Books: Ramuntcho
P >>
Pierre Loti >> Ramuntcho
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 | 9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13
"Well, he has succeeded in life, that one!" thinks Ramuntcho
lugubriously, continuing his walk under the autumn branches--
The road which he follows ascends, hollowed here and there by springs and
sometimes crossed by big roots of oaks.
Soon Etchezar will appear to him and, before seeing it, the image of it
becomes more and more precise in him, recalled and enlivened in his
memory by the aspect of the surroundings.
Empty now, all this land, where Gracieuse is no more, empty and sad as a
beloved home where the great Reaper has passed!--And yet Ramuntcho, in
the depths of his being, dares to think that, in some small convent over
there, under the veil of a nun, the cherished black eyes still exist and
that he will be able at least to see them; that taking the veil is not
quite like dying, and that perhaps the last word of his destiny has not
been said irrevocably.--For, when he reflects, what can have changed thus
the soul of Gracieuse, formerly so uniquely devoted to him?--Oh,
terrible, foreign pressure, surely--And then, when they come face to face
again, who knows?--When they talk, with his eyes in her eyes?--But what
can he expect that is reasonable and possible?--In his native land has a
nun ever broken her eternal vows to follow one to whom she was engaged?
And besides, where would they go to live together afterward, when folks
would get out of their way, would fly from them as renegades?--To America
perhaps, and even there!--And how could he take her from these white
houses of the dead where the sisters live, eternally watched?--Oh, no,
all this is a chimera which may not be realized--All is at an end, all is
finished hopelessly!--
Then, the sadness which comes to him from Gracieuse is forgotten for a
moment, and he feels nothing except an outburst of his heart toward his
mother, toward his mother who remains to him, who is there, very near, a
little upset, doubtless, by the joyful trouble of waiting for him.
And now, on the left of his route, is a humble hamlet, half hidden in the
beeches and the oaks, with its ancient chapel,--and with its wall for the
pelota game, under very old trees, at the crossing of two paths. At once,
in Ramuntcho's youthful head, the course of thoughts changes again: that
little wall with rounded top, covered with wash of kalsomine and ochre,
awakens tumultuously in him thoughts of life, of force and of joy; with a
childish ardor he says to himself that to-morrow he will be able to
return to that game of the Basques, which is an intoxication of movement
and of rapid skill; he thinks of the grand matches on Sundays after
vespers, of the glory of the fine struggles with the champions of Spain,
of all this deprivation of his years of exile. But it is a very short
instant, and mortal despair comes back to him: his triumphs on the
squares, Gracieuse shall not see them; then, what is the use!--Without
her, all things, even these, fall back discolored, useless and vain, do
not even exist--
Etchezar!--Etchezar, is revealed suddenly at a turn of the road!--It is
in a red light, something like a fantasmagoria image, illuminated
purposely in a special manner in the midst of grand backgrounds of shade
and of night. It is the hour of the setting sun. Around the isolated
village, which the old, heavy belfry, surmounts, a last sheaf of rays
traces a halo of the color of copper and gold, while clouds--and a
gigantic obscurity emanating from the Gizune--darken the lands piled up
above and under, the mass of brown hills, colored by the death of the
ferns--
Oh! the melancholy apparition of the native land, to the soldier who
returns and will not find his sweetheart!--
Three years have passed since he left here.--Well, three years, at his
age, are an abyss of time, a period which changes all things. And, after
that lone exile, how this village, which he adores, appears to him
diminished, small, walled in the mountains, sad and hidden!--In the depth
of his mind of a tall, uncultured boy, commences again, to make him
suffer more, the struggle of those two sentiments of a too refined man,
which are an inheritance of his unknown father: an attachment almost
maladive to the home, to the land of childhood, and a fear of returning
to be enclosed in it, when there exist in the world other places so vast
and so free.
