Books: Ramuntcho
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Pierre Loti >> Ramuntcho
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CHAPTER VI.
There is to be a grand ball-game next Sunday, for the feast of Saint
Damasus, in the borough of Hasparitz.
Arrochkoa and Ramuntcho, companions in continual expeditions through the
surrounding country, travelled for the entire day, in the little wagon of
the Detcharry family, in order to organize that ball-game, which to them
is a considerable event.
In the first place, they had to consult Marcos, one of the Iragola
brothers. Near a wood, in front of his house in the shade, they found him
seated on a stump of a chestnut tree, always grave and statuesque, his
eyes inspired and his gesture noble, in the act of making his little
brother, still in swaddling clothes, eat soup.
"Is he the eleventh?" they have asked, laughing.
"Oh! Go on!" the big eldest brother has replied, "the eleventh is running
already like a hare in the heather. This is number twelve!--little John
the Baptist, you know, the latest, who, I think, will not be the last."
And then, lowering their heads not to strike the branches, they had
traversed the woods, the forests of oaks under which extends infinitely
the reddish lace of ferns.
And they have traversed several villages also,--Basque villages, all
grouped around these two things which are the heart of them and which
symbolize their life: the church and the ball-game. Here and there, they
have knocked at the doors of isolated houses, tall and large houses,
carefully whitewashed, with green shades, and wooden balconies where are
drying in the sun strings of red peppers. At length they have talked, in
their language so closed to strangers of France, with the famous players,
the titled champions, the ones whose odd names have been seen in all the
journals of the southwest, on all the posters of Biarritz or of
Saint-Jean-de-Luz, and who, in ordinary life, are honest country
inn-keepers, blacksmiths, smugglers, with waistcoat thrown over the
shoulder and shirt sleeves rolled on bronze arms.
Now that all is settled and that the last words have been exchanged, it
is too late to return that night to Etchezar; then, following their
errant habits, they select for the night a village which they like,
Zitzarry, for example, where they have gone often for their smuggling
business. At the fall of night, then, they turn toward this place, which
is near Spain. They go by the same little Pyrenean routes, shady and
solitary under the old oaks that are shedding their leaves, among slopes
richly carpeted with moss and rusty ferns. And now there are ravines
where torrents roar, and then heights from which appear on all sides the
tall, sombre peaks.
At first it was cold, a real cold, lashing the face and the chest. But
now gusts begin to pass astonishingly warm and perfumed with the scent of
plants: the southern wind, rising again, bringing back suddenly the
illusion of summer. And then, it becomes for them a delicious sensation
to go through the air, so brusquely changed, to go quickly under the
lukewarm breaths, in the noise of their horse's bells galloping playfully
in the mountains.
Zitzarry, a smugglers' village, a distant village skirting the frontier.
A dilapidated inn where, according to custom, the rooms for the men are
directly above the stables, the black stalls. They are well-known
travelers there, Arrochkoa and Ramuntcho, and while men are lighting the
fire for them they sit near an antique, mullioned window, which overlooks
the square of the ball-game and the church; they see the tranquil, little
life of the day ending in this place so separated from the world.
On this solemn square, the children practice the national game; grave and
ardent, already strong, they throw their pelota against the wall, while,
in a singing voice and with the needful intonation, one of them counts
and announces the points, in the mysterious tongue of the ancestors.
Around them, the tall houses, old and white, with warped walls, with
projecting rafters, contemplate through their green or red windows those
little players, so lithe, who run in the twilight like young cats. And
the carts drawn by oxen return from the fields, with the noise of bells,
bringing loads of wood, loads of gorse or of dead ferns--The night falls,
falls with its peace and its sad cold. Then, the angelus rings--and there
is, in the entire village, a tranquil, prayerful meditation--
Then Ramuntcho, silent, worries about his destiny, feels as if he were a
prisoner here, with his same aspirations always, toward something
unknown, he knows not what, which troubles him at the approach of night.
And his heart also fills up, because he is alone and without support in
the world, because Gracieuse is in a situation different from his and may
never be given to him.
But Arrochkoa, very brotherly this time, in one of his good moments,
slaps him on the shoulder as if he had understood his reverie, and says
to him in a tone of light gaiety:
"Well! it seems that you talked together, last night, sister and you--she
told me about it--and that you are both prettily agreed!--"
Ramuntcho lifts toward him a long look of anxious and grave
interrogation, which is in contrast with the beginning of their
conversation:
"And what do you think," he asks, "of what we have said?"
