Viper's Tangle

by François Charles Mauriac

  Calèse,

  December 10th, 193—

  MY DEAR GENEVIÈVE,

  I shall finish, this week, sorting the papers with which every drawer here is bursting. But it is my duty to communicate to you, without delay, this strange document. You know that our father died at his writing-desk, and that Amélie found him, on the morning of November 24th, with his face against a note-book. It is this that I am sending you, under registered cover.

  You will, no doubt, have as much trouble as I have had myself in deciphering it....It is lucky that its writing is too illegible for the servants. Moved by a feeling of delicacy, I had at first intended to spare you the reading of it. Our father, in point of fact, expresses himself about you in extremely hurtful terms.

  But have I the right to leave you in ignorance of a document which belongs as much to you as it does to me? You know how scrupulous I am about everything that has to do, directly or indirectly, with our parents’—heritage. So I changed my mind.

  For that matter, which of us is not badly treated in these malicious pages? They reveal, alas! nothing that we have not known for a long time. The contempt which I inspired in my father embittered my youth. I was long doubtful about myself, I abased myself under that merciless stare. It took me years before I finally realised my own worth.

  I have forgiven him, and I would even add that it is, above all, filial duty which leads me to communicate this document to you. For, however you may judge him, it is not to be denied that the figure of our father will appear to you here, despite all the frightful feelings which he exhibits, I dare not say more noble, but at least more human. (I am thinking especially of his love for our sister Marie, and for young Luc, to which you will find here some moving testimony.)

  I can better understand, today, the grief which he showed beside our mother’s coffin, and which astonished us so much. You thought that it was partly assumed. Even if these pages serve only to reveal to you how much feeling subsisted in that implacable man, mad with conceit of himself, they will repay the trouble you take in reading them, painful, for that matter, as you may find it, my dear Geneviève.

  What I feel that I owe to this confession, and the benefit which you will derive from it yourself, is the easing of our consciences. I was born scrupulous. Even if I had a thousand reasons for believing myself in the right, the smallest thing sufficed to trouble me. Yes, indeed, moral delicacy carried to the point to which I have carried it does not make life any the easier!

  Pursued by the hatred of my father, I adopted no means of defence, even the most legitimate, without experiencing anxiety, if not remorse, as a result. If I had not been the head of the family, responsible for the honour of its name and for our children’s patrimony, I would have given up the struggle rather than go through those tearings of the heart, those quarrels with myself, of which you have more than once been a witness.

  I thank God that He has granted that these lines of our father’s should justify me. In the first place, they confirm all that we already knew about the unscrupulous machinations through which he sought to deprive us of his inheritance. I could not read without a sense of shame those pages where he describes the measures which he devised to keep a check, at one and the same time, upon the lawyer Bourru and that fellow Robert.

  Let us throw the mantle of forgetfulness over these shameful scenes. The fact remains that it was my duty, at any cost, to frustrate these abominable plans. I did so, and with a success of which I see no reason to be ashamed. Have no doubt about it, my sister—it is to me that you owe your fortune.

  The unhappy man, in the course of his confession, endeavours to persuade himself that the hatred which he felt towards us died away all of a sudden. He prides himself upon an abrupt detachment from this world’s goods. (I confess that I could not help laughing at this point.) But pay attention, if you please, to the time of this unexpected change of front. It occurred at the very moment when his plans had gone awry and his illegitimate son had sold us the clue to them.

  It was no easy matter to make such a fortune disappear. A scheme which it must have taken him years to bring to a head could not be replaced in a few days. The truth is that the poor man felt his end approaching, and that he had neither the time nor the means to disinherit us by any other method than that which he had conceived, and which Providence enabled us to discover.

  Lawyer as he was, he was reluctant to lose his case, either in his own eyes, or in ours. He had the shrewdness—half-unconsciously, I admit—to transform his defeat into a moral victory. He affected disinterestedness, detachment....

  Well, what else was he to do? No, that is where I refuse to let myself be taken in, and I am sure that you, with your common sense, will agree that we have no occasion to put ourselves to the expense of admiration or gratitude.

  But there is another point where this confession sets my conscience entirely at rest: a point about which I have cross-examined myself with the utmost severity, and without succeeding for a long time, as I may frankly admit today, in calming this troublesome conscience of mine. I refer to our efforts—fruitless, so far as that goes—to submit our father’s mental condition to the examination of specialists.