--After the warm afternoon, the autumn is indicated now by the hasty fall
of the day, with a coolness ascending suddenly from the valleys
underneath, a scent of dying leaves and of moss. And then the thousand
details of preceding autumns in the Basque country, of the former
Novembers, come to him very precisely; the cold fall of night succeeding
the beautiful, sunlit day; the sad clouds appearing with the night; the
Pyrenees confounded in vapors inky gray, or, in places, cut in black
silhouettes on a pale, golden sky; around the houses, the belated flowers
of the gardens, which the frost spares for a long time here, and, in
front of all the doors, the strewn leaves of the plane-trees, the yellow
strewn leaves cracking under the steps of the man returning in sandals to
his home for supper.--Oh, the heedless joy of these returns to the home,
in the nights of other times, after days of marching on the rude
mountain! Oh, the gaiety, in that time, of the first winter fires--in the
tall, smoky hearth ornamented with a drapery of white calico and with a
strip of pink paper. No, in the city, with its rows of houses one does
not have the real impression of returning home, of earthing up like
plants at night in the primitive manner, as one has it here, under those
Basque roofs, solitary in the midst of the country, with the grand,
surrounding black, the grand, shivering black of the foliage, the grand,
changing black of the clouds and the summits.--But to-day, his travels,
his new conceptions, have diminished and spoiled his mountaineer's home;
he will doubtless find it almost desolate, especially in the thought that
his mother shall not be there always--and that Gracieuse shall never be
there again.
His pace quickens in his haste to embrace his mother; he turns around his
village instead of going into it, in order to reach his house through a
path which overlooks the square and church; passing quickly, he looks at
everything with inexpressible pain. Peace, silence soar over this little
parish of Etchezar, heart of the French Basque land and country of all
the famous pelotaris of the past who have become heavy grandfathers, or
are dead now. The immutable church, where have remained buried his dreams
of faith, is surrounded by the same dark cypresses, like a mosque. The
ball-game square, while he walks quickly above it, is still lighted by
the sun with a finishing ray, oblique, toward the background, toward the
wall which the ancient inscription surmounts,--as on the evening of his
first great success, four years ago, when, in the joyous crowd, Gracieuse
stood in a blue gown, she who has become a black nun to-day.--On the
deserted benches, on the granite steps where the grass grows, three or
four old men are seated, who were formerly the heroes of the place and
whom their reminiscences bring back here incessantly, to talk at the end
of the days, when the twilight descends from the summits, invades the
earth, seems to emanate and to fall from the brown Pyrenees.--Oh, the
folks who live here, whose lives run here; oh, the little cider inns, the
little, simple shops and the old, little things--brought from the cities,
from the other places--sold to the mountaineers of the surrounding
country!--How all this seems to him now strange, separated from him, or
set far in the background of the primitive past!--Is he truly not a man
of Etchezar to-day, is he no longer the Ramuntcho of former times?--What
particular thing resides in his mind to prevent him from feeling
comfortable here, as the others feel? Why is it prohibited to him, to him
alone, to accomplish here the tranquil destiny of his dreams, since all
his friends have accomplished theirs?--
At last here is his house, there, before his eyes. It is as he expected
to find it. As he expected, he recognizes along the wall all the
persistent flowers cultivated by his mother, the same flowers which the
frost has destroyed weeks ago in the North from which he comes:
heliotropes, geraniums, tall dahlias and roses with climbing branches.
And the cherished, strewn leaves, which fall every autumn from the
vault-shaped plane-trees, are there also, and are crushed with a noise so
familiar under his steps!--
In the lower hall, when he enters, there is already grayish indecision,
already night. The high chimney, where his glance rests at first by an
instinctive reminiscence of the fires of ancient evenings, stands the
same with its white drapery; but cold, filled with shade, smelling of
absence or death.
He runs up to his mother's room. She, from her bed having recognized her
son's step, has straightened up, all stiff, all white in the twilight:
"Ramuntcho," she says, in a veiled and aged voice.
She extends her arms to him and as soon as she holds him, enlaces and
embraces him:
"Ramuntcho!--"
Then, having uttered this name without adding anything, she leans her
head against his cheek, in the habitual movement of surrender, in the
movement of the grand, tender feelings of other times.--He, then,
perceives that his mother's face is burning against his. Through her
shirt he feels the arms that surround him thin, feverish and hot. And for
the first time, he is frightened; the notion that she is doubtless very
ill comes to his mind, the possibility and the sudden terror that she
might die--
"Oh, you are alone, mother! But who takes care of you? Who watches over
you?"
"Who watches over me?--" she replies with her abrupt brusqueness, her
ideas of a peasant suddenly returned. "Spending money to nurse me, why
should I do it?--The church woman or the old Doyamburu comes in the
day-time to give me the things that I need, the things that the physician
orders.--But--medicine!--Well! Light a lamp, my Ramuntcho!--I want to see
you--and I cannot see you--"
And, when the clearness has come from a Spanish, smuggled match, she says
in a tone of caress infinitely sweet, as one talks to a very little child
whom one adores:
"Oh, your mustache! The long mustache which has come to you, my son!--I
do not recognize my Ramuntcho!--Bring your lamp here, bring it here so
that I can look at you!--"
He also sees her better now, under the new light of that lamp, while she
admires him lovingly. And he is more frightened still, because the cheeks
of his mother are so hollow, her hair is so whitened; even the expression
of her eyes is changed and almost extinguished; on her face appears the
sinister and irremediable labor of time, of suffering and of death--
And, now, two tears, rapid and heavy, fall from the eyes of Franchita,
which widen, become living again, made young by desperate revolt and
hatred.
