Books: Ramuntcho
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Pierre Loti >> Ramuntcho
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They have hushed, the watch-dogs, quieted or distracted, their attentive
scent preoccupied by something else. The vast silence has returned, less
reassuring, ready to break, perhaps, because beasts are watching. And, at
a low command from Itchoua, the men begin again their march, slower and
more hesitating, in the night of the plain, a little bent, a little
lowered on their legs, like wild animals on the alert.
Before them is the Nivelle; they do not see it, since they see nothing,
but they hear it run, and now long, flexible things are in the way of
their steps, are crushed by their bodies: the reeds on the shores. The
Nivelle is the frontier; they will have to cross it on a series of
slippery rocks, leaping from stone to stone, despite the loads that make
the legs heavy.
But before doing this they halt on the shore to collect themselves and
rest a little. And first, they call the roll in a low voice: all are
there. The boxes have been placed in the grass; they seem clearer spots,
almost perceptible to trained eyes, while, on the darkness in the
background, the men, standing, make long, straight marks, blacker than
the emptiness of the plain. Passing by Ramuntcho, Itchoua has whispered
in his ear:
"When will you tell me about your plan?"
"In a moment, at our return!--Oh, do not fear, Itchoua, I will tell you!"
At this moment when his chest is heaving and his muscles are in action,
all his faculties doubled and exasperated by his trade, he does not
hesitate, Ramuntcho; in the present exaltation of his strength and of his
combativeness he knows no moral obstacles nor scruples. The idea which
came to his accomplice to associate himself with Itchoua frightens him no
longer. So much the worse! He will surrender to the advice of that man of
stratagem and of violence, even if he must go to the extreme of
kidnapping and housebreaking. He is, to-night, the rebel from whom has
been taken the companion of his life, the adored one, the one who may not
be replaced; he wants her, at the risk of everything.--And while he
thinks of her, in the progressive languor of that halt, he desires her
suddenly with his senses, in a young, savage outbreak, in a manner
unexpected and sovereign--
The immobility is prolonged, the respirations are calmer. And, while the
men shake their dripping caps, pass their hands on their foreheads to
wipe out drops of rain and perspiration that veil the eyes, the first
sensation of cold comes to them, of a damp and profound cold; their wet
clothes chill them, their thoughts weaken; little by little a sort of
torpor benumbs them in the thick darkness, under the incessant winter
rain.
They are accustomed to this, trained to cold and to dampness, they are
hardened prowlers who go to places where, and at hours when, other men
never appear, they are inaccessible to vague frights of the darkness,
they are capable of sleeping without shelter anywhere in the blackest of
rainy nights, in dangerous marshes or hidden ravines--
Now the rest has lasted long enough. This is the decisive instant when
the frontier is to be crossed. All muscles stiffen, ears stretch, eyes
dilate.
First, the skirmishers; then, one after another, the bundle carriers, the
box carriers, each one loaded with a weight of forty kilos, on the
shoulders or on the head. Slipping here and there among the round rocks,
stumbling in the water, everybody crosses, lands on the other shore. Here
they are on the soil of Spain! They have to cross, without gunshots or
bad meetings, a distance of two hundred metres to reach an isolated farm
which is the receiving shop of the chief of the Spanish smugglers, and
once more the game will have been played!
Naturally, it is without light, obscure and sinister, that farm.
Noiselessly and groping they enter in a file; then, on the last who
enter, enormous locks of the door are drawn. At last! Barricaded and
rescued, all! And the treasury of the Queen Regent has been frustrated,
again tonight, of a thousand francs!--
Then, fagots are lighted in the chimney, a candle on the table; they see
one another, they recognize one another, smiling at the success. The
security, the truce of rain over their heads, the flame that dances and
warms, the cider and the whiskey that fill the glasses, bring back to
these men noisy joy after compelled silence. They talk gaily, and the
tall, white-haired, old chief who receives them all at this undue hour,
announces that he will give to his village a beautiful square for the
pelota game, the plans of which have been drawn and the cost of which
will be ten thousand francs.
