The Rendezvous and Other Stories

by Patrick O'Brian

  ‘Monsieur le Curé,’ cried Alphard, rising from his chair and bowing to the cassocked priest, ‘good evening to you. There,’ he said to Halévy, ‘there is your bridge – one of your bridges. The Church has not changed.’

  Halévy smiled, raising his shoulders and spreading his hands; but he only said, ‘He seems an excellent man, to be sure; it does me good to see him.’

  Alphard felt the strength of Halevy’s tactfulness and the naivety of his own remark in the present circumstances, and he cried, ‘Not changed essentially, not here, I mean. The vernacular is so close to Latin any way that it makes little difference. The natural piety of the village is the same as it always was. Take my grocer Fifine, for example: she has sugar blessed on Saint Blaise’s day, and whenever you have a sore throat she gives you half a dozen lumps – gives them, I say. Because to sell a blessed object would be gross impiety. There is your true mediaeval spirit, vigorously alive in the midst of electric refrigerators. Or take our curious vespers this day week, in which they have used the vernacular ever since the night of time.’ He paused, recollecting that the traditional proceedings at Saint-Félíu on Good Friday were far too truly mediaeval to describe to Halevy. He was an Avignon Jew who had recently opened a small gallery outside the sea-gate, not far from the church, where he exhibited a few young painters and bought antiques for his brother’s shop in Paris. He was old and fat and he had a mane of white hair; he meant to retire to Saint-Felíu, with the gallery for fun. Hitherto he had known the village only in the summer.

  ‘What is so curious about your vespers?’ he asked.

  ‘Or take our bull-fight at Assumption,’ said Alphard, feigning not to hear. ‘There is continuity for you … and apart from anything else, these people are still at the mercy of the sea for one half of their living and of the sun for the other half: they dare not presume, or go whoring after other gods. They must keep the ancient ways, so long as the ancient ways keep them. But speaking of continuity, I should like to show you my jar of Chian wine one day. The seal is unbroken – a seal pressed at least two thousand years ago! We might even try it.’

  Halévy did not follow the sequence of these observations – how could he? – but he saw that Alphard wished to change the subject, and he said that he should be very happy to see and even, if he were allowed, to try the Chian wine. ‘I shall be back before Easter, to get the place ready for the tourists. First I have to go to Gosol, where a man tells me his cousin has a Romanesque Virgin he might sell. I doubt the story very much. A true twelfth-century Virgin is scarcely to be hoped for today – all that were portable have already been sold. But I shall go: I love those strong, pitiless faces, even when they are fakes.’

  Good Friday’s dawn could not be seen for the clouds coming up from the south: a hot brooding day with a great many flies about. They even came into the cool depths of the church where Alphard was listening to a foolish young Dominican rattling away – an involved, enthusiastic sermon about ecumenism. The friar was in favour of it, but that was all his hearers could make out, since the reasoning was tenuous in the first place and the preacher had lost even that thread early on. The greater part of the congregation sat quietly as the excited, electrically amplified voice went on and on, booming from loudspeakers hung in the aisles. The acoustics were poor, but even if the Dominican had been content with the voice God gave him most of the older women would not have understood his French. They stared before them in a mild, holy stupor, watching the candles flicker or the choirboys scratching themselves as they read their comics: they did not seem to mind the flies, either. Alphard wondered at their patience. He himself had outlived his desires or had seen them dwindle into mere velleities – nothing mattered very much – but he had not outlived testiness, and as he brushed away a cluster of heavy, sluggish flies he muttered ‘frying in Hell … frying in Hell.’ He had had the greatest respect and affection for John XXIII as a man, but as a pope he thought him utterly disastrous – the results of his actions were utterly disastrous. Temerity, wild zeal, enthusiasm … Could it really be true that he was a freemason, a Communist?

  The tedious friar came down from the pulpit at last, but he contrived to give the mass a new-fangled twist at the very end: if Alphard understood him right he asked for the congregation’s blessing.

