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Malevil, Page 31

Robert Merle

  “As you wish,” Fulbert said.

  My little rebuff had not succeeded in making him lose one jot of his majesty, and it was with a gesture of the utmost graciousness that he ushered Jacquet into his confessional.

  “Peyssou,” I said immediately, “would you do something for me?”

  “Of course I will,” Peyssou said.

  “I want you to take all the guns into the room next to mine and give them a good clean. And make a good job of it, soldier! One speck of dirt and it’s the guardhouse for you!”

  This military language tickled his fancy, and he accepted the chore. At which I was delighted, not because it meant clean guns, since they were all perfectly clean already, but because it meant Peyssou was safely out of circulation until the time came for Mass. Things were complicated enough already without having a berserk Peyssou on my hands as well.

  Alone in my room, I pulled off my sweater and undershirt and set about freshening myself up. I was in an extremely anxious, nervous state. I couldn’t stop thinking about the interview ahead and offering myself a few of my own counsels of moderation. In order to get my mind off Fulbert I opened the drawers of my bureau and indulged in the pleasure of choosing a clean shirt. My shirts were my one luxury. I had literally dozens and dozens—woolen ones, twill ones, poplin ones. La Menou took care of them, since she would never allow “someone from outside” to stain them in the wash or scorch them with a clumsy iron.

  I had scarcely finished buttoning up my clean shirt when there was a knock. It was Fulbert. He must have dealt pretty summarily with our Jacquet. He walked in, his eyes fell on the open drawers, and it was at this point that he made the “fraternal” request I have already mentioned.

  And I confess I acceded to it with rather ill grace. We all have our weaknesses, and I set great store by my shirts. Though it was true that his—if it was his only one—was indeed threadbare, and he seemed absolutely delighted at being able to exchange it, there and then, for one of mine. I was amazed, as I have already said, at the sight of Fulbert undressed. Because his torso, in contrast to his emaciated face, was very well fleshed indeed. Not that he was lacking in muscles, but his muscles, like those of black boxers, were generously covered. In short, everything about him was a snare and a delusion, even his physical appearance.

  I courteously offered him the big chair at my desk to sit in, but it was a courtesy that paid dividends, since it meant I had to sit on the sofa with my back to the light, thereby making it difficult for him to see my face.

  “I thank you for the shirt, Emmanuel,” he said with calm dignity.

  As he finished buttoning the collar and knotting his gray knitted tie, he fixed me with a deeply serious gaze, albeit tempered with a bland smile. He was clever, Fulbert, subtle even. He must have sensed that something had gone wrong, that his plans were in danger, that I represented some kind of threat to him. His gaze was like a long feeler cautiously probing its way all over and around me.

  “Will you permit me to ask you a few questions?” he said eventually.

  “Ask away.”

  “I was informed in La Roque that you were somewhat lukewarm in your attitude toward religion.”

  “That’s true. I was, as you say, somewhat lukewarm.”

  “And that you have led a somewhat unedifying life here.” He accompanied the words with a disarming little smile, but I didn’t respond to it.

  “What exactly do they mean in La Roque by a somewhat unedifying life?”

  “Not very edifying where women are concerned.”

  I pondered that. I certainly didn’t want him to get away with the remark. But then neither did I want to provoke an open break between us. I was searching for a compromise reply.

  “You must be aware, Fulbert,” I said in the end, “how difficult it is for a vigorous man like myself, or you, to do without a woman.”

  As I spoke I raised my eyes and looked straight into his. He didn’t flinch. He remained absolutely impassive. Too impassive even. Because given that “insidious sickness” sapping his strength and that “one foot in the grave,” he should have protested at the vigor I had attributed to him. Proof that it was not that aspect of my reply that had caught his attention.

  Suddenly he smiled. “It doesn’t bother you, I hope, Emmanuel, answering my questions? I wouldn’t like it to appear that I was confessing you against your will.”

  Once again I ignored the smile. I said with slightly chilly gravity, “It doesn’t bother me.”

