Chapter 12

I experienced it once when I came in August to hunt ducklings and I will never forget the miserable and ferocious appearance of the burningly hot landscape. Here and there ponds were steaming in the sun like huge fermentation vats, keeping scant signs of life, perhaps just salamanders, spiders, and water insects looking for some moisture. There was a pestilential air about, a miasmic, brooding fog thickened by innumerable clouds of mosquitoes. At the keeper's house everybody had the shivers, everybody had the fever, and it was pitiful to see the yellowed, drawn faces, and the circled, popping eyes, of these unfortunates, who were condemned to drag themselves around for three months under this high, pitiless sun, which burnt, but didn't warm.... The life of a gamekeeper is miserable and hard in the Camargue. At least ours has his wife and children round him; but a little further on in the marsh, a horse-warden lives absolutely alone, from one year's end to the next, Robinson Crusoe like. In his home-made reed cabin, there isn't a single household utensil not made by him; the woven wicker-work hammock, the three black stones that form the hearth, the tamarisk roots made into stools, even the lock and key made from white wood that secures this unique accommodation.

The man himself is at least as strange as his dwelling. He is a sort of silent thinker like so many solitary people, hiding his peasant's wariness under thick bushy eyebrows. When not on the pasture land, he can be found sitting outside his door, and with touching, childlike, care, slowly fathoming out one of the little coloured leaflets which are wrapped around phials of medicines for his horses. The poor devil hasn't any recreation but reading these leaflets. Despite being neighbours, our keeper and he don't see each other. They actually avoid each other. One day when I asked the stalker the reason for this, he replied in a serious manner:

--It's because of a difference of opinion.... He is a red; I am a white.

Well, even in this wilderness, where solitude ought to have brought them close together, these two unsociable people, as ignorant and naïve as each other, these two cowherds of Theocritus, who barely go to town once a year, and the small cafés of Arles must seem like the Palace of Ptolemy to them, have managed to fall out about politics of all things.

V

LAKE VACCARES

One of the finest sights in the Camargue is lake Vaccares. I often leave the hunt to sit down by the shore of this beautiful, brackish lake, this baby inland sea, which seems a true daughter of the ocean. Being locked indoors, so to speak, she is made all the more appealing through her captivity. There is none of the dryness and aridity that often bedevils the seaside, around our Vaccares. On its high banks, it boasts a fulsome covering of fine, velvet-smooth grass, a perfect showcase for unique and charming flora. There are centauries, clover, gentians, and those lovely flowers that are blue in winter, and red in summer, apparently changing their clothes to suit the weather, and, when they have an uninterrupted flowering season, show their full range of colours.

About five o'clock in the evening, as the sun is going down, these three watery delights, without boat and sail to cover and change them, open out into an amazing scene. No longer is it just the intimate charm of the open-water and the irrigation channels appearing here and there between folds of marl, where the smell of water pervades, and is likely to emerge at the least depression in the ground. Here, lake Vaccares gives an impression of size and space. The radiant waves attract flights of scoter ducks from far away, and herons, bitterns, and white-flanked, pink-winged flamingos, lining up to fish all along the banks, in many-coloured strands. Then there are ibis, the sacred ibis of Egypt, truly at home in this splendid sunshine and silent landscape. From where I am, I can hear nothing but the lapping of water and the ranger calling his horses from around the lakeside. Each animal on hearing its name, rushes in, mane flowing in the wind, and takes hay from his hand....

Further on, still on the same bank, there is a herd of beef cattle free ranging like the horses. Sometimes, I notice their bony, curved backs hunched over a clump of tamarisk, and their small, immature horns just visible. Most of these Camargue cattle are bred to run in the branding fêtes in the villages, and some of them are already famed in the circuses of Provence and Languedoc. In one herd of the neighbourhood, there was a terrible fighter amongst them called the Roman, who has been the undoing of I don't know how many men and horses at the bullfights at Arles, Nîmes, and Tarascon. His companions also made him the leader, for in these strange herds the animals organise themselves around an old bull which they adopt as their leader. When there is a storm on the Camargue, it is truly terrifying on the great plain, where there is nothing to divert or stop it. It's an amazing sight to see the herd group themselves behind their leader, all their heads down and turned into the wind, their whole strength behind their foreheads. Shepherds in Provence call this manoeuvre: _turning the horn to wind_.

