Letters from my Windmill Part 20

--Awful growing weather, he told me, here comes the sirocco.

In fact, as the sun rose waves of hot, suffocating air came in from the south as though an oven door had briefly opened. We didn't know where to put ourselves or what to do. The whole morning was like this. We took coffee sitting on mats in the gallery, without finding the will power to move or speak. The dogs, stretched out, hoping the flagstones would keep them cool, looked utterly washed out. Lunch picked us up a bit; it was a generous if singular meal, and included carp, trout, wild boar, hedgehog, Staoueli b.u.t.ter, Crescian wines, guavas, and bananas.

All in all, an improbability of delicacies which nevertheless reflected the complex variety of nature which surrounded us.... We were just about to get up from the table, when shouts rang out from behind the closed French window, shouts that guaranteed that we would soon experience first-hand the furnace-like heat in the garden:

--Locusts! Locusts!

My host paled, as any man would who had been told of an impending catastrophe, and we shot outside. For ten minutes, in the farmhouse, once so calm, there was the sound of running footsteps, and indistinct voices lost in the sudden panic. From the shade of the dormitories, the servants rushed outside banging and clanging anything that came to hand; sticks, forks, flails, copper cauldrons, basins, saucepans. The shepherds blew their horns, others blew their conches or their hunting horns; a fearfully discordant racket, soon overlaid by the shrill voices of the Arab women ululating as they rushed out from nearby caves. Sometimes, setting up a great racket and a resonant vibration in the air is enough to send the locusts away, or at least to stop them coming down.

So, where were they then, these awful creatures? In a sky vibrant with heat, I saw nothing except a solitary cloud forming on the horizon, a dense, copper-coloured, hail-cloud, but making a din like a storm in a forest. It was the locusts. They flew en ma.s.se, suspended on their long, thin wings and despite all the shouting and effort, they just kept on coming, casting a huge, threatening shadow over the plain. Soon they were overhead. The edges of the cloud frayed momentarily and then broke away, as some of them, distinct and reddish, peeled off from the rest like the first few drops of a shower. Then, the whole cloud burst and a hailstorm of insects fell thick, fast, and loud. As far as the eye could see, the fields were completely obliterated by locusts. And they were enormous; each one as big as a finger.

Then the killing began to a hideous squelching sound like straw being crushed. The heaving soil was turned over using harrows, mattocks, and ploughs. But the more you killed, the more of them there were. They swarmed in waves, their front legs all tangled up, their back legs leaping for dear life--sometimes into the path of the horses harnessed up for this bizarre work. The farm dogs, and some from the caves, were released onto the fields, and fell amongst them crunching them in a frenzy. Then, two companies of Turks following their buglers came to the aid of the colonists, and the ma.s.sacre changed complexion completely.

They didn't crush the locusts, they burnt them with a wide sprinkling of gunpowder.

I was drained by all this killing and sickened by the smell, so I went back into the farmhouse, but there were almost as many in there. They had come in through the open doors and windows and down the chimney. On the woodwork and curtains, already stripped, they crawled, fell, fluttered, and climbed up the white wall, casting huge shadows making them look even uglier. And there was just no getting away from the awful stench.

Later, we had to do without water with our meal as the tanks, basins, wells, and fish ponds were all covered over with dead locusts. In the evening, in my room, where many had been killed, I heard a buzzing under the furniture, and the cracking of wing cases, which sounded like plant pods bursting in the sweltering heat. Naturally, I couldn't sleep again. Besides, everybody else was still noisily busy all over the farm. Flames were spreading over the ground from one end of the plain to the other; the Turks were still in their killing fields.

The next day, opening my window, I could see that the locusts were gone. But what total devastation they left behind. There wasn't a single flower, or a blade of gra.s.s; everything was black, charred, and eaten away. Only the banana, apricot, peach, and mandarin trees could be recognised by the outline of their stripped branches, but lacking the charm and flourish of the leaves which only yesterday had been their living essence. The rooms and the water tanks were being washed out. Everywhere, labourers were digging into the ground destroying the locusts' eggs. Each sod of soil was carefully examined and turned over.

But it broke their hearts to see the thousands of white, sap-filled roots in the crumbling, still-fertile soil....

FATHER GAUCHER'S ELIXIR

--Drink this, friend,; and tell me what you think of it.

