Fortunately, there was still a little wine left at the bottom of the bottle. I drank it very warm and very sugary. It has to be admitted that a man my age can hardly expect to keep his strength up with a few glasses of wine, some vegetables and sometimes a piece of bacon. I am certainly making a serious mistake by constantly putting off my visit to the doctor in Lille.
Not that I think of myself as a coward. I simply have great difficulty in fighting this state of lethargy, which is not indifference, which is not resignation either, and in which I search almost despite myself for a remedy to my ills. Abandoning oneself to the will of God is so easy when everyday experience proves to one that one can do nothing good! But one would end up receiving lovingly, as mercies, the humiliations and the reverses that are simply nothing but the fatal consequences of one’s stupidity. The immense service this diary does me is to force me to confront my share of responsibility in all this bitterness. And this time, too, it was enough to put pen to paper to awaken in me the feeling of my deep, my inexplicable inability to do the right thing, my metaphysical clumsiness.
(A quarter of an hour ago, who would have believed me capable of writing these lines that are basically so wise? And yet here I am, writing them.)
* * *
Yesterday morning I went to the chateau as I had promised. It was Mademoiselle Chantal who opened the door to me. That put me on my guard. I was hoping she would receive me in the hall, but she almost pushed me into the little drawing room, where the blinds were closed. The broken fan was still on the mantelpiece, behind the clock. I think mademoiselle caught my glance. Her face was harder than ever. She made as if to sit down in the armchair where two days earlier … At that moment, I thought I caught a kind of gleam in her eyes, and I said to her, ‘Mademoiselle, I only have a little time, I will speak to you standing.’
She blushed, and her mouth trembled with anger. ‘Why?’
‘Because my place isn’t here, and nor is yours.’
She said something horrible, something so far beyond her years that I cannot believe it was not prompted in her by some demon. She said, ‘I’m not afraid of the dead.’
I turned my back on her.
She threw herself between me and the door, barring the doorway with both arms outstretched. ‘Would I do better to pretend? If I could pray, I would. I even tried. You can’t pray with this here …’ She pointed to her chest.
‘What?’
‘Call it what you like, I think it’s joy. I can guess what you’re thinking – that I’m a monster.’
‘There are no monsters.’
‘If the next world is as people say, I’m sure my mother will understand. She never loved me. In fact, she’d hated me ever since my brother died. Is it wrong of me to speak to you frankly?’
‘My opinion hardly matters to you.’
‘You know it does, but you don’t deign to admit it. When it comes down to it, you’re as proud as I am.’
‘You’re speaking like a child,’ I said. ‘You’re also blaspheming like a child.’
I took one step towards the door, but she wouldn’t let go of the handle.
‘The governess is packing her bags,’ she said. ‘She’s leaving on Thursday. As you see, what I want, I get.’
‘No matter,’ I said, ‘it won’t do you much good. If you stay as you are, you’ll always find someone to hate. And if you were capable of hearing me, I’d even add …’
‘What?’
‘That it’s you yourself you hate, and only you!’
She thought this over for a moment. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I will hate myself if I don’t get what I want. I have to be happy, otherwise … It’s their fault anyway. Why have they locked me up in this dump? There are girls, I suppose, who even here would find a way to be insufferable. That’s a relief. But I hate scenes, I find them disgusting, I can take just about anything without complaining. When your blood is boiling in your veins, what a pleasure it is not to raise your voice, to bite your tongue and just sit quietly over your work with your eyes half closed! My mother was like that, you know. We could stay for hours, working side by side, each in her dream, her anger. Daddy, of course, didn’t notice a thing. At moments like that, there’s something you feel, an amazing strength building up from deep down inside you, and a lifetime won’t be long enough to use it up … I suppose you’re going to call me a liar, a hypocrite?’
‘The name I call you only God knows,’ I said.
‘That’s what incenses me. Nobody knows what you think. But I want you to know me as I am! Is it true there are people who can see into other people’s souls, do you believe such stories? How is that possible?’
‘Aren’t you ashamed of this chatter? Do you think I haven’t long ago guessed that you caused me some harm, I don’t know what, and that you’re dying to admit it to my face?’
‘Oh, yes, I understand. You’re going to talk to me about forgiveness, aren’t you? You’re going to play the martyr.’
‘Don’t be so sure,’ I said. ‘I am the servant of a powerful master, and as a priest, I can only absolve in His name. Charity is not what the world imagines, and if you’re willing to think about what you once learned, you’ll agree with me that there is a time for mercy, a time for justice, and that the only irrevocable misfortune is to find oneself one day before the forgiving Face without having repented.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’m not telling you anything!’
She moved away from the door, leaving the way free for me. As I was about to walk through it, I saw her one last time standing against the wall, her arms down by her sides, her head tilted over her chest.
The count did not return until a quarter of an hour later. He had been in the fields and was covered in mud. He had his pipe in his mouth, and he looked happy. I think he smelled of alcohol. He seemed surprised to see me there. ‘My daughter gave you the papers, they’re the details of the ceremony held for my mother-in-law by your predecessor. I want the same to be done at my wife’s funeral, more or less.’
