They hurried toward the Agha station under a sky that was already growing light, the fresh smell of the ficus trees floating in the air, with the dog racing at full speed ahead of them on a zigzagging course that sometimes ended with him sliding on sidewalks still wet from the night’s humidity, then coming back just as fast, visibly terrified that he had lost them, Étienne carrying the shotgun muzzle-down in its heavy canvas case, as well as a sack and a game bag, Jacques with his hands in the pockets of his shorts and a big knapsack on his back.
Their friends were at the station with their dogs, who did not leave their masters except to make quick inspections under their fellows’ tails. There were Daniel and Pierre,h brothers who worked in the shop with Ernest, Daniel always laughing and full of optimism, Pierre more contained, more methodical, full of opinions and words of wisdom about people and things. Also there was Georges, who was employed at the gasworks but who would earn some extra pay by boxing an occasional match.
And often two or three others besides, all good fellows, at least for this occasion, happy to have escaped for a day from the workshop, from small overcrowded apartments, sometimes from their wives also, uninhibited and in a mood of amused tolerance that is peculiar to men when they have gotten together among themselves for some brief violent pleasure.
They climbed cheerfully into one of those cars where every compartment opens to the platform, they handed each other the knapsacks, they made the dogs get in, and they settled down, happy now to feel themselves sitting side to side sharing the same warmth. On these Sundays Jacques learned that the company of men was good and could nourish the soul. The train started out, then picked up speed with short puffs and an occasional brief sleepy whistle. They were crossing one end of the Sahel, and on reaching the first fields these loud sturdy men fell oddly silent and watched the day dawn over carefully cultivated fields where morning mists trailed like scarves on the hedges of big dry reeds that separated the fields. Now and then clumps of trees would slip past the window with the whitewashed farmhouse they protected, where everyone was sleeping.
A bird that was flushed out of the ditch alongside the embankment came suddenly up to their level, then flew in the same direction as the train, as if trying to race it, until it abruptly set off at a right angle to the course of the train, and now it seemed as if it had been pulled away from the window and hurled to the rear of the train by the wind of their passage. The green horizon turned pink, then all at once red, and the sun appeared and rose visibly in the sky.
It sucked the mists off all the expanse of fields, kept on rising, and suddenly it was hot in the compartment; the men took off one sweater after another, made the fidgety dogs lie down, traded some jokes, and already Ernest was telling stories in his manner about food, about sickness, and also [about] fights in which he always had the upper hand. Sometimes one of the comrades would ask Jacques about his school; then they talked of other things or called him to witness one of Ernest’s charades. “He’s tops, your uncle!”
The countryside was changing, becoming more rocky, the orange trees gave way to oaks, and the little train chugged harder and harder and gave off great blasts of steam. Suddenly it was colder, for the mountain had come between the sun and the travelers, and then they realized it was still only seven o’clock. At last the train gave a final whistle, reduced its speed, slowly rounded a tight curve, and arrived at a small station that was alone in the valley, deserted and silent, for it only served some distant mines; it was planted with big eucalyptuses whose sickle-shaped leaves shivered in the morning breeze.
They left the train with the usual hubbub, the dogs tumbling out of the compartment, missing the two steep steps down, the men again lining up to pass each other the sacks and guns. But at the exit of the station, where the first slopes began immediately, the silence of wild nature bit by bit drowned out their exclamations and shouts; the little troop finished climbing the hill in silence, while the dogs circled in endless figure eights.
Jacques would not let his vigorous companions leave him behind. Daniel, his favorite, had taken his knapsack, over his objections, but he still had to take two steps for one of theirs to keep up, and the sharp morning air was scorching his lungs. After an hour they at last came to the edge of a vast and gently undulating plateau wooded with dwarf oaks and junipers, over which a fresh and softly sunlit sky stretched its immense space. This was their hunting terrain. The dogs came back, as if they already knew, and gathered around the men.
They agreed to meet for lunch at two o’clock in the afternoon at a pine thicket, where a small spring was conveniently located at the edge of the plateau and where they could see over the valley and far out on the plain. They synchronized their watches. The hunters grouped themselves in pairs, whistled to their dogs, and set out in different directions. Ernest and Daniel were paired. Jacques was given the game bag, and he put it carefully over his shoulder. Ernest, from a distance, announced to the others that he would bring back more rabbits and partridges than anyone else. They laughed, waved, and disappeared.
Now for Jacques began a time of ecstasy that he would always cherish nostalgically with wonder in his heart: the two men two meters apart but staying abreast, the dog in front, himself always kept at the rear, his uncle, whose eye was suddenly wild and cunning, always checking to make sure he kept his distance, and the interminable walking in silence, through bushes from which a bird they passed up would sometimes fly with a piercing cry, going down small ravines full of scents where they would follow the bottom ground, going back up toward the sky, radiant and warmer and warmer, the rising heat rapidly drying soil that was still damp when they set out.
Gunshots across the ravine, the sharp clacking of a covey of dust-colored partridges flushed out by the dog, the double report repeated almost immediately, the dog’s dash ahead, his return with eyes madly flashing and holding in his blood-covered jaws a bundle of feathers that Ernest and Daniel took from him, and that Jacques received a moment later with mingled excitement and horror; the search for more victims, and when they saw them fall, Ernest’s yelping that you sometimes could not distinguish from Brillant’s; and again the progress forward, Jacques sagging now under the sun despite his little straw hat, while the plateau around them was beginning to vibrate heavily like an anvil under the hammer of the sun, and occasionally a gunshot or two, but never more, for only one of the hunters had seen the hare or rabbit scurry off, it was doomed if it was in Ernest’s line of fire, he was always as agile as a monkey and now he was running almost as fast as his dog, baying like him, to pick up the dead creature by its hind legs and display it from far away to Daniel and Jacques, who arrived jubilant and out of breath.
Jacques opened wide the game bag to receive the new trophy before setting off again, staggering under the sun his master, and so, for hours without end on a land without boundaries, his head lost in the unremitting light and the immense space of the sky, Jacques felt himself to be the richest of children. As the hunters returned toward the place where they were to meet for lunch, they kept an eye out for any opportunity, but their hearts were no longer in it.
They were dragging their feet, they were mopping their brows, they were hungry. They arrived two by two, showing their prizes to each other from a distance, deriding the empty game bags, declaring that the same ones were always empty, all recounting their catches at the same time, each having some special detail to add. But the great braggart was Ernest, who finally got the floor and mimed, with an accuracy that Jacques and Daniel were well placed to judge, the way the partridges took off, and the scurrying rabbit zigzagged twice then rolled on his back like a rugby player making a try from behind the goal. Meanwhile the methodical Pierre poured anisette in the metal goblets he had collected from each person and went to fill them with fresh water at the spring trickling by the edge of the pines. They improvised a makeshift table with dishtowels, and each one brought out his provisions.
But Ernest, who was talented as a cook (summertime fishing expeditions always began with a bouillabaisse that he would put together on the spot and
