Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Montgreef put on his jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, the blue one with the zipper that Latouche had given him in exchange for the pink one from Chioggia. The American had been warned about the spiky grass, the thistles and the mosquitoes in the marshes. He drove through the small village, past the fortified cathedral, where the gypsies came each May from all over the world to celebrate the birthday of Sarah, personal maid to the saints. A boat, containing the carved wooden figures of the Saintes Maries, would be carried into the sea for a blessing.

     The guardians and the fishermen from the small port helped the gypsies celebrate. One of them, Georges Bellier, said to be as good at throwing a steer as at throwing out his nets, was to take Montgreef out to the bank of the Petit Rhône. But it was difficult to find him.

     One man said: ‘Bellier? He lives in the little pink house on the square.’ Another said: ‘At the cathedral.’ And a woman: ‘Straight ahead at the beach.’ Finally, Montgreef found Bellier in front of the Arena.

     ‘I was told you would drive with me to the Little Rhône,’ said Montgreef.

     ‘They said they would start early,’ said Bellier. ‘We were to be at the river at nine. For me, three is early. I went out fishing as usual at three and returned at seven. I left the boat to wait for us and bicycled back.’

     He got into the car and they drove on the road along the sea. Later, they turned on to a rough and bumpy path which looked smooth, because the fine white sand from the beach had blown over it. Right and left the marshes were spreading, bitter herbs, salt grass and tamarisk.

     They left the car in the brush. There was no shadow to be seen anywhere. They walked to the river bank. Montgreef took off his sandals, hitched up his jeans, and waded to Bellier’s boat. Twice he slipped on the clay bottom of the Little Rhône and nearly fell.

     Bellier pushed the boat and climbed in. He crouched low, he talked to the small inside engine, fondled it and nursed it, until it spat and choked and died, then started again and sputtered in fits, and after that, ran noiselessly. They crossed the Petit Rhône and kept on the other side until they reached the point where the river abruptly met the sea. There the men were waiting, the guardians and their horses. And, a little apart, one arm on the neck of his small mount, stood the beautiful boy.

     He was straight and thin and not very tall, clad in a torn yellow shirt and narrow trousers that reached just below the knees. His feet were bare. The wind blew the light hair about his face which glowed like a sun-ripened fruit. His eyes were wide apart in the shadow of long lashes.

     An illusion, thought Montgreef, like a painting by Picasso, from his most favoured period: boy and horse? Both were lit up by a sun that killed all colour, except that of the sand. Even the sky was bleached by the sun.

     Several of the men were taken on board. One of them, a cross-eyed youth, cradled in his arms a bulky object with which to shoot later on. Last came the boy. He climbed swiftly over sails and oars to the mast and embraced it. He remained there standing.

     They went back up river. Bellier cut the engine, jumped into the shallow water and pulled the boat until it stuck fast. The men got out and stood around waiting. The sun was hitting them, and the words they spoke came out sticky with the heat.

     When the other men and their horses arrived at the bend of the narrow path, Montgreef was told to sit behind the bushes and not move. He chose a low tamarisk and sat down. When after a while nothing seemed to happen, he got up and walked to the river. He waded in the water, careful not to slip. When he came out, there was still nothing happening. He was reminded of location shots around Hollywood, the bitter herbs, the heat, the same tension, the same waiting around. Only here the river was different, well-fed and lively.

     The guardians brought their horses at a canter and dismounted. Montgreef watched them. The men looked like the cowboys in his home state, dressed in checkered shirts, narrow riding breeches, and battered felt hats, that had neither ribbons nor cords. The horses stood rather short-legged. Narrow in the hips like Arabs, their heads small and chiselled. They were strong and compact, and light like the dried-up mud in the Camargue. The chief guardian was arguing with Monsieur Maurice, and the cross-eyed youth explained something with passionate urgency. And the guardians, standing quietly with their horses, found the demands of these gentlemen from Paris obviously absurd.

     The young Marquis ambled over for a talk. He looked tired. Like most of the landowners hereabouts, he was his own manadier, and had ridden out in the early morning to choose the mounts for the day from the free grazing herds.