  ‘At least one will know what to expect this afternoon,’ he said indignantly, dipping his hand into the dried-up stoup. ‘That will be a comfort.’ Their old priest would be taking the traditional vespers, as he always did: a dear man, untouched by modernism – nothing histrionic there – no innovations to be feared. The moment he passed the door heat enveloped him completely; it was as though he had walked into a physical substance, for now the sirocco had set in. The flies were thicker still, hatching in multitudes from some hidden filth; and looking up to the ominous sky he saw that the mountains behind the town had that particular livid glow that often came before a storm.

  ‘I hope it will not spoil the children’s day,’ he said. Not that he liked children: and most of the present crop, born since the village had grown so much richer from the tourists, were rough, aggressive, ill-mannered. They despised their illiterate parents; and their worshipping illiterate parents gave them far too much money. Far too much to the adolescent boys especially, who shrieked about the village streets on mopeds. Not that the girls were much better: a bold, gum-chewing, confident set. It seemed an unhappy generation for all its wealth; old and hard so very young. But still he hoped their day would not be spoiled. It was a particular ceremony, essentially for them; and it linked them with a very distant past – to the Crusades, in all probability. Many of them were dressed up for it already. He saw Fifine, leading her niece and her hulking great nephew by the hand. The children (if the hairy Albert could be called a child) walked stiffly, their arms away from their fine new clothes, and the free hand of each held an enormous rattle, of the kind that whirls about its stem. Both looked over-excited, and there was a glow of anticipation on their aunt’s Visigothic face as she steered them through the throng.

  A few yards farther on the shutters of the gallery were up, but to his surprise Alphard saw Halévy in the door, sweeping vigorously. He was bare to the waist and sweat ran through the grizzled mat on his bosom: he was wearing a beaded skull-cap, however, presumably against the dust. Averting his eyes from the mat, Alphard said, ‘Are you back already?’

  Halévy said that in fact he was – that he had found no Madonna – four hundred miles in pursuit of a myth – and that he was profoundly discouraged.

  ‘Come and try my Chian wine this evening,’ said Alphard. ‘Come at half past six.’

  ‘I should be very happy,’ said Halévy. ‘Thank you. Such a privilege.’ They talked about the weather – Halévy said the mountains made him think of El Greco – and while they were talking a horseplaying band of youths and boys, throwing sand and stones at one another, lurched into them. ‘Jean-Paul, what are you about? Dédé, say you are sorry to the gentleman,’ cried Alphard.

  No apology, no reply: only a ‘tough guy’ look.

  ‘Ill-mannered brutes,’ he said. ‘Really, I am ashamed for the village. I beg your pardon.’

  ‘They all seem over-excited today,’ said Halevy. ‘All the children. What are those rattles they are carrying, and why the saucepans?’ But before Alphard could reply, he went on, ‘Oh, I have a horrible piece of news for you. The municipality has forbidden sardines to be grilled in the street: it seems the tourists do not like the smell.’

  ‘They may forbid until they grow black in the face,’ cried Alphard, flushing. ‘The past will have its rights. The past will rise up and have its rights.’

  Alphard was not used to receiving guests, and after his lunch and his siesta he spent a considerable time setting his room in order, brushing the table, cleaning two glasses, moving chairs, angering the bird. Outside it was even hotter, dustier, and more oppressive. He was late for vespers and he slipped into a side-chapel: the ceremony was perfectly familiar to him n
ow, although it had seemed so strange twenty years ago, and he ‘found his place’ as it were, without hesitation. The remaining psalms and antiphons followed their universal course and then the ancient local variation began, in the vernacular – the Magnificat and its antiphon, followed by the curé’s address. Alphard understood the language pretty well, and as the address never varied year by year he followed it with ease: yet it was not really a very interesting address, except on historical grounds, being an allegory showing the relationship between the Church and the unbelievers under the outward likeness of the conduct of the lion towards the ass, taken straight from a mediaeval bestiary; and as the curé’s triple r’s and explosive participles rolled round the church Alphard’s attention wandered. Sometimes his eyes strayed over the shrouded form of Saint Eulalie, following the ecstatic baroque swirl beneath the sheet; sometimes he looked at the instruments of the Passion, the lance, the sponge, the cruel pincers, hanging unveiled beyond the saint; and sometimes he gazed at the packed congregation. On most days their conduct left a great deal to be desired; awe and even common respect were wanting, and the people, above all the children, usually whispered, giggled and stared about. But now, in spite of the heat, the flies, their new clothes, and the temptation of their rattles, whistles, saucepans and drums, they were exemplary; every year they delighted in the piece about the lion, and this year their interest was even greater. Leaning forward in their seats they listened with the keenest attention to the unvarying description of the beast: ‘His head is the head of a king and he has a terrible neck and a mane and his chest is vast and square: he holds his great tail high above the ground. His flattened legs come down to his huge feet, which are divided, with long hooked claws … the ass alone resists him, braying there in the wilderness.’