‘Unfortunately, the rates have changed since then.’
‘See my daughter.’
‘But mademoiselle didn’t give me anything.’
‘What? You didn’t see her?’
‘I just saw her.’
‘Good Lord! Call mademoiselle,’ he told the chambermaid.
Mademoiselle Chantal hadn’t left the small drawing room, I even think she was behind the door, because she appeared immediately. The count’s face changed so quickly that I couldn’t believe my eyes. He seemed terribly embarrassed. She was looking at him sadly, unsmilingly, as one looks at an irresponsible child. She even nodded at me. It was hard to fathom such composure in one so young!
‘The curé and I talked about something else,’ she said in a soft voice. ‘I think you should give him a free hand, it’s absurd to make such a fuss. You should also sign the cheque for Mademoiselle Ferrand. Remember she’s leaving this evening.’
‘What do you mean, this evening? Won’t she be at the funeral? Everyone will think that very strange.’
‘Everyone? On the contrary, I wonder if anyone will even notice her absence. And besides, what can we do? She’d rather leave.’
My presence clearly embarrassed the count – he had blushed to the roots of his hair – but Mademoiselle Chantal’s voice was still so perfectly poised and calm that it was impossible not to answer her in the same tone.
‘Six months’ wages,’ he resumed. ‘I find that excessive, ridiculous …’
‘But that’s the sum you and mother agreed on when you spoke about dismissing her. Besides, those three thousand francs – poor Mademoiselle Ferrand! – will barely be enough for the journey, the cruise costs two thousand five hundred.’
‘What cruise? I thought she was going to stay with her aunt Premaugis in Lille?’
‘Oh no. She’s been dreaming of a Mediterranean cruise for ten years. I think she’s absolutely right to have a good time for a while. Life here wasn’t so cheerful, af
ter all.’
This finally angered the count. ‘Please try to keep such thoughts to yourself. What are you still waiting for?’
‘The cheque. Your chequebook is in the writing desk in the drawing room.’
‘Leave me alone!’
‘Calm down, Daddy. I just wanted to spare you having to discuss these matters with Mademoiselle Ferrand, who’s very upset.’
He looked his daughter in the face for the first time, but she held his gaze with an air of surprise and innocence. And although there was no doubt in my mind that this was the most ghastly sham on her part, there was something indefinably noble in her attitude, a dignity that was still childlike, a precocious bitterness that brought a pang to the heart. Of course, she was judging her father, and her judgement was final and unforgiving, but there was also sadness in it. Not contempt, but sadness, which put the old man at her mercy, for there was nothing in him, alas, that could match such sadness, it was beyond his comprehension. ‘I’ll sign that cheque of yours,’ he said. ‘Come back in ten minutes.’
She thanked him with a smile.
‘She’s a very delicate, very sensitive child, she needs to be treated gently,’ he said to me in a high-handed tone. ‘The governess didn’t treat her gently enough. As long as her mother was alive, the poor woman was able to avoid confrontations, but now …’
He led me into the dining room, but didn’t offer me a seat.
‘Father,’ he resumed, ‘I may as well speak frankly. I respect the clergy, my family always maintained excellent relations with your predecessors, but they were relations of deference, of esteem, and only very occasionally of friendship. I don’t want a priest getting involved in my family affairs.’
‘We sometimes get involved without wanting to,’ I said.
‘You are the unwitting or at least unconscious cause of a … a great misfortune. As far as I’m concerned, the conversation you’ve just had with my daughter should be the last. Everyone, and that includes your superiors, would agree that a priest as young as you should not claim to direct the conscience of a girl that age. Chantal is already all too impressionable. Religion has its good points, of course, its excellent points. But the principal mission of the Church is to protect the family, society, she censures all excess, she is a power for order, for restraint.’
‘In what way have I been the cause of a misfortune?’ I asked.
‘My uncle the canon will enlighten you on that. All you need to know is that I do not approve your lack of prudence, and that your character’ – he waited a moment – ‘your character as well as your habits seem to me a danger to the parish. Good day to you, Father.’
He turned his back on me. I didn’t dare go up to the bedroom. I think we should only approach the dead in a calm spirit, and the words I had just heard had upset me too much. They struck me as meaningless. My character, fair enough. But my habits? What habits?
I went back to the presbytery by the route they call, for some reason, the Paradise Way – a muddy path between two hedges. I almost immediately had to rush to the church where the sacristan had been waiting a long time for me. My materials are in a deplorable state, and I must admit that a proper inventory, conducted in time, would have spared me a great deal of trouble.
The sacristan is rather a grouchy old man who, beneath his churlish and even vulgar manners, hides a capricious, whimsical sensitivity. Much more often than people think, we encounter in peasants that almost feminine temperament that seems the privilege of the idle rich. There is even, God knows, a kind of unconscious fragility in people walled up for generations, sometimes for centuries, in a silence whose depth they would be unable to assess, for they have no way of breaking it – not that they would dream of doing so, naively identifying as they do with the monotonous daily toil, the slow unravelling of their dreams … until the day when sometimes … Oh, the solitude of the poor!
