The Tyrant

by Jacques Chessex

  The big angry voice filled the study. The terrible blue eyes flashed in the red face. The doctor’s shoulders heaved with indignation, fits of coughing racked him; now he was breathing hard, he was still bellowing, he was choking with rage. Standing before him, somewhat stooped, his hands open, Jean Calmet looked with despair at his master, who was in a trance. What was he to reply? That was the most painful of all: his father paralysed him. He would have liked to cry out to him that he was wrong. That he loved him. That he was pursuing his studies with some pleasure. That he immersed himself in the Latin authors with passion. That he was grateful to him for allowing him to work under pleasant conditions. But nothing came out of his mouth. Jean Calmet stood there stupidly, mute, looking obstinate and guilty, and it was precisely this which enraged the purple-faced doctor. Impossible to free himself from that hideous silence, to tell all at one fell swoop about his loneliness and confusion, impossible to throw his arms around the man’s neck, to kiss him, to cry on those indestructible shoulders, glue his cheek to that rough cheek, as in bygone days feel the beard that scratches and scrapes his face, hear the strong voice in his throat by gluing his ear against the man’s neck…

  “Now, get the hell out of here, you little moron. You’re as stupid as your brothers and sisters. And to think that, at fifty-eight years of age, I can’t rely on anyone in this house!”

  Fifty-eight years old. An old man. Nonsense. Jean Calmet remembered with extraordinary shame the vile story of Liliane. Liliane was a pretty girl from Paudex, even rather beautiful, with big brown eyes, a ponytail, tall, blooming, a bosom that moved in a bra plainly visible under her cotton-print blouse. Seventeen years old. A bit common, perhaps, her father a labourer, five or six kids crowded into the garret of a fisherman’s shanty. Out of work, Liliane. A salesgirl’s apprenticeship broken off after two months. She lolled about on the beach at Lutry, drank Coca-Colas while smoking cigarettes on the terrace of the Hôtel du Rivage. That is where Jean Calmet had met her; funny, round-breasted, broke; they saw each other again every afternoon of the long summer months, they went to the beach, they swam, they rented a boat, they rowed far out, they came back peacefully to the little shore… Liliane laughed, tanned herself, bloomed. Jean Calmet did not dare touch her breasts, he kissed her before her door, quickly; he waited for the next day’s rendezvous with growing impatience. Liliane was always broke. At the end of the summer, her parents had insisted that she find another job as a salesgirl or as a supernumerary at the gas factory. Jean Calmet was upset at losing her. He had an idea. His father complained endlessly of being swamped with paperwork from his office, insurance forms that took for ever; then, too, the old servant was becoming incapable of performing correctly her work as receptionist. What if he hired Liliane? For once, the doctor had greeted the idea with satisfaction. Liliane began work at Les Peupliers on 30 August.

  She changed at once. As early as the first week, although the doctor’s office closed on Thursdays, she refused to go out with Jean Calmet on that day, and he had hung around her house sadly, alone, among the piles of sand and cement, in the harbour of Paudex that was under a fusillade of sunshine. Towards seven o’clock he finally saw her come home, he ran towards her, but she fled into her hallway, she quickened her steps; he called to her from downstairs:

  “Liliane, Liliane, wait for me!”

  She turned around and the look that she gave him was sad and full of shame. But he realized that only much later, remembering all the times that he had seen her, her pouts, her looks, her silences.

  “Liliane!”

  No answer. Those eyes. All their regret. The front door stands ajar, the evening sun pours into the cool hallway. Liliane is standing on a step in a flood of light that illuminates her violently, her bosom moves under the cloth, her bare legs shine… She turns around, she is swallowed up in darkness, Jean Calmet hears her running up the stairs. A door slams. Nightmare. He goes back out into the heat, he sees nothing, his eyes are full of tears, he goes back to Les Peupliers along the shore of the lake.

