•
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.
“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.”
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. H
e 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.