The Eternal Flame

by Michel Corday

  “And afterwards? When you’ve plunged humanity entire into that kind of intoxication for a few hours, what will you have gained?”

  With all his massive presence looming over Pierre Contal, wagging a prophetic finger, François Thibault said to him: “Afterwards? But human beings, having glimpsed their folly in a flash of lucidity—the abyss into which they’re about to hurl themselves like beasts—will step back in time, will refuse that absurd suicide. Do you remember the maxim that I forged and which has never ceased to haunt me, to sustain me in my work: When people have seen what they might be, they will blush with shame at what they are.”

  Chapter VIII

  (Thursday)

  Once again, Jean Liseray returned to his old lodgings in Bourg-la-Reine. On the day after receiving a hard blow—and doubtless on the eve of leaving it forever...

  The house where he had been born was perhaps a hundred years old. Miraculously, it had resisted the great urban upheavals of the last thirty years. The street had changed its name twice. The old place did not flinch. The two terracotta statuettes still stood watch in the niches of the façade, crowned with a second story under the roof, and the skylight still remained open over the “swallows’ room,” where the birds were allowed to build their nests every spring. It was said that it had been constructed by an old eccentric who, naturally, had died before moving into it. The lock-plates and door handles were made of hand-fashioned copper. There was stained glass in all the windows, and paintings on the ceilings. In Jean’s room, angels amid pink clouds had flown over his childish dreams.

  To think that he had still been in Lausanne the previous evening. No journey had ever seemed so long to him—to him, who had been rolling around the globe for ten years...

  He and Marilène had wanted to prolong the delightful isolation they had experienced on the lake for a further hour. They had eaten lunch outside the town, in a restaurant on the shore, before beginning the hunt for information. Marilène seemed to be striving to shake off the melancholy that had weighed upon her during the crossing. She almost apologized, poor thing, for being distracted, in order to appreciate the fine fare, the nice Fendant wine, dry, sparkling and as limpid as Topaz...

  Finally, it had been necessary for him to resume contact with the world. His profession was demanding. And immediately, he had learned of the abrupt closure of the Congress announced an hour earlier. Since the Schismatic vote three days before, the two opposed parties had remained present, but, weary of vain negotiation, of waiting for a firm decision from the Society of Nations, they had given up. Already, amid the loud clicking of doors and portfolios, delegates were leaving the city.

  Nevertheless, they would still submit the litigation to the International Court of Justice at The Hague. That was the supreme recourse. Because of the crazy mental tension, it had even been asked to issue a provisional judgment urgently—a kind of injunction.

  “It’s gone bad,” said Jean Liseray. The peoples, overexcited and duped, would not have the patience to await the verdict, or would not submit to it. The conflict now seemed to him to be unavoidable.

  Out of professional conscience, he resolved to remain in Lausanne until the evening, in order to interrogate the laggards, while Marilène took the boat back to Geneva, where her father was expecting her. They had granted one another one last break, arms linked, along the flowery quays of Lausanne-Ouchy, which is one of the most sumptuous and enchanting promenades in the world.

  It really was the last break, for Jean Liseray was certain of being conscripted. Of course, the war would be aerial, chemical, microbial and electric, but the General Staff, by virtue of instinct and self-interest. They would mobilize the young men, oppose them to one another breast to breast, as in the good old days—or they would imprison them in those profound bunkers that mine the frontiers. Had they not concreted, at great expense, the redundant coal-mines of the Flemish and Lorraine valleys?

  Yes, for him, that promenade had carried a strong risk of having no tomorrow. So he would have liked to know his friend’s intentions. To be sure, that very morning he had asked her to reflect, but the circumstances had changed. The storm gathering on the horizon was now overhead, ready to burst. In words, he had pressed her as gently and tenderly as he was squeezing her arm—but she remained obstinately silent. Then he stopped, to look her in the face. Was she upset by the alarming news, abruptly brought down from the pleasant intoxication of the meal? She seemed worn out. Beneath her profound brows, her eyes were ringed as if they had burned their lids.

