The Woodcocks
My dearest, you ask me why I do not come back to Paris; you are amazed, and you are almost angry. The reason that I am going to offer will doubtless disgust you: Can a sportsman return to Paris at the beginning of the woodcock season?
Assuredly, I understand and I am fond of the life of the town, which revolves between house and street, but I prefer a free life, the simple autumn life of the sportsman.
In Paris I feel as if I were never in the open air; for the streets are, after all, no more than vast public apartments, without ceilings. Is a man in the open air, held between two walls, his feet on stone or wooden pavements, his outlook everywhere bounded by buildings, without any prospect of meadow, plain, or wood? Thousands of fellow creatures elbow you, push you, greet you, and talk to you; and the mere fact of receiving the rain on an umbrella when it rains is not enough to give me the impression and the sense of space.
Here I remark very sharply and delightfully the distinction between inside and outside. … But that is not what I want to say to you. …
It is the woodcock season.
I must tell you that I live in a big Norman house, in a valley, near a little stream, and that I get some shooting almost every day.
Other days, I read. I read just the books that Parisians have no time to know, very serious, very profound, very strange, books written by a brilliant and inspired scientist, a foreigner who has spent the whole of his life in studying the one problem, and has observed all the facts relative to the influence on our minds of the functioning of our physical organism.
But I want to tell you about the woodcock. My two friends, then, the d’Orgemol brothers and I, live here during the shooting-season, waiting for the first frost. Then, as soon as it freezes, we set out for their farm at Cannetot, near Fécamp, because there, there is a delightful little wood, a divine little wood, where all the woodcocks halt in their flight.
You know the d’Orgemols, both of them giants, both real early Normans, both of them men of that old powerful race of conquerors who invaded France, took and held England, settled themselves along every coast of the old world, built towns everywhere, passed like a wave over Sicily, leaving behind the monuments of a marvellous art, pulled down kings, pillaged the proudest cities, engaged Popes in priestly intrigues and, craftier than those Italian pontiffs, beat them at their own game; and, more important to the world than all, left children behind them in the beds of every race. The d’Orgemols are two Normans of the purest and oldest stock, they have every Norman characteristic, voice, accent, manner, fair hair, and eyes the hue of the sea.
When we are together, we talk in the dialect, we live, think, and act like Normans, we become landed Normans more peasant-like than our farmers.
Well, fifteen days we have been expecting the woodcock.
Every morning Simon, the eldest, says to me:
“Hullo, the wind’s coming round to the east, it’ll freeze. They’ll be here in two days.”
The younger, Gaspard, more cautious, waits until the frost comes to announce its arrival.
Well, last Friday, he came into my room at daybreak, shouting:
“It’s come, the ground is covered with white! Two more such days, and we go to Cannetot!”
Two days later, as a matter of fact, we do set out for Cannetot. You would have laughed to see us. We move in a strange hunting-coach which my father had constructed some time ago. “Construct” is the only word I can use to speak of this travelling tomb, or rather this moving earthquake. It contains everything: holds for the stores, holds for the weapons, holds for the trunks, boxes with peepholes for the dogs. Everything is in shelter, except the human passengers, perched on railed seats outside as high as a three-storied house and carried on four gigantic wheels. You scramble up there as best you can, using feet, hands, and even teeth on occasion, for no ladder gives access to that erection.
Very well, the two d’Orgemols and I reach this mountain, rigged out like Laplanders. We are clad in sheepskins, we wear enormous woollen stockings over our breeches, and gaiters over our woollen stockings; we have black fur caps and white fur gloves. When we are installed, Jean, my man, throws us up three basset-hounds, Pif, Paf, and Moustouche. Pif belongs to Simon, Paf to Gaspard, and Moustouche to me. They are like three small hairy crocodiles. They are long, low, hollow in the back, and bowlegged, and so shaggy that they look like yellow bushes. Their black eyes are hardly visible under their eyebrows, or their white teeth under their beards. We never shut them in the rolling kennels in the coach. Each of us keeps his own dog under his feet for the sake of warmth.
And so we set off, shaken almost to pieces. It is freezing, freezing hard. We are happy. We arrive about five o’clock. The farmer, Monsieur Picot, is waiting for us in front of the door. He is a jovial fellow, not very tall, but plump, thickset, active as a mastiff, cunning as a fox, always smiling, always happy and very sharp after the money.
It is a fine holiday for him, in the woodcock season.
The farm is immense, an old building in an orchard, encircled by four rows of beech-trees which struggle the year round against the sea wind.
We enter the kitchen, where a monstrous fire is blazing in our honour.
Our table is set close to the lofty fireplace, where in front of the limpid flames a plump bird is turning and roasting, while the juice drips into an earthen plate.
The farmer’s wife greets us now, a tall silent woman, always busied with household cares, her head full of deals and calculations, of sheep and cattle. She is a methodical woman, levelheaded and austere, highly respected in the district.
