Malevil, Page 55

  “You? It was damned good, I must say! It fooled me.”

  “Don’t you remember our imitations in the old days, in the Club? I was the best.”

  He was still proud of it, even after all that time. But it was true, Colin was always the best at things that didn’t require strength: archery, catapult, marbles, conjuring tricks. And also, of course, juggling with three balls, cutting a flute from a reed, making a paper guillotine for flies, opening locks with a piece of wire, and climbing up onto the teacher’s dais then simulating a spectacular fall.

  I smiled at him. “Ten-minute break. Have a snooze.”

  “You know what I was thinking as I was covering you then, Emmanuel? That this little stretch of road is a dream of a place for an ambush. With four guns, two each side of the road, you could wipe out a whole battalion almost.”

  “Now then, I said get some sleep! You can do your strategic command stuff afterward!”

  And in order that he might drop off quicker I moved away, though this time, so that I shouldn’t lose him again, I left markers in the undergrowth as I went. I looked back at Colin before moving out of sight. He’d barely had time to lie back before he was out, two or three little bracken shoots crushed beneath his back, his gun cradled in his arms like a cherished mistress.

  I looked at my watch. I walked to and fro. My half boots made no sound. The slope we were on faced south, and with the rain we’d been having the moss had covered everything. I was struck anew by the tropical luxuriance of the undergrowth. Though it was pretty unvaried. I got the impression that the bracken, with its overwhelming vitality, was in the process of taking over the world. The silence, the absence of life were oppressive. The smallest spider’s web, the tiniest shining thread from one twig to another would have given me so much pleasure. But I was very much afraid, unless they began migrating in from less devastated regions, that we were never going to see any insects again. And what about the birds? Even supposing some had survived elsewhere, how could they live without any insects? The forest would be back more or less as before in less than twenty-five years, but nature would remain shorn of half her riches.

  Surrounded like that by the stifling silence, in the damp of the undergrowth, without a breath of wind to stir the leaves, I began to feel very alone, and I went through a very nasty moment. It wasn’t fear of the battle ahead. Guts turning to jelly, hollow belly, thumping heart, I’m no stranger to all those, thank you very much. No, what I felt now was much worse. It was a different sort of dread. Colin lay asleep, and without him, without my companions, far from Malevil, I had the sensation that I was no longer anything at all. An empty, flapping garment.

  This feeling of emptiness became so intolerable that I woke Colin up again. What selfishness. I woke him up a good five minutes before the time I’d set. He opened his eyes, stretched, spoke, and the first words he uttered were to bawl me out. It didn’t matter, as soon as he began talking to me I was myself again. With my ties of affection, my responsibilities, the role my companions had assigned to me, and the character they recognized as mine. I was back in my skin again, and very relieved to have one too.

  “You rotten bastard, you could have left me in peace!” Colin said in a low voice. “Oh, the dream I was having!”

  He was burning to tell it to me, but I signaled to him to keep quiet. We were still too near to the road where we were. We walked deeper into the undergrowth, and by the time we were at last back on the track he had forgotten his dream, though not the preoccupation underlying it. Odd, that danger can’t wholly manage to repress our everyday thoughts.

  He looked at me, eyebrows quirked, a half smile on his face. “Is Catie running after you a little?”

  “Yes.”

  “And after Peyssou?”

  “Ah, so you’ve noticed.”

  “And Hervé?”

  “Perhaps.”

  A silence.

  “Well, well, there’s a thing. And Thomas?”

  “Thomas thinks that there are two women at Malevil for six men.”

  “And.”

  “He wonders whether he was very wise to marry Catie.”

  Another silence. Then Colin went on: “In your opinion, why are there so few women?”

  “In the case of the wandering bands, it’s obvious enough. Either the leaders don’t want to be lumbered with them, or else they’ve just been eliminated by a natural process. When there’s almost nothing at all to eat, it’s the strong who eat it.”

  “But with people like us?”

