“But what an excellent notion!” Fulbert exclaimed, immediately attracted by the idea of being able to play the gracious prince at no expense to himself. “We have so few distractions here in our parish, alas. Your performance will be most welcome, Emmanuel, above all if there is no danger in it for you. Well, let us all make our way there now then,” he said with a generous sweeping gesture of both arms to indicate to his flock that they might approach. “Let us lose no time, since you are pressed for it. But I don’t see our Catie,” he went on while Gazel and Armand, obeying his signal, swung the great green gates open and the townspeople made their way up the château drive, a little more animated now, but still not daring to raise their voices.
“Evelyne is having one of her asthma attacks and Catie is looking after her,” I said. “I heard someone say so a moment ago.” And to prevent his lingering, I set off briskly up the drive.
I wanted to save the horses till the end, so I asked Fulbert to let us have the guns, the ammunition, and the dry goods first. Fulbert entrusted me to the care of his vicar, having first handed him a bunch of keys and spoken a few words in his ear. Jacquet and Colin followed me with two sacks.
I never know when it comes to Laurel and Hardy which was the fat one and which the thin one, but anyway Gazel made me think of the thin one. He had the same long neck, thin face, pointed chin, astonished eyes, and simpleton expression. Unlike the comedian, however, his graying hair did not stand up in an untidy shock but was very carefully combed and curled, clearly with the help of curlers, so that it looked not unlike my sisters’. He had narrow shoulders, a slender waist, big hips, and was swathed in an immaculate white hospital smock, with the belt tied not at navel level, where most men would have it, but much higher up. His voice was neither masculine nor feminine but neuter.
I walked beside him into the château and along an interminable marble-flagged corridor. “Gazel,” I said, “I understand that Fulbert intends to ordain you into the priesthood.”
“No, no, not exactly,” Gazel answered in his not-quite-anything voice. “Monsieur le Curé intends to present me to the suffrage of the faithful here in La Roque.”
“And then to send you to Malevil?”
“That’s if you want me there,” Gazel said with a humility that oddly enough didn’t ring the least bit false.
“We’ve nothing against you, Gazel. But from your point of view, I imagine it will grieve you somewhat having to leave the château of La Roque and your little house in the town.”
“Oh, yes,” Gazel said with a frankness that almost took me aback. “Especially my house.”
“Well, don’t worry, you won’t have to,” I told him. “Last Sunday I was unanimously elected Abbé of Malevil by the faithful there.”
I heard a chuckle behind me and took it that it came from Colin, but I didn’t turn around. As for Gazel, he stopped dead in his tracks and stared at me with his eyes popping out of his head. They look permanently astonished anyway, because they protrude, and also because of the abnormal distance there is between his eyebrows and eyelids. It is this facial formation that gives Gazel his simpleton expression, a misleading one in fact, because he is no fool. I also noticed a swelling at the side of his long neck. I was fairly sure it was an incipient goiter, and was surprised, because in these parts it was usually old women who suffered from that particular affliction. But, poor fellow, none of his glands could be functioning exactly normally.
“Have you told Monsieur le Curé?” he asked in his colorless voice.
“I haven’t had the opportunity to do so as yet, no.”
“Monsieur le Curé is going to be very put out,” Gazel said as he set off again beside me along the corridor.
Which meant, I took it, that Gazel himself wasn’t put out in the slightest. The prospect of leaving La Roque, of no longer being able to go and spruce up his perfectly clean house every morning, must have been appalling to him. Nothing dislikable in him really, poor Gazel. A gentle eccentric, adoring his curé, dreaming of entering heaven still untouched, with his beautiful curls, his white unspotted smock, his well-scrubbed little soul, and once there, of throwing himself at once into the Virgin Mary’s lap. Inoffensive enough. No, perhaps not. Not wholly inoffensive, since he had accepted a master like Fulbert and was closing his eyes to injustice.