  He continued. “When did you last partake of the Holy Sacrament?”

  “When I was fifteen.”

  “They say you were very much influenced by your Protestant uncle.”

  He wasn’t going to catch me out with that one. I rejected the suspicion of heresy with vigor. “My uncle was indeed a Protestant. I, however, am a Catholic.”

  “A somewhat lukewarm one though.”

  “Yes, I was, it’s true.”

  “You mean you aren’t lukewarm any longer?”

  “You ought to know that.”

  It was said pretty ungraciously, and the fine shifty eyes blinked slightly. “Emmanuel,” he said in his most resonant voice, “if you are referring to your evening readings from the Old Testament, I am bound to tell you that however much I may admire the purity of your intentions, I don’t think those readings are very good for your companions here.”

  “It was they who asked for them.”

  “I am aware of that,” he said rather snappily.

  I said nothing. I didn’t even bother to ask how he was aware of it. After all, I knew perfectly well already.

  “I am intending to create a vicar at La Roque,” Fulbert went on, “and then, with your permission, to appoint him as spiritual adviser here at Malevil.”

  I stared at him with assumed astonishment. “But Fulbert... How can you ordain a priest when you’re not a bishop?”

  He lowered his eyes with great humility. “In normal times you would be right, of course. But circumstances today are not normal. And the Church must go on, after all. What would happen if I died tomorrow? Without a successor?”

  The impudence of this was so flagrant that I decided I couldn’t let it pass. I smiled. “Of course,” I said, still smiling. “Of course. I realize perfectly that as things are today there can be no question of attending the seminary at Cahors, with or without Serrurier.”

  Momentarily he gave himself away. Although his face didn’t move, his eyes, even though it was for no more than half a second, blazed with fury. Quite frightening, our Fulbert. In that brief glance I sensed a vast reservoir of barely restrained violence and hate. I also sensed that he was no coward. If the challenge had been only slightly more open, he would have been ready to take it up in earnest.

  “You are certainly not unaware,” he said with perfect calm, “that in the primitive Church the bishops were elected by the assembled faithful. Taking my authority from that precedent, it would therefore be quite in order for me to present my candidate to the suffrage of the assembled faithful of La Roque.”

  “Of Malevil,” I said curtly. “Of Malevil, since it is at Malevil that he would be officiating.”

  He didn’t take up my objection. He preferred to get back onto solider ground. “I have taken note,” he went on gravely, “that you did not come to make your confession. Are you perhaps opposed to the practice of confession in principle?”

  The heresy trap again.

  “Not in the slightest,” I answered energetically. “It’s just that confession doesn’t help me personally.”

  “Doesn’t help you!” he exclaimed with expertly acted astonishment and shock.

  “No.”

  And when I didn’t go on, he continued in a gentler tone. “Would you be good enough to explain what exactly you mean by that?”

  “Well, even when I’ve been absolved of my sins, I still go on blaming myself for them.”

  Quite true, as it happens. I do in fact have the unfortunate kind of conscience
that doesn’t wash easily. I can still remember the precise fact, about five years ago, that crystallized the uselessness of confession as far as I personally was concerned: that I was still feeling remorse, scarcely attenuated at all, for a very cruel albeit childish action committed twenty years before.

  While I was reminiscing in this way, I could hear Fulbert delivering a series of routine priestly admonishments. But he was delivering them with a great deal of genuine fire, it suddenly struck me. Once a layman starts playing the priest, he can usually leave most real priests standing.

  Fulbert must have noticed that I was only half listening, because the flow abruptly stopped. “In short, then,” he said, “you do not wish to confess?”

  “That’s right.”

  “In that case I don’t know that I shall be able to admit you to communion as you say you wish.”

  “Why not?”

  “You must be aware,” he said, with a flick of the whip in the smooth voice, “that one must be in a state of grace in order to receive communion.”

