I sometimes encounter hardened sinners. Most only defend themselves against God by a kind of blind feeling, and it is even poignant to see on the features of an old man pleading for his vice the expression, both foolish and savage, of a sulking child. But this time I saw rebellion, true rebellion, burst out on a human face. It was expressed neither in her gaze, which was fixed and somewhat veiled, nor in her mouth, and her head was not raised proudly, but tilted rather towards her shoulder, as if bending beneath an invisible burden … Oh, the boasts of blasphemers have nothing even close to this tragic simplicity! It was as if this sudden flaring of her will had left her body inert, impassive, exhausted by too great an expenditure of her whole being.
‘Resign myself?’ she said in a soft voice that chilled the heart. ‘What do you mean by that? Am I not resigned? If I hadn’t resigned myself, I’d be dead. Resigned! I’m all too resigned, so resigned I’m quite ashamed.’ Although her voice had not grown any louder, there was a strange sonority to it, something like a metallic sheen. ‘Oh, I have more than once, in the old days, envied those spineless women who don’t recover from such setbacks. But we are built of sterner stuff. To stop this wretched body from forgetting, I should have killed it. Not everyone can do that.’
‘That’s not the kind of resignation I’m talking about,’ I said, ‘you know that.’
‘What, then? I go to Mass, I take communion at Easter. I should have abandoned all religious practice, I did think of it. I considered it unworthy of me.’
‘Madame, any blasphemy would be better than such words. There is all the hardness of hell in your mouth.’
She fell silent, staring at the wall.
‘How dare you treat God like that? You close your heart to Him, and you—’
‘I’ve lived in peace, at least. I might have died.’
‘That’s no longer possible.’
She raised herself like a viper. ‘God had become a matter of indifference to me. Once you’ve forced me to admit that I hate Him, will you be any better off, you fool?’
‘You don’t hate Him, not any more,’ I said. ‘Hatred is indifference and scorn. But now, you are finally face to face, He and you.’
She was still looking at the same point in space, without replying.
At that moment, some strange terror took hold of me. Everything I had said, everything she had said to me, that whole interminable dialogue seemed devoid of meaning. What reasonable man could have thought otherwise? No doubt I had let myself be deceived by a young girl enraged with jealousy and pride, I thought I had seen suicide in her eyes, a desire for suicide, as clearly, as distinctly as a word written on the wall. It was only one of those unthinking impulses whose very violence is suspect. And no doubt the woman standing before me, as if before a judge, really had lived for many years in a kind of peace, the terrible peace of a soul that has been rejected, which is the most terrible, most incurable, least human form of despair. But such misery is precisely the kind that a priest should not approach lightly. I had tried to warm that frozen heart in an instant, to bring light to the furthest recesses of a consciousness that God’s pity might perhaps still want to leave in merciful darkness. What to say? What to do? I was like a man who, having clambered up a vertiginous slope, stops and opens his eyes, dazed, unable to climb or descend.
It was then – no, this cannot be expressed – while I struggled with all my might against doubt and fear, that the spirit of prayer returned to me. Let me make this clear: since the beginning of that extraordinary conversation, I hadn’t stopped praying, in the sense that frivolous Christians give the word. An unfortunate animal trapped in an air bell may give every appearance of breathing, but it means nothing. And now all at once the air whistles again through its bronchial tubes, unfolding one by one the delicate, already shrivelled pulmonary tissues, the arteries tremble at the first throb of red blood – the entire body is like a ship when the sails begin to swell.
She collapsed into her armchair, her head in her hands. Her torn mantilla hung loose on her shoulder, and gently she pulled it off, gently threw it down at her feet. My eyes remained fixed on her every movement, and yet I had the strange impression that neither of us was in that sad little drawing room, that the room was empty.
I saw her take from her blouse a medallion at the end of a simple silver chain. And still with that same gentleness, more terrifying than any violence, she used her nail to snap open the lid. The glass came loose and rolled on the carpet, but she didn’t seem to notice. Now she held between her fingertips a lock of fair hair that looked like a sliver of gold.
