Thirty Hours with a Corpse

by Maurice Level

  Lights were appearing in the windows of some houses that stood in their own gardens. One of these remained dark, and but for the smoke that rose from a chimney, it might have been empty. The rare passers-by hurried along; here and there in the distance streetlamps flickered. It was quite dark now, a cold, dreary winter’s night. Ferrou stood still: push on to Paris? He had not the strength; sleep where he was, in the cutting wind, with no covering but his rags? Impossible. He had left behind him the country stables where the straw makes a warm bed for vagabonds; there were no more village inns . . . and even if there were? . . . he had not a halfpenny in his pocket. For a second time the little house without lights attracted his attention. He was alone, he was cold, he was hungry, this shelter was as good as any other . . . He walked through the garden, listened, drew back a window shutter and found that the window was unfastened. He opened it, and at a bound was in the house. The window shut, he felt about in the dark, touching a bed, a small table; the drapery of a hanging wardrobe gave way to his hand; he raised it, felt the clothes beneath it, let it fall again. Then he found a door, opened it, and a savory smell of cooking tempted his nostrils.

  “No good,” he thought, “there’s someone in the house. I must clear out . . .”

  He turned to go, then stopped. Go where? To die of hunger on the road? If anyone came in, he could hide. Then, his thoughts running off into another channel, he said to himself:

  “You are cold, and it is warm here; you are hungry, and hot food will soon be ready; you have no money, and there is sure to be a full stocking hidden somewhere. You will probably have time to do all you want before anyone disturbs you, and if you are disturbed . . .”

  He opened his knife, tried the point on the palm of his hand, the edge on his nail, and murmuring: “The first who tries to stop me! . . .” went into the kitchen, lifted the lid of the pan, pricked the meat, and sneered:

  “Not cooked enough; I will come back . . .”

  But as he turned away there was a sound of steps outside. He heard the latch of the garden-gate lifted, the crunching of the gravel, and quickly, just as a key turned in the door, he slipped into the other room, raised the wardrobe-hanging and crouched down among the clothes. Not too soon: a man was coming into the house. This man lit a lamp, threw his coat over a chair, and began to pace the room. From his hiding place Ferrou saw him coming and going. He was a big man with large hands and square shoulders; his heavy, measured steps gave an impression of strength.

  “The devil!” thought Ferrou. “It’s not when the stomach has been empty for a week that a man is in a state to attack a lump like that!”

  The man sat down and, his head resting on his hands, seemed to be thinking deeply. The bell sounded; he rose, saying:

  “Is it you, Marie?”

  “Yes. I went to bring the boy home from school. He hadn’t taken his raincoat, and it’s snowing.”

  The man took the child on his knee, stroking his hair. From the kitchen the woman said:

  “I didn’t hurry. You are earlier than usual; it’s only half-past six. You didn’t find your friends at the café?”

  “Yes. But we had special work this afternoon, and tonight I must go out.”

  “Well, everything’s ready. We can begin at once.”

  “Go on without me; I’m not hungry. I will lie down on my bed; you must wake me at eleven o’clock.”

  “All right. Come, little one, supper’s ready. Let your father rest, he is tired.”

  The child went out of the room, and the man stretched himself on the bed.

  “It is half-past six,” thought Ferrou, “and he doesn’t clear out till eleven. Five hours of this!”

  Through the half-open door came the clatter of plates and the sound of the two voices. Now and again Ferrou was tempted to leave his hiding-place, to spring on the sleeping man, to stab him; then, imagining the unequal struggle, the noise, the too long and dangerous massacre of three beings, the woman and child clinging to his arm like cats, paralyzing his movements, he decided to wait. Once the man was gone, it would be easy to settle the woman and child. He had abandoned all idea of a quiet robbery. His stomach was too empty and his heart too full of hate to be satisfied with so little. His weakness made him ferocious; he had a knife, and it was there to be used.

