CHAPTER TEN
The next day, for the Feast of Saint Peter, there was a street fair on Place de Petionville. Small colorful lamps decorated the trees beneath which the church ladies had set up their stands. An orchestra played a lusty merengue [32] by the lawn where a few couples were already dancing. Vendors with trays of goods on their heads hawked their wares to passersby but ran off and set up on the sidewalks after they were chased away by the monks for whose benefit this feast was held. The gendarmes kept at bay a horde of beggars haunting the vicinity. Once in a while the beggars would elude the watchful eye of the police and scamper to show off their scrofula or their maimed limbs and plead for alms.
When a fanfare sounded, cutting off the orchestra, the crowd was suddenly silent and listened attentively. Men in uniform emerged like an immense black wave, rushing right into the square. Upon seeing them, the beggars yelped with joy breaking free of the police, who no longer dared interfere, they crowded round to cheer on the men.
“Long live the Blackshirts!” they cried.
A voice ordered: “Halt! At ease!” and they broke ranks. Arrogant, chests bulging, hands on their weapons, a few of them with their arms draped imposingly around young girls. The atmosphere changed, as if everyone were suddenly whipped by a mad whirlwind: the church ladies, who a moment ago had been fanning themselves quietly at their counters, were standing and laughing nervously as they dug into bags of confetti; girls went into electrified contortions on the dance floor; their partners resembled robots gone wild, mechanically crashing to the ground with every blast of the saxophone. The frenzy ended with the sound of bullets. Shots were fired in the direction of a man with his hands up. His path was blocked. The men in uniform caught him and dragged him to a tree where they tied him up.
“Let me go,” begged the man. “I haven’t done anything, I only said I was hungry. Let me go.”
“What right do you have to be hungry? Are you trying to foment rebellion?”
“Music!” another voice ordered the orchestra.
And as the musicians attacked a new merengue, the men took aim and riddled him with bullets.
No one in the anxious crowd dared move another muscle. A fanfare sounded and smothered the orchestra once more; the flag rose, the boots regrouped. The monks untied the man’s body and placed it atop a pile of others in a truck driven by an undertaker in a black uniform. The monks motioned wildly as they returned, trying to restore the peaceful and cheerful atmosphere that had been decidedly broken by the arrival of the men in uniform.
“The fair’s not over, the fair’s not over,” they shouted, rolling up their robes and striding briskly around the square.
Paul squeezed Anna Valois’ hand tightly. He felt her trembling.
“You want to go?”
“Yes.”
He led her away, but a few steps later, they bumped into Fred Morin, who raised his glass and said: “Let’s party! Let’s drink to happiness!” They were immediately surrounded by a group of young people.
“Let’s go, Paul,” Anna begged.
“Why? What’s the matter? The party’s just started,” Fred exclaimed.
He seemed drunk and the fun-loving smile flickering on his lips could not erase the expression of fear dilating his eyes.
Paul took Anna’s hand to leave with her but the circle of young men blocked his path.
“You’re not about to ditch your friends,” a player on his team protested. “You’ve abandoned us and here we are glad to be with you.”
There was nothing natural about their words and gestures. They looked like bad actors suddenly pushed onstage and asked to perform a difficult role.
Involuntarily, they kept turning their heads in the same direction. Paul followed their gaze. He was startled to see Rose talking to a man in a black uniform sitting in the backseat of a car, the driver impossible to make out save for a patch of hair. The man in uniform leaned over, opened the door and Rose got in next to him as the car took off. Paul wanted to run after it, but his teammates blocked his path a second time.
“Leave me alone,” he yelled.
“Don’t do anything crazy,” the youngest on the team, who was only sixteen, advised him.
His hand fell on Paul’s shoulder and his nails slowly dug into his flesh.
“Don’t tell us you didn’t know,” Fred Morin said to him, forcing an increasingly false smile.
“Didn’t know what?”
“All right,” said another. “If you don’t feel like talking about it, that’s your business. But let’s set up our next practice. You’re our best player and we want to keep you.”
“Just like that, huh!” Paul answered, staring at them angrily. “I’d give anything to know why you’ve changed your mind. Eight days ago, I got the distinct feeling I was somewhat undesirable. Is it because my sister got into that car… you think that…”
“Lucky man,” Fred Morin said to him as he wrapped an arm around his shoulders.
He freed himself with a shrug and looked at Anna. She lowered her head. So then, she agreed with them. Or did she avert her eyes to spare his feelings? He fought off the desire to lay into them with blows and curses. He looked again at Anna and took off running. For a long time, he walked aimlessly through the city and only went home at nightfall. He found everyone in the living room except for Rose. He didn’t utter a word, but when she came back an hour later, he got up to meet her:
“Harlot!” he spat in her face. “I saw you!”
She turned to him with a face that was serene, almost wooden.
“You saw me, did you, so what? Is that how you thank me for trying so hard to save this land despite being afraid?”
And she started playing out the scene.
“He says to me, ‘Get in, Mademoiselle, so glad I ran into you, I’ll take you to the lawyer myself. He’s an old nutcase who gets strange ideas in his head, refused to take the money from your father, I know, because he wanted to see you again. He lost a daughter your age and you remind him of her.’ So he really did give me a ride to the lawyer’s, who promised that everything would be settled by next month. From now on, we can consider the case resolved. No, really, they’ve been very polite, very respectful, and I swear they are a lot less frightening up close than from afar.”
“You smell bad,” the invalid said suddenly.
“Me!” she said, taken aback, arms wrapped around her own waist, legs drawn together as if soldered shut.
“You don’t smell like yourself, you smell bad, go away, go away.”
“You be quiet!” Paul said to the invalid through clenched jaws.
“I’ll be quiet if I want to. And if I could stand on two feet, I would flog her.”
The grandfather got up, took the child in his arms and walked past Rose as he made for the stairs.
She slowly went up after them and pulled the door to her room shut. She fell to her knees, doubling over, head nearly touching the ground, arms crossed on her stomach as if it ached. Then she took off her clothes, holding them using the tips of her fingers in disgust, and ran to the bathroom.
When the mother went into the bedroom, she was resting, dressed in a clean white nightgown, lying on her side, eyes closed and breathing evenly. She looked at the girl pensively for a moment and then went to her son’s room.
“She slept with that dirty dog,” he said with revulsion.
“I will never believe that.”
“That’s it, keep lying to yourself, keep seeing only what others tell you, and the rest of your life they’ll keep telling you the moon is made of green cheese.”
“No one has ever fooled me, you know that, not even your father.”
“So why do you refuse to face the truth?”
“As long as she won’t say anything about it, I won’t accuse her. What right do I have to judge my daughter
