‘Derborence’ by Charles Ferdinand Ramuz    (1933) – 103 pages

Translated from the French by Laura Spinney

“The Mountain has fallen down.”

“What mountain?”

“The Devil’s Place.”

“Fell down where?”

“On Derborence.”

Tectonic shifts have caused a landslide on one of the mountains in the Alps. They later calculated that the volume of the landslide was more than one hundred and fifty million cubic feet. Blocks of dirt and rock bigger than houses have fallen off the mountain.

“Nothing remained but the stillness and tranquility of death. The only thing that still moved up there was a muddy mess, a river of sand earth, and water that continued to pour from the mouth of the chute. But reined in by these walls of rock, channeled by them, it cascaded soundlessly onto the core of refuse that broke its fall. ”

All of the men who were up in the area where the landslide occurred are presumed to be dead. Thus the townspeople are very surprised when young shepherd Antoine Pont wanders down from the mountain two months later. They can not imagine how he could have survived that avalanche of rock. His wife Therese is overjoyed that he has made it back since she is now expecting a baby.

“A shepherd was caught under the rockfall at Derborence. He was trapped under the debris for two months. He reappeared, nobody could believe it.”

Antoine was unharmed in the landslide but was buried alive in an underground cave area. He has had very little to eat and now is extremely thin. He finally managed to find a passage out.

“We’ll soon find out if it is really him. If it’s him or the shadow of him. If he is flesh or ghost. If he exists in reality or merely in illusion.”

The townspeople cannot believe their ears when Antoine tells them that he must return to the landslide area to rescue his fellow shepherd Seraphin who he went up there with. Antoine is sure that Seraphin also survived the landslide and is still alive. The townspeople try to talk him out of returning, but Antoine is fixed on rescuing his shepherd friend.

Derborence

This novella ‘Derborence’ was written in French. The small country of Switzerland borders France, Italy, Austria, and Germany, so I expect many of the Swiss are multilingual.

This tale of a mountain falling down is grounded in fact. Two years before it was written, there was an earthquake which weakened the side of a mountain which later collapsed.

Grade:    A-