Books: Ramuntcho
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Pierre Loti >> Ramuntcho
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They played, in the beautiful twilight, until the hour when the first
bats appeared, until the hour when the flying pelota could hardly be seen
in the air. Perhaps they felt, unconsciously, that the moment was rare
and might not be regained: then, as much as possible, they should prolong
it--
And at last, they went together to take to Itchoua his Spanish coins. In
two lots, they had been placed in two thick, reddish towels which a boy
and a girl held at each end, and they walked in cadence, singing the tune
of "The Linen Weaver."
How long, clear and soft was that twilight of April!--There were roses
and all sorts of flowers in front of the walls of the venerable, white
houses with brown or green blinds. Jessamine, honeysuckle and linden
filled the air with fragrance. For Gracieuse and Ramuntcho, it was one of
those exquisite hours which later, in the anguishing sadness of
awakenings, one recalls with a regret at once heart-breaking and
charming.
Oh! who shall say why there are on earth evenings of spring, and eyes so
pretty to look at, and smiles of young girls, and breaths of perfumes
which gardens exhale when the nights of April fall, and all this
delicious cajoling of life, since it is all to end ironically in
separation, in decrepitude and in death--
CHAPTER XV.
The next day, Friday, was organized the departure for this village where
the festival was to take place on the following Sunday. It is situated
very far, in a shady region, at the turn of a deep gorge, at the foot of
very high summits. Arrochkoa was born there and he had spent there the
first months of his life, in the time when his father lived there as a
brigadier of the French customs; but he had left too early to have
retained the least memory of it.
In the little Detcharry carriage, Gracieuse, Pantchita and, with a long
whip in her hand, Madame Dargaignaratz, her mother, who is to drive,
leave together at the noon angelus to go over there directly by the
mountain route.
Ramuntcho, Arrochkoa and Florentino, who have to settle smuggling affairs
at Saint-Jean-de-Luz, go by a roundabout way which will bring them to
Erribiague at night, on the train which goes from Bayonne to Burguetta.
To-day, all three are heedless and happy; Basque caps never appeared
above more joyful faces.
The night is falling when they penetrate, by this little train of
Burguetta, into the quiet, interior country. The carriages are full of a
gay crowd, a spring evening crowd, returning from some festival, young
girls with silk kerchiefs around their necks, young men wearing woolen
caps; all are singing, laughing and kissing. In spite of the invading
obscurity one may still distinguish the hedges, white with hawthorn, the
woods white with acacia flowers; into the open carriages penetrates a
fragrance at once violent and suave, which the country exhales. And on
all this white bloom of April, which the night little by little effaces,
the train throws in passing a furrow of joy, the refrain of some old song
of Navarre, sung and resung infinitely by these girls and these boys, in
the noise of the wheels and of the steam--
Erribiague! At the doors, this name, which makes all three start, is
cried. The singing band had already stepped out, leaving them almost
alone in the train, which had become silent. High mountains had made the
night very thick--and the three were almost sleeping.
Astounded, they jump down, in the midst of an obscurity which even their
smugglers' eyes cannot pierce. Stars above hardly shine, so encumbered is
the sky by the overhanging summits.
"Where is the village?" they ask of a man who is there alone to receive
them.
"Three miles from here on the right."
They begin to distinguish the gray trail of a road, suddenly lost in the
heart of the shade. And in the grand silence, in the humid coolness of
these valleys full of darkness, they walk without talking, their gaiety
somewhat darkened by the black majesty of the peaks that guard the
frontier here.
They come, at last, to an old, curved bridge over a torrent; then, to the
sleeping village which no light indicates. And the inn, where shines a
lamp, is near by, leaning on the mountain, its base in the roaring water.
The young men are led into their little rooms which have an air of
cleanliness in spite of their extreme oldness: very low, crushed by their
enormous beams, and bearing on their whitewashed walls images of the
Christ, the Virgin and the saints.
Then, they go down to the supper tables, where are seated two or three
old men in old time costume: white belt, black blouse, very short, with a
thousand pleats. And Arrochkoa, vain of his parentage, hastens to ask
them if they have not known Detcharry, who was here a brigadier of the
customs eighteen years ago.
One of the old men scans his face:
"Ah! you are his son, I would bet! You look like him! Detcharry, do I
remember Detcharry!--He took from me two hundred lots of
merchandise!--That does not matter, here is my hand, even if you are his
son!"
