The Solitude of Compassion

by Jean Giono

  His land, now, disappears under the trickle of woods: a disorder of thistles and wild vines. The pear tree is no longer anything but a dead trunk which supports a heavy, ruffled clematis.

  Did he return alive to all of that pain with his soul filled with thorns? Or did he go to sleep, very comfortably, under the savage foliation, and allow his humid body to bring forth this large, creamy, and bitter milk-wort.

  Ivan Ivanovitch Kossiakoff

  “Let him through: ‘Giono to the captain.’”

  Night. Rain. The entire company splashing, climbing towards reserve positions on the other side of the canal.

  “Let him through: ‘Giono to the captain.’”

  With difficulty I draw myself from the rank and file where mechanical effort is less painful. In the passage I hear Maroi whining.

  “Once again funny face is going to have the best trigger over there.”

  At the head of the column someone mutters in the shadows before me. It is the cyclist. He’s on foot.

  “The captain?”

  “Down there.”

  He indicates the rain, the night.

  “It was you who made the connection with the English in the Zouavian woods?”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “Good, you will go to Fort Pompelle with the Russians for the signaling.”

  “I do not know Russian, Captain.”

  “What the hell?… They will tell you at the canal.”

  (I wonder if he means the right path to follow or a method for learning Russian in five minutes.”

  “Fine, Captain.”

  “Every eight days Gunz will relieve you.”

  The communication trench, they told me, ascended straight ahead. It was still raining. No shells. No sound. Calm sector.

  A little pine woods without branches. A shell had eviscerated the trench. I hurry. My sack weighs me down, my rifle clings to me. I might have a long way to go like this.

  At last the fort, the dirt stairs, then the pit. I inhale deeply. I walk through the grass swollen with water. A thin ray of light reveals the door. I did not see any sentinels, fortunately. What would I have said?

  But when the leaf of the door was pushed there was one. Long, hooded coat, helmet: he is unarmed—it works—he makes a sign for me to stop.

  “Comrade Rousky, Franzous” (which is all the Russian that I know.)

  The man turns towards the back of the corridor lit by a storm lantern and mutters gibberish. There is a stairway which would not sully the manor of Lady Macbeth. There are footsteps above us. I make a gesture to unbuckle my sack; I have chafed shoulders. The extended arm of the sentinel stops me.

  “Me, here, stay, signaling.”

  He does not understand (this is going to be laughable). We go down the stairs.

  The one who arrives is a fat little young man. Pink-faced like a woman, well-traced lips. He has on a grey shirt correctly arranged, and a belt buckled around his waist.

  “What is it?” he says.

  (Ah, a friend, he speaks French.)

  But the sentinel rectifies the situation, salutes and speaks. It must be an officer.

  Finally:

  “What have you come here to do?”

  “6th company of the 140th for the optical signaling…(just who is this officer, he does not have any braids.)

  “Ah! The French liaison from the reserve, very good, very good, I have been forewarned. I was the one who asked for you. You know Morse code?”

  “Yes, Monsieur.”

  (It came out suddenly without reflection.)

  And he does not laugh; it seems natural to him.

  “Follow me. Leave your sack, they will carry it for you.”

  The sentinel disappears. We ascend the Macbeth staircase. A black and narrow corridor. I follow. There is a steel door, that opens with a heavy scraping, then there is a gust of stifling air. Here things are lit with electricity. In the basement the electrogenerator unit beats like a heart. After two detours—(I should have brought my sack, they are going to steal my razor)—the groaning of an accordion greets us. The man-woman opens a casemate. At first tobacco smoke and the accordion—from the ceiling hangs a rudimentary oil lamp—then, silence and in the middle of a blue cloud a little silhouette rises along with an enormous one, broad and tall.

  “Enter,” says my guide.

  He introduces me.

  “Your two comrades: Vassili Borrissenko”—(the musician: emaciated; Chinese mustache with cat’s skin), then a finger extended towards the tall shadow—“Ivan Ivanovitch Kossiakoff.”

