Malevil, Page 26

  Not much of an arsenal. A thought that reminded me of Wahrwoorde’s bow, which at reasonably close range had proved such a formidable and very accurate weapon. Birgitta had once taught me the rudiments of archery theory—a much more complicated matter than you might think at first sight—and amid general skepticism I began to practice out on the road leading up to the outer enclosure. With a little perseverance I began to achieve fairly satisfactory results, and gradually I increased my distance. On my good days I was eventually able to get one arrow out of three into the target at fifty yards. It wasn’t exactly William Tell, or even Wahrwoorde, but basically it was rather better than what you can do at that distance with a shotgun, since after fifty or sixty yards the shot has dispersed so widely as to be almost useless. I was also astonished at the penetration power achieved. The arrows used to embed themselves so deeply in the thick braided target that I sometimes needed both hands to pull them out.

  My success, moderate though it was, nevertheless sufficed to fan the dormant flames of competition in my companions, and archery practice soon became our favorite pastime. In fact before long I was not only caught up but completely outclassed by little Colin, who was regularly getting all three arrows into the target at sixty yards, and then began gradually edging them closer and closer to the bull’s-eye.

  Of the five of us—six counting Jacquet, but he wasn’t allowed to handle weapons yet—Colin was far and away the smallest and the least strong. We were so accustomed to this fact that his smallness seemed to us somehow part of his very essence, and we all tended to call him little Colin, even to his face. It never occurred to us that this might irk him at all, since he had never protested at the custom. And now, quite suddenly, seeing the immense happiness it gave him to feel his superiority to us all once he held a bow in his hand, it dawned on me how much he must always have suffered from his delicate build. The bow itself was taller than he was. But as soon as it was in his hands—which was pretty often, since he was by now practicing far more than the rest of us—he was king. At midday, after the meal, I would watch him sitting in the embrasure of one of the big mullioned windows in the great hall, poring studiously over the little archery manual that Birgitta had once made me buy for myself, and which I had never even opened. In short, little Colin became our great bowman. And that was how I began to refer to him, noticing how much pleasure that word “great” gave him, even in that figurative sense.

  He persuaded Meyssonnier to collaborate with him in the construction of three more bows. Each of us ought to have his own, he said, and he could frequently be heard lamenting the fact that he no longer had his little forge in La Roque (where he had combined the functions of locksmith and plumber), so that he could make more arrowheads for us. I gave him every encouragement in all these activities, because I was only too well aware that the day would eventually come—since our supply of ammunition was limited and we had no means of making more—when our guns would cease to be of use, in a world where it seemed unlikely that violence was going to die out merely from lack of firearms.

  A month had already gone by since Momo had rung the bell at dawn to announce the birth of Marquise’s two calves. One evening at about seven o’clock I had just closed the door of my bedroom in the keep and was about to go down to the house. I had the Bible under my arm, and Thomas was already out on the landing telling me I looked every inch the man of God. My right hand was just turning the key in the lock when suddenly the big bell rang out once more, not a wild clanging like the previous time, but just two solemn notes, followed by a third, much fainter one, making the succeeding silence seem heavy and strange. I froze. It couldn’t be Momo. He would never ring a bell that way. I went back in my bedroom, laid the Bible down on the table, picked up my rifle, and handed a shotgun to Thomas.

  Without speaking, and with Thomas streaking ahead of me as usual once we were on the flat, I ran toward the gate tower. It was deserted. La Menou and Momo were presumably in the house, the one preparing the evening meal, the other hanging around her in the hope of filching a little extra food. As for Colin and Peyssou, who were due to sleep that night in the gate tower, nothing in our arrangements required them to be there during the day. It was brought home to me then, as I ran through the gate tower’s empty rooms making a quick inspection while Thomas remained outside keeping watch on the door, how inadequate our security arrangements really were. The walls of the outer enclosure, being much lower than those of the inner, were not too tall to be scaled with a ladder, or even by someone using nothing more than a rope with a good grappling hook on it. As for the moat, that was spanned not by a drawbridge, as in the case of the inner one, but by an ordinary permanent bridge that made it quite a feasible proposition for attackers to approach the walls on foot, while we were all inside eating our evening meal, and simply scale them at their leisure.

