The shepherd worked a bit. He learned with a sigh that the ewe Joséphine had given birth and he went to wipe off the lamb with swabs of grass. Then he brought it to us, still all trembling, all sticky, all surprised. The smell of newborn lamb mixed with the smell of our soup, our fire, and then came the smell of the dawn, that scent of awakened earth and trees coming back to life. The sky began to moan again softly under the sun.
We blamed all we had missed the night before on that fear-ridden Anaïs. It was that great drama of the earth that the masters of beasts put on every year, the night of the summer solstice.
I RETURNED to Manosque by the most convenient route. The walking, my strength, the eel soup had given me heart and I rolled along the paths like a stone, but I was hungry for that great thing of the spirit and I couldn’t think of anything else. Insensible to the beautiful flower of sky, to all the hoopoes that were learning to fly around me, I went along and my thoughts, like a fledgling bird, learned to fly, too. They took off in the direction of that odor of newborn lamb.
“No more rest!” I had written to Césaire. This is what I said to him:
“This is what you must do, watch carefully for the date and the time for me. Try to find out, let me know exactly. Twenty opinions are better than one. Then, I put you in charge of the whole business because, you know, I am so far away from it all, I am so far from it, because, when all is said and done, I haven’t been able to completely disengage myself from the easy life, because I have a family that is used to it, because Manosque isn’t a big town, but it’s a town all the same. Do you know what I mean? I’m telling you this so that you will know that I’m putting the whole business in your hands. I know that I myself could never learn the time and date. I would have to go spend days and days in the hills and it would be exactly the moment I close my eyes when that red scarf would pass, and once more I would miss everything. Watch well and then tell me when it is close to the time. I’ll arrange to be ready day or night. Send me a message, and I’ll come up at once. Warn Anaïs and Bartholomé and, if perhaps you could get a faster horse…. Ah yes, Césaire, if only my life were like yours. To hollow out a burrow and to live there with only those you love for company. Maybe I would have had a witch daughter, too. Now, it’s too late. A hug for everyone there.”
And I added to my letter a word to Barberousse. It was in a visiting card envelope and on the bottom I wrote, “For the shepherd.” I said to him, “Barberousse, so here’s how it stands. We must not miss the shepherds’ thing again. You talked to me about sheep, and the revolt, and your master who is buried in Saint-Martin-de- Crau. That filled me with longing. I have written to Césaire for him to watch for the man with the red scarf. Césaire, as you know, is a good man, but he has his work. He can’t spend all his time watching the road. I need to be sure; that’s why I’m writing to you, too. You, you get wind of things in the air. You said to me (you’ll remember), ‘The eagle’s shadow wakes you’ and then, ‘there, it’s the same thing.’ I want to ask you for a favor. Watch for me. I need to be there when the shepherds do their play. I’ll tell you why. It’s because I want to copy down what they say on paper, and then afterwards show it to people to make them see that shepherds aren’t just shepherds, but, as you say, the masters of the beasts. My warmest greetings.”
Those letters calmed my anxiousness for three days. Then, Lardeyret who drives a stage cart between Manosque and Simiane came to bring me the response. It was, “Good, count on it” on Césaire’s part and, on the part of Barberousse, “That’s fine.”
I would have liked something more definite.
I would wake in the middle of the night. It seemed to me that the days had run from everywhere like water through a basket. The calendar was downstairs in the kitchen. To go down, to check it, was to make noise on the steps, knock over chairs, upset the whole house. I remained sitting up in bed. Let’s see, yesterday, Thursday. It’s February; the wind is in the chimney, the bare branch of the rosebush scratching the window. Until June 24th, there was time. February! The sheep were in their shelters, in Crau, and the shepherds were playing lotto in the cafés in Arles and Salon. Sleep, you have time.
Other times, in the thick of night, nothing indicated the season. Memories of past Junes were there alive all around me, the noise of watering in the fields, the smell of sap rising in the fig trees, the big leaves and the wind. All that so faint; I stopped breathing. The silence deceived my ears with its eternal drone.
I wrote another letter to Césaire, another note to Barberousse.
“Watch out,” I said, “It’ll soon be time. It’s May, I’ve already seen some of them.”
And Lardeyret came back with the answers:
“Don’t worry.”
One morning, I tore off the page for May 31st from the calendar. There underneath was the month of June, as well hidden as a green lizard.
The first day didn’t budge. The second day, a little uneasiness drifted in a long wind under a brand new sky, but the third day the tide of sheep overflowed from the hills to the south and the western passes at the same time, and the great froth-browed herds made their way into our country.
At last, a telegram was delivered to me, opened, all torn and crumpled, read by at least the hundred or so Jeans of Manosque. It was simply addressed to Monsieur Jean. It said, “Forward!” and it was signed Césaire.
“Yes,” I said to the carrier, “yes, it’s for me, don’t worry, I know what it is.”
“Sure?”
“Sure!”
And I took my good curved walking stick. The sky played ball with that great noise of herds and all the echoes from the hills trembled with bleating.
They had taken care of everything. Barberousse waited for me above Saint-Magloire in the open oaks. He had brought his long willow wood horn, and he sounded a good long and well-blown note in the direction of the pottery.
He explained to me, “First, it’s to tell him, ‘be ready,’ and then it’s to tell him, ‘relax, he’s here.’ What worries we’ve had!”
And, in the clearing, the wagon was all ready and on the point of setting out to sea. Césaire was up on the seat and holding onto a little black-and-white mare with both fists, her back end dancing around and splashing the prow of the cart with her long tail shivering like rippling water. She clattered her four hooves impatiently.
We quickly settled in. Barberousse went to the back, on the blankets. I had the grandfather’s coat again. I was next to the pilot, and this time we took with us the young sorceress with the yellow eyes.
The departure was so sudden that all four of us let out an “Oh!” This cry sounded shrilly in the mare’s ear and she shot off at full speed like a fish, and already the foam from the grass spurted out along beside us.