Malevil, Page 58

  “I recognized your laugh,” Catie said. “Even from the ramparts, I recognized it!” She wrapped herself around me. This was more like it: gentle, like velvet almost. And as for Miette, she melted in my arms.

  “My poor Emmanuel,” La Menou said a few moments later as she rubbed her dry lips against my cheek. She said “poor” as though I was already dead. Jacquet gazed at me without saying a word, still holding the pick with which he was digging a grave for the four enemy dead.

  Thomas, outwardly wholly unmoved, told me, “I collected their shoes. They’re still usable. I’ve started a special footwear section in the store.”

  La Falvine seemed to be made of water. She was weeping from everywhere, like lard in the sun. She didn’t dare come over, remembering my sharp words the day before. So I went over to her instead, and planted a brief but magnanimous kiss on her cheek, so happy did I feel to be back in Malevil, in the bosom of the community, in our family cocoon.

  “Six killed, and two prisoners,” little Colin announced as he strode along, hand on holster.

  “Tell us, Emmanuel!” Peyssou said.

  I threw my hands in the air as I walked. “No time! We have to be away again immediately. With you, in fact, and Thomas, and Jacquet. Colin will stay to take over command in Malevil. Have you eaten?” I asked Peyssou.

  “Well, we needed to,” Peyssou said, as though I was accusing him.

  “Quite right. Menou, make us seven sandwiches.”

  “Seven? Why seven?” she asked, already bristling.

  “Colin, me, Hervé, Maurice, Meyssonnier, and the two prisoners.”

  “The prisoners,” La Menou cried. “You’re going to feed that band of robbers as well!”

  Jacquet blushed, as he always did whenever any allusion was made to a condition that also applied to him.

  “Do as I say. Jacquet, harness Malabar up to the cart. No saddle horses this time, just the cart. Evelyne, help Catie unsaddle the mares. I’m going to throw a little water on my face.”

  I did more than throw a little water on myself. I took a shower, I washed my hair, and I shaved. Albeit extremely quickly. And while I was about it, in view of my imminent entry into La Roque, I decided to dress up a little. I took off my old riding breeches and the somewhat tired-looking boots I’d been wearing ever since the day it happened, and I replaced them with my white gymkhana breeches, new or nearly new boots, and a white turtleneck shirt. I was an immaculate and dazzling sight when I reappeared in the outer enclosure.

  The commotion I caused was such that Evelyne and Catie emerged from the Maternity Ward, currycombs and coils of straw still in their hands. Miette ran up and demonstrated her admiration in joyous mime. First she pinched a lock of her hair and her cheek (how clean my hair, how smooth my skin!). Then she pinched her own blouse with one hand while opening and closing the other several times (what a lovely shirt, how dazzingly white!). Then she placed her hands around her waist and squeezed it (my white breeches made me look even slimmer) and made an indescribable gesture conveying virility (did something for me lower down). As for the boots, she opened and closed her hand again several times. This gesture, symbolizing the rays of the sun, meant that my boots were so bright, as indeed (see above) was my shirt. Finally, she gathered the fingers of her right hand against her thumb, put them to her lips several times (how handsome you are, Emmanuel!), then gave me a great kiss.

  I was also assailed by a barrage of jibes from the male quarter. I hurried on. But I couldn’t escape them all, however much I tried. There was Peyssou in particular, striding after me, the packet of sandwiches under his arm, saying very loudly that got up like that I looked just as though I was off to my first communion.

  “Honestly,” Catie said, “if I’d seen you like that at La Roque the first time, it wouldn’t have been Thomas I’d have married. I’d have picked you!”

  “I had a lucky escape then!” I said good-humoredly as I jumped up into the cart and prepared to sit down.

  “Wait! Wait!” Jacquet cried as he ran up with an old sack over his arm. He folded it neatly and arranged it where I was about to sit so that I shouldn’t soil my clean clothes. The merriment became general at that, and I smiled at Jacquet to put him back in countenance.

