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Leo Tuor 
Mike Evans, Translator
Translated from the Sursilvian Romansh by Mike Evans
I spent five summers in search of the
White Stallion of Blengias, five whole summers.
I challenged it, provoked it, goaded it,
cursed at it, besought it,
set bait for it, enticed it, laid in wait for it.
All to no avail! Not even in the devil´s name.
How I´d love to cast eyes on the White Stallion of Blengias;
then I could happily perish, just like any member of the populace.
*
My recollections...
He wasn´t all that big, nor was he much to look at.
His shoulders weren´t really broad enough for a man.
His chest was hairless. One leg was a trifle too short, so his gait always gave him away, even from miles off. (He rarely went fast, being a shepherd. Perhaps because of that leg, perhaps because it was his wont to stand on the spot, glass to eye).
He had slender hands. Yet on his left hand, just the thumb stuck out on one side; the rest of his fingers had gone. I could find no beauty in him, bar his eyes, but it used to take a long time before he would look another straight in the eyes, because he preferred animals to people. He hated people, especially "the populace" -
that stupid, blind herd so easily turned in whatever direction the priests and politicians wanted to turn it.
No, thinking most definitely wasn´t the populace´s strong point. Say your prayers, do your work and think nought. Do a job, stay daft and keep on regurgitating the same old puke. That´s what the populace is like.
Hatred, contempt and ridicule had been the weapons he had wielded against stupidity. Finally, he had had to flee to the mountains like a wounded animal and fade away there - like last year´s snow. Don´t ever ask where.
*
He was not a believer, and the only trust he ever entrusted anywhere was in his dog. Once, when Albertina had said that she was coming to visit him, he had retorted:
"I´ll believe that when I see you." To which, she, in self-defence, had rejoined: "if I´ve said I´m coming, that means I´m coming!"
He just gave a slight laugh, a bitter one, then remarked (I know not whether he uttered this aloud to Albertina or just to himself): "Is it not said that those who inhabit the Alps have a belief all of their own?"
Continuing, he added: "Blessed shall be the believers; and stiff shall be the dead."
As early as seventeen, he had stopped believing in the catholics´ God, the God of sins and confessions, who only ever sided with the priests, since it was they who would say what it was that God had to say. At an early age he had stopped believing in the truth of what they preached - and in justice too.
And there was something else, too: he didn´t believe that people were good:
"I know I´m bad."
That was one of his very few sentences.
The sound of those five little words of his used to send a shiver down my spine. His beauteous eyes would boil over into mine as he said:
"And you know you´re bad."
And I knew it.
*
His soul often used to pain him ; I could sense it in his voice. His words were few and far between, and whole sentences even rarer. It wasn´t always possible to understand what he was saying or what he meant. But I wrote down everything I heard or saw. His words penetrated my very veins, though I did not always understand them. But do we always have to understand it all? Giacumbert was his name, and he herded his flocks in a place starting with ´G´ too.
He was proud of his daughter, whom he had had with a married woman, and even more proud that he had managed to produce a child precisely with the woman he wanted, cocking a snook at laws and morals alike, without anyone noticing it, not even the "old" ram (as he used to call her husband). So he had not only had his fling and made sure that his kind would not die out, but had also put a stopper in the mouths of the scandalmongers. In my heart of hearts, I am sure I know why he said that to me: he wanted me to commit it all to writing, so that, once he had gone, they would find out about it after all.
Giacumbert has gone now, and the pasturelands starting with a ´G´ have been wiped out too. I also recall four lines he used to enjoy reciting so much (I don´t know why; perhaps it was because of the sound of the words):
Have I not just had a sleep
On the altar of our great God
Sullied the slumbers of the Righteous,
Hugging your breasts?
The last time I saw him, he said:
"We are going to meet again, down in Hell at the latest
Down there is where the real beauties go. Adieu."
Red & white used to be his favourite colours.
*
So here you are; you´ve come up here to join me,
you´re asking me who Giacumbert might be.
It doesn´t really matter. Simply say that Giacumbert
is the man of the Gaglinera.
The Gaglinera is the place where the chickens have a shepherd.
Who is Giacumbert?
Who is the Gaglinera?
Perhaps you might even divine it, if you are able to sense it;
otherwise you won´t, for Heaven´s sake!
But if you come up to the Pass sometime, then your eye will see the meagreness of the land and the meagreness of the words, and perhaps you will sense the wavering soul of the man of flesh whom I call Giacumbert.
If you are able to sense it, then you yourself are Giacumbert or Albertina, and then your favourite colours are:
Red & white.
*
If you come up over Diesrut, if you have the eye for it
then you will see the pile of rubble up on the plateau that used to be the horseman´s refuge.
If you have the eye for it.
Your eye is your soul.