  And suddenly, she made up her mind. The words had emerged with difficulty from her mouth, tightened like a flower in bud. “Listen, Jean…I can’t be your wife…I wouldn’t be able to hide the truth from you for long... I’m going to have…I’m expecting a child...”

  He had been stunned, as if he had been hit on the head with a sledgehammer. He wondered where he was. But he had pulled himself together rapidly. He loved Marilène enough to think of her first.

  He did not ask the name of the man. He cut straight to the heart of the matter.

  “Why doesn’t he marry you?”

  “He’s married.”

  “Do you still love him?”

  “Yes.”

  In the distance, the calm beating of paddle-wheels was audible in the calm air. Mechanically, they retraced their steps back to the landing-stage. Jean fell silent in his turn. He imagined Marilène being obliged to confess the truth to her father, a hard traditionalist, a rigid conformist, one of those blind partisans of repopulation who believed in honoring the mother while dishonoring the unmarried mother. To what excess would he not abandon himself? She was heading straight for catastrophe. He alone could still spare her. Her pregnancy, still invisible, must be recent. Under the threat of war, the formalities of marriage would doubtless be abridged. The instinct of the St. Bernard drowned out all other voices in him.

  “Marilène, let me marry you... You’ll remain free, but you’ll be saved.”

  She sketched a poor smile. “How good you are...” Her burning eyes volatilized her tears.

  The boat was coming closer. Jean had not wanted to leave her at such a moment. He had offered to go with her to Geneva, but she refused.

  “No, no, Jean. Stay in Lausanne for your investigation. In my turn, I ask you to reflect. In any case, we’ll see one another again very soon.”

  And, her step light in spite of everything, she had gone along the gangway.

  Now, on the threshold of the little house in Bourg-la-Reine, which he had quit the day before yesterday, he wondered what his mother would think of that attempted rescue. She had known Marilène since the time when the Dormiers and the Liserays had been neighbors. She treated the girl benevolently—but he did not feel very reassured.

  Although it was still early, Madame Liseray was already weeding the paths in the garden behind the house. At the sight of her grown-up son she stood up swiftly in her unbleached smock, seemed tall and thin, going gray, imperious in her features and her bearing. She uttered a dry of surprise: “Already!”

  While embracing her, he joked: “Thanks!”

  She explained, awkwardly: “I only mean that I didn’t expect you so soon, and I don’t have anything ready for your breakfast.”

  Thus, for what would soon be thirty years, misunderstandings had arisen perpetually between them. The mother and the son undoubtedly loved one another, but they were not very good at it.

  He reassured her. When he got out of the airplane at Longchamp early that morning, he had eaten in the canteen at the aerodrome. While they sat down on a bench nestling in the lilacs at the far end of the garden he added: “I’m coming back sooner than I thought myself. Yesterday, in Lausanne, everything fell apart. There’s certain to be war, without much delay.”

  Putting her hands together, her first lament was for herself. “Is it possible? To think that I’ll have lived long enough to see war twice...” Then, abruptly: “But what about you?”

  “Oh! Obvious
ly, mobilization is imminent. It’ll be necessary to go.”

  She had always deplored his choice of an errant life. She sighed. “I would have seen you leave anyway...”

  “This departure,” he added, “will hasten many plans. So, me…you know that I’ve always had a great deal of affection for Marilène. Well, I’ve decided to marry her...”

  “And to think that you’ve never said a word to me...”

  She as more offended than surprised. She had always wanted to know about her son’s love life. She made allusions to it that irritated him, and made him secretive. This time, would he open up fully?

  He had reflected a great deal during his nocturnal journey by airplane. Should he tell his mother about Marilène’s condition? For the time being, he would be able to hide it from her. But when he was gone, mobilized, the two women would have an interest in communicating with one another. And the day when Madame Liseray realized that she had been duped, she would take out her annoyance on Marilène, at the moment when the poor girl would be most in need of aid and comfort. He had, therefore, resolved to speak.

