Malevil, Page 29

  “One?” I said. “Why not all three? They have five horses at La Roque, and five men with good mounts could bring that one off with ease. They appear out of nowhere, they knock out our lookouts, and goodbye cows!” I was pleased at being able to slip the horses in there, and for a good reason.

  “We can protect ourselves,” Colin said. “We have weapons.”

  I looked at him. “So have they. And more than us. We have four guns. At La Roque they have ten. Plus, and I quote Fulbert, ‘a large stock of ammunition.’ We can’t say the same.”

  Silence. We were all thinking with dread of what a war between La Roque and us would mean.

  “I can’t believe such things of the folk at La Roque,” La Menou said with a shake of her head. “They were all born in these parts. They are good honest folk.”

  I indicated the three newcomers. “Good honest folk? And what about them, aren’t they good honest folk? Yet look what happened.” And I added in patois, “One rotten apple will spoil a whole basket.”

  “Ah, that’s true, that’s very true,” La Falvine said, particularly delighted at being able to chime in on my side, because it enabled her to contradict La Menou, without risk, at the same time. But La Menou decided to come around to my opinion too. So did Colin, so did Peyssou.

  “Yes, you’re quite right, Emmanuel,” Meyssonnier said in his turn. And raising his eyes to heaven, finger pointed in the direction of the keep so that everyone should take his meaning, he repeated, still in patois, “One rotten apple will spoil a whole basket.”

  I saw Thomas lean over, ask Meyssonnier for a translation of the proverb, then nod approvingly. Ah, the power those old saws still have! One good adage and suddenly we were unanimous. Fulbertists and anti-Fulbertists were all agreed. It was only on the identity of the rotten apple that we differed slightly. In the minds of some it was clear beyond a doubt, in those of the others it was still unspecific.

  Having had my success, I lapsed into silence. The conversation began to turn in circles. The debate was running down, and I let it run down. In the others’ voices, in their postures, in their general edginess, I could sense fatigue creeping in. But if they were tired, so much the better. I would wait.

  And I didn’t have to wait long, because after one particularly long pause Colin said, “Well, and you, Emmanuel, what do you think?”

  “Oh, me,” I said. “I’ll go along with the majority.”

  They stared at me, disconcerted by this sudden modesty. All except Thomas, in whose eyes I discerned a look of irony. But he wasn’t going to say anything out loud. He was making progress, our Thomas. He had learned caution.

  I still said nothing. And as I intended, they insisted.

  “All the same, Emmanuel,” Peyssou said, “you must have your little notion about it?”

  “Ah, well, perhaps I do,” I said. “And my first little notion is that someone is trying to put one over on us with those little babies. [My “someone,” naturally, being the rotten apple, but still unspecified.] Because imagine, Menou [and here I slipped into patois], when Momo was still a little baby. If you had no milk for him, not a drop, well, tell me, would you stop him going to people who had some, who’d feed him when he cried? And would you have the gall to say to them, ‘It’s not the milk for my Momo I want from you, just give me your cow!?’”

  I had said absolutely nothing different from what Thomas had said a little earlier. But I had said it in wholly concrete terms. The same flowers, but a better arrangement. And I’d hit my bull’s-eye. I could read that on their faces.

  “Right,” I said after a moment, “so when we go over and visit them, in La Roque, we’ll get to the bottom of that. We’ll ask the mothers just how much truth there is in it. But even so, the fact remains, as you’ve said, that we have three cows while the La Roque folk haven’t even one for twenty of them. And given that fact, just imagine how easy it might be for someone to stir them up against us [still that vague “someone”] and put ideas into their heads. And when there are so many more of them than us, when they’re so much better armed, make no mistake, those ideas are bound to be very nasty ones.”

  Silence.

  “Yes. Yes,” Peyssou said slowly, more at sea than ever. “So you think then, Emmanuel, that we ought to give them the cow?”

  I exploded with indignation. “Give it to them! Ah, no! Never! Whatever else we do we mustn’t give it to them. We mustn’t be put in the position, as Meyssonnier said, of paying tithes! As if it were their due! A tax! As if it were the right of townspeople to eat for nothing at the expense of the people in the country! That would be all we need! How could they ever respect us again, those La Roque folk, if they knew we’d been boobies enough to give them a cow!”

