Letters From My Windmill (18 page)

* * * * *

Very early the next day, the unhappy Father was in the Prior's oratory
on his knees, in floods of tears, showing his contrition:

—It's the elixir, your Grace, which caught me out, he said, striking
his chest. The good Prior himself was very moved to see him so grieved
and penitent.

—Come, come, Father Gaucher, calm down. All this will disappear like
dew in the sunshine…. After all, worse things happen at sea. Lots of
people begin to sing when they are a little… hmm, hmm! We must hope
that novices wouldn't have understood it…. For the moment, let's see,
tell me just how this thing came to pass…. You were trying out the
liqueur, weren't you? You were perhaps a little generous with your
measure…. Yes, yes, I understand…. It's just like Brother Schwartz,
the inventor of gunpowder: you succumbed to your own invention…. Tell
me, my dear friend, is it really necessary to test this terrific
liqueur on yourself?

—Alas, yes your Grace … the elixir-strength-gauge tells me the
degree of the alcohol, but for the smoothness of the finished product,
I can trust nothing but my own palate….

—Oh yes, that's right … but if I might press you a little further
… when you taste the elixir in that way, does it seem good to you? Is
it enjoyable?…

—Yes, I'm afraid it does your Grace, admitted the miserable Father,
flushing…. For two nights now, I found it had such a bouquet, such an
aroma!… The devil himself has played this dirty trick on me…. From
now on, I am determined only to try it by means of the
elixir-strength-gauge. Never mind if the liqueur is not good enough,
and if it isn't quite a diamond of a drink….

—Hold it right there, interrupted the Prior, sharply, We must not risk
upsetting the customers…. All you need to do for the moment, as a
precaution, is to keep a eye on yourself…. Let's see, how much does
it take to fully establish the quality?… Lets say twenty drops…. It
would need a hell of a devil to catch you out with just twenty
drops…. Moreover, to avoid any possibility of accident, I am giving
you a dispensation not to have to come to church. You can have a
private evening service in the distillery…. And now, you may go in
peace, Reverend, but … be sure to count the drops.

Unfortunately, it was no use counting the drops…. The demon held of
him anyway, and having held him, wouldn't let go.

So, now it was the distillery that heard the
unusual
service!

* * * * *

In the daytime all went well … for a while. The Father was quite
relaxed: he prepared the stoves, the stills, and carefully selected the
herbs, fine, grey, dentate, the very scented essence of Provencal
sunshine…. But in the evening while the basic ingredients were
infusing and the elixir was cooling down in the large red coppers, the
poor man's torture began.

—… Seventeen … eighteen … nineteen … twenty!…

The drops fell tantalisingly from the pipette into the silver-gilt
goblet. These twenty, the Father swallowed in one go, almost without
tasting them. Oh! How he would have loved to drink the health of that
twenty first drop! To escape temptation, he had to lose himself in
prayer kneeling at the far end of the laboratory. Unfortunately, the
still warm liqueur was still releasing a hint of aromatic fumes, which
swirled around him, and led him on regardless towards the vats…. The
liqueur was of such a lovely golden green colour…. Poised above it,
his nostrils aquiver, he stirred it very gently with his pipette, and
in the twinkling eddies, which were spreading throughout the emerald
ambrosia, he thought he saw the sparkling, laughing eyes of aunty Bégon
looking back at him….

—Oh! Alright! Just one more drop!

One drop, yes. And then another. And another, and another, and another,
until his goblet almost overflowed. By now, his struggle was over, and
he collapsed into a large armchair, his body cast off, his eyelids half
closed, in pleasure—and in pain—as he continued to sip his sinful cup
and said with sweet remorse:

—Oh! I'm damned if I do…. I'm damned if I don't….

But the worst was still to come. As he reached the end of the
diabolical liqueur, he recalled, by who knows what spell, some of the
dirty songs of aunty Bégon:
In Paris there was a White Canon
… and
so on….

Imagine the fuss the next day, when his neighbouring cell mates joked
to him knowingly:

—Hey! Hey! Father Gaucher, you were well off your head last night when
you went to bed.

