Jean Giono - Hill

“Don’t worry about me,” says Ulalie, “I’ll find someplace easily enough.”

•

“What a crowd!” exclaims Marguerite, “there’s some comfort being all together.”

The walls of the room toss her back and forth like a limp ball. She travels from the linen cupboard to the buffet. She’d like to give everybody sheets, to make coffee, at one and the same time, and she wanders around empty-handed, not knowing where to begin, and she laughs with a big laugh, frozen like in a photograph.

“Help yourselves, help yourselves. I don’t know which way to turn anymore. Babette, get the cups, Ulalie, hand out the sheets, get out the flowered blanket, under there…”

•

They’ve lit the petrol lamp. Janet’s bed raises the old man’s body right to the edge of the shadow cast by the lampshade.

Twice already Marguerite has said: “Ulalie, come and lie down here behind the stove, you’ll be comfortable here, you’ll have a bit of space.”

“Let me be. I have lots of time. I wouldn’t be able to sleep, knowing they were just over there.” When everything was arranged, the others bedded down on the floor on straw pallets. Now they’re all stretched out, at rest: Babette between the two girls, Madelon in her corner between the sideboard and the door, fully dressed in her wraparound skirt and her scarves, Marguerite on the bedside rug. She’s taken off her blouse, but left on her petticoat and hose. She’s lain down flat on her back, and her ample breasts, covered with freckles, flop, one on one side, one on the other, projecting their thick, rose-coloured tips.

Long-drawn breaths have already merged into a chorus, interspersed by short puffs that flit through little Marie’s feverish, dried-out lips. And through the twin notes that play through Marguerite’s nostrils. And through the pipe-smoker’s rattle issuing from old Madelon. Once in a while, a raucous gurgling rises up through this concert, swells, diminishes, ceases: Janet is breathing with difficulty.

They’ve trimmed the wick of the lamp. The light is a yellow ball fastened to the hoops of the iron hanger, a compact sphere stuck in the middle of the room, whose rays don’t even reach into the corners. It barely brushes Babette’s pretty, upturned white nose, one of Marguerite’s breasts, and the hem of Madelon’s petticoat.

•

Suddenly, the shadowy wall lights up, and a casserole dances against it in silhouette. The window opposite is lit up by a big, dazzling, russet flower.

Ulalie moves closer to the window.

“There, now it’s grabbed hold of Les Ubacs,” she murmurs to herself.

•

Outside: the blackened bulk of the empty houses and, beyond them, the hill brushing the belly of the night. The hill’s contours are outlined by the russet flames devouring the woods of Les Ubacs, lower down on the neighbouring hill.

With its freight of plants and animals, the hill rises up, dark, massive, heavy with immobility and power.

“And if this hill gets roused up like the rest…”

•

The lamp gutters. The ball of light shrinks. Babette’s nose — it’s nothing more now than a tiny, pale triangle, anonymous. Only Marguerite’s breast keeps its semblance of a breast, lifting and falling to the two tones of her snoring.

As she faces the window within the dark wooden interior, the glare of the blaze hollows out Ulalie’s harsh features.

•

The lamp has just guttered out. Very quietly.

The breast, the nose, have faded. On the wall where the cooking pots hang, a big, reddish patch is flickering. At its center there’s a little pattern, egg-shaped, which elongates, then flattens. When it’s inflated it’s the projection of a flaw in the glass through which the flames of Les Ubacs are glaring.

On the hearth, an ember groans for a moment, then goes out.

•

A cock crows. The oak shakes itself off in the wind. It must be dawn.

A dreary, grayish thread of dawn. The clock strikes seven. With firm finality.

Marguerite is the first to wake up. She sits on the bedside rug where she’s slept and scrapes long and hard at her belly with her nails, as though it were the drum of a tambourine. She slips her breasts inside the straps of her chemise and then pushes them snugly into the bodice of her corset.

The door opens. Ulalie pokes her head into the opening. She seems put out to see Marguerite awake.

“You’re already up?” Marguerite asks her.

“I couldn’t sleep. You know what — Les Ubacs are completely on fire.”

“Les Ubacs?…

“Les Ubacs?” Marguerite asks, a second time. She’s still half asleep, completely out on her feet. She can’t come to grips with the fact that Les Ubacs are burning.

“What time is it?”

“Almost seven-thirty.”

“Seven-thirty? But you can’t see a thing!”

“Les Ubacs are on fire, that’s why you can’t see anything. There’s so much smoke you can’t see Sainte Roustagne anymore.”

“Oh, my goodness, this time it’s…” Marguerite says, terror-stricken.

Then, as though coming back to herself:

“I’m going to make coffee.”

At the sound of the percolator, Babette wakes up all at once, with a cry and a defensive gesture.

“Hey, what’s going on? I was frightened. Does it ever smell like something’s burning.”

“It’s Les Ubacs that are burning,” Marguerite says, casually, as she goes about serving the coffee.

•

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.”