  “Oh, yes, but I feel you’re exaggerating a little there, you know,” I said. “There were quite a few priests in France, before the day it happened, who didn’t link communion and confession directly like that.”

  “And they were wrong!” Fulbert said in a cutting voice. His lips were pinched together, his eyes glittering. I was stopped in my tracks. This impostor, strange as it might seem, was also a fanatic. A real fascist-style traditionalist. He misunderstood the reason for my silence and decided to thrust home. “Don’t ask the impossible of me, Emmanuel. How can I give you communion if you are not in a state of grace?”

  “Very well,” I said, looking him in the eyes, “in that case we must pray to God to put us in that state. Me after all those years I have lived without the sacraments, and you after the night you’ve just spent in Malevil.”

  It was the hardest I could hit him without bringing about an open breach between us. But Fulbert’s poise was obviously colossal, because he didn’t twitch a muscle. Nor did he speak. He appeared not to have heard me even. Though in a sense his very silence accused him, since if he wished to appear innocent he ought to have asked me what I meant by his night in Malevil.

  “Yes, we shall pray, Emmanuel,” he said after a moment in resonant tones. “We always have need of prayer. And I for my part will pray most particularly that you will agree to receive the abbé I shall be sending here to you.”

  “That is not something that depends on me,” I answered very smartly, “but upon all of us. Our decisions are all taken in accordance with the wishes of the majority, and when I am in the minority I accept the fact.”

  “I know, I know,” he said as he got to his feet. Glancing at his watch, he added, “It is time I began thinking about my Mass.”

  I rose as well, and informed him of the terms upon which we had decided to let La Roque have our cow. When I mentioned the guns, he shot a glance at the rack that Meyssonnier had built in my room, seemed astonished to find it empty, but said nothing. On the other hand he kicked quite hard when I came to the horses.

  “Two!” he exclaimed with a start. “Two! That seems to me rather excessive! You mustn’t go imagining, Emmanuel, that I have no interest in horses. In fact I have asked Armand to give me lessons.”

  I knew Armand well. The château handyman. He spent more time holding his hands out for tips than working with them. A shifty, brutal customer too. And I knew what his horsemanship amounted to as well. They had three geldings and two mares at the castle, but the Lormiaux (and Armand when they weren’t there) never rode anything but the geldings. They were afraid of the mares, and I knew why.

  “The two I have in mind,” I said, “are the mares. No one has ever been able to ride them. As a matter of fact I advised the Lormiaux strongly against buying them. As Armand must have told you. However, if you wish to keep them, then do. That’s your affair.”

  “But still,” Fulbert said, “both of them? For a single cow? And the guns as well? I find the terms a little exorbitant.”

  A hint of curtness creeping into my voice, I said, “The terms are not mine, they are those of Malevil. They were arrived at last night by a unanimous vote, and I have no power to change them. If they don’t suit you, then let us abandon the whole transaction.”

  This time-honored horse dealer’s tactic had its effect. He was obviously shaken, and from his look I knew already that he was going to accept. He couldn’t afford to go back to La Roque empty-handed. He glanced again at his watch, excused himself, and stalked hurriedly out of my room.

  Left alone, I decided, as my mother used to say, to “make myself nice” for the Mass. (Ah, those curling-iron sessions with my sisters interminably fussing at their ringlets!) I pulled off my boots and riding breeches and put on—I quote Menou here—“my funeral suit.” And it was true that in the country, those past few years, there had always been five funerals for every marriage. Even before the bomb, the countryside around us was dying.

  I was pleased, and yet I wasn’t, though there was no denying that the balance had ended up very much in my favor. I had sidestepped all Fulbert’s pressures and outflanked him on every count. I hadn’t made confession, yet I was sure he wouldn’t refuse me communion when it came to the point, or any of the others either. Which meant that I had prevented communion being indissolubly linked, here at Malevil anyway, with the inquisitorial questioning I was sure was standard in La Roque. I had undermined what in hands as unscrupulous as Fulbert’s could have become a formidable source of power, and I had done so in such a way that he could not present me in La Roque as an unbeliever or a heretic.

