Letters from my Windmill Part 22

The stables are beginning to stir into life, while very early risers light up the windows in the farms before day break. In the gaps in the stones amongst the ruins of Mont-Majeur abbey, the sea eagles, still drowsy, stretch their wings. Despite the hour, the old peasant women are coming from the Ville-de-Beaux, trotting along in their donkey carts. We pa.s.s them alongside the ditches. They have to go six country kilometres to sit on the steps of St. Trophyme to sell their small packets of medicinal herbs collected on the mountain....

The low, crenellated ramparts of Arles appear, just as you see them on old engravings, which show warriors with lances larger than the talus they are standing on. We gallop through this marvellous, small town, surely one of the most picturesque in France, with its rounded sculptured, moucharaby-like balconies, jutting out into the middle of the narrow streets. There are old black houses with tiny doors, in the Moorish style, gothic and low-roofed, which take you back to the time of William the Short-Nose and the Saracens. At this hour there's n.o.body about yet, except the quay on the River Rhone. The Camargue boat is steaming up at the bottom of the steps and is ready to sail. The tenant farmers are there in their red serge jackets. So are some young women of La Roquette, out looking for farm work, and standing on the deck amongst us, chatting and laughing, with their long brown mantles turned down because of the sharp morning air. The tall Arles' headdresses makes their heads look small and elegant with an attractive pertness, and they feel the need to stand on tip toe, so that their laughter and banter can be heard by everybody. The bell rings and off we go. What with the fast flow of the Rhone, the propeller, and the mistral, the two river banks speed by. On one side, there is the Crau, an arid, stony plain. On the other we have the Camargue, much greener, with its short gra.s.s and swamps full of reeds stretching all the way to the sea.

From time to time the boat pulls in at a landing stage, on the right or left bank, or on the _Empire_ or the _Kingdom_, as it was known in the middle ages, in the time when Arles was a Kingdom. The old Rhone sailors still use these same words today. At every stop there was a white farm, and a clump of trees. The workmen getting off with their tools, and the women with their baskets under their arms, go straight onto the gangway. Little by little the boat empties, first on the Empire side and then on the Kingdom, and by the time we get off at Mas-de-Giraud, there's hardly anybody left on board.

The Mas-de-Giraud is an old farm of the Lords of Barbentane, and we went in to await the keeper appointed to come and meet us. In the main kitchen, all the farm hands, ploughmen, winegrowers, and shepherds are sitting at the table, solemnly, silently, and slowly eating their meal and being served by the women who have to wait to eat until the men are finished. Presently the keeper arrives with the cart. He is a real Fennimore-Cooper type, a trapper on land and water, fish-warden, and gamekeeper, known locally as the Stalker, because he can always be found in the morning mists or at nightfall stalking amongst the reeds, or stock still in his small boat watching over his keep nets on the open water and the irrigation channels. It may be this work of perpetual lookout that makes him so silent and focussed. And yet, as the cart full of rifles and baskets trundles along in front of us, he gives us news of the hunt, the number of over-flights, and the location where the birds of pa.s.sage have been brought down. As he talks, he melts into the landscape.

The cultivated earth gives way to the true, untamed Camargue, amongst the pasture and the marshland, and the irrigation channels shine in amongst the goose-foot plants as far as the eye can see. Bunches of tamarisks and reeds form little islands on a calm sea. There are no tall trees; the immense evenness of the plain is unbroken. The animal sheds have roofs that slope down almost to ground level. The roaming flocks, lying in the salt gra.s.s or making their way as they nuzzle around the shepherd's red cape, don't disturb the landscape's regular flow, dwarfed, as they are, by the endless s.p.a.ce of blue horizons and open sky. Just as a rough sea is still the sea, so a sense of solitude and immensity emerges, heightened by the relentless mistral, which, with its powerful breath, seems to flatten yet enlarge the landscape.

Everything bows down before it. The smallest shrubs bear the imprint of its pa.s.sage, and stay twisted and bent over southwards in an att.i.tude of perpetual flight....