"Now, tell me your affair," insists Itchoua, in Ramuntcho's ear. "Oh, I
suspect what it is! Gracieuse, eh?--That is it, is it not?--It is hard
you know.--I do not like to do things against my religion, you
know.--Then, I have my place as a chorister, which I might lose in such a
game.--Let us see, how much money will you give me if I succeed?--"
He had foreseen, Ramuntcho, that this sombre aid would cost him a great
deal, Itchoua being, in truth, a churchman, whose conscience would have
to be bought; and, much disturbed, with a flush on his cheeks, Ramuntcho
grants, after a discussion, a thousand francs. Anyway, if he is piling up
money, it is only to get Gracieuse, and if enough remains for him to go
to America with her, what matters it?--
And now that his secret is known to Itchoua, now that his cherished
project is being elaborated in that obstinate and sharp brain, it seems
to Ramuntcho that he has made a decisive step toward the execution of his
plan, that all has suddenly become real and approaching. Then, in the
midst of the lugubrious decay of the place, among these men who are less
than ever similar to him, he isolates himself in an immense hope of love.
They drink for a last time together, all around, clinking their glasses
loudly; then they start again, in the thick night and under the incessant
rain, but this time on the highway, in a band and singing. Nothing in the
hands, nothing in the pockets: they are now ordinary people, returning
from a natural promenade.
In the rear guard, at a distance from the singers, Itchoua on his long
legs walks with his hands resting on Ramuntcho's shoulder. Interested and
ardent for success, since the sum has been agreed upon, Itchoua whispers
in Ramuntcho's ear imperious advices. Like Arrochkoa, he wishes to act
with stunning abruptness, in the surprise of a first interview which will
occur in the evening, as late as the rule of a convent will permit, at an
uncertain and twilight hour, when the village shall have begun to sleep.
"Above all," he says, "do not show yourself beforehand. She must not have
seen you, she must not even know that you have returned home! You must
not lose the advantage of surprise--"
While Ramuntcho listens and meditates in silence, the others, who lead
the march, sing always the same old song that times their steps. And thus
they re-enter Landachkoa, village of France, crossing the bridge of the
Nivelle, under the beards of the Spanish carbineers.
They have no sort of illusion, the watching carbineers, about what these
men, so wet, have been doing at an hour so black.
CHAPTER X.
The winter, the real winter, extended itself by degrees over the Basque
land, after the few days of frost that had come to annihilate the annual
plants, to change the deceptive aspect of the fields, to prepare the
following spring.
And Ramuntcho acquired slowly his habits of one left alone; in his house,
wherein he lived still, without anybody to serve him, he took care of
himself, as in the colonies or in the barracks, knowing the thousand
little details of housekeeping which careful soldiers practice. He
preserved the pride of dress, dressed himself well, wore the ribbon of
the brave at his buttonhole and a wide crape around his sleeve.
At first he was not assiduous at the village cider mill, where the men
assembled in the cold evenings. In his three years of travel, of reading,
of talking with different people, too many new ideas had penetrated his
already open mind; among his former companions he felt more outcast than
before, more detached from the thousand little things which composed
their life.
Little by little, however, by dint of being alone, by dint of passing by
the halls where the men drank,--on the window-panes of which a lamp
always sketches the shadows of Basque caps,--he had made it a custom to
go in and to sit at a table.
It was the season when the Pyrenean villages, freed from the visitors
which the summers bring, imprisoned by the clouds, the mist, or the snow,
are more intensely as they were in ancient times. In these cider
mills--sole, little, illuminated points, living, in the midst of the
immense, empty darkness of the fields--something of the spirit of former
times is reanimated in winter evenings. In front of the large casks of
cider arranged in lines in the background where it is dark, the lamp,
hanging from the beams, throws its light on the images of saints that
decorate the walls, on the groups of mountaineers who talk and who smoke.
At times someone sings a plaintive song which came from the night of
centuries; the beating of a tambourine recalls to life old, forgotten
rhythms; a guitar reawakens a sadness of the epoch of the Moors.--Or, in
the face of each other, two men, with castanets in their hands, suddenly
dance the fandango, swinging themselves with an antique grace.
And, from these innocent, little inns, they retire early--especially in
these bad, rainy nights--the darkness of which is so peculiarly
propitious to smuggling, every one here having to do some clandestine
thing on the Spanish side.
In such places, in the company of Arrochkoa, Ramuntcho talked over and
commented upon his cherished, sacrilegious project; or,--during the
beautiful moon-light nights which do not permit of undertakings on the
frontier--they talked on the roads for a long time.