"Oh, that woman," she says suddenly. "Oh, that Dolores!"
And her cry expresses and summarizes all her jealousy of thirty years'
standing, all her merciless rancor against that enemy of her childhood
who has succeeded at last in breaking the life of her son.
A silence between them. He is seated, with head bent, near the bed,
holding the poor, feverish hand which his mother has extended to him.
She, breathing more quickly, seems for a long while under the oppression
of something which she hesitates to express:
"Tell me, my Ramuntcho!--I would like to ask you.--What do you intend to
do, my son? What are your projects for the future?--"
"I do not know, mother.--I will think, I will see.--You ask--all at
once.--We have time to talk of this, have we not?--To America, perhaps--"
"Oh, yes," she says slowly, with the fear that was in her for days, "to
America--I suspected it. Oh, that is what you will do.--I knew it, I knew
it--"
Her phrase ends in a groan and she joins her hands to try to pray--
CHAPTER III.
Ramuntcho, the next morning, was wandering in the village, under a sun
which had pierced the clouds of the night, a sun as radiant as that of
yesterday. Careful in his dress, the ends of his mustache turned up,
proud in his demeanor, elegant, grave and handsome, he went at random, to
see and to be seen, a little childishness mingling with his seriousness,
a little pleasure with his distress. His mother had said to him:
"I am better, I assure you. To-day is Sunday; go, walk about I pray
you--"
And passers-by turned their heads to look at him, whispered the news:
"Franchita's son has returned home; he looks very well!"
A summer illusion persisted everywhere, with, however, the unfathomable
melancholy of things tranquilly finishing. Under that impassible radiance
of sunlight, the Pyrenean fields seemed dull, all their plants, all their
grasses were as if collected in one knows not what resignation weary of
living, what expectation of death.
The turns of the path, the houses, the least trees, all recalled hours of
other times to Ramuntcho, hours wherein Gracieuse was mingled. And then,
at each reminiscence, at each step, engraved itself and hammered itself
in his mind, under a new form, this verdict without recourse: "It is
finished, you are alone forever, Gracieuse has been taken away from you
and is in prison--" The rents in his heart, every accident in the path
renewed and changed them. And, in the depth of his being, as a constant
basis for his reflections, this other anxiety endured: his mother, his
mother very ill, in mortal danger, perhaps!--
He met people who stopped him, with a kind and welcoming air, who talked
to him in the dear Basque tongue--ever alert and sonorous despite its
incalculable antiquity; old Basque caps, old white heads, liked to talk
of the ball-game to this fine player returned to his cradle. And then, at
once, after the first words of greeting, smiles went out, in spite of
this clear sun in this blue sky, and all were disturbed by the thought of
Gracieuse in a veil and of Franchita dying.
A violent flush of blood went up to his face when he caught sight of
Dolores, at a distance, going into her home. Very decrepit, that one, and
wearing a prostrate air! She had recognized him, for she turned quickly
her obstinate and hard head, covered by a mourning mantilla. With a
sentiment of pity at seeing her so undone, he reflected that she had
struck herself with the same blow, and that she would be alone now in her
old age and at her death--
On the square, he met Marcos Iragola who informed him that he was
married, like Florentino--and with the little friend of his childhood, he
also.
"I did not have to serve in the army," Iragola explained, "because we are
Guipuzcoans, immigrants in France; so I could marry her earlier!"
He, twenty-one years old; she eighteen; without lands and without a
penny, Marcos and Pilar, but joyfully associated all the same, like two
sparrows building their nest. And the very young husband added
laughingly:
"What would you? Father said: 'As long as you do not marry I warn you
that I shall give you a little brother every year.' And he would have
done it! There are already fourteen of us, all living--"
Oh, how simple and natural they are! How wise and humbly
happy!--Ramuntcho quitted him with some haste, with a heart more bruised
for having spoken to him, but wishing very sincerely that he should be
happy in his improvident, birdlike, little home.