The cellar door was double locked. Gazel unlocked it and opened it. It was here that Fulbert had piled up the booty wrested from La Roque by his gentle persuasions. The cellar was divided into two sections. In the one we had entered were all the non-food items. In the second section, separated from the first by a door secured with a vast padlock, were all the groceries, preserved meats, and wine. Gazel didn’t allow me into this inner chamber. My view of it was limited to a couple of brief glimpses when he went in and when he came out.
The guns were in the outer cellar, housed in a rack, with the appropriate ammunition for each neatly stowed on shelves running above the rack.
“There you are,” Gazel said in his flat voice. “Just choose which you want.”
I was flabbergasted by this generosity. Then I immediately realized that it was entirely due to Fulbert’s and Gazel’s ignorance and took care not to let my astonishment show, with a glance at Colin to make sure he didn’t offer any comment. I counted eleven guns, and among those eleven, mostly ordinary shotguns, I saw shining like a thoroughbred in a string of humble nags a superb Springfield that Lormiaux must have bought in order to take part in some posh safari or other. A very expensive weapon, capable of dropping a buffalo at a hundred and fifty yards (with two or three good shots concealed in the bush to cover up for the client’s inadequacies).
I didn’t take it right away. I checked the ammunition situation first. The right bullets for it were there, and in abundance too. The other two choices didn’t take long: a .22 rifle with a telescopic sight that had presumably belonged to Lormiaux Junior, and third, the best of the double-barreled shotguns. For these too there were plenty of shells and cartridges. They were duly deposited at the bottom of the sack in which I placed the three guns, asking Jacquet to make sure he tied a cord around it so that they wouldn’t knock against one another in transit.
Gazel then took the second sack, asked us to stay where we were—that was the regulation, he explained apologetically—and went in alone to fetch the sugar and detergent. Before long he was back with the sack duly filled.
A few minutes later, however, Armand was proving a rather more difficult customer when it came to the horses. The two mares, whose special characteristics I shall come to in a moment, couldn’t have had much grain given them since the day it happened from the look of their hollow bellies. And they were pretty filthy too. So not wanting to ride a pair of animals crusted with dung, I spent a certain amount of time currying and brushing them beneath Armand’s pale gaze. He was equally determined, I could see, not to leave me there alone for a second and not to lift a finger to help. However, he didn’t interfere until he saw me return from the harness room with the two saddles I had picked out and place them astride the stall partition.
“And what do you think you’re going to do with those saddles then?” he asked in a loutish, aggressive tone.
“Saddle the mares, naturally.”
“Oh, no you don’t,” he said. “I can’t have that! My orders are you’re to have the mares, but there was nothing said about saddles. There’ll be no saddling unless you promise to bring them right back again after your little circus act is over.”
“And how do you expect me to get the horses back to Malevil? Riding them bareback? Horses like this?”
“That’s your affair not mine. You should have brought your own saddles, shouldn’t you?”
“I only have saddles at Malevil for the three horses we have left. I don’t have any for these two.”
“Bad luck.”
“But Armand, be reasonable. I’m not taking anything La Roque needs. You still have three saddles left for your geldings.”
“A
nd when they wear out? What do we do for replacements? And another thing. I notice you haven’t taken the worst ones! Saddles from Hermès those are. I went to Paris myself with old man Lormiaux to buy them! Twenty thousand francs each! It didn’t take you long to pick them out, did it? You’ve an eye for these things, haven’t you? But then so have I!”
I didn’t answer that. I went back to currycombing one of the mares. It wasn’t like Armand to show such concern for the interests of his employer, whether Lormiaux or Fulbert. What did it mean, this obstructionist attitude? A little revenge for the business with Colin?
“I don’t see why you’re making such a fuss,” I said after a moment. “Fulbert doesn’t give a damn about the saddles.”