At this, the priest of Graveson, with all the care of a jeweller counting pearls, poured me two fingers of what proved to be a fresh, golden, cordial, sparklingly exquisite liqueur.... It warmed the c.o.c.kles of my heart.

--It's Father Gaucher's elixir, the pleasure and toast of Provence, crowed the kind man, it's made at the White Canons' Monastery, a few kilometres from your windmill.... Now, isn't that worth all the Chartreuses in the world?... And if you'd like to know the amusing story of this delightful elixir, listen to this....

The presbytery's dining room was genuine, and calm, with little pictures of the Stations of the Cross, and attractive, clear curtains starched like a surplice. It was in there that the priest began this short, and lightly sceptical and irreverent story, in the manner of Erasmus, but completely without art, or malicious intent.

Twenty years ago, the Norbertian monks, called the White Canons in Provence, hit some really hard times. To see their living conditions at that time was to feel their pain.

Their great wall and St. Pacome's tower were crumbling away. The cloister was disappearing under the weeds, the columns were splitting, and the stone saints were collapsing in their niches. There was no stained gla.s.s window unbroken; nor door still on its hinges. Within the chapels and the inner cloister, the Rhone wind entered, just like in the Camargue, blowing out candles, bending the lead and breaking the gla.s.s, and skimming the holy water from its font. Tellingly sadly, the convent bell hung as silent as an empty dovecote, forcing the penniless Fathers to call to matins with an almond wood clapper!...

Oh, the woeful White Canons. I can still see them in procession on Corpus Christi day, sadly filing past in their patched capes--pale, emaciated, as befitted their mainly watermelon diet--followed by his grace the abbot, head lowered, shamed by his tarnished crosier, and his eaten away, white, wool mitre. The lady followers of the brotherhood were reduced to tears of pity in the procession, and the well-built banner-carriers were t.i.ttering quietly amongst themselves as the poor monks appeared,

--Those who dream together, starve together

The fact is that the unfortunate White Canons had come to the point where they were wondering if they wouldn't be better off finding a place in the real world with every man for himself.

One day when this grave matter was under discussion in the chapter, the prior was informed that Brother Gaucher wanted to be heard in the a.s.sembly.... Brother Gaucher was the monastery cowherd, which meant that he spent his entire day wandering around the cloister, driving two old, emaciated cows from one archway to another, to graze the gra.s.s in the gaps in the paving. He had been looked after for twelve years by an old woman from the Baux country, known as aunty Begon, before he was taken in by the monks. The unfortunate cowherd had been unable to learn anything but how to look after his cattle and to recite his Our Father; and then only in the Provencal language, as he was too dull witted for anything else, and about as sharp as a b.u.t.ter-knife. Otherwise, he was a fervent Christian, although a touch extreme, at ease in a hair shirt and doing self-chastis.e.m.e.nt with commendable vigour, and, oh, brother, his strong arms!...

As he entered the chapter room, simple and uncouth, and greeted the a.s.sembly with a sort of curtsey, the Prior, Canons, Treasurer, in fact, everybody began to laugh. His greying hair, goatee beard and slightly wild eyes, always had this effect. It didn't bother Brother Gaucher, though.

--Reverend Fathers, he said meekly, as he twiddled with his rosary of olive pips, Although it's very true that empty vessels make the most noise, I want you to know that by further furrowing my already poor, furrowed brow, I think I have found a way to deliver us from our hardship.

--This is what I propose. You all know about aunty Begon, the kind woman who looked after me when I was little. (May her soul rest in peace, the old vixen! She used to sing filthy songs after drinking.) I must tell you, Reverend Fathers, that when she was alive, she was as familiar with the herbs of the mountainside, as the old Corsican blackbird. Now, before she died, she developed a unique elixir made from several different kinds of herbs that we had gathered in the Alpilles.... All this was a long time ago, but, with the help of St.

Augustine, and your permission, Father Abbot, I should, if I search thoroughly, be able to find the ingredients for this elixir. We will then only have to bottle it, and sell it at a good profit. This would allow the community to quietly fill its coffers, like our brother Trappists and ... and their liqueur, Grand Chartreu ...

Before he could finish, the Prior had stood up and leapt round his neck. The Canons shook him by the hand. But it was the treasurer, who was more moved than all the others, and respectfully kissed the edge of Brother Gaucher's frayed hood.... Each one then went back to his seat and the chapter, still in session, elected to entrust the cows to Brother Thrasybule, so that Brother Gaucher could dedicate himself to making his elixir.