  The curé never used the microphone, and his fine deep voice filled the church, each word as distinct as a stone. The description was done and now the allegory was to be unfolded and made plain: here he might well have lost his grasp upon his hearers as he went on, right through the list; but they knew the climax was coming, and they never stirred. ‘… and the tail of the lion is justice, divine justice high over us. The lion’s leg is flattened, and here we see the coming of the Passion: the shape of his foot is God’s own sign that the world is to be held by the clenched fist. The sharp crooked claws are vengeance against the Jews; and the ass, who is the evil ass but the Jews? With the terrible face of a lion He will appear to the Jews when He judges them, for they damned themselves …’

  Now the tension was growing to its height. Alphard had heard this twenty times and more, but he too leaned forward on his chair.

  ‘For they damned themselves: the Jews betrayed their king.’ In the momentary pause all the children drew in their breath: every mouth was open, every tongue shaped to form the sound of D; and the moment the priest cried ‘Death to the Jews!’ they all burst out ‘Death to thejews!’ an enormous shrilling, instantly drowned by the even greater din of rattles, whistles, saucepans, drums as they rushed in a body from the church, leaving the adults to listen to the collect, read in a mild and unemphatic routine voice.

  To recover from the shattering din and to avoid the racing bands of children as they howled and whistled in the streets, blind with excitement, Alphard usually walked on the jetty for half an hour; but today he went straight back along the beach towards his house. The sirocco had dropped: a brooding calm.

  There was indeed something unusual about the general hub-bub: less of the high small-child piping and more of the crack-voiced adolescent bawl, with here and there a woman’s shriek and the bass roaring of a man. But Alphard’s mind was far away until he reached the diesel-pump. Here there was a dense crowd, an impenetrable swarm – every youth and child in Saint-Felíu – and something was terribly amiss. The fun had turned oh so sour: the smell of a bull-fight or worse. In the heat and the dust and the shouting he tried to push through: somewhere in the middle of that tight mob outside Halévy’s gallery there was a rhythmic crash; and striving, thrusting his way through the smaller children on the fringe he saw half a dozen great boys swinging a baulk of wood, a launching stretcher from the beach, swinging it end-on against the door – a battering-ram. All round the edge there were women screaming, grasping at their own children: astonished men and dogs came running. Alphard shouted ‘Jean-Baptiste, Jojo, put it down – stop, stop at once,’ but as he tottered there, children underfoot, children pulling at his legs, the door gave way and there was Halévy, terribly pale, his white hair streaming, with an antique, bell-mouthed gun in his hands. A high triumphant roar, the shriek of rattles, a shower of stones, and he fired. Alphard went down. Had he been hit? No. But the swarm of children struggling over him three-deep kept him in the dust and by the time he struggled to his feet it had happened. The jet of diesel-oil played straight into the shop: Alphard stood there, bumped into, unsteady, tossed from side to side, amazed, tears running down his face, shouting ‘Stop, stop, stop,’ and the flames shot up, straight into the windless air, mounting high, high under the black and swirling smoke, an enormous fire.

