The Solitude of Compassion

by Jean Giono

  He stepped back and went into the open sky of the attic. Barbe got up. Her dress was covered with dust.

  This afternoon, which was a good one for doing end of winter tasks, everybody was out in the fields, even the children because it was Thursday. Even me, because it brought out so much laughter and so many songs that I said to myself: “It is spring and the almond trees must be in bloom.” They were not in bloom, but in the breadth of the whole plain that was planted with naked almond trees, there was at the tops of the branches like a sort of blue and red foam, the swelling of the sap.

  So, I went out and along with the others. There were donkeys, and all the dogs, and the mules, and the horses, and there was nothing but neighing, barking, songs, the sounds of water, the calls of girls and galloping because Gaston’s donkey escaped.

  In the middle of all that we saw Jofroi pass by. He was foolish; he looked as bleak as a notary in a café. He was dragging a long rope.

  “And where are you going?” we said to him.

  “I am going to hang myself,” he said.

  Good. We thought of his stay on the roof and we watched him from afar. From afar… He went all the way to Antonin’s orchard, he threw the rope over a branch…

  Antonin arrived quickly.

  “Jofroi, go hang yourself at Ernest’s place, go; here is not the place. And besides, the trees are taller there, and then it is on the other side of the pines, you will be more comfortable, no one will see you, go.”

  Jofroi looked at him with his stormy eyes.

  “Antonin, you will never change. When someone asks a favor of you…”

  “Go…”

  “I’m going.”

  And he went. We followed him because in our hearts we knew Jofroi’s great pain. We knew that it was a truth, this pain; known by and staring at everybody like the sun and the moon, and we boasted about it. But look at how down there at Maussan a long cry went up and it cast itself out over us like a heavy smoke. It was Barbe who was crying. It was old Barbe who, even in her seventies, was still able to cry out with all the strength of her belly to proclaim that her husband was going to go hang himself.

  We even ran a little. He had time to pass the cord over, to make the slipknot, to bring over a piece of wood, to climb up, to put his head in the noose, and already the wood was rolling beneath his feet.

  We just had to grab him with our arms around his body, raise him up, and hold him, while he, he beat on all our heads with his fists, and he kicked his feet into our stomachs, without speaking because the cord had already choked him a little.

  We took him down and laid him out on the slope. He did not say anything, he just breathed. Nobody said anything. The good fun was over. Children were there to press against the huddle, looking between our legs to see Jofroi stretched out. No more songs. We heard the high wind rustle.

  Jofroi stands up. He looks at us standing around him. He takes a step and we step back and he goes through. He turns around:

  “Race of…” he says between his teeth. “Race… Race of…”

  He does not say of what. There are no words to express all of his desperation.

  He takes off down the road, and we see Barbe coming to meet him, moaning, running across the ruts like a little dog learning to walk.

  “At heart,” Fonse tells me, “I am the worst off in this story; I gave my ten thousand francs and if something happens it will not be long before they say that I am responsible, you will see.

  Now they are all on my side. But once Jofroi hangs himself for good, or drowns himself, who knows what, you will see. I know them, I do, the people around here. I already have scenes at home: my wife, my child, my mother-in-law, everyone, and yet what do you want me to do?”

  “Nothing, Fonse, you have done all that you need to, but as for thinking that you are the worst off, no. Think of Jofroi, he is the worst off, believe me, he is not clowning around. You know him. He seriously wants to die, but he thinks about what he would leave behind, and then, he is not sure, he is in limbo. He says to himself: ‘If they see me like that, dead, they will be overcome with pity and they will arrange things;’ he sees that it is difficult but he is not without hope.”

  “Are you sure about that?” says Fonse.

  I tell him:

  “I believe so. Listen. I went to Maussan the other day. You do not go anymore, do you?”

