* * *
Again I have lost a little blood. Spat blood rather. The fear of death touched me lightly. Oh, of course, I think of it often, and sometimes it inspires dread in me. But dread is not the same as fear. It only lasted a moment. I don’t know what I can compare this fleeting impression to. The stinging of a lash across the heart, perhaps? … O Holy Agony!
It is absolutely certain that my lungs are in a bad state. And yet Dr Delbende did examine me carefully. Tuberculosis couldn’t have made such progress in a few weeks. One can often get over that disease through energy, the will to recover. I have both.
Finished today these visits that the curé of Torcy ironically dubbed ‘home calls’. If I didn’t so hate the vocabulary common to many of my fellow priests, I’d say they have been very ‘consolatory’. And yet I had kept for the end those whose favourable outcome seems to me most unlikely … What is the reason for this sudden ease with people and things? Is it imaginary? Have I become insensitive to certain small misfortunes? Or has my insignificance, recognized by everyone, disarmed their suspicions, their antipathy? It all seems a dream.
(Fear of death. The second attack was less violent than the first, I think. But it’s quite strange, this shudder, this contraction of my whole being around a point in my chest …)
* * *
I have just had an encounter. A not very surprising encounter, to be quite honest! But in the state I am in, the slightest event looms larger than it is, like a landscape in the mist. In short, I met, I think, a friend; the possibility of friendship was revealed to me.
This admission would surprise many of my old classmates, for I am considered very loyal to some of those I liked when I was young. I am famous for remembering dates, for always sending them greetings on the anniversaries of their ordination, for example. They laugh about it. But this is only liking someone. What I realize now is that when friendship springs up between two people, it can happen suddenly and violently, in a way that lay people would only generally attribute to the revelation of love.
Anyway, I was on my way to Mézargues when I heard a siren sound a long way behind me, a rumbling that swelled and receded according to the whims of the wind or the bends of the road. Over the past few days, it has become so familiar that people no longer look up when they hear it. They simply say, ‘That’s Monsieur Olivier’s motorcycle.’ A remarkable German machine that looks like a glittering little locomotive. Monsieur Olivier’s name is actually Tréville-Sommerange: he is the countess’s nephew. The old people who knew him here as a child are always talking about him. He had to be sent off to the army at the age of eighteen because he was so difficult.
I stopped at the top of the hill to catch my breath. The noise of the engine stopped for a few seconds (because of the big bend at Dillonne, I suppose) then resumed abruptly. It was like a wild cry, imperious, menacing and desperate. Almost immediately, the ridge facing me was crowned with a burst of flame – the sun hitting the polished steel – and already the machine was plunging down the slope with a powerful groan, then climbing again so quickly that it was as if it had leaped up. As I threw myself to the side to make way for it, I thought I could feel my heart coming loose in my chest. It took me a moment to realize that the noise had stopped. All I could hear now was the shrill lament of the brakes, the grinding of the wheels on the ground. Then that noise, too, stopped. The silence seemed bigger even than the cry.
Monsieur Olivier was there before me, his grey jumper up to his ears, his head bare. I had never before seen him at such close quarters. He has a calm, attentive face, and eyes so pale it would be hard to say the exact colour. They were smiling as they looked at me.
‘Are you tempted, Father?’ he asked in a voice – my God, in a voice I recognized immediately, soft and inflexible at the same time – the countess’s voice. (I don’t have a good memory for faces, but I do have a memory for voices. I never forget them, I love them. A blind man, with no other distractions, probably learns a great deal from voices.)
‘Why not, monsieur?’ I replied.