And the old defrauder, who was the chief of a great band, without rancor,
with effusion, presses Arrochkoa's two hands.
Detcharry has remained famous at Erribiague for his stratagems, his
ambuscades, his captures of contraband goods, out of which came, later,
his income that Dolores and her children enjoy.
And Arrochkoa assumes a proud air, while Ramuntcho lowers his head,
feeling that he is of a lower condition, having no father.
"Are you not in the customhouse, as your deceased father was?" continued
the old man in a bantering tone.
"Oh, no, not exactly.--Quite the reverse, even--"
"Oh, well! I understand!--Then, shake once more--and it's a sort of
revenge on Detcharry for me, to know that his son has gone into smuggling
like us!--"
They send for cider and they drink together, while the old men tell again
the exploits and the tricks of former times, all the ancient tales of
nights in the mountains; they speak a variety of Basque different from
that of Etchezar, the village where the language is preserved more
clearly articulated, more incisive, more pure, perhaps. Ramuntcho and
Arrochkoa are surprised by this accent of the high land, which softens
the words and which chants them; those white-haired story tellers seem to
them almost strangers, whose talk is a series of monotonous stanzas,
repeated infinitely as in the antique songs expressive of sorrow. And, as
soon as they cease talking, the slight sounds in the sleep of the country
come from peaceful and fresh darkness. The crickets chirp; one hears the
torrent bubbling at the base of the inn; one hears the dripping of
springs from the terrible, overhanging summits, carpeted with thick
foliage.--It sleeps, the very small village, crouched and hidden in the
hollow of a ravine, and one has the impression that the night here is a
night blacker than elsewhere and more mysterious.
"In truth," concludes the old chief, "the customhouse and smuggling, at
bottom, resemble each other; it is a game where the smartest wins, is it
not? I will even say that, in my own opinion, an officer of customs,
clever and bold, a customs officer like your father, for example, is as
worthy as any of us!"
After this, the hostess having come to say that it was time to put out
the lamp--the last lamp still lit in the village--they go away, the old
defrauders. Ramuntcho and Arrochkoa go up to their rooms, lie down and
sleep, always in the chirp of the crickets, always in the sound of fresh
waters that run or that fall. And Ramuntcho, as in his house at Etchezar,
hears vaguely during his sleep the tinkling of bells, attached to the
necks of cows moving in a dream, under him, in the stable.
CHAPTER XVI.
Now they open, to the beautiful April morning, the shutters of their
narrow windows, pierced like portholes in the thickness of the very old
wall.
And suddenly, it is a flood of light that dazzles their eyes. Outside,
the spring is resplendent. Never had they seen, before this, summits so
high and so near. But along the slopes full of leaves, along the
mountains decked with trees, the sun descends to radiate in this valley
on the whiteness of the village, on the kalsomine of the ancient houses
with green shutters.
Both awakened with veins full of youth and hearts full of joy. They have
formed the project this morning to go into the country, to the house of
Madame Dargaignaratz's cousins, and see the two little girls, who must
have arrived the night before in the carriage, Gracieuse and
Pantchika.--After a glance at the ball-game square, where they shall
return to practice in the afternoon, they go on their way through small
paths, magnificently green, hidden in the depths of the valleys, skirting
the cool torrents. The foxglove flowers start everywhere like long, pink
rockets above the light and infinite mass of ferns.
It is at a long distance, it seems, that house of the Olhagarray cousins,
and they stop from time to time to ask the way from shepherds, or they
knock at the doors of solitary houses, here and there, under the cover of
branches. They had never seen Basque houses so old nor so primitive,
under the shade of chestnut trees so tall.
The ravines through which they advance are strangely enclosed. Higher
than all these woods of oaks and of beeches, which seem as if suspended
above, appear ferocious, denuded summits, a zone abrupt and bald, sombre
brown, making points in the violent blue of the sky. But here,
underneath, is the sheltered and mossy region, green and deep, which the
sun never burns and where April has hidden its luxury, freshly superb.
And they also, the two who are passing through these paths of foxglove
and of fern, participate in this splendor of spring.
