Books: Ramuntcho
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Pierre Loti >> Ramuntcho
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Three o'clock. It is the hour when vespers, the last office of the day,
comes to an end; the hour when leave the church, in a meditation grave as
that of the morning, all the mantillas of black cloth concealing the
beautiful hair of the girls and the form of their waists, all the woolen
caps similarly lowered on the shaven faces of men, on their eyes piercing
or somber, still plunged in the old time dreams.
It is the hour when the games are to begin, the dances, the pelota and
the fandango. All this is traditional and immutable.
The light of the day becomes more golden, one feels the approach of
night. The church, suddenly empty, forgotten, where persists the odor of
incense, becomes full of silence, and the old gold of the background
shines mysteriously in the midst of more shade; silence also is scattered
around on the tranquil enclosure of the dead, where the folks this time
passed without stopping, in their haste to go elsewhere.
On the square of the ball-game, people are beginning to arrive from
everywhere, from the village itself and from the neighboring hamlets,
from the huts of the shepherds or of the smugglers who perch above, on
the harsh mountains. Hundreds of Basque caps, all similar, are now
reunited, ready to judge the players, to applaud or to murmur; they
discuss the chances, comment upon the relative strength of the players
and make big bets of money. And young girls, young women gather also,
having nothing of the awkwardness of the peasants in other provinces of
France, elegant, refined, graceful in costumes of the new fashions; some
wearing on their hair the silk kerchief, rolled and arranged like a small
cap; others bareheaded, their hair dressed in the most modern manner;
most of them pretty, with admirable eyes and very long eyebrows--This
square, always solemn and ordinarily somewhat sad, is filled to-day,
Sunday, with a lively and gay crowd.
The most insignificant hamlet in the Basque country has a square for the
ball-game, large, carefully kept, in general near the church, under oaks.
But here, this is a central point and something like the Conservatory of
French ball-players, of those who become celebrated, in South America as
well as in the Pyrenees, and who, in the great international games,
oppose the champions of Spain. So the place is particularly beautiful and
pompous, surprising in so distant a village. It is paved with large
stones, between which grass grows expressing its antiquity and giving to
it an air of being abandoned. On the two sides are extended, for the
spectators, long benches--made of the red granite of the neighboring
mountain and, at this moment, all overgrown with autumn scabwort.
And in the back, the old monumental wall rises, against which the balls
will strike. It has a rounded front which seems to be the silhouette of a
dome and bears this inscription, half effaced by time: "Blaidka haritzea
debakatua." (The blaid game is forbidden.)
Still, the day's game is to be the blaid; but the venerable inscription
dates from the time of the splendor of the national game, degenerated at
present, as all things degenerate. It had been placed there to preserve
the tradition of the "rebot", a more difficult game, exacting more
agility and strength, and which has been perpetuated only in the Spanish
province of Guipuzcoa.
While the graded benches are filling up, the paved square, which the
grass makes green, and which has seen the lithe and the vigorous men of
the country run since the days of old, remains empty. The beautiful
autumn sun, at its decline, warms and lights it. Here and there some tall
oaks shed their leaves above the seated spectators. Beyond are the high
church and the cypress trees, the entire sacred corner, from which the
saints and the dead seem to be looking at a distance, protecting the
players, interested in this game which is the passion still of an entire
race and characterises it--
At last they enter the arena, the Pelotaris, the six champions among whom
is one in a cassock: the vicar of the parish. With him are some other
personages: the crier, who, in an instant, will sing the points; the five
judges, selected among the experts of different villages to intervene in
cases of litigation, and some others carrying extra balls and sandals. At
the right wrist the players attach with thongs a strange wicker thing
resembling a large, curved fingernail which lengthens the forearm by
half. It is with this glove (manufactured in France by a unique
basket-maker of the village of Ascain) that they will have to catch,
throw and hurl the pelota,--a small ball of tightened cord covered with
sheepskin, which is as hard as a wooden ball.
Now they try the balls, selecting the best, limbering, with a few points
that do not count, their athletic arms. Then, they take off their
waistcoats and carry them to preferred spectators; Ramuntcho gives his to
Gracieuse, seated in the first row on the lower bench. And all, except
the priest, who will play in his black gown, are in battle array, their
chests at liberty in pink cotton shirts or light thread fleshings.
