She approached the edge to look down on Peniel. The sky was cloudless. There was a strongish north wind which would fall when the sun went down. The sun was low in the sky so that the cows had long shadows like camels. Marius was there with his dog beside him. Yet there was something wrong. She sensed it without knowing why. The old man was shouting, his arms outstretched before him towards the crags. Why didn’t the dog move? She couldn’t hear what he was shouting because she was upwind. Then, abruptly, the wind dropped.
Sounds, like distances, are deceptive in the mountains. Sometimes you can recognise a voice, but not the words the voice is saying. Sometimes you hear a cow growl like a dog, and a whole flock of sheep singing like women. What Danielle thought she heard was:
Marius à Sauva! Marius à Sauva!
The sun was so low that it was lighting only one side of each mountain, one side of each forest, one side of each little hillock in the pastures; the other side of everything was in dark shadow, as if the sun had already set or not yet risen.
Perhaps he was telling the dog to go and save one of the cows, she argued to herself, that could sound like à Sauva. Yet why didn’t the dog move?
Marius à Sauva!
She could no longer be sure, the wind had got up again. She picked her way carefully down the scree. Occasionally she dislodged a stone or a pebble which, clattering down, dislodged others, and they in their turn others. Yet despite the noise of her descent, Marius never once glanced up. It was as if at Nîmes, that evening, all sounds were playing tricks.
The dog ran to greet her. She waited for Marius to kiss her on her cheek as he always did. He kissed her and began talking as if they had been stopped in the middle of a conversation.
You see Guste over there — he pointed at a thickset Charolais with curly hair like wool — he’s charming, Guste, the gentlest bull I’ve had, and already he’s too old. I shall sell him for meat this autumn. He’s two and a half. Next year his calves will be too small.
You must have thought I’d disappeared, Danielle said.
He lifted his hat and put it lower on his brow.
No, no, he said, gently. I hear their chain saws all day. And there are six of them, aren’t there? Bring the Comtesse over! Gently, in God’s name! Over!
He stopped in his tracks and leant against the side of a large boulder covered with moss. He was rubbing the back of his hand against the moss. And our summer at Peniel, he said, you’ll remember it, won’t you, Danielle?
The following Sunday the woodcutters came after supper to eat the blueberry tart Danielle had made. With them they brought two bottles of Italian sparkling wine. They were dressed as if they were going to town. Thin pointed shoes instead of boots, white shirts, natty belts. It was only their scarred hands they could do nothing about. Virginio was the most transformed by his change of clothes: tall and with glasses, he almost had the air of a schoolmaster. Father looked older, and Pasquale younger.
The days were drawing in and the end of the summer approaching. The pastures now were not green but lion-coloured, there were no flowers left, every day the buzzards circled lower, and by eight o’clock in the evening it was almost dark.
The men lay on the grass and looked up at the sky, where the first stars were appearing. They could feel the warmth of the earth through their shirts.
Would you like some more tart?
It was so good.
I made two, replied Danielle proudly and went indoors to fetch the second.
Next week the helicopter, said Virginio.
I’ve never seen a helicopter getting out the wood, said the boy.
Lifts pines like matches.
You look up and you feel as small as a frog, said Alberto the Sicilian.
Do you know how much it costs them to hire a helicopter for an hour?
No idea.
Two hundred thousand. In an hour it uses two hundred litres of petrol.
Here, Pasquale, take your tart, said Danielle. The other men were scarcely visible but she recognised their voices.
Helicopter pilot killed himself near Boege last year.
They were passing round a wine bottle.
Forgot his cables, didn’t look down.
They’re forbidden by law to do more than four hours’ flying a day, said Father. In four hours they can get eighty trees off a mountain.
If one of his cables gets entangled, said Alberto, miming with his hands, it pulls him out of the sky. Plouff!
Next century we’ll do everything in the sky, said the boy.
Nobody’ll work like us, next century.
Pasquale’s packing it in next year, isn’t that right?
I haven’t decided yet, said Pasquale.
You won’t make it. You can’t take on the supermarkets single-handed, said Virginio.
With fruit and vegetables you can, insisted Pasquale.
No, said Father, you can’t compete with their prices or their publicity.
I’m going to make my own publicity!
The other men laughed. A jet airliner crossed the sky, they could see its lights.
I’m going to get a bird, a Blue Rock Thrush.
He’s out of his mind, our Pasquale!
You can teach a Blue Rock Thrush to talk.
So?
Every time a customer comes into the shop the bird’ll talk. Pasquale recited a saleman’s patter which, under the stars, sounded more like a prayer:
Guarda quanto è bella ’sta mela
quanto è bellissima e cotta!
Turning to Danielle, he translated the words for her: Look at the lovely apples, ripe and lovely apples!
The boy giggled. A good idea, said Father, but you need to give it a twist, make it unforgettable. Teach your bird to insult your customers. Stronzo! for the husband! Fica for the wife. They’ll adore it, they’ll adore it in Bergamo.
Are you sure?
I’ll train the bird for you, said the Sicilian.
The moon was rising to the right of St. Pair. They watched a pink halo slowly changing into a white mist and then, suddenly, the bone-white incandescence of the first segment of the moon. Danielle sat down on the grass beside Pasquale.
When are you going to pack it in, Father?
Next year, sometime, never, sometime … I’ve no choice, I don’t want to drop dead.
The head of the moon was now free in the sky, enormous and close-up like everything newborn.
Do you know who dropped dead last Tuesday? asked Virginio. Our friend Bergamelli — had his throat cut in prison.
Who did it?
The Brigade Rouge.
Bastards!
Bergamelli? Danielle whispered.
A gangster from Marseille … Virginio knew him when he was in prison, said Pasquale.
In the moonlight which became brighter as the moon grew smaller, Danielle could see Virginio’s face, pillowed on his arms, gazing into the firmament.
He reminded me of my father, Virginio went on, Bergamelli had the same truculence, the same dark look when he was crossed, the same smile when something pleased him … He was killed when I was twelve, fell off a roof, my father.
Virginio took off his glasses and stared at the moon.
He was a mason, your father?
He built chimneys … The day they carried him home, I opened the veins on my wrists … they found me too soon. They carted me off to hospital, him down to the cemetery.
Shit! muttered Alberto.
From that day on I knew something, said Virginio; in this god-forsaken life everyone is abandoned sooner or later. Father did everything with me. He taught me to cook, he showed me how to catch frogs, hundreds a night, he saw to it I knew how to pick locks, he was my music teacher, he told me about women, when he got drunk in the café by the big fountain he stood me on the table and I danced whilst he sang — and then one Wednesday morning, dry weather, sober week, clean shirt, good boots, one godforsaken Wednesday morning — pfft! like that, he fell off a roof. I used to go and look at the mark on the pavement where he landed.