Along the end of the kitchen runs the big table where will shortly seat themselves the hired men and women of every class, certain ploughmen, labourers, farm wenches, shepherds; and all those folk eat in silence under the quick eye of the mistress and watch us dine with Farmer Picot, who lets off jests that make us all laugh. Then, when all her household has been fed, Madame Picot will take, alone, her hasty and frugal meal on a corner of the table, keeping an eye on the servant-girl meanwhile.
On ordinary days, she dines with her household.
The three of us, the d’Orgemols and I, sleep in a white room, bare, whitewashed, and containing only our three beds, three chairs, and three basins.
Gaspard always wakes first and sounds a ringing reveille. And in half an hour everyone is ready and we set off with old Picot, who shoots with us.
Monsieur Picot prefers me to his masters. Why? Doubtless because I am not his master. Then you may see us both making for the wood from the right, while the two brothers advance on it from the left. Simon has the dogs in his charge, leading them, all three held at the end of a cord.
For we are not out after woodcock but rabbits. We are convinced that we must not look for woodcock, but just come across them. We stumble on them and kill them, don’t you know! When you want especially to find them, you never set eyes on one. It is a strange and lovely thing to hear in the clear morning air the sharp report of the gun, then Gaspard’s thunderous voice filling the whole countryside and roaring: “Woodcock—here they come!”
I am wily. When I have brought down a woodcock, I call out: “Rabbit!” And I rejoice exceedingly when we lay out the bag at lunch.
There we are, old Picot and I, in the little wood where the leaves fall with a soft ceaseless murmur, a harsh murmur, a little sad, they are dead. It is cold, a thin sharp cold that pricks eyes, nose, ears, and has powdered the edges of the grass and the brown ploughed fields with a fine white moss. But we are warm in all our limbs, under the thick sheepskin. The sun sparkles in the blue air; it has little or no warmth, but it sparkles. It is good to shoot over the woods on a keen winter morning.
Yonder a dog breaks into a shrill barking. It is Pif. I know his thin voice. Then, silence. Now another outburst, then another; and Paf gives tongue in his turn. But what is Moustouche doing? Ah, there he goes whimpering like a chicken whose neck is being wrung. They have started a rabbit. Now, Farmer Picot!
They draw apart, then close in, separate again, then run back; we follow their haphazard goings, running along narrow paths, every sense on the alert, fingers on the triggers of our guns.
They make back towards the common, we make back too. Suddenly a grey streak, a shadow crosses the path. I bring my gun to my shoulder and fire. The faint smoke clears away in the blue air, and I see on the grass a morsel of white fur that moves. Then I shout at the top of my voice: “Rabbit, rabbit! Here it is!” And I show it to the three dogs, to the three shaggy crocodiles, who congratulate me with wagging tails; they then go off in search of another.
Old Picot has rejoined me. Moustouche begins to yelp. The farmer says:
“That’s surely a hare, let’s go to the edge of the common.”
But just as I emerged from the wood, I saw, standing ten paces from me, Gargan, the deaf-mute, Monsieur Picot’s herdsman, wrapped round in a voluminous yellowish cloak, with a woollen bonnet on his head, and knitting away at a stocking, as do all the shepherds of these parts.
“Good morning, shepherd,” I said, as we always do.
And he lifted his head in greeting, although he had not heard my voice, but he had seen my lips moving.
I have known this shepherd for fifteen years. For fifteen years I have seen him every autumn, standing on the edge or in the middle of a field, his body motionless and his hands ceaselessly knitting. His flock follow him like a pack of hounds, seeming to obey his eye.
Old Picot grasped my arm:
“You know that the shepherd has killed his wife?”
I was dumbfounded.
“Gargan? The deaf-mute?”
“Yes, this last winter, and he was brought to trial at Rouen. I will tell you about it.”
And he drew me into the copse, for the herdsman was able to pick up the words from his master’s lips as if he had heard them. He understood no one else; but, face to face with him, he was no longer deaf; and his master, on the other hand, read like a wizard every meaning of the mute’s dumbshow, all the gestures of his fingers, the wrinklings of his cheeks, and the flashes of his eyes.
Listen to this simple story, a melancholy piece of news, just such a one as happens in the country, time and again.
Gargan was the son of a marl-digger, one of those men who go down into the clay pits to dig out that sort of soft stone, white and viscous, that we scatter on the fields. Deaf and dumb from birth, he had been brought up to keep the cows along the roadside ditches.
Then, employed by Picot’s father, he had become a shepherd at the farm. He was an excellent shepherd, zealous and honest, and he could set dislocated limbs, though he had not been taught anything of the kind.
When Picot came into the farm in his time, Gargan was thirty years old and looked forty. He was tall, thin, and bearded, bearded like a patriarch.
