“Monsieur Comte,” he said in a quivery voice, “there are people here talking about putting me on trial and hanging me. Do you think that’s just?”
I took a good step back, and not solely to discourage familiarity. I said coldly, “I certainly don’t think it’s just to talk of hanging you, Monsieur Fabrelâtre, not before you have been tried.”
His lips trembled and his eyes wavered. I felt sorry for the poor flabby creature. But ought I to forget his informer’s role over the past months? His complicity in Fulbert’s tyranny?
“Who are these people?” I asked.
“What people, Monsieur Comte?” he quavered in a barely audible voice.
“The ones who are talking about putting you on trial.”
He gave me two or three names, all of them, needless to say, of people who had remained studiously silent during Fulbert’s reign. And now, Fulbert having been toppled—without their having lifted a little finger—they had begun to play at tough guys.
The amorphous Fabrelâtre was nevertheless no idiot, because he had guessed my line of thought. He said in the same toneless thread of a voice, “And after all, what did I do that they didn’t? I just obeyed.”
I looked at him. “Perhaps, Monsieur Fabrelâtre, you obeyed just a shade too much.”
God, how soft the man was! He shrank into himself like a frightened slug under my accusation. And I’ve never been able to squash slugs, not even with boots on. I just flick them away as quickly as possible with one toe.
“Listen, Monsieur Fabrelâtre, to begin with, just keep well out of the way. Don’t talk to anyone; don’t make a fuss. As for your trial, I’ll see what I can do.”
Then I sent him packing as quickly as I could and turned to meet Burg, who was striding toward me from the far end of the chapel on his short little legs, eyes lively and resourceful, his little cook’s pot bobbing in front of him.
“Oh, dear,” he said, panting slightly, “if you’d just heard what’s been going on with Gazel. Some people have come and told him he’s not allowed to say his prayers over Fulbert’s grave. Beside himself, poor Gazel is. He asked me to come right out here and tell you.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. At that moment the stupidity and vileness of the human animal seemed to me to be without limits. Why should anyone go to so much trouble, I wondered, to perpetuate such a nasty little species. I told Burg to wait for me while I went in to see Gazel. On the way I glimpsed Judith and quickly took her to one side.
If I was going to talk to her, she would need something to squeeze. I was used to it by now. I practically offered her my arm.
“Madame Médard,” I said, “people are getting impatient, and there’s not much time. May I offer you one or two suggestions?”
She bowed her heavy head in assent.
“First, as I see it, Marcel should be the one to present the list of candidates for your council. And he needs to do it diplomatically. May I be frank?”
“Of course, Monsieur Comte,” she said, the broad hand giving my biceps an encouraging squeeze.
“There are two names on that list people are going to shy at a little. Yours, because you’re a woman. And Meyssonnier’s, because of his former connection with the Communist Party.”
“What discrimination!” Judith exclaimed.
I hurried on before she could indulge in an outburst of liberal indignation. “In your case, Marcel ought to emphasize the advantages the council will derive from your education. As for Meyssonnier, he must introduce him as a specialist in military matters, and an indispensable link in the town’s relations with Malevil. Not a word about him being mayor for the moment.”
“I must say that I admire your tact, Monsieur Comte.” Another of her own extremely tactile squeezes.
“If you will allow me, I will go on. There are certain people who want to put Fabrelâtre on trial. What do you think?”
“That the idea is idiotic,” Judith said with masculine terseness.
“I am entirely in agreement with you. A public reprimand will be quite sufficient. There are others—or perhaps the same ones—who want to prevent Gazel from giving Fulbert a Christian burial. In short, we have a new Antigone affair on our hands.”
Judith smiled shrewdly at my classical allusion. “Thank you for warning me, Monsieur Comte. If we are elected, we will nip all these imbecile ideas in the bud right away.”
“And perhaps it would be as well, if I may be permitted to make the suggestion, to begin by revoking all Fulbert’s decrees.”