     He was no longer really young, but his uncle, the old Marquis Fosco de Salterelli, had been famous for so many years, the nephew would go on being known as the young Marquis until his sons were grown. He wanted to find out more about Montgreef but the American was reluctant to reveal much. He found it increasingly difficult to explain why he remained in France instead of returning to America. He just mentioned the names of the people who had told him to look in at the Mas de la Rochelle. And how he had only found Maurice there, who had invited him to come out with Bellier.

     ‘Maurice is crazy,’ said the young Marquis. ‘He has seen too many documentaries by your Bob Flaherty. He shoots like a madman who has never heard about the business side of the movie industry. He invents the story from day to day, no continuity. He uses any idea that comes into his head. I let him have my house, my bulls, my horses. Why? Because I love the Camargue. And this love will ruin me.’

     Montgreef said how well he understood this love. ‘When I came here first,’ he said, ‘it was different. That was at the end of the war. There were no vineyards or rice fields. Only the lonely plains. And I remember the pink flamingoes. Thousands of them, standing sleepily around the silent lakes. I remember those. And the Camargue’s admirable tradition. Life in the wilderness.’

     ‘Progress,’ the Marquis sighed gloomily. ‘Our symben have great difficulties nowadays in finding places where the herds may graze in peace.’

     The symben, Montgreef knew, were the lead steers. And wine and rice were at battle with the half-wild horses and the small black fighting bulls. Here, as everywhere else, tradition and progress were at war. The movie might take it from there, but would not solve the problem.

     The men at the boat had come to an agreement, and the young Marquis hurried to join them. He changed into a tight, torn, buttonless silk shirt and pale yellow narrow trousers. He was to stand-in for the boy.

     The first horse refused, steadfastly, decidedly. At the steep bank of the Little Rhône he stopped. The young Marquis was riding bareback without spurs or shoes. He was getting furious. Montgreef, in back of his thorn-bush, could see the scowl on the Marquis’s face. He tried the horse a few times, taking him from far back in a sharp gallop, from nearby in a canter. Nothing doing.

     The guardians were angry too. Especially when the director posted two men facing each other, to whip the horse if he refused again. Of course it did not work.

     Nobody had ever asked a horse in this part of the world to jump into the river. The horses were accustomed to wading in. They knew a spot further down river where they were certain to find footing and where the bank sloped gently. Why should they jump here where it was so hard?

     ‘They never jump into the water. Over hedges, yes. Over fences. They do not understand why they should jump here,’ said the chief guardian.

     The beautiful boy was talking to one of the horses. Off and on he tied a loop around the horse’s soft nose, and took it off again immediately. He leaned his face tenderly against the horse’s neck. It was easy to see this boy was in love.

     Maurice waved his arms for Montgreef to come over. ‘From here you can see better,’ he said, stroking his beard.

     The young Marquis took the halter rope from the boy and led the horse off. The boy lowered his eyes and looked at his empty hands. He slowly walked over to one of the other horses and fondled that. But his head was turned away.

     ‘Filou is going to make it,’ said Maurice. He watched the Marquis ride huge circles far away on the marsh grass. ‘Filou is a good horse.’

     The chief guardian nodded. ‘The boy thinks Filou is the best horse in the world. All the time you find him talking to the horse, brushing his hide, currying him. Praising him. Philippe learned how to ride on Filou.’

     The boy had turned his back to the horse he had been talking to and looked towards the plain. Towards Fiou. The sun was shining straight into his face.

     ‘How did you find him?’ asked Montgreef.

     ‘Through an advertisement in the papers, in Marseilles.’

     ‘How did you word the ad? “Wanted: Boy, breath-takingly beautiful, courageous and gentle, innocent and full of charm”?’

     ‘No. Simply “boy who loves horses”. Over four hundred answered. We chose Philippe. We had to wait until his hair grew a bit. He comes from a very poor family. He is eager and co-operative.’

     The men on the boat had become restless. The cross-eyed youth was perching precariously, the camera cradled in his arms, on the cross-beam of the main mast. The young Marquis approached on Filou. The horse never hesitated for a moment and jumped with ease. The mirror of the river tore open, a fountain rose, and horse and rider, raining water drops, turned about. They came on land, gleaming with moisture.