After beating the curtains, we rested for a moment on the stone bench in the sacristy. I saw him in the shadow, his two huge hands crossed calmly around his thick knees, his body bent forward, a short lock of grey hair stuck to a forehead glossy with sweat.
‘What do people think of me in the parish?’ I asked abruptly.
As I had only ever exchanged the odd insignificant word with him, my question may well have struck him as absurd, and I wasn’t really expecting him to answer. And in fact, I had to wait a long time.
‘They say you don’t get enough to eat,’ he finally said in a cavernous voice, ‘and that you turn the heads of the girls in the catechism class with stories of the next world.’
‘And what about you? What do you think of me, Arsène?’
He thought about this for even longer, to the point that I had resumed my work and had my back to him by the time he replied.
‘Far as I can see, you’re not the right age …’
I tried to laugh, but didn’t feel like it. ‘What can we do, Arsène, the age will come!’
But he pursued his patient, obstinate meditation without hearing me. ‘A priest is like a notary. He’s there in case you need him. He shouldn’t bother anyone.’
‘Come, now, Arsène, a notary works for himself, I work for God. People don’t often convert themselves.’
He had picked up his cane and was resting his chin on the handle. He might have been asleep. ‘Convert …’ he resumed at last, ‘convert … I’m seventy-three and I’ve never seen anyone converted with my own eyes. Everyone is born this way or that way, and dies the same way. In my family, we’re all Church people. My grandfather was a bell ringer in Lyon, my late mother was a servant for the curé of Wilman, and none of us ever died without the sacraments. It’s in the blood and there’s nothing you can do about it.’
‘You’ll see them all again up there,’ I said.
This time, he reflected for a long, long while. I watched him out of the corner of my eye while going about my task and I had lost hope of hearing him again when he proffered his final oracle in an unforgettable, weary voice, a voice that seemed to come from the depths of time. ‘When you’re dead,’ he said, ‘everything’s dead.’
I pretended not to understand. I didn’t feel capable of answering, and what would have been the point anyway? He clearly didn’t think he was offending God with this blasphemy, which was merely an admission that he was powerless to imagine eternal life: although his experience of things provided him with no viable proof of it, the humble wisdom of his race told him it was certain and he did believe in it, but was unable to express his belief at all. He was the legitimate, if reluctant, heir to countless baptized ancestors … No matter, I was frozen, my heart grew faint all at once, I claimed I had a migraine, and I set off alone, in the wind and rain.
Now that these lines are written, I look in astonishment at my window open to the darkness, the untidiness of my table, the thousand little signs visible to my eyes only in which the great anguish of these last hours is inscribed as if in a mysterious language. Am I more clear-headed? Or has the strength of the presentiment that allowed me to gather into a single bundle events that in themselves were of no importance been blunted by fatigue, insomnia and revulsion? I don’t know. All this strikes me as absurd. Why didn’t I demand from the count an explanation that the canon of La Motte-Beuvron himself considered necessary? First of all because I suspect that Mademoiselle Chantal has played some terrible trick on me and I dread to learn what it is. And secondly, for as long as the dead woman is still under her own roof, until tomorrow, we should be silent! Later perhaps … But there won’t be any ‘later’. My position in the parish has become so difficult that the count’s intervention with His Excellency is sure to be completely successful.
No matter! Though I may reread these pages and find nothing in them to correct, they still strike me as vain. That is because no reasoning in the world could provoke true sadness – the sadness of the soul – or vanquish it once it has entered us, through God knows what breach in our being … What to say? It has not entered, it was in u
s. I believe more and more that what we call sadness, anguish, despair, as if to convince ourselves that they are impulses of the soul, is the soul itself, that since the Fall, the condition of man has been such that he can no longer perceive anything either within him or outside him except in the form of anguish. Even those most indifferent to things of the spirit still retain, even in pleasure, an obscure awareness of how terrifying a miracle is the fulfilment of a single joy in a being capable of conceiving his own annihilation and forced to justify with great difficulty, and with ever shakier logic, the furious revolt of his flesh against that terrible, absurd hypothesis. If it were not for the vigilance of God, it seems to me that the first time man became aware of himself, he would crumble to dust.
I have just closed my window, and made a little fire. Because one of my subsidiary parishes is so far away, I have a dispensation from the sacramental fast on the days when I have to celebrate Mass there. Up until now I have not availed myself of it. But now I am going to heat myself a bowl of sweet wine.
On rereading the countess’s letter, it was as if I could see her and hear her … ‘I desire nothing.’ Her long ordeal was over, accomplished. Mine is just beginning. Could it be the same? Could it be that God wanted to place on my shoulders the burden of which He had just relieved His exhausted creature? In the moment when I blessed her, what was the source of that joy mixed with fear, that threatening sweetness? The woman I had just absolved, whom death would welcome a few hours later on the threshold of a familiar room, a place meant for safety and rest (I remember that the following day the watch was still hanging on the wall, in the place where she had put it before going to bed), already belonged to the invisible world, and without realizing it I was looking at the reflection on her brow of the peace of the dead.
Diary of a Country Priest Page 18