  “I had been thinking about the marriage in a still-confused fashion during my year in Latin America, but yesterday, in Lausanne, events moved rapidly. First there was the rupture in the Congress, the sounding of the tocsin. Then I learned that Marilène was unhappy. Yes, she’s compromised…in brief, she’s given herself to a man who can’t marry her...”

  “Who is he?”

  “I didn’t ask her. Now, there’s going to be a child...”

  “She started on the bench and turned to her son sharply. “What? You want to cover up someone else’s sin?”

  “Let’s say that I want to do a good deed. You can’t refuse to help me.”

  “But my poor child, do you understand what you’re asking of me? I can’t oppose your plan, that’s understood—but I disapprove of it absolutely, with all my heart. I don’t want, in any way, for a single moment, by any action, to seem to be condoning it. And you’re asking me to associate myself with it?”

  “Just think, Maman. I can save the child, merely by reaching out a hand before I leave. It’s a matter of a gesture, a simple gesture...”

  “No, my child. You’re pledging your name, your life. You’ll become the laughing-stock of people who know the truth—especially the man who knows, the lover... By introducing this disreputable person into our family, you’ll be doing us incalculable harm. You can do so much better. We had such dreams for you. Oh, if your unfortunate father were alive, what chagrin he’s be experiencing today...”

  “But when all’s said and done,” he exclaimed, “I love Marilène!”

  “Don’t say another word. You’ll never convince me.”

  “Maman…I would have liked so much to feel that you were on my side, with me...”

  “I beg you…I repeat that your persistence would be futile. It would be painful for me.”

  To make it perfectly clear that she did not want to hear any more, she got up, and headed for the house, with a stiff tread.

  He followed her briefly with his gaze. He was about to leave for The Hague without delay. Afterwards, no doubt, mobilization would take him. Those dry and curt words…this was perhaps his last conversation with his mother. He would have liked so much to touch her, to soften her—but there it was. They had never revealed the best of themselves to one another. If he died, she would never even know about the sudden surges of compassion he felt when he discerned signs of her aging, when he realized the sadness of her solitary widowhood, or the sufferings and the privations she had endured in order to bring him into the world and raise him...

  In his turn, he went back to the house and went upstairs. Exhausted by his sleepless night, he threw himself on his bed, in the room where his childhood had been laid to rest. Before sinking into oblivion, he caught a glimpse of the ceiling, where the little angels were flying among pink clouds.

  Chapter IX

  (A fragment of Emile Truchard’s Journal)

  Thursday evening. He must die. He shall die, by my hand. Henceforth, I shall attach myself to his steps. He decided his fate the day before yesterday, when he sowed the sacrilegious words to the four winds, when he exhorted people to resist the war. Unpardonable language...

  Yesterday’s meeting of the League confirmed my resolution. I feel that I am the chosen one, the predestined one. I shall have saved the world. I shall have prevented it from sinking into shame, into the mud. My name will shine in history among those of the martyrs and apostles, eternally.

  Precisely because my action will be capital, all the circumstances that will have led me to its execution will be important. None of them must remain in shadow.

  On Tuesday, I was at Briolle, in my parents’ home. At seven p.m., my father gets the news from one of the sets in his shop. Ordinarily, I avoid those listening sessions, for which it’s necessary to understand all languages. It’s Babel in the home. I have a horror of those intruders, those barbarians who dare to slip into our hearths. On hearing them, I always experience a hateful revolt, a physical disgust. It seems to me that I’m watching an invasion. But the news had been so serious, since the previous day, that I overcame my repugnance.

  Suddenly, I saw the face of François Thibault surge from the screen. I heard his voice. At the moment when all the people were getting ready, in a magnificent uprising, to defend their liberty against infamous oppressors, the wretch was clinging on in a cowardly fashion to peace! He was forbidding us war, that school of courage and grandeur, that divine era when the virtues blossom in glory. He was stealing it from us!

