Letters From My Windmill (17 page)

—Locusts! Locusts!

My host paled, as any man would who had been told of an impending
catastrophe, and we shot outside. For ten minutes, in the farmhouse,
once so calm, there was the sound of running footsteps, and indistinct
voices lost in the sudden panic. From the shade of the dormitories, the
servants rushed outside banging and clanging anything that came to
hand; sticks, forks, flails, copper cauldrons, basins, saucepans. The
shepherds blew their horns, others blew their conches or their hunting
horns; a fearfully discordant racket, soon overlaid by the shrill
voices of the Arab women ululating as they rushed out from nearby
caves. Sometimes, setting up a great racket and a resonant vibration in
the air is enough to send the locusts away, or at least to stop them
coming down.

So, where were they then, these awful creatures? In a sky vibrant with
heat, I saw nothing except a solitary cloud forming on the horizon, a
dense, copper-coloured, hail-cloud, but making a din like a storm in a
forest. It was the locusts. They flew en masse, suspended on their
long, thin wings and despite all the shouting and effort, they just
kept on coming, casting a huge, threatening shadow over the plain. Soon
they were overhead. The edges of the cloud frayed momentarily and then
broke away, as some of them, distinct and reddish, peeled off from the
rest like the first few drops of a shower. Then, the whole cloud burst
and a hailstorm of insects fell thick, fast, and loud. As far as the
eye could see, the fields were completely obliterated by locusts. And
they were enormous; each one as big as a finger.

Then the killing began to a hideous squelching sound like straw being
crushed. The heaving soil was turned over using harrows, mattocks, and
ploughs. But the more you killed, the more of them there were. They
swarmed in waves, their front legs all tangled up, their back legs
leaping for dear life—sometimes into the path of the horses harnessed
up for this bizarre work. The farm dogs, and some from the caves, were
released onto the fields, and fell amongst them crunching them in a
frenzy. Then, two companies of Turks following their buglers came to
the aid of the colonists, and the massacre changed complexion
completely.

They didn't crush the locusts, they burnt them with a wide sprinkling
of gunpowder.

I was drained by all this killing and sickened by the smell, so I went
back into the farmhouse, but there were almost as many in there. They
had come in through the open doors and windows and down the chimney. On
the woodwork and curtains, already stripped, they crawled, fell,
fluttered, and climbed up the white wall, casting huge shadows making
them look even uglier. And there was just no getting away from the
awful stench.

Later, we had to do without water with our meal as the tanks, basins,
wells, and fish ponds were all covered over with dead locusts. In the
evening, in my room, where many had been killed, I heard a buzzing
under the furniture, and the cracking of wing cases, which sounded like
plant pods bursting in the sweltering heat. Naturally, I couldn't sleep
again. Besides, everybody else was still noisily busy all over the
farm. Flames were spreading over the ground from one end of the plain
to the other; the Turks were still in their killing fields.

The next day, opening my window, I could see that the locusts were
gone. But what total devastation they left behind. There wasn't a
single flower, or a blade of grass; everything was black, charred, and
eaten away. Only the banana, apricot, peach, and mandarin trees could
be recognised by the outline of their stripped branches, but lacking
the charm and flourish of the leaves which only yesterday had been
their living essence. The rooms and the water tanks were being washed
out. Everywhere, labourers were digging into the ground destroying the
locusts' eggs. Each sod of soil was carefully examined and turned over.
But it broke their hearts to see the thousands of white, sap-filled
roots in the crumbling, still-fertile soil….

—Drink this, friend,; and tell me what you think of it.

At this, the priest of Graveson, with all the care of a jeweller
counting pearls, poured me two fingers of what proved to be a fresh,
golden, cordial, sparklingly exquisite liqueur…. It warmed the
cockles of my heart.

—It's Father Gaucher's elixir, the pleasure and toast of Provence,
crowed the kind man, it's made at the White Canons' Monastery, a few
kilometres from your windmill…. Now, isn't that worth all the
Chartreuses in the world?… And if you'd like to know the amusing
story of this delightful elixir, listen to this….

