The Solitude of Compassion (13 page)

“This morning I said to myself: “The weather is so-so, you have nothing to do, you'll begin taking them out. And, right away I went to Maussan… (Typical Fonse, this phrase. He did not make it to Maussan until three o'clock in the afternoon.)

“…I attached a rope to the biggest branch and I pulled, pulled and it came; it made a sound. Then I was going to pull out the stump; I heard a window open, then Jofroi came out.

“‘And what are you doing?' he asked me.

“His face was not itself.

“‘You can see,' I replied.

“‘Are you are going to do that to all of them?'

“‘All of them.'

“I did not see what he was getting at. He went back into the castle, and I saw him come out with his rifle. Not on his shoulder, well in hand, with his right hand on the tumbler, his left hand on the barrels, and he carried it out in front, firmly, and he walked like a crazy man. He was even less himself than before.

“Me, I had attached the rope to the second tree and, seeing Jofroi with the rifle, I asked him laughing:

“‘Are you going to go and hunt down your enemies?'

“‘I am going to chase away the scoundrel,' he said to me. And he came over to me.

“My arms dropped.

“‘You'll leave me the trees,' he said to me.

“‘Jofroi…'

“‘You will leave them?…'

“He raised his barrels there beneath his shirt, and you know, he was no longer a man. I said to him, without getting mad (his finger was ready):

“‘Jofroi don't be childish.'

“He was only able to repeat:

“‘You'll leave them, my trees, you'll leave them?…'

“What was there to discuss? I dropped the rope and came down, there you have it.

“Ah! That is all the stuff of a story!

“And what am I going to do now?”

We all tried, tried everything; I myself went to see Jofroi. He is like a dog who has sunk his teeth into a piece of meat and does not want to let go.

“They are my trees; I was the one who planted them all; I cannot take this, here, under my own eyes. If he comes back I will shoot him in the belly, and then I will blow my brains out.”

“But he paid for it.”

“If I had known what it was for, then I would not have sold it.”

“Jofroi,” I told him, “it is because you kept the house; so you are still here, you see everything; it breaks your heart, it is a slap in the face, I understand, but put yourself in Fonse's place. He bought it, he paid, it is his; he has the right to do what he wants.”

“But my trees, my trees. I bought them at the fair at Riez, I did, in ‘05, the year that Barbe said to me: ‘Jofroi we are probably going to have a child and then the big Revaudières fire made her miscarry. These trees, I carried them on my back from Riez; I did it all alone: the holes, carted in the manure; I got up in the night to light the damp straw, so that they would not freeze; at least ten times I made the nicotine remedy and each can went for a hundred francs. Here, look at the leaves, if they are not healthy, I don't know what is. Where will you find trees this old that are still like that? Ah, of course, they hardly bear any more, but we have to be reasonable, after all. You know that old trees are not young; one does not kill everything just because they get old. Then would you have to kill me, me too, just because I am old? Come on, come on, let him think a little, too.”

It is difficult to make him understand that it is not the same thing for him as it is for the trees.

Then everyone set upon Fonse. We went to him after supper in
a group. They said to me: “You know how to talk, talk to him; we cannot leave things like this.”

I said to him:

“Fonse, listen: Jofroi is stubborn; there is nothing to be done, he thinks like a drum you know. You are the only intelligent one in the affair, so show it. Do you know what I advise you to do? We'll arrange everything: you give him back his land, and he gives you back your money, no fees for the deal, as you said, of course, you do not need to be out anything, and then it's over. He is an old man, we cannot leave him like this, maybe two years away from his death, with sorrow. Let us arrange it in this manner.”

And Fonse who is the best old fellow in all creation said right away:

“Let's do it.”

But then there was something else.

Jofroi has already deposited everything into the safety deposit box. He no longer has the money. He only has his income.

He is there in the village square; they made Fonse come, everyone is around; there is no gun, there is no risk of anything. We are here to discuss matters.

“Well if you do not have the money,” says Fonse, “what do you expect me to say to you? I cannot give you back your land for nothing; I paid, I did.”

Jofroi is steadfast. Fonse's reasoning is solid. It is a wall to crack your head against. There is nothing to say.

There is something to be said by Fonse, because he is, as I said, the best man in creation: frank like a healthy pig who will give all of his blood so that he can be eaten.

“Listen Jofroi, I will arrange things even so. You have your income; you need so much to live; your land, since you cannot return the money, let's call it a loan. So. It will be there for you as long as you live, and you can do what you like with the trees.”

That seemed like the wisdom of Solomon to us. We all looked on with happy eyes. It was finished. Things were squared away; I even thought that the monument to the dead was not all that bad. We heard magpies singing.

Jofroi does not seem satisfied. He mulls it over and over again.

In the end he says:

“That means that even if you loan it to me, it will not be mine any more. It will still be yours. The trees will be yours.”

“What do you want me to say?” said Fonse desperately.

And the comedy began.

Albéric came, one of the neighbors of Maussan. He was running. He stopped suddenly, whirling his arms, crying out: “Quick, quick, come quick.”

We all began to run towards the farm and, while running, Albéric cried to us:

“Jofroi has thrown himself out the window.”

No, he had not thrown himself out the window. When we arrived he was up there on the roof of the house, well to the side, the tips of his toes on the zinc of the gutter. He cried:

“Move away so I can jump.”

Barbe was there, on her knees in the dust.

“Do not jump Jofroi, do not jump” she cried. “Do not stand there on the edge where the dizziness might get to you, oh, great
God and good Virgin and holy Monsieur le Curé; take him away from there. Do not jump, Jofroi.”

“Take her away from there so I can jump.”

We are all there, not knowing what to do. Fonse went in to get a mattress from the bed; he set it on the stones of the courtyard just at the place where Jofroi might jump.

“Take it away,” cries Jofroi, “take it away so I can jump.”

“You are a beast,” cries Fonse, “What good will it do you to jump?”

“If I want to jump,” responds Jofroi.

“No, no, good mother,” says Barbe.

It went on: jump, do not jump; he kept us there for more than an hour. In the end I called out to him:

“Jump and get it over with.”

Then he stepped back a bit and asked:

“Who was it that said that?”

“I did,” I said, “Yes I did; aren't you done playing the clown up there? Ah, you are making out well on your roof. You are going to break the tiles with your big shoes and break the gutter. That is what you are going to do. And then you will have gotten far. If you are going to jump, then jump and get it over with.”

He thought about it, he looked at us, all of us, mute, below, not knowing how it was going to end, all of us with faces raised towards him, so that he must have thought we were a row of eggs in a basket. Then he said:

“No, if that's the way it is, and since you want me to jump, I will not jump. I will hang myself when no one else is around.”

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.