What to do? Children have a very sharp sense of the ridiculous, and given a situation, they know perfectly well how to see it through to its final consequences, with surprising logic. This imaginary duel between their classmate and the priest clearly fascinates them. If need be, they would make things up to ensure that the story was more appealing and went on for longer.
I wonder if I’ve been preparing my catechism classes with enough care. It occurred to me this evening that I had expected too much, far too much, from what, when it comes down to it, is merely an obligation of my ministry, one of the roughest and most thankless. Who am I to ask for consolation from these young creatures? I had imagined I could speak to them from the heart, share my joys and sorrows with them – without running the risk of harming them, of course! – putting my life into that teaching as I put it into my prayers … It’s all so selfish.
From now on, therefore, I will force myself to rely less on inspiration. Unfortunately, time is not on my side, and I shall have to reduce my hours of rest even more. I managed it last night, thanks to a supplementary meal which I digested without any difficulty. To think I once regretted having bought that beneficial Bordeaux!
* * *
A visit yesterday to the chateau, which ended disastrously. It had been a snap decision, after I had had rather a late lunch thanks to having wasted a lot of time in Berguez with Madame Pigeon, who is still sick. It was nearly four, and I felt ‘full of beans’, as they say, and very lively. Much to my surprise – because the count usually spends Thursday afternoon at the chateau – only the countess was there to greet me.
How to explain the fact that, having arrived so fit and well, I should find myself all at once incapable of maintaining a conversation, or even giving sensible answers to the questions I was asked? True, I had been walking very fast. The countess, perfectly polite as usual, pretended at first not to notice, but eventually she was forced to inquire anxiously about my health. I have made it a duty in the past few weeks to dodge this kind of question, and even consider myself entitled to lie. In fact, I am quite good at lying, and I realize that people ask nothing more than to believe me as soon as I declare that everything is fine. I am clearly unusually thin (the children have taken to calling me ‘a sorry sight’) and yet the assertion that ‘it runs in the family’ instantly reassures people. I don’t mind that at all. To confess my troubles would be to risk being replaced, as the curé of Torcy puts it. And besides, for want of anything better – I hardly have time to pray – it seems to me that I must only share these small miseries with Our Lord, at least for as long as possible.
So I told the countess that, having had a very late lunch, I had a slight stomach ache. The worst of it is that I then had to take my leave abruptly, and descended the front steps like a sleepwalker. The countess kindly walked me all the way down, and I wasn’t even able to thank her, since I was holding my handkerchief over my nose. She looked at me with a very curious, indefinable expression, a mixture of friendship, surprise, pity and even a touch of disgust, I think. A man who feels sick is always so ridiculous! Finally she took the hand I held out to her and said as if to herself – I guessed the words from the movement of her lips – ‘Poor child!’ or perhaps ‘My poor child!’
I was so surprised, so moved, that I crossed the lawn to get to the avenue – that pretty English lawn of which the count is so fond, and which must now bear the tracks of my thick shoes.
Yes, I blame myself for praying little, and badly. Almost every day, after Mass, I have to interrupt my thanksgiving to receive this person or that: sick people, generally. My former classmate from the junior seminary, Fabregargues, who has now set up as a pharmacist somewhere near Montreuil, sends me boxes of samples he uses for publicity purposes. Apparently the schoolmaster is none too pleased about this competition, because he used to be the only one to render these small services.
How hard it is not to annoy anyone! And whatever we do, people seem less disposed to make use of our goodwill than unconsciously desirous of opposing it. What is the source of so many people’s incomprehensible futility?
Of course, man is everywhere his own worst enemy, his own secret and insidious enemy. Wherever the seeds of evil are scattered, they are almost certain to germinate. Whereas it takes exceptional luck, phenomenal good fortune, for the smallest grain of good not to be stifled.
* * *
In my mail this morning, found a letter postmarked Boulogne, written on the kind of poor-quality squared paper that’s found in taverns. It bears no signature.
A well-intentioned person advises you to request your transfer. The sooner, the better. When you finally notice what is blindingly obvious to everyone, you will weep tears of blood. We feel sorry for you, but we repeat: ‘Get out!’
What is this? I thought I recognized the handwriting of Madame Pégriot, who left a notebook here in which she wrote down the money she spent on soap, washing powder and bleach. Obviously, the woman doesn’t like me very much. But why would she be so eager to see the back of me?
I sent the countess a short note of apology. It was Sulpice Mitonnet who offered to take it to the chateau. He didn’t need to be asked twice.
* * *
Another ghastly night, a sleep interspersed with nightmares. It was raining so hard that I didn’t dare go to the church. I’ve never forced myself so much to pray, calmly at first, then with a kind of fierce, concentrated intensity, and finally – having with great difficulty recovered my composure – with an almost desperate will (I hate the word desperate), a paroxysm of will, which made my whole heart quiver with anguish. But nothing came of it.
Oh, I know perfectly well that the desire to pray is already a prayer, and that God demands no more. But I wasn’t merely fulfilling a duty. At that moment, prayer was as indispensable to me as air to my lungs and oxygen to my blood. Behind me, there was no longer the familiar daily life from which one has just broken free, while keeping within oneself the certainty of returning there whenever one likes. Behind me, there was nothing. And in front of me, a wall, a black wall.