We considered each other in silence. I could see surprise in his eyes, a touch of irony, too. Beside that flamboyant machine, my cassock was like a dark, sad stain. By what miracle did I feel so young at that moment – oh, yes, so young – as young as that triumphant morning? In a flash, I saw my sad adolescence – not in the way that drowning men are said to see their lives pass before them as they sink, because it certainly wasn’t a series of almost instantly unfolding tableaus. No, it was there in front of me like a person, a being (living or dead, God alone knows!). But I wasn’t sure I recognized it, I couldn’t recognize it because – this will seem quite strange – because I saw it for the first time, I had never seen it before. It had passed once – just as so many strangers pass close to us who might have become our brothers and then move off into the distance and never return. I had never been young, because I had not dared. Around me, I assume, life had pursued its course, my classmates had known and savoured that keen spring, whereas I had made an effort not to think about it and had besotted myself with work. There was no lack of people I had liked, of course! But the best of my friends must unwittingly have dreaded the mark that my childhood, my early childhood experience of poverty and its shame, had left on me. I would have had to open my heart to them, and what I would have liked to say was the very thing I wanted to keep hidden at all costs … My God, it seems to me so simple now! I was never young because nobody wanted to be young with me.
Yes, things seemed simple suddenly. The memory of it will never leave me. That clear sky, the brown mist filtered with gold, the slopes still white with frost, and that dazzling machine purring gently in the sun … I realized that youth is blessed, that it is a risk to be run, but that the risk itself is blessed. And by a presentiment that I cannot explain, I also realized, I knew, that God didn’t want me to die without experiencing something of that risk – just enough, perhaps, for my sacrifice to be total, when the moment came … I experienced that poor little minute of glory.
To speak in this way about such a banal encounter must seem quite silly, I sense. No matter! In order not to be ridiculous in happiness, one must have learned it at an early age, when one could not even stammer the name. I will never have such self-assurance, such elegance, not even for a second. Happiness! A kind of pride, a joy, an absurd, purely carnal form of hope: that, I think, is what they call happiness. At last, I felt young, really young, faced with this companion as young as me. We were both young.
‘Where are you going, Father?’
‘To Mézargues.’
‘Have you ever been on one of these?’
I burst out laughing. I told myself that twenty years earlier, just stroking the long tank all aquiver with the slow throbbing of the engine, as I was doing now, would have made me faint with pleasure. And yet I didn’t remember, as a child, ever daring even to desire to own one of these toys, which to children are mythical, a mechanical toy, a toy that walks. But that dream must have been there, deep down inside me, still intact. And now it was resurfacing from the past, exploding suddenly in my poor, sick chest already perhaps touched by death. It was inside me, like a sun.
‘Well, well,’ he went on, ‘you can boast that you’ve surprised me. Aren’t you afraid?’
‘No, why should I be afraid?’
‘No reason.’
‘Listen,’ I said, ‘between here and Mézargues, I don’t think we’ll meet anybody. I wouldn’t like people to make fun of you.’
‘I’m the one who’s a fool,’ he replied, after a silence.
I climbed as best I could onto a small, quite uncomfortable seat and almost immediately the long descent that had been ahead of us seemed to leap behind us while the loud voice of the engine rose constantly until it gave out just one note, a note of extraordinary purity. It was like the song of the light, it was light itself, and I thought I could follow it with my eyes in its immense curve, its prodigious ascent. The landscape was coming towards us,
opening up on all sides, and just beyond the wild undulations of the road it turned majestically on itself, like the door to another world.
I was quite incapable of estimating the distance we had travelled, or the time we had taken. All I know is that we were going fast, very fast, faster and faster. As we flew along, the wind was no longer, as at first, an obstacle on which I leaned with all my weight, it had become a vertiginous corridor, a void between two columns of air intermingling with aggressive speed. I felt them rolling past on my right and on my left, like two liquid walls, and when I tried to raise my arm, it was pinned back against my side by an irresistible force. Riding thus, we reached the bend that led to Mézargues. My driver turned for a second. Perched on my seat, I was taller than him, and he had to look up at me. ‘Careful!’ he said. His eyes were laughing in his taut face, the air made his long fair hair stand upright on his head. I saw the embankment rush towards us, then flee away sharply at a wild, oblique angle. The vast horizon shuddered twice, and already we were plunging down the hill towards Gesvres. My companion cried out something, I replied with a laugh, I felt happy, liberated, so far from everything. At last I realized that the way I looked surprised him a little, he must have thought he was scaring me. Mézargues was behind us. I didn’t have the courage to object. After all, I thought, it takes me at least an hour to get there on foot, so I’ve still gained time …
We returned to the presbytery more calmly. The sky had clouded over, and a sharp little breeze was blowing. I had the distinct feeling that I was awakening from a dream.
