The Serpent of Stars Read online

  And I added to my letter a word to Barberousse. It was in a visiting card envelope and on the bottom I wrote, “For the shepherd.” I said to him, “Barberousse, so here’s how it stands. We must not miss the shepherds’ thing again. You talked to me about sheep, and the revolt, and your master who is buried in Saint-Martin-de- Crau. That filled me with longing. I have written to Césaire for him to watch for the man with the red scarf. Césaire, as you know, is a good man, but he has his work. He can’t spend all his time watching the road. I need to be sure; that’s why I’m writing to you, too. You, you get wind of things in the air. You said to me (you’ll remember), ‘The eagle’s shadow wakes you’ and then, ‘there, it’s the same thing.’ I want to ask you for a favor. Watch for me. I need to be there when the shepherds do their play. I’ll tell you why. It’s because I want to copy down what they say on paper, and then afterwards show it to people to make them see that shepherds aren’t just shepherds, but, as you say, the masters of the beasts. My warmest greetings.”

  Those letters calmed my anxiousness for three days. Then, Lardeyret who drives a stage cart between Manosque and Simiane came to bring me the response. It was, “Good, count on it” on Césaire’s part and, on the part of Barberousse, “That’s fine.”

  I would have liked something more definite.

  I would wake in the middle of the night. It seemed to me that the days had run from everywhere like water through a basket. The calendar was downstairs in the kitchen. To go down, to check it, was to make noise on the steps, knock over chairs, upset the whole house. I remained sitting up in bed. Let’s see, yesterday, Thursday. It’s February; the wind is in the chimney, the bare branch of the rosebush scratching the window. Until June 24th, there was time. February! The sheep were in their shelters, in Crau, and the shepherds were playing lotto in the cafés in Arles and Salon. Sleep, you have time.

  Other times, in the thick of night, nothing indicated the season. Memories of past Junes were there alive all around me, the noise of watering in the fields, the smell of sap rising in the fig trees, the big leaves and the wind. All that so faint; I stopped breathing. The silence deceived my ears with its eternal drone.

  I wrote another letter to Césaire, another note to Barberousse.

  “Watch out,” I said, “It’ll soon be time. It’s May, I’ve already seen some of them.”

  And Lardeyret came back with the answers:

  “Don’t worry.”

  One morning, I tore off the page for May 31st from the calendar. There underneath was the month of June, as well hidden as a green lizard.

  The first day didn’t budge. The second day, a little uneasiness drifted in a long wind under a brand new sky, but the third day the tide of sheep overflowed from the hills to the south and the western passes at the same time, and the great froth-browed herds made their way into our country.

  At last, a telegram was delivered to me, opened, all torn and crumpled, read by at least the hundred or so Jeans of Manosque. It was simply addressed to Monsieur Jean. It said, “Forward!” and it was signed Césaire.

  “Yes,” I said to the carrier, “yes, it’s for me, don’t worry, I know what it is.”

  “Sure?”

  “Sure!”

  And I took my good curved walking stick. The sky played ball with that great noise of herds and all the echoes from the hills trembled with bleating.

  They had taken care of everything. Barberousse waited for me above Saint-Magloire in the open oaks. He had brought his long willow wood horn, and he sounded a good long and well-blown note in the direction of the pottery.

  He explained to me, “First, it’s to tell him, ‘be ready,’ and then it’s to tell him, ‘relax, he’s here.’ What worries we’ve had!”

  And, in the clearing, the wagon was all ready and on the point of setting out to sea. Césaire was up on the seat and holding onto a little black-and-white mare with both fists, her back end dancing around and splashing the prow of the cart with her long tail shivering like rippling water. She clattered her four hooves impatiently.

  We quickly settled in. Barberousse went to the back, on the blankets. I had the grandfather’s coat again. I was next to the pilot, and this time we took with us the young sorceress with the yellow eyes.

  The departure was so sudden that all four of us let out an “Oh!” This cry sounded shrilly in the mare’s ear and she shot off at full speed like a fish, and already the foam from the grass spurted out along beside us.

