•
They’re sitting, Jaume and Gondran, on the rim of the fountain basin. They’re drinking absinthe. The bottle is bobbing in the cool water. It’s dusk, the hour of ice-blue stars.
“It’s good, our water.”
Lure’s shadow covers up half of the earth. From the houses come the sounds of dishes and the melody of a child’s lullaby.
“Aphrodis is sending his youngest to Pertuis, to her grandmother’s, for a change of scene.”
“She looks like she’s doing better.”
“Yes, like everything else.”
•
“Oh, you know what, we’re keeping the cat. It comes from the Grandes Bastides. You remember when Chabassut brought me that load of hay? It must have gone to sleep inside it, by the looks of it. It’s his cat. It’s pretty bold. It’s a good little critter. It catches rats — you should see it.”
“Haven’t you started your ploughing yet, Alexandre?”
“Tomorrow.”
The metallic smell of watercress wafts from rivulets that the fountain is once again filling. The spring sings a long lament that conjures up cold stones and shadows. The watering trough quivers, teeming with life.
Suddenly, Jaume leans over and sets his glass down in the grass.
“Look,” he says in a low voice.
On the slope, toward the wasteland, a black shape is moving. A wild boar.
“Ah, son of a whore!”
Jaume has already grabbed his gun and shouldered it. He takes double aim, steadily, with deadly intent. The shot rips through the familiar sounds of the fountain and of the houses.
“He’s done for.”
“Hey, hey,” Arbaud yells from the fields.
“Hey,” Maurras yells from the olive grove.
They run, all four of them, toward the wild beast that’s making clods of earth fly as it writhes in agony.
It’s a fat, young boar, with bristles like a green chestnut. The buckshot has disemboweled it, and its blood gurgles out between its thighs. It tries to stand up again on its hooves and it howls, laying its big, white, burrowing teeth bare.
And it’s Maurras who finishes it off, with some blows from his billhook.
They’ve skinned it while it’s still warm, and they’ve shared out the meat generously. And the men have washed their hands in the trough of clear water. Jaume has kept the skin for himself. He’s stretched it across two willow sticks, and he’s hung it from the lowest branch of the oak for the dew to soften it.
•
Now it’s night. The light has just faded from the last window. A large star keeps watch over Lure.
From the skin, which turns in the night wind and drones like a drum, tears of dark blood weep in the grass.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THIS TRANSLATION has been a labor of love and the focus of my creative life for a number of years. Without the involvement of many others, it would never have come to fruition.
In particular, I’d like to thank Jacques Mény, president of the Association les Amis de Jean Giono, for his unwavering encouragement and support; Edmund White, for his warm appreciation; Wendell Block, for his insight; the late Walter Redfern, for his generosity; Edwin Frank and Susan Barba of NYRB, for their vision and commitment; and Debbie Honickman, my fellow traveler, for her acumen, and for the beauty of her art.
— PAUL EPRILE
Creemore, Ontario, 2015