  Colin, who at first had joined in the laughter, was now standing a little apart with a very miserable expression on his face. And suddenly, as Malabar started off across the ADZ, I remembered that I had been dressed like this that day, a week before the day it happened, when I had taken him for a meal in a restaurant, him and his wife, after a gymkhana we’d been to. Still very close to each other after fifteen years of marriage, they had held hands under the table while I was ordering the meal. It was during the course of that meal, I remembered, that he had confided to me how worried he was about Nicole (ten years old) who was having a sore throat every month, and about Didier (twelve), whose spelling was so terrible. And now all that was ashes, buried in the little box that contained all Peyssou’s family and all Meyssonnier’s too.

  “Colin,” I shouted back at him, “don’t bother to wait for me. Tell them what happened. Only one order: no one to leave Malevil in our absence. Otherwise, you’re in command.”

  He seemed to wake up suddenly at my shout, and waved at me in acknowledgment. But he still remained standing where he was, even though the others—Evelyne, Catie, Miette—were running beside us, out past the shattered panels of the palisade and onto the road. Through the noise of Malabar’s hoofs and the squeaking of the wheels, I shouted to Miette to take good care of Colin because he was feeling sad.

  Jacquet stood at the front, reins in his hands. Thomas was seated beside me, Peyssou opposite, his long legs almost touching mine.

  “I’ve got something to tell you that will give you a bit of a shock,” Thomas said. “I looked through Vilmain’s papers. He wasn’t an army officer at all, he was an accountant!”

  I laughed, but Thomas remained impassive. He couldn’t see anything funny in what he’d told me. The fact that Vilmain had lied about his identity seemed to him to add to his crimes. Not to me. I wasn’t even particularly astonished. It had half occurred to me on several occasions, after Hervé’s accounts and descriptions, that there was a hint of the caricature about Vilmain, in his language especially. But when one thought about it! A phony priest, a phony army captain. Nothing but impostors! Was this what our new era was going to be like always?

  Thomas handed me the professional card. I glanced at it, tucked it away in my wallet, and then told them in my turn about the part Fulbert had played in the dangers we had just been through. Peyssou exclaimed in disgust. Thomas just clenched his teeth without speaking.

  We arrived back at the scene of our ambush and took Meyssonnier, Hervé, Maurice, and the prisoners on board, together with the extra rifles, the bazooka, the ammunition, and the bike. Nine grown men was something of a weight, even for our Malabar, so on the steeper hills we all climbed out, apart from Jacquet, to ease things for him somewhat. Meanwhile I explained my plan.

  “First of all a question, Burg. Have the people of La Roque got anything to hold against you or Jeannet personally?”

  “Why, what could they have to hold against us?” Burg said with a hint of indignation.

  “How do I know? Brutalities? ‘Excesses’ perhaps?”

  “I’ll tell you,” Burg answered, shining with virtue. “Brutality, that’s not my line, nor Jeannet’s neither. And as for the other, well I’ll tell you something else,” he added in a sudden explosion of honesty, “I didn’t even get the chance. With Vilmain, a recruit had no rights, none at all. So just supposing for a moment I’d tried a bit of ‘excessing,’ I’d have had the veterans flogging the skin off my back in no time.”

  With one ear, I heard Peyssou behind me asking Meyssonnier what “excessing” meant.

  I went on: “Another question. When we get to La Roque, is the south gate guarded?”

  “Yes,” Jeannet answered. “Vilmain detailed off a chap from La Roque for
that. Name of Fabre... Fabresomething.”

  “Fabrelâtre?”

  “Yes.”

  “What? What?” Peyssou asked, catching up when he heard me laugh.

  I told him. He laughed in his turn.

  “And did they issue him with a rifle, Fabrelâtre?”

  “Yes.”

  The laughter redoubled. I went on: “No problem there. When we get to La Roque, only Burg and Jeannet will show themselves. They will get themselves let in. We disarm Fabrelâtre, and Jacquet takes care of him as well as Malabar.” I paused. “And this is where the farce begins,” I said with a smile and a wink at Burg.

  He smiled back. He was delighted by this complicity I was establishing between us. It seemed to promise well for the future, no doubt. Especially since I broke off my explanations at that point in order to open Peyssou’s package and hand out the sandwiches. Burg and Jeannet were dazzled by the bread, Burg especially, being a cook.