Persistent religions scruples made him hesitate a great deal, although he
hardly realized it. They were inexplicable scruples, since he had ceased
to be a believer. But all his will, all his audacity, all his life, were
concentrated and directed, more and more, toward this unique end.
And the prohibition, ordered by Itchoua, from seeing Gracieuse before the
great attempt, exasperated his impatient dream.
The winter, capricious as it is always in this country, pursued its
unequal march, with, from time to time, surprises of sunlight and of
heat. There were rains of a deluge, grand, healthy squalls which went up
from the Bay of Biscay, plunged into the valleys, bending the trees
furiously. And then, repetitions of the wind of the south, breaths as
warm as in summer, breezes smelling of Africa, under a sky at once high
and sombre, among mountains of an intense brown color. And also, glacial
mornings, wherein one saw, at awakening, summits become snowy and white.
The desire often seized him to finish everything.--But he had the
frightful idea that he might not succeed and might fall again, alone
forever, without a hope in life.
Anyway, reasonable pretexts to wait were not lacking. He had to settle
with men of affairs, he had to sell the house and realize, for his
flight, all the money that he could obtain. He had also to wait for the
answer of Uncle Ignacio, to whom he had announced his emigration and at
whose house he expected to find an asylum.
Thus the days went by, and soon the hasty spring was to ferment. Already
the yellow primrose and the blue gentian, in advance here by several
weeks, were in bloom in the woods and along the paths, in the last suns
of January--
CHAPTER XI.
They are this time in the cider mill of the hamlet of Gastelugain, near
the frontier, waiting for the moment to go out with boxes of jewelry and
weapons.
And it is Itchoua who is talking:
"If she hesitates--and she will not hesitate, be sure of it--but if she
hesitates, well! we will kidnap her.--Let me arrange this, my plan is all
made. It will be in the evening, you understand?--We will bring her
anywhere and imprison her in a room with you.--If it turns out badly--if
I am forced to quit the country after having done this thing to please
you; then, you will have to give me more money than the amount agreed
upon, you understand?--Enough, at least, to let me seek for my bread in
Spain--"
"In Spain!--What? What are you going to do, Itchoua? I hope you have not
in your head the idea to do things that are too grave."
"Oh, do not be afraid, my friend. I have no desire to assassinate
anybody."
"Well! You talk of running away--"
"I said this as I would have said anything else, you know. For some time,
business has been bad. And then, suppose the thing turns out badly and
the police make an inquiry. Well, I would prefer to go, that is
sure.--For whenever these men of justice put their noses into anything,
they seek for things that happened long ago, and the inquiry never
ends--"
In his eyes, suddenly expressive, appeared crime and fear. And Ramuntcho
looked with an increase of anxiety at this man, who was believed to be
solidly established in the country with lands in the sunlight, and who
accepted so easily the idea of running away. What sort of a bandit is he
then, to be so much afraid of justice?--And what could be these things
that happened long ago?--After a silence between them, Ramuntcho said in
a lower voice, with extreme distrust:
"Imprison her--you say this seriously, Itchoua?--And where imprison her,
if you please? I have no castle to hide her in--"
Then Itchoua, with the smile of a faun which no one had seen before,
tapped his shoulder:
"Oh, imprison her--for one night only, my son!--It will be enough, you
may believe me.--They are all alike, you see: the first step costs; but
the second one, they make it all alone, and quicker than you may think.
Do you imagine that she would wish to return to the good sisters,
afterward?--"
The desire to slap that dull face passed like an electric shock through
the arm and the hand of Ramuntcho. He constrained himself, however,
through a long habit of respectfulness for the old singer of the
liturgies, and remained silent, with a flush on his cheeks, and his look
turned aside. It revolted him to hear one talk thus of her--and surprised
him that the one who spoke thus was that Itchoua whom he had always known
as the quiet husband of an ugly and old woman. But the blow struck by the
impertinent phrase followed nevertheless, in his imagination, a dangerous
and unforeseen path.--Gracieuse, "imprisoned a room with him!" The
immediate possibility of such a thing, so clearly presented with a rough
and coarse word, made his head swim like a very violent liquor.
He loved her with too elevated a tenderness, his betrothed, to find
pleasure in brutal hopes. Ordinarily, he expelled from his mind those
images; but now that man had just placed them under his eye, with a
diabolical crudity, and he felt shivers in his flesh, he trembled as if
the weather were cold--
Oh, whether the adventure fell or not under the blow of justice, well, so
much the worse, after all! He had nothing to lose, all was indifferent to
him! And from that evening, in the fever of a new desire, he felt more
boldly decided to brave the rules, the laws, the obstacles of this world.
