Malevil, Page 44

  It was eleven at night when we threw the last shovelful of earth onto the still warm ashes. I wouldn’t allow anyone to go back into Malevil wearing the clothes we had on. I rang the bell at the gate, and when Catie appeared I told her to get Miette to help her carry out two boilers for us and fill them with water. As soon as they were brought, we put all our clothes into them, underclothes included, walked back into the castle naked, then took turns under the shower in the keep bathroom. We inspected every fold in our bodies with great care, but no parasites were found on anyone. Next day we lit a big fire under the two boilers outside the gate and boiled the clothes for some considerable time before bringing them back into the castle and spreading them in the sun.

  That evening we all ate in the great hall, with Catie serving us. Evelyne was there, but I didn’t speak to her, and she didn’t dare come near me. Miette, Falvine, and La Menou were keeping vigil over Momo in the gate tower. The meal was eaten in silence. I was overwhelmed with tiredness, and emotionally numb. Apart from the dazed animal contentment of eating, drinking, and getting my strength back, I could feel nothing but an immense need for sleep.

  There could be no question of that, however. There were decisions to be taken. An assembly had to be held without delay, directly when the meal was over. I was against having the women present. I had some very unpleasant things to say to Thomas and I didn’t want to have to say them in Catie’s presence. And then there was Evelyne. I had not thrown her out of my bedroom, but I still hadn’t spoken to her, and I certainly didn’t want her to be present during our discussions.

  The faces of the men around me bore the marks of fatigue and grief. I began speaking in a neutral voice, picking my way very carefully. We had just been through a very bad experience, I said. Errors had been committed. It was essential that we should discuss things together and decide where we stood. The best thing would be to begin by allowing everyone to give his opinion of the day’s events.

  There was a long silence, then I said, “Colin, what about you?”

  “Well, you know,” Colin said in a choking voice, without looking at anyone, “of course I am very upset about Momo. But I’m pretty upset about the people we killed too.”

  “Meyssonnier?”

  “Well, I don’t think our organization was very good,” Meyssonnier said, “and I’m afraid there were a great many infractions of discipline.” He too had refrained from looking at anyone as he spoke.

  “Peyssou?”

  Peyssou lifted his great shoulders and spread his powerful hands on the tabletop. “Well, the thing is,” he said, “poor Momo, you could say he was asking for it, in a way. But all the same, the way Colin said...” And there he stopped.

  “Jacquet?”

  “I think what Colin said too.”

  “Thomas?”

  I had called on him last deliberately, in order to convey a certain aloofness. Though he had already accepted that aloofness in advance, in fact, by not occupying the chair left vacant beside me when Evelyne left. He straightened his shoulders and continued to stare straight ahead, presenting me with just his tensed profile. Although he was sitting up very straight on his chair, even rigidly, he had both hands in his pockets, something very unusual with him. I imagined that he was concealing them not in order to convey a couldn’t-care-less attitude but because they were in fact trembling slightly.

  In a voice he had difficulty controlling, he said, “Since Meyssonnier has mentioned infractions of discipline, I would like to begin by saying that I personally have two such infractions to blame myself for. First, after the first shots, Emmanuel told me not to dress but to go down to the gate tower as I was, with my weapon. But in fact I did stay to dress and in consequence reached the gate much too late. I was unable to help La Menou keep Momo inside.”

  He swallowed. “Second, instead of staying and keeping watch on the battlements with Catie, as Emmanuel had ordered me to, I decided on my own initiative to proceed down to the Rhunes as a reinforcement. I realize that I committed a serious error in leaving Malevil undefended. If the band we were facing had been an organized one, it could have split in two, and one group could have drawn us down to the river by pillaging our wheat while the other seized the castle.”

