Malevil, Page 47

  While giving just enough of my attention to this discussion to put in a word or two now and then, I was listening to what was happening at the lower end of the table. Jacquet, paralyzed with shame, was eating without a word, hunched over his plate, while La Menou bombarded him with an unceasing stream of brusque injunctions in a low voice: “Sit up straight!... Don’t mess your bread about like that!... Can’t you make less noise when you chew!... Where do you think you are!... What do you think your napkin’s for?... Wiping your mouth with your hand, indeed!” And what struck me most was that each of these sharply delivered reprimands was followed by Jacquet’s name, as though La Menou wanted to make it quite clear that her mind wasn’t rambling and that she knew perfectly well whom she was addressing, whatever anyone might think. There was a further piece of evidence, moreover, indication that La Menou’s mind was still perfectly lucid. In none of the objurgations she addressed to Jacquet did a single word of patois occur, since Jacquet, being a foreigner, would of course be unable to understand it.

  —|—

  Forty-eight hours after the ADZ had been completed, just as we had resumed our routine shooting practice (archery included), old Pougès appeared once more on his ancient bike. He wasn’t at all pleased at having to get down on all fours in order to get in through the palisade. And even less so when we blindfolded him to lead him through the traps. As soon as he was settled in the gate-tower kitchen, he gave us to understand that all these ordeals would necessitate adequate compensation. I say us, because all Malevil was there, drawn down to the gate by the news of his arrival, standing around the kitchen listening.

  “Well, I can tell you, Emmanuel, it’s not so easy getting to your place now,” he said, smoothing the points of his yellowish white mustache. “Both ends it’s not easy!” He looked around him, very flattered by the attention he was getting.

  “Because getting out of La Roque, that’s something now that Fulbert has clapped a guard on the gates! You’ll not believe me, but going for a little ride along the Malevil road, that’s out. There’s one of their damned decrees forbidding it. They’ll only just allow me out on the main road. But luckily it came to my mind, there’s a track that cuts across to your road. Through Faujoux’s place, if you remember.

  “You came through Faujoux’s!” I exclaimed in amazement. “With your bike?”

  “Yes, even though there were times when I had to carry it,” Pougès said. “Like a cross-country champion! At my age! I hope,” he went on after a dramatic pause, allowing his eyes to wander around his audience, “that you won’t be so hasty about banging the cork back into your bottle, Emmanuel, seeing the trouble I’ve had.”

  “Serve yourself,” I said, pushing the bottle across to him. “You’ve certainly earned it.”

  “Ah, that I have,” old Pougès agreed. “Just remember that it means something, coming through Faujoux’s with my bike. And all I have to tell you, my head bursting with it. And my legs almost bursting too, I’ve pedaled that hard.”

  “You ought to be in training though,” La Menou said, “seeing the number of times you’ve pedaled from La Roque to Malejac to go and drink yourself stupid at your trollop’s place.”

  “Your health, Emmanuel,” old Pougès said with dignity, but livid with fury underneath that La Menou should wreck his hour of glory for him.

  “Menou,” I said in a stern voice, “why don’t you give him a bite to eat.”

  “I wouldn’t mind that,” old Pougès said. “I’ve got quite a hole in my stomach, what with that track through Faujoux’s.”

  La Menou opened the closet on the right of the range, dumped a plate down violently in front of him, then cut a thin slice of ham, which she took between thumb and forefinger and flipped onto the plate from a distance.

  I gave her a stern look, but she pretended not to see it. She was occupied cutting Pougès a slice of bread, and concentrating on cutting it as thin as she possibly could—no mean task, since the loaf was very new. And while performing this delicate operation she continued to talk to herself the whole time, half mumbling, half out loud. But since old Pougès was silent because he was busy drinking his first glass, eyes fixed on the bottle, and since we were all silent as well, waiting for the news he had promised us, La Menou’s soliloquy was perfectly audible to everyone in the kitchen, and my attempts to catch her eye were in vain.