Perish the herd that doesn't do it. Blinded by the rain, and carried away by the storm, the herd turns in on itself, becomes panicky, scatters, and is overwhelmed. To escape the storm, they have been known to dash headlong into the Rhone, the Vaccares, or even the sea.

NOSTALGIA FOR THE BARRACKS AND PARIS.

This morning, at first light, a formidable drum-roll woke me with a start....

A drum-roll from amongst my pines at this hour!... What a ridiculous thing. For goodness sake.

As quickly as I can, I jump out of bed and run to the door.

Nobody about! The noise has ceased.... From the midst of some wet wild vines, a couple of curlews fly off noisily.... A light breeze sings in the trees.... Towards the east, on the sharp ridge of the Alpilles, a golden dust amasses, from which the sun slowly appears.... The day's first sunbeam is already touching the roof of the windmill. Immediately, the drum-roll starts again, hidden, this time from in the fields....

The devil, I had forgotten about it. What sort of idiot, then, greets the day from the middle of the woods with a drum?... I try my best to get a look, but I can't see anyone.... Nothing except the tufts of lavender and the pine trees which go down right to the road.... Perhaps there is some goblin, hidden in the thicket, mocking me.... It must be Ariel or Puck. The rascal must have said to himself as he passed my windmill:

--That Parisian is much too tranquil in there, let's have a dawn serenade for him.

Whereupon, he took up his big drum and ... more drum-rolls.... Will you shut that thing up, Puck, you will wake up the cicadas.

* * * * *

It wasn't Puck.

It was Gouget Francois, called Pistolet, drummer in the 31st Battalion, and right now on his biannual leave. Pistolet is bored stiff here and he has his memories, and he has his drum, and--when someone from the village wants to _borrow_ the instrument--he goes out and bangs the damned drum in the woods, and dreams of the Prince-Eugène barracks, back in Paris.

Today, he is honouring a small, green hillock with his reveries. There he is, propping up a pine tree, his drum in his arms, having a field day.... Partridges, alarmed, take to the air from under his feet; but he doesn't notice them. Wild flowers bathe him in their scent; but he doesn't smell them.

He doesn't see the fine spiders' webs vibrating in the sun amongst the branches, nor the pine needles, which jump about on his drum. Completely given over to his reverie and his music, he looks lovingly at the blur of his whizzing drumsticks, and his large, dull face lights up with pleasure at every roll.

"How lovely the great barracks is, with its large flagged courtyard, its orderly, all in line windows, its men in military caps, and its low arcades full of clattering mess-tins!...

"Oh, the echoing steps, the whitewashed corridors, the smelly dormitory, the belts to be polished, the slab of bread, the tins of polish, the iron bedsteads with grey covers, the gleaming rifles in the rack.

"Oh, the good days with the corps, the cards that stick to your fingers, the hideous queen of spades with her feathered charms, the old newspaper, pages missing, scattered on the beds....

"Oh, the long nights on guard at the Ministry's door, the old sentry box which rains in, the frozen feet!... The carriages which splash you going past!... Oh, the extra fatigues, the days without break, the stinking wash tub, the wooden pillow, the reveille on cold, wet mornings, the retreat in fog and at lights on time, the evening call-out that finds you late and breathless!

"Oh, the bois de Vincennes, the thick, white, cotton gloves, the walks on the fortifications.... Oh, the Military School entrance, the loose women, the sound of the cornet at the Salon de Mars, the absinth in the bars, the shared secrets between hiccoughs, the sabres drawn, the sentimental tale told hand on heart...."

* * * * *

Dream on, poor man! I won't be the one to stop you.... Hit your drum and hit it hard, hit it as hard as you can. I have no right to ridicule you.

So, you are nostalgic for your barracks; am I not just as nostalgic for mine?

My Paris haunts me just like yours. You--you play your drum among the pines. Me--I write here.... What a right pair of Provencal people we are. Back in Paris, we miss our Alpilles and the smell of wild lavender. Right here and right now, bang in the middle of Provence, we miss our barracks, and everything that reminds us of it is so dear to us!...

* * * * *

Eight o'clock strikes in the village. Pistolet, drumsticks at the ready, starts on his way back.... He can be heard, playing non-stop, coming down from the woods.... Me--I lie down in the grass, overwhelmed with nostalgia. As the drum fades into the distance, All my own familiar Paris passes before my eyes, there amongst the pines....

Ah, Paris!... Paris!... Paris for ever!

End of Project Gutenberg's Letters from my Windmill, by Alphonse Daudet