  “You mean sedentary communities?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s a different phenomenon, I suspect. Before the day it happened, eighty percent of all those leaving rural districts for the cities were young women.”

  “And you think all the cities were destroyed?”

  “I can’t say. But up till now, none of the bands we’ve encountered has been composed of city people.”

  Silence.

  “It’s rotten, isn’t it?” Colin said gloomily. “It would be much better for everyone if we all had wives of our own.”

  An idea that seemed to me—after giving it some thought—a little uncomplimentary to Miette. Poor Miette. Yet another one who’d grown a little weary of institutionalized embraces.

  I changed the subject. “Colin, I want you to get all the sleep you can this afternoon.”

  As I expected, he bridled immediately. “Oh, and why me?” he asked, squaring his shoulders.

  And indeed, why him? Don’t go thinking just because he’s little...

  I said seriously, “I want to assign you to a very important post in the defense arrangements.”

  “Ah,” he said, reassured.

  “I want you to occupy the single hole that Meyssonnier is digging at the moment.”

  “And who’ll be in the dugout?”

  “Hervé and Maurice.”

  “And me in the hole?”

  “Yes. That means you won’t be getting any sleep tonight. They’ll be able to take turns keeping watch, but you won’t.”

  “The thought of a night without sleep doesn’t worry me any,” Colin said dismissively. Then he asked, “And what kind of gun will I have?”

  “One of the .36 rifles.”

  “Ah!” he said, very pleased.

  He lifted his head and looked at me. “And the others?”

  “Hervé and Maurice?”

  “Yes.”

  “Their own rifles.”

  “Why all three .36s outside?”

  “So that Vilmain’s men, when you start shooting them up the behind, won’t be able to distinguish your shots from their own by the sound.”

  He gave me one of his gondola smiles. “Not by the sound, but by the feel they will.” And he added, “You have ideas that no one else would ever think of.”

  “You too.”

  “Me?”

  “I’ll tell you later. I haven’t finished. Tonight I shall give you my binoculars.”

  “Ah!”

  “I expect Vilmain to attack just before dawn. I’m counting on you to spot him first and signal to me that he’s on his way.”

  “With the flashlight?”

  “Absolutely not. You’d give yourself away.”

  “How then?”

  I looked at him. “Your owl.”

  It was his turn to look at me, face lit up with a radiant smile, and he looked so childishly proud that his reaction made me feel suddenly a little sad, even though I’d predicted it. If it were only possible, I’d gladly split the difference in our heights with him, so that he needn’t go on searching for compensations for his size in every tiniest thing.

  “You said something about an idea of mine,” he said after a moment.

  “An idea of Catie’s plus an idea of yours.”

  “An idea of Catie’s?” Colin said.

  “You see, you’d never have thought it, would you? Perhaps your image of her has been a little too specialized up till now.”

  I pau
sed long enough for us to enjoy a little laugh “with the boys,” as it were, then went on: “If Vilmain retreats, we’re going after him on the horses. But not along the road. Along this track here. We shall get to the proclamation place well before him. And that’s where we lay our ambush.”

  “The idea of the ambush, that was me!” Colin said with discreet pride. “What about Catie?”

  “It was Catie who thought of the horses. And I thought of the track.”

  I allowed him to bask in his glory. We walked on for a good five minutes in silence, then in a slightly different voice he said, “And you think we’re going to give him a licking, Vilmain?”

  “I think so, yes... I’m only afraid of one thing now. That he won’t come.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  That night, as on the previous one, I kept the last watch for myself. There was one change: Evelyne was allowed to share my mattress on the floor in the gate-tower kitchen, and my dawn watch as well.

  She had two tasks assigned her. As soon as I squeezed her shoulder, she was to alert all our combatants in the gate tower, then go directly to the Maternity Ward and saddle Amarante and the two white mares ready for the pursuit, should it occur. I wasn’t going to take Malabar. I was afraid that he might be excited by running with the mares and betray us with his neighing.