  When the meal was finished, the woman put the child to bed and washed up the crockery. In the silence that followed nothing could be heard but the tick-tock of the clock and the irregular breathing of the sleeper, who turned and tossed on his bed. It struck ten; he arranged his plan of attack. In an hour the man would go . . . Afterwards, he would be master of the place.

  The thought of the coming massacre gave him more joy than the hope of the plunder. All was still. The man and the woman, the one sleeping, the other reading, had no suspicion that in the shadow a man lay in wait. Gradually a drowsiness stole over him, and he started when a voice said:

  “It’s eleven o’clock.”

  He rubbed his eyes and slowly stretched himself. The man got up, put on his shoes, and thrust his arms through the sleeves of his coat.

  “Above all, don’t catch cold,” said the woman. “I have heated some coffee; will you have it?”

  “Yes.”

  While he was sipping it, the woman went on:

  “Won’t you put on your other overcoat?”

  Ferrou felt that she was stretching her hand toward the hanging and started. But when the man replied: “No, this one will do very well,” he breathed again, and still shaking with fright, said to himself:

  “You, you hellcat, you shall pay for that presently! . . .”

  She went on:

  “You haven’t forgotten anything? What time will you be back?”

  “About seven or eight o’clock as usual.”

  He was ready. Standing up, the collar of his overcoat buttoned up, he seemed bigger and stronger than before. Behind his curtain Ferrou was growing unnerved: “You are never going then! . . .” The man, his hand on the handle of the door, turned back.

  “Don’t forget to fasten the bars of the shutters and bolt the door.”

  The sound of wheels grated on the road and stopped.

  “Here they are,” said the man.

  He went out and began to talk to the newcomers in the garden.

  “You haven’t forgotten anything? Yes.—The coach-house properly shut?—Yes, yes.—Let’s be off then. Go in, Marie; it’s snowing, it’s a very bad night.”

  “Worse than you think!” snarled Ferrou.

  His knife was burning his fingers; he longed to have done with it all. But the man still lingered. His voice rang clear through the cold air:

  “Pass me the lantern. Let me see if everything is in its place.”

  Suddenly his voice, till then very kind, rose angrily:

  “Just look how you have fastened that! The sheath is not even buckled. And it’s badly balanced. In less than a quarter of an hour half the blade would be on the ground. You’d have mud in the slides and on the posts. Come, give a hand!”

  Ferrou listened, mocking:

  “The finest porcelain, at least, to need so much care.”

  The man went on:

  “What have you been thinking about? At the first jolt, the tub would have tipped off.”

  Ferrou ceased sneering. A cold shiver ran down his back. The Blade . . . the Posts . . . the Tub . . . Separately, these words meant nothing . . . Put together . . . they suggested, might mean a terrible thing . . . Where was he? . . . Who was this man who had lain sleeping there and was now saying these words to the other man?

  The voice softened:

  “There, that will do. It would have been a fine thing if you had blunted the knife of the guillotine.”

  Trembling, Ferrou repeated: “The knife of the guillotine! . . .” and his teeth began to chatter. In a flash, these last words had brought the whole of the awful thing before him. He seemed to hear the mysterious noises that come in the night to wake those who are condemned to dea
th, the hammer-knocks of the sinister carpenter; he seemed to see the pale faces of the assistants who enter the cell; the big red posts set up outside in the gray dawn of the morning . . .

  “Ready,” said a voice—the voice of the man.

  Then Ferrou, gasping with fear, biting his fingers to stop himself from shrieking, stammered, forgetting that he might be heard:

  “The executioner! I have been watching the executioner sleep!”

  The cart had set off at a good pace and the woman was just going to shut the door, but forgetting that he had crouched there for hours waiting to kill, he flung away his knife, knocked her out of his way with a thrust of his shoulder, rushed into the garden, leaped over the fence and began to run blindly down the road, fleeing from Paris whose distant noises and familiar odors would soon be augmented by the sound of cracking bone and crushed flesh and the fusty smell of blood.