  On the following days she kept on running from him. At Les Peupliers, he met her on the doorstep in the morning; he passed her in the vestibule, or, suddenly, while he was trying to read in the garden, her head would appear at one of the windows of the waiting room or the doctor’s consulting room on the ground floor; she would come across him with a dazed astonishment, greet him painfully, and then the windowpane would sparkle at once, the window would close, and Liliane’s image would disappear into the room. That lasted for a month. A month of embarrassment, of doubt, of impatience. Jean Calmet no longer ate. He slept badly. Or not at all. When he caught sight of Liliane at the end of a hallway, he would flee in his turn into a corner, as if he felt his own disgrace too shamefully to dare approach her directly. He hid from her. He suffered. But he suffered much more – in a more vile and permanent way – when he learnt the truth.

  It was one fine autumn day, at the end of the afternoon. The visiting hours should have been over, and Jean Calmet needed to consult a dictionary that was kept in the doctor’s office. He went down to the ground floor, somewhat ill at ease, and, as usual, he gave two quick knocks: no answer. He waited a few seconds, then he went in. To the right, the consulting room was empty. He started absently up the corridor, pushed open the office door, and the scene smacked him in the face: standing, her breasts bare, Liliane was pressing herself against the doctor, who was kissing her full on the mouth. Liliane’s shoulders, torso, belly streamed with light; she turned, stupefied, and Jean Calmet, for the first time, saw the nipples on the girl’s heavy, round bosom. The doctor was breathing hard. Nobody moved. A few seconds went by; no one spoke. Then Jean Calmet moved back a step and closed the door behind him. Dizziness seized him. One second. Two seconds.

  “Shit!” cried the doctor’s raucous voice from the other side of the wall.

  Jean Calmet fled, shut himself up in his room and collapsed on a chair. That was almost twenty years ago. He was nineteen then; about to begin his second semester of his literature degree. Twenty years, and the sadness, the shame, the humiliation had not gone away. He recalled himself doubled over in his chair, motionless, silent, not even able to cry. And Liliane naked in the dazzling light. And his father, red, panting, furious. And he, himself, stunned with pain. But why had Liliane given herself up so easily to that bastard? He would never know. He had seen her again a few days later, and this time she had not dared to avoid him. They had walked a hundred yards along the lake. Tense, strained, Jean Calmet:

  “Liliane, have you slept with him?”

  The coarse intonation of the reply still echoed in his ears:

  “Well, you know, I lost my cherry. I had to lose it sometime, didn’t I?”

  He loved her. She was seventeen. He, nineteen. She was a woman. He, virgin, and wounded to the depths of his soul, frightened, not even finding anything to say that could communicate a little of his confusion and sadness. Nevertheless, he looked at her with intense curiosity: the spongy lips against her wide teeth, the curly forelock in her big eyes which no longer turned away, the brown neck in the blouse where her breasts lay heavy… Behind her, the seven o’clock sun set the lake ablaze, orange clouds ceased to move, fringed with liquid gold; white boats cruised out on the lake under the green slopes of Savoy. Who decides for us? Who triumphs in the beauty of the world? What anguish is to be drunk like a poison in that evening’s light? Liliane was a woman and the doctor was her lover. His own father. Jean Calmet dug his nails into his palms. His own father had bitten that mouth. Tasted the smell of the nape of that neck. Grasped those pink-tipped breasts. Parted those tanned legs. Driven himself into that belly. The master had demanded his due. Had possessed. It was still going on. Everyone bent. Everyone yielded. He reigned. He fed on their submissiveness. And he had wanted that fresh flesh as a natural tribute to his power. That little girl belonged to him. She had yielded in his arms. She had moaned under his hands, panted under his unfailing strength. He was the father! The man
of vigour, the owner, the law! Fifty-eight years of age. Seventeen years old. But the law… Jean Calmet immediately discarded the idea that this was the abduction of a minor: the doctor had not led this girl astray, had not seduced her. He had exercised a right. Who would ever contest it? Jean himself had yielded to that authority, he was ashamed of it, he was infuriated, but he bowed before his father’s sovereign domination… A beautiful evening, to be sure. Green Savoy, the sky burning the lake like molten copper, and before it Liliane, who looks at him with a kind of tenderness, now, as if everything were still possible, as if their walks were going to resume. As if, after the father, the son in his turn were going to hurl himself on that meat. That awful word made Jean Calmet suffer at once. That meat? Who said such vile things? And he recalled his father, the infallible doctor, feeling flesh, grinding up fibres in small, sour apartments, in the morning, after the swaying elevator or the black staircase, when he accompanied him on calls to the homes of the poor, the humiliated, the wretched, who begged the master to give them enough to live on for a little while longer. Then Jean Calmet had had a kind of illumination: like a revelation that had driven him one notch surer into his loneliness. They too, the sick people, loved him. They adored him in their way. The doctor was generous. He was devoted. He came running. He came rushing. He fought against the insurance companies. He arranged their burials. He followed in the cortège. He spoke over their graves. To their greyish beds, only he brought noise, joking, all of the diversity of the outside. Liliane had been conquered by that power. And he, Jean, the poor dwarf? That beautiful girl was tender and unappreciated. Father a labourer. Mother a labourer. Too many kids in her room. And what future? A nervous, crazy student? The doctor radiated power. Now Jean Calmet looked at Liliane with tenderness. They were brother and sister, that sweet thing and he. They had gone through the same filth. Tyranny. They could fight their way back to the surface. Meet again. Break out of that infernal circle. There would be a way out someday. The doctor would die. Then they would see who entered the true kingdom. But my kingdom is not of this world? With an extraordinary feeling of deliverance, Jean Calmet suddenly found himself open, light, completely cleansed of all anger. Of jealousy? She, he would coddle her later on. He knew it. He drove her to the back of his mind like an old fear. The sky was turning a golden grey. The lake was loaded with amber. Across the way, France was taking on reddish hues, shades of late autumn woods and squirrel fur. A smell of fish, blandly sickening and soothing, hung about the sewers of the bay of Lutry. A boat was drawing near the shore. People were milling around on a landing stage. Combat? A restless girl full of flavour stared into the depths of his eyes.

