Every morning since he left, the cold has awakened him just before dawn. He is shivering. No sudden movements, so that the dew, dark pearls on the canvas, doesn’t stream down. Patiently, by folding his tent into a furrow, he manages to fill his flask with a few ounces of this icy dawn sweat to drink, which will be his only morning meal.
He sets off, once his reluctant feet are wrapped in the wretched green spongy knit, still wet, in the direction of destiny, north, for chaos and oblivion must be named. Once again he hesitates to leave the rifle behind, it’s heavy, and its strap is uncomfortable, too short ever since he cut it to make a belt from it, with the knife that’s still so sharp, yet another sign of a dangerous solitude, drunk with blood, he doesn’t think anymore, he’s already walking when the first rays of sun root out the shadows from the rocks. These needles of light animate the sparrows and warblers and titmice, and the movements of their wings follow the train of the song of morning.
If he’s thinking so much about birds, if he’s so caught up in their presence and song, it’s because they rouse hunger in him—it would be so easy to hide out, nose to the wind, with the rifle, to wait for one of those little feathered creatures to betray itself, to shoot and eat it, but the power of the weapon of war would leave nothing but feathers, the sound of gunfire would echo far into the hills, and even if a fat pheasant or partridge stumbled into his line of sight, it would have to be cooked, and he has no intention of interrupting his march for long or revealing himself with fire or smoke.
He has resolved to reach the house.
You could find it even on a moonless night,
the cabin,
feel it advancing in the daylight between the holm oaks, scattered by the dryness; a few lentiscs are sheltering among the rocks, freeing as the walker passes their medicinal smell, from some far-off pharmacy; he looks out for the fresh wild basil that spring causes to proliferate in the mountains and chews for a long time on a sprig, bitter, acidic, peppery—arbutus berries still survive in winter like forgotten Christmas decorations, coarse and red, they taste like overripe strawberries, bland as oblivion.
These fruits are tiny stars, planets in arm’s reach,
little moons reddened by desire and cunning,
the sun, at each step, illumines the petals of the dogwood flowers, their bright yellow is dimmed by no leaf, on their still-bare branches the first fissure in winter opens up by magic.
He walks like the last man, in the restless rustling of the mountain.
He envies the black spots of airplanes or distant birds of prey.
*
Overcome by remembering, ass on a rock—one of those stones veering to blue-gray, which warm up quickly in the sun and smell of metal and gunflint, smooth as they are hard: was there an initial shudder, a harsh wind, premise of the logic of brutality, a bellow preceding the sovereign rutting of war, he thinks not,
it’s the surprise that sat you down there,
soon the black snakes will emerge from their holes and the males will set out in search of females,
he unlaces his boots, undoes the knots and takes them off. The leather is gnawed away by wear, water, and cold. The smell of shit hasn’t left him. His hands are rough; his white palm is starred with darker callouses, stiff from squeezing wooden handles for too long. His tobacco-stained fingers end in yellowing nails streaked with black filth, you can see the outline of veins, in his thumb and along his wrist; his cheeks are coarse with a patchy beard, his hair is greasy, in clumps, stuck together in darker strands with dried blood,
you’ll reach the house before nightfall,
the house, the cabin, the shack—it rests deep in his memories and hopes. Childhood country cairn. At the edge of the enemy lines. High enough in the mountain so that no one will venture there. Concealed enough from the mountain people so that he can seclude himself there. For a while. The roof might be partly collapsed, the cypress pillars, round, still gleaming, will stand alone, without tiles, between the uneven stones. The very low door. The front porch, its wooden struts reminiscent of the arms of the Father, its two stone posts, unevenly squared, the columns of the temple of a brutal God. The facade of unplastered quarried stone. The roof made of old yellow clay tiles,
you can sculpt faces with the knife in the pillars like you used to, you’re so hungry it’s frightening,
you’re hungry down to the roots of your hair,
imagining the little grill in the cabin’s porch and a fowl crackling on the embers makes him writhe in raging pain,
you are thirsty,
he drains his metal flask. The lovely March sun is tinted orange.
A wind is blowing from the sea,
you walk forward,
you must move forward even if you stumble a little, clumsy with dizziness. He lets thoughts fly away as soon as they’re born. He chases them away with his feet, makes them flee by walking. He transmits his thoughts to his boots, scattering them in the pebbles. Then silence inside, until the return of the great fixed star of hunger.
The treachery of illusion, the perfume of spring returning.
The sea, its violet plains fringed with white.
So high up in the mountain the sea is nothing but a threatening line, a horizon of pain.
His feverishness distorts distance: the more he walks, the further away the house recedes.
