The Serpent of Stars (12 page)

He takes three steps, he disengages himself from the semi-circle of the elements. Slowly, he kneels; he lies down belly to the earth; he embraces the earth with his outspread arms. We hear him say:

 

 

He remains for a brief moment not saying anything, waiting for a response that doesn't come and he cries his great cry of defiance:

I HAVE not spoken of the music for some time. Never did it stop playing a part in the drama. Never did it stop being another drama beside the drama, full of reflections, in which leaves became foliage and the image of one hill became the rolling sea of the whole hilly country. During the last scene, when the narrator kneels and lies down on the earth, the most beautiful song of rejoicing breaks out, the most beautiful song of the world, the most charged with hope, but the task that I had imposed upon myself, which was to capture it word for word, to follow the text with all my attention, prevented that swaying abandon which alone could have carried me through the images of that music. Nevertheless, I still have a few of them under my eyelids; they are there, as hard as grains of sand or as soft as tears.

 

WE UNTIED the mare. Already, the herds were heading off; already, far off, above, in the Sisteron passes, the tide of beasts sounded like the great rolling waters.

Césaire went off to find water for the mare to drink. The little sorceress lay down in the bottom of the cart. The two of us, Barberousse and I,
stayed there, with no will to do anything, bruised and softened from all sides, bathed in the bath of life like that god at the beginning who washed himself with the sky, and we watched the trembling lantern of dawn lighting up.

The aeolian harp players passed close to us, returning from their heights. They spoke loudly, with voices full of young laughter. Barberousse recognized among them the voice of a friend and cried, “Greetings, Boromé!”

“And who is that?” said Boromé, stopping himself mid-conversation.

Then he moved forward, recognized Barberousse, and they embraced heartily, beard to beard. Despite his laugh, Boromé was also an old shepherd, gray-haired, skin all hollowed by the scars of time.

“You get the smallest share,” I said to him.

He answered me, “Why is that?”

“Because you harp players are so far away, up above, and you can't hear the beautiful speeches.”

He said to me, “No, don't think that. Shares! Who's to say who gets the biggest share! We are alone on top of the hill, with our sounds. We say what we want to say, without words.

“We look at the sky. And just now, high up in the middle of the night, I saw a great serpent of stars! It's enough to imagine.”

A complete translation of Scene IV of the
Shepherds' Play

T
HE GREAT SILENCE HAS COME. The narrator is without words, there, between the fires. He has just spoken the words which must bring about man's birth. The play needs a man with his terrors, one of those from before the waters, wide eyes trembling like bees, mouth open over his ecstasy, his fear and his drool. And if such a man is present, it's only by chance. It takes a shepherd with a heavy heart to do this man, and you don't always find him because that heaviness of heart (as Barberousse explained to me) comes from the sediment misfortune leaves in man. Many misfortunes, much sediment, and a heavy heart.

Great silence. Here and there, a ram's bell rings. A shepherd stands up. He doesn't move forward into the stage clearing. He remains in the
middle of the audience. The narrator has heard the noise of the shepherd who has stood. He turns his way. He greets him in silence, raising his left hand. The shepherd greets the narrator, also raising his left hand, and then, shrugging his shoulders, he sheds his heavy homespun cloak.

 

THE MAN (He cries slowly, in a high-pitched voice).
Lord, I am naked, and you have tossed out handfuls of fleece and foliage.

 

THE NARRATOR (who plays the role of the world. He speaks in a solemn voice and a muted gargoulette that accompanies him lowers the tone further still).
And man will be upon me like a mountain among mountains; he will flow with forests, he will walk, dressed in all the hair of the beasts.

 

THE MAN.
Lord, I am naked, and your pity has bent over the water and not over me. And you have given the water, with its beautiful green skin, that garb
of grasses and trees, and you have told that skin that it would make the spray, and your sun lights that spray with a higher joy than the most wide open flowers.

 

THE NARRATOR.
He will walk over the waters.

 

THE MAN.
Lord, I am naked, and you have bound me wrist and ankle and you have thrown me to the cold earth like a kid to be slaughtered.

 

THE NARRATOR.
Around him, there are good trees and grass as thick as clouds, and he lives in a long morning. The flowers answer each other from hillside to hillside and on the hills, there are flights of pigeons like smoke from dry wood.

 

THE MAN.
Lord, Lord, I am bound like the beasts and you have tied my elbows behind my back, and my heels are bound, and my chest is offered up, and here is my neck, bare and hot, offered up, with all its poor life running up and down it like a mad little mouse.

 

THE NARRATOR.
Man! Freer than smoke itself, if only you understood your great liberty!

 

The shepherd who took the part of the man lowers his arms in a great disheartened gesture. Those around him pick up his heavy homespun cloak, stand up, and cover him. He lets them. He remains motionless for a moment, standing there, doubled in thickness since he is clothed, big as a rock. You can only see the white circle of his face. He pulls his cloak tight; he sits down; again he becomes a man among men.