The presbytery's dining room was genuine, and calm, with little
pictures of the Stations of the Cross, and attractive, clear curtains
starched like a surplice. It was in there that the priest began this
short, and lightly sceptical and irreverent story, in the manner of
Erasmus, but completely without art, or malicious intent.

* * * * *

Twenty years ago, the Norbertian monks, called the White Canons in
Provence, hit some really hard times. To see their living conditions at
that time was to feel their pain.

Their great wall and St. Pacôme's tower were crumbling away. The
cloister was disappearing under the weeds, the columns were splitting,
and the stone saints were collapsing in their niches. There was no
stained glass window unbroken; nor door still on its hinges. Within the
chapels and the inner cloister, the Rhone wind entered, just like in
the Camargue, blowing out candles, bending the lead and breaking the
glass, and skimming the holy water from its font. Tellingly sadly, the
convent bell hung as silent as an empty dovecote, forcing the penniless
Fathers to call to matins with an almond wood clapper!…

Oh, the woeful White Canons. I can still see them in procession on
Corpus Christi day, sadly filing past in their patched capes—pale,
emaciated, as befitted their mainly watermelon diet—followed by his
grace the abbot, head lowered, shamed by his tarnished crosier, and his
eaten away, white, wool mitre. The lady followers of the brotherhood
were reduced to tears of pity in the procession, and the well-built
banner-carriers were tittering quietly amongst themselves as the poor
monks appeared,

—Those who dream together, starve together

The fact is that the unfortunate White Canons had come to the point
where they were wondering if they wouldn't be better off finding a
place in the real world with every man for himself.

One day when this grave matter was under discussion in the chapter, the
prior was informed that Brother Gaucher wanted to be heard in the
assembly…. Brother Gaucher was the monastery cowherd, which meant
that he spent his entire day wandering around the cloister, driving two
old, emaciated cows from one archway to another, to graze the grass in
the gaps in the paving. He had been looked after for twelve years by an
old woman from the Baux country, known as aunty Bégon, before he was
taken in by the monks. The unfortunate cowherd had been unable to learn
anything but how to look after his cattle and to recite his Our Father;
and then only in the Provencal language, as he was too dull witted for
anything else, and about as sharp as a butter-knife. Otherwise, he was
a fervent Christian, although a touch extreme, at ease in a hair shirt
and doing self-chastisement with commendable vigour, and, oh, brother,
his strong arms!…

As he entered the chapter room, simple and uncouth, and greeted the
assembly with a sort of curtsey, the Prior, Canons, Treasurer, in fact,
everybody began to laugh. His greying hair, goatee beard and slightly
wild eyes, always had this effect. It didn't bother Brother Gaucher,
though.

—Reverend Fathers, he said meekly, as he twiddled with his rosary of
olive pips, Although it's very true that empty vessels make the most
noise, I want you to know that by further furrowing my already poor,
furrowed brow, I think I have found a way to deliver us from our
hardship.

—This is what I propose. You all know about aunty Bégon, the kind
woman who looked after me when I was little. (May her soul rest in
peace, the old vixen! She used to sing filthy songs after drinking.) I
must tell you, Reverend Fathers, that when she was alive, she was as
familiar with the herbs of the mountainside, as the old Corsican
blackbird. Now, before she died, she developed a unique elixir made
from several different kinds of herbs that we had gathered in the
Alpilles…. All this was a long time ago, but, with the help of St.
Augustine, and your permission, Father Abbot, I should, if I search
thoroughly, be able to find the ingredients for this elixir. We will
then only have to bottle it, and sell it at a good profit. This would
allow the community to quietly fill its coffers, like our brother
Trappists and … and their liqueur, Grand Chartreu …

Before he could finish, the Prior had stood up and leapt round his
neck. The Canons shook him by the hand. But it was the treasurer, who
was more moved than all the others, and respectfully kissed the edge of
Brother Gaucher's frayed hood…. Each one then went back to his seat
and the chapter, still in session, elected to entrust the cows to
Brother Thrasybule, so that Brother Gaucher could dedicate himself to
making his elixir.