We generally form such an absurd idea of prayer! How is it that those who hardly know it, or don’t know it at all, dare to talk about it so lightly? A Trappist or a Carthusian will work for years to become a man of prayer, and the first scatterbrained person who comes along will claim to judge the effort of a whole lifetime! If prayer were really what they think, a kind of chatter, a madman’s dialogue with his own shadow, or less still – a vain, superstitious request to obtain the things of this world – would it be credible that thousands of people find in it, right up until their dying day, I do not even say so much sweetness – they care little for tangible consolations – but a hard, strong, unqualified joy! Oh, of course, scientists talk of the power of suggestion. But then they’ve probably never seen those old monks, so thoughtful, so wise, so inflexible in their judgements, and yet radiant with understanding and compassion, with such tender humanity. By what miracle do these men, half-men as they are, prisoners of a dream, waking sleepers, seem to gather, day by day, ever more awareness of other people’s miseries? A strange dream, a singular opium that, far from making the individual withdraw into himself, far from isolating him from his fellows, connects him with everyone, in a spirit of universal charity!
I hardly dare venture this comparison, I beg pardon for it, but perhaps it will satisfy a great number of people from whom one cannot expect any personal reflection if they have not first been encouraged to it by some unexpected image that disconcerts them. From having occasionally, by chance, hit the keys of a piano with his fingertips, would a sensible man think himself entitled to express judgements about music? And if this or that symphony by Beethoven or fugue by Bach leaves him cold, if he has to content himself with observing the effect of great but inaccessible delights on other people’s faces, would he not have only himself to blame?
Alas, the psychiatrists will be believed, and the unanimous testimony of the saints will be considered of little c
onsequence. However much they maintain that this inner deepening is like no other, that instead of revealing our own complexity to us as we go on it culminates in sudden and total enlightenment, that it leads to a vision of heaven, people will merely shrug. And yet what man of prayer has ever admitted that prayer disappointed him?
I literally can’t stand on my feet this morning. The hours that seemed so long have left me with no clear memory – nothing but the feeling of a blow launched from somewhere or other, a blow I received full in the chest, the gravity of which I cannot yet ascertain thanks to a merciful lethargy.
We never pray alone. I assume my sadness was too great. I wanted God for myself only. He did not come.
I have reread these lines, which I wrote on waking this morning. Since then …
What if it was only an illusion? … Or perhaps … The saints all knew such moments of weakness … But surely not this subdued rebelliousness, this bitter, almost hateful silence of the soul …
It’s one o’clock in the morning, and the last light in the village has gone out. Wind and rain.
The same solitude, the same silence. And this time, no hope of forcing my way through the obstacle, or of going round it. Besides, there is no obstacle. Nothing. God! I am breathing, I inhale the night, the night enters me through some inconceivable, unimaginable breach in the soul. I myself am night.
I force myself to think of fears similar to mine. No compassion for these strangers. My solitude is perfect, and I hate it. No self-pity.
What if I were never again to love?
I stretched out on the floor at the foot of my bed, face down. Of course, I am not naive enough to believe in the effectiveness of such a method. I merely wanted to make a gesture of total acceptance, of abandonment. I lay on the edge of the void, of nothingness, like a beggar, like a drunkard, like a dead man, waiting to be gathered up.
From the first second, even before my lips touched the ground, I felt ashamed of the lie. Because I expected nothing.
What I would give to suffer! Even pain refuses to come: the humblest, most frequent pain, the pain in my stomach. I feel horribly well.
I am not afraid of death, it matters as little to me as life. This cannot be expressed.
It seems to me that I have gone all the way back along the path I have been on ever since God took me from nothing. At first I was nothing but that spark, that glowing speck of divine charity. And now once again that is all I am in the unfathomable darkness. But the speck no longer glows very much, it is about to be extinguished.
I woke very late. Sleep must have taken me suddenly, where I had fallen. It is already time for Mass. All the same, I want to write this before I go: Whatever happens, I will never talk of this to anyone, especially not to the curé of Torcy.
The morning is so clear, so mild, so wonderfully light … When I was very small, I sometimes huddled at dawn in one of those dew-drenched hedges and returned home soaked, shivering and happy, to receive a slap from my poor mother and a large bowl of boiling milk.
All day long, I have had nothing in my head but images of childhood. I think of myself as a dead man.
(N.B. Some ten pages have been torn from the exercise book at this point. The few words that remain in the margins have been carefully crossed out.)
Dr Delbende was found this morning on the edge of the Bazancourt wood, his head fractured, his body already cold. He had rolled to the bottom of a small, hollow path lined with dense hazel trees. It is believed that his shotgun may have got caught in the branches and gone off when he tried to pull it out.