Little by little, in their enjoyment at being there, and under the
influence of this ageless place, the old instincts to hunt and to destroy
are lighted in the depths of their minds. Arrochkoa, excited, leaps from
right to left, from left to right, breaks, uproots grasses and flowers;
troubles about everything that moves in the green foliage, about the
lizards that might be caught, about the birds that might be taken out of
their nests, and about the beautiful trout swimming in the water; he
jumps, he leaps; he wishes he had fishing lines, sticks, guns; truly he
reveals his savagery in the bloom of his robust eighteen
years.--Ramuntcho calms himself quickly; after breaking a few branches,
plucking a few flowers, he begins to meditate; and he thinks--
Here they are stopped now at a cross-road where no human habitation is
visible. Around them are gorges full of shade wherein grand oaks grow
thickly, and above, everywhere, a piling up of mountains, of a reddish
color burned by the sun. There is nowhere an indication of the new times;
there is an absolute silence, something like the peace of the primitive
epochs. Lifting their heads toward the brown peaks, they perceive at a
long distance persons walking on invisible paths, pushing before them
donkeys of smugglers: as small as insects at such a distance, are these
silent passers-by on the flank of the gigantic mountain; Basques of other
times, almost confused, as one looks at them from this place, with this
reddish earth from which they came--and where they are to return, after
having lived like their ancestors without a suspicion of the things of
our times, of the events of other places--
They take off their caps, Arrochkoa and Ramuntcho, to wipe their
foreheads; it is so warm in these gorges and they have run so much,
jumped so much, that their entire bodies are in a perspiration. They are
enjoying themselves, but they would like to come, nevertheless, near the
two little, blonde girls who are waiting for them. But of whom shall they
ask their way now, since there is no one?
"Ave Maria," cries at them from the thickness of the branches an old,
rough voice.
And the salutation is prolonged by a string of words spoken in a rapid
decrescendo, quick; quick; a Basque prayer rattled breathlessly, begun
very loudly, then dying at the finish. And an old beggar comes out of the
fern, all earthy, all hairy, all gray, bent on his stick like a man of
the woods.
"Yes," says Arrochkoa, putting his hand in his pocket, "but you must take
us to the Olhagarray house."
"The Olhagarray house," replies the old man. "I have come from it, my
children, and you are near it."
In truth, how had they failed to see, at a hundred steps further, that
black gable among branches of chestnut trees?
At a point where sluices rustle, it is bathed by a torrent, that
Olhagarray house, antique and large, among antique chestnut trees.
Around, the red soil is denuded and furrowed by the waters of the
mountain; enormous roots are interlaced in it like monstrous gray
serpents; and the entire place, overhung on all sides by the Pyrenean
masses, is rude and tragic.
But two young girls are there, seated in the shade; with blonde hair and
elegant little pink waists; astonishing little fairies, very modern in
the midst of the ferocious and old scenes.--They rise, with cries of joy,
to meet the visitors.
It would have been better, evidently, to enter the house and salute the
old people. But the boys say to themselves that they have not been seen
coming, and they prefer to sit near their sweethearts, by the side of the
brook, on the gigantic roots. And, as if by chance, the two couples
manage not to bother one another, to remain hidden from one another by
rocks, by branches.
There then, they talk at length in a low voice, Arrochkoa with Pantchika,
Ramuntcho with Gracieuse. What can they be saying, talking so much and so
quickly?
Although their accent is less chanted than that of the highland, which
astonished them yesterday, one would think they were speaking scanned
stanzas, in a sort of music, infinitely soft, where the voices of the
boys seem voices of children.
What are they saying to one another, talking so much and so quickly,
beside this torrent, in this harsh ravine, under the heavy sun of noon?
What they are saying has not much sense; it is a sort of murmur special
to lovers, something like the special song of the swallows at nesting
time. It is childish, a tissue of incoherences and repetitions. No, what
they are saying has not much sense--unless it be what is most sublime in
the world, the most profound and truest things which may be expressed by
terrestrial words.--It means nothing, unless it be the eternal and
marvellous hymn for which alone has been created the language of men and
beasts, and in comparison with which all is empty, miserable and vain.
The heat is stifling in the depth of that gorge, so shut in from all
sides; in spite of the shade of the chestnut trees, the rays, that the
leaves sift, burn still. And this bare earth, of a reddish color, the
extreme oldness of this nearby house, the antiquity of these trees, give
to the surroundings, while the lovers talk, aspects somewhat harsh and
hostile.
Ramuntcho has never seen his little friend made so pink by the sun: on
her cheeks, there is the beautiful, red blood which flushes the skin, the
fine and transparent skin; she is pink as the foxglove flowers.