  “Did you bake this bread yourselves?” he asked with respect.

  “So? Why the surprise?” Peyssou said. “We can do it all at Malevil. We’ve got the baker, the mason, the carpenter, the plumber. And there’s even Emmanuel, who puts on a fine show as our curé. I’m the mason,” he added modestly.

  Needless to say, he wasn’t actually going to mention the addition to the ramparts, but I could see that he was thinking about it, and that it gave him a warm feeling around his heart to be leaving that masterpiece behind him for posterity.

  “The trouble is though, there’s the yeast,” Jacquet said, joining in the conversation from his perch up on the cart. “There’s none left almost.”

  “There’s heaps in the La Roque château,” Burg said, happy to be of service to us.

  He sank his strong white teeth into his sandwich again and was clearly thinking to himself that this wouldn’t be a bad firm to work for.

  “Here’s the plan,” I said. “Once Fabrelâtre is disposed of, Burg and Hervé will go up alone into La Roque, with rifles. They will find Fulbert, and they will tell him Vilmain has taken Malevil. He has captured Emmanuel Comte and has sent him here to you. You are to take him up to the chapel, try him before all the assembled inhabitants of La Roque, and pass sentence immediately.”

  Mixed reactions: Peyssou, Hervé, Maurice, and the two prisoners delighted at the prospect of such high jinks. Meyssonnier looking at me doubtfully. Thomas clearly disapproving. And Jacquet had twisted around and was looking down at me with an anxious look in his eyes. He was quite simply afraid for me.

  I went on: “So, you make sure everyone is assembled in the chapel, then you come down to the south gate to fetch me. I enter alone and unarmed, escorted by Burg, Jeannet, Hervé, and Maurice, rifles slung over their shoulders. And the trial begins. Hervé, since you’re supposed to be Vilmain’s spokesman, you must allow me to defend myself and also make sure any of the townspeople who want to speak are given the chance.”

  “But what about us?” Peyssou said, bitterly disappointed at being excluded from the fun.

  “You will come in at the very end, when Maurice comes to fetch you. All four of you, bringing Fabrelâtre with you. Did you think to bring a tether for Malabar, Jacquet?”

  “Yes,” Jacquet said, eyes still heavy with apprehension.

  “I’ve chosen Burg because he was the cook and therefore known to Fulbert well by sight, and I’ve chosen Hervé because of his talent as an actor. Hervé will be the only one to speak. That way you can be sure of not tripping one another up.”

  A silence. Hervé was stroking his little beard with a professional air. I could sense that he was already rehearsing.

  “You can get back in now,” Jacquet said, reining Malabar in.

  “All right, get in, all of you others,” I said with a gesture of the arms that embraced our new members and the prisoners. “I have to talk to my ‘veterans.’”

  I could see from Thomas’s face that there was an abscess in formation in that quarter, and I wanted to lance it before it got any worse. I allowed the cart to get a good thirty feet ahead of us. Then we followed, line abreast, Thomas on my left, Meyssonnier on my right, Peyssou to the right of Meyssonnier.

  “What the hell is all this amateur theatricals?” Thomas said in a quiet but furious voice. “What’s the point of it? It’s totally unnecessary. All we have to do is take Fulbert by the scruff of his neck, stick him against a wall, and shoot him!”

  I turned to Meyssonnier. “Would you agree with that analysis of the situation?”

  “It depends on what you mean to do in La Roque,” Meyssonnier said.

  “We’re going to do what we said we would: take power.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Meyssonnier said.

  “Oh, not because I want to. I don’t particularly. But because we must. La Roque’s weakness weakens us, it constitutes a permanent danger to us. Any band that comes along can just seize it and use it as a base to attack us.”

  “And also,” Peyssou said, “they have very good land around La Roque.”

