Malevil, Page 45

  When Colin had finished, he said with a little smile, “According to Peyssou, Fulbert asks a great many questions when you confess. Then afterwards he bawls you out. That doesn’t seem to be your method.”

  I smiled in my turn. “Would you want it to be? If you’ve come to make a confession, that means you want to relieve your conscience. Why should I complicate things and make it more difficult for you?”

  To my great astonishment, Colin’s face became very serious. “But I don’t make confession just for that. I make confession to make myself better as well.” He flushed as he said it, because the words suddenly sounded ridiculous to him.

  I made a doubtful face.

  “You don’t think it’s possible?” he asked.

  “In your case, perhaps it is. But for the majority, no.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because people generally, you know, are very good at hiding their own defects from themselves. With the result that their confession is valueless. Take Menou, for example. I’ve never heard her make confession, please note, otherwise I wouldn’t be saying this. But La Menou reproaches herself for her ‘unkindness’ to Momo, yet never for an instant thinks to blame herself for her unpleasantness to La Falvine. In fact, as far as she’s concerned, she hasn’t been unpleasant at all. She sees her attitude as totally legitimate.”

  Colin laughed. Then I realized that I had spoken about Momo as though he were still alive, and a terrible sense of loss stabbed through me. I went on, very quickly: “I’ve written Fulbert a little note to tell him about the risk of looters in the district. I’ve advised him to keep La Roque better guarded, especially at night. Would you like to act as messenger for me?”

  Colin blushed again. “After what I’ve told you, don’t you think it’s a little...” He didn’t finish the sentence.

  “I think that you have a childhood friend in La Roque and that it would give you pleasure to see her. What of it? Where is the harm in that?”

  After the three men, I received Catie. She was scarcely inside the door of my room before she threw her arms around my neck. Although this embrace was not without its effect on me, I decided it would be best to treat it as a joke. I freed myself with a laugh.

  “You go too far. Have you come here to cuddle me or confess to me? Come on, sit yourself down, and on the other side of the table, if you please. I shall feel a little safer then.”

  She was delighted by this reception. She had been expecting something much chillier. Without further ado she began rattling off her confession at the double. I was more interested in what would come after the confession, since I knew perfectly well she wasn’t there just for that. While she was pouring out her sins, or rather a string of trifling peccadilloes that had never bothered her for a moment, I noticed that she had done her eyes. Discreetly, but extensively: eyebrows, lashes, lids, the lot. She was still living on her little prebomb stock of cosmetics.

  When she had finished her meaningless little recital, I remained silent. I was waiting. And in order to make my waiting more noncommittal I didn’t look at her. I began doodling on a sheet of blotting paper with my pencil. I wasn’t going to spoil a piece of good paper, it had become too precious.

  “So in other words,” she said finally, “you’re still angry with me?”

  I doodled on. “Angry? No.”

  And when I just left it at that, she went on: “You don’t look very pleased.”

  “No. That’s because I’m not.”

  Silence. More doodling.

  “And is it me you’re not pleased with, Emmanuel?” she said in her most wheedling voice.

  She was doubtless also wriggling, pouting, and doing her full act. But she was wasting her time, because my eyes were occupied elsewhere. I was drawing a little angel on my blotting pad.

  “I’m not pleased with your confession,” I said in a stern voice.

  And only then did I raise my head and look at her. She hadn’t been expecting that. Presumably she didn’t take me very seriously as Abbé of Malevil. “It was a bad confession,” I went on in the same stern tone. “You didn’t even admit to your principal defect.”

  “And what is that, according to you?” she asked with only just restrained aggression.

  “Your coquetry.”

  “Oh, that!” she said.

  “Oh, yes,” I said. “For you it’s nothing, I know! You love your husband, you know you’re not going to be unfaithful to him”—here she smiled mockingly—“so you say to yourself, Well, Catie my girl, why don’t we have a little fun, come on! But unfortunately, in a community of six men and only two women, such little games are very dangerous. And if I don’t do something about it and quick, your flirting is going to have Malevil in total chaos. There’s Peyssou, he’s already looking at you a bit too much, if you ask me.”