  “There are some people,” she said, steadfastly refusing to look up from the loaf, “you’d say were like leeches and worse for sucking blood out of others. That Adelaide, for example. Now you’ll say that’s no great crime when it’s Adelaide, and there I’d agree. With her legs always so wide apart, it’s a wonder she could ever get through a door. But there are some that took advantage of her all right, both ways too. First of all getting what they fancied when they felt like it, and when they couldn’t do that any more, being past it, then getting drink out of her. That poor great fat slut can’t have got very rich with customers like that!”

  Old Pougès set down his glass, straightened himself on his chair, and wiped his mustache with the back of his left hand. “Emmanuel,” he said with dignity, “it’s not that I wish to blame you at all, but you ought to stop your servant showing disrespect for me under your roof.”

  “Well now, who’d have thought it,” La Menou said. “So now he wants respect!”

  White with anger at having been called a servant, she threw the slice of bread onto the table as hard as she could, folded her bony little arms across her chest, and fixed Pougès with glittering eyes. But Pougès was already savoring his second glass, as well as his little counterattack, and all in all feeling quite pleased with himself.

  “Menou is not my servant,” I said firmly. “She has independent means. If she lives here, that is simply because she keeps house for me. But I don’t pay her. I am talking about before the bomb, naturally.”

  “Like it might be Monsieur le Curé’s housekeeper,” Colin said. At which everyone, except La Menou, began to laugh, and the atmosphere was relaxed again.

  I took advantage of this lull to move over to La Menou and whisper into her ear, “If you go on, I shall throw you out of the kitchen in front of everyone.” She didn’t answer. She was breathing very hard, eyes flashing, lips tight together, nostrils quivering. And in a sense it did my heart good to see her like that again after what had happened.

  I went back to my chair. Old Pougès was just finishing his bite and his third glass. And it was taking an infinite time. He drank quickly, but he chewed slowly.

  His third glass finished, he sat there pulling at his mustache and looking at the bottle without saying a word. I filled his glass again, then banged the cork into the bottle. He watched me, then looked at his full glass but did not touch it. Not yet. The last glass, that had to be drunk in silence. So the time had come when he must speak. Even so, he took his time about it.

  In the end I had to start him off. “So, Armand is ill then?”

  Old Pougès shook his head. “He’s not ill,” he said with the contempt for ignorance of one who knows, and I could see from his repugnance to go on that it was very distressing for him to have to give us anything, even a little news.

  “Well,” I said rather sharply, to remind him that he had his side of the bargain to fulfill.

  “Well, it isn’t a pretty business what’s been happening back there.” He paused, then added, “Bloodshed it’s come to.” He looked around, shaking his head. “It was Pimont, came home and found Armand trying to serve his Agnès.”

  “By force?” Colin said, blenching.

  “By force or not by force,” old Pougès said, with the malice in his voice enough to set your teeth on edge. “Agnès, she says it was by force. But what do I know? You know her better than I do, lad. You tell me.”

  “And so,” I said with irritation.

  “And so Pimont, his blood goes right to his head. He picks up a little kitchen knife, and he sticks it right in Armand’s back. Well, believe it or not, it doesn’t seem
to worry Armand a little bit. He just turns around and he says, ‘I’ll teach you to come punching me in the back, you little sod you.’ And there and then, point-blank, he blows his face off with his popgun, and poor Pimont, he didn’t have any face left at all hardly. We all came rushing over, and there was Armand on Pimont’s doorstep. White, that he was, but straight as a ramrod, and telling us all how he’d been punched in the back. ‘And now,’ he said, ‘clear off the lot of you, or I blast my way through!’ And there he is, waving his popgun at us and walking backward up to the château gate. Well, like that, you see, naturally, it was only when he turned around to open the gate we saw the knife sticking out of his back. And we could see it all right, because Armand had his black jacket on, and the knife handle was red. And there he was, just walking away like that, with the knife sticking out of his back!”

  “And Agnès?” Colin said.