     The boy ran to receive Filou. He brushed the water off the light hide. He praised the horse and talked to him with tender intensity.

     The young Marquis had changed back into his guardian trousers, grey, hugging the calf, broad black stripes running up to his hips.

     Maurice was involved in a passionate discussion with his assistants and the guardians. The men stood patiently while the sun beat on them. They were devoted to their work, unified by the red thread which ran from Maurice s mind to theirs, breaking occasionally and having to be retied. He wished to treat the Camargue with utter reverence, and this desire often interrupted the flow of the script. The landscape was to play a more important part in the film than that of the main characters, of the small black bulls, the light horses and the beautiful boy.

     The young Marquis, completely dry by now, threw himself on the ground, next to Montgreef. He found a piece of seaweed in his palm and played with it, pulling it like a rubber-band and letting it snap back again.

     ‘Are you going to stay for a while?’ he asked.

     Montgreef said that one of these days he would have to go to Ste Maxime.

     ‘Do you know Nathalie? She has remodelled an old tower in the wall.’ The young Marquis sensed that this was an opportunity to find out more about Montgreef. ‘She is a friend of Marie Louise’s,’ he added.

     Montgreef laughed. Everybody was a friend of Marie Louise, or at least a guest at one of her famous Thursdays. But he had not come here to be tied down by social obligations. He had returned to this enchanted landscape like a man who wishes to revisit the house of his childhood, or the street corner where his first love had been waiting.

     When, together with the men who had liberated this stretch of country, he had first known the Camargue, he promised himself he would return.

     The Camargue had recovered rapidly, the herds of horses and bulls had returned to the lonely plains, and the seagulls and sea-swallows, the herons and the cranes and the wild geese, the wild pigeons and ducks and swamp hens, the flamingoes and the small sea eagles filled the air as ever with their shrieking or whispering bird sounds, day and night.

     He had visited the arenas in the villages and had watched the bullfights, the tassel snatchings, and even games of football between mixed teams of boys and bulls. He had also seen a real Corrida in Nimes, with toreadors and picadores imported from Spain, and gigantic bulls, built like heathen gods.

     He saw the inhabitants here were unhappy about the draining of swamps, about the new rice plantations and the new vineyards. They loved with all their heart the traditional sports of their country, and they preferred the black bulls and the historic race of horses to raising their living standards. Even though the breeders were near ruin. Camargue horses have no trade value, neither have the small bulls. Anxiously, the Marquis talked about the battle between the breeders and the new farmers.

     ‘It is much the same at home in my country,’ said Montgreef. ‘Oil and progress versus solitude in Louisiana for instance, and there, just like here, the poor people, supposed to gain by the change, are strongly opposed to progress.’

     The young Marquis wanted very much to go to America. ‘But I cannot afford it,’ he said. ‘I have to carry on here. I owe that much to the Camargue. The family settled here centuries ago, when one of my ancestors stabbed a Pallavicino with his dagger and had to flee.’

     When Maurice appeared, he was wearing tiny bathing trunks. His skin looked sickly white in the shimmering heat. He leaned over the side of the boat and dipped the boy in the river. The water went over the boy’s head, but when he came up, he grinned. Dripping, he hopped around on deck, on his straight thin pony legs. At every moment, in every pose, quiet or in motion, he was incredibly beautiful and did not know it.

     One of the guardians said, ‘He can’t swim.’

     ‘At first he couldn’t ride a horse either,’ said the chief guardian.

     The men smiled. They were splicing a piece of rope to make a bridle for Filou.

     ‘My uncle considered it of great importance to keep traditions alive here,’ said the young Marquis. ‘He was a guardian of the Camargue, in the real sense of the word. When I got married, my bride had to sit behind me on a horse. That way we rode to church and back. She was wearing a Provençal gown, flowered silk, with a long train — and long earrings and a bonnet with broad satin ribbons. She still wears the native costume when we go to the bullfights in Arles. But what is the sense of keeping up traditions when one needs money? Do you believe a book about tradition might sell in America?’