‘Do you swear to me …’ she began. But she saw immediately in the way I looked at her that I had understood and would not swear.
‘My daughter,’ I said (the word came unbidden to my lips), ‘we cannot bargain with God, we have to surrender to Him unconditionally. Give Him everything, and He will give you back much more. I am neither a prophet nor a soothsayer, and from that place where we all go He alone returned.’
She didn’t protest, simply bent a little more towards the floor, and with each word I spoke, I could see her shoulders shake.
‘All I can tell you is that there isn’t a kingdom of the living and a kingdom of the dead, there is only the kingdom of God, and we are all in it, living or dead.’
I uttered these words, I could have uttered others, it mattered so little at that moment! It seemed to me that a mysterious hand had opened a breach in some kind of invisible wall, and peace had rushed in from all sides, majestically finding its level, a peace unknown on earth, the sweet peace of the dead, like an expanse of deep water.
‘It seems clear to me,’ she said in a phenomenally altered but calm voice. ‘Do you know what I asked myself just now, just a moment ago? Perhaps I shouldn’t confess it to you? What I said to myself was this: if somewhere, in this world or the next, there is a place where God isn’t – even if I were to suffer a thousand deaths there, every second, eternally – then I would take my …’ (she did not dare utter the name of her dead child) ‘I would take him there and I would say to God, “Do as you wish! Crush us!” I suppose that seems horrible to you?’
‘No, madame.’
‘What do you mean, no?’
‘Because I, too, madame … I sometimes …’
I couldn’t finish the sentence. The image of Dr Delbende was before me, his worn, inflexible eyes looking into mine, with a gaze I dreaded to read. And I also heard, I thought I heard, at that very minute, the moans torn from so many men’s chests, the sighs, the sobs, the gasps – our wretched mankind caught in a vice, that terrifying murmur …
‘Truly,’ she said slowly, ‘how can one …? Even children, little children with faithful hearts … Have you ever seen a child die?’
‘No, madame.’
‘He calmly crossed his little hands, he assumed a grave air and … and … I’d tried to give him something to drink a moment earlier, and there was still a drop of milk on his chapped lips …’ She began trembling like a leaf.
It seemed to me that I was alone, standing alone, between God and this tormented creature. It was as if great thuds sounded in my chest. Our Lord nevertheless allowed me to face up to the situation.
‘Madame,’ I said, ‘if our God were that of the pagans or the philosophers – who for me are one and the same – He might well take shelter high up in heaven, our misery would force Him there. But you know that our God came down to us. You could wave your fist at Him, spit in His face, whip Him with rods and finally nail Him on a cross, what would it matter? It’s already been done, my daughter …’
She did not dare look at the medallion she still held in her hand. I was so far from expecting what she was about to do! She said: ‘Repeat those words … Those words about … Hell meaning no longer to love.’
‘Yes, madame.’
‘Repeat them!’
‘Hell means no longer to love. As long as we are alive, we can delude ourselves, think that we love through our own strength, that
we love outside God. But we are like madmen reaching their arms out to the reflection of the moon in the water. You must forgive me, I’m expressing my ideas very badly.’
She gave a curious smile which didn’t relax her tense face, a funereal smile. She had closed her fist over the medallion, and with her other hand, she held this fist clenched against her chest. ‘What do you want me to say?’
‘Say: Thy kingdom come.’
‘Thy kingdom come!’
‘Thy will be done.’
She stood up abruptly, her hand still clenched against her chest.
‘Come on now!’ I cried. ‘You have said these words many times. Now you must say them from the depths of your heart.’
‘I haven’t recited the Our Father since … since … Well, you know that, you know things before you’re told them.’ She shrugged, angrily this time. Then she made a gesture whose meaning I only grasped later. Her forehead was glossy with sweat. ‘I can’t,’ she moaned. ‘I feel as if I’m losing him twice.’
‘The kingdom you’ve just wished would come is also yours and his.’
‘Then may that kingdom come!’ She raised her eyes to mine, and we stayed like that for a few seconds, then she said, ‘It is to you I surrender.’
‘To me?’