  If I hadn’t known Thomas so well, I’d have said that this speech of his was very cleverly calculated. Because after all, by conducting his own prosecution like that, he had disarmed us. Any prosecuting counsel would have been left without an accusation to stand on. But in fact, as I knew perfectly well, it was entirely the result of his passion for accuracy. His only piece of manipulation, if it was one, was to present the facts in such a way as to exonerate his wife. Which was touching, but also rather dangerous. Because I had my own ideas about Catie’s role in the lapses of discipline he had confessed to, and I intended to voice them.

  I said in a noncommittal tone, “I am grateful to you for your frankness, Thomas. But I think you are covering up for Catie a little too much. I would like to put it to you: Wasn’t it Catie who insisted on taking the time to dress?” I looked at him. I knew he could never bring himself to lie.

  “Yes, it was,” he said in a slightly shaky voice. “But since I accepted her point of view, I am the one responsible for our delay.”

  That admission cost him a lot. He was raw now, our Thomas. But I wasn’t going to let him off the hook yet all the same. “And up on the battlements, wasn’t it Catie who suggested that you come down to the river to see what was happening?”

  “It was,” Thomas answered, flushing a deep red. “But I was in the wrong in agreeing. The responsibility for the mistake therefore rests solely with me.”

  I said in a cutting tone, “The responsibility rests with both of you. Catie has the same rights and the same duties as every one of us here.”

  “Except,” Thomas said through tight lips, “that she hasn’t the right to attend this assembly at which you are criticizing her.”

  “I wanted to spare her that. But if you feel that she should be allowed to speak for herself, go and fetch her. We will wait.”

  A silence. Everyone looked at him. His eyes were lowered, his hand thrust deep in his pockets. His lips quivered. “It’s not necessary,” he said eventually.

  “In that case, I suggest that we discuss Colin’s point of view, which is shared, I think I’m right in saying, by Peyssou and Jacquet.”

  “I haven’t finished speaking yet,” Thomas said.

  “All right then, speak, speak!” I said impatiently. “You pull this one on me every time! No one is stopping you from speaking!”

  Thomas said, “I am ready to accept the consequences of the errors I committed and leave Malevil with Catie.”

  I shrugged, and since he didn’t go on, I said, “Have you finished now?”

  “No,” Thomas said in a muffled voice. “Since until a decision has been taken on what I have just said I am still a member of Malevil, I have the right to give my opinion on the problem we are debating.”

  “Then give it! Who’s stopping you?”

  He waited briefly, then went on in a rather firmer voice: “I don’t agree with Colin. I don’t think that there is any cause for regret at having killed the looters. On the contrary, I think that Emmanuel committed an error in not making up his mind to fire sooner. If he had not waited so long, Momo would still be alive.”

  There were no gasps or, properly speaking, any “mixed reactions,” but disapproval of what had been said was clearly visible on the others’ faces. For once, however, I wasn’t going to play the cunning politician. I wasn’t going to take advantage of popular support. The issue was too serious. I said in an even voice, “Put rather tactlessly, Thomas, but it’s not untrue. However, I would like to correct you, if you don’t mind. I didn’t commit just one error. I committed two.”

  I looked around at the others and paused. I could afford to pause. I was commanding absolutely total attention now. “Error number one, and it’s of a general nature. I have been far too weak wit
h regard to Evelyne. By presenting everyone with the spectacle of a grownup man allowing himself to be led by the nose like that by a little girl, I introduced an element of laxity into the community and contributed to a slackening of discipline. That slackening produced a concrete result. If I hadn’t had Evelyne to cope with as I was leaving the gate, I could have helped La Menou restrain Momo, at least until Thomas arrived.”

  I paused again, then said, “If I am going into all this, Thomas, it is not simply because I enjoy wallowing in the delights of self-criticism. It is in order to make it clear to you that I see my weakness with regard to Evelyne and yours with regard to Catie as weighing equally in the scale.”

  “Except that Evelyne, after all, is not your wife,” Thomas said.

  I said coldly, “And you see that as an aggravating circumstance?”

  He looked shamefaced and said nothing. What he had meant, I think, was that the fact of his being married to Catie extenuated his error. But he had no desire to spell this notion out in public; it would have been an open confession of his own weakness. Because he had a conventional—and in his case utterly false—idea of the dominant husband.