"Oh, my friend," replied Arrochkoa, become more serious also, "on my word
of honor, it suits me very well--And even, as I fear that there shall be
trouble with mother, I promise to help you if you need help--"
And Ramuntcho's sadness is dispelled as a little dust on which one has
blown. He finds the supper delicious, the inn gay. He feels himself much
more engaged to Gracieuse, now, when somebody is in the secret, and
somebody in the family who does not repulse him. He had a presentiment
that Arrochkoa would not be hostile to him, but his co-operation, so
clearly offered, far surpasses Ramuntcho's hope--Poor little abandoned
fellow, so conscious of the humbleness of his situation, that the support
of another child, a little better established in life, suffices to return
to him courage and confidence!
CHAPTER VII.
At the uncertain and somewhat icy dawn, he awoke in his little room in
the inn, with a persistent impression of his joy on the day before,
instead of the confused anguish which accompanied so often in him the
progressive return of his thoughts. Outside, were sounds of bells of
cattle starting for the pastures, of cows lowing to the rising sun, of
church bells,--and already, against the wall of the large square, the
sharp snap of the Basque pelota: all the noises of a Pyrenean village
beginning again its customary life for another day. And all this seemed
to Ramuntcho the early music of a day's festival.
At an early hour, they returned, Arrochkoa and he, to their little wagon,
and, crushing their caps against the wind, started their horse at a
gallop on the roads, powdered with white frost.
At Etchezar, where they arrived at noon, one would have thought it was
summer,--so beautiful was the sun.
In the little garden in front of her house, Gracieuse sat on a stone
bench:
"I have spoken to Arrochkoa!" said Ramuntcho to her, with a happy smile,
as soon as they were alone--"And he is entirely with us, you know!"
"Oh! that," replied the little girl, without losing the sadly pensive air
which she had that morning, "oh, that!--my brother Arrochkoa, I suspected
it, it was sure! A pelota player like you, you should know, was made to
please him, in his mind there is nothing superior to that--"
"But your mother, Gatchutcha, for several days has acted much better to
me, I think--For example, Sunday, you remember, when I asked you to
dance--"
"Oh! don't trust to that, my Ramuntcho! you mean day before yesterday,
after the high mass?--It was because she had just talked with the Mother
Superior, have you not noticed?--And the Mother Superior had insisted
that I should not dance with you on the square; then, only to be
contrary, you understand--But, don't rely on that, no--"
"Oh!" replied Ramuntcho, whose joy had already gone, "it is true that
they are not very friendly--"
"Friendly, mama and the Mother Superior?--Like a dog and a cat,
yes!--Since there was talk of my going into the convent, do you not
remember that story?"
He remembered very well, on the contrary, and it frightened him still.
The smiling and mysterious black nuns had tried once to attract to the
peace of their houses that little blonde head, exalted and willful,
possessed by an immense necessity to love and to be loved--
"Gatchutcha! you are always at the sisters', or with them; why so often?
explain this to me: they are very agreeable to you?"
"The sisters? no, my Ramuntcho, especially those of the present time, who
are new in the country and whom I hardly know--for they change them
often, you know--The sisters, no--I will even tell you that I am like
mama about the Mother Superior. I cannot endure her--"
"Well, then, what?--"
"No, but what will you? I like their songs, their chapels, their houses,
everything--I cannot explain that to you--Anyway, boys do not understand
anything--"
The little smile with which she said this was at once extinguished,
changed into a contemplative expression or an absent expression, which
Ramuntcho had often seen in her. She looked attentively in front of her,
although there were on the road only the leafless trees, the brown mass
of the crushing mountain; but it seemed as if Gracieuse was enraptured in
melancholy ecstasy by things perceived beyond them, by things which the
eyes of Ramuntcho could not distinguish--And during their silence the
angelus of noon began to ring, throwing more peace on the tranquil
village which was warming itself in the winter sun; then, bending their
heads, they made naively together their sign of the cross--
Then, when ceased to vibrate the holy bell, which in the Basque villages
interrupts life as in the Orient the song of the muezzins, Ramuntcho
decided to say:
"It frightens me, Gatchutcha, to see you in their company always--I
cannot but ask myself what ideas are in your head--"
Fixing on him the profound blackness of her eyes, she replied, in a tone
of soft reproach:
"It is you talking to me in that way, after what we have said to each
other Sunday night!--If I were to lose you, yes then, perhaps--surely,
even!--But until then, oh! no--oh! you may rest in peace, my Ramuntcho--"
He bore for a long time her look, which little by little brought back to
him entire delicious confidence, and at last he smiled with a childish
smile:
"Forgive me," he asked--"I say silly things often, you know!--"
"That, at least, is the truth!"
