He straightens his stocky frame. He takes two steps, and his broad hand moves toward the lamp. He adjusts the wick. The lamp quiets down.
•
“And what if it isn’t true,” Jaume thinks, all of a sudden. He’s tried to accustom himself to Janet’s view of the world, and the more he thinks about it, the more he has his doubts.
“What if it’s just a lie to trick me, to take me in even further?”
He listens to the languid life of the trees around him, but it seems more hostile than friendly.
There’s grass growing in the little square — tufts of yellow grass, same as on the hill. Their square’s on its way to becoming part of the untamed hill again, the way it was before. The road to the flatlands is almost completely blocked by a huge, broken-down clematis. In a less unsettled time they would have quickly cleared the road. The world of trees and grasses is slyly attacking the Bastides.
“Tenderness! He said ‘Tenderness.’ Like it’s that easy.”
But if you don’t go at it with your spade, if you don’t go at it with your axe, if you don’t clear a space around you, if you let the blade fall away from your hands just one time, then the whole mass of green surges over your feet and right up over your walls. It turns everything back into dust. Jaume raises his head. In front of him, on the other side of the square, a shadow slides into the shade of the oak: a wild boar! A wild boar out in broad daylight in the Bastides!
The beast barely conceals itself underneath the foliage. It’s headed for the fountain. It sniffs the empty basin. It scratches at the ground with its hoof.
Jaume’s rifle is right there against the wall. All he needs to do is reach out his hand. Jaume doesn’t reach out his hand. This is something new and disturbing.
The wild boar has seen the man. Calmly, it chooses its resting spot and sprawls out in the dust. The rifle stays against the wall. Jaume, with his forehead thrust forward, his hands clasped between his knees, looks straight ahead as if he weren’t seeing a thing. And the last thing he’s thinking about is the gun. He’s afraid. Fear has pierced him like a splinter, and his whole body hurts around it. He’s afraid. That’s why he hasn’t stretched his hands out toward his gun. He’s no longer thinking about his power as a human, he’s thinking that he’s afraid, and he’s shrinking back inside his fear, like a nut into its shell.
The beast grunts as it rubs its back. It gets up, sniffs around, shakes itself heavily, and then, at an easy trot, takes off again into the woods.
•
It’s a beautiful afternoon. The moon pebble rolls along the sands of the sky. At the same time, down toward Pierrevert, an odd, reddish mist is rising.
•
Jaume gets up. Over there at Gondran’s the window is open. That white mound under the sheets, that’s Janet.
“Aah, Janet, now I really see it — the harm that you do. It’s right in front of me, like a mountain. You’re on the other side of the barricades, with earth, trees, animals — all lined up against us. You’re a dirty swine. My wife hanged herself up in the attic one night while I was out chasing hare. It was you who did that. Not with your hands, you can be sure, but with your tongue, your whore of a tongue. You have all the sweet taste of evil in your mouth…”
Jaume draws nearer. In front of the window, a fig tree forks into two twisted limbs. He climbs into the crotch. From here he can see inside the room.
Janet is stiff. His gaze threads through the shadows right to the wall where the post-office calendar hangs. He’s mumbling in a low voice. Is he by himself?
No.
Next to him on the bed: the cat.
•
Someone’s scrambling across the rocks on the hillside. Who? Maurras. Elbows tucked in, head lowered — driven by what? He’s breathing so hard you can hear it from here.
As soon as he gets to the square he throws himself, screaming, at Jaume. But before he’s able to speak, he stands there gesticulating, red in the face, streaming with sweat. And as soon as he opens his mouth he takes a gulp of air so huge that it chokes his words up inside him.
Finally he gets it out:
“Fire, fire…”
He stretches his arm toward the hill.
That mist they saw a few minutes ago, now it fills the sky. You can look at the sun right through it — round and ruddy as an apricot.
Jaume’s moustache gives a twitch. He licks his finger and holds it up in the air: “The wind’s coming from there, quick…”
They race from house to house, bang on doors with feet, hands, shoulders, yelling.
•
“Whoaaa, whoa, I’m here!” cries Arbaud as he tumbles downstairs, tying up his woolen belt. Gondran, Marguerite, Madelon, the valet, Ulalie, all of them burst out of their doorways in a rush of skirts and corduroys. Their faces are pocked by the heightened color of their eyes and the gaping pits of their mouths. Babette opens her bedroom window: “What’s happening, what on earth is happening now?”
“The fire, the fire!”
Maurras is hopping up and down, between his mother and Gondran: “… it’s swallowed up Hospitaliers woods, and farther, toward Les Collines, it’s all over, burnt to the ground, nothing left. When I got up to the Espel heights and saw all of this… ah me, good God, good God!”
“And Garidelle?”
“It’s headed there.”
“And Gaude?”
“It’s burning it all up.”
“Son of a whore!”
•
Jaume is holding back a little from the others. He’s a bit off to the side, on his own. He feels himself growing tall and solid like a tree. All at once, his heart has been freed of dread. He listens to it beating, deep down inside himself, naked and exposed, beating away with its precious cargo of blood.
“Good, this time we know where it’s coming from. We see it for what it is, and we know what we have to do. It could have been a lot worse. We’re ready for it. I’m ready for it, yes, I am. Things are going well now, things go well from the moment you know what you’re dealing with.”
•
Really, the air is like an aromatic syrup that’s been thickened with odors and heat.
•
Jaume reaches them in a single stride. With his right hand on Maurras’s shoulder and his left on Gondran’s, he stands between them, like a tree with sturdy branches: “All the children — out of here.
“Arbaud, get your little girl over to Gondran’s. They’ll put her in the back bedroom. Ulalie, go and help Babette. Ma Madelon, you go to Gondran’s too. Everybody to Gondran’s. Get going. Don’t split up, so we’ll know where you are if we need you. And on top of that, if you’re all together you won’t be afraid.”
“Now for us: Arbaud, get your axe and your spade.
“Maurras — your spade, and your pitchfork too.
“Gondran — your axe, some rope, and your flail.
“And you, boy, you come with us. Run to the house, grab my two axes, the big one and the small one too. They’re under the workbench.”
•
The women run by.
“Babette, hey, Babette, watch out for the kid’s blanket.”
“Mother, get something to cover yourself with.”
“Don’t stand in the way there, kid, get a move on.”
•
Windows open up:
“Father, did you take the key to the armoire?”
“Get going, get going, quick,” says Jaume.
“Father, the key to the armoire… the key?… Father?”
“What?”
“The key to the armoire?”
“Behind the clock, behind the glass dome.”
Doors bang:
“The axes, boy?”
“Can’t find them.”
“Under the workbench, like I told you, you little scoundrel…”
“Arbaud, have you got it all?”
“I’ve got my billhook too.”