II

THE SHACK.

The roof and walls consist of dried, yellowing, reeds. This is the shack, which is to be our meeting place for the hunt. A not untypical house of the Camargue, it has a single, vast, high room with no window, getting its daylight through a gla.s.s door kept fully shuttered at night. All along the huge, rendered, whitewashed walls, the gun-rack waits for the rifles, the game bags, and the wading boots. At the back, five or six bunks are placed round an actual boat mast which is stepped into the soil and reaches the roof which it supports. During the night, while the mistral is blowing and the house is creaking everywhere, the distant sea seems nearer than it is, its sound carried by the freshening wind, and gives us the impression of being in a boat's cabin.

In the afternoon, the shack is especially charming. Throughout our beautiful, southern winter days, I enjoy being alone by the tall mantelpiece, while several twigs of tamarisk smoke away in the hearth.

The howling mistral or tramontana makes the doors bang, the reeds scream, and a range of noises that make the great, natural clamour all around. The rays of the winter sun gather and are then scattered by the fierce wind. Great shadows race around under a perfect blue sky. The light comes in flashes, and the noise in crashes, and the flock's bells are suddenly heard, then lost in the wind, only to emerge again under the rattling door like a charming refrain.... Twilight, just before the hunters come back, is the most exquisite time of day. By then the wind has moderated. I go out for a moment; the great red sun, at peace at last, goes down in flames, but without heat. Night falls and brushes you with its damp, black wing as it pa.s.ses over. Somewhere, at ground level, there is a bang, a flash, as the red star of a rifle shot bursts into the surrounding blackness. What is left of the day rushes past. A long flight of ducks flies by, low, as if looking for somewhere to land; but suddenly, catching sight of the cabin where the fire is lit, they take fright. The one at the head rises, and the rest follow as they fly away screaming.

Soon afterwards, a great shuffling sound, something like rain falling, approaches. Thousands of sheep, brought back by the shepherds and urged on by the dogs, are anxiously and haphazardly and breathlessly scurrying about towards the folds. I am overrun by them and they barge into me as I am caught up in a maelstrom of woollen curls, and bleating. It was an ocean swell of sheep that seems to carry away the shepherds on leaping waves of wool.... Behind the flock, friendly footsteps and joyful voices are heard. The shack fills up, and becomes lively, and boisterous. The kindling blazes on the fire. The more tired they are; the more they laugh. It is a dizzy, happy fatigue, their rifles stacked in a corner, long boots strewn about, and game bags emptied into a bloodied heap of red, golden, green, and silver plumage.

In the smoke, the table is set out with a good eel soup. Silence falls; the huge silence of robust appet.i.tes; only broken by the ferocious growling of the dogs as they scuffle to sample their bowls by the door....

The evening will soon end. By now, there is only the keeper and I in front of the flickering fire. We chat desultorily, occasionally throwing half-words at each other, peasant-like, with Red Indian style grunts, which fizzle out like the last sparks of the dying fire.

Eventually, the keeper stands up, lights his lantern, and I hear his heavy footsteps fade into the night....

III

_THE WISH-AND-WAIT!_

The _wish-and-wait!_, what an appropriate name for the lookout, the expectancy of the hunter lying in wait, and the uncertainty of hours of total concentration, waiting and wishing between day and night. The morning lookout is just before sunrise. There is a lookout posted from evening until twilight, which is the one I prefer, especially in this marshland where the swamp water sustains the daylight for so long....

Sometimes the lookout takes place in a tiny, punt, a narrow, keelless boat, which rolls at the drop of a hat. Hidden to peak of his cap by the reeds, the hunter, lying on the bottom of the boat, keeps an eye out for ducks. The gun barrel and the dog's head sniff the air. The dog catches mosquitoes or else stretches out its huge paws and pitches the whole shooting-match over and fills it with water. All this looking out is a bit too complicated for my tyro's taste. Most of the time, I go to the _wish-and-wait_ on foot, paddling deep into the swamp in enormous leather waders. I move slowly and carefully for fear of getting stuck in the mud. I try to avoid stinking reeds and jumping frogs....