Luckily, the road was deserted, and the only person we passed was old Madeleine, who was binding firewood. She didn’t turn. I assumed that Monsieur Olivier would go all the way to the chateau, but he kindly asked permission to come into the presbytery. I didn’t know what to say to him. I would have given anything to be able to entertain him a little, for nothing will ever remove from the head of a peasant like me the idea that a soldier is always hungry and thirsty. Naturally, I didn’t dare offer him any of my wine, which is nothing now but a muddy and not very presentable herbal tea. But we lit a big log fire, and he filled his pipe.
‘A pity I’m leaving tomorrow, we could have done it again.’
‘Once is enough for me,’ I replied. ‘People wouldn’t be too keen on seeing their priest rushing along the roads at the speed of an express train. Besides, I might get killed.’
‘Are you afraid of that?’
‘Oh no … Well, not very much … But what would Monseigneur think?’
‘I like you a lot,’ he said. ‘We might have been friends.’
‘You and I, friends?’
‘Of course! And not just because I know a lot about you. Over there, you’re all they talk about.’
‘Do they say bad things?’
‘Somewhat … My cousin’s furious. She’s a real Sommerange, that one.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, I’m also a Sommerange. Greedy and hard, never satisfied with anything, with something inflexible about us, which must be the devil’s portion in us and makes us our own worst enemies, to the point that our virtues resemble our vices, and God Himself would find it hard to distinguish the saints of the family – if by any chance there are any – from the villains. The only quality we all share is that we fear sentiment like the plague. We hate to share our pleasures with others, but at least we’re consistent and don’t embarrass them with our sorrows. It’s a precious quality at the hour of death, and truth obliges me to say that we die quite well. There, now you know as much as I do. All that combines to make us good soldiers. Unfortunately, the profession is not yet open to women, which means the women in our family – oh, my God! … My poor aunt found a motto for them: all or nothing. I told her one day it was a fairly meaningless motto, unless you see it as a wager. And that wager can only be made seriously at the hour of death, isn’t that so? None of our family have ever come back to tell us if it was kept or not, or by whom.’
‘I’m sure you believe in God.’
‘In our family,’ he replied, ‘that’s a question we don’t ask. We all believe in God, all of us, even the worst – the worst more than the others, perhaps. I think we’re too proud to think of doing evil without taking risks. There’s always a witness we have to reckon with: God.’
These words should have been painful to my ears – it was easy to interpret them as so many blasphemies – and yet they did not disturb me. ‘It is not so bad to reckon with God,’ I said. ‘It forces a man to commit himself completely – to commit his hope, all the hope of which he is capable. Only, God sometimes turns away …’
He stared at me with his pale eyes. ‘My uncle says you’re a dirty, worthless priest, he even claims you …’
The blood rushed to my face.
‘I don’t think you care about his opinion, he’s the stupidest of men. As for my cousin—’
‘Don’t finish, I beg you!’ I said. I felt my eyes fill with tears, I couldn’t do anything against this sudden weakness, and I was so terrified that I might yield to it despite myself that a shudder took hold of me and I went and crouched at the corner of the hearth, amid the ashes.
‘It’s the first time I’ve seen my cousin express a sentiment with such … Usually, she’s dead set against any indiscretion, even a frivolous one.’
‘Speak about me, not her.’
‘You? Well, if it wasn’t for that black sheath, you’d look the same as any of us. I saw that at first glance.’
I didn’t understand (in fact, I still don’t understand). ‘You don’t mean …’
‘Oh yes, I do. But you may not know I’m in the foreign regiment?’