  I may say that my wife had a great deal to do with making me uneasy about this. You know that I am not in the least in the habit of paying much attention to her opinions; she is the least responsible person in the world. But in this case she dinned into my ears, day and night, arguments some of which, I must confess, disturbed me. She ended by convincing me that this great business lawyer, this shrewd financier, this profound psychologist, was the very personification of mental balance....

  No doubt it is easy to make hateful in their own eyes children who set about having their old father shut up lest they should lose their inheritance....You see that I do not mince my words....I spent many a sleepless night, God knows.

  Very well, my dear Geneviève, this note-book, especially in its later pages, adduces evidence to prove the intermittent delirium with which the poor man was afflicted. His case strikes me as interesting enough to justify submitting his confession to a psychiatrist; but I regard it as my first duty to divulge to nobody pages so dangerous for our children. And I may say at once that, in my opinion, you ought to burn them the very moment you have finished reading them. We ought not to run the risk of their falling under the eyes of a stranger.

  You are not ignorant of the fact, my dear Geneviève, that, while we have always kept everything to do with our family very secret—and I have taken precautions lest anything should transpire outside as to our anxieties about the mental condition of him who, after all, was the head of it—certain elements foreign to the family have not used the same discretion or the same prudence. Your wretched son-in-law, in particular, has broadcast the most dangerous stories in this respect.

  We are paying dearly enough for this today. I am giving you no news when I saw that plenty of people in town see a connection between Janine’s neurasthenia and the eccentricities which are attributed to our father, in accordance with Phili’s tales.

  Destroy this note-book, therefore. Do not say a word about it to anybody. Let there be no further question about it between us. I do not say that this will not be a pity. There are in it pyschological interpretations, and even impressions of Nature, which denote in this orator a real gift for writing. That is all the more reason for destroying it. Suppose one of our children should publish it later on? That would be a nice business!

  But, between you and me, we can call things by their own name; and, once we have finished reading this notebook, the fact that our father was half-mad can no longer be in any doubt for us. I understand, today, something that your daughter said, which I took for a raving of illness: “Grandfather is the only religious man I have ever met.”

  The poor girl let herself be taken in by the vague aspirations, the dreamings, of this hypochondriac. Enemy of his own family, hated by everybody, without friends, unhappy in love—there are some amusing details—je
alous of his wife to the point of never forgiving her for some sketchy flirtation when she was a girl, did he, towards the end, desire the consolations of prayer?

  I do not believe it for a moment. What stares one in the face out of these lines is mental disorder in its most clearly marked form: persecution mania, delirium taking a religious shape.

  Is there not any trace, I ask myself, of real Christianity in his case? No; a man as informed as I am about such matters knows that, if you give such people an inch, they take a yard. This false mysticism, I am bound to say, provokes in me an insurmountable disgust.

  Is it possible that the reactions of a woman may be different? If this religiosity impresses you, bear in mind the fact that our father, astonishingly endowed as he was for hatred, never loved anything except as a stick with which to beat somebody. His exhibition of his religious aspirations is a criticism, direct or indirect, of the principles which our mother inculcated into us from our childhood. He surrenders himself to a fuliginous mysticism only for the purpose of being better able to attack reasonable, moderate religion, which has always been held in honour in our family. Truth is a matter of balance....

  But I stop short of considerations where you would have difficulty in following me. I have said enough. Study the document itself. I am eager to know your impression of it.

  I have not much space left to reply to the important questions which you put to me. My dear Geneviève, in the crisis through which we are passing, the problem which we have to solve is agonising. If we keep these piles of banknotes in a safe, we shall have to live on our capital, and that is a misfortune. If, on the other hand, we give our brokers instructions to buy stock, the dividends we get will not recompense us for the uninterrupted decline in capital values.

  Inasmuch as we are condemned to lose in any case, it is the wiser thing to keep the Bank of France notes. The franc is only worth four sous, but it is guaranteed by an immense reserve of gold.

  On this point our father saw clearly, and we ought to follow his example. There is a temptation, my dear Geneviève, against which you ought to fight with all your strength. It is the temptation of investment at any price, which is so deeply rooted in the French people.

