The Solitude of Compassion (14 page)

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 feather 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.'“

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…”