•
Suddenly the door opens and slams back against the wall. The women turn around in unison: Jaume is standing on the threshold.
Silence. They hear a cup roll from the table, fall, and shatter.
“Oh, Jaume,” goes Babette.
Ulalie comes forward and touches her father’s face.
“What, what’s the matter with me?”
One side of Jaume’s walrus moustache is completely burned off. His eyes are gleaming in the midst of soot and sweat. He’s lost his jacket; one sleeve of his shirt has been torn off, and you can see all of his sinewy arm, where tendons thick as fingers snake between tufts of white hair.
“And Aphrodis?”
“And Gondran?”
“They’re all right, they’re all right. I left them on the bank of the Neuf. Over there, it’s gone out. I came to get coffee, brandy, bread, a bit of everything. If you still have some omelet left, wrap it up for me in a piece of paper. Give me a bit of ham too. Now it’s taken off at Les Ubacs. That’s bad — completely exposed to the wind. I caught sight of it on my way over. In the thick of all that smoke I didn’t know where I was anymore. Let’s hurry. I’m going back.
“No, no bottles. Where would you want me to put them? I don’t want to have to carry them in my hands the whole way. Fill up the jug, stick the casserole lid on it, it’s the right size. Don’t go out. You have no idea where you’re headed in these hills, it’s catching everywhere. Stay here, stay together. Either Gondran or I will be back by dark.”
He leans forward toward Marguerite and asks gently, “Your father? He hasn’t said anything?”
Her full, flushed, moon-like face lifts up, with its pretty, round, blue eyes, blue like the spaces in the foliage of trees, and there’s nothing behind them.
“No, why?”
When he’s ready to leave, all harnessed up with shoulder bags and knapsacks, his jug, and his basket in hand, he changes his mind: “Ulalie, do you have your scissors? Cut this off for me,” he says, pointing to the remaining half of his moustache, “it’s bothering me.”
•
Near the watering trough he runs across Gagou.
“Aah, you good-for-nothing, get moving!”
Gagou angles alongside him, on a slant, like a dog sidling up to a whip.
“Hey, don’t be afraid. In the name of the devil! Here, carry this.”
He hands him the water jug, and they take off.
•
And so, panting gleefully now in step with Jaume’s elongated strides, Gagou has entered into the vengeful heart of the high country.
They follow the valley along the side of the slope. In every direction, the smoke is roiling and crackling. You can see the ground you’re walking on for about fifty feet around, and for six feet above your head. But that’s it. Beyond that, nothing but smoke.
As you walk along, a shrub looms here and there through the veil, passes, disappears. Now and then a panic-stricken bird plummets down, grazes the ground, flexes itself to get its strength back, and launches again into the murky mass that flows like a river in place of the sky.
Jaume is keeping an eye on the idiot.
“Hey, Gagou, don’t go down, it’s bad there, follow me — here.”
He points to the spot just behind him, and Gagou obediently latches on to his heels.
Suddenly, a long knife of flame cuts through the smoke to their left. A pine thrashes wildly, crackles, twists, crashes down in a shower of sparks. One of them bursts into flame in the dry grass.
“Gagou, you son of a whore, give it everything you’ve got, let’s climb up.”
They tackle the hill on a slant. Three paces higher up, and they’re engulfed in smoke. Completely. Jaume flings his hand back, grabs Gagou’s arm on the fly, and pulls him along.
“Get a move on, kid.”
It smells damnably of burning. You can hear the pinecones crackling and bursting. Could it be burning up ahead there, too?
Two large hares, as hard as rocks, hurtle in between Jaume’s legs. Next thing you know, you hear them squeal down below, when they reach the knife edge of the flame.
Maurras stands alone on the hill. Alone beside a tall, robust, gleaming pine. The tree ruffles its dense, green plumage and sings. The trunk has arched itself into the prevailing wind… and then, with a strain, has raised its reddish arms, thrust its fine greenery into the sky, and stayed there. It sings mysteriously, in a low voice.
Maurras has looked at the pine, then at the smoke that’s rising from the bushes below. He’s done this instinctively, without reflection. He’s said to himself: “Not that one. No, it won’t get hold of that one.”
And he’s started to hack away around it.
In one fell swoop, earth has erupted in anger. The shrubs fought back for a moment, cursing, but then the flame reared up and crushed them under the soles of its bluish feet. It danced, the flame, crying with joy, but as it danced — the sly devil — it crept right down to the junipers, who were completely defenseless. In no time at all they were consumed, and they were still crying out while the flames, now out on flat, open ground, leapt across the grasses.
And now it’s no longer a dancer. It’s naked. Its reddened muscles are twisting. Its heavy breathing scorches a hole in the sky. You can hear the bones of the scrubland cracking under its feet.
Maurras hacks to the left and to the right, in front and behind, then takes a leap backward.
Suddenly, they’re face to face — Maurras and the flame. There they are, dancing again, facing one another, jostling, backing up, rushing at one other, tearing each other apart, swearing…
“You goddamned gutless coward…”
And, out of the corner of his eye, Maurras checks on the gleaming pine.
But the flame’s fighting like a trickster.
Flexing the backs of its thighs, it leaps as though it wants to let go of earth once and for all. Across its slender body, you can see the entire hill, scorched. It’s already gotten into the pine and it’s gutting it.
“Swine!” Maurras yells, and he jumps back into the smoke.
The ground falls away under his feet. He races at full tilt. In a flash, his spine becomes a fiery patch. The muzzle of the blaze pants after him. The flame leaps over the ridge. To his left the smoke settles, dense and motionless, like a circular stone. A shadow leaps out of it, coughing and spitting. Two curses.
“Jaume, it’s you?”
“Hey, so it’s burning up top too?”
“Everywhere. We’ve got to get a move on. The only gap left is Les Bournes.”
Which means they’re going to have to race for at least half a mile through the twists and turns of the choked valley.
It’s no time for joking.
Jaume ditches his basket, makes sure he still has the bottle of brandy in his pocket, and heads off.
But what about Gagou?
In midflight, Jaume pulls up.
“Gagou, Gagou…”
Up above, the gleaming pine crashes down in a wonderland of sparks.
“Gagou…”
A bank of smoke collapses and rolls downwards.
Never mind…
In the end, he must have slipped away too. Jaume resumes his muscular, hunter’s pace.
•
Out of the land of smoke, across the light-colored carpet of scrubland, three men are running. One of them is Maurras for sure — you can tell by the way he flings his feet out sideways.
The other two? Jaume hopes that Gagou is one them. No — it’s Arbaud and Gondran. Even though it is the two of them who’ve returned, you have to hear them speak to recognize them. They have no more eyelashes, their skin is scorched, they can hardly breathe, their underwear is steaming, and they smell charred. The cuff of Arbaud’s pant leg is fringed by a rim of sparks that are gnawing away at the fabric, thread by thread.
“Nothing to be done?”