  I re-emerged from the gate tower and told Thomas in a whisper to climb the steps up to the top of the wall and cover our visitor or visitors with his gun through one of the openings in the battlements overhanging the gate. I waited till he was in place, then stole soundlessly over to the Judas in the gate, gently opened it a fraction, and put my eye very gingerly to the slit.

  About a yard away from me, and therefore well this side of the bridge, I saw a man of about forty sitting astride a large gray donkey, the barrel of the gun slung over his back sticking up above his left shoulder. He was bareheaded and had a very dark complexion and black hair. He was wearing a charcoal gray suit, somewhat dusty, and on his chest, suspended by a chain around his neck, there was a large silver crucifix, very like a bishop’s pectoral cross. He looked to be both tall and strong. His features were stamped with the greatest calmness, and I noticed that he did not so much as bat an eyelid when he lifted his eyes toward the battlements and perceived Thomas’s gun aimed down at him.

  I slid the Judas violently open till it hit the stop and I shouted loudly, “What do you want?”

  The violence of my tone had no effect on the visitor. He didn’t even start. He simply looked toward the Judas and answered in a deep, measured voice, “Why, to visit with you in the first place, and then to sleep tonight in the castle. I have no wish to make my return journey during the hours of darkness.”

  I noticed that he spoke well, rather deliberately so, perhaps, enunciating his words with care, and in an accent that without being quite the same as ours was very close to it. I spoke again. “Have you any other weapon on you besides your gun?”

  “No.”

  “You would do well to answer truthfully. We shall search you as soon as you’re inside.”

  “I have a small penknife, but I wouldn’t call that a weapon.”

  “A switchblade knife?”

  “No.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Fulbert le Naud. I am a priest.”

  I made no comment on his claim to the priesthood.

  “Listen, Fulbert. Remove the bolt from your gun and place it in your jacket pocket.”

  He complied immediately, commenting in a noncommittal voice, “You are very suspicious.”

  “We have good cause to be. We have been attacked once.” Then I went on: “Listen. I’m going to open the gate. You will ride in without dismounting. Then you will stop ten yards inside and not dismount until I tell you to.”

  “As you wish.”

  I raised my head. “Thomas, keep him covered the entire time.”

  Thomas nodded. I took my rifle in my right hand, thumbed off the safety catch, tugged the two big bolts open, pulled one half of the door inward, and waited. As soon as Fulbert was through I pushed the door to so quickly that I bumped the donkey’s hindquarters. It gave a jump forward, then kicked back with both legs and almost had our visitor out of his saddle. The horses in the cave began to neigh. The donkey put up its long ears and stood trembling slightly on its legs when Fulbert reined it to a halt.

  “All right, down you get,” I said in patois, “and hand me that bolt.”

&nbsp
; He did as I said, showing that he understood our dialect. I put the bolt into my own pocket. I was more or less convinced that all these precautions were pointless in this particular case; but suspicion has one thing in common with the usual virtues: it is only effective on condition that it allows of no exceptions.

  Thomas came down, without being told, to take the gray donkey by the bridle and lead it to one of the stalls in the cave. I saw him take a bucket off one of the hooks to fetch it some water.

  I turned to Fulbert. “Where are you from?”

  “Cahors.”

  “Yet you understand our patois.”

  “Not all of it. There are differences of vocabulary.”

  It was a subject he seemed to find interesting, because he immediately began comparing certain words in our dialect with those in his own. As he spoke, and he spoke very well, I watched him. He wasn’t tall, as I had thought at first, but he was well proportioned and had a certain elegance of bearing that made him seem tall. As for his face, I didn’t know what to think of that. I let him finish his philological comparisons, then I said, “Have you just come from Cahors?”

  He smiled, and I noticed that he had really a rather attractive smile.

