The Serpent of Stars Read Online Free PDF

Everyone’s mouth bled, and I myself no longer mattered. Yet he was the one who had guided my fingers over the flute, who had put me, weak as I was, before the gaze of the sheep. But now he gave me no more notice than the hundred other shepherd’s helpers who buzzed around the packed bags. The proprietor approached in a fine flowered waistcoat just at the moment when the animals began to pour out of the first door, which had been raised like a floodgate. There was snorting, galloping, climbing over hedges, and at the far end of the great fields, dogs from distant farms barked. Our boss went straight over to the proprietor. He was glowing black with anger, as fearful to the touch as hot tar. He said some words. I saw them. I didn’t hear them in all that noise; I saw them in the white of his
teeth, and the curl of his mustache, and in the disdainful spit that Bouscarle aimed right into the dust. I saw those words, and I also saw the proprietor go off, humbled, his tail between his legs, and the boss whose look was like a knife in his back, that’s all I can say. Each to his own place.
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    ORDER returned, the foreman bellowing the long cries of the language of sheep the whole length of the sky, and that started the flow, thick and fast. And the road, taken by surprise, had already begun to groan and creak from every one of its stones, and great bands of magpie and hoopoe clattered around us like holiday streamers. A holiday, yes, the long-awaited holiday!
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    THEN, before taking his first step ahead of the animals, before taking command of that white road, the boss Bouscarle approached the saddle packs where I was tightening up the straps. He rested a heavy hand on my shoulder and I felt the sweat from it through my shirt. I turned my head and looked up at him; this was no longer the same man.
    He glowed with the great rays of his sweat.
    â€œMy boy,” he said, “don’t think you know everything. You know the sheep, but to know is to be separate from. Now try to love; to love is to join. Then, you will be a shepherd.”
    Ah! How well I knew I was only a little apprentice. But among them, I was one of the best, and he had guided my fingers along the length of the flute. I knew well enough that I couldn’t be quickly forgotten, even by the brain that drew forward twenty thousand sheep.
    And yet, he did forget me; at least everything led me to believe that.
    We moved out for long days across the breadth of a plain as red as raw
flesh. I led a pack mule. That is, I just walked along beside him and tapped him on the nose when he sniffed out the shade of some cypress or stretched his mouth toward the nettle. The dust burned my eyes; blood red, it got into my mouth; it stuck to my tongue; deep in my throat, it was mud. I could never count on being able to see the one leading the other mule up ahead, a thousand sheep away, unless I took advantage of a sudden drop in the wind. It was no easier to see the one behind. And soon, the wind itself no longer reached us because the airborne earth that followed us was too thick. Lost, rolled along in the herd like a bit of gravel, I held myself together around this shepherd’s love. I knew he was there, kilometers ahead, leading the way, marking the route. And from time to time, I felt along my thigh the fine roundness of the flute which clacked against the horn handle of my knife. I had a goatskin flask with a little more than a liter of fresh water in it; once in a while, I drank a little. The days stretched out; they extended over the earth. They had to be crossed from one end to the other by putting one foot ahead of the next. From time to time, the great phantom of a cypress appeared in the dust before me. It passed alongside, oblivious, following its own route, and I walked along mine. Sometimes, through the dust we saw a farm, pale and wide. Behind us, the whole country moaned with the moaning of the stragglers. At night, we stopped in little