  “Oh, like a madwoman, you can imagine,” Pougès said with total lack of feeling. “Her man done in like that, a big hole in his face, and a pool of blood on her floor, which you’d have thought someone had killed a bullock in there. Luckily Judith took her and the baby away to stay with her. But wait, wait,” he went on, as though what he had to say next was far more important and interesting. “Armand, he gets back to the château and he tells Fulbert the whole thing, with Gazel and Josepha there. And Josepha, in that funny gibberish of hers, she suddenly says, ‘But, Monsieur Armand, you have a knife stuck in your back!’ Well he won’t believe her. He feels around with his hand and then whumph! flat on the floor! Fainted dead away. It was Josepha who told us it all.”

  “And afterward?” I asked impatiently.

  “Afterward? That’s all,” Pougès said, beginning to eye his full glass.

  “What do you mean, that’s all? Is that the kind of people you are in La Roque? Someone kills a man in his own home in broad daylight, in front of everyone, you all know who the murderer is, and no one says anything? Not even Marcel? Not even Judith?”

  “Oh, them!” Pougès said dismissively, but without looking me in the eye all the same. “They didn’t do much. Called a meeting and voted a whatsit. Saying how Armand had to be tried and punished for murder.”

  “And that’s what you call nothing?” I said indignantly. “You call that nothing?” And I added, very angry, “And you, of course, when it came to voting, you abstained!”

  Old Pougès looked at me reproachfully and tugged at his mustache. “Only in your interests, Emmanuel. I mustn’t get too mixed up in Marcel’s camp, you know. Not if you want me to go on having my little bike rides.” And at that he gave me a wink.

  “And Fulbert, what did he have to say about this vote?”

  “He said no. He came down to tell us through the grille in the gate. He said it was legally self-defense, that there was no call for a trial. The lads booed him a bit. And since then he’s got the wind up a bit, Fulbert has, especially with Armand in bed. So he hands the rations out through the grille opening in the gate and never comes out of the château. He’s waiting for it all to simmer down. Your good health, Emmanuel.”

  These last words sounded like a polite prelude, but in fact they were the exact opposite. They meant that now it was time for him to drink his last glass, and would we all bugger off and leave him in peace, since he’d given us our money’s worth.

  Silence fell. None of us was ready to speak yet. But we didn’t need words. We all knew that we were in agreement on the main thing: that we weren’t going to leave a murder unpunished. It was high time to go over and set things to rights in La Roque.

  —|—

  [NOTE ADDED BY THOMAS]

  This expedition to La Roque did take place, but much later than we then expected, and not before we ourselves had confronted a mortal danger. Which is why I am taking the liberty of interrupting Emmanuel’s narrative here with a number of remarks that would be out of place later on, when things begin to move rather quicker.

  I would like to mention Emmanuel’s negative sentiments with regard to Catie. They created an uncomfortable atmosphere in Malevil. Catie admired Emmanuel and was hurt by his low valuation of her. She felt that he was constantly comparing her to Miette, and always to her disadvantage. Hence, I believe, her rebellious and undisciplined attitude. In my opinion, this attitude would have disappeared if Emmanuel had had a higher regard for Catie as a human being.

  I now come to the matter of Evelyne. It is a subject on which I wish to be frank without being odious.

  I will state my own firm opinion at the outset: I was quite convinced that on the physical level there was nothing, absolutely nothing, between Emmanuel and Evelyne.

  Catie was for a long time convinced of the contrary, and we often argued the question.

  What gave rise to all these speculations was an extremely surprising incident that occurred between our return to Malevil from La Roque and the killing of the band of looters. Emmanuel does not make any reference to it in his narrative, but it is not the first time that Emmanuel has omitted things that he found embarrassing. I have already commented on the fact earlier.

  You will remember the Malevil custom: Every evening, at the end of the evening, Miette went over to the companion she had chosen for that night and took him by the hand. It was a custom, I must admit, that shocked me at first. Then later, in my impatience for my turn to come around again, I grew accustomed to it. After I married Catie and was comfortably settled in my new privileged position—for a time at least—it shocked me again. Yes, I know what you will say. That man has two moralities, according to whether he personally benefits or not from the act that shocks him.

