“He doesn’t recognize you,” whispers Marguerite.
Janet takes clear aim at his daughter with his gaze.
“She’s nuts, that one. Not recognize you? So what, you think I’ve flipped, too?”
“Hey, his hearing’s still good…”
Jaume sits down at the foot of the bed, directly in line with Janet’s stretched-out body — now nothing but skin and bones, looks, and words.
“How’s it going, Janet?”
“Bad. And it’s not about to go any other way.”
“Are you in pain?”
“In my head.”
“You have a headache?”
“No. It’s not aching like other people’s. It’s full… just full, and it’s cracking up all by itself, in the dark, like an old washbasin. They leave me on my own all the time. I can’t talk to anybody, so it builds up inside me, it weighs on my bones. A bit of it runs out through my eyes, but the big pieces, they can’t make it through, so they stay inside my head.”
“Big pieces of what?”
“Of life, Jaume.”
“Pieces of life? What do you mean?”
“Oh, you’ll find out….
“I remember everything I’ve done in my life. It comes to me in big blocks, piled up like rocks, and it pushes out through my flesh.
“I remember everything.
“I remember that I picked up a piece of string on the Montfuron road when I was going to the fair at Reillanne. I fixed my whip with it. I see the string, I see the whip, I see the cartwheel, just like I saw it when I bent down to pick up the string. I see the hoofs of the mule I owned at the time.
“On the wall over there, I see all of that, all the time: the string, the whip, the wheel. When I close my eyes, it stays there in my head.
“It’s like that with everything I’ve done.
“Now that I’ve told you about it, it’s gone down a little.”
“You remember everything?”
“Everything. Even things—”
“Things?”
“I mean things that you do sometimes, thinking they’ll go away, but they stick around anyway. And then, down the road, you run into them again, head on. They’re waiting for you.”
“Bad things?”
“What, you think you can tell what’s bad from what’s good?”
Jaume falls speechless. In the old man’s talk there are chasms where untold powers rumble.
“Gritte, some water.”
He’s put on a different voice to demand a drink.
Marguerite comes obligingly with a tiny bit of water in a cup.
“Do you have any more?” Jaume asks in an undertone.
“This is some holy water I’d put aside for Palm Sunday. It was in the armoire. It’s just as well that it gets used for something.”
•
“Janet, since you remember everything, shouldn’t you be able to remember the day when you found the spring?”
“Yes. You were one of those who laughed. You too.”
“Who could’ve possibly guessed that there’d be water there?”
“You’re all the same. You always want to understand: This one does this… why? This one does that… why? Let the people who really know what they’re doing get on with it. Did I find it? Yes or no?”
“You found it.”
“And was it good water?”
“It was good water.”
“What more do you want?”
In an instant Jaume makes up his mind.
“I’d like to know how you did it. How you have to root around in the ground, or if there’s some kind of a plant that shows you where there’s water running underneath.”
“Have a look and see if you can find my wad.”
“Where?”
“There, under the sheet, take a little peek.”
Jaume finds the wad of tobacco, already chewed up, still moist.
“Give it to me.”
Janet slips it into his mouth.
“Do you know the song, Alex?”
At Pertuis fair
If you don’t pay
The stable boy
Will snatch your hay.
Janet beams. Tobacco juice trickles from the corner of his mouth.
“Ah, you old rascal,” says Jaume good-naturedly, “you’re being cagey. Don’t you want to tell me your secret for finding water?”
“My boy, it just isn’t possible. Either you’re born with it or not, and if you’re not, nothing doing! It’s your mother’s womb that transmits it. You have to get going on it way ahead of time. Now it’s too late.
“What, the water you have already isn’t good enough? You’re saying my water isn’t any good? Water that comes right out of our own hill, water you’ll never find the equal of.”
Jaume’s going to tell him that the spring has failed, but Marguerite is already shushing him with her stubby finger.
Anyway, now it’s clear beyond a doubt: Janet won’t say a thing, whether out of deceitfulness, sickness, or spite.
“I knew it,” Gondran says, coming back in. “What can you make of that?” He points toward Janet, who has finally fallen silent. “He’s all bad, rotten from head to toe.”
•
The hardest time is from noon onwards.
For the past two days it seems as though the sun has leapt closer to earth. Its molten mass is crackling right at the edge of the sky. Heat descends from it like a heavy downpour. Wide, rippling whirlwinds blur the air.
There’s nothing to drink but wine, and your parched throat craves it constantly.
Thirst is ever-present.
They fill their hours with expansive dreams of dancing, silver waters.
•
Everything’s ready for the expedition: ropes, canteens, the gas lighter, the alpenstocks, the shotgun. Now they only have to wait for night to fall. It won’t be long now — the sky’s already green, and banks of cloud, pinkish just a moment ago, are gradually turning blue. What’s left of the blinding dust of the sun is settling into a bowl on the horizon. Lure’s shadow is rising.
Here’s what they’re going to do: Since they’ve found out from Maurras that he’s seen Gagou twice coming back at dawn with his pants all muddy and his hair dripping wet, tonight they’re going to follow him. He has to have found a spring. So they’ll find out for sure.
It goes without saying that they’d prefer not to be heading out into the wasteland during the night, but it’s the only way.
And after all, there’s the moon. Look: The shadow of the cypress is already growing darker by the minute and taking shape on top of the grass.
•
With raised voices, they bid each other good evening. They walk across the square. Doors slam and, even more loudly than usual, shutters bang. They’ve got to make Gagou believe they’re going to bed.
A light, evening breeze stirs in the foliage of the oak. A nightingale sings.
•
“There he is,” Jaume whispers.
The moon plainly lights up the two mossy pillars and the sheet-metal shack. Gagou comes out. He’s wearing only his britches. His upper body is naked, and his oversized head tilts toward the moon. In the whitish light he stretches back his drooling lips. A varied kind of clucking issues from his mouth. He’s singing.
He’s dancing too. The moonlight infuses him with mild agitation. He moves about lightly, as though he were gliding over the tips of the grass blades without even moving his feet. His hips sway. He totters, drunk with the dusk. He comes out from between the pillars.
In a flash he takes off, as though he were launching himself into the night.
•
“Let’s let him get ahead a bit,” says Maurras, “he has a keen ear. This is definitely the way he comes back in the morning. I know he goes past La Thomassine. We won’t lose him.”
•
After you leave the clump of trees around the Bastides it’s just an empty plain on both sides of the path that Gagou’s following. It’s as naked as your hand and it rises gently toward the high ridge of Mount Lure.