I had planned to destroy this diary. On second thoughts, I only got rid of one part I considered pointless, a part I’ve repeated to myself so often that I know it by heart anyway. It is like a voice talking to me, never silent day or night. But I assume it will be extinguished with me. Or else …
I have been thinking a great deal about sin in the last few days. It seems to me that, in defining it as a breach of divine law, we risk giving too superficial an idea of it. People say so many stupid things about it! And, as usual, they never take time to think. For centuries now, doctors have been arguing about disease. If they had merely defined it as a breach of the rules of good health, they would have agreed with each other a long time ago. But they study it on the patient himself, with the intention of curing him. That’s precisely what we are trying to do. So jokes about sin, sarcastic remarks, smiles, don’t impress us much.
Of course, nobody wants to look any further than wrongdoing. But wrongdoing, when it comes down to it, is merely a symptom. And what lay people think of as the most impressive symptoms are not always the most disturbing, the most serious.
I firmly believe that many people never commit their whole being, their deepest truth. They live on the surface of themselves, and the human soil is so rich that this thin surface layer suffices for a meagre harvest, which gives the illusion of a genuine destiny. They say that during the last war, timid little clerks gradually revealed themselves to be leaders; they had a passion for command without knowing it. Of course, this is nothing like what goes by the beautiful name of conversion – convertere – but all the same it was enough for these men to experience heroism in its crude state, an impure heroism. How many men will never have the slightest idea of spiritual heroism, without which there is no inner life! And yet it is on that life that they will be judged: as soon as we give it a little thought, this seems obvious. Which means that, stripped by death of all these artificial limbs that society provides to people of their kind, they are back as they are, as they were without knowing it – terrible undeveloped monsters, stumps of men.
Being thus, what can they say about sin? What do they know of it? The cancer that eats away at them is like many tumours: painless. Or at least, all most of them have felt, at one time or another in their lives, was a fleeting impression, soon erased. It is unusual for a child not to have had, even if only in an embryonic state, a kind of inner life, in the Christian sense of the word. At some point in his young life, the impulse grew stronger, the spirit of heroism stirred deep in his innocent heart. Not much, perhaps, but just enough for the little creature to have vaguely glimpsed, perhaps even obscurely accepted, the immense risk of salvation, which makes human existence so divine. He learned something of good and evil, an unalloyed notion of good and evil, still ignorant of social disciplines and habits. But of course, he reacted like a child, and all that the mature man will retain of that crucial, solemn minute is the memory of an infantile drama, an apparent piece of mischief whose true meaning will escape him and of which he will talk until the end of his days with that tender, over-shiny, almost lustful smile of the old …
It is hard to imagine the extent to which people whom the world calls serious are childish, childish in a way that is truly inexplicable, metaphysical. I may be only a young priest, but I still often smile about it. And towards us, what an indulgent, pitying tone they adopt! A notary from Arras whom I comforted up until his last moments – a person of some importance, a former senator, one of the largest landowners in his département – said to me one day, apparently to apologize for greeting my exhortations with a degree of scepticism, however benevolent, ‘I understand you, Father, I used to feel the same way, I was very pious. At the age of eleven, I would never have dreamed of going to sleep without first reciting three Hail Marys, and I even had to recite them all in one go, without taking a breath. Otherwise, it would have brought me bad luck, or so I thought.’
He thought I went no further than that, that we all went no further than that, we poor priests. At the end, just before he died, I heard his confession. What to say? There’s not much in a notary’s life, you could sum it up in a few words.
The sin against hope – the most fatal of all and perhaps the most warmly welcomed, the most caressed. It takes a lot of time to recognize it, and the sadness that foretells it, precedes it, is so sweet! It is the richest of the demon’s elixirs, his ambrosia. Because anguish …
(The page
has been torn out.)
* * *
I made a very strange discovery today. Mademoiselle Louise generally leaves her evening prayer book on the pew, in the little pigeonhole intended for it. This morning I found the thick book on the flagstones, and as the pious images of which it is full had scattered, I had to leaf through it a little despite myself. My eye fell on a few handwritten lines on the back of the flyleaf. It was her name and address – an old address, probably – in Charleville in the Ardennes. The handwriting was the same as in the anonymous letter. At least I think so.
What does it matter now?
The great of this world are able to dismiss us irrevocably, with a gesture, a look, or even less. But God …
I have not lost Faith, Hope, or Charity. But what good are the eternal values for mortal man in this life? It is the desire for the eternal values that counts. It seems to me that I no longer desire them.
* * *
Met the curé of Torcy at his old friend’s funeral. I admit that I haven’t stopped thinking about Dr Delbende. But a thought, however heartrending, is not, and cannot be, a prayer.
God sees me and judges me.
I have resolved to continue with this diary. Who knows? A sincere, scrupulously accurate account of the events of my life, during the ordeal I am going through, may be useful to me one day. Useful to me or to others. Because although my heart has become so hard (it seems to me that I no longer feel any pity for anyone, pity has become as difficult for me as prayer, I realized it again last night as I watched over Adeline Soupault, even though I was comforting her as best I could), I cannot think of the future – probably imaginary – reader of this diary without friendly feelings … Not that I really approve of this tenderness, since it is probably addressed, through these pages, to myself alone. I have become an author, or, as the dean of Blangermont would say, a poet … And yet …
Diary of a Country Priest Page 10