It all ended in tears, recriminations, fasting, the hair shirt, and
chastisement, of course. But nothing, nothing could defeat the demon of
the drink, and every evening, at the same time, the same story.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, the orders were flooding into the abbey, and it was a
blessing. They came from Nîmes, Aix, Avignon, Marseilles…. Day by day
the monastery was gradually turning into a factory. There were Brother
packers, Brother labellers, Brother accountants, and even Brother
wagoners. The service to the Lord, though, was getting well and truly
lost, despite the odd peal of bells. But, I can reveal to you that the
poor folk of the area weren't losing out by it….

And then, one fine Sunday morning, as the Treasurer was reading out his
end of year report before the whole chapter, and the good Brothers,
wide eyed and smiling, were listening, Father Gaucher rushed into the
meeting shouting:

—It's all over…. I am doing no more…. I want my cows back.

—So what's wrong, Father Gaucher? asked the Prior, who could well
imagine something of what was wrong.

—What is wrong, your Grace?… What is wrong is that I am making an
eternity of hell fire and forks for myself…. It is wrong that I am
drinking, and I am drinking like a sot….

—But I told you to count the drops.

—Oh! Yes, of course, count the drops! Actually, I count by tumblers
these days…. Yes, Reverends, that's how bad things are. Three flagons
every evening…. You must understand that this can't continue…. Have
the elixir made by whomever you choose…. But, may I burn in God-sent
fire, if I have anything more to do with it.

This sobered up the chapter, at least.

—But, wretched man, you will ruin us! the treasurer shouted,
brandishing his account book.

—Would you rather that I am damned?

With that the Prior stood up:

—Reverends, he said, stretching out his elegant white hand with its
shining pastoral ring, there is a way to settle this…. It's in the
evening, isn't it, my dear son, when the demon tempts you?…

—Yes, Prior, regularly every evening…. As well as that, as the night
approaches, I get, begging your pardon, the sweats, which grip me just
like Capitou's ass when he sees them coming to saddle him.

—Well then, let me reassure you…. Henceforth, every evening, during
the service, we will say, for your benefit, the prayer of St.
Augustine, to which a plenary indulgence is attached…. After that,
you are covered no matter what happens…. It brings absolution during
the actual commission of the sin.

—Oh that's really excellent! Thank you so much, Prior!

And without asking for more, Father Gaucher went happily back to his
stills, walking on air.

Actually, from that moment, every evening, at the end of the last
service of the day, the celebrant never forgot to add:

—Let us pray for our unfortunate Father Gaucher, who is sacrificing
his soul for the benefit of the community…. Pray for us, Lord….

And while, on all the white hoods of the Brothers, prostrated in the
shade of the naves, the prayer fluttered like a slight breeze on snow,
elsewhere, at the back of the monastery, behind the flickering reddened
glass of the distillery, Father Gaucher could be heard singing at the
top of his voice,

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

* * * * *

… Here, the good priest paused, horrified:

—Mercy me! If my parishioners could only hear me!

There is a huge buzzing at the chateau. The messenger has just brought
word from the keeper, half in French and half in Provencal, announcing
that there had already been two or three fine flights of herons, and
water-fowl, and that the season's first birds weren't in short supply.

"You're coming hunting with us", my friendly neighbours wrote to me;
and this morning, at the unearthly hour of five o'clock, their large
wagon, loaded with rifles, dogs, and provisions, came to pick me up at
the bottom of the hill. Off we go on the road to Arles, which is a bit
dry and the trees have mostly lost their leaves by this time in
December. The pale green shoots of the olive trees are hardly visible,
and the garish green of the oaks is a bit too wintry and artificial.
The stables are beginning to stir into life, while very early risers
light up the windows in the farms before day break. In the gaps in the
stones amongst the ruins of Mont-Majeur abbey, the sea eagles, still
drowsy, stretch their wings. Despite the hour, the old peasant women
are coming from the Ville-de-Beaux, trotting along in their donkey
carts. We pass them alongside the ditches. They have to go six country
kilometres to sit on the steps of St. Trophyme to sell their small
packets of medicinal herbs collected on the mountain….