‘Yes, to you. I have offended God, I must have hated Him. Yes, I believe now that I would have died with that hatred in my heart. But I surrender only to you.’
‘I am too poor a man. It would be like dropping a gold coin into a pierced hand.’
‘An hour ago, my life seemed to me quite orderly, with everything in its place, and now you have left nothing standing, nothing.’
‘Give it to God, just as it is.’
‘I want to give everything or nothing, that’s how we girls are.’
‘Give everything.’
‘Oh, how can you understand? You think I’m already docile. But what pride I have left would be enough to damn you!’
‘Give your pride along with the rest, give everything.’
No sooner had I uttered these words than I saw a strange gleam come into her eyes, but it was too late for me to stop her. She flung the medallion into the flaming logs. I threw myself to my knees and plunged my arm into the fire, I didn’t feel the burning. For a moment, I thought I had the little blond lock in my fingers, but it got away from me and fell into the glowing embers. Behind me, there was such a terrible silence that I did not dare turn round. The cloth of my sleeve was burned up to the elbow.
‘How dare you!’ I stammered. ‘What madness!’
She had retreated to the wall, and now leaned her back and hands on it. ‘I beg your forgiveness,’ she said in a humble voice.
‘Do you take God for a torturer? He wants us to have pity on ourselves. And besides, our sorrows do not belong to us, He assumes them, they are in His heart. We have no right to go searching for them there, to defy them, to offend them. Do you understand that?’
‘What’s done is done, I can’t help it.’
‘Then be at peace, my daughter,’ I said. And I blessed her.
My fingers were bleeding a little, the skin rising in patches. She tore a handkerchief and bandaged me. We exchanged no words. The peace I had called down on her had descended on me, too. It was so simple, so familiar that no presence could have disturbed it. Yes, we had returned so gently to everyday life that the most attentive witness would have caught nothing of this secret, which already no longer belonged to us.
She asked me if I would hear her confession tomorrow. I made her promise not to tell anyone what had gone on between us and vowed to observe absolute silence myself. ‘Whatever happens,’ I said. In uttering these last words, I felt my heart tighten and sadness overwhelm me again. May God’s will be done.
I left the chateau at eleven and had to set off immediately for Dombasle. On the way back, I stopped at the corner of the wood, from where you can see the whole flat country, the long, barely perceptible slopes gradually descending to the sea. I had bought a little bread and butter in the village and I now ate it heartily. As happens after every crucial trial in my life, I felt a kind of lethargy, a numbness of the mind, which isn’t unpleasant, and gives me a curious illusion of lightness and happiness. What happiness? I couldn’t say. It is a faceless joy. What was meant to be has been and is no longer, that’s all. I got home very late. On the road, I came across old Clovis, who handed me a little package from the countess. I couldn’t make up my mind to open it, and yet I knew what it contained. It was the little medallion, now empty, at the end of its broken chain.
There was also a letter. Here it is. It’s strange.
Father, I don’t think you are capable of imagining the state in which you left me, I assume these questions of psychology are of no interest to you. What can I say to you? The desperate memory of a little child was keeping me at a distance from everything, in a terrifying solitude, and it seems to me that another child drew me out of that solitude. I hope I don’t offend you by calling you a child? You are one. May God keep you a child for ever!
I wonder what it is you did, and how you did it. Or rather, I no longer wonder. All is well. I didn’t think resignation was possible. And indeed it wasn’t resignation that came. It isn’t in my nature, and my presentiment regarding it did not deceive me. I am not resigned, I am happy, I desire nothing.
Don’t wait for me tomorrow. I’ll ask Father X to hear my confession, as usual. I shall try to confess as honestly as possible, but also as discreetly as possible, don’t you think? It’s all so simple! Once I’ve said: ‘I have deliberately sinned against hope, at every hour of the day, for eleven years,’ I will have said it all. Hope! I held it dead in my arms, one terrible evening of a windy, desolate March … I felt its last breath on my cheek, in a spot I know. And now it’s been given back to me. Not lent this time, but given. A very personal hope, which is mine and mine alone, which no more resembles what the philosophers call by that name than the word love resembles the loved one. A hope that is like the flesh of my flesh. It cannot be expressed. It would take a young child’s words to do so.