  Wristwatch, three o’clock in the morning: I arrived at the fort at eleven o’clock. Ten times the thin man began the same refrain again and again on his accordion. His head hanging, he sings: “Vagonitika, soldati, garanochispiat.” Is he going to let me sleep?

  “There is your bed,” says the man-woman.

  He should have warned Vassili that I do not sleep to music.

  “The rafters, Vaseline, have had enough.”

  He looks at me, and he continues. Vassili, he is not pretty.

  I doze. Music. The flash of a dream: the cat’s mustache. I walk in an immense accordion. A green light: Vassili’s eye. Pain on my right side: the iron of the bed. I turn over. Music. A drop of sleep. A blade of dream: “It is again the funny face who will have the best trigger.” The sentinel must have stolen my razor. Bawling of the accordion: Vagonitika…

  Ah! The dreadful night.

  Then peace—it is a very soft morning in the trenches. The almond trees are blossoming and my feet are caught in a root of couch grass. I pull. It resists. I pull. The sky blackens. I pull. My head hums…

  The casemate, the candle end, but no more music. Vassili is asleep and the colossus pulls my leg to wake me.

  “Ay yah! What is it?”

  Wristwatch. It is seven o’clock in the morning. Already.

  Kossiakoff indicates my signal lantern then the door and he speaks.

  “I do not understand, old chap. Yes, the connection. I am going.”

  I get up.

  Kossiakoff seems to be a good guy. They carved his features like scythe stokes on an old elm tree. But he has a wide smile which illuminates his entire face. He speaks, he speaks.

  (How do you say I do not understand in Russian? The man-woman told me last night; let’s try.)

  “Ne po ni maïo?”

  That’s it. The wash of words stops, and Kossiakoff is astonished.

  “Yes old chap, there is nothing to be done.”

  He makes a gesture to indicate that he does not understand either, then a great silent laugh: “It means nothing.” We leave.

  The signal post is a little narrow hut with squared portholes. Kossiakoff sits down. The skylight which he lets me occupy frames a piece of dirty fog; in the back, barely sketched, the phantoms of trees, the canal. I do not know where to hang my lantern. With his finger Kossiakoff indicates a tree branch stuck in the ground before me.

  “The marking.”

  By chance I send a long ray of light in that direction… Miracle. They respond. A little red glow under the trees. A silent dialogue begins:

  “Artillery?”

  “Yes. Connection at seven o’clock in the morning; in the evening, ordinary code.”

  “Understood… Nothing to signal.”

  “Understood… End of the transmission.”

  And look. It works. I am very proud. Kossiakoff laughs.

  I sleep a lot in the barracks. Opening my eyes I find Kossiakoff in a corner, legs folded, head on his knees. He is looking at me. He has given me the entire place. He has made himself small so as to allow me to sleep at my leisure. I am confused. I want to thank him and make him understand that I am not normally the type who sleeps on duty.

  “I am tired old chap… Last night Champfleury, you understand Champfleury? Vassili (I imitate an imaginary person playing the accordion), Vassili zon zon zon all night long… No sleep (I indicate my head) badly, tired, understand?”
/>   “Ne po ni maïo.”

  He has remained folded in his corner. He makes a gesture for me to take his hooded cloak and cover myself with it.

  The afternoon goes by quickly. I have a letter and three pipes. I read the Bible a little. (My sack arrived intact. They did not touch my razor.) Vassili sleeps, concealed under his grey covering. He does not make any more noise than a bird. At four o’clock we go to attract the artillery’s attention.

  Kossiakoff absolutely insists on holding my lantern. I walk with my arms swinging, like a bourgeois, behind him; from time to time he looks back joyfully. I feel myself attracted to this big boy who no longer speaks but who tries everything to make me happy and lets his high shoulders carry my baggage.

