Gondran jokes as he pours it out: “If this had been milk you’d have churned it into butter.”
Then a blissful silence; matches strike; somebody bangs a pipe against the table.
This is an hour opening up in flower, like a meadow in April.
All of a sudden, Jaume stands. They watch him. He’s uneasy. Babette doesn’t dare to keep on soaking her lump of sugar.
“All you men, we have to go outside. I have something to say to you. It’s serious.”
They can tell it’s serious by the look on his face. Behind his unshaven beard his cheeks are as white as candle wax.
“All right, let’s go.”
They stand up, ill at ease and listless. They won’t gladly give up the spring daisies that were flowering just a moment ago.
“Let’s go under the oak. The women don’t need to hear everything. We’ll tell them what we want to, nothing more.”
“Is something the matter?” asks Gondran.
“Yes, there is something the matter,” says Jaume, pointing past the Bastides at the earth, naked, scarred, blackened, wisps of smoke still trailing across it.
“Let’s sit down. This is going to take a while.
“I didn’t want to tell you this back there for a number of reasons. First, because of the women, and second, for another reason that you’ll understand later.
“It’s been a while that I’ve been thinking about it in this way, without really knowing for sure. Now I do know, and I’m going to tell you.
“But first, because it’s a deadly serious business that I’m going to talk to you about — serious for me and for you too, whether we agree about it or not — I want to know if you trust me. I mean, whether when I ask you for something, you believe I’m asking you because it’s the right thing, and for the good of us all?”
Jaume has been looking mainly at Maurras.
“Me, I believe it,” goes Maurras.
He’s sincere — it’s obvious.
“You’ve never done any harm,” say the others.
Jaume is getting paler and paler.
“I’ve never done any harm, that’s for sure. I’ve been mistaken, like everybody else, but that… that’s not my fault. This time I’m not mistaken. I’m sure of what I’m going to say to you. Remember this: I’m sure of it. I don’t need to talk to you about what happened last night and this morning. If I told you that we’d barely escaped, we’d agree, wouldn’t we? But don’t you believe that this fire is just one more vicious trick, like the others we’ve suffered through lately?”
“What do you mean?”
“Yes, you do remember. We were sitting pretty just a few months ago. Things were coming along just so, the grain was doing well, we were getting by very nicely with what we had in our barrels, in our crocks, in our jars. I’d already had a word with the broker in Pertuis about my beans, and the prices were good. Things were falling into place.
“Then, all at once, it started. If I remember right, it began on the day when Gondran came to tell us that Janet was raving. We came over to your place and we listened. It made me feel peculiar. The rest of you too. You must remember, we talked about it that evening on the way home. Next there was that business of Gondran’s, with his olive grove making groaning sounds down in the bottomlands. It was already starting to smell a little worse. After that came the cat. Since then there’s been the spring, Marie, the fire…The spring, we found a way around that. The little one, she doesn’t look like she’s getting any worse — isn’t that true, Arbaud? — but she’s not getting any better either. The fire — we don’t know the full story yet.
“When I saw the cat, I didn’t hide anything from you. I said: ‘Keep a sharp eye out on every slope,’ but in all honesty, I didn’t believe it could get this bad. And now — and I’ve thought hard about this — if, after the spring, after Marie’s sickness, after the fire, there’s still another dirty trick that comes down on top of us, then what will we do?”
“…”
“We’ve been pretty well rattled.”
“…”
“To be blunt, if one of these days a trick as dirty as the one that just got played comes down on our heads, we’ll be done for. That’s my opinion.”
“Mine too,” says Arbaud.
“And here’s the worst of it: If these were all natural happenings, we could cope. You can’t have bad luck all the time, you get through it, but — do you want me to say it? All of this is being done to harm us, us and our families, the Bastides, you name it. And by someone stronger than we are.”
“Who?”
Jaume looks at Gondran.
“Ja… net,” Jaume says slowly.
“He is a bit nasty, the old bastard, it’s true,” says Maurras.
Not a peep from Gondran.
“If I say it’s Janet, it’s that I know, it’s that I’m sure of it. I’m not a man to wrong anyone else for nothing. Remember — everything I’ve said, everything I’m going to say, these are things I’m sure of. I’ve dug up the proofs, I’ve weighed all of it up inside myself, and I’m sure of it.”
Gondran coughs.
“What is it that makes you say you’re so sure about it?” he breathes. “I don’t have any doubts about you, I have confidence in you, but to say you know? Can’t we look for a minute at whether I’ve thought about this too?”
“Listen,” Jaume goes on. “It was when the spring failed. After we’d been tramping through the bush searching for the underground stream and we came home that evening completely wiped out. All that night I couldn’t stop chewing it over. It seemed unbelievable to me that we hadn’t found anything. This country around Lure is brimming with water, but for us it had turned into a kind of burning flesh. I got the idea that from the other side of the air we know, and from inside earth, somebody else’s will was coming at us head on, that these two wills had locked horns, like two goats who have it in for each other. Right was on our side. We were looking for answers as best we could, we couldn’t have done any different. So, why was the other one so headstrong?
“In the morning I went to see Janet. He’s the oldest — so I thought he might know something useful. And he did. He boasted about it, but he didn’t want to tell me. When I couldn’t cure Marie I took it on myself to come and talk to Janet again. I didn’t do it willingly, you can be sure of that. He’d already done me a dirty turn. This time he showed his true colors. You can’t have the remotest idea of the things he said to me. I saw his malice standing right in front of me, like another man. He told me we were all going to croak, and that this made him glad, that he was doing everything necessary for it to happen. I tried to make him listen to reason, I got angry, but there was nothing to be done. And then it was he started to talk, as if he himself had been the source of the mystery. It all took shape — a whole world being born out of his words. He conjured up countries, hills, rivers, trees, wild animals. It was like his words were marching ahead, stirring up all the dust of the world. Everything was dancing and spinning like a wheel. It totally dazed me. In a glance, I saw, as plain as day, how all earths and heavens are one, including this earth where we exist — but transformed, totally varnished, totally oiled, totally slippery with malice and evil. Where before I used to see a tree, a hill — in other words, all the things we’re used to seeing — there was still a tree, still a hill, but I was seeing right through to the terror of their essence. Power in the green branches, power in the clay-red folds of earth, hatred that mounts up in the green streams of sap, and hatred that trembles in the wounds of the furrows. And then I saw someone holding a thorn in his hand, who was ripping open the wounds to heighten the anger.”
•
They were listening, with their eyes wide open, their jaws slack, their lips drooping, their pupils dilated, their hands frozen, overwhelmed by this vision of the avenging spirits of the vegetal world.