Flies, mosquitoes buzz in their ears. Now Gracieuse has been bitten on
the chin, almost on the mouth, and she tries to touch it with the end of
her tongue, to bite the place with the upper teeth. And Ramuntcho, who
looks at this too closely, feels suddenly a langour, to divert himself
from which he stretches himself like one trying to awake.
She begins again, the little girl, her lip still itching--and he again
stretches his arms, throwing his chest backward.
"What is the matter, Ramuntcho, and why do you stretch yourself like a
cat?--"
But when, for the third time, Gracieuse bites the same place, and shows
again the little tip of her tongue, he bends over, vanquished by the
irresistible giddiness, and bites also, takes in his mouth, like a
beautiful red fruit which one fears to crush, the fresh lip which the
mosquito has bitten--
A silence of fright and of delight, during which both shiver, she as much
as he; she trembling also, in all her limbs, for having felt the contact
of the growing black mustache.
"You are not angry, tell me?"
"No, my Ramuntcho.--Oh, I am not angry, no--"
Then he begins again, quite frantic, and in this languid and warm air,
they exchange for the first time in their lives, the long kisses of
lovers--
CHAPTER XVII.
The next day, Sunday, they went together religiously to hear one of the
masses of the clear morning, in order to return to Etchezar the same day,
immediately after the grand ball-game. It was this return, much more than
the game, that interested Gracieuse and Ramuntcho, for it was their hope
that Pantchika and her mother would remain at Erribiague while they would
go, pressed against each other, in the very small carriage of the
Detcharry family, under the indulgent and slight watchfulness of
Arrochkoa, five or six hours of travel, all three alone, on the spring
roads, under the new foliage, with amusing halts in unknown villages--
At eleven o'clock in the morning, on that beautiful Sunday, the square
was encumbered by mountaineers come from all the summits, from all the
savage, surrounding hamlets. It was an international match, three players
of France against three of Spain, and, in the crowd of lookers-on, the
Spanish Basques were more numerous; there were large sombreros,
waistcoats and gaiters of the olden time.
The judges of the two nations, designated by chance, saluted each other
with a superannuated politeness, and the match began, in profound
silence, under an oppressive sun which annoyed the players, in spite of
their caps, pulled down over their eyes.
Ramuntcho soon, and after him Arrochkoa, were acclaimed as victors. And
people looked at the two little strangers, so attentive, in the first
row, so pretty also with their elegant pink waists, and people said:
"They are the sweethearts of the two good players." Then Gracieuse, who
heard everything, felt proud of Ramuntcho.
Noon. They had been playing for almost an hour. The old wall, with its
summit curved like a cupola, was cracking from dryness and from heat,
under its paint of yellow ochre. The grand Pyrenean masses, nearer here
than at Etchezar, more crushing and more high, dominated from everywhere
these little, human groups, moving in a deep fold of their sides. And the
sun fell straight on the heavy caps of the men, on the bare heads of the
women, heating the brains, increasing enthusiasm. The passionate crowd
yelled, and the pelotas were flying, when, softly, the angelus began to
ring. Then an old man, all wrinkled, all burned, who was waiting for this
signal, put his mouth to the clarion--his old clarion of a Zouave in
Africa--and rang the call to rest. And all, the women who were seated
rose; all the caps fell, uncovering hair black, blonde or white, and the
entire people made the sign of the cross, while the players, with chests
and foreheads streaming with perspiration, stopped in the heat of the
game and stood in meditation with heads bent--
At two o'clock, the game having come to an end gloriously for the French,
Arrochkoa and Ramuntcho went in their little wagon, accompanied and
acclaimed by all the young men of Erribiague; then Gracieuse sat between
the two, and they started for their long, charming trip, their pockets
full of the gold which they had earned, intoxicated by their joy, by the
noise and by the sunlight.
And Ramuntcho, who retained the taste of yesterday's kiss, felt like
shouting to them: "This little girl who is so pretty, as you see, is
mine! Her lips are mine, I had them yesterday and will take them again
to-night!"
They started and at once found silence again, in the shaded valleys
bordered by foxglove and ferns--
To roll for hours on the small Pyrenean roads, to change places almost
every day, to traverse the Basque country, to go from one village to
another, called here by a festival, there by an adventure on the
frontier--this was now Ramuntcho's life, the errant life which the
ball-game made for him in the day-time and smuggling in the night-time.
