Jean Giono - Hill

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.”

“I’ve got two pickaxes,” says Maurras.

Gondran comes out of Les Monges.

“They’ve put Marie to bed.”

“She didn’t cry?”

“And my mother?”

“Gad almighty!” goes Jaume. “Are you ready, or not?”

A flock of birds, as thick as a river, flies crying overhead.

Jaume climbs into the crotch of the fig tree. In the room, Janet lies stiff, at rest, in the same position he was in a moment ago. Near him, the cat grooms itself with short strokes of its claws.

•

“Janet, it’s blazing at Hospitaliers, do you hear me? The wind’s coming from over there. Don’t you have anything to say to me?”

•

A silence with a stream of wind roaring through it, loaded with violent essences. Then you hear Janet cry out with all his might:

“Jackass.”

•

It had spread like hellfire and damnation down there, between two villages where people were burning the stalks and leaves of dried-up potato plants.

The slippery fire-devil leapt from the heather brush at the stroke of three in the morning. To begin with, it was raging in the thick of the pinewoods, making a hell of a racket. At first people believed they could master it before it did too much damage. But it roared so hard for the whole day and part of the following night that it wore out the arms and wearied the brains of all the lads who were fighting it. By daybreak, they saw it slithering its big body in between the hills, like a torrential stream, more robust and gleeful than ever. It was too late.

Since then it’s thrust its scarlet head through woods and moors, followed by its flaming belly. Trailing behind, its tail beats at the embers and the ashes. The devil crawls, it leaps, it advances. Lashing one claw to the right, one to the left, it guts a whole oak grove on one side; on the other it devours twenty white oaks and three clumps of pines. Like a stinger, its tongue flicks into the wind to taste its direction. You’d think it knew where it was going.

And it’s this sickening muzzle soaked with blood that Maurras has seen just below them in the combe.

•

Babette was scared to be in the back room, so they laid a mattress down in the kitchen for Marie and some sacks beside it for her mother and her baby sister. Between the back door and the sideboard they piled up big sheets of jute — the kind they used for wrapping up hay — for Madelon to sleep on.