The Solitude of Compassion by Jean Giono Page B

sees.
    â€œBetter! You know that I got it when I was young. The day of the procession for Saint-Pancrace. It was warm, it was May around here, everything was sunny and there was the thick steam of the earth, and I followed the saint, with my hat off, at high noon, at the height of the heat. The one who carried the reliquary in front was
named Mathurin, he was a woodworker from Observantine Road. At Notre-Dame, I was one of the first people in the church. The cold gripped my head. They put the reliquary down into the crypt: ‘Boy, lend a hand,’ said Mathurin, ‘It is heavy.’ I put my shoulder under the reliquary, beside the shoulder of Mathurin, and I helped set the holy corpse down. I said to myself: ‘You have something out of sorts in your head.’ Below it was black. Since then it has been black. They brought me back up by lending me a hand. They did not say a thing. I did not say a thing; I was dumbstruck. I was young. I remember the last thing that I saw: Mathurin’s shoulder, and then a big candle that was weeping, and then the stairway below my feet. My foot stepped on it, and then nothing.
    â€œI stayed for a long time in my chair. They placed me in front of the door. My mother kept saying: ‘Look, look, just try.’ I tried and still I had a black brain. In the end I gave it up and cried, I left my eyes alone, I said no. Then, and from that moment on, all that was around me said yes to me and I began to see.”
    I watch this hand in the grass. It touches a sprig of thyme. The big fingers follow the twisted wood then the palm caresses this cheek of flowers.
    â€œI recall the time when I was a young man. My beard grew. Across from our house was a seamstress shop. At four o’clock vespers they allowed the girls to go out into the courtyard by the iron pits, you know, where there is that old wall older than the town. They came up to me. The ladies called over to me: ‘Fidéline, Fidélin,’ then ‘Here is your cane,’ then ‘You look like Jesus Christ,’ but very nicely, leaning against me rubbing, making me smell the openings of their blouses, laughing, telling me, ‘Give me your hand’ and they put things that were round and warm into my hands, fleshy things that I knew later to be breasts. But there it was in the
blouse. Poor me! A young man of twenty without eyes! You understand, Monsieur Jean?”
    â€œI understand Fidélin, I understand that I would have suffered. All that suffering which I avoided. Never again will I complain, Fidélin. I was twenty, and I had my eyes, may the good Lord protect them!”
    â€œNo, it’s not that. You understand, Monsieur Jean, all the happiness that it gave me? They were not mean. One fine day, one of them came all alone. She said to me: ‘It is evening,’ then ‘you cannot see anymore, but they broke the lamp at the end of the road,’ then ‘I was the one who broke the lamp with rocks, last night.’ I said ‘I heard you.’ ‘Touch,’ she said to me. She took my hand and placed it open on her face. ‘Touch my eyes,’ she told me, ‘touch my nose, touch my mouth, touch my chin; you feel how fine my skin is? You feel how it makes a stream there between the cheek and the nose? You feel how round my cheek is, perfectly round, and then there, between my nose and my mouth, this little border with two slopes, and then pass your fingers there, over my lips, you feel how soft they are? And also the design, follow it, and then, you see, I’ll kiss your fingers, touch my hair…’—‘Yes,’ I said, ‘you are beautiful. ’—‘My name is Antonia,’ she told me: ‘I love you, and you?’”
    He stopped speaking. After a moment, he shrugged his shoulders.
    â€œWell, I have to say something to keep myself amused, don’t I, Monsieur Jean?”

Annette or A Family Affair
    â€œYou must