  Briefly, this particular evening, a month perhaps after Evelyne’s arrival at Malevil, Miette walked over to Emmanuel when the fire was burning low, and smiling at him with a tender look in her eyes, took his hand. Immediately, Evelyne, who was standing on Emmanuel’s left, moved around to his right and without a word, though with a force and determination that took us all by surprise, parted the two hands. Amazed and distressed that Emmanuel should have released her hand without a struggle, Miette did nothing. She just stood looking at Emmanuel. But Emmanuel didn’t move or speak. He was examining Evelyne with an air of great concentration, as though he was trying to understand what she was doing—even though it was completely obvious to everyone else. And when Evelyne seized the hand she had just pulled free in her own “tiny paw,” Emmanuel did nothing to stop her.

  I still remember the look that Evelyne gave Miette then. It wasn’t the look of a child either, it was the look of a woman. And it said as clearly as any words could have done, He’s mine.

  What Miette thought of this incident was easy to guess. But she made no comment, as it were. When Emmanuel’s turn came around again she left him out, and Emmanuel didn’t appear to notice.

  All the discussions I had with Catie on the subject of any supposed intimacy between Emmanuel and Evelyne sprang from this scene. Catie argued that Emmanuel was just not the sort of man who could remain chaste, and that since he had allowed himself to be deprived of Miette, what else could one think?

  Colin, when I confided our suspicions to him, was of the contrary opinion. “It’s just not true that Emmanuel can’t stay chaste,” he said. “When he was about twenty, for two whole years, I saw it with my own eyes. Emmanuel just wouldn’t even look at a woman. Two whole years. A real devil for the girls before that, and again after, a real terror, and yet for those two years, nothing. Why? If you ask me, it was some girl who’d really given him a bad time.”

  Then he added, “And besides, you just don’t know Emmanuel. Scruples up to his eyebrows. He’d never do anything like that. Emmanuel has never done anything rotten to any girl. The other way around, more like. He’s just not a man who could take advantage like that. Never.”

  So then I asked him how he explained the situation in that case. “Well, there it is, he loves her,” Colin said, “but how he loves her, that I couldn’t say. I have to admit it’s a bit puzzling, seeing that
Evelyne is nothing but a scrawny little kitten, and up till now the more woman Emmanuel could get his hands on the better he liked it. And it’s pretty amazing too when you think that Evelyne’s barely fourteen, and not even pretty, eyes apart. But as for him touching her, no. You can scrub that idea here and now. It’s just not in him.”

  I ought to add that Catie also came around to this point of view later on. She had made it her business to “observe” them for some time and had never come up with the slightest hint of anything to justify her suspicions.

  The assembly that Emmanuel described in his last chapter was not important solely because it marked the beginning of our transition to a new “stern morality” better suited to our “new era”; it also made Emmanuel into our military leader “in the event of emergency or danger.” And since such events were frequent in the months that followed, authority within the community, spiritual as well as temporal, since he was already Abbé of Malevil, became concentrated entirely in Emmanuel’s hands.

  Did this mean that Emmanuel was gradually becoming Lord of Malevil in good earnest, that we were simply sliding back into pure feudalism? I don’t think so. In my opinion, the spirit in which the community of Malevil debated its internal affairs was entirely modern. And equally modern was Emmanuel’s constant concern never to undertake anything without first being certain of our support. Without wishing to talk about humility—I have a horror of such masochistic phraseology—I would nevertheless say that there was a certain transcendence of self involved in the way that Emmanuel and all the rest of us accepted that we had to live in perpetual confrontation with all the others.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Two days after our visit from old Pougès, I mounted a dawn expedition to reconnoiter the walls of La Roque. The results convinced me that Fulbert was guarding the town badly, and that taking it would be an easy enough matter. The two gates had watches on them, but the long wall joining them was completely undefended along its entire length, and was by no means so high that it could not be scaled with the aid of a ladder, or better still with a rope and grappling hook.