A Packhorse Called Rachel by Marcelle Kellermann

Author:Marcelle Kellermann [Kellermann, Marcelle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Action & Adventure
ISBN: 9781906658021
Publisher: M-Y Books

9.

Jean-de-la-Montagne.

On the evening of the 22nd, (another date I shall never forget) I was installed in my bothy with food a-plenty -enough to feed a regiment in the company of Jean, a young shepherd of twenty whom Raboullet had lent me as porter for the long march to the bothy.

“Do what you will with him…I shan’t need him right now. Not ‘till we bring the sheep up for summer.”

Was this true? Not quite, surely, but he wanted Jean to assist me during our frequent journeys between the farm and the bothy, especially when the load exceeded 30 kilos (which it did more often than not). It still remained for me to march across from the bothy to Savignole, but with half the load, making another journey there, at night, when there was less risk of meeting the Vichy militia.

But first let me tell you something about Jean. He is one of those chosen creatures who in brutal times restores our faith; noble beings unsullied by the depravity of war. He has remained a primitive, having slipped through the net of state education. There is a village school at Murol, but he served his life’s apprenticeship with the sheep he had been told to watch as soon as he could walk. He can neither read nor write, his mind is untouched by formal education. He is as gentle as a lamb, as sturdy as an ox, as free as Romany, caring little if at all for men and their affairs. But he can foretell the weather unerringly, sniffing the air. He can tell the time of day without a watch. He knows what date it is without a calendar. He likes to talk, and he talks well. Words keep him company. He told me one day that he talked to himself, held conversations with his dog Fiston, his sheep, and sometimes with the trees whose varieties he knows as well as any botanist. “I tell them things”, he said. I would give a lot to know what he tells them and what they say to him in return, but my bookish education prevents me from understanding the unspoken language of the hills I climb every day, the streams I trace and cross, the Neolithic rocks of shale and chalk which strew my path, the wild flowers and fruit which used to fill my herbarium when I was a student… the fragrant trees… the lizards, snakes, toads, frogs, the field mice… the eagles and kites suddenly darkening the skies with their fully stretched wings. My formal learning of nature’s wonders will never compare with Jean’s Savoir.

Jean has also the gift of listening, without seeming to concentrate when you speak to him, and of remembering what you said. There is never any hurry, he can and will take his time. No one is there to exercise pressure on him, his memory is perfect, it has its own perfect rhythm of recall. During the fortnight when I used him as a porter to carry

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