  “No, I have not set foot down there, I do not even go in that direction. It is not exactly his rifle that I am afraid of. Of course, that counts for something, but, if it were only that, maybe… No, I do not go in that direction particularly because I am afraid of that. I will tell you: he knows that I have everything going for me, the law, the people’s support, even his own support at heart. Well, if he sees me again, he will think that I have decided to make use of all this. He knows that if I make use of all this, he is lost; and who knows what he will do then?”

  “Good, but I went after the rains, and then the hot spell; the field is filled with grass like a basin of water. It is up to the middle of the trees. He was there, Jofroi, and upon seeing me he said: ‘Look at this misfortune; if it isn’t a misfortune to treat the earth like this.’ You see that he is bitter; he no longer knows what he is saying. He knows very well that he is the one…”

  At this moment Félippe opens the door of the café. He looks at us. He stands with his hand on the door.

  “Fonse, Monsieur, Jofroi is dead.”

  We remain frozen, empty, without a thought, feeling ourselves go pale, feeling ourselves grow cold like a plate taken off the fire.

  Then someone said:

  “How?”

  And we got up with the little willpower that was left us.

  “Yes,” said Félippe “he is over there stretched out on the road. He is not moving. He is all stiff. I called him from afar, then I made a detour and came quickly.”

  Jofroi is lying out on the road, but as we arrive beside him, we see that he is alive, quite alive with open eyes.

  “And what are you doing there?”

  “I want to get run over by automobiles.”

  Félippe cannot come back.

  “You think that it will happen just like that? When they see you from afar they will stop. If you really want to kill yourself, Jofroi, go throw yourself in…”

  “Don’t say anything to him,” said Fonse.

  Spring came, then went. Summer came, and went, quite slowly, big and heavy with its big mucky feet with the sun weighing down on our heads.

  The Maussan orchard is nothing more than a wild field among our domestic lands. Those who are near it need to be wary, it bites with its long tenacious grasses and you have to strike hard with your hoe to get it to let go.

  Jofroi, we held him back maybe twenty times, on the edge of Antoine’s wells, a well of more than 30 meters about which Antoine said: “Even so, if he did it, where would I get water afterwards?” We pulled him from the little milldam by the stream. He shook himself like a dog and he left. We hid his rifle. We broke a bottle of iodine tincture, and we warned the apothecary not to give him another, nor salt spirits, nor anything. We were there asking ourselves what extraordinary thing he could do: eat nails, to ruin his stomach, poison himself with grass, mushrooms; get a bull to kill him. Who knows? We imagined everything ourselves and ended up losing touch with reality. Fonse, who has never been sick, had indigestion and everyone came on the run, bad indigestion from a melon. He was two fingers away from death. As for me, I said to my wife:

  “Listen, the Jarbois have invited us several times to go see them at Barret. We should go for a fortnight with the little one…”

  And my wife said:

  “It isn’t because of Jofroi that you are saying this?”

  “No, but…”

  At last it was decided that we would leave. The air is good at Barret, plus the Jarbois are very nice, the husband as well as the wife, plus…aren’t they Elise?

  And I said to Fonse, a Fonse afloat in his pants, a Fonse in full f
eather like a pigeon, light, light, white like good china and wearing a vest despite the summer; I said to Fonse: “Come on, let’s have a drink because in a few days I will have to go. Yes, on business.”

  And it was just then that they came again to tell us:

  “Jofroi is dead.”

  We said, in all honesty:

  “Again?”

  But this time it was Martel who announced it, Martel a distant cousin of Jofroi, a believable man.

  “This time, it is for good,” he said, then, right away, because he knew that we were thinking about it:

  “No, he had an attack yesterday at noon and he died during the night. He is dead, quite dead. They dressed him, I kept watch until morning. I am going to the town hall to take care of the formalities, then to the curé, to arrange a time.”

  Fonse stayed there for a minute, then color came into his cheeks and he said to me quickly:

  “Goodbye.”

