branches of the trees where it remained stuck fast. “Come,” he shouted to me, seizing my hand firmly. We climbed into that heavy boat, which I pushed away from the bank with a shove of my oar. He had run to the river which would decide my fate; for I more or less understood this: knowing we were guilty, though not quite knowing what of, he wanted to lead me to death, with the subconscious thought that we would be absolved of our sins if we emerged from this trial alive; indeed, he ran the risk of drowning along with me, which made him innocent of this murder. It would be the river’s judgement, God’s perhaps, a trial by ordeal, which corresponded well with his mentality, his habit of deciding nothing for himself.

  My memory of travelling down that river is as much one of terror as delight, and also, in a way, almost no memory at all, for I was travelling into the realm of my soul and the realm of death. As soon as we were some distance from the bank, the current took hold of the boat which rolled, spun round on itself, danced on short, choppy waves, and almost threw us into the water; although I was kneeling on the bottom of the boat, I strained to hold it in a straight line with the aid of an oar. The Vézère in flood, whipping our boat, proved to be more than dangerous because of the stones and the sandbanks on which we could have foundered. Deep undercurrents lifted up the bows of our boat, which fell back heavily into the water; brisk, slightly lukewarm air hit our faces; we were carried away without being able to do much to direct our course, or grab hold of a branch, since the speed and weight of the boat tore it out of our hands. At any moment, we could be blinded by the trees under which we passed, unseeing.

  The strength of the current, although still considerable, seemed to me to be abating. We were travelling less swiftly on the invisibly lapping waves. The river was growing calmer. I laid the oar across the boat and let it run with the flow of the water. Soon there was silence and a sort of stillness. We drifted gently into the blackness, only light lapping disturbing our slow movement through the shadows, in deep water, under tall cliffs which jutted out to form a vault above our heads. It was so difficult to see anything that we needed a lantern. On the prow, he positioned a helmet from the 1914 war, peppered with holes driven through with a hammer; he filled it with twigs and charcoal which he took from his pockets, and lit it, not without difficulty. And so we continued to sail slowly on; red-hot twigs fell into the water and sizzled for a moment; the holes aerated the helmet quite well, and a bright red blaze, the colour of our burning coals, flamed powerfully around us.

  The flames guttered, then almost went out. The moon rose in a beautiful night sky decked with white, transparent clouds; our helmet, balanced on the pointed prow of our boat, gave off only a humble blue smoke, which floated on the Vézère like a train of mist. A small shudder, a bump; the boat turned its nose slowly downstream, and stayed in the middle of the river, while leaves which floated here and there overtook us little by little. Amid the shadows of the night, in low voices, we discussed our situation. A long pole, thrust into the water, did not touch the bottom. A spring which sang under the rocks emptied into the Vézère. Probably we had foundered on the tip of some block of stone or other which had fallen from the cliff and was just below the surface of the water. My priest lowered himself into the river; with a heave of his shoulder he dislodged our wicked boat; then I saw the line of ridges moving across the sky; we had been taken up again by the current. He swam after me. The mass of water began to tremble, announcin
g the approach of new rapids; I thought it wise to give him a rope, and he tied it around a tree-trunk which our boat had just come alongside. We climbed out; pushing aside the leaves, groping our way, we searched for a shelter against the cold of the night. Our hands encountered dry wood, we lit a fire without really knowing what instinct had led us there in the half-darkness.

  Our flames revealed a vast cave, a chamber even, hewn into the rock, where you could sleep on a sort of platform if you climbed up to it; there were planks there, an extraordinarily dry, powdery earth floor, a real fireplace, stacks of firewood. In front of the fire we stacked up our possessions to form a kind of bed, made up of clothes and blankets which we had brought out with us. The surroundings were quite damp and it would have been rather cold in the realm of the dead if we had not fuelled our fire with fresh wood; he plunged into the depths of the undergrowth; working hard and without respite, he pulled tangled trees towards himself, long branches which he threw at my legs, quickly supplying me with a pile of dry wood which the rocky overhang had protected from the rain.

  With an immense crackling sound and bright flashes of flame, our inferno cast a powerful brilliance over one whole side of the river. He remained standing in front of the fire, a blanket draped over his shoulders, his legs spattered with earth and leaves, saying nothing, deep in thought. He took his knife, cut a deep slash in his wrist and threw blood onto the firewood, which our flames were devouring. We were, to say the least, beyond customary reality, in an altered state whose danger I knew only too well; for I was with a being who was highly unstable, and whose kind of love for me could end very badly. The invincible need to destroy me hardened his face. He glared stubbornly into the fire, his blanket on his shoulders, wrapping part of the front around his legs and his blood-blackened hand. He was thinking about me, I had no doubt about that.