The assistants know them well, these players; in a moment, they shall be
excited for or against them and will shout at them, frantically, as it
happens with the toreadors.
At this moment the village is entirely animated by the spirit of the
olden time; in its expectation of the pleasure, in its liveliness, in its
ardor, it is intensely Basque and very old,--under the great shade of the
Gizune, the overhanging mountain, which throws over it a twilight charm.
And the game begins in the melancholy evening. The ball, thrown with much
strength, flies, strikes the wall in great, quick blows, then rebounds,
and traverses the air with the rapidity of a bullet.
This wall in the background, rounded like a dome's festoon on the sky,
has become little by little crowned with heads of children,--little
Basques, little cats, ball-players of the future, who soon will
precipitate themselves like a flight of birds, to pick up the ball every
time when, thrown too high, it will go beyond the square and fall in the
fields.
The game becomes gradually warmer as arms and legs are limbered, in an
intoxication of movement and swiftness. Already Ramuntcho is acclaimed.
And the vicar also shall be one of the fine players of the day, strange
to look upon with his leaps similar to those of a cat, and his athletic
gestures, imprisoned in his priest's gown.
This is the rule of the game: when one of the champions of the two camps
lets the ball fall, it is a point earned by the adverse camp,--and
ordinarily the limit is sixty points. After each point, the titled crier
chants with a full voice in his old time tongue: "The but has so much,
the refil has so much, gentlemen!" (The but is the camp which played
first, the refil is the camp opposed to the but.) And the crier's long
clamor drags itself above the noise of the crowd, which approves or
murmurs.
On the square, the zone gilt and reddened by the sun diminishes, goes,
devoured by the shade; more and more the great screen of the Gizune
predominates over everything, seems to enclose in this little corner of
the world at its feet, the very special life and the ardor of these
mountaineers--who are the fragments of a people very mysteriously unique,
without analogy among nations--The shade of night marches forward and
invades in silence, soon it will be sovereign; in the distance only a few
summits still lighted above so many darkened valleys, are of a violet
luminous and pink.
Ramuntcho plays as, in his life, he had never played before; he is in one
of those instants when one feels tempered by strength, light, weighing
nothing, and when it is a pure joy to move, to extend one's arms, to
leap. But Arrochkoa weakens, the vicar is fettered two or three times by
his black cassock, and the adverse camp, at first distanced, little by
little catches up, then, in presence of this game so valiantly disputed,
clamor redoubles and caps fly in the air, thrown by enthusiastic hands.
Now the points are equal on both sides; the crier announces thirty for
each one of the rival camps and he sings the old refrain which is of
tradition immemorial in such cases: "Let bets come forward! Give drink to
the judges and to the players." It is the signal for an instant of rest,
while wine shall be brought into the arena at the cost of the village.
The players sit down, and Ramuntcho takes a place beside Gracieuse, who
throws on his shoulders, wet with perspiration, the waistcoat which she
was keeping for him, Then he asks of his little friend to undo the thongs
which hold the glove of wood, wicker and leather on his reddened arm. And
he rests in the pride of his success, seeing only smiles of greeting on
the faces of the girls at whom he looks. But he sees also, on the side
opposed to the players' wall, on the side of the approaching darkness,
the archaic assemblage of Basque houses, the little square of the village
with its kalsomined porches and its old plane-trees, then the old,
massive belfry of the church, and, higher than everything, dominating
everything, crushing everything, the abrupt mass of the Gizune from which
comes so much shade, from which descends on this distant village so hasty
an impression of night--Truly it encloses too much, that mountain, it
imprisons, it impresses--And Ramuntcho, in his juvenile triumph, is
troubled by the sentiment of this, by this furtive and vague attraction
of other places so often mingled with his troubles and with his joys--
The game continues and his thoughts are lost in the physical intoxication
of beginning the struggle again. From instant to instant, clack! the snap
of the pelotas, their sharp noise against the glove which throws them or
the wall which receives them, their same noise giving the notion of all
the strength displayed--Clack! it will snap till the hour of twilight,
the pelota, animated furiously by arms powerful and young. At times the
players, with a terrible shock, stop it in its flight, with a shock that
would break other muscles than theirs. Most often, sure of themselves,
they let it quietly touch the soil, almost die: it seems as if they would
never catch it: and clack! it goes off, however, caught just in time,
thanks to a marvellous precision of the eye, and strikes the wall, ever
with the rapidity of a bullet--When it wanders on the benches, on the
mass of woolen caps and of pretty hair ornamented with silk kerchiefs,
all the heads then, all the bodies, are lowered as if moved by the wind
of its passage: for it must not be touched, it must not be stopped, as
long as it is living and may still be caught; then, when it is really
lost, dead, some one of the assistants does himself the honor to pick it
up and throw it back to the players.