  I saw him go into his house. He came out again a little later and he went here and there to speak to the women. Then he covered the door of his coach, harnessed the donkey, he put a big axe on the carriage, a rope, a knife-saw, a scythe, and pulling the donkey by the muzzle, he left in the direction of Maussan.

  I saw Fonse again tonight. He told me:

  “I will leave five or six of those trees. Not for the crop, no, just so that if Jofroi sees me, from wherever he is, he will say: ‘That Fonse, you know, if you look closely, he is not a bad man.’“

  Philémon

  Around Christmas the days are peaceful like fruits set out on straw. The nights are great hard plums of ice; the noontimes wild apricots, bitter and red.

  It is the time of olive crops; for once, the cart will be brought up the bad slope of the hill, and you will have to pull the mule by the muzzle to get it to advance.

  It is the time of the pig slaughter. The farms are smoking; in the washhouses they have taken away the washing barrel, attached the big kettle to make the water boil, and, when I come back from a walk on the sunny hillside, I run into Philémon.

  He says to me:

  “I placed an article in the paper. Yes, because we have to let people know that I am not too old this year. Well, you understand…”

  I understand; I read the article. It said: “Monsieur Philémon alerts the public that he is still capable of killing pigs for people.”

  “Ah! You read it. This way they will know that I am still doing the job.”

  I met Philémon on the sunken path, and it was at nightfall; he had a wooden sheath in which he kept his knife. I recognized right away the odor of pig tripe and blood that he had about him.

  “As for me, I don’t smell a thing. It is habit. My wife doesn’t smell a thing either; maybe it is because I’m with her all night, and her skin has taken on the smell as well. I think that is it. But my daughter is like you. All month there is no way for me to kiss her. She says to me: ‘You smell like death.’”

  This smell of murder is so strong that he cannot approach the sows or offer them a hand. He waits there by the bench and the basin. The dog comes, smells him, then goes away with its tail between its legs. And from over there he surveys things. If the man moves, if he sneezes, if he puts a hand in his pocket, the dog suddenly howls a long howl which he sends up to the sky, neck extended, muzzle in the air.

  Philémon knows all of this; he also knows that the pig is an animal that is quickly worried about very little, and that the dog is going to complicate the affair; so he stands there immobile, in a corner of the courtyard, with his big knife hidden behind his back.

  “Do you remember the time at Moulières-longues?”

  He laughs. I say:

  “Don’t you want me to remember? I went for a long time without being able to keep myself from thinking about it.”

  “It was laughable.”

  “It was not that laughable; you are used to it, you are, but, then me and the others…”

  “Because you get ideas and then once they are formed your mind gets stuck. What was it after all? A pig like any other.”

  “Yes, but just at that very moment.”

  “Yes, at that moment…the principal, was to kill the pig before he was dead. That makes you laugh? That is how it is. I should not have been there. It was crazy. It was a rush job, you know.”

  That day at Moulières-longues, the daughter was married. First I must tell you two things: Moulières-longues is a very isolated farm, lost in a sort of crater in the hills where everything takes on a great importance because the surrounding view is not pretty but rather scowling. That is the first thing. The second, is that they have a lot of money at Moulières-longues. Father Sube is renowned for it. So, rather than keep his daughter for the land, he has allowed her to climb and has sent her to school in Aix. Blanchette Sube, big and pliant as a switch, pretty face, but, ever since she has kept me at a distance. There she found a son of a professor or a lawyer, or…anyway, blond and like her: well-matched. Two straws. A puff of wind and then nobody.

  I was at the wedding because Sube is still a friend of the family. Philémon was there: because he is a fourth cousin. And then people from all around; and the mother of the young man who pinched her dress together and raised it so she could walk cleanly on the grass. There were about thirty of us. All that I know is that in the end, for the last carriage there was only the “couple,” father Sube, Philémon, and myself.

  “Go ahead and get in the carriage,” said Sube; “I will take a look at the pigs and come along.”