Here and there, folks were seated in front of their doors, in that sort
of atrium of branches which precedes all the houses of this country. And
their vaults of plane-trees, cut in the Basque fashion, which in the
summer are so impenetrable all open worked in this season, let fall on
them sheafs of light. The sun flamed, somewhat destructive and sad, above
those yellow leaves which were drying up--
And Ramuntcho, in his slow promenade, felt more and more what intimate
ties, singularly persistent, would attach him always to this region of
the earth, harsh and enclosed, even if he were there alone, abandoned,
without friends, without a wife and without a mother--
Now, the high mass rings! And the vibrations of that bell impress him
with a strange emotion that he did not expect. Formerly, its familiar
appeal was an appeal to joy and to pleasure--
He stops, he hesitates, in spite of his actual religious unbelief and in
spite of his grudge against that church which has taken his betrothed
away from him. The bell seems to invite him to-day in so special a
manner, with so peaceful and caressing a voice: "Come, come; let yourself
be rocked as your ancestors were; come, poor, desolate being, let
yourself be caught by the lure which will make your tears fall without
bitterness, and will help you to die--"
Undecided, resisting still, he walks, however, toward the church--when
Arrochkoa appears!
Arrochkoa, whose catlike mustache has lengthened a great deal and whose
feline expression is accentuated, runs to him with extended hands, with
an effusion that he did not expect, in an enthusiasm, perhaps sincere,
for that ex-sergeant who has such a grand air, who wears the ribbon of a
medal and whose adventures have made a stir in the land:
"Ah, my Ramuntcho, when did you arrive?--Oh, if I could have
prevented--What do you think of my old, hardened mother and of all those
church bigots?--Oh, I did not tell you: I have a son, since two months; a
fine little fellow! We have so many things to say, my poor friend, so
many things!--"
The bell rings, rings, fills the air more and more with its soft appeal,
very grave and somewhat imposing also.
"You are not going there, I suppose?" asks Arrochkoa, pointing to the
church.
"No, oh, no," replies Ramuntcho, sombrely decided.
"Well come then, let us go in here and taste the new cider of your
country!--"
To the smugglers' cider mill, he brings him; both, near the open window,
sit as formerly, looking outside;--and this place also, these old
benches, these casks in a line in the back, these same images on the
wall, are there to recall to Ramuntcho the delicious times of the past,
the times that are finished.
The weather is adorably beautiful; the sky retains a rare limpidity;
through the air passes that special scent of falling seasons, scent of
woods despoiled, of dead leaves that the sun overheats on the soil. Now,
after the absolute calm of the morning, rises a wind of autumn, a chill
of November, announcing clearly, but with a melancholy almost charming,
that the winter is near--a southern winter, it is true, a softened
winter, hardly interrupting the life of the country. The gardens and all
the old walls are still ornamented with roses!--
At first they talk of indifferent things while drinking their cider, of
Ramuntcho's travels, of what happened in the country during his absence,
of the marriages which occurred or were broken. And, to those two rebels
who have fled from the church, all the sounds of the mass come during
their talk, the sounds of the small bells and the sounds of the organ,
the ancient songs that fill the high, sonorous nave--
At last, Arrochkoa returns to the burning subject:
"Oh, if you had been here it would not have occurred!--And even now, if
she saw you--"
Ramuntcho looks at him then, trembling at what he imagines he
understands:
"Even now?--What do you mean?"
"Oh, women--with them, does one ever know?--She cared a great deal for
you and it was hard for her.--In these days there is no law to keep her
there!--How little would I care if she broke her vows--"
Ramuntcho turns his head, lowers his eyes, says nothing, strikes the soil
with his foot. And, in the silence, the impious thing which he had hardly
dared to formulate to himself, seems to him little by little less
chimerical, attainable, almost easy.--No, it is not impossible to regain
her. And, if need be, doubtless, Arrochkoa, her own brother, would lend a
hand. Oh, what a temptation and what a new disturbance in his mind!--
Drily he asks, "Where is she?--Far from here?"
"Far enough, yes. Over there, toward Navarre, five or six hours of a
carriage drive. They have changed her convent twice. She lives at
Amezqueta now, beyond the oak forests of Oyanzabal; the road is through
Mendichoco; you know, we must have gone through it together one night
with Itchoua."
The high mass is ended.--Groups pass: women, pretty girls, elegant in
demeanor, among whom Gracieuse is no more: many Basque caps lowered on
sunburnt foreheads. And all these faces turn to look at the two cider
drinkers at their window. The wind, that blows stronger, makes dance
around their glasses large, dead, plane-tree leaves.