‘The regiment?’
‘Yes, the Legion! I’ve hated that word ever since novelists made it fashionable.’
‘Come now, a priest?’ I stammered.
‘Priests? There’s no lack of priests in the Legion. Even my commanding officer’s orderly used to be a priest in Poitou. We didn’t find out until after …’
‘After …?’
‘After his death, of course!’
‘And how did he …?’
‘How did he die? Why, on a pack mule, tied up like a sausage. He had a bullet in his belly.’
‘That’s not what I’m asking.’
‘Listen, I don’t want to lie to you. The boys like to show off at the moment of death. They have two or three phrases that are quite like what you call blasphemies, let’s be frank about that!’
‘How horrible!’ Something inexplicable was happening inside me. God knows I had never thought much about those hard men and their terrible, mysterious vocation, because for all those of my generation the word ‘soldier’ only evokes the banal image of a civilian who has been called up. I remember those soldiers on leave who came to us loaded with bags and whom we would see again the very same evening already dressed in velvet – peasants like the others. And now the words of a stranger were suddenly arousing an inexpressible curiosity in me.
‘There’s blasphemy and blasphemy,’ my companion continued in his calm, almost hard voice. ‘In the minds of the men, it’s a way of burning their bridges behind them, they’re used to it. I find it stupid, but not dirty. Being outside the law in this world, they put themselves outside the law in the next. If God doesn’t save soldiers, all soldiers, because they’re soldiers, there’s no point in insisting. One more blasphemy for good measure, taking the same chances as your comrades, avoiding a minority acquittal – it doesn’t always work! … It’s the same motto, when it comes down to it: all or nothing. Don’t you think? I’d wager that you yourself …’
‘Me!’
‘Oh, of course, there’s a subtle difference. All the same, if you only wanted to look at yourself …’
‘Look at myself!’
He couldn’t help laughing. We laughed together, as we had laughed earlier, on the road, in the sun. ‘I mean that if your face didn’t express …’ He stopped. But his pale eyes no longer disconcerted
me, I could see exactly what he was thinking in them. ‘The habit of prayer, I suppose,’ he resumed. ‘Heavens, that language is none too familiar to me.’
‘Prayer! The habit of prayer! Alas, if you only knew … I pray very badly.’
He gave me a strange reply, which has made me think a lot since. ‘The habit of prayer. I think what that actually means is a constant preoccupation with prayer, a struggle, an effort. It’s the incessant dread of fear, the fear of fear, that moulds the face of a good man. Yours – if you’ll allow me – seems worn down by prayer, it reminds me of a very old missal, or else one of those half-erased carvings on a recumbent tomb. No matter! I don’t think it would take much for that face to be the face of an outlaw, like ours. Besides, my uncle says you’re lacking in a sense of social life. Admit it: our order isn’t theirs.’
‘I don’t reject their order,’ I replied. ‘I blame it for being without love.’
‘Our boys don’t know as much about that as you do. They think God is connected with a kind of justice they despise, because it’s a justice without honour.’
‘Honour itself …’ I began.
‘Oh, no doubt an honour suited to them … However rough it may seem to your casuists, their law at least has the merit of being expensive, very expensive. It’s like the sacrificial stone – nothing but a pebble, barely bigger than any other pebble – but streaming with purifying blood. Of course, our case isn’t clear-cut, and we’d give the theologians a run for their money if those learned men had any time to bother about us. The fact remains that none of them would dare to maintain that, living or dead, we belong to this world over which the only curse in the Gospels has fallen for twenty centuries. What is the law of the world? It’s refusal – and we refuse nothing, not even our skin. It’s pleasure – and we ask nothing of debauch but rest and oblivion, like another sleep. And it’s a hunger for gold – most of us don’t even own the registered cast-offs in which they put us in the ground. Admit it: our poverty can sustain comparison with the poverty of some of those fashionable monks who specialize in prospecting for rare souls!’
Diary of a Country Priest Page 22