     Montgreef could not answer that.

     Maurice looked for a sandy spot and sat down gingerly next to them.

     ‘The story is about this boy,’ he said. ‘You must know that to understand what we are doing here. This boy loves horses. He watches a herd. He also watches the guardians when they come out for a triade to choose mounts. In one of the herds there’s a vicious animal. Nobody can ride that horse. Finally the owner promises that if the boy manages to ride the vicious horse he may keep him.’

     Montgreef asked, ‘The film isn’t set in the present time, is it? I mean, because of the odd way the boy is dressed.’

     ‘Outside of time,’ Maurice said. ‘The epoch is emotion, poetry.’

     The words sounded flat and unassuming out there in view of the river, beneath the sun, far from the pale horizon.

     ‘The boy returns to the herd. He makes a halter for the vicious horse; spends his time with him, talks to him, is patient and kind. Finally the horse allows the boy to mount, and the boy rides it. Something like that, the story is.

     ‘No world-shaking idea, of course,’ the Marquis interrupted. ‘Maurice believes that this way it will be easier to sell the film than as a mere documentary. A simple, modest little story; nothing to it, in fact. Boy loves horse. Boy gets horse. You should have seen Philippe learning to ride. And Filou pretending to be untamed, wild.’

     Maurice continued, ‘The owner doesn’t keep his promise. He laughs. Who has ever heard of anybody giving a horse away?’

     The Marquis said, ‘Curious, this boy understanding horses so well. He comes from Marseilles.’

     ‘We make the boy steal the horse,’ Maurice said. ‘The owner hears about that; he is so moved that he tells his guardians that the boy may keep the horse. They like the boy. Just as our guardians like Philippe. They ride after him to bring him the good news. When the boy notices them he is afraid they want to capture him so he gallops off. He comes to the river and jumps in. The men after him. Finally the boy on his horse swims to the mouth of the river and out into the sea. Perhaps towards a happy island, where boys and horses are happy. That’s about it. And today we shoot those last scenes. Philippe on Filou. Do you like the story?’

     ‘Yes,’ said Montgreef. ‘That should be very moving. Especially if the film shows the beauty of the swamp: the horses, bulls and water fowl. And the beauty, the astonishing beauty of the boy.’

     ‘That is exactly what we are aiming at,’ said Maurice, and his whole body glowed under the sun. ‘I love this stretch of land,’ he said, ‘I love the animals.’ He did not say he loved the boy.

     During the scene the cross-eyed youth was hanging over the mast shooting from different angles. Everybody was shouting, one order contradicted the other. Only Bellier was silent. He put all his weight into the huge oars that stuck nearly vertically in the water.

     Filou, a rope looped around his nose, was swimming alongside the boat. ‘Cut the rope, hey, cut him off!’ one of the men called over from the river bank. ‘He will suffocate.’

     ‘No, not yet,’ another called back from the boat. Maurice was holding the boy in his arm and talked to him.

     ‘Try to stay astride Filou. Try to keep the end of the rope in your hands. Try to hold the horse off, make him swim straight to the other side. Don’t let go when Filou starts to feel ground under his hoofs and wants to canter. When I call you, turn your head: In case you slide off, one of us will jump in and get to you.’

     ‘I’m not afraid,’ said the boy. His eyes were wide open, he grinned, and his voice sounded delighted.

     ‘They should have taught him how to swim,’ the chief guardian said. He was standing with one of the horses. ‘They are crazy, those Parisians. They should have taught him. He learns easily, look how he learned to ride.’

     When the boat had reached the centre of the river, the boy was lowered on to the back of the horse and the rope was cut. The cross-eyed cameraman was trying to focus the camera and not to fall in. The horse, the boy on his back, swam in a circle, discovered the opposite river bank, and started off towards it.

     Bellier found it impossible to follow. The boat was too heavy. Maurice called out to the boy, and fear made his voice shrill. ‘Philippe, Philippe.’

     The boy was hanging over the neck of his horse. He did not sit properly. He was motionless, and from afar, he looked asleep.

     ‘Philippe, turn around. Hey. Show your face. Careful. Sit up. Straight, please. Look back.’