  That thought had occurred to me too. I hadn’t mentioned it though. I didn’t want Thomas to accuse me of cupidity. Because nothing could have been further from the truth. For me, the problem was wholly one of security, not of possession. In a few months I had already lost all sense of private property. I no longer even remembered that Malevil had once belonged to me. What I feared was that some ruthless leader would one day seize the town and see to it that the richness of its land was converted into terms of power. I didn’t want a neighbor capable of holding us in subjection. Nor did I want to hold La Roque in subjection to us. I wanted a union between twin communities, so that each would aid and guarantee the safety of the other while always retaining its own distinct personality.* (This passage was to be cited very often in later days, both by the people of La Roque and by ourselves, sometimes in support of diametrically opposed arguments. [Note added by Thomas.])

  “In that case,” Meyssonnier said, “we can’t just shoot Fulbert.”

  “And why not?” Thomas asked belligerently.

  “Because we must avoid taking power by shedding blood.”

  I cut in: “And particularly a priest’s blood.”

  “He’s a fake priest,” Thomas said.

  “That’s irrelevant, as long as there are people who think he’s a genuine one.”

  “All right, I’ll accept that,” Thomas said. “But I still don’t understand why you need to go about it like this. It’s ridiculous, it’s just playacting!”

  “Playacting, yes. But with a precise aim in view: to lead Fulbert on until he reveals to all the townspeople just how far he aided and abetted Vilmain. Which he will do all the more readily if he believes himself to be in an unassailable position of strength.”

  “And then?”

  “We can use his admission against him in his own trial.”

  “But you’re not going to condemn him to death?”

  “Nothing would give me greater pleasure, believe me, but we’ve told you, it’s just not possible.”

  “So what then?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps banishment?”

  Thomas stopped, and we all stopped with him, allowing the cart to draw even farther ahead.

  “So it’s just for that,” he said in a low voice shaking with indignation. “It’s just to banish him that you’re going to put your life in the hands of those four fellows we none of us know from Adam? Four of Vilmain’s gangsters!”

  I looked at him. I had just realized at last the real reason for his hostility to my “amateur theatricals.” It was no different from Jacquet’s really. He was afraid for my personal safety. I shrugged. To me, it seemed the risk just didn’t exist. Hervé and Maurice could scarcely have had more opportunities to betray us during the past twenty-four hours. Yet they hadn’t; they had fought beside us. As for the other two, there was only one thought in both their minds: to integrate themselves as quickly as they possibly could into our community.

  “Afte
r all, they will be armed and you won’t.”

  “Hervé and Maurice will keep their rifles, with full magazines. Burg and Jeannet will be issued with rifles too, but without ammunition. And I have this.”

  I produced my uncle’s little revolver from my pocket. I had snatched it out of my desk drawer while I was changing. It was really no more than a toy. But accustomed as I was, ever since the day in the wheatfield, to have a gun slung from my shoulder almost every waking hour of the day, I would have felt naked with no weapon at all. And the revolver, tiny though it was, at least served to reassure Thomas, I could see that.

  “If you ask me,” Meyssonnier said, having by now passed the whole problem through all the various digestive chambers of his brain, “if you ask me, the idea is a good one. With Josepha and Gazel out of the château, the people in La Roque can’t have any idea just how hand in glove Fulbert and Vilmain were. And just by agreeing to condemn you, he’ll be giving himself away. Yes,” he concluded with a grave, judicial air, “on the whole, definitely a good thing. Forcing the enemy to reveal his position.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The chapel in which my “trial” was to take place was the chapel of the château, the church in the lower town having been destroyed by fire on the day it happened. The Lormiaux family used to have Mass said there on Sundays by a friend who happened to be a priest, and as a mark of special favor they also invited in the dignitaries of La Roque and the surrounding district. Which in all, women and children included, made a band of about twenty chosen. The Lormiaux didn’t like sharing God with just anyone.

  The château of La Roque, as I have said, is a Renaissance structure, which is to say modern to anyone from Malevil, but the chapel dates from the twelfth century. It is long and narrow, with a roof of ribbed vaulting supported on round pillars, themselves in turn supported by enormously thick walls pierced with tall, narrow openings scarcely any larger than arrow slits. The chancel is a semicircular apse, with a different kind of vaulting supported by external buttresses plus a series of small round pillars inside. This section, which was half in ruins, had been reconstructed with great tact by an architect from Paris. Which just goes to show that you can buy anything if you have the wherewithal, even taste.