  “Error number two. As Thomas said, I didn’t make up my mind quickly enough to fire on the looters.”

  Meyssonnier threw both hands to the sky. “Let’s be fair!” he said loudly. “If that was an error, then you weren’t the only one to commit it. None of us was exactly itching to shoot at those poor people. They were so thin! They were so hungry!”

  I said, “Thomas, did you feel that way too?”

  “Yes,” he answered without hesitation. I love that passion for the truth in Thomas. He couldn’t lie, even if it meant ruining his own argument.

  “In that case,” I said, “we are forced to the conclusion that the error was a collective one.”

  “Yes,” Thomas said, “but you were more responsible for it than anyone else, because you are the leader.”

  I threw my hands in the air and cried vehemently, “But that’s just it! That’s the point! Am I the leader? Can you say you are a leader when two adult members of the group you are supposed to be leading disobey your orders in the middle of a battle?”

  Silence fell, and I let it fall. The heavier the better. Let Thomas stew in his own juice a little longer.

  “In my opinion,” Colin said, “the situation we have here is not at all clear. We have the Malevil assembly and the decisions we take together. Right. And in that assembly, Emmanuel certainly plays an important part. But we have never said, not in so many words, that in an emergency, whenever there is no time to discuss things, then Emmanuel is the leader. And as I see it, we ought to say that. So that we all know, when a real emergency comes, that Emmanuel’s orders must be obeyed.”

  Meyssonnier raised a hand. “That’s it,” he said with satisfaction. “That was just what I meant at the beginning when I said the organization wasn’t good. In fact I would say it was pitiful, the way we behaved. People running around in all directions, paying no attention to what they were told. Result, at one point the only two left on the ramparts to defend Malevil were La Falvine and Miette. And not only that. Miette, who can shoot perfectly well, didn’t even have a gun!”

  “Yes, you’re right,” Peyssou said, shaking his great head. “A brothel, that’s what it was! Down by the Rhunes there was poor Momo, who had no business there. There was La Menou, who was in the wrong place too, but came down because of Momo. There was Evelyne, sticking to Emmanuel like a little burr. And there was...”

  He stopped and blushed to the eyebrows. Carried away by his emotion he had almost included Thomas in his enumeration. There was a silence. Thomas, hands still in pockets, didn’t look at anyone. Colin, as though speaking an aside, flashed me one of his little smiles, eyes asparkle.

  “It’s like your idea just now,” Peyssou said suddenly, stretching his great paw toward Thomas at the end of an arm that seemed to extend the whole width of the table. “It’s like your idea just now of wanting to leave Malevil with Catie,” he went on in a voice of thunder. “Which is the most completely damn fool thing I ever heard!”

  “I quite agree,” I put in quickly.

  “Because in the first place, where would you go, you great asshole?” Peyssou asked, imbuing his insult with untold warmth and affection.

  Colin burst out laughing, as always just at the right moment, and managed to sound utterly natural. It was as though we were a chorus and he had given us our note. Everyone else burst out laughing at once, and our laughter defused the atmosphere to such an extent that even Thomas’s lips relaxed into the beginning of a smile. And from then on, I noticed, his body gradually lost its rigidity, and in the end he even took his hands out of his pockets.

  When the laughter stopped, we proceeded to a vote. And with the exception of one vote—mine, given to Meyssonnier—I was unanimously elected military leader of Malevil “in the event of emergency and danger.” With the understanding, needless to say, that at all other times all decisions, even those concerning our security, would be taken by the assembly. I thanked everyone, then asked for Meyssonnier to be appointed as my lieutenant and, in the event of any incapacity resulting from injury, my successor. A second vote followed, which gave me great satisfaction. Then there was a general shuffling and murmuring of relaxation which I allowed to go on for a few minutes undisturbed.

