Blue Boy (Paperback)

Text extracted from opening pages of book: BLUE BOY BY JEAN GIONO TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY KATHERINE A. CLARKE NEW YORK THE VIKING PRESS MCMXLVI BLUE BOY CHAPTER I Mof my age here remember the time when he road to Sainte-Tulle was bordered by a erried row of poplars. It is a Lombard cus om to plant poplars along the wayside. This road came, with its procession of trees, from the very heart of Piedmont. It straddled Mont Genevre, it flowed along the Alps, it caine all the way with its burden of long creaking carts and its knots of curly-haired countrymen who strode along with their songs and their hussar pantaloons flutter ing in the breeze. It came this far but no farther. It came with all its trees, its two-wheeled carts, and its Pied monteses, as far as the little hill called Toutes-Aures. Here, it looked back. From this point it saw in the hazy distance the misty peak of the Vaucluse, hot and muddy, steaming like cabbage soup. Here it was assailed by the odors of coarse vegetables, fertile land, and the plain. From here, on fine days, could be seen the still pallor of the whitewashed farmhouses and the slow kneeling of the fat peasants in the rows of vegetables. On windy days, the heavy odors of dung heaps surged in waves along with the broken, bloody 4 Blue Boy bodies of storms from the Rhone. At this point the poplars stopped. The carts rolled noisily into the jaws of the way side inns with their loads of corn flour and black wine. The carters said, Porca wwdona They sneezed like mules that have snuffed up pipe smoke, and they stayed on this side of the hill with the poplars and the carts. The chief inn was called Au Territoire de Piemont. In those days, our country was madeup of meadows and fair orchards that used to unfold in a magnificent spring time as soon as the warm weather came up the Durance Valley. They knew how to recognize the approach of the long days. By what means, no one knows. By some bird cry or by that burst of green flame that lights up the hills on April evenings. They would simply begin to flutter while the frost was still on the grass, and, one fine morning, just when the bluish heat weighed upon the rocky bed of the Durance, the gaily flowered orchards would begin to sing in the warm breeze. That we have all seen from the time we were mere urchins in our black school smocks. I remember my father's workroom. I can never pass by a shoemaker's shop without thinking that my father still exists, somewhere beyond this world, sitting at a spirit table with his blue apron, his shoemaker's knife, his wax-ends, his awls, making shoes of angel leather for some thousand legged god. I was able to recognize strange steps on the stairs. I could hear my mother saying below, It is on the third floor. Go up, you will see the light. Blue Boy 5 And the voice would reply, Grazia, signora And then the sound of the feet. They stumbled on that soapstone step near the top of the first flight. The loose boards in the landing rattled be neath the heavy boots. Their hands pressed against the two walls in the darkness. Here comes one of them, said my father. Putamr That is a Romagnol, said my father. And the man would enter. I remember that my father always gave them the chair near the window, then he would lift his spectacles. He would begin to speak in Italian to the man who sat erect, hands on thighs, all perfumed with wine and new corduroy. Sometimes ittook a long time. At others, the smile came almost at once. My father spoke without gestures, or with very slow ones, because he held a shoe in one hand and the awl in the other. He would talk until he saw the smile. It was useless for the other to haul out papers, to tap on his papers with the back of his hand. Porca di Dior Until the smile appeared my father talked on, and some times the other would say in a hushed tone, Che bellezza! Then the man would smile. Moreover, they did not come to my father at once. I do not know by what miracle they came. It must have bee