Saps ascended everywhere around him, on the sides of the brown Pyrenees;
there were longer and more tepid nights; the paths were bordered with
violets and periwinkles.--But religious scruples held him still. They
remained, inexplicably in the depth of his disordered mind: instinctive
horror of profanation; belief, in spite of everything, in something
supernatural enveloping, to defend them, churches and cloisters--
CHAPTER XII.
The winter had just come to an end.
Ramuntcho,--who had slept for a few hours, in a bad, tired sleep, in a
small room of the new house of his friend Florentino, at
Ururbil,--awakened as the day dawned.
The night,--a night of tempest everywhere, a black and troubled
night,--had been disastrous for the smugglers. Near Cape Figuier, in the
rocks where they had just landed from the sea with silk bundles, they had
been pursued with gunshots, compelled to throw away their loads, losing
everything, some fleeing to the mountain, others escaping by swimming
among the breakers, in order to reach the French shore, in terror of the
prisons of San Sebastian.
At two o'clock in the morning, exhausted, drenched and half drowned, he
had knocked at the door of that isolated house, to ask from the good
Florentino his aid and an asylum.
And on awakening, after all the nocturnal noise of the equinoctial storm,
of the rain, of the groaning branches, twisted and broken, he perceived
that a grand silence had come. Straining his ear, he could hear no longer
the immense breath of the western wind, no longer the motion of all those
things tormented in the darkness. No, nothing except a far-off noise,
regular, powerful, continued and formidable; the roll of the waters in
the depth of that Bay of Biscay--which, since the beginning, is without
truce and troubled; a rhythmic groan, as might be the monstrous
respiration of the sea in its sleep; a series of profound blows which
seemed the blows of a battering ram on a wall, continued every time by a
music of surf on the beaches.--But the air, the trees and the surrounding
things were immovable; the tempest had finished, without reasonable
cause, as it had begun, and the sea alone prolonged the complaint of it.
To look at that land, that Spanish coast which he would perhaps never see
again, since his departure was so near, he opened his window on the
emptiness, still pale, on the virginity of the desolate dawn.
A gray light emanating from a gray sky; everywhere the same immobility,
tired and frozen, with uncertainties of aspect derived from the night and
from dreams. An opaque sky, which had a solid air and was made of
accumulated, small, horizontal layers, as if one had painted it by
superposing pastes of dead colors.
And underneath, mountains black brown; then Fontarabia in a morose
silhouette, its old belfry appearing blacker and more worn by the years.
At that hour, so early and so freshly mysterious, when the ears of most
men are not yet open, it seemed as if one surprised things in their
heartbreaking colloquy of lassitude and of death, relating to one
another, at the first flush of dawn, all that they do not say when the
day has risen.--What was the use of resisting the storm of last night?
said the old belfry, sad and weary, standing in the background in the
distance; what was the use, since other storms will come, eternally
others, other storms and other tempests, and since I will pass away, I
whom men have elevated as a signal of prayer to remain here for
incalculable years?--I am already only a spectre, come from some other
time; I continue to ring ceremonies and illusory festivals; but men will
soon cease to be lured by them; I ring also knells, I have rung so many
knells for thousands of dead persons whom nobody remembers! And I remain
here, useless, under the effort, almost eternal, of all those western
winds which blow from the sea--
At the foot of the belfry, the church, drawn in gray tints, with an air
of age and abandonment, confessed also that it was empty, that it was
vain, peopled only by poor images made of wood or of stone, by myths
without comprehension, without power and without pity. And all the
houses, piously grouped for centuries around it, avowed that its
protection was not efficacious against death, that it was deceptive and
untruthful--
And especially the clouds, the clouds and the mountains, covered with
their immense, mute attestation what the old city murmured beneath them;
they confirmed in silence the sombre truths: heaven empty as the churches
are, serving for accidental phantasmagoria, and uninterrupted times
rolling their flood, wherein thousands of lives, like insignificant
nothings, are, one after another, dragged and drowned.--A knell began to
ring in that distance which Ramuntcho saw whitening; very slowly, the old
belfry gave its voice, once more, for the end of a life; someone was in
the throes of death on the other side of the frontier, some Spanish soul
over there was going out, in the pale morning, under the thickness of
those imprisoning clouds--and he had almost the precise notion that this
soul would very simply follow its body in the earth which decomposes--
And Ramuntcho contemplated and listened. At the little window of that
Basque house, which before him had sheltered only generations of
simple-minded and confident people, leaning on the wide sill which the
rubbing of elbows had worn, pushing the old shutter painted green, he
rested his eyes on the dull display of that corner of the world which had
been his and which he was to quit forever. Those revelations which things
made, his uncultured mind heard them for the first time and he lent to
them a frightened attention. An entire new labor of unbelief was going on
suddenly in his mind, prepared by heredity to doubts and to worry. An
entire vision came to him, sudden and seemingly definitive, of the
nothingness of religions, of the nonexistence of the divinities whom men
supplicate.