  “Jean! I had to lose it sooner or later…”

  He did not have the patience to wait. All of a sudden, he turned around, he started to run on the gravel of the jetty; sand crunched in his sandals like the last reminder of summer. Liliane! The summer! And Jean Calmet hurled himself like a madman into the tepid mist.

  That is what he was remembering, seated at his big table before his books and his file cards, in the middle of that crowded night. He ran his hand over his throat: his beard was beginning to bristle again. Like on the faces of corpses… Wizened, Jean Calmet. Everything was all right. He rose, carefully checked the latch, the window, the electricity, brushed his teeth, shaved, showered, came back to hang around before the shelves of his bookcase, opened his leather-bound edition of Baudelaire, closed it again, drank a glass of Contrexéville, finding it as insipid as his life, came back to hang around Baudelaire, searched in a pile and found the photo by Nadar, felt the terrible curl of his lips like a sneer, recited to himself two verses of Chant d’automne, shivered, switched off his lamp, opened the windows in the dark while one or two cars backfired behind idiotic gardens where stupid animals, porcupines as lost as himself, sucked in the last hydrocarbons of the damp urban air.

  The ceremony of interring the ashes took place on Friday 20 October. It was the middle of the afternoon. The small sun yellowed the cemetery, where tufts of pinkish heather made rather dirty spots in the rays of light like bloodstains on amber-coloured linens. Jean Calmet met his mother in front of the crematorium; in a black astrakhan coat, she was pale and stooped. His brothers and sisters surrounded her. At four o’clock sharp the funeral director emerged in the central lane that bristled with crosses and elaborately decorated monuments, the black hat in his hand, and the crematorium official, also dressed and fitted with a hat of charcoal grey, joined them in the doorway of the chapel.

  Both of them bowed before the widow, shaking her hand at great length, greeting each of the children with extreme solemnity.

  “It’s niche number 157,” said the official. “The urn was brought this morning. As is customary, the ashes have been poured into it without the family’s being present. Naturally, you can see them in a little while. If you’ll be good enough to follow me…”

  The meagre procession started into the cemetery, went up a lane, climbed up some steps bordered by boxwood, turned, took another lane between the graves and the shrubbery; finally they arrived before the columbarium, whose iron-latticed doors were open.

  “Please go right in, Madame,” said the official, motioning to the arched interior with his black hat.

