The Serpent of Stars Read Online Free

looked at the bird and said, ‘That’s it.’ He went to find a rope and he hung himself. He walked through the whole village with his rope. Nobody stopped him.
    â€œThere are trees and there are animals. I was a small-time boss, a small-time shepherd. Two hundred sheep. My proprietor lived in Raphèle. Two hundred sheep, it’s not many, not enough to understand.
    â€œThere are great bosses, there are big-time shepherds. In charge of ten thousand beasts, a hundred thousand beasts, masters who open the door, say only one word into the darkness of each sheepfold. The great wooden gates are opened wide, the hired hands are there lined up on either side. And the boss says the word, just one, no more, then he turns
his back, tightens his hand around his staff and he sets off, and the sheep come out, and the sheep walk behind him. It’s like a sash that he’s attached to his sides and that he unravels over the country. He walks along ahead, he sets off, he draws the sheep. They fall into step, they start walking. He is already over there in the far distance, having crossed through two or three villages, two or three woods, two or three hills. He is like the needle and the whole thread of sheep passes where he has passed. It passes through the villages, the woods, the hills behind him. Here, the sheep are still leaving the stable. Ten thousand, a hundred thousand, that’s quite a stretch. As they go along, the assistants who are there with the hired hands say, ‘Good-bye, it’s my turn,’ and one after the other, they set off. The last sheep goes out, the stable is closed. It goes out of the yard, the big gates are closed. No one watches. It’s a mystery. Above the wall, the dust rises. You hear that sound of a big stream, a big herd, that sound of the world, that sound of sky, that sound of stars. It’s a mystery. The proprietor takes off his hat. He feels small with all his paper deeds housed at the lawyer’s office. That isn’t what makes a master. He thinks of the needle that draws the long thread of sheep. He says, ‘Come, let’s have a drink,’ and everyone goes into the kitchen.
    â€œThose others are the great masters of the beasts; they are the ones that know.”
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    THAT WAS how the night proceeded, and now I felt it all damp, stuck against the round of earth like a sheet coming out of the wash. The moon had taken on its full speed; a little spray of cloud escaped from under its sinking weight. I remembered my tremendous youth, that time when, by whatever divination, I had been delivered over to the
great powers, in confidence, with the words, “Here’s the child, take him.” Now I understood that great blue gaze of my father’s when, returning from those summer months when I had followed after Massot the shepherd, pale from the green of the grass and emitting the scent of fennel, I entered the workshop where he had remained crouched over. So it wasn’t the health of the flesh that he felt in me when, seizing me by the shoulders, he planted me in front of him to look, before embracing me. It was the health of the spirit. “And now, you know, son?”
    That was how the night proceeded. We were on the rooftops of the world.
    Césaire breathed in the four corners of the sky.
    â€œThere’s the wind,” he said, “there’s our wind, shepherd. We’re going to be able to play.”
    In the quick of the moon, in that circle of short grass embraced by the woods, a beautiful pine lyre held up its two trunks.
    As you approached, the tree began to sing in a voice that was human and vegetable at the same time. I saw that someone had harnessed the two horns of the tree by means of a hollow yoke. They had extended nine cords from the yoke to the foot of the tree. Thus, it had become a living lyre, full all at once with the ample life of the wind, the mute life of the trunks swollen with resin, and the