  “I’d like to go back to the point of view expressed at the beginning by Colin,” I broke in eventually. “Well, it was something we all felt, that it was terrible to shoot at those people. Which was why we all hesitated so. But there’s something I’d like to say, all the same. If our hesitation cost Momo his life, then it was because there was something wrong with our reactions. On the day it happened the world we knew before ceased to exist. We’ve been living in a new era since then, and we haven’t faced up to the fact sufficiently. We haven’t adapted to it as we should.”

  “And what do you mean then exactly,” Peyssou asked, “when you say we’ve been living in a new era?”

  I turned to him. “I’ll give you an example. Before the day it happened, just suppose someone came to your place in the night, and to get revenge on you he burned down your buildings, with your hay and your stock inside.”

  “I’d like to see anyone try!” Peyssou thundered, quite forgetting that he had already lost all those things long ago.

  “Just suppose. It would be a terrible loss, you’ll say, but not a loss that put your life in danger. First, because there would be the insurance. And even if they took their time deciding your claim, there would still be the Ministry, which would lend you the money to buy more cows and more hay for them. Whereas now, this is what you must understand, if a person steals your cow or takes your horse or eats your wheat, there’s no way out of it. It’s all up with you. He has condemned you sooner or later to death. It’s not just a ‘mere’ theft, it’s a capital crime. A crime that must be punished by death instantly, without hesitation.”

  I was aware of Jacquet fidgeting on his seat, but I was too deeply engrossed in getting my point across to realize why at the time. I had gone over everything I had just said so many times in my head since Momo’s death that I had the feeling I was laboring my point horribly. Though even so, I was expecting to have to say it all a lot more times before I’d finished, knowing as I did that it was going to take more than a day, for me as well as the others, to change the attitudes of a lifetime. The instinct for self-defense was not going to abolish overnight the respect we had been taught for human life.

  “All the same,” Colin said sadly. “Killing people!”

  “We must accept the idea though,” I said without raising my voice. “It is the new age we live in that makes it necessary. The fellow who takes your wheat, I say it again, he is condemning you to death. And can you think of any reason why you should prefer your death to his?”

  Colin didn’t answer. Nor did any of the others speak. I didn’t know whether I’d succeeded in convincing them or n
ot. But the bomb still weighed heavy on our lives. I could count on it to go on sinking into their memories, to help me inculcate in them, and in myself first of all, that incredibly swift and brutal reflex with which an animal rushes to defend its territory.

  Preoccupied though I was, in the end I couldn’t help noticing that Jacquet’s face was by now crimson, and that there were huge drops of sweat standing out on his forehead and running down his temples. I burst out laughing. “Jacquet, stop worrying! The decisions we take now won’t be retroactive!”

  “Ah, and what does that mean, ‘retroactive’?” he asked, good-natured brown eyes gazing hopefully into mine.

  “It means they don’t apply to anything that was done in the past!”

  “Oh, good!” he said with relief.

  “Bloody Jacquet,” Peyssou said.

  And with all our eyes on Jacquet, we laughed, as we had at Thomas just before. I wouldn’t have believed such merriment possible after the blood we had lost and shed. Except that it wasn’t really merriment. It was the social content of the laughter that mattered. It was an affirmation of our solidarity. Thomas, despite his errors, was one of us. Jacquet too. The community, after its ordeal, was re-forming, closing ranks, strengthening its unity.

  The burial was fixed for noon, and we agreed to include communion in the service. After the morning assembly, I waited up in my room for those who had decided to make confession.

  I heard Colin, Jacquet, Peyssou. I knew what was on their three minds before they even opened their mouths. And if they were under the impression that I could relieve them of that burden, why so much the better. After all, a priest was supposed to be able to remit sins or not remit them in God’s name. But God forfend that I personally should ever think I held or ever would hold that exorbitant power! Not when I sometimes doubt whether God Himself is capable of washing a man’s conscience clean. But that’s enough of that. I have no wish to distress anyone with my heresies. Especially since religion is a sphere in which I personally am sure of nothing.