  All stations had been meticulously assigned. La Menou in charge of the drawbridge. La Falvine in the cellar, where her presence was theoretically supposed to be a reassurance to the cows and the bull we had tied up there. It was the best I could think of to ensure we didn’t have to listen to her cackling.

  I had numbered the arrow slits from one to seven, working from south to north. When summoned by Evelyne, all those with guns were to proceed directly to the one allotted to them as quickly and silently as possible. Jacquet at number one, Peyssou at number two, Thomas at three, myself at four, Meyssonnier at five, Miette and Catie at six and seven. The last two were the slits inside the tower itself. They were very cleverly designed, enabling our two warrior maids to fire at the enemy without any danger of being hit by his return fire. This was a point we were all totally agreed on—under no circumstances could we afford to lose our women, since the future of the community depended upon them.

  Outside, Hervé and Maurice had taken up their places in the dugout. Colin was in the single hole. He was to give the other two the signal to fire by firing a single shot himself—at his discretion, but not until Vilmain and his men were thoroughly engaged.

  “I’m taking my bow too!” Colin had said earlier that evening.

  “Your bow! When you have a rifle!”

  “Ah, but this is another of my ideas,” Colin said. “Think of the terror it will strike into their hearts! No noise, no smoke, just phfffft!—an arrow right through the chest! That will shake them. And then I open up with my .36.”

  He looked so delighted by his idea that I said nothing. And later we watched him from the ramparts as he set out, .36 slung from one shoulder, huge bow across his back. Meyssonnier just shrugged, but Thomas was furious. “You let him get away with anything,” he said reproachfully.

  I didn’t sleep much, but as on the previous night, my last watch in the paling dark, sitting on Meyssonnier’s little bench at battle station four, found me very calm. The barrel of my Springfield rested on the ancient stone of the merlon, its butt on my thigh. How strange it was that I should be there, a twentieth-century man in the very spot where so many English or Protestant archers had kept watch in their coats of mail. If it were not for Evelyne, there beside me, and my companions sleeping in the tower, I knew I would never go to the trouble of surviving in such precarious conditions. This struggle against marauders, this deadly garrison life on perpetual alert, how many years would it have to go on?

  Evelyne was sitting beside me on her favorite little stool. Her back was pressed against my left calf, and her head lay on my lap. So light, her head, that I could scarcely feel it there. She wasn’t asleep. Every now and then, with my left hand, I stroked her neck and cheek. Immediately, the little hand clasped mine. It had been agreed that no words were to be spoken.

  I knew that my relationship with Evelyne shocked my companions, even while they admired my patience in nursing her, teaching her exercises, educating her. If I made her my wife, they would perhaps disapprove, in their hearts. But they would understand better. Though it was true that I myself had given up trying to understand. My relationship with Evelyne was at the same time platonic yet also sensual in part. I wasn’t tempted to possess her, and yet that little body was a source of perpetual delight. And her limpid eyes, her long hair. If Evelyne should become a beautiful young woman one day, then it is likely, being the man I am, that I won’t be able to resist. And yet, I had the feeling that I would be losing a great deal. I would have preferred it a hundred times if she could remain just as she was, so that our relationship need never change.

  That afternoon, as she was tidying the drawer of my desk while I took a short siesta, she had found a small but very sharp and pointed dagger that my uncle had given me as a paper knife. When I woke up, she asked if she could have it.

  “What do you want it for?”

  “You know that.”

  It was true. I did know. And I didn’t want to hear her say it. I just nodded.

  She immediately tied a piece of string through the sheath ring and attached it to her belt. That evening the whole of Malevil complimented her and teased her about her little dagger. I too asked her at one point if she intended to put Vilmain to the sword with it. I pretended to be taken in, like the others, by her childish playacting. But I knew what deadly resolve lay behind it.