The low, crenellated ramparts of Arles appear, just as you see them on
old engravings, which show warriors with lances larger than the talus
they are standing on. We gallop through this marvellous, small town,
surely one of the most picturesque in France, with its rounded
sculptured, moucharaby-like balconies, jutting out into the middle of
the narrow streets. There are old black houses with tiny doors, in the
Moorish style, gothic and low-roofed, which take you back to the time
of William the Short-Nose and the Saracens. At this hour there's nobody
about yet, except the quay on the River Rhone. The Camargue boat is
steaming up at the bottom of the steps and is ready to sail. The tenant
farmers are there in their red serge jackets. So are some young women
of La Roquette, out looking for farm work, and standing on the deck
amongst us, chatting and laughing, with their long brown mantles turned
down because of the sharp morning air. The tall Arles' headdresses
makes their heads look small and elegant with an attractive pertness,
and they feel the need to stand on tip toe, so that their laughter and
banter can be heard by everybody. The bell rings and off we go. What
with the fast flow of the Rhone, the propeller, and the mistral, the
two river banks speed by. On one side, there is the Crau, an arid,
stony plain. On the other we have the Camargue, much greener, with its
short grass and swamps full of reeds stretching all the way to the sea.

From time to time the boat pulls in at a landing stage, on the right or
left bank, or on the
Empire
or the
Kingdom
, as it was known in the
middle ages, in the time when Arles was a Kingdom. The old Rhone
sailors still use these same words today. At every stop there was a
white farm, and a clump of trees. The workmen getting off with their
tools, and the women with their baskets under their arms, go straight
onto the gangway. Little by little the boat empties, first on the
Empire side and then on the Kingdom, and by the time we get off at
Mas-de-Giraud, there's hardly anybody left on board.

The Mas-de-Giraud is an old farm of the Lords of Barbentane, and we
went in to await the keeper appointed to come and meet us. In the main
kitchen, all the farm hands, ploughmen, winegrowers, and shepherds are
sitting at the table, solemnly, silently, and slowly eating their meal
and being served by the women who have to wait to eat until the men are
finished. Presently the keeper arrives with the cart. He is a real
Fennimore-Cooper type, a trapper on land and water, fish-warden, and
gamekeeper, known locally as the Stalker, because he can always be
found in the morning mists or at nightfall stalking amongst the reeds,
or stock still in his small boat watching over his keep nets on the
open water and the irrigation channels. It may be this work of
perpetual lookout that makes him so silent and focussed. And yet, as
the cart full of rifles and baskets trundles along in front of us, he
gives us news of the hunt, the number of over-flights, and the location
where the birds of passage have been brought down. As he talks, he
melts into the landscape.

The cultivated earth gives way to the true, untamed Camargue, amongst
the pasture and the marshland, and the irrigation channels shine in
amongst the goose-foot plants as far as the eye can see. Bunches of
tamarisks and reeds form little islands on a calm sea. There are no
tall trees; the immense evenness of the plain is unbroken. The animal
sheds have roofs that slope down almost to ground level. The roaming
flocks, lying in the salt grass or making their way as they nuzzle
around the shepherd's red cape, don't disturb the landscape's regular
flow, dwarfed, as they are, by the endless space of blue horizons and
open sky. Just as a rough sea is still the sea, so a sense of solitude
and immensity emerges, heightened by the relentless mistral, which,
with its powerful breath, seems to flatten yet enlarge the landscape.
Everything bows down before it. The smallest shrubs bear the imprint of
its passage, and stay twisted and bent over southwards in an attitude
of perpetual flight….

The roof and walls consist of dried, yellowing, reeds. This is the
shack, which is to be our meeting place for the hunt. A not untypical
house of the Camargue, it has a single, vast, high room with no window,
getting its daylight through a glass door kept fully shuttered at
night. All along the huge, rendered, whitewashed walls, the gun-rack
waits for the rifles, the game bags, and the wading boots. At the back,
five or six bunks are placed round an actual boat mast which is stepped
into the soil and reaches the roof which it supports. During the night,
while the mistral is blowing and the house is creaking everywhere, the
distant sea seems nearer than it is, its sound carried by the
freshening wind, and gives us the impression of being in a boat's cabin.