     The boy lifted his head to show his face. He was no longer grinning. Slowly, and as if it cost him tremendous effort, he turned his head forward again.

     The men in the boat were quarrelling.

     ‘Why weren’t we allowed to use the engine? If he slides off now, we could never reach him in time.’

     ‘Philippe, turn your head round. Hello. Philippe. Sit upright now. Look here, to the boat.’

     Philippe looked at them. His face had lost the colour of a peach and was white against the shimmering water. Filou’s head went under and came up again in a spray of silvery drops.

     ‘We can’t handle the waves from the propeller screw. That wouldn’t connect with the previous scene.’

     Up river the horse found ground under his hoofs and was clambering up the bank.

     ‘Look how he holds on. How well he sits. Marvellous,’ exclaimed the chief guardian. ‘He loves Filou, that’s why.’

     ‘Just one more look, Philippe. Very good, thank you.’

     The boy was much too far away and could not hear Maurice shouting. He rode the horse into the brush on the other side. A few minutes later, the boat made fast and one of the guardians got out to look after the horse. The boy came aboard. He was wrapped into a huge towel, but was still trembling when they reached the other side.

     ‘Did you like it?’ asked Maurice.

     ‘Yes. Very much,’ said Montgreef. He had difficulty talking. The sequence had moved him deeply. ‘I was supposed to look afraid, wasn’t I?’ said the boy. ‘Because, you see, I wasn’t really. Not with Filou. I only pretended.’ He still shivered under the sun.

     ‘How come you can’t swim, you a boy from Marseilles?’ the chief guardian asked sternly.

     The boy only grinned. He looked like a pale angel who knows a secret.

     ‘Sometimes I was out with the guardians and slept in their cabanas,’ the boy told Montgreef. ‘Do you know why they have a cross on the thatched roofs? I do. Filou knows my voice. I talk to him and he knows it’s me. He is the best. Everybody knows Filou is the best horse in the Camargue. Filou is my friend. I do not like bulls. When they are afraid they say “moo”. Not very loud, they say “moo”, like a stupid cow.

     Montgreef was hurt. In the crypt of the cathedral he had seen a sacrificial stone from old times. Much blood had flown for Mithra, the bull god. Never and nowhere had horses been thus honoured.

     ‘And the bullfights? Don’t you like to watch the fights?’ he asked.

     ‘I only like them when they pick out an animal from the herd. The men let me ride with them sometimes. They pick out the bulls for the night fights. I like that because they need horses, for the roping. And the other day, I rode Filou to the ferrade. But Filou dislikes the smell of singed hair when the guardians throw the heifers and the yearlings and burn the owner’s brand into the hides. Filou nearly threw me. But I stayed on.

     The boy shadowed his eyes with both hands and looked over the river where a guardian had tied Filou to a low tree so he would dry in the heat.

     The men had resumed their discussions. Maurice sounded exhausted. After a while they interrupted their talk, and Montgreef was fetched aboard again. The boy stayed on land with the guardians who were to ride some of the horses down river.

     This time Bellier used the engine. The Marquis was wearing a blue polka-dot shirt. Montgreef wondered whether it was from Bond Street or from Montgomery Ward.

     The Marquis said he was worried. ‘This is going to wear him out,’ he said.

     ‘Yes,’ Montgreef agreed. ‘He should lie down and rest. Maurice doesn’t seem to care at all. He only thinks about his movie, and nothing else.’

     ‘Oh, you’re talking about the boy. I meant Fiou.’

     At the mouth of the Little Rhône, they climbed out of the boat and waded on land. Maurice slipped on the clay and his writing pad fell into the water. He fished it out and laughingly shook the drops off.

     The cross-eyed youth said angrily: ‘That is all we have. Notes. A fine shooting script.’ He sighed. ‘And tomorrow we are supposed to show the rushes in Nimes. And nobody will know which scene belongs where. He works like an amateur.’

     ‘But that’s what I am.’ Maurice was amused. ‘In the true sense of the word, I am in love with my work.’

     They did not wait for the others. A shabby station wagon had brought a picnic basket and they lunched. They drank a rosé from the new vineyards.