“But of course, that goes without saying.”
“Right. And meanwhile, since I don’t want to look as though I’m pressuring people in any way while they vote, I shall make myself scarce and pay a visit to Monsieur Gazel.”
I smiled at her, and after a moment’s hesitation she was good enough to hand my arm back to me. Little defects included, she was the salt of the earth, that woman. And I was pretty well certain by now that she and Meyssonnier were going to get on.
Burg led me through a labyrinth of passages to Fulbert’s bedroom, where I reassured our Antigone—who was as worked up as I’d been told—that I was absolutely determined, come what may, to ensure that the fallen enemy was buried in accordance with the rites of our religion. I glanced at Fulbert’s body, then looked away again hurriedly. His face was just one wound. And someone must have stabbed him, for I glimpsed blood on his chest.
Gazel, reassured by the promise of my support, expressed his lively gratitude. He had begun sorting out Fulbert’s papers (I suspect him of having an ungovernable old-maidish curiosity), and he offered me back the letter in which, in the name of History, I had laid claim to the suzerainty of La Roque. I accepted. What had been a good move in time of war, to put Fulbert in his place, was no longer apposite in the present state of our relations with La Roque. And there would always be the danger, if the letter was left lying around, that it might one day be used by someone out to make trouble.
As I crossed the château esplanade on my way down to the big green gate, I was enveloped by the late afternoon sunlight and felt myself expand in its warmth. It occurred to me that La Roque’s new council would be wise to find a room in the château for the townspeople to hold their meetings in. Possibly it might be less impressive than the chapel, but it could scarcely fail to be lighter and less damp.
Agnès Pimont lived on the main street over the newsstand her husband used to keep, a tiny, very old, very dainty little house in which everything was on the minutest scale, including the very steep spiral staircase that led to the upstairs rooms, which forced me to hold my shoulders sideways in order to get up it at all. Agnès greeted me on the landing and led me into a tiny parlor lit by an equally tiny window. The place had the air of a doll’s house, an impression that had always been reinforced in the old days by a windowbox of geraniums on the windowsill overlooking the street. The walls were papered with old gold burlap, there were two dainty little tub armchairs, the tubbiest and tiniest you ever saw, and a large divan, covered like the chairs in blue velvet. One couldn’t help wondering how it could possibly have been got into the room in the first place. Certainly not through the window or up that staircase. Perhaps it had always been there, even before the walls were built. It looked old enough for that, even though it was entirely lacking in any discernible style.
On the floor of the little room, between tub chairs and divan, there was a carpet, and on the carpet a Persian rug made in France, and on the rug a white simulated animal fur. I took it that the Pimonts must have inherited the latter two, and that unable to think what to do with them in so tiny a dwelling they had taken the easy way out and just piled them on top of one another. The result was rather cozy. And so was Agnès: fresh, pink, and blond, with those kind, lovely light brown eyes that always gave me the impression, as I said earlier, that they were somehow really blue. She made me sit in one of her little tubs, where I was so low down and so near to the white fur that I felt as though I was actually sitting on the g
round at Agnès’s feet when she perched herself on the divan.
I always experienced a feeling of intimacy, of warm trust, and also of melancholy in her company. I could have married her, and I didn’t. Yet far from bearing me a grudge on that account she still felt this warm friendship for me. I admired her for that. Not one girl in a thousand, I’d say, would have reacted the way she had. And as for me, every time I met her I always thought to myself, and not without regret, There is one of the possible paths my life could have taken. And I would wonder once again what it would have been like. A futile yet tantalizing occupation, because how was it possible to tell? How can any man ever say that he would have been happy with some particular woman without trying the experiment? And if he does try it, why then, however it turns out, however well or badly, the experiment has by then ceased to become an experiment, because it is his life.
