It was only completely by chance, three days later, that I finally came to understand her reasons, or rather her reason, since there was only one.
Constantly obsessed with our security, Emmanuel had decided to keep the three shotguns, the rifle, all our ammunition, and our two bows and the arrows in our bedroom, to lock the door whenever we were neither of us there, to conceal the key at the back of one of the storeroom drawers, a hiding place known only to the two of us and Meyssonnier.
One afternoon, feeling a need to change my clothes—Emmanuel had just given me my first riding lesson and I was drenched in sweat—I went and collected the key from its hiding place. The spiral staircase in the keep was pretty steep, so, being tired, I climbed it slowly, my left hand resting on the stone column around which the steps twisted. I had just reached the second floor and stopped on the landing for a moment to draw breath when to my amazement, at the far end of the big empty room that acted as a sort of antechamber to the two bedrooms, I saw Miette, her ear glued to the keyhole of our door and apparently listening with all her might and main. Odd, because I of course knew for sure that the room was empty. First because I had just left Emmanuel outside the Maternity Ward, and second because I myself had locked it only an hour and a half earlier when I had come up to put on my boots and get ready for my lesson.
I walked up behind her and said loudly, “Miette, whatever are you doing there?”
She started, straightened up, blushed, and glanced all around her with a hunted look, as though she was preparing for flight.
But by that time I was upon her, seized her by the wrist and said, “Whatever is it, Miette? There’s nothing to listen to in there. The room is empty!”
She looked at me with such incredulity in her eyes that I took the key out of my pocket, opened the door, and, still holding her firmly by the wrist, dragged her unceremoniously inside, despite her very vigorous resistance. But once she had been in the room for the short time it took to realize that it was really empty, she stopped struggling and just stood there, clearly dumbfounded. Then, completely ignoring my questions, a frown on her face, she opened the big wardrobe. Presumably she recognized the clothes inside as belonging to Emmanuel and myself, because she completely ignored all mine but began stroking his with the palm of her hand. After that she went over and opened all the drawers of the bureau, one by one, her face slowly lighting up with joy as she did so.
When she had finished, she looked at me questioningly, then, since I was still rather taken aback by her search, she pointed with her right index finger at the sofa under the window, then at my chest. I nodded. Then, casting astonished eyes here and there about the room, she suddenly noticed the photograph of Birgitta drawing her bow on Emmanuel’s desk. She snatched it up, then waved it in front of my face, narrowing her eyes and pointing at it with her other hand. I don’t quite know how she managed it, but her posture, the position of her body, the inclination of her head, the expression on her face, the gestures she was making with her hands, all combined not exactly to ask me a question, since no sound escaped from her lips, but to mime it, to act it, almost to dance it for me. And the question was so clear that I almost believed I had heard it: Where is the German girl then?
Everything became clear. At L’Étang, you will remember, it was generally believed by all the Wahrwoorde clan that Birgitta was still with us. And this error had never been expunged from Miette’s mind. On the contrary, she had interpreted Emmanuel’s reserve toward her on that first evening back at Malevil as irrefutable proof that his heart was engaged elsewhere. And since she never saw Birgitta anywhere in the castle, she had imagined that Emmanuel must have shut her away somewhere, safe from covetous eyes. And she had been absolutely confirmed in this idea when she discovered that Emmanuel’s bedroom—which she did not know I shared—was the only room ever kept locked. She had not paused for a moment to consider all the physical impossibilities contradicting her theory. And in view of her belief, it was quite certainly out of respect for this supposed jealous passion of Emmanuel’s that she had never singled him out.
At all events, that very same evening when it was time for bed Miette repaired her error. Apart from the great relief that we all felt at that moment, I for my part also experienced a mischievous additional pleasure at seeing Emmanuel leaving the great hall with his huge Bible in one hand and Miette, as it were, in the other.
CHAPTER NINE
Fulbert brought us two very good pieces of news. Marcel Falvine, La Falvine’s brother, had survived, and so had Catie, Miette’s elder sister. Second, Colin’s workshop in the side street, where he kept all his plumbing and locksmith’s equipment, was intact.
Less in order to do him honor than to observe his amazing face at my leisure, I placed our guest opposite me at the dinner table, moving Miette along one and separating her from Peyssou, to the latter’s acute displeasure.
He had an abundant head of black hair, our newcomer, wavy, shining with health, and lacking any trace of a tonsure at the crown. There was a fair amount of white at the temples, lending him a dignified, serious look, and the thick locks that curled nobly down over the front of his head produced the effect of a kind of helmet or mane and served as an admirable foil to his vast forehead and magnificent eyes, which gleamed with vitality and cunning. Unfortunately, however, the pupils were just a little off center, which introduced a disturbing shiftiness into his gaze. It was also a pity that the lower half of his face ended in a snout, still further accentuating the air of untrustworthiness inflicted on his eyes by his squint.
But that was not the only physical distinction Fulbert presented. There were his hands, for instance. They were broad and strong, with flattened fingers. A laborer’s hands in short, which didn’t seem to belong in any way to the same persona as the beautiful unctuous voice and the careful diction.