You’re making too much noise,
you shouldn’t trust the scree looming over the cabin,
lie down in the sunset and observe strange movements—abandoned dogs made feral by war, deserters, villagers, distant cousins, all of them, far from their relics, on the path to the hermitage, to escape suffering, to be done with the long Lent of blood,
Spring suddenly takes his breath away. A spring of the beating of wings, of flowers on rocks, of thorn bushes, of white and blue rosemary, of the buzzing of the beetles’ elytra—the track he was following sloped down a few dozen meters to the sea; he takes off his clothes stiff with filth, stained with grease and dried blood, finds himself bare-chested licked by the sea breeze and blinded by the power of the sun whose burning heat he feels on his shoulders, on the long scar streaking across his back, before the bag’s cloth covers it. Tired of the too-short gun strap, he takes his weapon in his arms like a hunter, his left hand on the stock, his right on the grip the way you grasp a fowl’s neck, firmly, casually; the breech is open, he sees the brass of a cartridge case in the cartridge, once again he wants to get rid of the object of misfortune,
it’s heavier than a child in your arms,
you should abandon it, hide it there in a bush, a few hours’ walk from the cabin,
he plays with the well-oiled breech, impossible to get rid of it,
Fate in front of you and all these things, the remains, the traces, and the great mourning of the future, you’ll be what the Lord wants,
force or forgiveness, nothing, like this yellow spider under your boot, crushed despite its power for death, crushed despite its sting, all that we don’t know about ourselves, we bend beneath the world of yesterday, we bend beneath our sins, we bend beneath the prospect of the next day, our Father give us this day our daily oblivion, in the too-numerous steps that wear down our soul, yard after yard, path after path, track after track, this sudden emotion comes from nearby—one day walking—from the village below, halfway up the slope, where the orange trees are little by little invading the plains, where the olive trees make themselves scarce on the terraces with their stone walls, where a few towers appear among the houses with gentle arches, with their broken domes between the green medlar trees, lit up with orange fruit in June, among the noble fig trees bent with age whose figs hum with insects in autumn, just as the trellis shaded the terrace in front of the father’s house, a wine was pressed there that quickly stung the tongue, purple, troubling and intoxicating—the green demijohns, woven round with straw, piled up in the darkest, coolest recesses, until they were cleaned in September to receive the new vintage, and the red and black clouds of tannin clinging there inside their glass shoulders were scrubbed away with a metal bottle brush,
you’ll have to hide, they must be looking for you,
you mustn’t come across anyone, conceal yourself from men and beasts, from shepherds and dogs, swallow your own name,
the closer your footsteps bring you to the cabin, to the mountain house, the greater the danger grows, in the village everyone knows, no doubt, rumors swell like the war itself, everyone knows, or thinks they know,
the afternoon swells like thirst and reddens like hunger.
He pauses in the shade of a holm oak. He sits down on a root. The sun drenches the valley in front of him. He dreams of rain. He shakes his flask over his tongue one more time. He unties his shoes, hesitates to take them off, he’s so tired he won’t put them back on if he removes them. The smell seems to have disappeared for an instant but returns, even stronger, unexpectedly,
you stink of blood and shit,
you stink of sleep and hunger,
a child could kill you with one punch,
he counts the days since he left the city. Since his flight from the barracks. Four days since he launched the vehicle into the ravine,
you’ve traveled almost a hundred kilometers on foot in the mountain,
the holm oak’s root is hard under your buttocks, your bent knees hurt,
he leans against the black trunk, stretches out his legs, gazes into the valley (almond trees, hazelnut trees, prickly pear trees) he knows so well. He worked these terraces, weeded around the trees, removed countless stones. The sun that he knows. The fringe of sea beyond the hills that he knows. The fear that he carries with him. That black smoke on the horizon marks the beginning of the enemy territory. There, only just. The remains of the enemy territory as it’s reduced from shell to shell.
At the next turn in the path, when he passes the old retention basin for the stream, dried up now, he’ll be two hours’ walk from the house. He’ll reach it almost an hour before sunset,
you know where you’ll take cover,
behind the big rock and make sure without being seen that no one’s hanging around the cabin. Behind the rock and observe. Observe the last insects in the twilight. Listen to the birds and stones in the twilight.
He takes out the knife. The blade is as gray as it is blue. He dreams of a hare, leaping out of a hollow, suddenly within reach of the dagger. He draws a cross on the tree root. A short thin cross. A sign. He would have been capable of drinking the warm blood of that hare if it had appeared, he’s so thirsty,
you’re feverish like those areas in your memory,
for hours he’s been searching for an orange tree or even a lemon tree on whose branches there might still be a few forgotten fruits. Opposite the cabin is an immense lemon tree planted by his grandfather that bears (or rather bore, it’s been a long time since he saw it last) dozens of juicy yellow fruits, with thick skins, which leave on your hands a scent of linen and flowers, a perfume of purity, purity pleases the Lord,
there’s also an orange tree, they used to weave crowns from its flowers for weddings,
you’re the least pure of creatures,
he finds the strength to start off again, with his painful knees, his thighs hard as rocks, his scratched feet; the further away the war gets the more his body falls to pieces, an old mechanism that only habit kept functioning. He’s almost incapable of climbing the few kilometers still separating him from the cabin, from the house, from the purple mists and hollows of clouds. It’s his rifle that carries him and guides him, the immense needle of a magic compass, the wand of a douser of death,
you can hardly walk, you’re staggering, you’re making too much noise,
he chases away the tiny flies that pursue him and always catch up with him. The sun burns his skin that emerged fragile from the cold of war, he’s a lizard revived by warmth; everything in him is stretched between fear and exhaustion.