Ascents, descents, in the midst of a monotonous display of verdure. Woods
of oaks and of beeches, almost inviolate, and remaining as they were in
the quiet centuries.--When he passed by some antique house, hidden in
these solitudes of trees, he stopped to enjoy reading, above the door,
the traditional legend inscribed in the granite: "Ave Maria! in the year
1600, or in the year 1500, such a one, from such a village, has built
this house, to live in it with such a one, his wife."
Very far from all human habitation, in a corner of a ravine, where it was
warmer than elsewhere, sheltered from all breezes, they met a peddler of
holy images, who was wiping his forehead. He had set down his basket,
full of those colored prints with gilt frames that represent saints with
Euskarian legends, and with which the Basques like to adorn their old
rooms with white walls. And he was there, exhausted from fatigue and
heat, as if wrecked in the ferns, at a turn of those little, mountain
routes which run solitary under oaks.
Gracieuse came down and bought a Holy Virgin.
"Later," she said to Ramuntcho, "we shall put it in our house as a
souvenir--"
And the image, dazzling in its gold frame, went with them under the long,
green vaults--
They went out of their path, for they wished to pass by a certain valley
of the Cherry-trees, not in the hope of finding cherries in it, in April,
but to show to Gracieuse the place, which is renowned in the entire
Basque country.
It was almost five o'clock, the sun was already low, when they reached
there. It was a shaded and calm region, where the spring twilight
descended like a caress on the magnificence of the April foliage. The air
was cool and suave, fragrant with hay, with acacia. Mountains--very high,
especially toward the north, to make the climate there softer, surrounded
it on all sides, investing it with a melancholy mystery of closed Edens.
And, when the cherry-trees appeared, they were a gay surprise, they were
already red.
There was nobody on these paths, above which the grand cherry-trees
extended like a roof, their branches dripping with coral.
Here and there were some summer houses, still uninhabited, some deserted
gardens, invaded by the tall grass and the rose bushes.
Then, they made their horse walk; then, each one in his turn,
transferring the reins and standing in the wagon, amused himself by
eating these cherries from the trees while passing by them and without
stopping. Afterward, they placed bouquets of them in their buttonholes,
they culled branches of them to deck the horse's head, the harness and
the lantern. The equipage seemed ornamented for some festival of youth
and of joy--
"Now let us hurry," said Gracieuse. "If only it be light enough, at
least, when we reach Etchezar, for people to see us pass, ornamented as
we are!"
As for Ramuntcho, he thought of the meeting place in the evening, of the
kiss which he would dare to repeat, similar to that of yesterday, taking
Gracieuse's lip between his lips like a cherry--
CHAPTER XVIII.
May! The grass ascends, ascends from everywhere like a sumptuous carpet,
like silky velvet, emanating spontaneously from the earth.
In order to sprinkle this region of the Basques, which remains humid and
green all summer like a sort of warmer Brittany, the errant vapors on the
Bay of Biscay assemble all in this depth of gulf, stop at the Pyrenean
summits and melt into rain. Long showers fall, which are somewhat
deceptive, but after which the soil smells of new flowers and hay.
In the fields, along the roads, the grasses quickly thicken; all the
ledges of the paths are as if padded by the magnificent thickness of the
bent grass; everywhere is a profusion of gigantic Easter daisies, of
buttercups with tall stems, and of very large, pink mallows like those of
Algeria.
And, in the long, tepid twilights, pale iris or blue ashes in color,
every night the bells of the month of Mary resound for a long time in the
air, under the mass of the clouds hooked to the flanks of the mountains.
During the month of May, with the little group of black nuns, with
discreet babble, with puerile and lifeless laughter, Gracieuse, at all
hours, went to church. Hastening their steps under the frequent showers,
they went together through the graveyard, full of roses; together, always
together, the little clandestine betrothed, in light colored gowns, and
the nuns, with long, mourning veils; during the day they brought bouquets
of white flowers, daisies and sheafs of tall lilies; at night they came
to sing, in the nave still more sonorous than in the day-time, the softly
joyful canticles of the Virgin Mary:
"Ave, Queen of the Angels! Star of the Sea, ave!--"
Oh, the whiteness of the lilies lighted by the tapers, their white petals
and their yellow pollen in gold dust! Oh, their fragrance in the gardens
or in the church, during the twilights of spring!
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