How what trials and tribulations the good Brother underwent to retrieve aunty Begon's recipe, history doesn't tell us. But what you can be a.s.sured of, is that after only six months the White Canons' elixir was very popular. Throughout the districts of Avignon and Arles there wasn't a single farm which didn't have a store room containing a small brown earthenware bottle showing the arms of Provence, and a silver label depicting a monk in ecstasy, standing amongst the bottles of sweet wine and jars of picholine olives. The elixir sold in a big way, and the house of the White Canons soon became wealthy. St. Pacome's tower was rebuilt. The Prior gloried in a new mitre, the church was fitted with finely worked stained gla.s.s; and in the fine filigree stone work of the bell tower, a whole range of bells, large and small, rang out their first fulsome peal on one fine Easter morning.

Brother Gaucher, the poor lay Brother, whose rustic charms, who had so enlivened the chapter, is no longer to be found there. From now on, he is known only as the Reverend Father Gaucher, a capable man of great learning. He lives apart from the many petty concerns of the cloister, locked all day in his distillery, while thirty monks scour the mountainside collecting pungent herbs for him.... The distillery was in an old unused chapel at the very bottom of the Canons' garden, and no one, not even the Prior himself, had a right of access. The innocence of the good Fathers had transformed it into a place of mystery and wonder. If, on occasion, a bold and curious young monk made use of the climbing vines to reach the rose window of the door, he would scramble down soon enough, alarmed by the sight of Father Gaucher, who looked like a bearded magician, leaning over his flames, holding his elixir-strength-gauge. All around, there were pink stoneware retorts, huge stills, coiled gla.s.s condensers, and all sorts of bizarre equipment, which gleamed eerily in the red light from the stained gla.s.s windows....

At nightfall, as the last angelus bell was ringing, the door of this mysterious place silently opened, and the Reverend Father Gaucher emerged to attend the evening church service. It warmed the heart to see him greeted with such joy as he crossed the monastery grounds. The brothers rushed to be at his side. They said:

--Hush! That's the Father with his secret!...

The Treasurer used to join him and spoke to him humbly....

With these adulations ringing in his ears, the Father walked on, mopping his brow, and placed his wide brimmed tricorne hat on the back of his head, where it gave all the appearance of a halo, and looked complacently around at the great courtyard planted with orange trees, and the new working weatherc.o.c.ks on the blue roofs. In the sparklingly white cloister--between the elegant columns decorated with flowers--the Canons, in new clothes, were filing past in pairs, in renewed health and well-being.

--It's thanks to me they can enjoy all that! the Reverend thought; and each time he did, he flushed with pride.

But, the unfortunate man was to be well punished for his pride, as you will see....

Who would have thought, that one evening, during the service, he would come to church in an extraordinarily agitated state: red-faced, out of breath, his cowl askew, and so beside himself, that as he took the holy water, he wet his sleeves up to the elbow. At first, it was thought it was the embarra.s.sment of coming late, but he was then seen bowing deeply to the organ and the gallery instead of genuflecting to the high altar, and then breezing quickly across the church, and wandering about for five minutes looking for his stall. After all this, once seated, he turned to right and left, smiling beatifically, prompting a murmur of astonishment that spread down the three naves. From prayer book to prayer book the whisper went,

--What on earth is the matter with Father Gaucher?... What's wrong with Father Gaucher?

Twice, the Prior struck his crosier impatiently on the flagstones to command silence.... Over at the back of the choir, the psalms were still echoing out, but without any responses....

Suddenly, right in the middle of the _Ave Verum_, Father Gaucher slumped back into his stall and began singing in a piercing voice:

In Paris, there was a White Canon, Who went all the way with a black nun....

This caused everyone great dismay, and they all stood up. Somebody said:

--Take him out ... he's possessed!

The Canons crossed themselves. His Grace's crosier was clattering madly away.... But Father Gaucher, was oblivious to all this; and two monks were obliged to carry him out through the little choir door, struggling as if he were being exorcised, and continuing with his hmm ... tune....

Very early the next day, the unhappy Father was in the Prior's oratory on his knees, in floods of tears, showing his contrition:

--It's the elixir, your Grace, which caught me out, he said, striking his chest. The good Prior himself was very moved to see him so grieved and penitent.