  The front lines are a little on edge. There is a lot of confusion. In the courtyard, under the signal post, a stretcher-bearer rushes by. A battery by the canal begins firing. Here’s the response: a grinding cluster of shells fans out over our heads—and is destroyed in flames and thunder along the canal. One by one all of the French and Russian batteries illuminate themselves. Towards the underground shelter where my company is gathered, little black grains scurry about… Friends… Short whistlings and blows of a club. I lower my head, trembling a little in the legs. A shell explodes on the parapet across from us.

  I verify the direction with the lantern. Kossiakoff is at his post, jaw protruding, teeth clenched, nostrils open. He is breathing deeply. I watch him. A furtive glance towards me.

  “Niett caracho,” he says between his teeth.

  “How’s it going, old chap?”

  A second shell farther on. Pieces fall on our wooden roof. “Once again funny face is going to have the best trigger.” Another quite near. A rumbling strike passes by.

  There in the trees, the illuminated letters.

  Pencil, what is happening?

  I respond: A.S. Attendez;b I am going out for instructions. I open the door. The talus, like a recently awoken dragon, blows a breath of flame, of stone, and of fine stone debris at me. A thought enlightens me: “Got him right in the belly.” The swarm of steel squeals around me “You are going to get it.” I roll into the back of the hut and onto Kossiakoff.

  I hear him say:

  “Niett caracho.”

  A grey ball comes upon us. It is the man-woman. He is covered with dust.

  “The artillery has asked me what is happening, Monsieur.”

  “Nothing.” (The man-woman smiles.) “Respond quickly and do not stay here.”

  He says a few more words to Kossiakoff and leaves like an arrow. Besides, things seem to be building up. A few more strikes, far away, towards the pine woods. One by one our batteries silence themselves. There is a magnificent sunset in the fog with a cloud rearing like a colt. Kossiakoff gives me two vigorous taps on the shoulder. Take up the lanterns and go back arm in arm. Yes, if you want, old chap.

  Upon coming in we wake up Vassili. This damned fellow has slept through the entire alert. He stands up, stretches, and yawns. He mutters something against Kossiakoff who tells him about the whole adventure—I suppose—with powerful wavings of his arms. I amble into a shady corner.

  “Shoot. Again the piano with straps.”

  And the Vagonitika begins. Vassili drinks in the grumblings of the accordion with his cat’s eyes like embers; ecstatic, he leans his head all the way down to the keyboard which his fingers pulverize. Nothing else exists around him, not Kossiakoff who taps his boot to the cadence, nor myself who yawns like a sheep, nor all this leprous earth pockmarked with sores upon which flows the harvest of young men.

  Vassili goes to look for tea. I think that in going to the kitchen I will be able to get some from the man who serves it, and mix it with my tobacco.

  He comes back and begins playing the accordion again.

  Eleven o’clock. Still Vagonitika with some little variations steeped in a heavy gloom like the wind over the swamps. Is it going to go on like last night? It looks that way. Kossiakoff, almost asleep, looks at me; I see his eyes flash in the shadows. I would rather go to sleep out in the corridor: straw mattress, covers, I move out; and Vassili, tireless, stretches his melodymaker like a seller of caramel candy paste.

  The music stops. I hear Kossiakoff’s voice scolding, slightly singing with words that blow like whiplashes. Vassili responds—magpies calling on mountain slopes—the light fluting of sharp notes to occupy the fingers during the discussion. Kossiakoff provides the bass. The last sigh of the accordion. The door opens. Kossiakoff. I am in shadow.

  “Hep.”

  He calls me

  “What do you want?”

  A step towards me; the light strikes his back. I see his big arms open and close several times, imitating Vassili harnessed to his dream.

  “Niett zon, zon, zon, niett.”

  And he makes a sign for me to return to the calmed casemate.

  Afternoon reveries on the slopes of the fort. Grey sun through grey clouds. In a blue patch of sky the flakes of shrapnel search for an invisible target. Flat calm. A cyclist, walking his bicycle, passes unhurriedly along the slope of the canal. The little wind with sharp teeth dances in the thin yellow grasses. A sentence by Spinoza haunts me: “Love is an outgrowth of ourselves…” I find it at all the turns of my thought, like that ironic poster towards which the network of trenches always brings me back when I am lost in the Zouavian woods.

