Thirty Hours with a Corpse

by Maurice Level

  . . . You are no longer conscious of any sensation . . .

  . . . The Unknown calls you . . .

  . . . And you press the trigg . . .

  The Bastard

  SEATED ON his stool, an elbow on the table, the man ate his supper slowly, a long interval between every spoonful of soup. The woman was standing by the big open hearth, now and again pushing the blazing twigs into place with her sabot. She talked incessantly, paying no attention to the obstinate silence with which her remarks were received.

  “Is it true that the Chaputs have got rid of their old hens? that the Rizoys’ butter has turned?”

  Without raising his head he murmured: “I don’t know.”

  “And you—what sort of prices did you get?”

  “Bah!”

  “Why are you so short tonight? What’s the matter with you?”

  He put his spoon down. His arms stretched out before him, his two fists on the table, he drew a deep breath as if he were on the point of lifting a heavy sack.

  “The matter . . . the matter . . .”

  He stopped, drew back the plate he had pushed away, cut himself a piece of bread, shut his knife, and drying his mouth with the back of his hand, said:

  “Nothing.”

  She insisted:

  “You’re put out about something . . .”

  For a time there was silence, broken only by the sound of the rain and the wind outside. The fire blazed cheerfully, throwing big lights and shadows on the walls.

  Presently the woman said:

  “Have you finished your soup? Would you like anything else?”

  He shook his head, and his “no” was short and sharp. Ignoring his tone, she began to talk again, telling him the gossip of the village, dwelling on details in the way one would if a man had been absent for a long time and wanted to hear about everyone and everything.

  “Do you know about the Heutrots’ dog? The big brown dog? They say it’s gone mad. While they were getting a gun to shoot it, it ran away and no one knows where it is.”

  The man whistled between his teeth. She burst out:

  “Is that all you’ve got to say? I don’t know what’s the matter with you tonight . . . Been to the inn, I suppose . . . though usually when you’ve been there you come home in a good temper, ready to talk! Tonight not a word: you’ve eaten your food as if it was poison, and you haven’t even asked where the boy is.”

  He turned slowly toward her, and looking straight in her eyes, asked:

  “Is it long since you saw Big Jacquet?”

  She was raising her leg to push back a log that had rolled too far forward; the abrupt question seemed to transfix her, and she stood with her foot in the air as she stammered:

  “Big Jacquet? . . . Not for a long time . . . Why?”

  “I thought he came here today . . .”

  “He didn’t.”

  “What are you lying for? The postman told me he saw him come out of here this morning.”

  She tried to retract:

  “That’s right . . . he looked in for a moment as he passed . . . I’d forgotten . . . Why should I remember such a small thing? . . .”

  She shrugged her shoulders and turned away. But the man wanted to talk now.

  “Stay where you are,” he said roughly. “I have something to say to you!”

  She tried to turn it off, but she had grown very pale and her voice was uncertain.

  “What are you looking at me like that for?”

  He placed his hand heavily on her shoulder.

  “Sit down. This has lasted long enough. It’s got to be settled sooner or later . . . I’m tired of being the laughing-stock of the village . . . with them all talking about it even when I’m there. God knows I’ve tried not to believe it . . . but I’ve had too much of it. I want to know the truth. Big Jacquet is your lover.”

  She started violently.

  “How have you the face to say such a thing! . . .”

  “It’s no words I want. I want proof. I know now, you see, I know.”

  He repeated the “I know! I know!” several times, emphasizing the words by striking his chest heavily at each repetition. Now that he had made the accusation, his anger blazed out. He banged his big hands on the table, shouting imprecations and threats. The woman was trembling, too terrified by this unchained fury to attempt to defend herself with any conviction.

  “You thought it would go on like this always, that I was too stupid ever to find out. You’ll see whether I am stupid or not . . . And that’s not all. Whose child is he, the boy? Which of us is his father?”

  She snatched up her apron and hid her face in it, sobbing:

  “How can you talk like that . . . how can you . . .”