  The men were there, hitting, kicking, turning off the pump. Alphard turned away and he came face to face with a small beaming round-faced child who had not yet understood the change, a child that danced still, marvelling at the fire, waving her rattle and chanting ‘Death, death to the Jews.’

  The Virtuous Peleg

  EVERY YEAR a great concourse of people come to the place they call Kevin’s tomb in the mountains and they pray him to intercede for them, for although he is not a saint upon the calendar – he is not that Kevin, but another – he is much revered in those parts which is no doubt a great solace to him as he burns for ever in the extreme torment aggravated as it is by every device and artifice known to the fiend of hell. The pilgrims suppose him to be well placed to intercede for them, in which they are right, by far the most of them being false lechers, damned in every inch.

  Kevin was a young man when he first lived in the beehive cells that stand around Deara. He had no inclination to the warfare which was the occupation of his sept, nor to work, and equally none to women; he was as soft as a cat and sober in his discourse and he slept inordinately, which made him fat despite the diet of Deara. In the first years of his life with the holy monks he was unable to avoid a small share of the work, but when his young cousin Peleg was allowed to join him this was no longer the case, which was a consolation to Kevin.

  Peleg had little enough inclination in his nature to work, but he revered his cousin, who had an awful and persuasive way, and had been held up to Peleg as a man perfect all the days of his life, and daily young Peleg forced his nature and conquered this aversion and cleaned the cell and tilled the apron of garden and carried stones from the common field. The carrying of them, even the huge square ones, was easy enough for Peleg, being the length and breadth of an ox as he was, and that of the larger kind.

  They did not hold Peleg in much estimation at Deara, for he had no learning and if they had known he was incapable of his letters even, Peleg would have been put out of the beehive cells and they would have made him go back to watching his father’s herd of swine, a meagre herd that was watched already by his nine brothers.

  Peleg was humble in his mind and freely acknowledged his deficiencies; he studied meekness and told over his letters by day and by night, but they ran by like water or the mist and he had no hold upon them, which made him low in his spirits: his mind would also turn of itself to young women, especially to the three daughters of Turlough who were so kind and loving to him; and whenever his mind did this he would leap up and plunge into the deep pool to his neck and tell over his letters. Kevin told him each time how wicked he was, and the monks would offer to scourge him at any time, by day or by night, whenever he felt himself invaded by the flesh or the Devil.

  It was at about this time that news came to Deara of Brothen’s wonderful voyage to the Picts, how he went on a millstone that happened to be on the shore, and he sleeping
most of the way and without oar, rudder or sail, and how he had baptized seven Pictish kings in one day, eleven dukes with their families, with many other nobles and four large fields of ordinary people.

  The news edified the monks of Deara, as well it might; but it seemed to Peleg that he noted a certain restraint, almost a sourness like that you may see on the face of the second man when he says how well the first has run. Peleg too felt that the honour of Deara was in some way lowered by this success from the north, and daily after he had returned thanks for the spread of the faith he prayed that some one of the holy men of Deara might be moved to take to the sea, to be wafted by ghostly hands to the pagan coast, there to meet a bloody martyrdom with unflinching delight or to convert fourteen kings with the numerous family of each while the sun should stand in admiration and the day grow long enough for the numbers of the common to pass the end of counting. He prayed especially that the reverend Kevin might be the chosen vessel: he prayed with fervour and his four bones were flayed and his blood soaked into the stone.

  Days passed, and the monks of Deara looked at one another sideways and anxious, but none went near the strand.

  Peleg watched Kevin for signs of a trance or an exaltation perhaps, but Kevin still moved slowly and slept the day long in his cell, waking to eat or to go through the motions of worship. The only hopeful sign at all was his increasing absent-mindedness; for day after day now he would forget that the stir-about was for two and he would eat it all, as well as the nuts.

  Many days Peleg fasted and that apart from the usual fasts of Deara which were known in all the Christian world: it was for his soul’s health, as he found one evening, it being Friday and his birthday. There was an angel sitting on the heap of stones by the side of the common field that Peleg was picking for ever.