Books: Ramuntcho
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Pierre Loti >> Ramuntcho
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Ramuntcho breathed that dry and suave air, come from the South in order
to vivify the lungs. It was the true weather of his native land. It was
even the characteristic weather of that land of the Bay of Biscay, the
weather which he liked best formerly, and which to-day filled him with
physical comfort--as much as with disturbance of mind, for all that was
preparing, all that was amassing above, with airs of ferocious menace,
impressed him with the sentiment of a heaven deaf to prayers, without
thoughts as without master, a simple focus of storms, of blind forces
creating, recreating and destroying. And, during these minutes of halting
meditation, where men in Basque caps of a temperament other than his,
surrounded him to congratulate him, he made no reply, he did not listen,
he felt only the ephemeral plenitude of his own vigor, of his youth, of
his will, and he said to himself that he wished to use harshly and
desperately all things, to try anything, without the obstacle of vain
fears, of vain church scruples, in order to take back the young girl whom
his soul and his flesh desired, who was the unique one and the
betrothed--
When the game had ended gloriously for him, he returned alone, sad and
resolute,--proud of having won, of having known how to preserve his agile
skilfulness, and realizing that it was a means in life, a source of money
and of strength, to have remained one of the chief ball-players of the
Basque country.
Under the black sky, there were still the same tints exaggerated by
everything, the same sombre horizon. And still the same breaths from the
south, dry and warm, agitors of muscles and of thought.
However, the clouds had descended, descended, and soon this weather,
these appearances would change and finish. He knew it, as do all the
countrymen accustomed to look at the sky: it was only the announcement of
an autumn squall to close the series of lukewarm winds,--of a decisive
shake-up to finish despoiling the woods of their leaves. Immediately
after would come the long showers, chilling everything, the mists making
the mountains confused and distant. And it would be the dull rain of
winter, stopping the saps, making temporary projects languid,
extinguishing ardor and revolt--
Now the first drops of water were beginning to fall on the road, separate
and heavy on the strewn leaves.
As the day before, when he returned home, at twilight, his mother was
alone.
He found her asleep, in a bad sleep, agitated, burning.
Rambling in his house he tried, in order to make it less sinister, to
light in the large, lower chimney a fire of branches, but it went out
smoking. Outside, torrents of rain fell. Through the windows, as through
gray shrouds, the village hardly appeared, effaced under a winter squall.
The wind and the rain whipped the walls of the isolated house, around
which, once more, would thicken the grand blackness of the country in
rainy nights--that grand blackness, that grand silence, to which he had
long been unaccustomed. And in his childish heart, came little by little,
a cold of solitude and of abandonment; he lost even his energy, the
consciousness of his love, of his strength and of his youth; he felt
vanishing, before the misty evening, all his projects of struggle and of
resistance. The future which he had formed a moment ago became miserable
or chimerical in his eyes, that future of a pelota player, of a poor
amuser of the crowds, at the mercy of a malady or of a moment of
weakness--His hopes of the day-time were going out, based, doubtless, on
unstable things, fleeing now in the night--
Then he felt transported, as in his childhood, toward that soft refuge
which was his mother; he went up, on tiptoe, to see her, even asleep, and
to remain there, near her bed, while she slept.
And, when he had lighted in the room, far from her, a discreet lamp, she
appeared to him more changed than she had been by the fever of yesterday;
the possibility presented itself, more frightful to his mind, of losing
her, of being alone, of never feeling again on his cheek the caress of
her head.--Moreover, for the first time, she seemed old to him, and, in
the memory of all the deceptions which she had suffered because of him,
he felt a pity for her, a tender and infinite pity, at sight of her
wrinkles which he had not before observed, of her hair recently whitened
at the temples. Oh, a desolate pity and hopeless, with the conviction
that it was too late now to arrange life better.--And something painful,
against which there was no possible resistance, shook his chest,
contracted his young face; objects became confused to his view, and, in
the need of imploring, of asking for mercy, he let himself fall on his
knees, his forehead on his mother's bed, weeping at last, weeping hot
tears--
CHAPTER V.
"And whom did you see in the village, my son?" she asked, the next
morning during the improvement which returned every time, in the first
hours of the day, after the fever had subsided.