The night falls, falls, the last golden colors scatter with serene
melancholy over the highest summits of the Basque country. In the
deserted church, profound silence is established and antique images
regard one another alone through the invasion of night--Oh! the sadness
of ends of festivals, in very isolated villages, as soon as the sun
sets!--
Meanwhile Ramuntcho is more and more the great conqueror. And the
plaudits, the cries, redouble his happy boldness; each time he makes a
point the men, standing now on the old, graded, granite benches, acclaim
him with southern fury.
The last point, the sixtieth--It is Ramuntcho's and he has won the game!
Then there is a sudden crumbling into the arena of all the Basque caps
which ornamented the stone amphitheatre; they press around the players
who have made themselves immovable, suddenly, in tired attitudes. And
Ramuntcho unfastens the thongs of his glove in the middle of a crowd of
expansive admirers; from all sides, brave and rude hands are stretched to
grasp his or to strike his shoulder amicably.
"Have you asked Gracieuse to dance with you this evening?" asks
Arrochkoa, who in this instant would do anything for him.
"Yes, when she came out of the high mass I spoke to her--She has
promised."
"Good! I feared that mother--Oh! I would have arranged it, in any case;
you may believe me."
A robust old man with square shoulders, with square jaws, with a
beardless, monkish face, before whom all bowed with respect, comes also:
it is Haramburu, a player of the olden time who was celebrated half a
century ago in America for the game of rebot, and who earned a small
fortune. Ramuntcho blushes with pleasure at the compliment of this old
man, who is hard to please. And beyond, standing on the reddish benches,
among the long grasses and the November scabwort, his little friend, whom
a group of young girls follows, turns back to smile at him, to send to
him with her hand a gentle adios in the Spanish fashion. He is a young
god in this moment, Ramuntcho; people are proud to know him, to be among
his friends, to get his waistcoat for him, to talk to him, to touch him.
Now, with the other pelotaris, he goes to the neighboring inn, to a room
where are placed the clean clothes of all and where careful friends
accompany them to rub their bodies, wet with perspiration.
And, a moment afterward, elegant in a white shirt, his cap on the side,
he comes out of the door, under the plane-trees shaped like vaults, to
enjoy again his success, see the people pass, continue to gather
compliments and smiles.
The autumnal day has declined, it is evening at present. In the lukewarm
air, bats glide. The mountaineers of the surrounding villages depart one
by one; a dozen carriages are harnessed, their lanterns are lighted,
their bells ring and they disappear in the little shady paths of the
valleys. In the middle of the limpid penumbra may be distinguished the
women, the pretty girls seated on benches in front of the houses, under
the vaults of the plane-trees; they are only clear forms, their Sunday
costumes make white spots in the twilight, pink spots--and the pale blue
spot which Ramuntcho looks at is the new gown of Gracieuse.--Above all,
filling the sky, the gigantic Gizune, confused and sombre, is as if it
were the centre and the source of the darkness, little by little
scattered over all things. And at the church, suddenly the pious bells
ring, recalling to distracted minds the enclosure where the graves are,
the cypress trees around the belfry, and the entire grand mystery of the
sky, of prayer, of inevitable death.
Oh! the sadness of ends of festivals in very isolated villages, when the
sun ceases to illuminate, and when it is autumn--
They know very well, these men who were so ardent a moment ago in the
humble pleasures of the day, that in the cities there are other festivals
more brilliant, more beautiful and less quickly ended; but this is
something separate; it is the festival of the country, of their own
country, and nothing can replace for them these furtive instants whereof
they have thought for so many days in advance--Lovers who will depart
toward the scattered houses flanking the Pyrenees, couples who to-morrow
will begin over their monotonous and rude life, look at one another
before separating, look at one another under the falling night, with
regretful eyes that say: "Then, it is finished already? Then, that is
all?--"
CHAPTER V.