  “Do you think so?” Catie said. She was radiant! Not the slightest attempt to look even a little contrite!

  “Yes, I do think so! And I’ve watched you flirting with the others too. But luckily they don’t give a damn.”

  “You mean you don’t give a damn,” she said aggressively. “But I knew that already. You only like great fat puddings, like that girl without a stitch on stuck up there by your bed. Honestly, you surprise me! A thing like that in a priest’s bedroom. I’d have expected a crucifix!”

  Oh ho! So she bites, does she? “That is a Renoir print,” I said, rather taken aback at finding myself suddenly put on the defensive. “You know nothing about art.”

  “And the photo of your Boche on your desk, is that art? What a frightful cow she looks! Nothing but tits everywhere! But anyway, what do you care, you have Evelyne.”

  What a little viper! With icy anger I said, “What do you mean, I ‘have’ Evelyne? Do you take me for a Wahrwoorde?” And fixing my eyes on hers, I blasted her with the full force of my fury. She immediately retired from the battle, picking her way very carefully.

  “Oh, no, I never said that! You know I didn’t,” she said. “The thought never entered my mind.”

  As if I cared the tiniest damn about what had entered her so-called mind! Or her anything else! But gradually I did manage to calm myself down. I picked up my pencil and removed my little angel’s wings. Then I gave him two little horns and a long tail. A prehensile monkey tail. And all the while I was aware of Catie opposite, twisting and wriggling in an attempt to see what I was doing. How proud she was of her little sex, the hot-bottomed little she-monkey! And how anxious she was to make everyone succumb to its power.

  I lifted my eyes and scrutinized her. “Your dream, really, is to have all the men in Malevil in love with you, and all reduced to despair. And meanwhile, you, you love no one but Thomas.”

  I’d scored a bull’s eye there, or at least I thought I had. Because I saw that little aggressive flame flicker up again in her eyes.

  “Well, what do you want me to do?” she said. “Everyone can’t play the trollop, like your Miette.”

  Silence. Without raising my voice I said, “That’s a nice way to talk about your sister. Bravo.”

  But she was not a bad-hearted girl, Catie, not really. Because she blushed, and for the first time since she began her confession she looked truly contrite.

  “I love her very much, you know. You mustn’t think I don’t.” A long silence. She added, “You must think I’m not very nice.”

  I smiled at her. “I think you’re young and thoughtless.”

  And when she said nothing, amazed to hear me take that friendly tone after all the bitchy things she’d just come out with, I went on: “Take Thomas now. He’s well and truly caught. And because you’re young you have a tendency to take advantage of the fact. You give him orders, and that’s a mistake. Because Thomas is no weakling. He’s a man, and he’s going to bear you a grudge for it one day.”

  “He does already.”

  “Because of the stupid things you made him do?”

  “Well, yes!”

  I stood up and smiled at her again. “Don
’t worry. That will sort itself out. In the assembly he took it all on himself. He defended you like a lion.”

  She looked at me with shining eyes. “But you too, you weren’t as beastly as you could have been, in the assembly.”

  “All the same, remember what I said. Be careful about how you behave with Peyssou.”

  “That I just can’t promise,” she said with a frankness that took me aback. “It’s just the way I am. I’ve never been able to say no to men.”

  I looked at her, really disconcerted. I pondered for a moment. Had I failed to understand the girl completely then? If what she said was true, then my whole analysis of the situation lay in pieces.

  She said, “You know, you really don’t make such a bad priest after all, even though you are such a skirt chaser. Well, I want to say I take back all those horrid things I said, and especially what I said... Anyway, I take it all back. You’re very sweet. The trouble is I can never stop myself saying what comes into my head. Can I give you a kiss?”