There was also his thinness and its odd distribution. Below his eyes those twin swellings—so charming to behold in children—that we call cheeks and anatomists refer to as facial fat had in Fulbert’s case melted totally away, leaving on each side of his nose a deeply dramatic trench that made one think of a patient in the last stages of tuberculosis and lent him the very misleading appearance of an invalid or an ascetic.
I say misleading, and I will tell you why. Before he left Malevil, Fulbert was to ask me “fraternally” (on the strength of our common bond with Our Father, I presumed) to let him have (not “give,” you note, but “let him have”) one of my shirts, since his own was worn out. A little taken aback, I must admit, at being expected to bear the cost of our newfound fraternity entirely on my own, I nevertheless acceded to the request. And Fulbert promptly effected the exchange on the spot, revealing such a broad well-muscled, generously fleshed, even plump torso that it seemed almost impossible that it could belong to the same body as that emaciated head.
An ascetic and an invalid, however, was precisely what Fulbert laid claim to being during his first meal at our table. He assured us almost before it began that he had “always lived frugally,” that he had no “needs,” and that he had “accustomed himself to poverty.” A few moments later he took us even further into his confidence. He was suffering from “an insidious and incurable illness,” though fortunately a noninfectious one (presumably he did not wish to alarm us). He already had “one foot in the grave,” he admitted with simplicity. However, he still managed to eat enough for four, and to talk nonstop in that beautiful baritone voice of his, so vibrant with vitality. From time to time, moreover, between mouthfuls, he found time to cast a few little glances at the young lady on his left. And his interest appeared to redouble when he learned that she was dumb.
Meanwhile, I was beginning to ask myself several little questions about Fulbert. According to what he had told us about his life before the day it happened—and on the surface at least he seemed to be very free with such information, even though it was perhaps all a little vague—he had traveled here and there over the whole of central and southwestern France, s
taying sometimes with Monsieur So and So, the parish priest of X, sometimes with a Madame Someone Else, sometimes with the Good Fathers at Z, and always at his various hosts’ express invitation. When Zero Day caught up with him, he had just spent a week with the good curé of La Roque, who had rendered his soul to God before his visitor’s eyes.
So, does our friend Fulbert have no parish then, or any home of his own? And what did he live on?
Any references he had made to such matters himself were concerned solely with charitable ladies who provided for his “needs” (the needs which of course he didn’t have) and constantly showered him with presents while vying with one another for his company. There, I felt, a certain coquetry was apparent, and the handsome Fulbert seemed rather too conscious of his charms.
His dark gray suit was somewhat worn, though very clean now that it had been given a good dusting. Beneath it he wore a shirt whose collar—completely nonclerical in cut—was threadbare, plus a dark gray knitted tie. But above all, hanging on its black cord around his neck, there was that superb pectoral cross, solid silver by the look of it, which, it seemed to me, no ecclesiastic beneath the rank of bishop ought conceivably to be wearing.
“If you were brought up in Cahors, Fulbert,” I said (I had decided to keep my tone as familiar as possible, despite his majestic airs), “you must have trained for the priesthood at the seminary there?”
“Of course,” he answered, the heavy eyelids drooping over his shifty eyes.
“Ah, and when did you enter it, in what year?”
“The things you ask!” Fulbert said, eyes still covered, but with a little good-natured chuckle. “It’s so long ago now! I am no longer a young man, you know,” he added coquettishly.
“Oh, come now, I’m sure you can remember. After all, for a priest, the year he entered his seminary must have meant something!”
“Indeed,” Fulbert said in his beautiful deep voice, “it is a milestone.”
And when I did not speak, maneuvered with his back to the wall by my silence, he said, “Let me see... It must have been in fifty-six... Yes,” he confirmed after a further mental effort, “in fifty-six.”
“Ah, I thought it must be about then,” I said immediately with a delighted air. “Then you entered the Cahors seminary at the same time as my friend Serrurier.”
“Ah... But you know there were a great many of us, I’m afraid,” Fulbert said with a little smile. “It was a large college. I didn’t know everyone.”
“But everyone in your year, surely,” I said. “And besides, a fellow like Serrurier, you could scarcely not notice him. Six foot four and flaming red hair.”
“Oh, of course, yes, now you describe him,” Fulbert said.
He had seemed to be speaking rather unwillingly, and was clearly relieved when I asked him to tell us about La Roque.
“After the bomb,” he said sadly, “we were left in a state of most grievous affliction.”
I noted that “grievous affliction” in passing. I had rarely heard the phrase other than in the mouths of priests, or of those who were aping them. With them it was almost a professional term. And despite its disagreeable meaning, it always seemed to give them a kind of satisfaction. I have been told that the younger generation of priests didn’t use it. In which case, good for them. It is a phrase that revolts me because of the complacency behind it. Affliction—especially that of others—is not after all something to sip at like a connoisseur or to be worn as some kind of spiritual ornament.