Eight o'clock in the evening. They have dined at the cider mill, all the
players except the vicar, under the patronage of Itchoua; they have
lounged for a long time afterward, languid in the smoke of smuggled
cigarettes and listening to the marvellous improvisations of the two
Iragola brothers, of the Mendiazpi mountain--while outside, on the
street, the girls in small groups holding one another's arms, looked at
the windows, found pleasure in observing on the smoky panes the round
shadows of the heads of the men covered with similar caps--
Now, on the square, the brass band plays the first measures of the
fandango, and the young men, the young girls, all those of the village
and several also of the mountain who have remained to dance, arrive in
impatient groups. There are some dancing already on the road, not to lose
anything.
And soon the fandango turns, turns, in the light of the new moon the
horns of which seem to pose, lithe and light, on the enormous and heavy
mountain. In the couples that dance without ever touching each other,
there is never a separation; before one another always and at an equal
distance, the boy and the girl make evolutions with a rhythmic grace, as
if they were tied together by some invisible magnet.
It has gone into hiding, the crescent of the moon, fallen, one would
think, in the black mountain; then lanterns are brought and hooked to the
trunks of the plane-trees and the young men can see better their partners
who, opposite them swing with an air of fleeing continually, but without
increasing their distance ever: almost all pretty, their hair elegantly
dressed, a kerchief on the neck, and wearing with ease gowns in the
fashion of to-day. The men, somewhat grave always, accompany the music
with snaps of their fingers in the air: shaven and sunburnt faces to
which labor in the fields, in smuggling or at sea, has given a special
thinness, almost ascetic; still, by the ampleness of their brown necks,
by the width of their shoulders, one divines their great strength, the
strength of that old, sober and religious race.
The fandango turns and oscillates, to the tune of an ancient waltz. All
the arms, extended and raised, agitate themselves in the air, rise or
fall with pretty, cadenced motions following the oscillations of bodies.
The rope soled sandals make this dance silent and infinitely light; one
hears only the frou-frou of gowns, and ever the snap of fingers imitating
the noise of castanets. With a Spanish grace, the girls, whose wide
sleeves expand like wings, swing their tightened waists above their
vigorous and supple hips--
Facing one another, Ramuntcho and Gracieuse said nothing at first,
captivated by the childish joy of moving quickly in cadence, to the sound
of music. It is very chaste, that manner of dancing without the slightest
touch of bodies.
But there were also, in the course of the evening, waltzes and
quadrilles, and even walks arm-in-arm during which the lovers could touch
each other and talk.
"Then, my Ramuntcho," said Gracieuse, "it is of that game that you expect
to make your future, is it not?"
They were walking now arm-in-arm, under the plane-trees shedding their
leaves in the night of November, lukewarm as a night of May, during an
interval of silence when the musicians were resting.
"Yes," replied Ramuntcho, "in our country it is a trade, like any other,
where one may earn a living, as long as strength lasts--and one may go
from time to time to South America, you know, as Irun and Gorosteguy have
done, and bring back twenty, thirty thousand francs for a season, earned
honestly at Buenos Ayres."
"Oh, the Americas--" exclaimed Gracieuse in a joyful enthusiasm--"the
Americas, what happiness! It was always my wish to go across the sea to
those countries!--And we would look for your uncle Ignacio, then go to my
cousin, Bidegaina, who has a farm on the Uruguay, in the prairies--"
She ceased talking, the little girl who had never gone out of that
village which the mountains enclose; she stopped to think of these
far-off lands which haunted her young head because she had, like most
Basques, nomadic ancestors--folks who are called here Americans or
Indians, who pass their adventurous lives on the other side of the ocean
and return to the cherished village only very late, to die. And, while
she dreamed, her nose in the air, her eyes in the black of the clouds and
of the summits, Ramuntcho felt his blood running faster, his heart
beating quicker in the intense joy of what she had just said so
spontaneously. And, inclining his head toward her, he asked, as if to
jest, in a voice infinitely soft and childish:
"We would go? Is that what you said: we would go, you with me? This
signifies therefore that you would consent, a little later, when we
become of age, to marry me?"