Then, one heard the sound of their laughter, which in two different
intonations had the same freshness and the same youthfulness. Ramuntcho,
with an habitual brusque and graceful gesture, changed his waistcoat from
one shoulder to the other, pulled his cap on the side, and, with no other
farewell than a sign of the head, they separated, for Dolores was coming
from the end of the road.
CHAPTER VIII.
Midnight, a winter night, black as Hades, with great wind and whipping
rain. By the side of the Bidassoa, in the midst of a confused extent of
ground with treacherous soil that evokes ideas of chaos, in slime that
their feet penetrate, men are carrying boxes on their shoulders and,
walking in the water to their knees, come to throw them into a long
thing, blacker than night, which must be a bark--a suspicious bark
without a light, tied near the bank.
It is again Itchoua's band, which this time will work by the river. They
have slept for a few moments, all dressed, in the house of a receiver who
lives near the water, and, at the needed hour, Itchoua, who never closes
but one eye, has shaken his men; then, they have gone out with hushed
tread, into the darkness, under the cold shower propitious to smuggling.
On the road now, with the oars, to Spain whose fires may be seen at a
distance, confused by the rain. The weather is let loose; the shirts of
the men are already wet, and, under the caps pulled over their eyes, the
wind slashes the ears. Nevertheless, thanks to the vigor of their arms,
they were going quickly and well, when suddenly appeared in the obscurity
something like a monster gliding on the waters. Bad business! It is the
patrol boat which promenades every night. Spain's customs officers. In
haste, they must change their direction, use artifice, lose precious
time, and they are so belated already.
At last they have arrived without obstacle near the Spanish shore, among
the large fishermen's barks which, on stormy nights, sleep there on their
chains, in front of the "Marine" of Fontarabia. This is the perilous
instant. Happily, the rain is faithful to them and falls still in
torrents. Lowered in their skiff to be less visible, having ceased to
talk, pushing the bottom with their oars in order to make less noise,
they approach softly, softly, with pauses as soon as something has seemed
to budge, in the midst of so much diffuse black, of shadows without
outlines.
Now they are crouched against one of these large, empty barks and almost
touching the earth. And this is the place agreed upon, it is there that
the comrades of the other country should be to receive them and to carry
their boxes to the receiving house--There is nobody there,
however!--Where are they?--The first moments are passed in a sort of
paroxysm of expectation and of watching, which doubles the power of
hearing and of seeing. With eyes dilated, and ears extended, they watch,
under the monotonous dripping of the rain--But where are the Spanish
comrades? Doubtless the hour has passed, because of this accursed custom
house patrol which has disarranged the voyage, and, believing that the
undertaking has failed this time, they have gone back--
Several minutes flow, in the same immobility and the same silence. They
distinguish, around them, the large, inert barks, similar to floating
bodies of beasts, and then, above the waters, a mass of obscurities
denser than the obscurities of the sky and which are the houses, the
mountains of the shore--They wait, without a movement, without a word.
They seem to be ghosts of boatmen near a dead city.
Little by little the tension of their senses weakens, a lassitude comes
to them with the need of sleep--and they would sleep there, under this
winter rain, if the place were not so dangerous.
Itchoua then consults in a low voice, in Basque language, the two eldest,
and they decide to do a bold thing. Since the others are not coming,
well! so much the worse, they will go alone, carry to the house over
there, the smuggled boxes. It is risking terribly, but the idea is in
their heads and nothing can stop them.
"You," says Itchoua to Ramuntcho, in his manner which admits of no
discussion, "you shall be the one to watch the bark, since you have never
been in the path that we are taking; you shall tie it to the bottom, but
not too solidly, do you hear? We must be ready to run if the carbineers
arrive."