Giacumbert pushes back his hat
Giacumbert is not impressed by the plateau
Piano della Grena
Giacumbert keeps going until he has gone from sight.
Like his animals, Giacumbert sticks doggedly to the black path up there, pushes back his hat even further still,
hammers the point of his stick on the rocks, between the rocks and into the grass.
Stubborn Giacumbert.
*
Giacumbert listens to the murmurings, strains himself to listen to the murmurings. Giacumbert listens to the shepherd, to the valley and its undertones.
The spirit and the valley never die.
*
Where are your paths leading you, Giacumbert? And the paths in your mind? And that hard skull of yours?
Your paths are wandering like your mind,
not in an orderly line like your animals.
But should the paths of thought not go like animals keep on going, going, going?
*
"Why on earth are you trying to sense the weather?"
You´re not a barometer. People of yore used to have a feeling for the weather. You no longer have a feeling for the weather.
Go and sleep in your refuge and leave the weather alone.
Outdoors is the place for weather.
*
Where´s there a night pen for the flock, where?
*
They´re already up and about and all lined up along the grey horizon. They look as if they are stretching to their full length on the rounded rocks of the glacier.
Down they come in rows.
Suddenly one, two, four.
One that´s faster,
like so many elongated beads.
So that´s where the Gaglinera would have been.
It´s six o´clock, and Giacumbert, already soaked to the skin,
looks on amazed, utterly stunned.
So that was the revelation of daybreak.
*
Giacumbert takes a gloomy view and rushes like a devil through the knolls and hollows of the Gaglinera. Now you see Giacumbert, now you see just his hat, now you don´t see Giacumbert at all.
There must be snow in the air.
The farming folk are nowhere to be seen.
Giacumbert´s on the run to keep warm.
There must be snow in the air.
The Gaglinera turns white.
Where are your animals, Giacumbert?
Where are your animals going to spend the night now?
The silent snow fills the Gaglinera,
blotting out its features.
*
Giacumbert? Dozing off?
Dozing off at your table, Giacumbert?
What´s the point in going to bed!
Your bed´s too short in this condemned cell of a
refuge. You are worse off than your dogs;
they´ve already been asleep a long time, raising an occasional
eyebrow to see if you´re finally going to turn off the light.
*
Giacumbert has to pull Oldie along after him.
Today´s the day for moving on.
"Aah-tit-tit-tit-titaaaaaaaaaaa."
Oldie´s in no hurry and still takes a nibble from the right of the path and another from the left, stretching out for one tasty shrub and trying to root out another.
Her bleats grow more staccato as the rope tightens round her neck.
A murky Giacumbert turns and looks back, his patience at its tether´s end, stumbling forward over the exasperating young goat darting to-and-fro between his legs,
what impudence.
Behold Giacumbert, the goatherd of his goats, lying facedown on the path.
But let´s not lose our patience; perhaps we´ll be where we want to be by nightfall. Aah-tit-tit!
The nanny goat licks his ear clean for him.
Giacumbert chews his bread.
Bread never goes hard, not even after fifteen, twenty days.
Giacumbert chews his dry bread.
There´s no such thing as hard bread.
Giacumbert makes a feast out of gnawing at his bread, piles up his yellowing ham and breaks the blade of his knife on his bread.
What´s the matter, Giacumbert? You´ve got no meat left.
You´re lost without meat. You can´t live only off greens and fruit and old junk like that; you need meat. Your ancestors descended from the wolf. It´s meat you need, meat.
You never feel full, you need meat.
*
"I"
"i i i i - i i i i i"
Giacumbert hauls the dog from the bed by its ears.
"Not in the bed, you swine, not in the bed!"
"i i i i i"
"Wretched creature!"
*
Giacumbert stands sentinel beside the long line of animals wending their way down the path like pearls on a string.
Giacumbert just keeps staring entranced at the line of the procession going where it has to go. Giacumbert´s the only one standing sentinel next to the long, long procession. It´s not like Saint Placi´ Day, when there are only a few in the procession and all the rest look on or swarm around with cameras and things that go click and things that go buzz and things that go whirr as they keep on trying and kneeling and slipping and sliding and bending down low, as they creep along behind the cross and the noise of the bells.
Giacumbert´s animals have kept their rituals;
humanity alone stands sentinel;
decadence.
*
The vast woollen front advances
over hillock and hill, cropping the succulent grass
back to its roots. It takes but one moody animal to steer the whole jittery herd in a different direction.
Then the whole flock squeezes together again, as if nothing had happened. Lone animals chance a glance up, continuing to chew suspiciously. Their sporadic bells chime in with their tin tin. On and on the front moves:
avanti avanti
avanti popolo
no time to rest
no time to rest
Onward moves the flock, leaving behind its night pen, the hilltop, its droppings, the grass-heath, the tufts and its baa baa. 
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