His footsteps suddenly (rolling stones, quivering branches, the sound of wings) startle a pigeon a few meters away. He snaps the breech closed to arm the rifle and shoulders it—he doesn’t fire,
you’re too close to the villages, mustn’t attract the attention of a shepherd who might be passing by,
he watches the bird disappear behind a copse of holm oaks to find its companion,
these fowl always travel in pairs,
they’re the inseparable couple of the mountain, the inevitable ones of spring, along with the nightingales. He engages the gun’s safety. On top of the pass between those two hills dotted with rocks the cabin will come into sight. He observes the clouds amassing suddenly gray over the line of the sea. A cloud veils the sun. The wind transforms the drops of sweat on his shoulders and chest into as many frozen pins and needles. He had forgotten the dexterity of the cold—he forces himself to pause to put his jacket back on, with pain and dread, it has become stiff with all the fluids filling its fibers,
you stink of the slaughterhouse, that’s the stench you reek of, the stench of guts and the stream of water over blackened tiles,
a stench of meat,
he runs his left hand over his face, feels the roughness of his beard, like a kind of bark. The sun’s disappearance signifies the return of altitude as much as of shadow: he is shivering. Behind him, a little further down, a cottony mist is spreading between folds in the hills, a white fog on red earth, the sea has disappeared. Steel eats away at the horizon. He launches all his strength onto the rocks to cross them, onto the slopes to climb them. The pass is bellowing, the pass is freezing his face. The wind flattens his face and shoulders. He clings to his rifle and leans forward. Stumble by stumble he reaches the shelter of a rock, a few dozen meters lower down. He leans against it,
the house is down below on your right,
he observes, there is the roof of tiles more yellow than red, a single-sloping roof, leaning against the mountain in the back, he glimpses the porch, the short chimney, the partition wall made of quarried stone, the low walls around the abandoned garden, not an animal in sight, in the distance a raptor is spiraling, a tiny solitary spot in the now milky sky, the paddock on the right of the garden is empty, the tall almond tree in front of the house has no leaves yet, the lemon tree is green with that solemn green of citrus trees, eternal, a sepulchral green with yellow glints in the shifting light of the absent sun, no smoke is rising from the chimney, an odor of thyme and snow floats in the air,
if you had binoculars, you’d search for traces,
signs of someone’s presence, shepherds, farmers, refugees, creatures, angels, demons,
there’s just the brief hesitant plain that breaks as it nears the sea, only the wind crossing the walls can be heard, his back to the rock hands around his knees the rifle on his right bag at his feet like a motionless dog he waits, he waits for the time he planned for, the two hours left before the darkest part of the night, reassured by the presence of the cabin, by the lemons in the lemon tree, by the old orange tree invisible to him next to the hazelnut tree beyond the cabin to the right of the wall,
all urgency abolished by the sudden presence of childhood,
wingbeat by wingbeat,
wandering backwards,
you wait for the apparition, Lord thy invisible face, you wait for Sirius, you wait for Orion, you wait for thy face, Lord,
your ass is frozen by the scraps of winter the mountain always harbors,
the mountain preserves winter, the orange and lemon trees preserve winter—December fruits are still hanging from the branches when the flowers open in April, he forces his eyes into the settling twilight, he forces his gaze, he sees nothing, not one movement, not one shadow aside from that of the almond tree that’s growing, and of the shack that’s growing, a blackbird is singing in the evening, a blackbird Lord one of thy creatures is singing of thy glory, all creatures sing thy glory, hope brews in his chest, it’s the presence of the shack and the voice of the blackbird,
hope Lord is born from thee,
you will find a little childhood and rest in the shack,
the shack where you used to go with your father, where your father used to go with his father, used to grow things, gather things, grow things,
the house is in front of your eyes and with no movement, no presence, it’s night now or almost, the bird’s voice has fallen silent, he’ll go down to the cabin, the shack, the house whatever name it’s given,
you limp, stumble, the bag and rifle are heavy,
the path uncoils like a snake on the mountainside, no more stars in the sky and the wind, the wind is always at war.
__________________________________
From The Deserters by Mathias Enard, translated by Charlotte Mandell. Used with permission of the publisher, New Directions. Copyright © 2025.
