The Solitude of Compassion (6 page)

 

Those two things made people talk; they were entranced by them. More than one person got up in the middle of the night and went barefoot over to the window to listen, in the depths of the darkness, to the mountain quaking like a sick child. Still we had a little peace.
But the days were not in their usual health. On the border of Léchau a green fog floated; there was this fog stuck to all the corners of the mountain as if the wind was heavy with sea grasses. Towards Planpre it smelled like crushed gentian. One day a forest girl came with a beautiful mushroom, larger than a hat, pale and spotted with black like a dead man's head.

All of that should have set us on our guard, and, to tell the truth, we were on guard against all of it; but life is life; go ahead try and stop the flow, you get used to anything, even fear.

 

The fourth of September is our votive festival. It made our reputation, as they say. From my younger years it united three or four communes. They came from Vaugnières, Glandages, Montbran, crossing the ridge… At the time in question they had largely stopped celebrating with us; there was no longer anyone coming but folk from the high farms, tall woodsmen, and shepherds who came on the sly and entered the village in the evening to have a glass. They left their herds alone on the Oches' pastures.

 

As I said to you, there was a great calm. Above us there was a round patch of blue sky all spread out, perfectly neat, all clean. On the circumference of the horizon there was a thick bar of heavy, purple clouds; it was there mornings and evenings, without moving, always the same, breaking the backs of the mountains.

“It will get the others,” is what they said.

“It should rain in Trièves.”

“It should be bad on la Drôme.”

We said it, but even so we looked at the round blueness which weighed on the village like a millstone.

Now that we know, we know that it was the mark, the sign, that
we were destined for something, that by this circle they had wanted to indicate our village and make it shine in the sun in order to designate it for evil. So it was, we were happy.

“The weather purged itself before. You will see that it will be nice for the festival.”

“It should be for once.”

The son of the blacksmith went around to all the houses with a list, and one gave, perhaps a hundred cents, perhaps three francs, so that our festival would be a nice festival and not make us be ashamed. By the school there was already a booth which smelled of caramel candy.

For a night or two there were noises in the sky.

“That is, if, all the same…”

But no, the mornings were blond with ripe grass; the wind smelled of gramineal, there was the circle of blue filled with sunshine which fooled us. The ground was warm beneath our feet and elastic like a fruit.

This fourth of September then, one opened the shutters, and it was fine weather. The people from the Café du Peuple had planted a May tree before their door, a young pine that was all glistening. In its branches were hung the red scarf which one won at boule, the blue scarf which was the prize for the girls' race, and the money which was the prize for the men's race. All of them were floating on a stream of joyful, scented air that played like a young kid.

The folk from the Café du Centre had installed trestles all the way down to the Liberty tree. The washhouse was filled with bottles that were cooling in the water. The baker had ordered a case of tarts from his cousin du Champsaur, and he was on his doorstep waiting for them saying to people passing by:

“You know, I am going to have tarts.”

And we thought:

“Good, that will be a good dessert.”

Apollonia waited for her nephews du Trièves. Brother Antoine was supposed to come from Coriardes with his whole family. The boule players from Trabuech wrote down their names and they were the great players… From Montama six came, from Montbran three, and we knew that the shepherds from Oches would come, but we did not say anything.

The first rough characters that were seen were the Coriardes folk. They put the mule in the stable, looking under it without a word, and, immediately afterwards, the father whispered to Antoine:

“You have to arrange for us to sleep here tonight, we do not want to go back at night.”

Then the father said:

“We'll have something strong to drink.”

The Coriardes folk were asked what they had.

“Nothing.”

And there was a black mystery in their eyes which stayed for more than two hours.

The folk from Trièves were soaking.

“It is raining on the ridge, quite a lot…”

 

Only at that moment we were not thinking on our feet any longer. There was in the sky, like a hand spreading the pile of clouds, a little breeze flowing which smelled like meadow sweet. The sun spread out on the earth and began resting while blotting out the clouds. There only remained a threat in the direction of Montama where the clouds were still shining and dark like a heap of egg-plants.

The Café du Centre was filled to the rafters. In the kitchen there was the sound of dishes and water so that you would think a stream was flowing through there. People were inundated with beer and wine. On the floor, when you moved your feet, they made a mark in the coating of spilled beer and wine. Outside there were people all the way to the Liberty tree. Marie went to the washhouse and filled her arms with streaming bottles of fresh water, and she carried them, shivering, because they wet her breast and in time the water ran down onto her stomach.

When she arrived to serve them, people pinched her haunches and slapped her rump, and there were even those who stuck an arm all the way up her dress.

“Ah, leave it there, it's so warm,” she said.

For drink, there were already those who were sick and who sang “Poor Peasant.” Others quickly left the benches to go throw up in a corner. There were those who laughed about who knows what, but with such laughs! Those who pissed sitting up, and who became serious again when they felt themselves moistened between the legs. Then they began laughing and drinking again. In the Café du Peuple it was the same, except for in a corner in the back at the little table where the trio from Trièves were. They had crossed the ridge in the morning. It was not hard in September, but they said:

“It's funny. It's not natural. Who knows?…”

They had pipes and big glasses, and they tried to dispel their uneasiness.

 

At noon something happened which would pull everyone out of there. They were in the middle of discussing the defeat of Polyte at boule, and my Polyte was all somber, right in the middle, chewing his mustache. We spoke as if we were haranguing the housewives…
For the youths, again it was easy. They were excited with their hands on the servants' buttocks, nothing to do but to sniff the scent of their wives. It made them rise, but the others would have to be told about it!