  In my meanderings in the woods I had entered to escape a low-flying plane, I encountered some friends on repair duty.

  “How’s it going Giono?”

  “Eh, funny face, how’s it going?

  “They gave you a good one the other day, didn’t they.”

  I shook a couple of hands. I shook the hand of Devedeux, a good sort, a pimp I think in civilian life (he hides his great bangs under his hood and reveals them when he goes to the canteen). I shook hands with Decorde, a café-concert artist, bloated, adipose, and who outlines his eyelashes with match cinders. I hailed him as he turned—always the last one—the caboose. “You will say to Gunz that he should not bother; I am a volunteer for this post; let the captain know it.”

  I thought about it: here there is Kossiakoff.

  Tonight, there is something vexing his soul. He snorts in the stinking casemate as if to seize a nostalgic whiff of desert grass. I bet that he would happily hear a little tune on the accordion, but his companion, once night falls, goes out with his instrument. We are alone. I know the words that must be spoken to calm this heavy pain of a man stooped under the yoke, but in French, alas!

  And Kossiakoff leads me under the lamp; from his shirt he takes out a little worn wallet, crumbly, with folded corners, and he spreads it out on the table. A photo: a little round and wrinkled face, a winter apple under an otterskin hat, sharp eyes, slightly dreamy.

  I ask:

  “Papa?”

  “Da.”

  He nods. He turns the photo so that it does not gleam under the lamp and looks at it—the photo impassive, distant, he with great sighs.

  Another: an older woman with a veil around her cheeks, a bitter fold in the corner of her lips, very deep. What sort of claw carved that out?

  “Maman? Mama?”

  “Da.”

  I scarcely recall Kossiakoff’s voice: it trembles, he must have had that voice when he was young. There is against me, quite near, the bleeding skin, and I do not know the gesture that is needed to heal the wound.

  Another photo: a young lady, glistening hair pulled back, heavy earlobes, low cheeks, two vast oblong eyes in a moon of fat.

  That I no longer know: papa, mama, international language, but this one: fiancé, sister? I do not know.

  “Who?”

  He indicates his father, his mother, then himself, then the young lady; I do not understand. Then he makes as if to take them all into his arms, embracing them, the family. The little kernel around which his entire pulp of memories has crystallized.

  It is definitely his sister.

  I indicate to hi
m that she is pretty.

  He laughs, says a few hurried words, then he shrugs his shoulders, he gestures: “What is the use of it?”

  How far am I from him!

  I unbutton my vest, and I, too, take out my wallet…an international gesture. We are perhaps a million tonight: Germans, English, Russians, French taking out wallets with photos. And how many similar people consume all the rottenness in the mud that is gorged with fat and blood?

  My father: his good eyes, the beard through which I ran my fingers.

  “Papa?”

  “Da.”

  Now it is my turn to respond—in Russian—with a frog in my throat and a demon in my eyes.

  “Mama?”

  “Da.” (The look of my mother so far away set on this empty space.)

  My cousin.

  Kossiakoff the interrogator shows the photo of his sister.

  “Niet.”

  He asks:

  “Barichna?”

  I repeat: barichna between my teeth without daring to respond yes or no. Then suddenly I recall the Countess of Ségur née Krospotchine…old General Dourakine forgotten on the shelf with the dust, with the barines every five pages; barichna, that must mean mademoiselle; the cousin has too young a face for a madame.

  “Da da Barichna.”

  And we laugh, him, with Russian words that scrape my throat, me thinking about the unknown source of my wisdom.

  Every evening now, once the shadows come, Vassili disappears. He does not return until the morning to throw himself on his bed and sleep. What does he do at night? There is no watch to take? That is his habitual pattern.

  Kossiakoff is the officer who makes the orders.

  I make believe that I am writing a letter. Vassili rummages around and draws gently towards the door. I watch him out of the corner of my eye. He takes the bottle of tea and goes out. I listen; I hear him delicately set the container in a corner; his footsteps fade.