He perceived through the darkness the gentle black light of Gracieuse's
eyes, which rose toward him with an expression of astonishment and of
reproach.
"Then--you did not know?"
"I wanted to make you say it, you see--You had never said it to me, do
you know?--"
He held tighter the arm of his little betrothed and their walk became
slower. It is true that they had never said it, not only because it
seemed to them that it was not necessary to say, but especially because
they were stopped at the moment of speaking by a sort of terror--the
terror of being mistaken about each other's sentiment--and now they knew,
they were sure. Then they had the consciousness of having passed together
the grave and solemn threshold of life. And, leaning on one another, they
faltered, almost, in their slackened promenade, like two children
intoxicated by youthfulness, joy and hope.
"But do you think your mother will consent?" said Ramuntcho timidly,
after the long, delightful silence--
"Ah, that is the trouble", replied the little girl with a sigh of
anxiety--"Arrochkoa, my brother, will be for us, it is probable. But
mother?--Will mother consent?--But, it will not happen soon, in any
case--You have to serve in the army."
"No, if you do not want me to! No, I need not serve! I am a Guipuzcoan,
like my mother; I shall be enrolled only if I wish to be--Whatever you
say, I'll do--"
"My Ramuntcho, I would like better to wait for you longer and that you
become naturalized, and that you become a soldier like the others. I tell
you this, since you ask--"
"Truly, is it what you wish? Well, so much the better. Oh, to be a
Frenchman or a Spaniard is indifferent to me. I shall do as you wish. I
like as well one as the other: I am a Basque like you, like all of us; I
care not for the rest! But as for being a soldier somewhere, on this side
of the frontier or on the other, yes, I prefer it. In the first place,
one who goes away looks as if he were running away; and then, it would
please me to be a soldier, frankly."
"Well, my Ramuntcho, since it is all the same to you, serve as a soldier
in France, to please me."
"It is understood, Gatchutcha!--You will see me wearing red trousers. I
shall call on you in the dress of a soldier, like Bidegarray, like
Joachim. As soon as I have served my three years, we will marry, if your
mother consents!"
After a moment of silence Gracieuse said, in a low, solemn voice:
"Listen, my Ramuntcho--I am like you: I am afraid of her--of my
mother--But listen--if she refuses, we shall do together anything,
anything that you wish, for this is the only thing in the world in which
I shall not obey her--"
Then, silence returned between them, now that they were engaged, the
incomparable silence of young joys, of joys new and not yet tried, which
need to hush, which need to meditate in order to understand themselves
better in their profoundness. They walked in short steps and at random
toward the church, in the soft obscurity which the lanterns troubled no
longer, intoxicated by their innocent contact and by feeling that they
were walking together in the path where no one had followed them--
But the noise of the brass instruments suddenly arose anew, in a sort of
slow waltz, oddly rhythmic. And the two children, at the fandango's
appeal, without having consulted each other, and as if it was a
compulsory thing which may not be disputed, ran, not to lose a moment,
toward the place where the couples were dancing. Quickly, quickly placing
themselves opposite each other, they began again to swing in measure,
without talking to each other, with the same pretty gestures of their
arms, the same supple motions of their hips. From time to time, without
loss of step or distance, both ran, in a direct line like arrows. But
this was only an habitual variation of the dance,--and, ever in measure,
quickly, as if they were gliding, they returned to their starting point.
Gracieuse had in dancing the same passionate ardor as in praying at the
white chapels,--the same ardor which later doubtless, she would have in
embracing Ramuntcho when caresses between them would not be forbidden.
And at moments, at every fifth or sixth measure, at the same time as her
light and strong partner, she turned round completely, the bust bent with
Spanish grace, the head thrown backward, the lips half open on the
whiteness of the teeth, a distinguished and proud grace disengaging
itself from her little personality, still so mysterious, which to
Ramuntcho only revealed itself a little.
During all this beautiful evening of November, they danced before each
other, mute and charming, with intervals of promenade in which they
hardly talked--intoxicated in silence by the delicious thought with which
their minds were filled.
And, until the curfew rang in the church, this dance under the branches
of autumn, these little lanterns, this little festival in this corner
closed to the world, threw a little light and joyful noise into the vast
night which the mountains, standing everywhere like giants of shadow,
made more dumb and more black.
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