The Tyrant

by Jacques Chessex

  He nevertheless took the bar of soap and ran it over the fairy’s neck, his hand touches her muscles, squeezes them, his fingers follow her collarbones, climb back up to the smooth throat.

  Lyre of her shoulders.

  Hiding place of her armpits.

  Circuit of her arms, up to the wrists that are extended, return to the curly armpits, to the collarbones, very gentle road to the nape of the neck, on the way he spreads her hair, he caresses the down under the rain of gold, he touches her vertebrae with his fingernails, Thérèse shakes herself, he returns to the pale, slender neck.

  Solidity of that neck.

  Fragility of the collarbones.

  Resistance of her breasts under his hand. His palm insists, goes around it quickly, his thumb crushes the aureole, goes away, his hand takes the lithe apple again, squeezes, its roundness does not come undone.

  His hand descends, explores the curve of her hips.

  Her belly is lifted, offering itself like a basket of marvels. Navel full of soap suds. Pubis all white: a carnation that shines. Length of her legs, toes that Jean Calmet counts and re-counts like jacks, like the beads of a smooth, warm rosary, my daughter, my little girl, I love you oh my tenderness, oh my child, I’ll finger your pink nails, Tom Thumb, I’ll strew your toes in the forest, thanks to you I’ll find my way…

  Then Jean Calmet dried her in a big red towel.

  Then he combed her long hair that was dripping.

  Then he set the blower on “warm air”, and he was surprised to see her hair, lank and dark from the water, regain its suppleness and its gold as the blower ran.

  Then he put the blower on “cool air” and caressed her head, her neck for a long time, from close up, from further away, going back down over the nape of her neck, touching her shoulders with the cool wind, returning to the temples, the forehead, sculpting her hair, which fled and curved under the jet of air, ascending once more to the top of her skull, my Melusina, my Ophelia, finding again the light-coloured furrow between her shoulders covered with golden down, playing at hunting the golden tuft which fled immediately before the barrel of the blower, making her hips shudder, turning about her breasts which goosefleshed at once, lingering at the wide, brown aureoles, which shrank and were covered with hard little grains. And what did Jean Calmet feel during these games? He saw Thérèse grow excited, and a kind of exasperation seized him at rousing that silken body without his own desire being whetted for a second. First he had seen his father considering him with an ironic look: “You’re trying to arouse yourself, Jean Calmet. You know very well that it’s impossible. They’re for me, those dainty morsels. Leave that girl alone. You know you’ll never be able to have her.” And the doctor laughed on the threshold of the room. Nevertheless, Jean Calmet continued, he persevered, and he was aware of devising more and more exciting caresses as he felt the shame overwhelm him. Impotent, he said to himself, I’m setting that fruit ablaze, and I stay paralysed. The humiliation brought tears to his eyes. The blower pursued an imaginary enemy between the shoulder blades of Thérèse, who bent to experience the whole caress more completely: stooping that way, breathing fast, yielding, taut with desire, she was extraordinarily beautiful, and Jean hated himself with violence. My father wouldn’t let this prey go by. He cursed himself cruelly. He imagined the old man’s erect penis, the knotty stick, the big purple glans lunging towards the adorable fleshy fruit; the penis drew close, greedy, aiming at the pink antrum, entering it, provoking cries and sobs of joy…

  Thérèse was panting softly.

  “Jean, come into my bed, come next to me, Jean,” she said; and pressing herself against him, she crushed her breasts on his chest, she clasped her hands around his neck, she drew his head to her, taking his mouth in her mouth.

  Despondent, Jean Calmet allowed himself to be drawn towards the bed, allowed himself to be laid down on his back like a child. He had his eyes closed, heinous humiliation gripped his throat. Stomach knotted. Nausea. Rage. My father had Liliane sent to him, I surprised them, she was naked in front of the window, he was feeling her breasts… She touched, she gathered, she sucked the doctor’s huge swollen glans. Jean Calmet was choking with pain and sadness. Impotent. In the doorway his father was roaring with laughter.

  “Benjamin! Get ready! Now’s the time to show what you can do!”