  Étienne took his mother’s arm and they all started into the little building. The daylight filtered under the archway through tiny slits in the wall. Jean Calmet spun around: the walls were entirely partitioned with hundreds of numbered niches, the depth of which was hard to determine. One of them, at eye level, was sealed by a little black curtain fringed with silver: it bore the number 157, and they pointed it out to one another with their looks and their fingers. Then all became silent, and everyone stood motionless. The funeral director and the official advanced to the foot of the wall. On behalf of his company, the mortuary man reaffirmed his sympathy in a gentle voice. Then he pulled a paper from his pocket and read the municipal regulations on the storage of ashes in the columbarium. His paper refolded, the fellow stepped back a pace with a look of pained modesty.

  Then the funeral director took up position beneath the black curtain and slowly, with weighty solemnity, his head straight, he uncovered the doctor’s niche: the brocaded urn appeared, superb, luminous against its background of shadows, and everyone in the small gathering could read the inscription in light-coloured bronze capitals:

  DOCTEUR PAUL CALMET

  1894 – 1972

  The letters and dates gleamed on the pebbled flanks of the vase. The man from the mortuary, having turned towards the family, pointed at the pigeonhole: all around it, above, to the side, below, other urns stood out against the black background of other niches, and it was like a strange assembly of round, motionless ghosts that stood guard, silently, within those cold walls. Jean Calmet shuddered. So that is the doctor’s resting place for fifteen years. For all those years the doctor was going to remain motionless under that vault. Motionless? The urn was safely stowed away. But the official climbed up on a stepladder and took hold of the heavy vase with both hands. Now he carried it to Madame Calmet and raised the lid.

  “You see, Madame. We have carefully done what was necessary. Your husband’s ashes will be at your disposal whenever you want them. You can always cancel your contract by means of a simple letter, duly signed at our municipal office.”

  Then he carried the urn from one to the other; some touched it, leant over its gaping orifice and looked inside for a moment. Jean Calmet recoiled in horror when his turn came; the official stared at him curiously and went off to place the urn back in its niche.

  They went out. It was cold. The sun was a red ball skimming thousands of bloodstained tombstones. They met before a bottle of white wine, and tea; the official and the man from the mortuary had followed; the Café du Reposoir was full of people in mourning, and Jean Calmet studied the boisterous scenes being indulged in, body and soul, by the families of the poor wretches who had just been shoved into a hole or roasted at a thousand degrees in
a cast-steel machine. He did not accompany his brothers and sisters to Les Peupliers, where his mother invited them all to come for supper. He left them, full of remorse at having deserted them too soon on such an occasion, and he came back to the city streets with marvellous pleasure.

  It was the hour when bands of boys and girls come down from the heights of Lausanne, where the schools and the faculties of the university are found, to the station from which they are going to take the trains all over the canton. How beautiful they are! thought Jean Calmet, who stopped in the middle of the Rue de Bourg and watched the swarming hordes of tanned kids. Lithe, solid, they hurried towards the station, speaking very loudly. Their splendour took his breath away, but he was pleased by this onslaught: slim, blond, helmeted with watered silk or braided locks like those of the Celts, with blue eyes, the youngsters bounded, chattering, the girls’ breasts moving in their sweatshirts, in their long, purple or orange Indian dresses, and, although it was only the beginning of autumn, many of them were wearing high boots that gave them the bearing of innocently perverse and cruel conquerors. Excitement stirred Jean Calmet. His flesh was struck by the boys’ strength and the sumptuous moistness of the girls. Those boys clad in tatters like guerrillas or like pals of Clint Eastwood, these magnificent bundles of health with their breasts bouncing, dressed in imitation leather or beautiful blue Levi’s, Jean Calmet contemplated them with a tender fervour that cured him of the austerity of Lutry, of the affected politeness of the crematorium. They were far from his stifling family! Their old clothes affronted the doctor’s voracious bonhomie. May they go on, may they continue, may they persevere, may they tear the place down, may they destroy these lousy families and these patriarchs and these tyrants and these big morons that have been paralysing us for centuries. Rage seized him, shook him. Then he began to smile again, because hundreds of other teenagers appeared in groups of three or four, their coats open on long legs, on solid thighs in worn denim, on flat bellies, belted with small iron and silver chains.