  Fascination

  ONE HOUR ago I was a prisoner. And what a prisoner! It was not a question of my honor or my liberty: it was my head that was at stake.

  I have known terrible nights haunted by the nightmare of the guillotine. I have trembled as some ghastly fascination made me lift my clammy hands to my neck to trace the narrow line the knife would make there. I have shuddered at the hostile murmurs of the crowd. The hoarse roar: “To the scaffold with him!” has rung and echoed in my ears.

  But that is all over now. I am free. Once again I have seen the noisy streets and the bright lights of the shops. Presently, quite at ease, I shall dine. Sitting by the fire I shall smoke my pipe, and tonight I shall fall asleep quietly in the warm bed that is waiting for me.

  And yet never have I felt myself so much of a criminal as at this moment just after my judges have acquitted me. I am wondering what aberration prevented them from knowing the kind of being I really am. The power of systematic denial stupefies me, and I feel that if I am to regain my clearness of mind, I must write down the truth I have hidden for the last three months with a cleverness and cynicism that have ended by almost making me believe my own lies.

  For I really am a murderer; I killed a woman.

  Why? . . . I do not know. I have never been able to understand why I did it.

  Certainly not because of jealousy; I did not love her. Not to rob her; I am rich, and the few francs they found on her could never have tempted me. Nor was it done in anger . . .

  We were in this room. She was standing near that mirror; I was sitting just where I am at this moment. I was reading. She said to me:

  “Let’s go out . . . Let’s go for a stroll in the Bois.”

  Without raising my eyes, I replied:

  “No, I’m tired. Let’s stay here.”

  She insisted. I persisted in my refusal. She kept on insisting, and her voice aggravated me. She spoke very angrily, sneering at my inertia, laughing scornfully, shrugging her shoulders. Several times I tried to stop her:

  “Will you be quiet? . . . I beg you to be quiet . . .”

  She continued. I got up and began to pace the room, and as I walked up and down I saw on the mantelshelf a little revolver that I used to carry in my pocket at night. I took it up mechanically. The moment I touched it an extraordinary frame of mind took possession of me. The voice of my mistress which had till then merely aggravated me, unnerved me to an extent I cannot describe. It was not what she was saying that irritated me; it was her voice, just her voice. If she had been jibbering meaningless words or reciting beautiful poetry, I should have felt just the same exasperation. An irresistible longing for quiet, for complete repose, seized me. How, why did my mind connect this imperious desire for the silence I could not command with the revolver I held in my hand? . . . I only know that I imagined myself brandishing the weapon, pressing the trigger, and I also saw the woman fall, without a cry . . .

  As a rule such ideas are only giddy hallucinations that flash through the brain and are gone as quickly as they came. But this time it seemed as if this particular vision had caught into my mind in the way a jagged fingernail will catch in floss silk, getting more securely entangled as one tries to free it. I placed the revolver on the table. I could not help looking at it. I tried to turn my head away; my eyes drew me toward it.

  It lay there before me a little lifeless thing, with its ivory butt and shining barrel. Twice, thrice, I stretched out, then drew back my hand. The desire was stronger than my will. I was obliged to touch it, to seize it.

  It is impossible to understand the temptation that assails one in the face of certain kinds of danger. I remember that one day when I was in the park of the Buttes Chaumont I was obliged to hold on to the parapet of the place they call “The Suicide’s Bridge” to prevent myself from leaping off into space. Several times when I have been alone in a railway carriage I have felt a sick longing to pull the alarm-signal. The nickel knob drew me toward it, seemed to beg to be pulled. It was in vain I told myself that such an action would be absurd, that I should be heavily fined or punished for doing it; had not the chance stoppage of the train or the flashing by of another suddenly diverted my thoughts, I am certain I should have succumbed to the temptation.

  Well, at that moment I was overwhelmed by the same irresistible impulse. My eyes and my hands ceased to obey my will. I seemed to be watching myself as if I were someone else, to be following the movements of that other person without knowing what they were leading up to.

