The Solitude of Compassion (5 page)

The other did not say anything, he came in standing straight in his dirty shoes; he followed the Curé's gestures with the cold sadness of his blue eyes.

They entered the spacious hallway, because at one time the parish had been the home of some landowners. Then came a tiled courtyard, and to this courtyard stairways were attached which ascended in great tiled swoops.

“Wait for me here,” the Curé remembered while looking at their muddy shoes.

He went up.

The large man silently produced a little smile.

“You see, it is going to work,” he said. “The twenty cents that we spent…”

“Martha…” said the Curé, then immediately:

“What are you doing there?”

It was a hot plate set on the table of white wood and in it the tripe sizzled with bits of purple liver like flowers and rice on the stalk.

“It's a picoche,” said Martha.

And she began to pour a thin stream of thick wine with the smell of wood root. The bubbling grease was silenced.

“Is that for tonight?” asked the Curé.

“Yes.”

“Tell me, Martha, can you guess what I have come up with? What if we used them to fix the end of the pump?”

“He would have to go down into the well,” said Martha as she measured the line of wine.

“But of course,” said the Curé.

She did not say a thing, then she raised the neck with a clean sweep; she carried the plate over to the fire.

“And you will find someone. Someone who will go down? You know what the plumber said. He did not want to kill himself. It is an old well, and so, in this weather, you will really find someone?”

“Listen: there are two men down below asking for something to do. They look like men in need.”

“Well we should make the most of them,” said Martha, “because you know that the plumber will never go down. He told me so. If they are in need, then we should make the most of them.”

“This is what's the matter,” said the Curé. “We have a pump, and the iron end was stuck against the side of the well. The attachment, or the attachments must have slipped. The end is unstuck, you could say, and it sucks up thin air. It is suspended like that from the bolts on top and that could have come completely out. I have the attachments right here. You have to go down…”

“Is the well deep?” asked the large man.

“No,” said the Curé, “No. Yes. At least not very, you know, it is a house well: fifteen, twenty meters at most.”

“Is it far?”

“No. It is right there.”

The Curé walked to the side of the courtyard and the large man followed him, and the other followed in his greatcoat. There was a gate in the wall and, below, a trough of old stone worn by water. He opened the gate, the hinges squealed and two or three scales of rust fell on the tiles.

“There you see.”

The well blew a bitter breath of nocturnal plants and deep water. There was the “sssglouf ” of a detached stone that fell. The Curé, very much in back, leaned and at the same time pulled back his rump, and one heard his toes slosh in his shoes.

“There you see.”

He seemed as if he wanted to excuse himself.

“As there are two of you,” he said.

Then the large man looked at his companion. He was there still floating in his grey greatcoat. He did not have a face except for his eyes, cold blue eyes, always fixed on the black soutane of the Curé but looking through it and beyond it like the sad soul of the world.

He trembled and painfully swallowed his saliva with great bobbings of his Adam's apple.

“Good, Monsieur le Curé,” said the large man, “that will do, I work alone, but that will do.”

Martha appeared on the balcony of the gallery.

“Monsieur le Curé, it is about time for your music lesson.”

At just this moment someone rang. He went and opened the door: it was a little blond youth in a beautiful wool coat.

“Go on up, Monsieur René,” said the Curé. “I am coming.”

He came back toward the men.

“The wall might be just a little bit bad,” he said.

“Set yourself there, old man,” said the large man.

There was a door in the back of the courtyard. Behind it they could hear rabbits running and crying out.

“Set yourself there. Sit down. You are not cold, too cold?…”

Then he sat to one side and began untying his shoes.

“I prefer to do it barefoot. You catch yourself with your toenails…”

Then he unbuttoned his hussard pants and pulled them off.

“Barelegged works better, and besides they're heavy. Put them on, and they will keep you warm.”

The exhalation of the well steamed-up into the cold air of the courtyard.

“If I need to, I will call you,” just when he stepped on the rim.

He still held himself up by his hands and you could see his head. He looked down into the blackness; and you could tell that he was busy trying to secure his feet.

“I see the holes old man. It's going to fly.”

He disappeared.

One heard the sound of a harmonium: a spiral of ascending notes which stuck together in threes and slowly darted, so it seemed, towards the sky like the swaying of a serpent's head.

It was played rather well by Monsieur le Curé, then taken up again after a silence by the wide hands of Monsieur René.

The daylight faded.

On the wooden gallery, up there on the second floor, there was a row of cactus plants and a pot with a tuft of violets. The man looked at the flowers. The night flowed into the courtyard like water from a fountain; soon the flowers were no longer visible; the night rose up to the third floor.

The man stood up. He approached the well, looked for the opening by feeling with his hand. He leaned over. Down below one could hear, it seemed, a sort of scraping.

“Hey,” he called.

“Hey,” responded the other from below.

It came after a short pause, stifled by a cushion of air.

“Take care of yourself,” said the man.

“Yes,” replied the voice. Then it asked, “and you up there. How goes it?”

The man went back and sat down at the moment when Martha opened the door and appeared in the gallery of the second floor with a lamp in her hand.

“You can see the way Monsieur René?… Close the door.”

The blond youth closed the door. Martha looked out into the courtyard.

“I think that they have gone,” she said.

The large man walked in shadow. His muddy feet were heard squishing on the cold tiles.

“Are you there?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Give me my pants. It's over.”

“It's cold out,” he added once he was dressed again.

The house was all silent except for the sizzling of a fried fish which flowed from the second floor.

He called out:

“Monsieur le Curé.”

The frying kept him from hearing. He cried out:

“Monsieur le Curé.”

“What?” asked Martha.

“It's done,” said the man.

“What?” asked Martha again.

“The pump.”

“Ah! Good, I will come and see.”

She went back into the kitchen and tried to give a push on the pump to the well. The water flowed. Monsieur le Curé was reading by the stove, and there was the sizzling of the frying.

“It's flowing,” she said.

He hardly raised his eyes.

“Good. Go pay them.”

“How much should I give them? After all it was done quickly.”

“…and close the door tightly…”

But she accompanied them, watched them leave, then firmly set the latch, pushed the lock, and set the bar.

A cold and tenacious rain was falling.

Under the streetlight the man opened his hand. It was ten cents. The blue eyes looked at the little coin and the hand all marked with scrapes and mud.

“You will get tired,” he said, “I am a chain around your neck, me, sick. You will get tired, leave me.”

“No,” said the large man. “Come.”

It happened on the fourth of September, the year of those big storms, that year when there was misfortune for everyone in our land.

If you will recall, it began with a sort of landslide by Toussière in which more than fifty pines were knocked head over heels. The ravine carried away the long cadavers of the trees, and it made a lot of noise… It was a shame to see all of those trunks of good wood thrown against the rocks, and all that getting washed out in shreds like meat from a sick person. Then there was that gushing of the spring at Frontfroit. Do you recall? The high prairie was suddenly all wet, then that spring mouth which opened up under the grasses, and you heard the black water splashing, then this retching which took hold of it on the mountain and in the valley which wailed under the heavy load of cold water.