Happily, an islet of tamarisks finally appears and I can get myself onto some dry land. The keeper did me the honour of leaving his dog with me, a huge Great Pyrenees with a long, white, s.h.a.ggy coat, a prime hunter and fishing dog, whose presence never ceases to intimidate me somewhat. When a water fowl comes within firing range, the dog has an ironical way of looking at me and throwing his head back like a disdainful arty type, and with his two long ears flopping in front of his eyes, he freezes, and wags his tail, in a perfect mime of impatience, as if to say:

--Shoot... go on then, shoot!

I obey. I miss. So, he lies down full length, and yawns and stretches himself out giving the appearance, for all the world, of being tired, discouraged, and insolent....

Oh! Very well, then, you're right, I am a bad shot. What really fascinates me about the lookout is the sunset; the dimming light taking refuge in the water of the shining lakes, which transform the grey tint of the overcast sky into a fine shade of polished silver. I love the smell of the water, and the mysterious rustling of long leaves and insects in the reeds. Every so often, a darker note sounds and rolls across the sky like the sound of a conch sh.e.l.l. It's the boom of the bittern as it plunges its huge, wader's beak to the bed of the swamp.... Noisy crane flights startle me and I can hear the movement of their feathered, plumed wings. Then--nothing. It's the night, the deep, dark night, with just a glimmer of daylight left lingering on the water....

Suddenly, I feel sort of nervous unease, as if someone was behind me. I turn round and am rea.s.sured by the sight of that ubiquitous travelling companion of fine nights, the moon; a low, large, and full moon rising calmly and with a visible motion which slows gradually as it rises above the horizon.

A moonlit patch is already clearly visible nearby, then another, then one further off.... Eventually the whole marsh is bathed in moonlight, and the least tuft of gra.s.s gives a shadow. The lookout is over, the birds can see us--we have to return to base. We walk bathed in a dusting of weak, blue light; each step we make in the open water and the irrigation channels stirs the horde of reflected stars and the moonlight that penetrates the depths of the water.

IV

RED AND WHITE.

Within rifle range of the shack, there is another one similar, but more rustic. It's home to our keeper, his wife and their two eldest children. The girl is responsible for the men's meal, and doing repairs to the fishing nets, while the boy helps his father look into the keep nets, and maintain the sluice gates in the ponds. The two youngest children are in Arles, staying with their grandmother, until they have learned to read and have taken their first communion. It is too far to the school and the church from here, and the atmosphere of the Camargue is completely unsuitable for young children. The fact is that, come the summer, when the marshes are dry and the white mud of the irrigation channels cracks in the great heat, the islet isn't really habitable at all.

I experienced it once when I came in August to hunt ducklings and I will never forget the miserable and ferocious appearance of the burningly hot landscape. Here and there ponds were steaming in the sun like huge fermentation vats, keeping scant signs of life, perhaps just salamanders, spiders, and water insects looking for some moisture.

There was a pestilential air about, a miasmic, brooding fog thickened by innumerable clouds of mosquitoes. At the keeper's house everybody had the shivers, everybody had the fever, and it was pitiful to see the yellowed, drawn faces, and the circled, popping eyes, of these unfortunates, who were condemned to drag themselves around for three months under this high, pitiless sun, which burnt, but didn't warm....

The life of a gamekeeper is miserable and hard in the Camargue. At least ours has his wife and children round him; but a little further on in the marsh, a horse-warden lives absolutely alone, from one year's end to the next, Robinson Crusoe like. In his home-made reed cabin, there isn't a single household utensil not made by him; the woven wicker-work hammock, the three black stones that form the hearth, the tamarisk roots made into stools, even the lock and key made from white wood that secures this unique accommodation.