  The bartering of the cow was another very important item to be entered to my credit. And more on account of the horses than on that of the guns. Because Fulbert was going to let me have those two mares, I was sure of that. Intelligent though he was, he wasn’t a countryman, he didn’t have peasant instincts. He hadn’t grasped the fact that as soon as he handed over those two mares of his, I would be the sole possessor not only of the only stallion available but also of every single mare. He hadn’t realized yet that once his three geldings had met their noble end, he would be wholly dependent on me for replacements, and that he had conceded me the monopoly of equine breeding in a day and age when the horse had come to represent a very important labor factor and also a crucial military one. He had therefore weakened his position. And I had greatly strengthened mine.

  From that point of view, as I saw it, I had nothing more to fear. Except treachery. And given the man, I didn’t dismiss that out of hand. I remembered that blaze of hate in his eyes when I alluded to his night with Miette, and to the fact that he was an impostor. The fact was, I had been forced to put all my cards on the table, to show my hand, to reply to his blackmail with counterblackmail. And I knew that kind of man. He wasn’t going to forgive me for it.

  As I was knotting my cravat, Thomas burst into the room. His face bore not the slightest trace of his customary calm. It was red and twitching. Without a word he passed behind me, opened his closet, and began taking out his raincoat, his crash helmet, his goggles, his gloves, and the Geiger counter.

  “What’s all this? Where are you going?”

  “The barometer is falling. I think it’s going to rain.”

  “It’s not possible!” I cried, glancing automatically over at the window. Then I went over to it and opened it as wide as it would go. The sky, gray earlier in the morning, had become much darker, and above all there was that stillness, that sense of expectancy everywhere that always comes before rain. Although we had all longed so hard for it ever since the day the bomb fell, I couldn’t bring myself to believe what I saw. I turned back to Thomas. “And why all the gear?”

  “To check whether the rain is radioactive or not.”

  I stared at him, and when I finally recovered my voice it was unrecognizable, toneless and thin. “Can it be? So long afterward?”

  “Of course it can. If there’s radioactive dust up i
n the stratosphere, the rain will bring it down. And that means total disaster. We have to face it. The water in our water tower would be contaminated, as well as the wheat you’ve sown. And us too, if we expose ourselves to the rain. The only possible outcome would be death, either in a few months or a few years. Death by slow degrees.”

  I stared at him, lips dry. I had forgotten about the possibility of radioactive dust in the stratosphere. Like everyone at Malevil, I had longed for rain so that it would bring the world back to life. I had suppressed the idea that it might, on the contrary, just finish off the work the bomb had begun.

  The slow, delayed death Thomas had described, it was appalling. For those few moments I was unable to stir for sheer dread. I didn’t believe in the devil, but if I did, how could I avoid the thought that man was Satan’s creature?

  “We must all gather somewhere and stay together,” Thomas said feverishly. “And above all, tell them not to go outside once the rain starts.”

  “The others are all together already,” I said. “In the great hall, for Mass!”

  “Then let’s get over there quickly,” Thomas said, “before the rain begins!”

  It wasn’t the moment for irony, and the thought that Thomas was going to be attending the Mass after all scarcely did more than flicker through my mind. I followed him out of the room, but halfway down the stairs to the ground floor I suddenly realized that I had forgotten Peyssou, still cleaning the guns in the next-door room. I went back up alone to fetch him, explained the situation as briefly as possible, and we both ran down again as fast as we could. On the ground floor I called out to Meyssonnier as we passed through the storeroom, but he was nowhere in evidence. Thomas must already have warned him and taken him with him. We hurtled across the courtyard, reached the great hall, found the door open, rushed in, and Peyssou slammed it behind us.

  I could see from my first glance around that everyone was there, but in my panic state I began counting to make sure, then recounting, because there were eleven of us, one too many! It wasn’t till my second recount that I realized the extra person was Fulbert.