  And she gave me one. A very different kiss from the one she had given me on her arrival. But no, I mustn’t try to exaggerate the purity of that kiss. If it had been as pure as all that, then it wouldn’t have had such an effect on me, and she wouldn’t have noticed that it had, or let slip the little chuckle of triumph that she did. At that, I opened the door for her and she fled, crossing the landing at a run, then turning, just as she was about to vanish down the spiral staircase, to give me a last little wave.

  —|—

  We buried Momo beside Germain and the tiny grave that had received all that remained of the others’ families. We had begun this embryonic graveyard on the day after it happened. It was part of the new “after” world, and we all knew that we too would lie there one day. It was situated in the flat area beyond the outer wall. There was a little esplanade there, created by cutting back into the cliff, which abruptly narrowed about forty yards farther on until it was just the width of the road between the rock above and the steep slope below. At that point the road bent around the cliff at what was almost a right angle.

  It was there, in this narrow bottleneck between precipice below and overhanging rockface above, that we decided to erect a palisade that would protect the ramparts of the outer enclosure from nocturnal attack, since they were low enough to be scaled without too much difficulty. This palisade was constructed of strong oak planks, fitted very closely together, and with a gate that also included a smaller sliding opening at ground level. This was made just big enough to allow a man to enter it on all fours. It was through this “cat door” that any visitor would be required to make his entrance, after having been scrutinized through the peephole concealed to one side of the Judas. This latter was not to be used except for a final check, since even an aperture as small as that represented a risk.

  We had also considered the possibility of the palisade too being scaled. Its top, which could be removed to allow a loaded cart through, was protected by four strands of barbed wire that could not be touched without unleashing a terrific jangling from the tin cans attached to them. However, for bona-fide visitors there was also a bell that Colin had produced from the stores brought back from his shop, and had installed beside the Judas.

  Meyssonnier christened the little esplanade area between the palisade and the moat of the outer castle wall our “Advanced Defense Zone,” or ADZ.

  We further decided, on his recommendation, to cover the entire area of our ADZ with traps arranged in a quincunx pattern, leaving only one path about three yards wide which ran along the moat to the right, then around the bend of the cliff, past the tiny graveyard, and on to the gate of the palisade. These booby traps, as Meyssonnier always called them, were of the most classic kind: holes about two feet deep with sharpened stakes hardened in the fire and embedded point up at the bottom, or else small planks with large nails hammered through them. The tops of the holes were concealed by sheets of cardboard covered with earth.

  Meanwhile, Peyssou was finishing his additions to the outer wall. He had added a good five feet of masonry supported by strong wooden lintels running across the tops of the original crenelations. When he had finished the stonework, he asked Meyssonnier to add thick wooden panels to close all the rectangular openings he had thus created, and to hinge them so they opened outward and upward. “That way,” he said, “you can pepper the foot of your ramparts nicely without any swine farther away picking you off. And in the bottoms of the panels, there you must make a slit like the arrow slits in the old wall.”

  He was presupposing, of course, without explicitly saying so—and we were all presupposing the same thing—that any assailants would be armed with nothing more than the shotguns that formed the greater part of our arsenal, and whose shot would never be able to pierce the iron-hard old oak planks. It was, as I say, an almost unconscious supposition, and one that proved false in the event.

  I was alone one morning in the ADZ—the palisade having by then been completed, though the booby traps were still in the course of construction—when the bell rang. It was Gazel, on Fulbert’s big gray donkey. He dismounted as soon as I slid open the Judas and presented a polite but chilly face for my inspection.

  He did not wish to “refresh himself,” handed me a letter from Fulbert through the Judas, and told me that he would wait where he was for the reply. I didn’t try very hard to coax him in, since the ADZ was still a long way from being finished.

  Here is the letter:

  My dear Emmanuel,

  I thank you for your warning against the bands of marauders. We have not yet seen anything of this kind in our vicinity. Though it is true that we are not as rich as Malevil.

