The Solitude of Compassion by Jean Giono

had the desire to go to sleep there, alone.”
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    â€œI got off at the next station. But I did not know how to find that valley that I had seen from the train. I climbed up into the hills and I came here.”
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    He displayed the immobile waves of the undergrowth, on the other side of his own land; and above all I saw the great scaly tentacle that the brambles had cast. It seemed to have crept a little more across the turf.
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    Another day he said to me:
    â€œGive me a little tobacco.”
    The big brambles were extended all the way across the onion patch. A hardy clematis pointed a green arrow towards the pear tree which the wind caused to tremble.
    I left him the entire packet.
    And when I came back a week later, the door was closed. The
underbrush blew gently, like an enormous beast shaking. His violets on the threshold were dying. Two or three irises, of the kind which are well adapted to life in the wild, were blossoming despite the mute hostility of the woods.
    One morning, by the post office, I was waiting for the country postman, the one who served his section of town.
    â€œI recall,” he responded, “three weeks ago (which was about the time that the man had begun confiding in me) he gave me a letter addressed to Italy, even though I did not know the precise tariff. After that, he came every day to meet me awaiting a response. He had promised to give me the stamps, my little daughter collects them. The response did not come. I have not seen him since.
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    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
    â€œLet him through: ‘Giono to the captain.’”
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    Night. Rain. The entire company splashing, climbing towards reserve positions on the other side of the canal.
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    â€œLet 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.
    â€œOnce 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.
    â€œThe captain?”
    â€œDown there.”
    He indicates the rain, the night.
    â€œIt was you who made the connection with the English in the Zouavian woods?”
    â€œYes, Captain.”
    â€œGood, you will go to Fort Pompelle with the Russians for the signaling.”

    â€œI do not know Russian, Captain.”
    â€œWhat 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.”
    â€œFine, Captain.”
    â€œEvery eight days Gunz will relieve you.”
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    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.
    â€œComrade 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