  This first swim into the hill’s surf I will remember all my life. All along that wild slope descending toward Saint-Michel and over which Césaire led us by shortcuts, our wagon, its sides too high, swayed right and left through the waves of thyme. We hung on to the stays.

  Sometimes, a “Watch your heads!” from Césaire made us crouch down into the hold, and we passed full speed through the foam of a chestnut tree, through the lower branches.

  Sometimes in the middle of flat country, a bit reassured by our wake stretched out like a thread, a high wave lifted us up to make us touch the sky. We fell back down, all askew, every joint creaking, and I said to myself, “In case of shipwreck, you jump onto the tiller and you stay there!”

  Finally, the two wheels landed level on the hard road. Césaire stopped the mare, wiped his forehead, took up the reins again, and asked, “What time is it?”

  Oh! This time we were rich in navigational instruments.

  Barberousse rummaged around in his jacket and drew out his big watch.

  “Eight o’clock,” he said.

  “We’re okay,” said Césaire. And then, “Avanti!”

  And with a loop of the reins, he stung the mare’s rear.

  NIGHT came.

  We sliced through the village of Ongles at a trot-gallop, extended and solid. The milestone at the turn sparked under our iron wheels. People came out of the café to look at our cloud of dust. From there, we skirted around a horn of Lure, into a little valley which raised its high wave of bare rocks in warning. At Saint-Etienne, we stopped under the plane trees to light our lantern. It was just a bottle with a hole in the bottom and a candle stuck inside it. Barberousse held it out above us.

  We followed along Lure, but by a snaking route that wove round all the contours of the high hill like twines of ivy. The breath of the high ground cut across us with sudden gusts of wind as cold and solid as blocks of ice. Barberousse used his whole body to protect the candle, and then he extended a wing of his greatcoat, and we heard the sail clap and the mare galloped. My belly was all tickly from the rises. The swell of the open sea carried us along as its waves of earth unrolled.

  A detour faced us into the wind at the mouth of a valley. The candle went out. The mare, who’d gotten a blast of wind right in her nostrils, stopped dead against the darkness. Césaire tacked gently into the night. I hung onto the sides.

  “Prepare the matches.”

  The wind whipped us on the sides, two turns of the wheels, and then it hit us right on the back.

  “Light them.”

  And we had to face the stampede once again.

  We had gone past Cruis.

  “What time is it?” asked Césaire.

  “Hold the candle, my girl.”

  Barberousse fished around and found his watch. We had not stopped galloping.

  “A little after nine.”

  “Good. Avanti! ”

  “Give me the candle, my girl.”

  One last hill threw us right into the open sky.

  “Oh!” cried Césaire and Barberousse.

  “Oh!” I cried.

  “Oh!” said the girl softly against my ear.

  The mare, held hard, reared up like struck water. We had arrived!

  As far as you could see, the heavy sea of herds was lapping the black earth. It began there, under the mare’s feet, and it extended over the whole of Mallefougasse. Despite the darkness, you could see it. All the stars had descended upon the earth; they were the eyes of the sheep lit up by the watchfires, by t
he four bonfires, by all the Saint-Jean fires that illuminated the countryside from here to the distant mountains of the Mées, and of Peyruis, Saint-Auban, and Digne. You could hear the last shepherds to arrive whistling and the bells of the rams and the mules, and far off in the distance, toward Sisteron, the clusters of dogs howling, necks extended, into the moonless night. . . .

  “Pause! Pause! Pause!” sang the shepherds to the sheep.

  Men ran by, hands raised toward the new herds. The animals lay down in a mass around them. You could hear them kneeling down on the ground, crushing the hyssop. The whole heavy batter of herds turned slowly like a whirlpool of mud.

  “Fédo, Fédo,” sang the shepherds, to reassure the ewes.

  On the crest of the hill, someone tried the aeolian harps, then tightened the keys. A cord broke and the moan traveled on the wind to the depths of the county, toward the Durance lowlands. Men’s voices called for strings. The tympon players played their bright scales, and then blew the warning notes, and a shiver of fear like wind on the sea raised the waves of beasts again. Young shepherds carried tubs of water. One of them, with the lantern, walked backwards, lighting the way. A little lost harmonica sounded in a juniper.