  His craven language was slackening the springs of national energy. At the same time, he was fortifying the confidence of the adversary, giving him to believe that we weren’t ready, that we would shirk the combat. Thus, he was playing the enemy’s game twice over. It was at that moment that I made a vow to annihilate that baneful influence.

  In front of the apparatus I howled: “Enough!” I brandished my fist, as if he could see me.

  He was speaking from the Radio France studio. He was in Paris. Instinctively, I wanted to get close to him without delay, to get on the track as soon as possible. In the square, the last bus was about to leave. I heard its signal-horn. I went upstairs. I got my automatic pistol. My mother was asleep. I didn’t wake her. As I went through the shop I sent my father a vague word of farewell. I leapt into the vehicle.

  In the room in which I live in Paris, I would have liked to go to sleep immediately, in order to be lucid and strong in the hours to come, but I couldn’t sleep. I was too excited by my resolution. For a long time, with my lamp lit, I reread the admirable maxims of that perfect hero who was both a great soldier and a great scientist, René Quinton9—the maxims that I had copied in capital letters on pieces of paper and pinned to the wall.

  As I write, they’re before my eyes. It seems to me that they light up my room, that they’re inscribed in letters of fire, like the Mene Tekel Upharsin of legend.

  Pacifism is an outrage against honor. Man has but one majesty, which is to know how to die. Pacifism denies him that.

  Hatred is the great affair of life. Sages who no longer hate are ripe for sterility and death.

  Peoples who love war are virile peoples.

  The days that end wars are days of mourning for the brave.

  Nature has endowed men with virtues, but they are only deployed in war.

  Whoever does not know war does not know man. Mediocre in everyday existence, man his beautiful in war, because his virtues are warrior.

  War is the noble mode of human activity. Men are brothers therein. War is the Golden Age.

  One of the joys of war is that it returns man to primitive existence.

  War brings peace to the heart.

  Men who make war sense that they are doing good.

  Great combats sanctify. Those who do not fight are to be pitied.

  Action, for the honest man, is only possible in war.

  Not havin
g gone to sleep until morning, I woke up very late. My resolution had not changed. My fury had not abated. I looked in the mirror, with a kind of fervor, at my face, that would soon be engraved in everyone’s memory. We had a meeting that afternoon of the Section of the League. I found my comrades seething with excitement. Our newspapers, which I hadn’t yet read, proudly accepted the risks of war, and they were fulminating against François Thibault’s appeal. They were covering the wretch with insults that I can still see, and which, by their abundance and their repetition, imposed themselves on the mind: scoundrel, criminal, traitor, hireling, parricide.

  An article was passed around that I have kept to reread: “There is talk of war, but the lambs are bleating and will perhaps frustrate us of the glorious adventure. To avoid that defeat, it is important to drown out their voices—or, better, to stifle that of their shepherd. There are, in that latter intention, the elements of a magnificent project. Has the man capable of realizing it not been born? Raised up by our admiration, he will attain the summit of History.” I felt that I have been designated.

  Our words, our speeches were merely commentaries inflamed by that appeal. They reaffirmed my decision. I was tempted to cry out: “Yes, that man has been born! It is me!” But I constrained myself to silence, for the filthy party has spies everywhere. Enemy ears were certainly listening to us. The traitor would have been put on his guard against me. I kept quiet. Silently, I savored the pride of knowing, and being alone in knowing, that I was going to realize the wishes of that elite. Dusk was falling when we separated.

  Outside of his sojourns in Briolle and facts of public notoriety, I knew nothing about François Thibault’s private life—I couldn’t have said whether he lived in Paris or Bellevue—because our two families had quarreled. It was so long ago that I don’t know exactly why. It was, I think, a matter of a rivalry of municipal councilors between my grandfather Truchard, who was a violin-maker, and François Thibault’s father. Curiously enough, that Thibault had resigned his commission in the navy to look after his vineyard. To abandon the glorious career of arms to sell wine…what sacrilege! François Thibault takes after him.