"And whom did you see in the village, my son?--" In talking, she tried to
retain an air of gaiety, of saying indifferent things, in the fear of
attacking grave subjects and of provoking disquieting replies.
"I saw Arrochkoa, mother," he replied, in a tone which brought back
suddenly the burning questions.
"Arrochkoa!--And how did he behave with you?"
"Oh, he talked to me as if I had been his brother."
"Yes, I know, I know.--Oh, it was not he who made her do it--"
"He said even--"
He did not dare to continue now, and he lowered his head.
"He said what, my son?"
"Well, that--that it was hard to put her in prison there--that
perhaps--that, even now, if she saw me, he was not far from thinking--"
She straightened under the shock of what she had just suspected; with her
thin hands she parted her hair, newly whitened, and her eyes became again
young and sharp, in an expression almost wicked from joy, from avenged
pride:
"He said that, he!--"
"Would you forgive me, mother--if I tried?"
She took his two hands and they remained silent, not daring, with their
scruples as Catholics, to utter the sacrilegious thing which was
fomenting in their heads. In the depth of her eyes, the evil spark went
out.
"Forgive you?" she said in a low voice, "Oh, I--you know very well that I
would.--But do not do this, my son, I pray you, do not do it; it would
bring misfortune to both of you!--Do not think of it, my Ramuntcho, never
think of it--"
Then, they hushed, hearing the steps of the physician who was coming up
for his daily visit. And it was the only time, the supreme time when they
were to talk of it in life.
But Ramuntcho knew now that, even after death, she would not condemn him
for having attempted, or for having committed it: and this pardon was
sufficient for him, and, now that he felt sure of obtaining it, the
greatest barrier, between his sweetheart and him, had now suddenly
fallen.
CHAPTER VI.
In the evening, when the fever returned, she seemed already much more
dangerously affected.
On her robust body, the malady had violently taken hold,--the malady
recognized too late, and insufficiently nursed because of her
stubbornness as a peasant, because of her incredulous disdain for
physicians and medicine.
And little by little, in Ramuntcho, the frightful thought of losing her
installed itself in a dominant place; during the hours of watchfulness
spent near her bed, silent and alone, he was beginning to face the
reality of that separation, the horror of that death and of that
burial,--even all the lugubrious morrows, all the aspects of his future
life: the house which he would have to sell before quitting the country;
then, perhaps, the desperate attempt at the convent of Amezqueta; then
the departure, probably solitary and without desire to return, for
unknown America--
The idea also of the great secret which she would carry with her
forever,--of the secret of his birth,--tormented him more from hour to
hour.
Then, bending over her, and, trembling, as if he were about to commit an
impious thing in a church, he dared to say:
"Mother!--Mother, tell me now who my father is!"
She shuddered at first under the supreme question, realizing well, that
if he dared to question her thus, it was because she was lost. Then, she
hesitated for a moment: in her head, boiling from fever, there was a
battle; her duty, she discerned well no longer; her obstinacy which had
lasted for so many years faltered almost at this hour, in presence of the
sudden apparition of death--
But, resolved at last forever, she replied at once, in the brusque tone
of her bad days:
"Your father!--And what is the use, my son?--What do you want of your
father who for twenty years has never thought of you?--"
No, it was decided, ended, she would not tell. Anyway, it was too late
now; at the moment when she would disappear, enter into the inert
powerlessness of the dead, how could she risk changing so completely the
life of that son over whom she would no longer watch, how could she
surrender him to his father, who perhaps would make of him a disbeliever
and a disenchanted man like himself! What a responsibility and what an
immense terror!--
Her decision having been taken irrevocably, she thought of herself,
feeling for the first time that life was closing behind her, and joined
her hands for a sombre prayer.
As for Ramuntcho, after this attempt to learn, after this great effort
which had almost seemed a profanation to him, he bent his head before his
mother's will and questioned no longer.
CHAPTER VII.
It went very quickly now, with the drying fevers that made her cheeks
red, her nostrils pinched, or with the exhaustion of baths of
perspiration, her pulse hardly beating.
And Ramuntcho had no other thought than his mother; the image of
Gracieuse ceased to visit him during these funereal days.