  “Téou, Téou, Téou!” said the shepherds to calm the beasts.

  Everything fell silent.

  That “téou,” the word of peace, sang itself through the whole expanse. Afterwards, there was silence, and then the voice of a few masters, and then the great silence.

  Someone tried the music conductor’s whistle. The aeolian harps murmured. Someone whistled. Silence.

  Césaire had tied up the mare. As an extra precaution, he had hobbled her legs with a blanket.

  “On a night like this, you never know.”

  We walked toward the clearing.

  The shepherds were sitting all around. Despite the two hundred men and the hundred thousand beasts, there was so little noise that you could hear us coming. Heads turned toward us; someone made room. I squatted down in the folds of my coat. My arms shook. I took out my notebook and pencils. Barberousse gave me a board to write on.

  Four huge fires lit up and defined the large stage of grass and earth.

  Right in the middle, a man was standing. He was waiting for what would flow from his heart. I remember that he was a tall, thin man, one who saw things, who feasted on visions. His nose turned into a bird’s beak under the fire’s high flames. He was wearing a red scarf on his head, tied gypsy-fashion.

  Suddenly he raised his hand to greet the night. A rumbling flowed from the aeolian harps. The muffled flutes sang like springs.

  “The worlds,” said the man, “were in the god’s net like tuna in the madrague . . .”

  You could have heard him on the other sides of the earth and the sky.

  IV

  I’VE BEEN ASKED MANY TIMES—every time I relate this shepherds’ play—if this ceremony was part of some esoteric tradition. I don’t know. I don’t believe that it was a ceremony. I’m the one who says “shepherds’ plays; ” they say, “We’re going to perform.” All the same, there are arguments for and against. To find out the truth, you would have to go stay with them through the long months in the high summer pastures, get on familiar terms with them, share their breadcrusts rubbed with garlic, and take part in those long tales of summer nights. If all goes well, by next year, I’ll have untangled the mystery. I now have a friend among the true masters of the beasts. It’s Vénérande, the head shepherd from the Saint-Trubat farm, and it’s agreed that next season, I’ll go up to spend the long months with him.

  So, for me, and for the moment, I believe that it’s simply a game, a pastime, but the pastime of the masters of beasts. All the rest, everything that Barberousse could say about it, who’s getting old, who’s a dreamer, and who, I know, is capable of falling under the simple spell of a fountain, all the rest lies under the shadow of clouds. There is, of course, the Sardinian . . .

  But, as for the Sardinian, let me explain. The Sardinian—that thin man in the red scarf from whom the whole game spatters like water shaken from a dog—the Sardinian, he’s the author. He’s the midwife of images. Moreover, he is, I know, a remarkable midwife for difficult ewes. He has long and nervous hands, as delicate as little fish, and if you had to give him all the lambs he brought to life in the furrow of his two hands, he would be richer than the richest proprietors. For the images, for the plays, it’s the same. They are all there around him, pregnant and heavy with dreams, with the beautiful coil of the serpent of stars, and, in the midst of them, he’s the midwife of the play. He’s the one who delivers the play and who makes sure it’s born completely new each time, because each time, it is born completely new, and year after year, the same words are never repeated, nor the same roles, and each time, the play has that odor of the blood and salt of newborn lambs, because everyone makes it up. The Sardinian, who is the narrator, may keep a narrative thread in his hand, always the same, that’s possible, but those around him, those shepherds who are like a seated shadow and whom you don’t see until the moment they move forward between the fires, those shepherds are never the same. Maybe you would say what Barberousse said to me.

  “That one, it’s five years now that he’s been playing. That one, I’ve seen him twice. Those over there are new, but they help the Glaude master, and he speaks so well that he must have taught them their parts.”

  No, Barberousse, the same shepherd never sits at the edge of the play twice. You tell me, “It’s five years for that one,” yes, but he’s five years older, five years richer. In that time, he has experienced things on the world’s wide back, he isn’t the same. He won’t say what he said five years ago, or what he said last year, but all that he’s learned in this new year. You know, Barberousse, dreams are the shepherd’s savings. And, very soon, he will spend this year’s savings like a boy on holiday.

