The Serpent of Stars (5 page)

He hasn't completely understood.

But, when it's a man of my age who has chewed this over through the years, all alone, each time adding a bit of his own human experience to his reflection, then there is some chance for the second meaning to light up like a lamp.

One star, one alone. And now, look at the night completely flooded with stars!

There are the powers of the world. That is the secret!

This is what he meant:

“Son, you have heard our pastor. He's told you a beautiful story of the little child who was not received by the hands of midwives, but by the straw, as the beasts are received. He told you that it was a virgin who made him. The beasts are virgins; they do not soil the acts that make life. They make life, simple as that. They go into the bushes, and then they come out with baby sheep and, right away, these babies taste fresh life with their muzzles, and right away, they are heavy with a great wisdom which astonishes men. The crèche, the straw, the cattle, the donkey, the virgin, this birth: among men, this is the birth of a healthy animal. That is the great lesson. That is why men crucified the child.”

To know all that would have helped me, but I didn't know it then, and I played the flute.

But this flute playing, it wasn't by accident that Bouscarle had put the reed to my lips. In this flute was all the knowledge of the sky. It was the reed that's planted in the bank's porous flesh to make fountains spring forth. I planted the flute in the sky. I took the other end in my mouth. And the music was only the noise I made filling myself with sky.

When we reached the mountain, Bouscarle named the seconds-in-command. Ours was a meat-eater from Pontet, a knowledgeable man, nearly as knowledgeable as Bouscarle, except for the simple difference that he didn't know the great words to make the herds start off, and that came from his liking meat nearly raw and being too saturated with blood.

One evening he came over to me, his eyebrows knitted together with worry. He studied the sheep in a peculiar way.

“Son,” he said to me, “go over to Corne-Blanche. You'll find Bouscarle there. Ask him this for me: ‘Have you gotten wind of the planet?' No more. Then, come back and tell me his answer.”

Instead of being scattered all over the grass, our herd was clotted together in big lumps of trembling beasts.

I went, and when it was late, I saw the boss' lantern. He was sitting next to it. The boys of the “Vermeil” pasture were also there, and those who kept watch in the pastures of Norante, all of them, maybe thirty, bent over their staffs, all ears turned toward Bouscarle who breathed not a word.

I was about to speak when someone said to me, “Yes, we know.”

“And so?” I said.

“And so! . . .”

And someone next to Bouscarle shook his head, his forehead low and silent. And I leaned on my stick, too, and I waited like the others.

“Who has hit the beasts?” asked Bouscarle gently.

Someone answered, “Me!”

“Come here.”

It was a heavy-set man from Arles, dark and gray as a cicada.

“I mean,” Bouscarle continued, looking at the man, “did you hit them without just cause?”

The Arlatan said nothing for a moment, and then, “Yes, I hit them without just cause.”

“Then,” said Bouscarle, “go down to the village while there's still time, and stay there.”

“It's as bad as that,” breathed a shepherd next to me. Then he raised his hand to be noticed, and said, “Me, too, I hit them, boss.”

“No, you should have said that a moment ago. I need everyone. I want to save what can be saved, but I need men. If it's true, if you have hit them, take your chances; too bad for you, I'm keeping you here.”

Then he asked, “And the dogs—”

And then, along the embankment of the path where they could be seen as though it were broad daylight because of the moon's reflection on the glaciers, we noticed the dogs running with their heads down toward the valleys.

I returned to my boss to tell him all this and I thought of that shepherd's “It's as bad as that,” and it seemed to me that somehow we must have gotten ourselves into deep trouble of some very strange kind.

I told the shepherd from Pontet what I thought.

He pointed to the sky, but I didn't see anything.

“Remember when the sun set yesterday.”

I tried to remember. Nothing.

“You didn't smell the sulfur?”

“No!”

Then I remembered that the day before I had played my flute just as the sun went down. And I picked up my flute and sniffed the holes. And then, yes, I smelled the sulfur.

“It's the planet,” he said.

 

DAWN ARRIVED like any other. No different, except for our flock, still all clotted together like bad milk, and our dog, who could not stop trembling and wouldn't leave my side. I went to my boss' hut.

“Macimin!” I cried.

But the hut was empty. He had grabbed his blankets, shoulder bag, staff, and flask, and he had taken off. A shiver ran up my spine especially as the dog came to sniff the empty hut, looked up at me, looked at the sheep, and then took two little steps across the grass. The sheep were asleep. The dog took off, extending himself into a long gallop. Then, the sheep stood up. It was understood; they had risen and they
hadn't shaken their heads like sheep just waking up, but instead they tilted their ears to catch the whistling of the grass under the galloping feet of the dog, to trace his route. The dog stopped in his tracks; he sniffed the wind; he tried to lie low, to make his way back toward me along the lower, hidden trail. Then a huge mass of sheep, packed together belly-to-belly, rolled forward to block his path.

I took my staff and started to run, crying, “Fédo! Fédo!” when I heard Bouscarle's voice in my ear, “If you have hit them, too bad for you.”

And I stayed on my hillock to watch.

All the clots of sheep were on the move like clouds in the grass. They ran, making great circles, following a plan they cried out to one another in an entirely new kind of bleat. The panic-stricken dog was dancing about in the thick of them. Finally, they surrounded him, and he knew that his last moment had arrived. He no longer put up a fight, but I saw the sheep close in on him, engulf him, trample him, trample him to death, with the great mindfulness required of a thing that has to be done well.