She was going, Franchita; she was going, mute and as if indifferent,
asking for nothing, never complaining--
Once, however, as he was watching, she called him suddenly with a poor
voice of anguish, to throw her arms around him, to draw him to her, lean
her head on his cheek. And, in that minute, Ramuntcho saw pass in her
eyes the great Terror--that of the flesh which feels that it is
finishing, that of the men and that of the beasts, the horrible and the
same for all.--A believer, she was that a little; practising rather, like
so many other women around her; timid in the face of dogmas, of
observances, of services, but without a clear conception of the world
beyond, without a luminous hope.--Heaven, all the beautiful things
promised after life.--Yes, perhaps.--But still, the black hole was there,
near and certain, where she would have to turn into dust.--What was sure,
what was inexorable, was the fact that never, never more would her
destroyed visage lean in a real manner on that of Ramuntcho; then, in the
doubt of having a mind which would fly, in the horror and the misery of
annihilation, of becoming powder and nothing, she wanted again kisses
from that son, and she clutched at him as clutch the wrecked who fall
into the black and deep waters--
He understood all this, which the poor, fading eyes said so well. And the
pity so tender, which he had already felt at seeing the wrinkles and the
white hairs of his mother, overflowed like a flood from his very young
heart; he responded to this appeal with all that one may give of desolate
clasps and embraces.
But it did not last long. She had never been one of those who are
enervated for long, or at least, let it appear. Her arms unclasped, her
head fallen back, she closed her eyes again, unconscious now,--or
stoical--
And Ramuntcho, standing, not daring to touch her, wept heavy tears,
without noise, turning his head,--while, in the distance, the parish bell
began to ring the curfew, sang the tranquil peace of the village, filled
the air with vibrations soft, protective, advising sound sleep to those
who have morrows--
The following morning, after having confessed, she passed out of life,
silent and haughty, having felt a sort of shame for her suffering,--while
the same bell rang slowly her agony.
And at night, Ramuntcho found himself alone, beside that thing in bed and
cold, which is preserved and looked at for several hours, but which one
must make haste to bury in the earth--
CHAPTER VIII.
Eight days after.
At the fall of night, while a bad mountain squall twisted the branches of
the trees, Ramuntcho entered his deserted house where the gray of death
seemed scattered everywhere. A little of winter had passed over the
Basque land, a little frost, burning the annual flowers, ending the
illusory summer of December. In front of Franchita's door, the geraniums,
the dahlias had just died, and the path which led to the house, which no
one cared for, disappeared under the mass of yellow leaves.
For Ramuntcho, this first week of mourning had been occupied by the
thousand details that rock sorrow. Proud also, he had desired that all
should be done in a luxurious manner, according to the old usages of the
parish. His mother had been buried in a coffin of black velvet ornamented
with silver nails. Then, there had been mortuary masses, attended by the
neighbors in long capes, the women enveloped and hooded with black. And
all this represented a great deal of expense for him, who was poor.
Of the sum given formerly, at the time of his birth, by his unknown
father, little remained, the greater part having been lost through
unfaithful bankers. And now, he would have to quit the house, sell the
dear familiar furniture, realize the most money possible for the flight
to America--
This time, he returned home peculiarly disturbed, because he was to do a
thing, postponed from day to day, about which his conscience was not at
rest. He had already examined, picked out, all that belonged to his
mother; but the box containing her papers and her letters was still
intact--and to-night he would open it, perhaps.
He was not sure that death, as many persons think, gives the right to
those who remain to read letters, to penetrate the secrets of those who
have just gone. To burn without looking seemed to him more respectful,
more honest. But it was also to destroy forever the means of discovering
the one whose abandoned son he was.--Then what should he do?--And from
whom could he take advice, since he had no one in the world?
In the large chimney he lit the evening fire: then he got from an upper
room the disquieting box, placed it on a table near the fire, beside his
lamp, and sat down to reflect again. In the face of these papers, almost
sacred, almost prohibited, which he would touch and which death alone
could have placed in his hands, he had in this moment the consciousness,
in a more heartbreaking manner, of the irrevocable departure of his
mother; tears returned to him and he wept there, alone, in the silence--
At last he opened the box--
His arteries beat heavily. Under the surrounding trees, in the obscure
solitude, he felt that forms were moving, to look at him through the
window-panes. He felt breaths strange to his own chest, as if some one
was breathing behind him. Shades assembled, interested in what he was
about to do.--The house was crowded with phantoms--
They were letters, preserved there for more than twenty years, all in the
same handwriting,--one of those handwritings, at once negligent and easy,
which men of the world have and which, in the eyes of the simple minded,
are an indication of great social difference. And at first, a vague dream
of protection, of elevation and of wealth diverted the course of his
thoughts.--He had no doubt about the hand which had written them, those
letters, and he held them tremblingly, not daring to read them, nor even
to look at the name with which they were signed.
