Thursday 22 September 2011

...of fury

'Yes, the father and his two sons had their throats cut, the mother and daughter raped over and over, then killed... In short... The prefect was unfortunate enough to tell a meeting of farmers that they would have to reconsider issues, how they treated the Arabs, and that now a new day had come. The he had to listen to the old man tell him no one on earth was going to lay down the law about his property. But from that day on he didn't open his mouth. Sometimes at night he would get up and go out. My mother would watch him through the blinds and she'd see him walking around his land. When the order to evacuate came, he said nothing. His grape harvest was over, his wine was in the vats. He opened the vats, and he went to a spring of brackish water he'd diverted long ago, and he turned it back to run into his fields, and he equipped a tractor with a trench plough. For three days, at the wheel, bareheaded, saying not a word, he uprooted the vines all over his property. Think of it, that skinny old man bouncing around on his tractor, pushing the accelerator lever when the plough wasn't getting a vine that was bigger than the others, not stopping even to eat, my mother bringing him bread, cheese, which he ate calmly, the way he had done everything, throwing away the last chunk of bread and accelerating some more, all this from sunrise to sunset, without even looking at the mountains on the horizon, nor at the Arabs who'd soon found out and were watching him from a distance - they weren't saying anything either. And when a young captain, informed by who knows who, arrived and demanded an explanation, he said to him, "Young man, since what we made here is a crime, it has to be wiped out." When it was all finished, he headed towards the farmhouse, crossed the yard that was soaked with wine pouring out of the vats, and began to pack his bags. The Arab workers were waiting for him in the yard. (There was also a patrol the captain had sent, no one knew just why, with a nice lieutenant who was waiting for orders.)

[The First Man, Camus, A.]

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