  “Goodness no. I’ve come from La Roque. I happened to be there, you see, when the bomb exploded.”

  I stared at him open-mouthed. “You mean there are survivors in La Roque?”

  “Yes,” he said, “certainly there are.” Then he added, still as calm as ever, “A score or so.”

  —|—

  [NOTE ADDED BY THOMAS]

  The chapter you have just read is notable for an omission so flagrant that I feel I must interrupt Emmanuel’s narrative at this late date in order to repair it. Before writing this I went on to read the next chapter, to make sure that Emmanuel had not retraced his steps, as he sometimes did, and gone more fully into the matter later on. But he didn’t. Not a word about it. It’s almost as though he had just forgotten the whole thing.

  But first of all, since she was the person chiefly concerned, I would like to say a word about Miette. After all of Emmanuel’s poetic effusions, I don’t want to appear as though I’m just trying to deglamorize her. But Miette was really just an ordinary country girl, no different from a great many others. True, she was very healthy and solidly built and she did have, in abundance, all those firm and well-muscled curves that Emmanuel found so attractive. But to imply that Miette was beautiful seems to me to be going much too far. She was no more beautiful, to my eyes at the time, than the Renoir painting of a woman washing herself that Emmanuel had a print of over his bed, or than the photograph of Birgitta drawing her bow that stood on the desk in his room (rather odd, really, that Emmanuel should have kept that picture after the foul letter she wrote telling him about her marriage).

  Nor do I share Emmanuel’s opinion about Miette’s “intelligence” either. Miette was born prematurely, a mute from birth, which meant she had a brain lesion that always prevented her from using her powers of speech, and that also, as a direct consequence, impoverished her apprehension of the world. I am not saying that Miette was an imbecile, or even feeble-minded, because Emmanuel would have had no difficulty at all in reeling off a long list of the occasions when Miette demonstrated great shrewdness in the sphere of human relationships. But from that to claiming that Miette was “very intelligent,” as Emmanuel had assured me on numerous occasions (another example of sexual overestimation), is a step that I for my part am unwilling to take. Miette, while being extremely shrewd, was at the same time very simple. Like a child, she only apprehended half of reality. The rest is all fantasy and fiction, without any reference to fact.

  You may have begun to think I didn’t care much for Miette. On the contrary, I valued her very highly indeed. She was generous, she was goodness itself, and there was not the slightest particle of egotism anywhere in her body. If I believed in such dangerous nonsense, I would say that she was made of the stuff of saints. Except that her goodness showed itself in a field not usually associated with saints.

  The day following the council meeting during which Emmanuel was defeated over his polyandrous project, there was a certain air of suspense throughout Malevil, since we were all wondering which “husband” (Meyssonnier) or which “partner” (Emmanuel) Miette was going to choose. So much so that none of us even dared to look at her any more—as Emmanuel has already described—for fear that the others might think we were trying to steal a march on them. What a change from the shameless stares with which we had been transfixing her the evening before!

  I have no way of telling what Miette thought of our sudden reserve. Because her eyes were like a child’s, “transparent and unfathomable” (I am quoting Emmanuel there, though he doesn’t use the phrase until the next chapter). However, it’s worth adding that during our second day of carting things from L’Étang, Peyssou, the most naturally frank and open of our group, remarked resignedly that obviously “she” was going to choose Emmanuel. This comment was made in the presence of Colin, Meyssonnier, and myself only, the newcomers all being inside the troglodyte dwelling at the time, busy packing up their belongings. Not without a certain gloom, we all three expressed the opinion that it was, as Peyssou had said, obvious.