     Montgreef was sitting quietly. He felt hot and exhausted, as though it were he who had crossed the river, riding a spirited horse. The staccato talk of the men cut through the silence. The sun seemed reluctant to leave the zenith.

     ‘Now for the last scene. The difficulty will be to induce Filou to swim out to the sea, instead of back to the beach,’ said Maurice. ‘At first we may have to pull him after us with a rope. That way we might take close-ups, shoot the boy’s face and the head of the animal.’

     ‘It will be tricky with the engine running,’ said Bellier.

     The boy had arrived on the other side and waved to them. The boat went over to fetch him.

     After Maurice had sketched the sequence for him, the boy said: ‘I’m not a bit tired or afraid. Now I know how to ride Filou in the water. I am going to keep his head up so he can’t see any land. He will have to rely on me.’

     ‘I believe he will make it,’ said the chief guardian who was just then arriving with Filou.

     Montgreef was invited into the boat. He still felt worn out. Drowsily, he squatted on a coil of rope, watching under half-closed lids how the boy was lowered on to the back of the horse. Filou seemed to understand what was demanded of him and he kept his distance from the screw.

     After the rope was cut, the boat changed direction while the horse swam straight ahead towards the open sea. This time the boy was sitting erect. The camera sounded like the accelerated song of a cricket.

     ‘Keep the boat back, Bellier,’ said Maurice. ‘I need more distance. The sequence is supposed to be indistinct, vague, the light, the horizon, and far out the boy on his light horse, gently washed over by the waves. Scarcely distinguishable from the whitecaps.’

     ‘I hope this will be all for today,’ said the young Marquis. ‘I’m exhausted. Maurice really is a slavedriver. After this, though, I suppose there’ll only be nature shots. The swamp lakes. The water fowl. The lonely marshes. Background.’

     ‘Cut. I have to load. Out of film,’ announced the cross-eyed youth.

     ‘Philippe,’ cried Maurice. ‘Turn around. Come back.’

     The boy seemed not to listen. He was sitting as if he wanted to prove once and for all that he sat well on a horse and rode well in the water.

     Bellier accelerated the engine and called: ‘Take the rudder, Mr Montgreef. We have to get to him. More to backboard or the waves will go over their heads.’

     Montgreef, suddenly wide awake, did what he was told. He heard the young Marquis desperately calling Filou and saw how the horse lifted his head, looked over the shoulder.

     At this moment the boy slipped off.

     Montgreef let go of the rudder. It swung around and he jumped. He felt like swimming in liquid silk, the same sensation he had when he took his bath from the beach at the Saintes Maries. The boat outdistanced him in seconds.

     He did not hear any shouting. He was just able to see the cross-eyed youth pointing the empty camera.

     The horse passed him, breathing evenly, without regrets. Overhead, in a washed-out sky, a triangle of wild ducks flew in the direction of the Vaccares swamp.

     And again Montgreef felt drowsy, as if he had never been awake enough to jump into the sea.

     When he came up from diving, the water on his face tasted warm and salty like tears.

     The boat circled the spot. The engines had been stopped. Bellier rowed, strained to see below the surface. Even out here the broad stripe of milk white was visible, drawn by the river clay into the water-colour of the sea. But the boy was not there.

     Finally, with a hoarse shout, Bellier signalled to Montgreef, to give him direction. He dived and came up with a light burden.

     Eyes closed, held fast by a strong arm, lying full length on the swimmer, the boy seemed quite content. His moist mouth smiled.

     I have saved him, thought Montgreef. I have fished a boy from the Mediterranean. He will again ride on Filou and later go back to Marseilles. He will forget. He will remember. He will believe the Camargue and all this happened while he was asleep, when he was young. And tomorrow, I will drive to Ste Maxime and live in a tower. The sea is a silk spread drawn up to our chins.

Later, walking on the thorny bank of the Petit Rhône in a cloud of mosquitoes, his clothes wet and sticky, Montgreef had the impression that loneliness had descended from the sky to settle forever on the endless plain. He passed a small herd of black bulls grazing soundlessly in the marsh grass. It took hours to find his car.