  He entered the stable, he came out almost immediately, crying:

  “Philémon, come quick.”

  The three of us stayed in the carriage.

  After a minute the young monsieur asks:

  “What are we waiting for?”

  As for me, I had already seen Philémon pass by on the run, then come back with his vest and with a basin before entering the stable, he set the basin on the ground, then he took off his starched shirt front.

  I said:

  “I don’t know.”

  Sube cried out again:

  “Chette, bring me the big knife…the table drawer…in the kitchen…quick.”

  We saw Chette’s eyes grow wide.

  I handed the reins to the young monsieur.

  “Hold the horse a bit, I’m going.”

  The pig was lying on its side. Sick. Apoplexy. He tried to breath by wagging his mouth like a fish on the grass but it gargled like a stopped drain.

  “Give me the knife,” said Philémon, “and catch his feet…lie on top of him.”

  I had on my good clothes but, I knew what to do, I lay down.

  “The basin…under the head…higher…someone to stir the blood…do not let go of his feet.”

  “Blanchette,” howled Sube, “are you coming or do I have to come after you?”

  Philémon bled the pig. At first the blood blocked the hole like a pea but Philémon drilled with the knife and it pissed red, clear, in a beautiful arc, like an unstopped fountain. With a little heather broom, Blanchette stirred the blood in the basin. She turned her head; she felt like she was going to throw up, but she kept it in her mouth with her little brocaded kerchief. She was almost as white as her dress. I say almost; and if her dress appeared more white it was because right in the middle was a big spot of blood.

  “It’s nothing,” said Sube, slightly calmed because the affair looked like it would work itself out. “We’ll stick a pin in, and it won’t be seen.”

  Joselet

  Joselet is sitting facing the sunlight.

  The sun is descending in full fire. It has illuminated all of the clouds and made the sky bleed onto the woods. It gathers this whole impenetrable forest, it tramples it, it makes a golden juice come out all warm which then flows down the paths. When a bird passes through the sky it leaves a long black trace all wound up like the tendrils on a vine. You hear the bells ring in the village belfries, there behind the hills. You hear the herds coming in along with the peopl
e who harvest the last olives in the highlands as they call from orchard to orchard with voices that are like tapping a glass.

  “Oh! Joselet,” I said to him.

  “Oh! Monsieur,” he responds without turning his head.

  “So, you are watching the sun?”

  “So I am, you can see.”

  Now the sun is in the middle of battling with the belly of a great cloud. It tears it apart with big knife thrusts. Joselet’s beard is filled with sun like peach juice. It dapples all around his mouth. He has it full in his eyes and on his cheeks. You want to tell him: “Wipe it off.”

  “So, you are eating the sun?” I say to him again.

  “Ah! Yes, I am eating it up,” says Joselet.

  Veritably he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and he swallows his saliva as if he had perfumed it with some great fruit from the sky.

  And when there only remained the green day of dusk, and there, in the pines on the slope, a little drop of light all trembling like a pigeon, Joselet explained it to me.

  “That,” he said to me, “is what I knew before everyone else. You have heard that I am the master of the rain and that I heal burns with saliva alone? You have heard that when someone has shingles and has tried everything and fed up with everything, he comes to see me, and I’ll touch the man or the woman just a little at the place on their waist and the malady goes away? I dry myself with a towel, and they burn the towel and it is over with. They must have told you, too, that with a word, if one has a dislocated limb I’ll fix it. If you have a love which makes you thrash about, thrash as if you were on a grill, then you come and see me, we’ll come to an understanding, I’ll give you a big reading of the stars, I’ll put my hand slightly behind your head, and then the woman, there she’ll be beneath you, right away, in a moment, even if she is frigid. It is understood that I do that for you once, to please you, then afterwards it is your turn to talk. I give you what is necessary, that is my secret, and if you do well with what I say, she cannot resist, she’ll come and you’ll work things out with her.”