  He seized her wrists; his eyes were bloodshot and it was through clenched teeth that he hissed:

  “Which of us is his father? Which of us is his father?”

  “How could it be any one but you?” she gasped between her sobs. “You know it as well as I do.”

  In spite of himself he was moved by her words, by her tears, and his voice softened a little.

  “I know nothing about it . . . Nothing at all . . . Answer . . .”

  Though she was nearly frightened out of her wits, she saw that her husband was weakening, and feeling she was getting the upper hand she raised her voice:

  “For your sake as well as mine, I refuse to take any notice of such a question.”

  But anger had mastered him again. The accumulated wrath of months had only subsided for a moment to burst forth with renewed violence. His voice was little more than a hoarse whisper as he said, his arm raised threateningly:

  “Listen . . . You will tell me the truth or—take care! There’ll be murder in this house. I want to know who the father of that child is . . . We’ll settle about you and me afterwards . . . But I’ll know about the child now. Do you hear—at once. Do you think

  I am going on bringing up another man’s bastard, breaking my back in the sun and rain to leave him a few acres of land? Do you hear? Do you understand? There’ll be murder in this house, I tell you. You and him and the village between you all, you’ll end by driving me mad. I’m done with it! . . . It’s got to stop . . . You had nothing but the chemise you stood in when I married you, and long before that they used to see you lying about behind the mills with Jacquet . . . When the child was born eight months to the day after the wedding, you told me it was the fright you got when the cow went astray. I believed you . . . but I know better now. They’ve taken care to open my eyes. He isn’t mine, that child! If he is, swear it. Then I shall know what to do. Swear—swear before God!”

  Her face was hidden in her hands; her teeth were chattering. She made no reply.

  “You whor—”

  At this moment the door opened and the child came in, his sabots covered with mud, the hood of his cape over his head. The threatening attitude and loud voice alarmed him. The man did not finish the word. His arm fell, and his voice faltered as he pushed his wife from him, ordering:

  “Go to bed.”

  Then he turned to the boy, trying to soften his voice as he said:

  “You stay here.”

  The frightened child took off his cloak, placed his sabots in a corner near the door, and stood motionless.

  The man went to a stool near the fire where he sat for some time lost in thought, his elbows on his knees. Presently he raised his head and beckoned to the boy.

  “Come here . . .”

  He drew him between his knees, and taking the small head in his hands looked intently at his face in the light of the lamp. He stared with desperate intensity, every nerve strained in the effort to see whom the child resembled. A wave of tenderness rushed through him at the contact with the frightened little creature. He felt he would rather never see the child again than find in him any resemblance to the Other. But some influence he could not control riveted his eyes to the face, fastened his fingers in the hair, pressed his knees tightly against the
slim form . . . Neither could he master a feeling of hate that burned deep down in his heart. At first he hesitated, but desire for the truth proved irresistible. The eyes, the small eyes deep-set in their sockets, they were the eyes of the Other . . . The mouth that seemed to be always smiling . . . his mouth; the front teeth with the spaces between them, above all, the hair, the dry, stiff hair that stood up in ruddy disorder . . . all, everything, down to the smallest detail . . . Nothing was lacking. God in Heaven! . . . It was true then. She had deceived him, the whore! She had foisted her lover’s child on him.

  The evidence was there, shrieking at him . . . No need for further proof . . . the living one stood before him . . . But he still struggled against certainty, fighting with himself, not wanting to believe, trying to reason away conviction . . .

  He loved this child he had believed his own; he had watched it grow up out of babyhood; it called him “father,” and he was never so happy as when it was running beside him in the fields . . . Could any one feel like that toward the child of another man? . . . Surely there was something unique in the feeling a man has for his own flesh and blood, a tenderness he could never have for the child of another man? . . . The eyes, the hair, the teeth, the mouth might seem the same—but was he not imagining it?