One only had retained its envelope; then he read the address: "To Madame
Franchita Duval."--Oh! yes, he remembered having heard that his mother,
at the time of her disappearance from the Basque country, had taken that
name for a while.--Following this, was an indication of street and
number, which it pained him to read without his being able to understand
why, which made the blood come to his cheeks; then the name of that large
city, wherein he was born.--With fixed eyes, he stayed there, looking no
longer.--And suddenly, he had the horrible vision of that clandestine
establishment: in a suburban apartment, his mother, young, elegant,
mistress of some rich idler, or of some officer perhaps!--In the regiment
he had known some of these establishments, which doubtless are all alike,
and he had found in them for himself unexpected adventures.--A dizziness
seized him, to catch a glimpse thus under a new aspect of the one whom he
had venerated so much; the dear past faltered behind him, as if to fall
into a desolating abyss. And his despair turned into a sudden execration
for the one who had given life to him through a caprice--
Oh! to burn them, to burn them as quickly as possible, these letters of
misfortune!--And he began to throw them one by one into the fire, where
they were consumed by sudden flames.
A photograph, however, came out of them, fell on the floor; then he could
not refrain from taking it to the lamp to see it.
And his impression was heart-rending, during the few seconds when his
eyes met the half effaced ones of the yellowed image!--It resembled
him!--He found, with profound fear, something of himself in the unknown.
And instinctively he turned round, asking himself if the spectres in the
obscure corners had not come near behind him to look also.
It had hardly an appreciable duration, that silent interview, unique and
supreme, with his father. To the fire also, the image! He threw it, with
a gesture of anger and of terror, among the ashes of the last letters,
and all left soon only a little mass of black dust, extinguishing the
clear flames of the branches.
Finished! The box was empty. He threw on the floor his cap which gave him
a headache, and straightened himself, with perspiration on his forehead
and a buzzing at the temples.
Finished! Annihilated, all these memories of sin and of shame. And now
the things of life appeared to him to regain their former balance; he
regained his soft veneration for his mother, whose memory it seemed to
him he had purified, avenged also a little, by this disdainful execution.
Therefore, his destiny had been fixed to-night forever. He would remain
the Ramuntcho of other times, the "son of Franchita," player of pelota
and smuggler, free, freed from everything, owing nothing to and asking
nothing from anybody. And he felt serene, without remorse, without
fright, either, in this mortuary house, from which the shades had just
disappeared, peaceful now and friendly--
CHAPTER IX.
At the frontier, in a mountain hamlet. A black night, about one o'clock
in the morning; a winter night inundated by cold and heavy rain. At the
front of a sinister house which casts no light outside, Ramuntcho loads
his shoulders with a heavy smuggled box, under the rippling rain, in the
midst of a tomb-like obscurity. Itchoua's voice commands secretly,--as if
one hardly touched with a bow the last strings of a bass viol,--and
around him, in the absolute darkness, one divines the presence of other
smugglers similarly loaded, ready to start on an adventure.
It is now more than ever Ramuntcho's life, to run almost every night,
especially on the cloudless and moonless nights when one sees nothing,
when the Pyrenees are an immense chaos of shade. Amassing as much money
as he can for his flight, he is in all the smuggling expeditions, as well
in those that bring a suitable remuneration as in those where one risks
death for a hundred cents. And ordinarily, Arrochkoa accompanies him,
without necessity, in sport and for a whim.