One thing was certain anyway. If I had married Agnès fifteen years before, she would have done me good service. She had aged very little. Or rather, she had aged very well, without fading, without drying up, just becoming slightly—but not excessively—more fleshy. The waist was still charmingly slender, despite Christine, but above and below it everything was generously rounded, and with that complexion of hers, so pink, so fresh, she always had the look of having just stepped out of a bath. She’d done her hair and made herself up while she waited for me, I noticed. And that made things easier for me, because I was well aware that I was going to have the whole weight of a vanished civilization stacked against me in this little interview.
No peasant hemming and hawing, no cobwebby preambles. Although she lived in such a tiny town, Agnès was an urbanite, even though her grammar wasn’t much better than La Menou’s. I sank down into my tub chair, I looked her straight in the eyes, trying to still the voice of all emotion, and came straight to the point: “Agnès, would you like to come and live with us at Malevil?”
I had said “with us,” not “with me.” But I wasn’t sure whether at that stage she had quite grasped the distinction, because her clear skin flushed a deep and deeper pink, then a wave seemed to run through her, beginning in her feet and rising till it lifted her breasts. A deep silence. She looked at me, and I tried as hard as I could to stop my eyes saying more than they ought to, so afraid was I that she might misunderstand.
She opened her mouth (a beautiful full-lipped mouth), closed it again, swallowed, then finally brought herself to say, elliptically, “If that would give you pleasure, Emmanuel.”
I had feared as much. She was going to turn it into a personal discussion. I would have to make myself more clear. “It’s not to me only that you would be giving pleasure, Agnès.”
She jumped as though I’d slapped her. All the color ebbed from her face, and with what seemed like a mixture of disappointment and remorse she said, “You mean Colin?”
“I don’t mean only Colin.”
And when she just stared at me, not daring to understand, I explained to her about Miette and Catie, especially about the latter and the failure her marriage with Thomas had been in our community. Again she tried to bring things down to a personal level.
“But, Emmanuel, I could have told you before it happened that with a girl like Catie—”
I cut in on her. “Let’s leave Catie out of it, because it’s not a question of personalities. At the moment there are eight men at Malevil, and two women. Three if you come too. How can one of those eight claim the sole rights in one of those women? And if he does, what will the others think?”
“But what about people’s feelings, then? Where do they come into it?” Agnès said with a vehemence very close to indignation.
People’s feelings. Yes, she was in a strong position there. With centuries of courtly and romantic love behind her. I looked at her. “You haven’t understood me, Agnès. No one will ever force you to do anything you don’t feel like doing. You will be absolutely free in your choices.”
“My choices!” Agnès cried. And in that plural she managed to convey a whole world of reproaches. And not only reproaches, because she had never been so near before to a declaration of love. At that moment I was almost ready to let myself be carried away in the tide of her emotion and let her have her way. I took my eyes off her. I remained silent. I needed to summon up my strength. It took me quite a little while to overcome that temptation. But I knew only too well that I must, that any monogamous couple would soon prove incompatible with Malevil’s community life. The disproportion between the number of men and the number of women—on which I always based my arguments in our discussions—wasn’t really the essential factor. In reality, the choice was one between the nuclear family and the nonpossessive community.
I realized too that I couldn’t even tell Agnès what a sacrifice I was making in renouncing her. If I told her, I would only be strengthening her in her “feelings.”
“Agnès,” I said, leaning toward her, “if only for Colin’s sake, it’s impossible. If I were to marry you he would feel desperately let down and jealous. And if you married him, I wouldn’t be happy about that either. And it isn’t just Colin. There are the others too.”
Colin was an argument that reached her. And because she could sense my inflexibility in any case, and because she couldn’t see herself, even after this, choosing to live in La Roque instead of Malevil, she just didn’t know where she was or what to think. So she took a feminine way out that is no worse, after all, than any other. She retreated into silence and tears. I heaved myself up out of my tub, sat down beside her on the divan, and took her hand. She wept on. I understood her well enough. Like me, she was renouncing one of those possible paths her life might have taken, a path she had often dreamed of taking and now never would.