Then, just about this time, Martel, an honest country woman, died, leaving a young girl of fifteen, who had been nicknamed “A Wee Drop,” because of her immoderate liking for brandy.
Picot took in this ragged young wretch and employed her in light tasks, feeding her without paying her wages, in return for her work. She slept in the barn, in the cattle-shed or in the stable, on straw or dung, any place, no matter where, for no one bothers to find a bed for these ragamuffins. She slept anywhere, with anyone, perhaps with the carter or the labourer. But it soon came about that she attached herself to the deaf-mute and formed a more lasting union with him. How did these two poor wretches come together? How did they understand each other? Had he ever known a woman before this barn rat, he who had never talked to a soul? Was it she who sought him out in his rolling hut and seduced him at the edge of the road, a hedge-side Eve? No one knows. It only became known, one day, that they were living together as man and wife.
No one was surprised. And Picot even found this union quite natural.
But now the parish priest learned of this union without benefit of clergy, and was angry. He reproached Madame Picot, made her conscience uneasy, menaced her with mysterious penalties. What was to be done? It was quite simple. They were taken to the church and the town hall to be married. Neither of them had a penny to his name; he not a whole pair of trousers, she not a petticoat that was all of a piece. So nothing hindered the demands of State and Church from being satisfied. They were joined together, before mayor and priest, within one hour, and everything seemed arranged for the best.
But would you believe that, very soon, it became a joke in the countryside (forgive the scandalous word) to cuckold poor Gargan? Before the marriage, no one thought of lying with the Wee Drop; and now, everyone wanted his turn just for fun. For a brandy she received all comers, behind her husband’s back. The exploit was even so much talked of in the district round that gentlemen came from Goderville to see it.
Primed with a pint, the Wee Drop treated them to the spectacle with anyone, in a ditch, behind a wall, while at the same time the motionless figure of Gargan was in full view a hundred paces away, knitting a stocking and followed by his bleating flock. People laughed fit to kill themselves in all the inns in the countryside; in the evening, round the fire, nothing else was talked about; people hailed each other on the roads, asking: “Have you given your drop to the Wee Drop?” Everyone knew what that meant.
The shepherd seemed to see nothing. But then one day young Poirot from Sasseville beckoned Gargan’s wife to come behind a haystack, letting her see a full bottle. She understood and ran to him, laughing; then, hardly were they well on the way with their evil work when the herdsman tumbled on them as if he had fallen from a cloud. Poirot fled, hopping on one leg, his trousers about his heels, while the mute, growling like a beast, seized his wife’s throat.
People working on the common came running up. It was too late; her tongue was black and her eyes starting out of her head; blood was running out of her nose. She was dead.
The shepherd was tried by the court at Rouen. As he was dumb, Picot served him as interpreter. The details of the affair were very amusing to the audience. But the farmer had only one idea, which was to get his herdsman acquitted, and he went about it very craftily.
He told them first the whole history of the deaf-mute and of his marriage; then, when he came to the crime, he himself cross-examined the murderer. The whole court was silent.
Picot said slowly:
“Did you know that she was deceiving you?”
And at the same time, he conveyed his question with his eyes.
The other made a sign, “no,” with his head.
“She was lying in the haystack when you found her?”
And he gesticulated like a man who sees a revolting sight.
The other made a sign, “yes,” with his head.
Then the farmer, imitating the gestures of the mayor performing the civil ceremony and of the priest uniting them in the name of God, asked his servant if he had killed his wife because she was joined to him before man and God.
The shepherd made a sign, “yes,” with his head.
Picot said to him:
“Now, show us how it happened.”
Then the deaf-mute himself acted the whole scene. He showed how he was sleeping in the haystack, how he had been awakened by feeling the movement of the straw, how he had looked round carefully, and had seen the thing.
He was standing stiffly between two policemen, and all at once he imitated the obscene actions of the criminal pair clasped together in front of him.
A great shout of laughter went up in the court, then stopped dead; for the shepherd, his eyes wild, working his jaws and his great beard as if he had been gnawing something, his arms stretched out, his head thrust forward, repeated the ghastly gesture of a murderer who is strangling a person.
And he howled horribly, so maddened with rage that he imagined himself still grasping her, and the policemen were forced to seize him and push him forcibly into a seat to quiet him.
A profound and agonised shudder ran through the court. Then Farmer Picot, placing his hand on his servant’s shoulder, said simply:
“He has his honour, this man before you.”
And the shepherd was acquitted.
As for me, my dearest, I was listening with deep emotion to the end of this strange affair that I have told you crudely enough, so as not to alter the farmer’s way of telling it, when a gunshot rang out in the middle of the wood; and Gaspard’s great voice roared through the wind, like the thunder of a cannon:
“Woodcock! Here they come!”
And that is how I spend my time, watching for the arrival of the woodcock while you too go out to watch the first winter dresses arrive in the Bois.