«Blood», extract no. 10

Le Regard Libre N° 34 - Sébastien Oreiller

Interlude

From the mountain, you could hear the marshes of the plain. Here and there, the poorly dyked river revealed little spots that glimmered in the night and reflected you. Like an autumn breeze, the croaking of the frogs flew down the slopes, right into the bedrooms, a whole little wet world stirring in the evening, like a great body turning over and over, motionless. Nothing could be more nonchalant than these chuckling batrachians, just a few centimetres apart, staring at each other wordlessly, gobbling up flies that are easy to swallow. And yet, from their asperities, from their frog-like resentment, rose like a sinister chorus in the night, a kind of irregular beat, coupled with the dull hum of insects. This marshy lament disturbed the already exhausted dreams of the mountain dwellers, a latent malevolence that haunted their existences; and it's no wonder that the rich of yesteryear, when the air was clear, would have paid the people of the plains to strike the waters with their sticks until they silenced the sombre recital, like beating a criminal, a kind of popular vindictiveness against hereditary misery and mean looks, lands that produced nothing. But this was the easy way out, just as one plugs one's ears with wax when one wants to sleep in peace without worrying about the street below, the reality of the world and the imprecations of beggars. Even in the countryside, sleep is never light, and it's not the frogs' fault, at least not entirely. For the moment, they sang freely, caring neither for men nor for the raucous echoes of their songs, selfish in their feasting. But autumn would soon give way to winter, the swamps would freeze, and the frogs with them, and we'd find them frozen, in an acrobatic movement to flee a little further, a little higher, but where? The ice would catch them. So, for the time being, they preferred not to think about the deadline, blind as men to the snow already covering the peaks and the little creases forming on the water, savoring the last crumbs of their summer, indifferent to its end. They didn't even think that come spring, the last of their number to make it through winter would release a plethora of little frogs and toads, tadpoles flitting here and there between the clusters of slimy eggs yet to hatch. Such was not their reflection. Like a great beating heart, the lament of the marshes rose to the mountains, to the sleepless beds.

Write to the author: sebastien.oreiller@netplus.ch

Photo credit: © valais.ch