Fulbert, however, had obviously reveled in this “grievous affliction.” It had consisted largely in the necessity for the survivors of burying what still remained of the dead. We too had been through all that, but we never talked about it.
Since he was obviously not going to spare us the slightest horrific detail, in order to change the subject I asked how the people of La Roque were managing to live.
“Well and badly,” he said, shaking his head and looking around the table with his beautiful melancholy eyes. “Well from the spiritual point of view, not so well from the material point of view. From the spiritual point of view,” he went on, half closing his eyes as he popped a large piece of ham into his mouth, “I am bound to say that I am extremely satisfied with my flock. Their attendance at divine service is quite remarkably good.”
Reading a certain astonishment on the faces of Meyssonnier and myself (because the La Roque council had been wholly dominated by Socialists and Communists), he went on, “It may surprise you perhaps, but in La Roque everyone attends Mass and everyone takes communion.”
“And to what do you attribute this?” Meyssonnier asked with a frown, very put out.
Since he was sitting on my left, I turned my head to look at him. I was struck by the severity of that long profile. He was clearly utterly dismayed at what he had just heard. Although all his hopes had gone up in smoke the day it happened, Meyssonnier still thought of the world in terms of councils to be conquered by the united forces of the left. I gave him a little kick under the table. There is a time for being honest and a time for being something less than honest. My reservations with regard to Fulbert were growing stronger every minute. I had no doubt that the hold he claimed to have over the survivors at La Roque was very real, and I found it disturbing.
“After the bomb,” Fulbert said in that beautiful deep voice that seemed to take such pleasure in its own mellifluousness, “the people turned their eyes in upon themselves and examined their consciences. Their physical, and above all their moral suffering had been so great that they began to ask themselves if perhaps a curse had not been laid upon them to punish them for their errors, their sins, their indifference toward God, their neglect of their duties—and in particular their religious duties. And also it must be said that all our lives have now become so essentially precarious that to turn to the Lord and ask for His protection is a natural and instinctive reaction.”
Listening to this little speech, I suspected Fulbert of having done everything in his power to intensify this sense of guilt on his parishioners’ part, since it was precisely the grist he needed for his particular mill. I could sense Thomas growing restless on my right. I was afraid he might explode, so I dealt him a warning kick under the table too. On one point I was determined: no violent confrontation with Fulbert on the religious question. Especially since, with the help of those velvety eyes—despite their shiftiness—that noble ascetic face, and that dark brown voice, the voice of a man with “one foot in the grave” (albeit firmly clinging to life on earth with every toenail of the other), it had taken Fulbert rather less than two hours to win the hearts of all three women and also produce quite an impression on Jacquet, Peyssou, and even Colin.
After the meal, Fulbert joined us around the fire, and without any prompting he returned to the subject of the material difficulties of the survivors in La Roque.
At first they had viewed the future with optimism, since the big grocery and cooked-meat store next to Colin’s little workshop had not been touched by the fire that ravaged the lower town. But it soon became clear that when these stocks were used up, which they must be one day, the townspeople would not be able to replace them, since all the surrounding farms had been destroyed, together with all their livestock. In the château, whose owners had been in Paris and were therefore presumed dead, there remained only a few pigs, a bull, and five saddle horses, plus hay and grain to feed them.
At Courcejac, a tiny hamlet between La Roque and Malevil that had also been spared, six people had survived but only one cow, unfortunately, and that one was suckling a calf. The loss of the Courcejac cows was particularly unfortunate because there were two small babies in La Roque, plus a young orphan girl about thirteen years old, in poor health and in need of a special diet. Until now it had been possible to provide for their requirements from the stock of condensed milk in the grocery store, but even that was now almost exhausted.
Fulbert left his speech without a conclusion. We all exchanged looks. And since no one else
seemed prepared to speak up, I put a number of questions to our guest. In this way I learned that the people of La Roque had suspected from the first that there might be survivors at Malevil, simply because it was so well protected, like Courcejac and La Roque itself, by its cliff. And they had been confirmed in this suspicion about a month before when they thought they heard our bell ringing one morning. I also learned that they had at their disposal, for purposes of defense, ten or so shotguns, “a large stock of ammunition,” and a number of rifles.
I pricked up my ears when Fulbert mentioned the five horses again but I refrained from inquiries. The fact was, I knew everything I needed to know about them already. Because it was I who had sold them to the Lormiaux in the first place. The Lormiaux were wealthy industrialists from Paris who had paid through the nose for a historic but very dilapidated châtau, spent staggering sums on restoring it, and then only used it for one month out of every twelve. During that month, however, they were determined to live up to their feudal castle, which entailed, among other things, riding a lot. None of them rode well, but they nevertheless insisted that they must have three Anglo-Arabs, one each, no less, despite all my efforts—my very creditable efforts, I felt—to sell them three somewhat less prestigious mounts. But there it was, in those days “before,” I couldn’t stop making money out of our invading snobs even when I tried to. And apart from the three Anglo-Arab geldings, the Lormiaux had also bought two white mares from me. But more of those later.