The Solitude of Compassion by Jean Giono Read Free Book Online Page B

natural. Who knows?…”
    They had pipes and big glasses, and they tried to dispel their uneasiness.
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    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!
    â€œGo 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:
    â€œGo 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.
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    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:
    â€œI 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:
    â€œI 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.”
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    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…
    â€œThis one, what do you say?”
    â€œAh, 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