And then--since there was nothing, how simple it was to tremble still
before the white Virgin, chimerical protector of those convents where
girls are imprisoned!--
The poor agony bell, which exhausted itself in ringing over there so
puerilely to call for useless prayers, stopped at last, and, under the
closed sky, the respiration of the grand waters alone was heard in the
distance, in the universal silence. But the things continued, in the
uncertain dawn, their dialogue without words: nothing anywhere; nothing
in the old churches venerated for so long a time; nothing in the sky
where clouds and mists amass; but always, in the flight of times, the
eternal and exhausting renewal of beings; and always and at once, old
age, death, ashes--
That is what they were saying, in the pale half light, the things so dull
and so tired. And Ramuntcho, who had heard, pitied himself for having
hesitated so long for imaginary reasons. To himself he swore, with a
harsher despair, that this morning he was decided; that he would do it,
at the risk of everything; that nothing would make him hesitate longer.
CHAPTER XIII.
Weeks have elapsed, in preparations, in anxious uncertainties on the
manner of acting, in abrupt changes of plans and ideas.
Between times, the reply of Uncle Ignacio has reached Etchezar. If his
nephew had spoken sooner, Ignacio has written, he would have been glad to
receive him at his house; but, seeing how he hesitated, Ignacio had
decided to take a wife, although he is already an old man, and now he has
a child two months old. Therefore, there is no protection to be expected
from that side; the exile, when he arrives there, may not find even a
home--
The family house has been sold, at the notary's money questions have been
settled; all the goods of Ramuntcho have been transformed into gold
pieces which are in his hand--
And now is the day of the supreme attempt, the great day,--and already
the thick foliage has returned to the trees, the clothing of the tall
grass covers anew the prairies; it is May.
In the little wagon, which the famous fast horse drags, they roll on the
shady mountain paths, Arrochkoa and Ramuntcho, toward that village of
Amezqueta. They roll quickly; they plunge into the heart of an infinite
region of trees. And, as the hour goes by, all becomes more peaceful
around them, and more savage; more primitive, the hamlets; more solitary,
the Basque land.
In the shade of the branches, on the borders of the paths, there are pink
foxgloves, silences, ferns, almost the same flora as in Brittany; these
two countries, the Basque and the Breton, resemble each other by the
granite which is everywhere and by the habitual rain; by the immobility
also, and by the continuity of the same religious dream.
Above the two young men who have started for the adventure, thicken the
big, customary clouds, the sombre and low sky. The route which they
follow, in these mountains ever and ever higher, is deliciously green,
dug in the shade, between walls of ferns.
Immobility of several centuries, immobility in beings and in things,--one
has more and more the consciousness of it as one penetrates farther into
this country of forests and of silence. Under this obscure veil of the
sky, where are lost the summits of the grand Pyrenees, appear and run by,
isolated houses, centenary farms, hamlets more and more rare,--and they
go always under the same vault of oaks, of ageless chestnut trees, which
twist even at the side of the path their roots like mossy serpents. They
resemble one another, those hamlets separated from one another by so much
forest, by so many branches, and inhabited by an antique race, disdainful
of all that disturbs, of all that changes: the humble church, most often
without a belfry, with a simple campanila on its gray facade, and the
square, with its wall painted for that traditional ball-game wherein,
from father to son, the men exercise their hard muscles. Everywhere
reigned the healthy peace of rustic life, the traditions of which in the
Basque land are more immutable than elsewhere.
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