  Now Thérèse undressed him with tender precision. Unbuttoned his shirt, removed it, Jean Calmet felt her quick fingers on his skin; then a hand unbuckled his belt, opened his trousers, ran to his hips, came back to his belly, slid itself under his briefs… Heinously, Jean Calmet broke away from the embrace. He got up, pulled his shirt back on, buckled his belt, left the room without looking at the bed, slammed the door. That’s the last time. I’ll never see her again, he thought as he went down the stairs. Never again. Never again. Sobs of shame and despair rose in his throat. He found himself on the street, like a ghost. Night was falling. It was no longer raining; from the yard of the Gymnase the smell of clean earth and wet leaves rose, breaking his heart.

  Jean Calmet walked down the street, went around the cathedral and started across the Bessières bridge. He walked head down, ruminating over his chagrin. Suddenly, lifting his eyes, he saw Bloch, a schoolmate from his secondary school, Jacques Bloch, the pharmacist, who was coming the other way on the same pavement. A few yards away, Bloch smiled at him and greeted him when they passed.

  “Dirty Jew!” said Jean Calmet loud enough to be heard. Sneering, he took a few more steps, then repeated clearly:

  “Dirty Jew!”

  Then he went close to the guard rail of the bridge, and he looked into the abyss. The vertigo and all his baseness gave him a stinking nausea. For a long time he vomited bile on the toes of his shoes.

  Three days before his death – it was Friday 15 June – Jean Calmet woke up very early and remembered the night before with horror. Of course he did not know that he was going to die, and he believed that he was going to make the same movements, suffer the same sights, love them, and do his work like any other day.

  He went down to the Gymnase on foot and stopped at the Café de l’Évêché, where he ordered a cup of coffee. As he was about to pay, he toyed with a five-franc piece on the table, and suddenly he stared at it with exasperated attention. There was something there, at least, that he had not seen before! On the face of the big, solid coin, the man personifying Switzerland had a calm strength and self-assurance that wounded him immediately. He was seen in profile: a great untroubled forehead, strong, regular nose, thin mouth, resolute chin. Then the garment opened on a muscular throat and torso; his head, some curly hair of which could be seen, bore the hood of the peasants of old Switzerland that they are always shown wearing – threshers, hunters, woodsmen just and strong in their faith alone. But the man was clean-shaven, so he eluded the William Tell image and approached our century. And the weight of the metal, the long inscription crowning the character: CONFOEDERATIO HELVETICA; the worn beauty of the man and the regularity of his features gave him serene power that aggravated Jean Calmet’s loneliness.

  He paid in a violent temper and threw the change into his jacket pocket.

  CONFOEDERATIO HELVETICA. He was going to give a Latin lesson. The man’s profile seemed to sneer at him. Why did he repeat over and over that inscription, which was so insolent in its calm simplicity? Of course, he realized with fright, Latin was the paternal language. The sacred language, the language of power and the indestructible. And he, Jean Calmet, would soon be reading Latin, and translating, and annotating, and redistributing Latin. Woodlouse, slug, he would crawl over the eternal monument, he was going to drag his vile legs, his mandibles, his scales, his drool over the hallowed stone! Who are you, Jean Calmet, to dare insult your father’s resting place? Do you think you will ever enter it? It resists all attack! It fights back! The stronghold towers over you! From the height of its age, from the depth of its vigour, it looks at you and sees at its foot your miserable insect’s stature, which does its utmost t
o nibble the skin of its stones!

  Overwhelmed, Jean Calmet listened to the hideous voice thunder in his ears. Master of Latin! – Latin master? Aren’t you ashamed, Jean Calmet, you, the weakling, to dare cling to my authority? You’re dirty. You’re short of breath. And for years you’ve dared to defile my walls. Appropriate fragments of my house. The language of your father, Jean Calmet! You won’t set foot there any more! You don’t have the right, you hear. That language belongs to the strong. It belongs to the powerful men of the earth!

  Jean Calmet had stopped. Groups of students dressed in bright colours were going past him, chatting in very loud tones. He turned around: thirty yards away came François Clerc. Talk to him? Ask him for help? What good would it do? François Clerc had never known terror. He wouldn’t understand. He taught his classes, he created, he was generous and strong. Jean Calmet started walking again, and when he reached the small square near the cathedral, instead of going to the Gymnase, he scurried to the right and sheltered himself for a few moments in the hall of the film library.

  I can’t. I can’t go there, he thought. It’s Virgil this morning, a third-year class. I can’t.