“Go on big bags!” “Then come!” “You are already well taken care of.” And “at your age” and “You are cute, go” and even men slapping women and women slapping men, sort of among family.

And those who responded:

“Go to bed, you old bloodsucker.”

But, even so there were those who got up and left.

Finally, there was room once again with empty spaces in the road and in the two cafés where people were dining. There was also in the sky, like a bird, a thick silence, heavy and solitary. In this silence there was not a puff of air nor the sound of a footstep, not a whisper of grass, nor the hum of a wasp; there was only silence, round and weighty, filled with sun like a ball of fire.

 

It was in the middle of this silence that a man arrived by the forest path. He came in the shadow of the houses. He seemed to enfold himself in their shadow. He took two steps, then looked around, then he took several more light steps along the walls. He saw our poplar tree. Then he dared to cross a great swathe of sun, and he came towards the tree. He stayed there for a moment sniffing. He checked the wind. He had a round back, like a hunted beast. With his hand he caressed the old skin of our tree. In an instant he lowered a branch and placed his head in the leaves to smell them. Finally, he moved on to the Café du Peuple. He drew back the curtain and softly entered.

I saw it all from my window. I was just about to take my siesta. The party did not mean much to me, I was alone in the house, as you know.

Now, the story is Antoine's, who served him.

He was thin and all dried out, seemingly ageless. He was without a vest in his shirt of blue thread like the sky; he had rolled up his sleeves and his wrinkled, black elbows were visible like the wounds of branches on a tree trunk. He had hair on his chest like a sheep dog.

He asked for water. Nothing more. And he said:

“I will pay for it.”

Once it had been said it did not seem like something that one could contradict. He was given his water. He wanted it in a bucket.

Antoine told me about it:

“I went into the kitchen, and I was very curious. I did not say anything to the folk from Trièves who were eating there; I did not say anything to the woman, but I looked at him through a tear in the curtain. He even drank from the wooden bucket like an animal. Then he took three pine cones out of his pocket, took them apart on the table, and began eating the nuts. He picked them up with his fingertips, and chewed them with the ends of his teeth. From where I was watching him, he seemed like a big squirrel.”

 

The noon meal lasted for hours because they had prepared all the foods in creation. First they had taken sausages out of the vat of oil and laid them there on the plate, white and fat, like big caterpillars. They had put on a rooster to braze, and the rabbits stewed in their own blood. They had killed goats. Everywhere it smelled like crushed meat and dead grasses. They had drunk various wines…wine from the mountainside, wine from the rocky area, a two-year-old wine…

“This one, what do you say?”

“Ah, my friend!…”

Old wine from fine bottles, one only had to reach out one's hand, even without a candle, and it was there right away. The serving folk brought the bottles down. That was the festival in our town. They crammed their mouths with pieces of white chicken meat which hung from the end of their forks like strips of ash bark.

In the end, in the houses, one could smell all of the smells, except for the good ones.

 

It could have been about three-thirty when the man, having finished his meal, got up. He paid.

Antoine did not want any money for the water. The man said:

“For the corner of your establishment where I sat.”

And he forced him to take a coin. But as he was going out, the entire hoard of Boniface's men arrived, blocked the door, and came in knocking things over with:

“Hello, everyone!”

And there was the smell of sausage.

This hoard was made up of the absolutely biggest woodsmen.

The man faintly tried to pass between them; then he fell back into his shadowy corner, and, with all of the other big men stationed in the middle, he no longer dared.

He was like, so it seemed, a beast caught in a trap; he turned his head in all directions to see which way to go. His beautiful, distraught eyes were supplicating.

Besides, all that is according to Antoine and perhaps his memory is foggy about what happened next.

Thus, the man was back in his corner where there were shadows, and the café began filling up again.

With regard to myself, it was almost at this very moment that I
got up from my siesta, and I recalled that my first task was to go to the skylight in the attic to check the sky. The blue had grown smaller. And more of the clouds were piled up over Montama, which still remained immobile and damned hard. There were two or three bad clouds which extended over the mountain to see what we were doing.

“It will not come over this evening,” I said.

And in fact…

As for me, I had gotten up right away at four o'clock. There was only one thing to do: go to Antoine's, or to the “Center,” which, it is understood, meant the same thing.

That is how I arrived when it had already begun.

Upon approaching I said to myself:

“They are arguing.”

I heard Boniface bawling.

I entered:

They were all turned towards the back of the room, towards something which the shadow revealed after a moment, the man. He emerged from the shadow as if from water. I do not know if it was an effect of the day which turned around the village and came up a bit abruptly, or if this man's strength radiated outwards and off-set the shadow. But, the fact is that I saw him all of a sudden. He was standing very sadly, overwhelmed by a great thought which shaded his eyes to black. On his shoulder a wood dove had set itself. And it was with those two, him and the dove, that Boniface, lost in his wine, was angry.

It seemed that it had begun humorously enough. At first, I have to say: the entire troop of big men, woodsmen of size XL, up there beside Garnezier, arrived straight out of the high woods after more than a hundred days of solitary encampment. They came in after having lived for a hundred days, I tell you, with just the sky and the
rocks for companions. The forest was not their companion: they were killing it. Which they had to do, even so, just to live! This friendship which they were forced to have with the great, steely sky, with the hard air, with this cold ground like dead flesh, gave them the desire to kiss the trees like friends, but then, look, they were there to kill them. I am explaining it poorly, what do you want?… It was a little, if you don't mind my saying so, as if you who love Bertha, I know it, and she merits it, they required you to kill her so that you could live, and to make puddings with her blood. Excuse me, it was a manner of speaking, but now you know.