  . . . A noise like a moan broke the silence. He listened . . . It sounded again . . . then there came a sort of scratching outside the door, a growl. He pushed the child away, and the boy sat down by the fire and began to play with the twigs. He went to the window, opened it, peered out, and shut it again quickly.

  He had seen a large dark mass crouching across the threshold. He knew all the dogs in the village, and by the pointed nose and eyes that glittered in the shadow he had recognized the Heutrots’ dog.

  He took his gun from the corner, put two cartridges in it, and was on the point of opening the window to fire when it occurred to him that the noise would frighten the child. He placed the gun on the table, saying:

  “Go and find your mother and tell her not to be frightened. I am going to fire at the Heutrots’ dog.”

  The child turned toward him. Kneeling before the fire, he was in the full light, and as he made a quick movement his likeness to Big Jacquet was striking . . . terrifying . . .

  The man’s anger blazed up again; he bent down and was drawing the boy toward him when suddenly an oath strangled in his throat.

  There, near the cheek, almost at the corner of the mouth, was a light brown mole, smaller, but a mole exactly like the bigger one Big Jacquet called his “Beauty-Spot.”

  The last vestige of doubt vanished. No, this was not his child; he was the child of the other man . . . Everything round him seemed to fade away, and the blaze on the hearth seemed to enter his chest and burn his flesh. He seized the boy by the collar.

  “Get out . . . Never let me see you again . . . Out with you!”

  The child resisted, but he dragged him with one hand to the door, pulled it open and flung him out as one would some unclean beast, and banged it to again.

  A ferocious growl . . . a cry of agony rang through the darkness. The man stood stupefied, unable to think. But the mother, who had been listening in the next room, came hurrying out. Not seeing the child and noting the wildness in her husband’s eyes, she shouted:

  “What have you done?”

  Another cry rang out:

  “Mother . . Moth . . .”

  She rushed outside calling:

  “My little one! My little one!”

  The child lay panting at the bottom of the steps, his face all torn by the dog’s fangs. The beast tried to keep its grip on its prey, but she paid no attention to it, and seizing the boy in her arms dragged him away.

  She laid him on the table. His throat was open, his breath came in short gasps. She showered passionate kisses on his poor mud-filled hair, on his poor little blood-covered face, on his open mouth from which the death-rattle was coming . . .

  . . . Crouched in a heap on the floor, his eyes shut, his fingers in his ears, the man was sobbing:

  “My little one, Holy Virgin, save my little one!”

  That Scoundrel Miron

  NO ONE ever understood how this woman, who was neither young nor pretty, got complete possession of the heart, the mind, the whole life of Miron. As soon as he met her he broke with his best friends, left off going to his familiar haunts, and instead of devoting himself as formerly to Art for Art’s sake, took to painting the rankest potboilers. When a man who had been a great friend in the old days ventured to say:

  “You’re an idiot, Miron. You are spoiling your style, abusing your talent . . .” he only shrugged his shoulders and said: “Nonsense.” When the friend insisted, reminding him of the conscientious work, full of more than promise, he had done in the old days of his dreams of fame, he grew angry.

  “My talent? My dreams? You make me laugh. When I had them I slept in a garret, I had one meal a day. I know people will now stop saying: ‘You’ll see, he’ll be rich some day!’ but in the meanwhile I can eat as much as I like and am free from sordid worries. I am happy, very happy.”

  He walked rapidly away. But when he was sure that he was out of sight, he stopped at a café and sat for hours lost in thought with an empty glass in front of him. Miron lied: he was not happy. At first his love had absorbed him to the exclusion of everything else. To get the extra money that was necessary for his new kind of existence he had dashed off little sketches and drawings for the illustrated papers, and when he felt too disgusted with this prostitution of his talent, he had consoled himself by thinking that before long he would return to serious work. But as time flew by he had become morally weak, almost cowardly, and now there was a gnawing bitterness at the bottom of his heart and he was ashamed of himself, ashamed of the soulless love in which he had slowly but surely lost his better self. Debts accumulated, and at last there came a day when, worn out by the threats of those to whom he owed money and by scenes with his mistress, he lost his head and wrote a check he could not meet. He hoped to be able to get the money before the check was presented, but he was not able to do so, and, taking fright, he fled from Paris, from France.