So they go, all the others, their shoulders bent under the heavy loads,
the rustling, hardly perceptible, of their march is lost at once on the
quay which is so deserted and so black, in the midst of the monotonous
dripping of the rain. And Ramuntcho, who has remained alone, crouches at
the bottom of the skiff to be less visible becomes immovable again, under
the incessant sprinkling of the rain, which falls now regular and
tranquil.
They are late, the comrades--and by degrees, in this inactivity and this
silence, an irresistible numbness comes to him, almost a sleep.
But now a long form, more sombre than all that is sombre, passes by him,
passes very quickly,--always in this same absolute silence which is the
characteristic of these nocturnal undertakings: one of the large Spanish
barks!--Yet, thinks he, since all are at anchor, since this one has no
sails nor oars--then, what?--It is I, myself, who am passing!--and he has
understood: his skiff was too lightly tied, and the current, which is
very rapid here, is dragging him:--and he is very far away, going toward
the mouth of the Bidassoa, toward the breakers, toward the sea--
An anxiety has taken hold of him, almost an anguish--What will he
do?--What complicates everything is that he must act without a cry of
appeal, without a word, for, all along this coast, which seems to be the
land of emptiness and of darkness, there are carbineers, placed in an
interminable cordon and watching Spain every night as if it were a
forbidden land--He tries with one of the long oars to push the bottom in
order to return backward;--but there is no more bottom; he feels only the
inconsistency of the fleeting and black water, he is already in the
profound pass--Then, let him row, in spite of everything, and so much for
the worse!--
With great trouble, his forehead perspiring, he brings back alone against
the current the heavy bark, worried, at every stroke of the oar, by the
small, disclosing grating that a fine ear over there might so well
perceive. And then, one can see nothing more, through the rain grown
thicker and which confuses the eyes; it is dark, dark as in the bowels of
the earth where the devil lives. He recognizes no longer the point of
departure where the others must be waiting for him, whose ruin he has
perhaps caused; he hesitates, he waits, the ear extended, the arteries
beating, and he hooks himself, for a moment's reflection, to one of the
large barks of Spain--Something approaches then, gliding with infinite
precaution on the surface of the water, hardly stirred: a human shadow,
one would think, a silhouette standing:--a smuggler, surely, since he
makes so little noise! They divine each other, and, thank God! it is
Arrochkoa; Arrochkoa, who has untied a frail, Spanish skiff to meet
him--So, their junction is accomplished and they are probably saved all,
once more!
But Arrochkoa, in meeting him, utters in a wicked voice, in a voice
tightened by his young, feline teeth, one of those series of insults
which call for immediate answer and sound like an invitation to fight. It
is so unexpected that Ramuntcho's stupor at first immobilizes him,
retards the rush of blood to his head. Is this really what his friend has
just said and in such a tone of undeniable insult?--
"You said?"
"Well!" replies Arrochkoa, somewhat softened and on his guard, observing
in the darkness Ramuntcho's attitudes. "Well! you had us almost caught,
awkward fellow that you are!--"
The silhouettes of the others appear in another bark.
"They are there," he continues. "Let us go near them!"
And Ramuntcho takes his oarsman's seat with temples heated by anger, with
trembling hands--no--he is Gracieuse's brother; all would be lost if
Ramuntcho fought with him; because of her he will bend the head and say
nothing.
Now their bark runs away by force of oars, carrying them all; the trick
has been played. It was time; two Spanish voices vibrate on the black
shore: two carbineers, who were sleeping in their cloaks and whom the
noise has awakened!--And they begin to hail this flying, beaconless bark,
not perceived so much as suspected, lost at once in the universal,
nocturnal confusion.
"Too late, friends," laughs Itchoua, while rowing to the uttermost. "Hail
at your ease now and let the devil answer you!"
The current also helps them; they go into the thick obscurity with the
rapidity of fishes.
There! Now they are in French waters, in safety, not far, doubtless, from
the slime of the banks.
"Let us stop to breathe a little," proposes Itchoua.
And they raise their oars, halting, wet with perspiration and with rain.