  All eyes flashed with shared indignation. Absolute unanimity among Fulbertists and anti-Fulbertists alike. Thousands of generations of peasants were there behind me, beside me, urging me on. I felt the ground solid beneath my feet, and I pressed on.

  “In my opinion, we must make them pay for their cow. And pay a good price too! Because we weren’t the ones who wanted to take her to market. They’re the ones who want to buy.”

  I paused and gave them a shameless wink, as much as to say, I’m not a horse dealer and the nephew of a horse dealer for nothing. Then speaking slowly and distinctly, I said, “In exchange for our cow, we shall ask them for two horses, three guns, and five hundred cartridges.”

  I paused again, to stress the exorbitant nature of my demands. Silence, exchange of inquiring looks. My success—as I had expected—was considerably less than total.

  “The guns, those I understand,” Colin said. “They have ten, so we take three and leave them with seven. Which means that with the four we already have, we then have seven too. We’d be on an equal footing. And the cartridges too, that’s a good idea, because we don’t have all that many left.”

  Silence. I looked around. Although no one was willing to come out and say it, it was the first part of the bargain they couldn’t understand. Suddenly I was feeling rather tired, but I pulled myself together and went on. “I know what you’re thinking: Why the horses? We already have enough of those now: Malabar, Amarante, Bel Amour, not to mention Malice. Two more horses is two more animals to feed, you may be thinking, and we’ll not be getting much milk out of them either, those horses. And you’d be right. But. Just stop and take a look at our real situation on the horse front, here at Malevil. Malice, still too young to be of any use. And Bel Amour too, idle while she’s suckling Malice. So that leaves us with just two horses for both riding and working: Malabar and Amarante. And I say that two saddle horses among six able-bodied men is just not enough. Because there’s one thing you’ve all got to get through your heads [I leaned forward and spoke as emphatically as I could], every one of you here has to learn to ride one of these days. And I mean everyone! Why? I’ll tell you. Because ‘before the day it happened,’ here in the country, the people who always got the rough end of the stick, men or women, the nobodies, were those who didn’t drive a car. And now, the nobodies are going to be all those who don’t ride, who don’t have a horse. In peace and war both. Because if you’re fighting, if you want to make a lightning attack, or even if you want to get away quickly when things go against you, there is no other way now but the horse. The horse replaces everything: motorbike, automobile, tractor, even the machine gun. As of now, without a horse you are nothing. Peasant cattle to be exploited, nothing else.”

  I wasn’t sure whether I’d convinced La Menou and La Falvine, but the men yes, beyond a doubt. It wasn’t the appeal to their warlike instincts that had tipped the scales, it was the status argument. The definition of a nobody as a man without a horse. Just as “before,” the nobody was by definition the farmer without a tractor. They were all quite crazy around here when it came to tractors. Even the man with no more than twenty acres had to have his tractor, sometimes even two! People would rush into debt to buy the latest umpteen-horse-power monster, then keep the old one “a
s a standby.” Like So and So up the lane! Can’t let him get away with that! All for the pitiful twenty acres they were prepared to farm, and the rest just useless woods!

  Never mind, even men’s follies have their uses. At least this one helped me pull the trick of switching the tractor’s glamour and prestige back to the horse.

  We voted. Even the women were in favor. I heaved a tired sigh of relief, then got to my feet. Everyone else followed suit, and under cover of the ensuing clatter and chatter I went over to Meyssonnier and Thomas in order to tell them in a low voice that I wanted to speak to them both later up in my room. They agreed.

  I asked for silence again and said, “I shall be hearing Mass tomorrow and taking communion—that is if Fulbert does not object, since I don’t intend to go to confession.”

  This announcement caused general amazement. I knew it had aroused anger in some (but they restrained it, knowing that they would soon be talking to me in private) and joy in the others. Especially in La Menou, and for a very particular reason. She had been at daggers drawn with our priest in Malejac, before the day it happened, because he had stuck rigidly to the letter of the law—no confession, no sacred wafer—and in consequence would never let Momo take communion. And now, if Fulbert gave way to me on this point, there was a hope in her heart that her son would be able to follow me through the breach I had made.