  To avoid rousing suspicion he went alone; his mistress was to follow next day. He was so certain she would come he went to bed and fell asleep happily, almost without remorse. He expected a letter from her in the morning telling the time of her arrival; next night there came instead a telegram with just four words: “I am not coming.”

  At first he was too stunned to take it in; it did not seem possible she could have written that. But on reflection he told himself without bitterness that after all she was right; he was a thief. Thoughts of the lost love merged themselves in the remembrance of the days when his face was set toward fame, and a great weariness, mental and physical, made him feel like a child that has lost itself. You need courage to make an effort to save yourself. He had none left. He resolved to go back to Paris, to be arrested, to be punished. Nothing could be worse than what he had already suffered because of his voluntary artistic downfall. Indeed, it would only seem natural, right, that he should be publicly disgraced. He hesitated a little at the thought of the court, prison, the dishonor from which it was still possible to save himself. But why should he mind? A man might make an effort if he had to consider a wife, parents, friends, anyone he respected; or even if he were well known, his name stood for something good . . . But he?

  He took up the newspaper, looked at it without interest, and became very pale. There was a big headline: DISAPPEARANCE OF THE ARTIST MIRON. It was a long article, and a new thought came to him as he read and re-read it. Every day a dishonest cashier disappears; every day a forger is arrested—did people take any real interest in them? This article made it clear that his flight had aroused unusual interest, that his loss caused regret; if so much space were devoted to him, it showed that the public had begun to recognize his talent and valued it. He was not unknown. He was “Somebody”; he had a name.

  His infamy was the
revelation of his glory. The idea of prison that had before weighed so lightly now horrified him. He was tortured by shame, fear, and pride. For days he shut himself up in his room, watching suspiciously anyone who stopped under his window, reading with passionate interest all that the papers continued to say about his disappearance and, above all, about his work. Before long he was relegated to the second page of the newspapers, then to the third; two succeeding days there was no mention of him; twice or thrice his name cropped up at intervals; then—silence. People ceased talking of him, the authorities left off looking for him. He felt sure he had escaped, that he could come and go as he liked. He was free.

  It was only then that he realized how completely alone in the world he was.

  Then came want; he was penniless. He must do something to earn a living. But what could he do? Drawing? Painting? And give them a chance to recognize his style and so lead to his arrest? How could he run the risk of reviving memories of himself only to blacken afresh a name he had now become proud of ! Never had he been so aware of his real talent as now when he dare not show a new picture. But he must do something to get the money to support life. He thought of giving lessons, but no one cared to have them; he tried to obtain work in an office, but he had not the necessary certificates. He did all sorts of odd jobs, even the humblest, those that demand nothing but physical strength. His clothes wore out, became covered with stains; he lost his looks, his hair and beard grew gray. Over and over again he determined to kill himself, but resolution failed him at the last moment. His mind would travel back to the old days, to the little studio where he had dreamed such great dreams, and a vague feeling of hope would change the current of his thoughts.

  The vision of himself evoked by this remembrance of himself as he used to be only grew more vivid as the years passed, and by slow degrees he became possessed by a longing either to become that old self again or to create another personality on the same lines. This longing sustained him through the long, dreary months of hardship in which he tried to save some money, economizing in food, sometimes even sleeping in the open. Halfpenny by halfpenny the little hoard accumulated, and at last he found himself in possession of a small sum. The enthusiasm of youth had come back to him; he took to making sketches, on a white wall, on the corner of a table, anywhere; everything he saw presented itself as a picture, and when he had a hundred francs he took the train and returned to France. Fifteen years had gone by since he left Paris. Who would remember him? Who would recognize him with his white hair, his long beard, his bent shoulders!