I wanted to tell you these things this evening. I had to. And besides, we shan’t speak of them again, shall we? Never again! How sweet that word is. Never. As I write it, I say it under my breath, and it seems to me that it expresses in a wonderful, ineffable way the peace I received from you.
I slipped this letter into my Imitation, an old copy that used to belong to my mother and still smells of lavender, the lavender she would put in her linen in a sachet, as they did in the old days. She didn’t read it often, for the print is small and the paper so thin that her poor fingers, chapped from all that washing, couldn’t turn them.
Never … never again … Why? … It’s true the word is sweet.
I very much want to sleep. To finish my breviary, I had to walk up and down, my eyes were closing despite myself. Am I happy or not? I don’t know.
6.30 a.m.
The countess died last night.
I spent the first hours of this terrible day in a state close to revolt. Revolt comes from a lack of understanding, and I don’t understand. We can stand trials that seem beyond our strength – which of us knows his own strength? But I felt ridiculous in my unhappiness, incapable of doing anything useful, an embarrassment to everyone. This shameful distress was so great that I couldn’t stop myself grimacing. In mirrors and window panes, I would see a face that seemed distorted less by grief than by fear, with that annoying grin that asks for pity and resembles a hideous smile. God!
While I bustled about in vain, everyone was busy doing his best, and they ended up leaving me alone. The count hardly bothered with me, and Mademoiselle Chantal affected not to see me. The death occurred at about two in the morning. The countess slipped from her bed, and in her fall broke an alarm clock on the table. But her body was not discovered until later, of course. Her left arm, already grown stiff, was a little bent. For several months, she had been suffering from dizzy spells, to which
the doctor hadn’t attached any importance. Angina, no doubt.
I ran to the chateau and was streaming with sweat by the time I got there. I don’t know what I was hoping for. At the threshold of the bedroom, it took me a great effort, an absurd effort, to enter: my teeth were chattering. Am I such a coward, then? Her face was covered with a piece of muslin and I could barely recognize her features, but I very distinctly saw her lips, which touched the fabric. I would so much have liked her to smile, with that impenetrable smile of the dead, and which goes so well with their wonderful silence! … She was not smiling. Her mouth, pulled to the right, had an air of indifference, of disdain, almost of contempt. I raised my hand to bless her, and my arm felt like lead.
By a strange chance, two nuns had come to the chateau the previous evening, petitioning for alms, and the count had offered to drive them back to the station today, once their round was over. Which meant they had spent the night in the chateau. I found them there, small and frail in their over-large dresses, with mud on their thick little shoes. I fear my attitude surprised them. They kept looking at me out of the corners of their eyes, and I couldn’t gather my thoughts. I felt as if I were made of ice, except for that hollowness in my chest, which was burning hot. I thought I was going to fall.
At last, with God’s help, I was able to pray. Much as I may question myself now, I have no regrets. What would I regret? Oh, yes, I think I should have stayed awake last night, kept intact for a few more hours the memory of that conversation which was to be the last. The first and the last. Am I happy or not? I wrote … What a fool I was! I know now that I had never experienced and will never again experience hours so full, so sweet, all filled with a presence, with a gaze, a human life, as yesterday evening, sitting with my elbows on my table, I held gripped in my palms the old book to which I had entrusted that letter, as if to a friend I could trust to be discreet. And what I was so soon to lose, I willingly buried in sleep, a deep, dreamless sleep … It’s over now. My memory of the living woman is already fading and all I will remember, I know, is the image of the dead woman, on whom God has placed His hand. Why should such fortuitous circumstances, through which I groped my way like a blind man, stay in my mind? Our Lord needed a witness, and I was chosen, doubtless for want of anyone better, as one calls in a passer-by. I would have to be quite mad to imagine I played a role, a genuine role. It is already too much that God gave me the grace to witness that reconciliation of a soul with hope, that solemn marriage.
Diary of a Country Priest Page 16
