Jean Giono - The Serpent of Stars

“We’re okay,” said Césaire. And then, “Avanti!”

And with a loop of the reins, he stung the mare’s rear.

NIGHT came.

We sliced through the village of Ongles at a trot-gallop, extended and solid. The milestone at the turn sparked under our iron wheels. People came out of the café to look at our cloud of dust. From there, we skirted around a horn of Lure, into a little valley which raised its high wave of bare rocks in warning. At Saint-Etienne, we stopped under the plane trees to light our lantern. It was just a bottle with a hole in the bottom and a candle stuck inside it. Barberousse held it out above us.

We followed along Lure, but by a snaking route that wove round all the contours of the high hill like twines of ivy. The breath of the high ground cut across us with sudden gusts of wind as cold and solid as blocks of ice. Barberousse used his whole body to protect the candle, and then he extended a wing of his greatcoat, and we heard the sail clap and the mare galloped. My belly was all tickly from the rises. The swell of the open sea carried us along as its waves of earth unrolled.

A detour faced us into the wind at the mouth of a valley. The candle went out. The mare, who’d gotten a blast of wind right in her nostrils, stopped dead against the darkness. Césaire tacked gently into the night. I hung onto the sides.

“Prepare the matches.”

The wind whipped us on the sides, two turns of the wheels, and then it hit us right on the back.

“Light them.”

And we had to face the stampede once again.

We had gone past Cruis.

“What time is it?” asked Césaire.

“Hold the candle, my girl.”

Barberousse fished around and found his watch. We had not stopped galloping.

“A little after nine.”

“Good. Avanti! ”

“Give me the candle, my girl.”

One last hill threw us right into the open sky.

“Oh!” cried Césaire and Barberousse.

“Oh!” I cried.

“Oh!” said the girl softly against my ear.

The mare, held hard, reared up like struck water. We had arrived!

As far as you could see, the heavy sea of herds was lapping the black earth. It began there, under the mare’s feet, and it extended over the whole of Mallefougasse. Despite the darkness, you could see it. All the stars had descended upon the earth; they were the eyes of the sheep lit up by the watchfires, by the four bonfires, by all the Saint-Jean fires that illuminated the countryside from here to the distant mountains of the Mées, and of Peyruis, Saint-Auban, and Digne. You could hear the last shepherds to arrive whistling and the bells of the rams and the mules, and far off in the distance, toward Sisteron, the clusters of dogs howling, necks extended, into the moonless night. .

“Pause! Pause! Pause!” sang the shepherds to the sheep.

Men ran by, hands raised toward the new herds. The animals lay down in a mass around them. You could hear them kneeling down on the ground, crushing the hyssop. The whole heavy batter of herds turned slowly like a whirlpool of mud.

“Fédo, Fédo,” sang the shepherds, to reassure the ewes.

On the crest of the hill, someone tried the aeolian harps, then tightened the keys. A cord broke and the moan traveled on the wind to the depths of the county, toward the Durance lowlands. Men’s voices called for strings. The tympon players played their bright scales, and then blew the warning notes, and a shiver of fear like wind on the sea raised the waves of beasts again. Young shepherds carried tubs of water. One of them, with the lantern, walked backwards, lighting the way. A little lost harmonica sounded in a juniper.

“Téou, Téou, Téou!” said the shepherds to calm the beasts.

Everything fell silent.

That “téou,” the word of peace, sang itself through the whole expanse. Afterwards, there was silence, and then the voice of a few masters, and then the great silence.

Someone tried the music conductor’s whistle. The aeolian harps murmured. Someone whistled. Silence.

Césaire had tied up the mare. As an extra precaution, he had hobbled her legs with a blanket.

“On a night like this, you never know.”

We walked toward the clearing.

The shepherds were sitting all around. Despite the two hundred men and the hundred thousand beasts, there was so little noise that you could hear us coming. Heads turned toward us; someone made room. I squatted down in the folds of my coat. My arms shook. I took out my notebook and pencils. Barberousse gave me a board to write on.

Four huge fires lit up and defined the large stage of grass and earth.

Right in the middle, a man was standing. He was waiting for what would flow from his heart. I remember that he was a tall, thin man, one who saw things, who feasted on visions. His nose turned into a bird’s beak under the fire’s high flames. He was wearing a red scarf on his head, tied gypsy-fashion.

Suddenly he raised his hand to greet the night. A rumbling flowed from the aeolian harps. The muffled flutes sang like springs.

“The worlds,” said the man, “were in the god’s net like tuna in the madrague. .”

You could have heard him on the other sides of the earth and the sky.

I’VE BEEN ASKED MANY TIMES — every time I relate this shepherds’ play — if this ceremony was part of some esoteric tradition. I don’t know. I don’t believe that it was a ceremony. I’m the one who says “shepherds’ plays; ” they say, “We’re going to perform.” All the same, there are arguments for and against. To find out the truth, you would have to go stay with them through the long months in the high summer pastures, get on familiar terms with them, share their breadcrusts rubbed with garlic, and take part in those long tales of summer nights. If all goes well, by next year, I’ll have untangled the mystery. I now have a friend among the true masters of the beasts. It’s Vénérande, the head shepherd from the Saint-Trubat farm, and it’s agreed that next season, I’ll go up to spend the long months with him.

So, for me, and for the moment, I believe that it’s simply a game, a pastime, but the pastime of the masters of beasts. All the rest, everything that Barberousse could say about it, who’s getting old, who’s a dreamer, and who, I know, is capable of falling under the simple spell of a fountain, all the rest lies under the shadow of clouds. There is, of course, the Sardinian. .

But, as for the Sardinian, let me explain. The Sardinian — that thin man in the red scarf from whom the whole game spatters like water shaken from a dog — the Sardinian, he’s the author. He’s the midwife of images. Moreover, he is, I know, a remarkable midwife for difficult ewes. He has long and nervous hands, as delicate as little fish, and if you had to give him all the lambs he brought to life in the furrow of his two hands, he would be richer than the richest proprietors. For the images, for the plays, it’s the same. They are all there around him, pregnant and heavy with dreams, with the beautiful coil of the serpent of stars, and, in the midst of them, he’s the midwife of the play. He’s the one who delivers the play and who makes sure it’s born completely new each time, because each time, it is born completely new, and year after year, the same words are never repeated, nor the same roles, and each time, the play has that odor of the blood and salt of newborn lambs, because everyone makes it up. The Sardinian, who is the narrator, may keep a narrative thread in his hand, always the same, that’s possible, but those around him, those shepherds who are like a seated shadow and whom you don’t see until the moment they move forward between the fires, those shepherds are never the same. Maybe you would say what Barberousse said to me.