  Will you pass on my condolences to La Menou on the death of her son and tell her that I do not forget either of them in my prayers.

  Next, I have the honor to inform you that I have recently been elected Bishop of La Roque by the assembled faithful of this parish.

  I have thus been enabled to ordain Monsieur Gazel and to appoint him Curé of Courcejac and Abbé of Malevil.

  Despite my desire to be helpful to you in every way, I would be failing in my duties if I recognized the sacerdotal functions that you have seen fit to assume at Malevil.

  Monsieur l’Abbé Gazel will come to say Mass at Malevil next Sunday. I hope that you will receive him fittingly.

  Please accept, my dear Emmanuel, my sincere and Christian wishes for your well-being.

  Fulbert le Naud,

  Bishop of La Roque.

  P.S. Since Armand is indisposed and confined to his bed, I entrust Monsieur Gazel with the task of bearing this letter to you and accepting your reply.

  When I had finished this missive, I opened the Judas once more. (I had taken good care to close it as soon as the letter had been handed in. I didn’t want Gazel gazing in at our half-finished booby traps.) Gazel was still there outside the palisade, with a slightly tense, anxious expression on that sexually undecided clown’s face.

  “Gazel,” I said, “I can’t give you an answer immediately. I must consult the Malevil assembly. Colin will bring my reply to Fulbert tomorrow.”

  “In that case I will return myself tomorrow morning and collect it,” Gazel said in his piping voice.

  “No, really, Gazel. I can’t make you ride eighteen miles on your donkey two days running. Colin can do it.”

  There was a silence, then Gazel flickered his eyelids and said with some embarrassment, “You must excuse me, but we no longer admit persons not belonging to the parish to enter La Roque.”

  “What?” I said, quite incredulous. “And these persons not belonging to the parish are us?”

  “Not specifically,” Gazel said, lowering his eyes.

  “Ah! Because of course there are all these other persons everywhere, aren’t there?”

  “I’m sorry,” Gazel said, “but that was the decision of the parish council.”

  “Bravo for your parish council!” I said in indignation. “And didn’t it even occur to your p
arish council that Malevil might apply the same rule to people from La Roque?”

  Gazel, eyes lowered, was as silent as a martyr on a cross. He was going through what Fulbert would have called “a moment of grievous affliction.”

  I went on: “Because you can hardly be unaware of the fact that Fulbert is intending to send you over here to say Mass next Sunday.”

  “Yes, I am aware of it,” Gazel said.

  “So in other words, you are to have the right to enter Malevil while I, for instance, would not have the right to go into La Roque!”

  “One might say,” Gazel said, “it’s a temporary decision.”

  “Ah, is it indeed? And why is it temporary?”

  “I don’t know,” Gazel said, in such a way that I was immediately certain he knew very well indeed.

  “Very well then, until tomorrow,” I said in an icy voice.

  Gazel wished me goodbye and turned to climb back onto his donkey.

  I called him back: “Gazel!”

  He returned to the Judas.

  “What exactly is wrong with Armand?”

  The idea had crossed my mind that possibly there was an epidemic raging in La Roque, and that the town had put itself into voluntary quarantine to prevent the disease spreading. An idiotic notion on reflection, since it credited Fulbert with altruistic sentiments.

  Nevertheless, the effect my question had on Gazel was extraordinary. He blushed, his lips quivered, and his eyes seemed to be revolving in their sockets in an attempt to avoid meeting mine. “I don’t know,” he stammered out.

  “How can you not know?”

  “It is Monseigneur who is looking after Armand,” Gazel said.

  It took me a full second to realize that “Monseigneur” referred to Fulbert. But one thing at any rate was certain: If “Monseigneur” was nursing Armand, then whatever was wrong with him wasn’t infectious. I allowed Gazel to ride off, and that evening, after the meal, I called an assembly to discuss the letter we had just received.