  Obviously we must live as economically as possible. You know that you have only to turn to me if you need advice. Despite the bad times, opportunities may present themselves from one day to the next. I am following very closely, at this moment, a cinema and an aniseed liqueur. That is the kind of business which will not suffer from the crisis. In my opinion, it is in such directions that we ought to turn our eyes, boldly but prudently.

  I am glad to hear the better news you give me about Janine. There is nothing to be feared, for the moment, in the excess of religious devotion which makes you anxious about her. The essential thing is that her mind should be turned away from Phili. For the rest, she will come back to a sense of proportion by herself. She belongs to a stock which has always known how to avoid abuse of the best things.

  Until Tuesday, my dear Geneviève,

  Your devoted brother,

  HUBERT

  Janine to Hubert

  MY DEAR UNCLE,

  I want to ask you to judge between Mamma and myself. She refuses to entrust Grandfather’s “diary” to me. According to her, my regard for him would not survive the reading of it.

  If she is so anxious not to hurt my dear memory of him, why does she keep on telling me every day: “You cannot imagine all the bad things he says about you. Even your looks are not spared”? I am the more surprised at her readiness to let me read the harsh letter in which you comment upon this “diary.”...

  Mamma is tired of squabbling about it and says that she will give it to me if you think fit, and that she throws the responsibility upon you. I am therefore making this appeal to your sense of justice.

  Allow me, at the outset, to set aside the first objection, which has nothing to do with anybody but myself. However hard upon me Grandfather may show himself in this document, I am sure that he cannot judge me as badly as I do myself. I am sure, above all, that his harshness spares the unhappy girl who lived with him, all autumn, until the day of his death, in the house at Calèse.

  Uncle, forgive me if I contradict you on an essential point. I am the sole witness of what Grandfather’s feelings became during the last weeks of his life. You denounce his vague and unhealthy religiosity; but I tell you that he had three interviews—one at the end of October and two in November—with the parish priest of Calèse, whose testimony, for some reason which I cannot fathom, you refuse to accept.

  According to Mamma, the diary in which he notes the smallest details of his life makes no mention of these meetings—which he would certainly not have omitted to do, if they had been the occasion of a change in his destiny....But Mamma also says that the diary breaks off in the middle of a word. It is unquestionable that death surprised your father just at the moment when he was about to speak of his confession.

  It is idle for you to say that, if he had been absolved, he would have received Communion. I know what he kept on telling me, on the day but one before his death. Obsessed by his sense of unworthiness, the poor man had made up his mind to await Christmas.

  What reason can you have for not believing me? Why try to make me out a person suffering from hallucination? Yes, on the day but one before his death, the Wednesday, I can still hear him, in the drawing-room at Calèse, talking to me about that Christmas for which he longed, in a voice full of pain, or perhaps even then under the shadow of death....

  Don’t be afraid, Uncle: I am not trying to make a saint out of him. I grant you that he was a terrible man—sometimes, indeed, a dreadful man. That does not alter the fact that a great light shone upon him in his last days, and that it was he, and he alone, who took my head in his two hands, who forcibly made me look another way....

  Do you not believe that your father would have been a different man if we had been different ourselves? Do not accuse me of throwing stones at you. I know your good qualities; I know that Grandfather showed himself cruelly unjust towards you and towards Mamma. But it was the misfortune of all of us that he mistook us for exemplary Christians....

  Don’t protest. Since his death, I have lived with people who may have their defects, their weaknesses, but who live according to their faith, and die in the fullness of grace. If he had lived among them, might not Grandfather have found, after many years, that harbour which he reached only on the eve of his death?

  Once more, I make no attempt to discredit our family in favour of its implacable head. I do not forget, above all, that the example of poor, dear Grandmother might have sufficed to open his eyes if, only too long, he had not chosen to be the slave of his resentment.

  But let me tell you why, finally, I think that he was right and we were wrong. There where our treasure was, there was our heart also. We thought of nothing but that threatened heritage. No doubt we had plenty of excuses. You were a business man, and I was a poor woman....

  That does not alter the fact that, except in the case of Grandmother, our principles remained separate from our lives. Our thought, our desires, our actions struck no roots in that faith to which we adhered with our lips. With all our strength, we were devoted to material things, while Grandfather....

  Will you understand me if I tell you that, where his treasure was, there was not his heart also? I would swear that, on this point, the document which you do not want to let me read brings decisive witness.

  I hope, Uncle, that you will understand me, and I await your reply with confidence....

  JANINE.

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