sacrament of marriage. In any case, I have lost my innocence. Was I ever innocent? I understood the ugliness of life too early and it aged me. Jaded without experience, I’ve been like this since childhood. Like Claude. He can guess too many things as well. The day Anna began hating me because of the sewing box her father gave me, I felt it; just as I knew she’d torn my dress on purpose despite the innocent look on her face. I was only fifteen when I was already toying with Dr. Valois. That sensuous Normil force! Hits hard! Hell had its eye on us for some time and now we’re deep in it. The stakes have traced the infernal vicious circle, and maybe the hands that planted them are less guilty than ours. We are reaping what we sowed, the curse of our ancestors will disappear with our line. We must be hated and loved to the same extreme. I admire my father’s moderation, he’s the only one who stands out among us. How could Grandfather love him? Keep the sheep far away from us, for we would devour them. We, too, belong to a race of wildcats and raptors, that’s why we struggle so fiercely against those who’ve taken our lands. And the history of our property is quite murky. I heard my mother and father talking about it when I was six years old.
My mother was saying: “Grandfather insults me, he calls my father a drunk and a good-for-nothing; if I were mean I’d throw in his face what people say about his father.” “And what do people say?” my father asked. “They say he murdered a man to secure ownership of the land.” “Oh Laura, repeating such wild rumors?” my father replied. And my mother lowered her head.
One day, I had fallen asleep under the oaks. A man came to me in a dream wearing a bloody shirt that he took off to show me two gaping wounds on his back, and he said to me: “Look, he stabbed me with his knife to make his own justice. I will get my revenge when I put a weapon in the hand of one of his descendants, who will kill a man just as he did.” As he was talking, I detected his dull, atrocious stench. The smell of death, of clotted blood and rotting flesh. The memory of him has never made me feel uncomfortable, but I know he’s waiting there, two stones away from the ancestor’s grave. If Paul doesn’t leave, he will kill someone and I don’t want that. None of us will ever kill again. Grandfather must think that we deserved to be punished, that our tormentors were guided by a divine hand. The curse weighs on us and he knows it, but he rebels out of pride. It’s up to me to pay for this so that my children and Paul’s children can be free of it. Acquit myself without balking and be done with it. I’ve lived long enough with the superstitious fear of this curse falling on my brother’s head. He doesn’t deserve that. I struggle with the conviction that justice is not on our side. What right do we have to property? What gives us the right to such privilege while others wallow in poverty? The poverty of the people my peasant ancestor must have exploited, the misery of the poor who looted his garden and whom he had whipped without mercy, the poverty of the beggars taking on the uniform, the poverty of the man avenging himself through me for having been rejected by the women he desired. Suppose one day I too was forced to beg, to feel humiliated, would I not be proud to see Paul in a uniform with a gun on his belt? I don’t know. It’s difficult to put myself in others’ shoes, and I am still too well fed to understand what misery and hunger can make you do.
Human beings have an eerie resemblance to certain animals. I was struck by my resemblance to a panther I saw in a movie once. Same features, same fierce gaze veiled by false gentleness, same supple neck beneath an elegant head with wide, quivering, sensual nostrils. He, on the other hand, looks like a dog. One could easily mistake him for a gorilla, but that’s not the case. His hands are misleading since they’re long and hairy, but he’s just a dog; a poor dog craving affection who turns into a wolf as a result. A beastly couple, made for each other. A lascivious and insatiable panther! I will tear my impure body with my nails. A dog biting simply to defend himself, a poor dog used to kicks, who barks and bites to prove that he’s something other than a dog. “Are you tired, my saint, are you tired?” he says, and tenderly wipes my forehead. How can he get it so wrong when it comes to me? He’s ugly and that pains him. I will tear my impure body with my nails and I will die of it. The stench of a wildcat in my sweat. An animal stench in our sweat, all of us. Man is just an animal hemmed in by a narrow conscience; this is why it is his lot to suffer. The struggle between mind and beast tears at him from within. A tragic fate, a relentless struggle where the mind rarely wins. God has toyed with us…
I caught Melie with one of them. She was underneath him and was saying: “Kill him, kill them, you’re the strongest, kill them, they deserve to die.” Does she sleep with them only out of hatred for us? Who is naive enough to believe that you can win a servant’s heart with kindness? Inferiors only fear and respect you if you dominate them. Wearing one of my dresses, she spies on us, fornicates with the enemy and calls for our heads. A horde of beggars and ignoramuses finding salvation in crime! Is it their fault? Women and men together in uniform, women and men bearing arms, women and men marching, denouncing, murdering? Is that what awaits Melie when she puts on a uniform? I can see her goose-stepping, rifle on her shoulder. I can picture my mother’s face when she sees that spectacle, imagine my mother seeing her son in uniform, rifle on his shoulder, goose-stepping next to Melie.
Part Three
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The rocky road climbed abruptly, its sides shaded by almond trees, their leaves this time of year jutting from their branches like huge red tongues. Their dancing shadows traced strange arabesques on the ground. The sun hid behind a cloud and everything took on a new cast, bathed in filtered light. Paul climbed up the slope and arrived at the field where Fred Morin and the others were waiting for him. They ran to meet him, and lifted him up despite his protestations, carried him off in triumph. He struggled, meting out kicks and punches that the others took in stride. When he managed to get free, he faced them with his teeth on edge, hateful, fists up.
“If any one of you touches me I’ll smash your teeth in!” he shouted at them. “Bastards! You dirty bastards!”
He was yelling as loud as the grandfather would have, and he saw them draw back in perplexity, their shoulders drooping.
He ran his hand through his bushy mane and left without a word. Never again, never again, he kept saying to himself. He stumbled down the slope, retracing his steps.
They gathered around him almost immediately.
“What have we done to you?” Fred Morin asked him. “Why are you running away from us?”
“Let’s shake hands before you go, Paul, we’re begging you,” another said.
He watched them kneeling at his feet and he spit on the ground.
“Is it true you’re going to join the Blackshirts soon?” asked the youngest in the group, who was only sixteen. “If that’s true, put in a word for us with your sister’s friend. He’s important, mention us to him. We’d all like to wear the uniform. And when they give us weapons we’ll be feared and get some respect.”
A car went past them, slowed down, backed up and stopped. In the backseat was a man in a black uniform whom they all recognized. The man stuck his head out the window and looked at Paul for several long moments, then called him over with a flick of his long hairy hand: he wouldn’t budge. The man waited for some time, still leaning out the window; then he slapped the driver’s shoulder, gave him an order, and the car took off.
“Are you insane?” Fred Morin whispered.
A shiver ran through Paul. He gave Fred Morin a withering look, spat on the ground a second time and left. The grandfather was talking quietly with the child on the porch. He walked past them and into his room, opened the drawer, took the knife and tucked it inside his shirt, and went out again. He walked for an hour aimlessly and found himself almost randomly in front of the customhouse where his father worked. He pushed the door and went in. Someone he didn’t know greeted him and asked if he could help him with something.
“I’d like to speak to my father,” he replied.
“And who is your father?”
“Monsieur Normil.”
The employee’s expression changed immediately. He smiled with deliberate friendliness and hastened to admit