* * * * *

How what trials and tribulations the good Brother underwent to retrieve
aunty Bégon's recipe, history doesn't tell us. But what you can be
assured of, is that after only six months the White Canons' elixir was
very popular. Throughout the districts of Avignon and Arles there
wasn't a single farm which didn't have a store room containing a small
brown earthenware bottle showing the arms of Provence, and a silver
label depicting a monk in ecstasy, standing amongst the bottles of
sweet wine and jars of picholine olives. The elixir sold in a big way,
and the house of the White Canons soon became wealthy. St. Pacôme's
tower was rebuilt. The Prior gloried in a new mitre, the church was
fitted with finely worked stained glass; and in the fine filigree stone
work of the bell tower, a whole range of bells, large and small, rang
out their first fulsome peal on one fine Easter morning.

Brother Gaucher, the poor lay Brother, whose rustic charms, who had so
enlivened the chapter, is no longer to be found there. From now on, he
is known only as the Reverend Father Gaucher, a capable man of great
learning. He lives apart from the many petty concerns of the cloister,
locked all day in his distillery, while thirty monks scour the
mountainside collecting pungent herbs for him…. The distillery was in
an old unused chapel at the very bottom of the Canons' garden, and no
one, not even the Prior himself, had a right of access. The innocence
of the good Fathers had transformed it into a place of mystery and
wonder. If, on occasion, a bold and curious young monk made use of the
climbing vines to reach the rose window of the door, he would scramble
down soon enough, alarmed by the sight of Father Gaucher, who looked
like a bearded magician, leaning over his flames, holding his
elixir-strength-gauge. All around, there were pink stoneware retorts,
huge stills, coiled glass condensers, and all sorts of bizarre
equipment, which gleamed eerily in the red light from the stained glass
windows….

At nightfall, as the last angelus bell was ringing, the door of this
mysterious place silently opened, and the Reverend Father Gaucher
emerged to attend the evening church service. It warmed the heart to
see him greeted with such joy as he crossed the monastery grounds. The
brothers rushed to be at his side. They said:

—Hush! That's the Father with his secret!…

The Treasurer used to join him and spoke to him humbly….

With these adulations ringing in his ears, the Father walked on,
mopping his brow, and placed his wide brimmed tricorne hat on the back
of his head, where it gave all the appearance of a halo, and looked
complacently around at the great courtyard planted with orange trees,
and the new working weathercocks on the blue roofs. In the sparklingly
white cloister—between the elegant columns decorated with flowers—the
Canons, in new clothes, were filing past in pairs, in renewed health
and well-being.

—It's thanks to me they can enjoy all that! the Reverend thought; and
each time he did, he flushed with pride.

But, the unfortunate man was to be well punished for his pride, as you
will see….

* * * * *

Who would have thought, that one evening, during the service, he would
come to church in an extraordinarily agitated state: red-faced, out of
breath, his cowl askew, and so beside himself, that as he took the holy
water, he wet his sleeves up to the elbow. At first, it was thought it
was the embarrassment of coming late, but he was then seen bowing
deeply to the organ and the gallery instead of genuflecting to the high
altar, and then breezing quickly across the church, and wandering about
for five minutes looking for his stall. After all this, once seated, he
turned to right and left, smiling beatifically, prompting a murmur of
astonishment that spread down the three naves. From prayer book to
prayer book the whisper went,

—What on earth is the matter with Father Gaucher?… What's wrong with
Father Gaucher?

Twice, the Prior struck his crosier impatiently on the flagstones to
command silence…. Over at the back of the choir, the psalms were
still echoing out, but without any responses….

Suddenly, right in the middle of the
Ave Verum
, Father Gaucher
slumped back into his stall and began singing in a piercing voice:

In Paris, there was a White Canon,
Who went all the way with a black nun….

This caused everyone great dismay, and they all stood up. Somebody said:

—Take him out … he's possessed!

The Canons crossed themselves. His Grace's crosier was clattering madly
away…. But Father Gaucher, was oblivious to all this; and two monks
were obliged to carry him out through the little choir door, struggling
as if he were being exorcised, and continuing with his hmm … tune….