Jean Giono - Hill

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?”

“No. We sent the boy back home. It’s too risky.”

They climb, all four of them, up the Bastides’ last defense: the foothill of Les Bournes, still intact, though flame is already licking at its base.

From the summit, the enormous extent of the burning woods reveals itself: A black carpet, scintillating all over with embers, stretches right across to the outskirts of a village that one had never been able to see when there were tall trees in between. It’s gleaming now like a naked bone.

That’s what one sees in one direction.

In the other, everything’s still soft, ever so soft, covered with grasses and olive groves. There’s a bowl-shaped depression, like the imprint of a woman’s breast, in the grassland. In the middle sit the Bastides, and near the houses, there’s a little white patch that’s moving — maybe Babette? Ulalie? Madelon? Marguerite? Or, maybe just Arbaud’s youngest daughter, playing in the square.

The fire keeps climbing.

The four of them stand there watching it.

Down below, the woods are already crackling. The wind knifes between the walls of Lure and rends the smoke. The flame leaps like water in an uproar. The sky bears a heavy rain of glowing pine needles. Burning pinecones, clicking as they fly, score the smoke with blood-red streaks. A massive cloud of birds rises straight up toward the shrill reaches of the sky, gets drunk on the purer air, drops down, soars again, whirls around, cries. The terrifying suction of the blaze carries away whole wings, torn out and still bleeding, which swirl like dead leaves. A flood of smoke surges up, blots out the sky, wavers for a second in the wind, and then, flexing its sooty muscles, holds still and spreads. Inside its smoky flesh, birds crackle in agony.

Jaume is trembling from head to foot.

As though it was trying to shake off a bad dream, Maurras’s gaze leaves the hollow of the Bastides and shifts over to Jaume, feels its way across Jaume’s face, delves into his wrinkles, into his folds, under his eyes, around his mouth, looking for hope.

“And your moustache?”

“Phooey,” goes Jaume, with a motion that means to say: “It’s the same power that’s destroying us and earth. My moustache? It’s there… in the flames…”

Down below, the little girl plays on in the square of the Bastides.