“There I quite agree,” Armand said. “Anything you can’t eat, our Fulbert doesn’t know the first thing about it. But all the same, if I was to say to him, ‘Watch out, mustn’t give those saddles away. They’re worth twenty thousand each,’ then you can be sure of one thing: you wouldn’t get them. Not for free anyway.”
I discerned two things in this little speech. First, that we were leading up to a little bit of blackmail. And second, that Armand was entirely lacking in respect for his curé. Which permitted the supposition of a secret division of power between the two thieves, with Gazel and Fabrelâtre a long way behind, and without any say at all.
“Oh, come on, Armand,” I said, straightening up, brush in one hand currycomb in the other. “You wouldn’t go and tell Fulbert that, would you!”
“I might force myself.”
“You wouldn’t get anything out of it.”
“What would I get out of it if I didn’t?”
So I’d been right. I gave him a little smile to signify that I’d taken his meaning and that I was ready to make a sacrifice. But nothing more came. I went back to brushing the mare. Her white coat had profited markedly from the length of our negotiations. It had begun to rival Gazel’s gown.
Elbows on the stall wall, Armand stared in at me, white eyelashes blinking over the pale eyes. “That’s a nice gold signet ring you’ve got there,” he said at last.
“Would you like to try it on?”
I pulled it off my ring finger and held it out. He took it, pushing out his thick lips in a grimace of greed, and after a little fumbling managed to push it onto his little finger. That done, he rested his hand on the top of the partition and stood absorbed in deep contemplation of the new acquisition. I immediately returned brush and comb to their shelf and began saddling the mares. No further words were exchanged.
I had bought the mares from a stunt man who had been forced to choose between stunts and drink. One was called Morgane, the other Mélusine, names I deplore, but which I concede must have looked effective on a poster. Both were of an immaculate whiteness with long tails and sweeping manes.
Monsieur Lormiaux had seen them at Malevil and decided he wanted them as well as the three Anglo-Arab geldings. In vain I objected that they were circus or stunt animals, and therefore dangerous for anyone who didn’t know their language. He refused to listen, and in his usual pigheaded, arrogant way promptly made me a take-it-or-leave-it offer: either all five or none at all. I let him have them. Though that of course is just a manner of speaking. Unlike Fulbert with the shirt, Monsieur Lormiaux parted with a hefty sum.
I had expected Lormiaux to get tired pretty quickly of having horses in his stable on which he would never dare risk his neck. But not at all. He was as proud as punch of the fact. During the summer of 1976 he asked Birgitta on two occasions to come over and ride them for his guests to see. He paid her two hundred francs per session. It’s true that the act entailed a number of falls. But at that price, not being one to despise money, Birgitta would have willingly fallen off horses all day and every day.
The townspeople were all gathered on the château terrace when I emerged onto the esplanade leading Morgane, followed by Armand with Mélusine. I went over to them and urged them not to move or cry out if they saw me fall. But the recommendation was quite superfluous. I was now their TV, and they were already deep in their normal numbed and blissful spectator state. Their childlike happiness combined with their thinness and the furtive glances they never stopped darting at Fulbert—as though they felt almost guilty at enjoying themselves—touched my heart.
The effects of the bomb had scorched but not wholly destroyed the grass on the esplanade, and I led Morgane twice around my “ring” at a walk, gauging with foot and eye the consistency of the earth. It wasn’t too bad, since the rain had softened it without actually making it spongy. I mounted Morgane and walked her around again twice, then a third time with a whole series of volts, just to make sure that she had forgotten none of her training. As I began on the fourth circle, I gave Morgane the signal, or rather signals, to begin her act. I gripped her tightly with my legs, gathered the reins into my left hand, then, digging in even harder with my knees, I quickly raised my right hand high in front of me. Morgane promptly went into a series of prodigious bucks that gave the spectators the impression she was intent on throwing me. In fact, she was merely obeying me. And although I received quite a shaking, I was not running the slightest danger, even as I thrashed desperately at the air with my right arm, as though I was clinging for dear life to the back of some wild, unbroken stallion.