  I went on: “But those who do confess would do well to be very cautious if anyone [no one in particular, of course] asks them indiscreet questions about Malevil.”

  Silence.

  “What sort of questions?” Jacquet burst out suddenly, aware of how weak and easily influenced he was and already afraid he was bound to say too much.

  “Well, questions about how well armed we are, for instance. Or about our stocks of wine or grain or ham, and so on.”

  “But what shall I say if he asks me questions like that?” Jacquet asked, desperate to do the right thing.

  “Just say, ‘Oh, I wouldn’t know about that. You must ask Emmanuel.’”

  “Now listen to me, lad,” big Peyssou said, laying a bearlike arm around Jacquet’s neck, his great face split in a broad grin. (That knock on the head seemed to have turned them into the best of friends.) “There’s nothing to it. To be quite sure you don’t make any mistakes, you just answer like that to everything. For example: Fulbert asks you, ‘My son, have you committed the sin of the flesh?’ And you answer, ‘Oh, I wouldn’t know about that. You must ask Emmanuel.’”

  Everyone laughed. With Peyssou, because he was so pleased with his joke, and with Jacquet too, as well as at him. Our poor serf reeled under the friendly thumps and guffaws. He was in his seventh heaven. L’Étang had never been like this.

  The interview with Thomas and Meyssonnier up in my room shortly afterward was a little strained. They both immediately sailed into me for having played Fulbert’s game (and even, ultimate horror, having said I would take communion) instead of throwing him out on his neck for the mountebank he was. I explained my position. I was afraid of an armed conflict with La Roque, that was the heart of the matter. And I didn’t want to give Fulbert even the slightest excuse—either material or religious—to foment one. That was why I had suggested surrendering the cow on terms that would weaken his firepower. And also why I was prepared to go along with the religious beliefs of the Malevil majority.

  “It’s a compromise, in fact,” I told them. “And you of all people ought to be able to understand that, Meyssonnier. Your party was not so averse to them in its day.” Meyssonnier blinked. “As for Fulbert, I’m as near certain as it’s possible to be that he’s no priest. My redheaded friend Serrurier at the seminary was a total fabrication, and yet Fulbert remembered him! In short, he’s an impostor, an adventurer, a man totally without scruples. And all the more dangerous on that account. If you were wise, you and Thomas, you would attend his Mass tomorrow too. After all, it’s not really a Mass, since Fulbert isn’t a priest, and it won’t be a real communion, because if he’s not a priest there won’t have been a real consecration.”

  I could scarcely go any further than that, I felt, in my attempt to bring them around, and I was secretly rather enjoying the thought of the irony that my success would imply: persuading them to attend a Mass by convincing them that it in fact wasn’t a Mass.

  Just at that moment we heard someone scratching at the door. Not knocking. Scratching. I froze, looked at my two guests, then at my watch. One in the morning. In the silence we heard the scratching again. I took my rifle from the gun rack Meyssonnier had built on the wall opposite the foot of my bed, gestured to Meyssonnier and Thomas to arm themselves likewise, lifted the latch, and pulled the door very slightly ajar. It was Miette.

  After the briefest of pauses in order to smile at Thomas, whom she was expecting to see there, and then Meyssonnier, whose presence surprised her, she immediately began using her hands, her lips, her eyes, her eyebrows, her torso, her legs, and even her hair, in order to speak to me. It was a spontaneously devised method of communication all her own, having no connection with the formal sign language usually called “deaf-and-dumb,” which she had never learned and I certainly wouldn’t have understood. What she had to convey was pretty startling. When she had gone up with Fulbert to “his” room after the meal, he had asked her to come back and visit him when everyone was asleep (circular motion of pointed finger to indicate “everyone” then two hands palms together under her cheek for “sleeping”). She was certain he wanted her to make love to (the gesture here was indescribably crude). Having seen the light in my room (little finger of right hand raised, the other hand describing a halo around its tip to denote a flame), she had come up to ask if she should go to him.

