•
Rightly so. Gondran is examining the shapes of the clouds.
There’s one weighing down heavily on the hills’ back, like a sky-mountain, like a whole country in the sky — a huge, completely deserted country with shaded valleys, sunlight glancing off ridges, terraced escarpments.
Completely deserted… who really knows? There could be celestial mountain people up there, with black beards down to their waists and teeth flashing like suns. It’s a whole country above and beyond the country of humans.
Until now Gondran used to study the clouds for the threat of storms, for the white light that warns of leaden hail. Hail is no longer on his mind.
Hail means flattened wheat, hacked-up fruit, ruined hay, and so forth… but what he’s on the lookout for now, it’s something that threatens him head-on, and not just the grass. Grass, wheat, fruits — too bad for them. His own hide comes first.
He can still hear Janet saying: “So you think you know, do you, you sly devil, what’s on the other side of the air?”
And so, Gondran stays absorbed, right until the moment they call out to him from the Bastides.
•
It was only for lunch.
This peaceful morning has reassured them a little. So has this hearty cabbage and potato soup that sticks to your ribs. It fortifies your blood in an instant and flows fast through your arteries to your brain, full of promise.
“You’ll see,” says Arbaud, “we’ll get away with just a scare.
“We were right to be on guard, for sure, because we’d been warned, but whatever it is, so far it looks like it’s just playing around.”
They’re stretched out under the oak, for siesta.
“Hey you over there, quit that racket!” they yell at Gagou, who’s drumming on an empty canister. Then they throw stones at him. And Gagou stops.
•
It’s the silence that wakes them up. A foreign silence. Deeper than usual. More silent than the kind of silence they’re used to.
Something has up and left. There’s an empty place in the air.
“Hey,” says Gondran, alarmed.
Next thing, they’re all standing. Something’s missing from the background noise of the Bastides. But what?
It’s come over them, just like that. Now they’re gazing around, craning their necks. They’re looking hard at familiar objects: the roller, the harrow, the plough, the winnower. And then back again: the plough, the harrow, the roller…
Nothing. Everything’s the way it usually is.
But there’s something missing.
All of them turn at once toward the fountain.
It’s stopped running.
•
Jaume comes along while they’re trying their last resort.
Gondran has wrapped his lips around the spout of the fountain. The iron pipe fills his mouth. He sucks with all his might to get the water to come. With each inhalation, you can hear a gurgling somewhere deep down in the rock. But it subsides just as quickly. The only thing that’s fluid is a drop of Gondran’s saliva clinging to the iron.
They’ve all had to give it a try. Now they all have rust on their lips.
“It’s too deep,” says Jaume. “You won’t be able to get to it. But it’s true, you weren’t around yet when we built this fountain. The pipe runs straight up that bit of a slope, right there, you see? Just about where that little fig tree is. There’s a pocket of water up there. If it isn’t running, either the pipe is blocked, or else the whole thing’s empty from one end to the other. So you can suck all you want, brother. Tomorrow morning we’ll have to dig up the pipe.”
•
This morning they’ve dug up the whole length of iron pipe. It’s stretched out on the hill, like a monstrous, pus-covered snake.
That’s not where the problem lies.
They’ve searched for the stone slab over the mouth of the spring. It’s under a juniper. They’ve pried it loose and pulled it up.
Leaning over the hole, they’ve listened. They can’t hear anything flowing.
“Sometimes,” says Jaume, “water from springs like this makes no sound. It just oozes out of the ground. But in the end it would fill a whole lake that would last us for life. I’m going down.”
He’s at the bottom in no time. It wasn’t deep. They pass him an oil lamp.
“Hey,” Arbaud asks, “how does it look?”
Jaume’s voice drifts up with the smoke of the lamp.
“The water’s gone. It’s completely dry.”
•
“And so,” says Marguerite, “how are we going to make his soup and his herb tea?
“I still have a bit in the pail, and I’m going to go fetch what I took down to the goats….
“What did Jaume say? Didn’t he have any idea at all? Doesn’t he know if we’ll be able to find water anywhere?”
“The rest of us, we’ll drink wine, no doubt about that, but your dad?”
“I have barely enough for today, maybe tomorrow, and then what?”
This morning they’re hard at work on the hillside before daybreak, all four of them, searching.
They dig until they hit black soil, and then Jaume lowers his face and sniffs.
They dig another hole a little farther on.
Their hopes rise for a moment, when they spot a bunch of rushes. But they’re rushes that the old spring had kept alive, and now they’re almost dead.
•
This evening, on the third day, they’ve come back beat, worn out mostly by disappointment. And they’ve eagerly knocked back big, cool glasses of wine.
•
“And so,” Marguerite asks again, “how are we going to make his soup and his herb tea?
“I don’t have any more.
“Neither does Babeau… Neither does Ma Maurras. Ulalie gave me a pitcher full, just enough for tonight.”
•
Gondran stands under the oak with his whole shaving kit: his razor, his strop, his army mug, his brush, his mirror.
He carries all this pell-mell, squeezed against his chest, except for the mug, which he carries delicately before him between his thumb and his index finger.
In the trunk of the oak there’s a nail for his mirror, and the stub of a branch for his towel. All in all, a very convenient setup.
He begins lathering his face. The foam is purple. Jaume looks at him.
“What’s that you’re shaving with?”
“With wine, of course. I had to do it once before, in Queyras, during maneuvers.”
“You’re sprucing yourself up?”
“Mainly it’s just a good reason to get away from there for a bit,” says Gondran, gesturing toward his house.
Jaume pauses for a moment to listen to the razor hissing across Gondran’s cheeks. He looks at the fountain. Under the spout the moss is bleached as white as a goat’s beard.
“Guess what I’m thinking? Maybe Janet could figure it out for us — where the spring’s gone.”
“Janet? Hah! Get out of here, he’s nothing but a crazy raver.”
“Not really as bad as all that. Listen, Médéric, in his day your father-in-law was famous for knowing a lot about water. Well-diggers used to come around to ask him questions before they started digging. When he was still down on the plain, I remember a Monsieur Boisse — who was building fountains in those days — came looking for him in a car, for that very reason. That was before you married Marguerite. Janet’s the one who found our pocket of water. ‘Dig here,’ he said, ‘it isn’t deep, I can feel it.’ At first we laughed all around, but then we felt obliged to try digging where he said, and sure enough, we found it. I want to go see him.”
“If you want.”
Gondran scrapes away at his chin with delicate care. There’s a little dimple right at the tip, where he always cuts himself.
•
“So, Papa Janet, how’s it been going since the last time I saw you?”