Melville by Jean Giono

Author:Jean Giono
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781681371382
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2017-08-17T04:00:00+00:00

At his forge, wide open and full of sparks (as though he were fanning fiery kernels of wheat with wind from hell): the blacksmith. The postilion and the coachman saluted him in unison with a shrill whistle. He, in return, struck four or five hammer blows on the clear-ringing horn of his anvil. And now . . . the bridge over the stream: Grab hold of the handrail, because—there, you see!—before you know it, you traverse the hump and get to taste your dinner all over again. Then back out to the countryside, with the high, dark furrows of the plowlands swerving away in silence, surrounding the moving coach. Next, some young women, in skirts caked with mud, returning home heavy-footed through some fields of beets. They stop to look at the coach; their weary arms droop from their narrow shoulders. Finally, much later, next to a somber field, in a wide-open space with no abode in sight—nobody, nothing else around—a haggard little boy, all on his own, warming himself in front of a big blaze of brushwood.

I’ve never felt so much regret, thought Herman. He leaned forward and looked at the sky. The big wings were still there, high up above. The pale sun imparted such a pure quality to them. . . . they embodied the very indifference and obstinacy of the gods. I’ve never felt so much regret, he repeated, for not being the person you think I am. As it does everywhere, man’s fate shows itself here. It’s man’s fate one has to express. But, until now, my neck hasn’t been squeezed hard enough.

The worst of it, he mused, quite a while later (by now it was almost noon) . . . the worst of it, on top of that, is that I have absolutely no appetite for having my neck squeezed. Which is natural enough. If I sensed something was going to grab hold of my neck, I’d be kicking and screaming like the devil incarnate. No one really goes willingly to anything but celebrations. Who knows what he—that other one, up there—will come up with along those lines!

The coach was traveling at walking pace, through rolling country, toward a pass between two hills. The road was closed in on all sides by beech forests. With the onset of autumn, the whole leafy canopy had collapsed; the gray sky penetrated the reddish-brown wreckage and slid down through the branches.

From inside the coach, someone rapped on the window and then opened it. “Jack,” spoke a woman’s voice, “pull up for a minute at the Dartmoor turnoff.”

“Yes, miss,” said the postilion.

“There’s no passenger but me, is there, Jack?”

“Yes, miss, there’s someone, a gentleman, up here with us.”

“I beg your pardon,” said the voice. Then, after a moment, “Would you permit me, sir, to say a word to some friends who should be waiting for me at the roadside?”

“By all means, madam,” said Herman.

“Thank you.” And she closed the window.

It was a gloomy, depressed region. The Dartmoor Road was nothing but a dark, muddy track through the woods.

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