  The night was cool, and the pitch blackness had only just begun to lighten slightly. I could see very little through my arrow slit. I was more concerned with my “auditory concentration.” It was a phrase of Meyssonnier’s, presumably remembered from his army days. With all birds gone, dawn was eerily silent. And even Craa was not coming near me at the moment. I waited. That strutting cretin was bound to attack. Because having said he was going to, he wouldn’t know how to set about reversing his decision. And also because he had such blind confidence in his technological superiority, represented by one practically antique bazooka.

  The really sickening thing about that sort of man was that you always knew in advance how his mind was going to work: Since I am the one with the bazooka, I am the one who lays down the law. And his “law” consisted in massacring us. We had dropped two of his men. He was going to wipe out Malevil.

  Except that he wasn’t going to wipe out anything at all. During the day there had been waves of fear every now and then, but that was over now. The road ahead was clear. Apart from, shall we say a certain measure of residual nervousness, I was calm. I was expecting Colin’s owl cry at any moment now.

  I was expecting it, yet when it came it surprised me to the point of paralysis. Evelyne had to touch my hand before I remembered that I had to squeeze her shoulder. Which I then did, rather absurdly, I felt, since she knew I was going to do it.

  Evelyne promptly left, carrying her stool with her as we had arranged, so that no one would stumble into it or me. I found myself kneeling in front of the little bench on which I’d been sitting, left elbow propped on it, cheek against the wood of my rifle butt. Behind me I could hear—and see from the corner of my eye, since the darkness was paling with every second now—that my companions were moving to their stations. It was all accomplished with amazing silence and rapidity.

  After which an infinite length of time elapsed. Vilmain apparently couldn’t make up his mind to open fire against the palisade, and quite absurdly I experienced great resentment at his reluctance to play the role I had assigned him in my scenario. I wasn’t conscious at the time of saying anything at all, but Meyssonnier assured me later that I never stopped muttering to myself, “What the hell does he think he’s doing, damn it? What the hell is he up to?”

  At last the explosion we were all waiting fo
r came. And in a way we were disappointed, because it was much less loud than expected. It must have been a disappointment to Vilmain as well, because the shell by no means destroyed the whole palisade, and in fact failed even to rip the two halves of the gate off their hinges. All it managed to do was tear a hole about five feet wide in the center, but it left the splintered upper and lower sections still in place.

  What happened then? I was supposed to give the signal to open fire with a long blast on my whistle. I didn’t give it. And yet we all began firing, me included, each of us doubtless thinking that the others had seen something. In fact, no one could see anything, because there was nothing to see. The enemy hadn’t advanced into the breach.

  The testimony of our prisoners was to be quite categorical on this point. At the moment we opened fire, Vilmain’s men were still ten yards or so down the road, in no possible danger from our fire, since they were protected by the jut of the cliff. They had in fact just begun their advance toward the breach opened by the bazooka when our premature and totally aimless fire stopped them in their tracks. Not because it was doing them the slightest harm, but because it was raking the remains of the palisade, sending splinters of wood flying in all directions, and in the case of the shotguns, creating an incessant crackle of lead shot on the planks. Our attackers hurled themselves to the ground and began firing back. But of course, the same jut of the cliff that was sheltering them also made it impossible for them to see anything of us. So both armies were now safely under cover and both pouring a deafening barrage of fire into nonexistent targets.

  I eventually grasped what was happening, and so did Meyssonnier. He said to me, “Better stop this. It’s crazy.”

  I couldn’t have agreed more, but to stop it I needed my policeman’s whistle, and grope as I might through my pockets, the sweat standing out on my forehead, I was unable to find it. I was clearly aware, even as I was doing it, and despite the acuteness of my anxiety, how ridiculous I was. The commander in chief can’t give any orders to his troops just now, I’m afraid. He’s lost his whistle! I could have yelled, Cease fire! Even Miette and Catie in the tower would have heard me. But no, I don’t know why, but it seemed absolutely essential to me just then to do everything exactly according to the rules.