The man himself is at least as strange as his dwelling. He is a sort of silent thinker like so many solitary people, hiding his peasant's wariness under thick bushy eyebrows. When not on the pasture land, he can be found sitting outside his door, and with touching, childlike, care, slowly fathoming out one of the little coloured leaflets which are wrapped around phials of medicines for his horses. The poor devil hasn't any recreation but reading these leaflets. Despite being neighbours, our keeper and he don't see each other. They actually avoid each other. One day when I asked the stalker the reason for this, he replied in a serious manner:

--It's because of a difference of opinion.... He is a red; I am a white.

Well, even in this wilderness, where solitude ought to have brought them close together, these two unsociable people, as ignorant and nave as each other, these two cowherds of Theocritus, who barely go to town once a year, and the small cafes of Arles must seem like the Palace of Ptolemy to them, have managed to fall out about politics of all things.

V

LAKE VACCARES

One of the finest sights in the Camargue is lake Vaccares. I often leave the hunt to sit down by the sh.o.r.e of this beautiful, brackish lake, this baby inland sea, which seems a true daughter of the ocean.

Being locked indoors, so to speak, she is made all the more appealing through her captivity. There is none of the dryness and aridity that often bedevils the seaside, around our Vaccares. On its high banks, it boasts a fulsome covering of fine, velvet-smooth gra.s.s, a perfect showcase for unique and charming flora. There are centauries, clover, gentians, and those lovely flowers that are blue in winter, and red in summer, apparently changing their clothes to suit the weather, and, when they have an uninterrupted flowering season, show their full range of colours.

About five o'clock in the evening, as the sun is going down, these three watery delights, without boat and sail to cover and change them, open out into an amazing scene. No longer is it just the intimate charm of the open-water and the irrigation channels appearing here and there between folds of marl, where the smell of water pervades, and is likely to emerge at the least depression in the ground. Here, lake Vaccares gives an impression of size and s.p.a.ce. The radiant waves attract flights of scoter ducks from far away, and herons, bitterns, and white-flanked, pink-winged flamingos, lining up to fish all along the banks, in many-coloured strands. Then there are ibis, the sacred ibis of Egypt, truly at home in this splendid sunshine and silent landscape.

From where I am, I can hear nothing but the lapping of water and the ranger calling his horses from around the lakeside. Each animal on hearing its name, rushes in, mane flowing in the wind, and takes hay from his hand....

Further on, still on the same bank, there is a herd of beef cattle free ranging like the horses. Sometimes, I notice their bony, curved backs hunched over a clump of tamarisk, and their small, immature horns just visible. Most of these Camargue cattle are bred to run in the branding fetes in the villages, and some of them are already famed in the circuses of Provence and Languedoc. In one herd of the neighbourhood, there was a terrible fighter amongst them called the Roman, who has been the undoing of I don't know how many men and horses at the bullfights at Arles, Nimes, and Tarascon. His companions also made him the leader, for in these strange herds the animals organise themselves around an old bull which they adopt as their leader. When there is a storm on the Camargue, it is truly terrifying on the great plain, where there is nothing to divert or stop it. It's an amazing sight to see the herd group themselves behind their leader, all their heads down and turned into the wind, their whole strength behind their foreheads.

Shepherds in Provence call this manoeuvre: _turning the horn to wind_.

Perish the herd that doesn't do it. Blinded by the rain, and carried away by the storm, the herd turns in on itself, becomes panicky, scatters, and is overwhelmed. To escape the storm, they have been known to dash headlong into the Rhone, the Vaccares, or even the sea.

NOSTALGIA FOR THE BARRACKS AND PARIS.

This morning, at first light, a formidable drum-roll woke me with a start....

A drum-roll from amongst my pines at this hour!... What a ridiculous thing. For goodness sake.

As quickly as I can, I jump out of bed and run to the door.

n.o.body about! The noise has ceased.... From the midst of some wet wild vines, a couple of curlews fly off noisily.... A light breeze sings in the trees.... Towards the east, on the sharp ridge of the Alpilles, a golden dust ama.s.ses, from which the sun slowly appears.... The day's first sunbeam is already touching the roof of the windmill.

Immediately, the drum-roll starts again, hidden, this time from in the fields....