I put Morgane through three series of bucks, separated by rather sedater phases, then after one last walk around the “ring” I dismounted.
Fulbert, flanked on either side by Fabrelâtre and Gazel, had taken up his place in the front row, hands resting on the stone balustrade, eyes following my antics with benign condescension. As I dismounted, he called out a brief bravo and gently brought his palms together in an almost soundless suggestion of applause. What happened then was a surprise. Fulbert was all but submerged in the enthusiasm of his flock. They applauded like mad creatures, and persisted in their clapping long after their curé had ceased his polite imitation. I was by this time occupied adjusting Mélusine’s stirrups, so I prolonged the operation and observed Fulbert out of the corner of my eye. He was pale, lips pressed together in a hard line, with a look of disquiet in his eyes. The longer the clapping persisted—and it was in fact quite disproportionate to the brief show I had just given—the more he must have felt that this applause for me was in fact an expression of opposition to himself.
I got into the saddle again. With Mélusine the act was different. She had been trained to fall. What a beautiful, docile creature she was! And what amounts of money she must have earned for her stuntman owner, biting the dust before an adversary’s bullets for the benefit of so many moviemakers’ cameras.
The preliminaries took quite a while. It was essential that all her muscles be properly warmed up if she was not to hurt herself when she fell. As soon as I felt she was well run in, I removed my feet from the stirrups and crossed the leathers over her back in front of the saddle. Then I knotted the reins to make them shorter, so Mélusine would not catch her hoofs in them as she fell. That done, I urged her into a gallop.
I had decided that the best place for our fall was on the bend just before the straight stretch in front of the château, so just as we were entering it I gave a sharp pull on the left rein while bending my body to the right, which naturally put her off balance. She dropped like a stone, brought down in full stride by the enemy’s fire. I was sent hurtling over her neck and likewise ended up rolling across the battlefield. There was an oh! of shock, then an ah! as I stood up. Mélusine, meanwhile, lay stretched out on her side, stone dead, even her head flat on the ground, eyes closed. I walked over to her, picked up the reins, and clicked my tongue. She immediately got to her feet.
I restricted the act to two falls. After the second, which proved slightly less painless than I would have liked, I decided that I had by now given Catie enough time and the townspeople enough entertainment. I dismounted and, not without malice, offered the reins with an air of challenge to Armand, whose pride forced him to take them. Since he was already
holding Morgane, that meant both his hands were now fully occupied.
This time the audience had gone quite berserk. The applause reached an even greater intensity of volume—I might even say of calculated violence—than after the first part of my act. And partly because they could see that Armand was temporarily neutralized, partly too because their sports-crowd enthusiasm provided a convenient excuse, they all came running and jostling down the steps out onto the esplanade and clustered around me still applauding. Fulbert was left alone on the terrace, flanked by Gazel and Fabrelâtre, a ludicrous and isolated little group. Armand, of course, was down on the esplanade with us, but very occupied at that point with his two charges, since the sudden rush of the crowd had made them nervous, and he was having to struggle to hold them in check and had his back to me. Growing bolder as they noticed the difficulties he was in, and no longer content with mere clapping, the townspeople began rhythmically chanting my name, as though they were preparing to vote for me in a plebiscite. And some of them, taking care that Fulbert could not see them—for as he stood silent and motionless on the terrace his flashing eyes were watching every move—shouted out with conscious intent, “Thank you for the distribution, Emmanuel!”
There was something covertly insurrectional in the situation that could not fail to strike the onlooker. The idea occurred to me that I might take advantage of it to topple Fulbert from power there and then. But Armand had his gun. Mine had perforce been handed to Colin while I did my act, and he was now deep in conversation with Agnès Pimont. Thomas was lost in his own thoughts. And Jacquet was nowhere to be seen. And besides, I was of the opinion, and still am, that affairs of that kind are far better when not improvised. I freed myself from the crowd and began walking over toward Fulbert.