  Was she still talking? . . . Was she silent? . . . I do not know. The only thing I am certain of is that I walked toward her with the revolver in my hand, that my wrist rose, and when it was on a level with her forehead, I pressed the trigger. There was a sharp noise like the crack of a whip. I saw a red mark, very small, under the right lid, and the woman fell, inert, like a petticoat that has been unfastened and slips down on the carpet.

  Then, instantly, my reason came back to me. A wild terror dominated me. I rushed about the room like a madman without even thinking of looking at my victim, and some base instinct of cowardice forced me to open the door and run down the staircase shouting:

  “Help! . . . She has killed herself ! . . .”

  At first everyone believed it was suicide. Later the experts found that very improbable. I was arrested. The trial was a long one. I could have explained everything in a few words. I need only have said:

  “This is how it happened.”

  I persisted in obstinate denial. And as, sooner or later, they always find some motive to account for a criminal action, I was eventually acquitted.

  Reviewing it all calmly now, I am wondering if I was wrong to go on lying. If I had told the jury what I am writing now, would they have believed me? Would they have absolved me from blame? I believe I was right to deny it. Imperfectly understood, certain truths can very easily seem like lies . . .

  My God, how good it is to be free, to be able to come and go as I like.

  From my window I see the street, the houses and the trees . . . It was here on this very spot the thing happened. They did not want to give me this room. I insisted on having it. I am not afraid of ghosts. Besides, I can write this better here than I should have elsewhere. One can visualize a past incident so much more realistically in the place where it happened.

  . . . Somehow this confession has completely relieved my mind. My soul seems clean once again as if it had been washed.

  I shall try to forget the nightmare it has all been. I will go and live in the country somewhere far away from Paris. Soon everyone will have forgotten even my name. I shall be another man, living another existence, with the ways and habits of a peasant . . . I shall cease to recognize myself.

  There is one thing above all that I want to get rid of: the revolver they gave back to me in court this morning. It reminds me too forcibly of things I must forget. If I need a weapon I will buy another.

  It is close beside me as I write, and the sight of it hurts me. Yet what a little thing it is . . . It is pretty . . . it looks like a toy, a charming ornament . . . incapable of doing any harm.

/>   . . . I have just taken it in my hand. It is very light, very smooth to the touch. It is also very cold . . . It frightens me a little . . . It is so mysterious, this sleeping weapon . . . The danger of a knife is apparent; you see the sharp blade, can feel the pointed end . . . Here, nothing: you must have used it to—I will not keep it . . . I will not keep it . . . I will sell it at once, tomorrow . . . Sell it? . . . I will give it away . . . No, I will not. I will throw it away . . .

  Yet, after all, why should I, so long as I don’t see it for some time? I am looking at it too much . . . It is natural enough, too . . . It lies there like a silent witness . . . Decidedly I do not like it. I will get rid of it instantly.

  . . . I keep on writing and the revolver is still before me.

  People who commit suicide must sit just like this writing their last wishes. I wonder what their sensations are . . . I believe I know exactly. At first they dare not look at the revolver . . . then once their resolution has been made, they probably cannot take their eyes from it, sit looking at it, fascinated . . .

  Does it really need so much courage for a man to kill himself ?

  The worst part must be the simple act of stretching out the hand, grasping the weapon, and feeling its chill . . .

  . . . But no, I am holding it in my left hand . . . I place the barrel against my temple . . . The sensation is not at all disagreeable . . . A little shiver . . . then the steel grows warm against your flesh . . .

  No, that cannot be the most horrible moment . . . it must be the second when one presses the trigger . . . the last order the soul gives the body . . .

  Who knows? . . . Perhaps even that is nothing . . . Once the glamor has got hold of you, you feel irresistibly drawn on.

  I understand that perfectly . . .

  . . . You almost feel as if you no longer exist . . .