I ran toward the rocks. From there, you could look down over our whole region and then the “Vermeil” meadow and a bit of Norante. Above, I found the boss stretched out on the ground, his hat over his eyes, and fourteen of our poor men, their lips white with fear.

Because, below, it was like a thunderstorm had struck. A stampede of running sheep filled the valleys. It tore up the fences. It seethed in beasts who leaped against our rocky hill. It ripped up the earth, and it ran in torrents as determined as rushing water. In the midst of this noise, we heard the village below sound its alarm. When night came, the boss lifted his hat. He said to us, “Count the fires.”

We focused our eyes to count the watch fires. There were no longer any more of ours. Far off, on the mountain's large back, there were the other herds from Arles, Crau, Camargue, Albaron. And someone said, “Master, there are the five Crau fires, the three Albaron fires, and ten for the Camargue.”

“Watch them carefully,” the boss told him.

He stared wide-eyed until it hurt. He stayed there a good minute, and then he cried, “Master, master, they're going out, they're going out, no more Albaron fires, no more fires for the Crau, no more for the Camargue. Nothing's left, master, nothing, they've all gone out.”

The boss lay down again, and covered his eyes with his hat. As though he were speaking to himself, we heard him say, “Over there, too. So, it's the great revolt.”

 

So that was what I saw, me, a little shepherd, something seen only once in a hundred years, this revolt of the beasts, on an order that came from the sky, with the smell of sulfur. This was what I saw, and this was what I did.

I took up my flute, and I played very softly, for myself, I played this fear in my heart and the great voice of the mystery. That night, throughout the world, there was a terrible noise of sheep bleating and of bells from the church towers, of wooden houses cracking, and the cries of men, and the cries of women, and a great angry stream which hurtled down the steps of the mountains.

Bouscarle said, ‘Play for us all.”

Then, I took a good mouthful of air, and with all the fullness of my breath, I began to play the flute for us all.

IT WAS getting late. Only a little meadow of sun remained up high on the hill between the evening overflowing into the valleys and the sky gleaming like new iron. We climbed toward Césaire's. He was there in front of his clearing, his arms dangling at his sides, his hands heavy with clay. The kiln was smoking.

In a little grass nest, the shepherd carried his sheep milk cheeses tucked in his arm.

“I saw the sheep pass by,” said Césaire, between mouthfuls. “They made the day tremble. They poured over the whole road.”

I spoke, too, of the herds from that morning, that great flood of animals running through the straits of Mirabeau and their stop near the fountain.

The shepherd listened. Then he asked for the postal calendar. He looked at the card, pointing to the days with his finger. Then he said, “This is the day, or rather, the night, this is the night. Césaire, we ought to leave.”

Césaire looked at the pale woman, the red-haired girl and the children, then me.

“And him?” he said.

“Him? We'll take him along.”

I believed we were leaving for a gathering of the shepherds. The haste with which everything had been decided, the slow advice of the white woman, “Take your coat, take along the blanket, let him have grandfather's coat,” left me a little nervous in the end. Then the shepherd looked at the county map on the other side of the calendar and I saw his finger trace far into the white of the back country.

Then Césaire said, “We'll have to borrow Chabrillan's horse, and so we'll have to leave right away because if we don't, the farm gates will be closed and we'll lose more time when there's none to spare.”

Then I asked softly, “Are we going far?”

“We're going there!” said the shepherd.

I looked at where his finger pointed. It was the Mallefougasse plateau.

I only knew of the Mallefougasse because I had heard talk of it. All the stallholders I had kept company with before finding shelter under the thick, leafy branches of Césaire and the shepherd had spoken to me of that country at one time or another. Each time, it was the end of the world. But I especially remember Pierrinet the horse dealer, when he placed his hand sideways, half on the café table, half off it, and what he said to me, “Mallefougasse is like that. It's still a little bit attached to the earth. Although. . . ! But, above, below, it's all sky. It's like something stuck out into the sky. The sky is all around that land like a sucking mouth. Do you understand?”

I had understood then. I understood much better now. I understood that finger resting on the flimsy calendar map, Césaire who was borrowing a horse, and everything that was going to carry me, rolled in the grandfather's coat, toward that land the sky sucked like a mouth.

At the Chabrillans', the gates were closed.

“I knew it,” said Césaire, “when you're in a hurry, it's always like that.”

We banged on the gate with our fists and our feet; that set the iron chains clanging. We cried out, “Bartholomé! Bartholomé! Of all the luck! Are you going to wake up or not?”

The farm went on sleeping, eyes shut tight. But the dogs howled in the yard.

“All the same, we're making a hell of a noise,” said the shepherd. “What if they aren't there?”

“That can't be it,” said Césaire, “there'd have to be some disaster. They have a little girl. They wouldn't have left her alone.”

He bellowed once more, “Bartholomé!” and then he added hoarsely, “Christ, I've done in my vocal chords!”

But this time, a little line of light shone around a closed shutter. The shutter began to open.

“Who's there?” demanded a woman's voice.

“Ah!” cried Césaire, relieved. “Is that you, Anaïs? What a lot of sleep for such a little woman! Wake up Bartholomé.”

“Who are you?”

“Ah, Anaïs, come on, unplug your ears. It's Césaire from the pottery. You know who it is, Bartholomé!”

“He isn't here.”

“Where is he?”

“He went to the village!”