A woman, already old, casts at them, from under her black cloth mantilla,
a sad and evil glance:
"Ah," says Arrochkoa, "here is mother! And she looks at us
crosswise.--She may flatter herself for her work!--She punished herself
for she will end in solitude now.--Catherine--who is at Elsagarray's, you
know--works by the day for her; otherwise, she would have nobody to talk
to in the evening--"
A bass voice, behind them, interrupts them, with a Basque greeting,
hollow like a sound in a cavern, while a large and heavy hand rests on
Ramuntcho's shoulder as if to take possession of him: Itchoua, Itchoua
who has just finished chanting his liturgy!--Not changed at all, this
one; he has always his same ageless face, always his colorless mask which
is at once that of a monk and that of a highwayman, and his same eyes,
set in, hidden, absent. His mind also must have remained similar, his
mind capable of impassible murder at the same time as devout fetichism.
"Ah," he says, in a tone which wishes to be that of a good fellow, "you
have returned to us, my Ramuntcho! Then we are going to work together,
eh? Business is brisk with Spain now, you know, and arms are needed at
the frontier. You are one of us, are you not?"
"Perhaps," replies Ramuntcho. "We may talk of it--"
For several moments his departure for America has become a faint idea in
his mind.--No!--He would rather stay in his native land, begin again his
former life, reflect and wait obstinately. Anyway, now that he knows
where she is, that village of Amezqueta, at a distance of five or six
hours from here, haunts him in a dangerous way, and he hugs all sorts of
sacrilegious projects which, until to-day, he would never have dared
hardly to conceive.
CHAPTER IV.
At noon, he returned to his isolated house to see his mother.
The febrile and somewhat artificial improvement of the morning had
continued. Nursed by the old Doyanburu, Franchita said that she felt
better, and, in the fear that Ramuntcho might become dreamy, she made him
return to the square to attend the Sunday ball-game.
The breath of the wind became warm again, blew from the south; none of
the shivers of a moment ago remained; on the contrary, a summer sun and
atmosphere, on the reddened woods, on the rusty ferns, on the roads where
continued to fall the sad leaves. But the sky was gathering thick clouds,
which suddenly came out from the rear of the mountains as if they had
stayed there in ambush to appear all at the same signal.
The ball-game had not yet been arranged and groups were disputing
violently when he reached the square. Quickly, he was surrounded, he was
welcomed, designated by acclamation to go into the game and sustain the
honor of his county. He did not dare, not having played for three years
and distrusting his unaccustomed arm. At last, he yielded and began to
undress--but to whom would he trust his waistcoat now?--The image
reappeared to him, suddenly, of Gracieuse, seated on the nearest steps
and extending her hands to receive it. To whom would he throw his
waistcoat to-day? It is intrusted ordinarily to some friend, as the
toreadors do with their gilt silk mantles.--He threw it at random, this
time, anywhere, on the granite of the old benches flowered with belated
scabwort--
The match began. Out of practice at first, uncertain, he missed several
times the little bounding thing which is to be caught in the air.
Then, he went to his work with a rage, regained his former ease and
became himself again superbly. His muscles had gained in strength what
they had perhaps lost in skill; again he was applauded, he knew the
physical intoxication of moving, of leaping, of feeling his muscles play
like supple and violent springs, of hearing around him the ardent murmur
of the crowd.
But then came the instant of rest which interrupts ordinarily the long
disputed games; the moment when one sits halting, the blood in ebulition,
the hands reddened, trembling,--and when one regains the course of ideas
which the game suppresses.
Then, he realized the distress of being alone.
Above the assembled heads, above the woolen caps and the hair ornamented
with kerchiefs, was accentuated that stormy sky which the southern winds,
when they are about to finish, bring always. The air had assumed an
absolute limpidity, as if it had become rarified, rarified unto
emptiness. The mountains seemed to have advanced extraordinarily; the
Pyrenees were crushing the village; the Spanish summits or the French
summits were there, all equally near, as if pasted on one another,
exaggerating their burned, brown colors, their intense and sombre, violet
tints. Large clouds, which seemed as solid as terrestrial things, were
displayed in the form of bows, veiling the sun, casting an obscurity
which was like an eclipse. And here and there, through some rent,
bordered with dazzling silver, one could see the profound blue green of a
sky almost African. All this country, the unstable climate of which
changes between a morning and an evening, became for several hours
strangely southern in aspect, in temperature and in light.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 | 9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13