They are immovable again under the cold shower, which they do not seem to
feel. There is heard in the vast silence only the breathing of chests,
little by little quieted, the little music of drops of water falling and
their light rippling. But suddenly, from this bark which was so quiet,
and which had no other importance than that of a shadow hardly real in
the midst of so much night, a cry rises, superacute, terrifying: it fills
the emptiness and rents the far-off distances--It has come from those
elevated notes which belong ordinarily to women only, but with something
hoarse and powerful that indicates rather the savage male; it has the
bite of the voice of jackals and it preserves, nevertheless, something
human which makes one shiver the more; one waits with a sort of anguish
for its end, and it is long, long, it is oppressive by its inexplicable
length--It had begun like a stag's bell of agony and now it is achieved
and it dies in a sort of laughter, sinister and burlesque, like the
laughter of lunatics--
However, around the man who has just cried thus in the front of the bark,
none of the others is astonished, none budges. And, after a few seconds
of silent peace, a new cry, similar to the first, starts from the rear,
replying to it and passing through the same phases,--which are of a
tradition infinitely ancient.
And it is simply the "irrintzina", the great Basque cry which has been
transmitted with fidelity from the depth of the abyss of ages to the men
of our day, and which constitutes one of the strange characteristics of
that race whose origins are enveloped in mystery. It resembles the cry of
a being of certain tribes of redskins in the forests of America; at
night, it gives the notion and the unfathomable fright of primitive ages,
when, in the midst of the solitudes of the old world, men with monkey
throats howled.
This cry is given at festivals, or for calls of persons at night in the
mountains, and especially to celebrate some joy, some unexpected good
fortune, a miraculous hunt or a happy catch of fish in the rivers.
And they are amused, the smugglers, at this game of the ancestors; they
give their voices to glorify the success of their undertaking, they yell,
from the physical necessity to be compensated for their silence of a
moment ago.
But Ramuntcho remains mute and without a smile. This sudden savagery
chills him, although he has known it for a long time; it plunges him into
dreams that worry and do not explain themselves.
And then, he has felt to-night once more how uncertain and changing is
his only support in the world, the support of that Arrochkoa on whom he
should be able to count as on a brother; audacity and success at the
ball-game will return that support to him, doubtless, but a moment of
weakness, nothing, may at any moment make him lose it. Then it seems to
him that the hope of his life has no longer a basis, that all vanishes
like an unstable chimera.
CHAPTER IX.
It was New Year's eve.
All the day had endured that sombre sky which is so often the sky of the
Basque country--and which harmonizes well with the harsh mountains, with
the roar of the sea, wicked, in the depths of the Bay of Biscay.
In the twilight of this last day of the year, at the hour when the fires
retain the men around the hearths scattered in the country, at the hour
when home is desirable and delicious, Ramuntcho and his mother were
preparing to sit at the supper table, when there was a discreet knock at
the door.
The man who was coming to them from the night of the exterior, at the
first aspect seemed unknown to them; only when he told his name (Jose
Bidegarray, of Hasparitz) they recalled the sailor who had gone several
years ago to America.
"Here," he said, after accepting a chair, "here is the message which I
have been asked to bring to you. Once, at Rosario in Uruguay, as I was
talking on the docks with several other Basque immigrants there, a man,
who might have been fifty years old, having heard me speak of Etchezar,
came to me.
"'Do you come from Etchezar?' he asked.
"'No,' I replied, 'but I come from Hasparitz, which is not far from
Etchezar.'
"Then he put questions to me about all your family. I said:
"'The old people are dead, the elder brother was killed in smuggling, the
second has disappeared in America; there remain only Franchita and her
son, Ramuntcho, a handsome young fellow who must be about eighteen years
old today.'
"He was thinking deeply while he was listening to me.
"'Well,' he said at last, 'since you are going back there, you will say
good-day to them for Ignacio.'
"And after offering a drink to me he went away--"
Franchita had risen, trembling and paler than ever. Ignacio, the most
adventurous in the family, her brother who had disappeared for ten years
without sending any news!--
How was he? What face? Dressed how?--Did he seem happy, at least, or was
he poorly dressed?
"Oh!" replied the sailor, "he looked well, in spite of his gray hair; as
for his costume, he appeared to be a man of means, with a beautiful gold
chain on his belt."
And that was all he could say, with this naive and rude good-day of which
he was the bearer; on the subject of the exile he knew no more and
perhaps, until she died, Franchita would learn nothing more of that
brother, almost non-existing, like a phantom.
Then, when he had emptied a glass of cider, he went on his road, the
strange messenger, who was going to his village. Then, they sat at table
without speaking, the mother and the son: she, the silent Franchita,
absent minded, with tears shining in her eyes; he, worried also, but in a
different manner, by the thought of that uncle living in adventures over
there.
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