  Do you want me to tell you?

  One fine day—one fine night, rather—the Sardinian will come again to raise his hand in greeting, and then maybe in the shadow’s wide circle there will be a young shepherd, yes, Barberousse, a young shepherd, full to bursting. And when someone calls, “the Sea,” or “the River” or “the Woods,” it’ll be that young shepherd who comes forward to speak. And you will all listen, because you are masters and you know what is beautiful. Because you are masters of the beasts and you know first of all how to be masters of yourselves when your self-love or your spitefulness want to take over. And the young shepherd will speak so well that he will become the future master. The Sardinian will give him the red woolen scarf and the great herd of your dreams will flow behind him, toward other pastures.

  HOWEVER, seeing this Mallefougasse plateau, these black lands clawed by the rain, these rocks that a sand plane has worn to flat tables, these trees in their homespun cloaks turning their backs on the sky’s anger, this solitude, this great voice, the spirit is immediately seized with the noble sadness and the memory of high places.

  The grass is of a green gold and, when the wind ruffles it, it discovers its age underneath, as old as the earth. Blue schist, completely bare, creaks under the sun in fits and starts and suddenly cascades down to the road, making all the echoes ring. Then everything falls still. The torrent of stone stops. The schist creaks. Mallefougasse lives a life which is not vegetable. The trees there have learned to keep quiet. It freely lives the life of earth and stones. Under that light curtain of flesh, blue rocks, clay-pits, quivering eyelids of sand, throbs the interior of the world.

  Everything here is religion. There, in the crushed grass, is the litter of the gods!

  The little village is made up of four houses lying level with the ground and a barn called “the lookout” because it raises the sly vent of its pulley window over a bank. The other walls are flat and windowless. The stones, unplastered, are eaten away by the wind. The doors have thick bolts, all glistening with oil, which slip into their cylinders like fat black rats, silent and solid. The people from here have that long unwaveri
ng look that goes to the core of things, through men, women, the hills, and the depths of the sky.

  Thus, everything is ready on this high overhang of the earth to serve as altar and sacrificial stone, and yet, the shepherds have chosen it for other, more simple reasons.

  In Crau, of course, the sheep have plenty of room, and then, there they are, in the worst of the heat along the narrow roads, squeezed together, running as one thick body, like water, with no air around them.

  And so, they move through the areas where land is valuable, where, on plots the size of postage stamps, you can make money growing leeks, parsley, peaches, apricots, grapes. Just try letting them spread out there! You’ll find a shotgun exploding in your ear. Thus, you go along your flat way from one dust cloud to another, without ever stepping beyond the telegraph poles, with only one desire nevertheless, to reach the land, yes, the land! The land of leeks, parsley, peach trees, that isn’t land anymore. It’s so mixed with night soil, manure, droppings, and dung that it has become human rottenness, and they can have it! No, the land, the great land, our own, the land that remained after the flood, has dried itself off and there it is, the land where there’s room for everyone.

  And Mallefougasse is it!

  What’s more, when you’re there, you’re at a point where you’ve come more than a hundred kilometers along the way, and you have more than a hundred kilometers left to go. So you have the right to rest. Nothing screams in you if you lie down by the side of the road. It’s a stopping point, and it suits us just right. It’s like a great pool. The water of herds fills it at leisure, laps a bit, and then sleeps. But what is most beautiful is the great breadth of it. You don’t have to pay attention to this earth like a bit of the night, to the fearful trees, to the free movements of the wind, no, the sheep are at ease. They are there in the open, bathing in the air on all sides. The animals’ sweat smokes as if someone had just set fire to the hill. The bees who have been prisoners in their wool since the Châ-teauneuf hives set themselves free, flying awkwardly in this too pure air and falling into the fleece of thyme and wormwood. The ewes give birth. The males go off to push their snouts straight into the north wind, filling their brains with the fresh air until they shake off the surplus with a sneeze that leaves them trembling with drunkenness. All the bad folk are far off.