The shepherd touched the cords to adjust them. You could hear the sounds falling far below, in the middle of the brush, and the leaves muttered, as though under large raindrops from a storm. Finally, the shepherd stood with his back against the huge curved trunk, he spread his hands wide to span the strings, and he waited for the wind.
We heard it. Beyond the valleys, the wide plateaus were already whistling under it like hot iron dipped in water. It arrived.
It arrived, and immediately, from the level height of the hill soared the song of the three lives. The whole tree vibrated all the way down to its roots, and with the wide reach of his fingers, the man gripped the reins of that beautiful flying horse. The whole sky streamed through the lyre. Then a hailstorm of birds fell from the night, and, like stones on the move, the sheep began to climb up through the woods.
They emerged quietly from the line of trees. They came, step by step, one by one, without a sound. There they were, heads lowered, listening, and rams’ horns dragged in the grass, and trembling all over, the lamb hid under its mother’s belly.
Without a sound!
Only once in a while, deep in the grass, the beasts sighed, all together. The hills fell silent. The man gave a voice to the joy and the sadness of the world.
II
A PRISON OF FOUR WALLS AND A whole cemetery of books, but, sometimes, those walls draw apart, open, like a huge flower, and a deluge of sky crashes down inside there in a rush.
When you carry away with you the words “masters of beasts,” and the mute music of the pine-lyre, you are no longer the man you were before. You have taken a step toward the countries beyond the air; you are already beyond the air. The ordinary world passes just against your back. Before you opens the wide plain of clouds, and all your skin expands under the suction of those unknown lands.
I have always remembered how that night ended. Dawn came. I knew it because the eyes of the sheep all went out at the same time. The moon sank behind the darkness.
“Let’s take advantage of the good hours,” said Césaire.
The wind died. The last note flew off all alone like the dove from the ark.
The wife gathered the cluster of children. She took them off into the clay cave. The young sorceress woke her brother, the next oldest after her, and she dragged him along, pulling him by the hand, him lagging heavily behind, his head hanging, his eyes closed, her, lean as a bone, with those living antennae, her yellow eyes.
I said, “I’ll sleep outside with the shepherd.”
Yes, I was afraid of the root and that spring from the depths of the earth. The shepherd lent me a homespun coat, tight at the collar, but then full around the body, and, folded within that wool which smelled of mule and thick grass, I was going off to sleep when the man leaned over me, with his white face, and said, “When you come back, I will tell you what I did the night of the great revolt.”
THEN CAME the time of the summer solstice. The desire was constantly within me like a caper bush, beautiful flowers, but thorns and a taste of pepper to make you salivate like a fountain. Tired of the inner turmoil all that created, I took up my walking stick. That act alone was magic. It was a ritual gesture. A great wave of smells rushed over me. The wind took me by the shoulders like a sail and I set off from the coast of Saint-Martin-l’Eau.
First of all, I have to say that lots of things gave me impetus that day. In the morning, first, I heard a large herd enter the town from the south and grate against the houses as it crammed the streets. I went to wait for them at the fountains. The shepherds were wild-eyed. The head shepherd jumped out from all sides like a grasshopper giving orders which, at hearing them, you sat down, mouth open. Only the dogs went to stretch out in the shade. They watered the sheep. They gave them a little rest, standing, not letting them fold their legs or lie down, then “Hup!” The head shepherd whistled through his fingers and they all set off with their sleepiness and their suffering.
After that, I was watching peacefully from my window which looks out over everything, and there I saw it: the whole county was smoking under the hooves of the sheep. From Pertuis, from Valensole, from Pierrevert, from Corbières, from Sainte-Tulle, the lead sheep nudged one another on along the roads in the full fire of the great sun. Already, in the background, the Durance was lying in a cloud of earth thicker than the clouds of the sky, and the sound of a spring that had released all its waters danced over the country like a huge serpent crushing all the foliage.
It was the height of the move to summer pastures. All the animals left the red Crau, where the full sun was already crushing everything.
So, in the hills at noon, I ate my bread at the Turpine spring and I stayed there for an hour to watch the water fleas jumping. That noise of animals on the move was constantly in the sky. It resounded across the clouds as if across stretched skin. The noise no longer rose from the earth. A gray haze which was the dust from the fields and roads poured across the sky in the slow curves of thick, beautiful muscles. The whole world took part in the emigration of the beasts. The order had come from beyond the sky in the dazzling mystery of the sun. The rising tide of beasts obeyed the world’s orders. I was filled with that great monotonous noise like a sponge in a basin. I was more that noise than myself. The streams of sheep descended the length of my arms. I heard them gathering in the great woods of my hair. Their horned feet sounded heavily against the full of my chest. All of a sudden, I felt the dizzying rotation of the earth and I woke up.
Already that lovely silence, already that edge of evening, and the cowbell of the poor shepherd rang over there from under the blue junipers.
He let me get my breath beside him, and then he handed me his water jug. I saw that he, too, had his natural home there, not like the potter’s, who hollows out the earth and then kneads it, knowing the forms, but only goes that far, without knowing what spirit to breathe into it. No, this was the home of the master, the pine-lyre player, the initiated who listens to the words of the clouds and reads the great writing of the stars: a hut of loosely woven branches, ethereal, saturated with air.
THIS IS what he told me:
I was fifteen years old. In the middle of winter, the master felt my arms. He said, “Let me see your legs.” I lifted my pants. He passed his hands over my legs and felt my calves. “Good,” he said, “you’ll leave for the Alps this spring, but first, show me your teeth.” I rolled back my lips like a laughing dog, and he said, “Alright,” and this time, it was decided. First I went to say good-bye to my team of horses, and then I went to find the shepherds. They were camping in the hayloft, on the fine hay, humpbacked as the open sea. Like all young shepherds, I stayed there to test the waters, and in the evening, instead of sleeping under the stairs as I usually did, I dug myself a burrow in the hay to sleep beside them.
At Christmas, we went to the church to welcome Jesus, and I wasn’t among the plowboys, but with the team of shepherds. I’d been lent a sheepskin jacket, a pointed hat, and a fife. Coming out, old Bouscarle put his hand on my shoulder. “Jesus,” he said to me, “is up there.” And as I looked at the vast sky, he said to me, “No, not in the vastness, in that little corner, there, you see, that tiny star.”
Bouscarle was my boss. He was the one who gave me some idea of all you had to know to be an assistant shepherd, and especially, to take care of the beasts. “Look after them,” he would say to me, “but the most important thing is to win their trust. Every movement you make must be true. Maintain your balance. When you’re carrying a big bowl full of water, you don’t run.”