When I saw the tears begin to ebb a little, I held out my handkerchief and waited. She looked up at me, then said quietly, “I was raped. Did you know that?”
“I didn’t know. I suspected it.”
“All the women here were raped, even the old ones, even Josepha.”
When I didn’t say anything, she went on: “Is that why you...”
I protested. “Agnès, are you insane! There is only one reason, the one I’ve given you!”
“Because it wouldn’t be fair, you know, Emmanuel. Even though I was raped, that doesn’t make me a trollop.”
“Of course not, of course not,” I said vehemently. “It was nothing you could do anything about! It didn’t enter my mind!”
I took her in my arms, I stroked her cheek and her hair with a trembling hand. What I ought to have been feeling at that moment was compassion. The only thing I felt in fact was desire. It burst upon me absolutely unexpectedly, and took possession of me with a brutality that frightened me. My eyes became vague, my breathing changed. I had just enough clarity of mind left to think that I must at all costs obtain her consent, and quickly, if I didn’t want to find myself in the position of having raped her in my turn.
I urged her. I pressed her to answer me. Even though she lay passive in my arms, she hesitated, she continued to resist, and when she did finally acquiesce, I think it was more because she had been infected by the urgency of my desire than persuaded by my arguments.
We slid down onto the white fur, which thereby proved its usefulness at last, without my affection, my tenderness for her surfacing for even an instant. It was as though I had locked it away, that tenderness, deep in some corner of my consciousness where it couldn’t deflate the violence of my physical desire. And I took Agnès roughly, violently, there on her floor.
However, when the first violence of the storm abated, I gave as well as took. And if it is true that one can be happy at different levels, then I was happy at the humblest level of all at that moment. But after all our battles, after all that blood, was there still room for any happiness other than in the survival of the group?
“I no longer belong to myself.” That is what I told her as I said goodbye, a little hurt, too, that she could take leave of me with a hint of coldness
in her manner, just as Meyssonnier had done a little while before.
When I rejoined Meyssonnier, however, back in the gloom of the chapel, where the meeting had just ended, I found him more relaxed, more friendly suddenly. He came over to me and took me to one side.
“Where have you been? We’ve been looking for you everywhere. Well, never mind,” he added hurriedly, with his usual discretion. “Listen, I’ve got good news. It went absolutely without a hitch. They elected the whole list. Hardly a murmur. Then Judith proposed Gazel for curé. And he was elected too, by a rather small majority. And finally, carried away by their own enthusiasm, they elected you Bishop of La Roque.”
I was flabbergasted. With some cause. To walk out of the little interview I had just had and find myself a bishop! It is true that absence lends added virtues. But if the hand of God was in this, then He was showing an indulgence for the weaknesses of the flesh that belied His reputation.
At the time, however, it wasn’t the irony of it that struck me. I protested vehemently. “Me? Bishop of La Roque! But my place is at Malevil! Didn’t you tell them that?”
“Wait, wait! Of course they knew you’re not going to leave Malevil. But as I understand it, they want someone over Gazel to keep him in check. They don’t want him getting too zealous.” He laughed. “It was Judith’s idea in the first place. But I backed her to the hilt.”
“You backed her to the hilt!”
“Of course. For one thing I agree it’s a good thing to have you over Gazel. And for another, I thought it would mean I’d see you more often.” And he added very quietly, “Because, you know, leaving Malevil...”
I looked at him. Our eyes met. After a moment he turned his head away. I didn’t know what to say. I knew what he was feeling. Ever since primary school, Peyssou, Colin, Meyssonnier, myself, we’d always stuck together. Look at Colin, for instance. He’d set up his plumber’s business in La Roque, but he’d always gone on living in Malejac. And now that was over. The Club was beginning to break up. I realized it then. For us at Malevil too, it was going to be a wrench, not seeing Meyssonnier.