  “I have nothing to say against it,” I said when she’d finished. “You are free to do as you wish, Miette. No one is going to put any pressure on you, either one way or the other.”

  All right then, I’ll go, she mimed. Managing to convey, however, that it was purely out of politeness and reluctance to disappoint him, not out of any enthusiasm.

  “Don’t you like him then, Miette?”

  Squint and praying hands (Fulbert), then right hand on heart, and finally the forefinger of the same hand shaken vigorously to and fro in front of her nose. After which she swiftly vanished, leaving us all standing there looking at the door she had just closed behind her.

  “Oh, that fellow,” Thomas said.

  “You could have said something to stop her,” Meyssonnier said, scowling and speaking through clenched teeth.

  I shrugged. “By what right? You know the principle as well as I do. She must be left to do exactly as she pleases.”

  I looked at them. They were both furious, outraged, like cuckolded husbands. It was a paradoxical and perhaps even a slightly comic emotion, because after all we weren’t jealous of one another. Probably because the sharing of Miette had been kept wholly inside the group, in full view of all, with everyone’s knowledge. There was therefore no unfaithfulness involved, or even any moral laxity. In fact our arrangement had already acquired a wholly reassuring quasi-institutional character. Whereas in Fulbert’s case, not only did he not belong to the group, he had also acted with the utmost underhandedness.

  Thomas and Meyssonnier pointed out that if Miette had not been the honest person she was, we would never even have known about her “adultery.” Not that they actually used that term, since they did have some sense of the ridiculous, after all, but the concept was not far from their minds. You only had to see the way they were boiling with rage.

  “What a swine!” Meyssonnier said, and then, since it didn’t satisfy him sufficiently in French, he said it in patois too.

  And Thomas, emerging for once from his usual impassivity, enthusiastically agreed.

  “But at all events,” Meyssonnier said threateningly, “you can count on one thing. I shall be letting Colin and Peyssou know first thing tomorrow how Master Fulbert spent his night.”

  I exclaimed in alarm, “
You won’t tell them, surely!”

  “And why not?” Meyssonnier said. “They have a right to know about it too, don’t you think?”

  It was true. They too had the right to know how they had been deceived. And Colin especially, since he had been doubly deceived.

  “And even Jacquet. I shall tell him too,” Meyssonnier added with clenched fists. “The serf has the same rights as all of us.”

  I gave ground a little, still hoping to restrain him. “All right then, tell Colin if you wish,” I said, “but not Peyssou. Or at least wait till Fulbert’s off the premises before you do. You know what Peyssou’s like. He’s quite likely to smash his teeth in.”

  “And he’d be quite right!” Thomas said, his own teeth tightly clenched.

  For Miette, not a word or even, I was sure, a single thought of blame; on the contrary, a total certainty that the knavish Fulbert had foully abused the poor girl’s sense of duty and hospitality. I was also sure that if I were to suggest rousing Colin, Peyssou, and Jacquet from their slumbers there and then, so that we could all go together and smash down Fulbert’s door with a view to booting him out of the castle forthwith, donkey as well, then the proposal would be instantly acclaimed. Not wishing under any circumstances to take part in any such scene, I contented myself with imagining it briefly. And as I pictured those six cuckolded husbands hurling themselves into Miette’s room and beating the living daylights out of their wife’s lover, I couldn’t help bursting into laughter.

  “There’s nothing to laugh about,” Meyssonnier said sternly.

  “No, but we really must get to bed now,” I said. “What’s done is done, you know.”

  This soothing truism failed to soothe him in the slightest, or soothe them, I should say, since though Thomas was doing less talking, he was raging inwardly just as much.

  “What sickens me most,” Meyssonnier said, “is the thought that he tried to take advantage of the poor girl’s disability. He thought to himself, She’s dumb. She can’t tell anyone... And how could I possibly attend that Mass of his tomorrow,” he went on in a much louder voice, “sitting there and listening to him churning out all that imbecile rubbish about sins, knowing what I know now! But you’re right,” he added, noticing my impatient expression. “It’s time I went off to bed.”