“It’s your birthday next month. I will throw a little party. Invite anyone you want…”
“You’re talking to me as if I were a kid,” she protests.
My offer seems childish, but my goal, hardly. I want Annette to get her act together again, I want her to dance and laugh before Jean Luze’s very eyes. I will bring her to the limit of what she can endure. Suffering does not move, it provokes pity or annoys. I, usually so stingy, have now made up my mind to blow a lot of money on this party.
Morning, noon and night, the couple is with us, more united than ever. Felicia revives as her stomach grows more deformed. She is as serene as a statue. Jean Luze eats with a healthy appetite. He doesn’t smoke at the dinner table anymore under the pretext that the smell of tobacco bothers his wife.
“Pregnancy suits you nicely,” he tells her with a kiss.
Each time he shows her affection in my presence, I hate her for settling so easily for this bourgeois, measured feeling she inspires in him.
I swear I will shake him out of its tepid indifference. I will light his fuse. It won’t be too long. I will melt his ice. He looks at us too sweetly, all smiles. I like to see that dimple dig into his chin and his lips curl above his teeth.
The church bells have been ringing incessantly since morning. There I am, dressed as a Daughter of Mary. I look like a nun in the dress Jane Baviere made for me. I can’t reproach her; the worker always tries to please the master. I am the one who insisted on the long sleeves and the high collar. I look rather good, compared to the others in the procession. What a hideous cohort of shriveled old maids! All the same, I am the best among them. All old maids stand out. At least, the real ones do. Not those who, like me, were once torches and have become embers. The tangled webs of veins on their limbs, their pursed lips and darting glances, give them away. The dissatisfaction in their faces is unmistakable. Looking at them, I can’t feel so proud of my part, though I am the leading lady in this spectacle. This pious banner seems heavy to bear. Children’s heads crowned in white are moving in front of me; eyes cast down, they throw handfuls of flowers from their baskets. All the balconies are decorated, and garlands of artificial flowers made by the nuns sway slowly between the trees in the street. This is a festival for the young in which we should not be taking part. The Virgin, radiant, resting on a pedestal carried by four young men, is proof of this. We belong in the ranks of penitents. In the procession, we stand out like grumpy owls [9] in a flock of turtledoves. This is the last time in my life that I will make such a spectacle of myself. We sing Father Paul’s choral arrangement while we wait. “May God above shower us with the goodly rain of His sweet blessing and may His Holy Name be blessed.” Up above, the blows of axes rain upon the trees. It seems to lend rhythm to our hymn. The prefect and the mayor, clad in their gray wool suits, sweating blood and water, watch the procession go by and cross themselves before the Holy Sacrament. Caledu and M. Long stand outside the door of the Cercle. The priest blesses them all. Jacques the madman comes running.
“The gates of hell have opened their mouth to devour you,” he screams, flailing. “God has cursed us. He has opened the gates of hell upon us…”
The singing dies down. Caledu frowns. He brings a whistle to his mouth, and Jacques the madman screams again, pointing at him.
“Look out, Father, a demon!”
Caledu rushes up and grabs him by the collar. Face contorted in hate, he starts slapping him.
“Quiet, you!”
“Satan!” Jacques yells.
Then Caledu pulls his revolver from his belt and shoots the lunatic point-blank. Jacques falls to his knees without a protest.
The procession stops abruptly. In the silence, you can only hear the crying of the children in the first row. Some of the nuns clutch their rosaries in their shaking hands. Others clench them convulsively. We are standing, bodies stiff in a kind of hypnotic trance. But Jacques, red with blood, begins to crawl toward us, scraping the earth with his nails. Holding his head up, he moves slowly, painfully Dr. Audier, sweat pouring down his face, takes a step toward him, but a bullet whistling near his feet nails him to the ground, terrified.
The pharmacist twirls his hat in his hands mechanically. He spins it faster and faster as if his movements are not in his control. The women have hidden their faces in their kerchiefs; the nuns, eyes turned to heaven, drone a Pater Noster. The beggars lying on the ground are watching the scene without moving.
I see Joel Marti turn his head to the right and to the left, as if looking for help. With bulging eyes, he points at his brother, who has just collapsed face-first on the ground. He wants to go to him. Someone holds him back.
“Don’t move,” Caledu yells.
He steps back, smoking gun in his fist, as we remain frozen in place.
Father Paul then whispers something to the choir children, and in an instant, he is surrounded by a halo of incense. Raising the monstrance over his head, framed by the choir children, he walks up to Caledu.
“And now,” he says, “I ask for your permission to perform my priestly duties.”
The buzz of prayer becomes more intense.
Still walking backward, the commandant makes an impatient movement with his left hand to indicate his total indifference, and disappears around the corner.
This was the signal for a mad dash. The trembling nuns gathered their students. Men, women, and children rushed home. Dr. Audier and his wife followed me into our living room. We then told the entire story to Jean Luze and Felicia, whom we had awakened from their nap.
Crowding behind partly opened blinds, we watched Joel Marti, who was weeping over the body.
Jean Luze glanced at Dr. Audier’s sweaty face.
“Are you sure he is dead?” he asked. “That there is nothing more that can be done?”
“I will find out later.”
“Later!” Jean Luze cried out, “later indeed, while you stay here trembling with fear!”
“Hush! Calm down, dear,” Felicia said softly.
“It’s none of my business. It’s not up to me to stand up to your district commandant. This is your home, not mine. It is not the responsibility of a passing stranger to reform a place where he does not belong.”
He raised his voice and we trembled even more.
“Hush!” Dr. Audier said in his turn, with a glance to the porch.
“You have to protest, respond to this with a demonstration, face the danger together. They would never destroy an entire town. These murders, these tortures, are meant to terrorize you. But let one person here lead an uprising and the other side will tremble…”
“You don’t understand anything,” Dr. Audier said laconically, softly resting his trembling hand on Jean Luze’s arm.
Mme Audier was weeping and blowing her nose loudly.
Jean Luze opened the door of the living room with a gesture of unconcealed anger and went out. We saw him help Joel Marti carry Jacques’ body away, holding the feet awkwardly.
Jacques is dead. He was buried today. A few poets came out of their holes and carried his coffin to the cemetery in silence, heads lowered. Policemen and beggars were posted along the route. Violette followed the cortege with some flowers in her arms. As for the others, myself among them, we stayed behind locked doors, sitting quietly at home.
Jean Luze shows contempt in his eyes and in his smile. He can’t forgive our cowardice, reproaching us for it in every visible way. Each expression is a slap in our faces.
“Are you really that afraid to die?” he asked that evening of Dr. Audier, who accepts these insults in the detached manner of an experienced old man putting up with an impetuous son.
“You still haven’t understood a thing,” the doctor replied. “Fear is a vice that takes root once it is cultivated. It takes time to recover from it.”
Jean Luze shrugged.
“Who can boast that he has never been afraid?” he shot back at Audier. “At least you have been spared from war. As for me, I bear its mark on my body and soul forever.”