They have become inseparable, Arrochkoa, Ramuntcho,--and they talk freely
of their projects about Gracieuse, Arrochkoa seduced especially by the
attraction of some fine prowess, by the joy of taking a nun away from the
church, of undoing the plans of his old, hardened mother,--and Ramuntcho,
in spite of his Christian scruples which affect him still, making of this
dangerous project his only hope, his only reason for being and for
acting. For a month, almost, the attempt has been decided upon in theory
and, in their long talks in the December nights, on the roads where they
walk, or in the corners of the village cider mills where they sit apart,
the means of execution are discussed by them, as if the question was a
simple frontier undertaking. They must act very quickly, concludes
Arrochkoa always, they must act in the surprise of a first interview
which shall be for Gracieuse a very disturbing thing; they must act
without giving her time to think or to recant, they must try something
like kidnapping--
"If you knew," he says, "what is that little convent of Amezqueta where
they have placed her: four old, good sisters with her, in an isolated
house!--I have my horse, you know, who gallops so quickly; once the nun
is in a carriage with you, who can catch her?--"
And to-night they have resolved to take into their confidence Itchoua
himself, a man accustomed to suspicious adventures, valuable in assaults
at night, and who, for money, is capable of everything.
The place from which they start this time for the habitual smuggling
expedition is named Landachkoa, and it is situated in France at ten
minutes' distance from Spain. The inn, solitary and old, assumes as soon
as the night falls, the air of a den of thieves; at this moment while the
smugglers come out of one door, it is full of Spanish carbineers who have
familiarly crossed the frontier to divert themselves here and who drink
while singing. And the hostess, accustomed to these nocturnal affairs,
has said joyfully, a moment ago, in Basque tongue to Itchoua's folks:
"It is all right! They are all drunk, you can go out!"
Go out! It is easier to advise than to do! You are drenched at the first
steps and your feet slip on the mud, despite the aid of your sticks, on
the stiff slopes of the paths. They do not see one another; they see
nothing, neither the walls of the hamlet along which they pass nor the
trees afterward, nor the rocks; they are like blind men, groping and
slipping under a deluge, with the music of rain in their ears which makes
them deaf.
And Ramuntcho, who makes this trip for the first time, has no idea of the
passages which they are to go through, strikes here and there his load
against black things which are branches of beeches, or slips with his two
feet, falters, straightens up, catches himself by planting at random his
iron-pointed stick in the soil. They are the last on the march, Arrochkoa
and Ramuntcho, following the band by ear;--and those who precede them
make no more noise with their sandals than wolves in a forest.
In all, fifteen smugglers on a distance of fifty metres, in the thick
black of the mountain, under the incessant sprinkling of the shower; they
carry boxes full of jewels, of watches, of chains, of rosaries, or
bundles of Lyons silk, wrapped in oilcloth; in front, loaded with
merchandise less valuable, walk two men who are the skirmishers, those
who will attract, if necessary, the guns of the Spaniards and will then
take flight, throwing away everything. All talk in a low voice, despite
the drumming of the rain which already stifles sounds--
The one who precedes Ramuntcho turns round to warn him:
"Here is a torrent in front of us--" (Its presence would have been
guessed by its noise louder than that of the rain--) "We must cross it!"
"Ah!--Cross it how? Wade in the water?--"
"No, the water is too deep. Follow us. There is a tree trunk over it."
Groping, Ramuntcho finds that tree trunk, wet, slippery and round. He
stands, advancing on this monkey's bridge in a forest, carrying his heavy
load, while under him the invisible torrent roars. And he crosses, none
knows how, in the midst of this intensity of black and of this noise of
water.
On the other shore they have to increase precaution and silence. There
are no more mountain paths, frightful descents, under the night, more
oppressing, of the woods. They have reached a sort of plain wherein the
feet penetrate; the sandals attached to nervous legs cause a noise of
beaten water. The eyes of the smugglers, their cat-like eyes, more and
more dilated by the obscurity, perceive confusedly that there is free
space around, that there is no longer the closing in of branches. They
breathe better also and walk with a more regular pace that rests them--
But the bark of dogs immobilizes them all in a sudden manner, as if
petrified under the shower. For a quarter of an hour they wait, without
talking or moving; on their chests, the perspiration runs, mingled with
the rain that enters by their shirt collars and falls to their belts.
By dint of listening, they hear the buzz of their ears, the beat of their
own arteries.
And this tension of their senses is, in their trade, what they all like;
it gives to them a sort of joy almost animal, it doubles the life of the
muscles in them, who are beings of the past; it is a recall of the most
primitive human impressions in the forests or the jungles of original
epochs.--Centuries of civilization will be necessary to abolish this
taste for dangerous surprises which impels certain children to play hide
and seek, certain men to lie in ambush, to skirmish in wars, or to
smuggle--
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