THE RICE
It is our very teeth that we sink in the earth, in this plow that we plant there; and even now our bread eats there as we shall eat. At home, in the cold north, it is the sun who kneads our bread; he ripens the field as the open fire cooks our pancakes and roasts our meat. With a strong plowshare we open a furrow in the solid earth where that crust of bread is formed which we cut with our knife and grind between our teeth.
But here the sun does not serve only to heat the domestic sky like a furnace full of coals. One must take precautions with it. When the year commences, the waters overflow. These vast fields without slopes, scarcely separated from the sea that they continue, that the rain soaks without ever draining away, take refuge under the sheet of water in which the peasants fix a thousand rice-frames. The work of the village is to enrich the mud by means of many buckets; on all fours the farmer strokes the mud and dilutes it with his hands. The Mongol does not nibble bread, hesnatches it with his lips, he gulps it down, without fashioning a semi-liquid aliment of it in his mouth. So the rice grows, as it is cooked, in steam; and the intention of its people is to furnish all the water it will need to sustain the heat of the celestial furnace. Also, when the waters rise, the chain-pumps sing like crickets everywhere; and they do not have recourse to the buffalo. Side by side, clinging to the same bar and pressing the red handle with knees in unison, men and women watch the kitchen of their field as a housewife watches a smoking dinner. And the Annamite carries the water in a sort of spoon; in his black soutane, with his little tortoise head, as yellow as mustard, he is the weary sacristan of the mire. How many reverences and genuflections there are when, with a bucket fastened to two cords, the pair ofnhaquesgo seeking in all the hollows for juicy mud with which to anoint the earth and make it good to eat.