  Evening came. After the meal there was the usual Bible reading, followed now by three additional and fervent listeners, though rather inattentively, I fear, by us four. Emmanuel was in his usual position propped against one side of the fireplace, and Miette was seated in the center of the half circle of chairs, her face and body lit and reddened by the fire’s dancing flames. I remember it well, that evening: my sense of expectation, or rather our sense of expectation, and how Emmanuel’s voice, though so warm and rich, infuriated me by its slowness. I don’t know whether it was from the fatigue after our hard day, the nervous strain of our uncertainty, or the complicity of the half-darkened room, but the reserve that had been constraining us during the day melted away. We all had our eyes riveted on Miette as she sat there, every curve highlighted, completely relaxed, absorbed in the reading. And yet she made no pretense of being unaware of our gaze. From time to time she allowed her eyes to meet ours, and then she would smile. She smiled at all of us like that, impartially, Emmanuel has already described her smile, and it is true that it was extremely attractive, even though it was identical for all of us.

  At the end of the evening, with the most completely natural air, Miette got to her feet, took Peyssou by the hand, and left with him.

  Peyssou was extremely glad, I suspect, that the fire had by then been banked over with ashes, so there was very little light in the great hall. He was even happier, I think, at being able to turn his back on us so that we could not see his face. And we, the others, stayed there in front of the fire, silent and dismayed, while La Menou lit our lamps for us, muttering a string of acid comments less than flattering to our little group of slumping rejects.

  Our surprises were not at an end. Next evening Miette chose Colin. The day after that, myself. On the fourth day, Meyssonnier. On the fifth, Jacquet. On the sixth, she again chose Peyssou. And she went on like that, always keeping strictly to the same order, without ever choosing Emmanuel.

  No one felt like laughing, and yet the situation did verge on the comic. There was not one of us who had not been made to look ridiculous. The advocate of polyandry now found himself the only one excluded from the practice he had championed. And the stiff-necked partisans of monogamy were all sharing Miette without the slightest shame.

  On one point there was no mystery whatever. Miette was acting quite spontaneously, without any knowledge of our discussions and without asking advice from anyone else. If she gave herself to us all, that was simply because we all wanted her very much, and because she was kind. Because making love was something Miette could take or leave. Which is hardly surprising when you think of how she was initiated into it.

  As for the order in which Miette selected her partners, it dawned on us after a very short while that it was q
uite simply based on our positions around the meal table. And yet there still remained the one colossal enigma: Why was Emmanuel—whom she adored—excluded from her rota?

  There was no doubt that she did worship him, and like a child too, without the least shame about showing it. He had only to enter the room and she had eyes only for him. When he spoke, she hung upon his lips. When he left, she followed him with her eyes. It was quite easy to imagine Miette pouring precious ointment upon Emmanuel’s feet, then wiping them with her long hair. This comparison should not be taken as a sign that I was allowing myself to be infected by the religious atmosphere of our fireside evenings. I merely borrow it from little Colin.

  When my turn came around for the third time, I resolved to get to the bottom of the matter by asking Miette the reason outright, in the privacy of her room. But although Miette had at her disposal a whole arsenal of gestures and mimes with which she could make herself understood (and she also knew how to write), it was not always easy to carry on a dialogue with her, for the simple reason that without being unmannerly you could never reproach her for her lack of communication, as you would another woman, if you suspected that it was deliberate. As soon as I asked Miette why she still hadn’t singled out Emmanuel, her face became as blank as a lump of wood, and she refused to do anything but just shake her head. The same question put in several different forms always produced the same response.

  So I changed my approach. Didn’t she like Emmanuel? Vigorous and repeated nods, eyelashes lowered over tenderly melting eyes, lips apart, face upturned. I promptly put my first question again: Then why? Her eyes and mouth immediately closed, and once again she refused to do anything but shake her head stubbornly to and fro. We were getting nowhere. I left the bed, went over to my jacket, and took out the little notebook in which I recorded all the withdrawals and returns from the tool store, and on one of the pages, by the faint light of her little lamp, I printed in large capitals: “WHY NOT EMMANUEL?” Then I handed the notebook and pencil to Miette. She drew up her knees, rested the notebook on them, sucked the pencil, then with enormous concentration wrote, “Because.” After a moment’s reflection, she even added a period mark after the “Because,” presumably in order to make it clear that this answer was definitive.