  He came back out, quickly assured himself that nobody had seen him, ran to the Pomme de Pin, and, from the bistro, telephoned the Gymnase to say he was sick that morning, that he would undoubtedly be absent on Saturday as well, that he would be back on Monday without fail. Madame Oisel told him again that the written part of the bac began on Monday at eight o’clock and that, several weeks before, he had been designated invigilator for one of the classes. Jean Calmet promised and hung up.

  He was free. He started to breathe again.

  All of a sudden, he had to assure himself that the doctor’s ashes were still shut up behind the iron gate of the columbarium.

  He’s dead all right, that bastard, he thought. A little heap of ashes. I’m not going to let myself be pushed around by that bag of dust. And, along the sunlit streets, he made his way down to the crematorium.

  The ivy shone on the old walls. Jean Calmet started into the tree-lined lane. Sparrows fluttered over lawns. Blackbirds hopped among the beds of iris and roses. Jean Calmet stopped and looked at them. When he started on his way again, a stream of water showered him as he went by, and more sparrows, quick and odd, were bathing their wings in the glistening water.

  Silhouetted at the end of the path rose the chimney of the crematorium.

  Jean climbed the steps of a staircase, on the right, and the columbarium appeared. He went up to it. The iron gate was closed. At first, completely dazzled, he could only make out vague forms in the shadows. Then he saw it: at the back of its niche stood the great urn of shelly marble. Stopping, gluing his eye to the metal, Jean Calmet could read with certainty:

  DOCTEUR PAUL CALMET

  1894 – 1972

  Good. From that standpoint, there was peace. But what if the voice attacked him again? If the eye searched his heart? The urn was locked behind that iron gate, but it seemed that the doctor was in the air, sly, infallible, and even more mobile in death. His words thundered in Jean Calmet’s skull and resounded in his dreams. His gaze pierced his brain, oppressed his movements, laughed at his most carefully hidden plans. Devoured alive, Jean Calmet. He made a gesture of weariness and turned aside towards the garden. The sun was already white, the heat rose… He crossed the cemetery again and was out on the street once more.

  Then, as he wanted to take a census of his family in a useless, desperate album, he hailed a taxi and went down to the door of Les Peupliers. He did not go in right away. He walked around the house, reached the lake by the orchard, climbed back up along the line of laurel trees. The downstairs windows were open. Above him, to the right, under the roof, the shutters of his room were closed. All the better. The doctor’s eyes had finished piercing walls. Jean Calmet saw himself once more, exhausted, in the shadows, pretending to read, expecting – from one minute to the next – the Ogre’s gaze or voice to pull him from his hiding place and throw him back into the circus. But the shutters of the study were closed too, and he felt a glad satisfaction that gave him new courage. He reached the front door and rang. His mother opened it and beamed.

  “Jean, it’s you, Jean, my baby. Then you’re off today?”

  Jean Calmet did not answer. He kissed his mother, he went into the vestibule and recognized at once the smell of his childhood: the consulting room and the cellar. The disinfectant, the doctors, and those musty smells of winter apples that rose from the basement. He turned around to the old woman and took her in his arms: a little bundle of deformed bones, the pallid face of a clown, the wrinkled brow, pink at the temples, where the carefully drawn locks of hair revealed the frayed skin…

  The dining room was all lit up by the eleven o’clock sun. The long pendulum of the clock beat in the glass-doored case. The table gleamed. On the wall, the earthenware was perfectly shiny, and in front of the window, on the armchair, he could see a piece of embroidery that his mother had dropped at the sound of the doorbell. She’s fighting, thought Jean Calmet. She’s trying to fight back. Loneliness, old age, nothing stops her. She’s bent with age, she can’t sleep any more, but still she runs her house, she works, she eats every day. I’m sure she carries her meal to the big table. She has fought back all her life, in her own way, without saying a word, apparently resigned; and perhaps it’s propriety? Or pride? She doesn’t ask anyone for help… With tenderness he looked at that tidiness, the sewing left unfinished on the armchair, and when the old woman sat down again, he pulled a chair next to her and gently took her hand.

  “You see, I keep busy, but I get tired right away…”

  The veins in her hands stood out, periwinkle blue, the arthritis obliterated her wrinkled skin and the wrist that was all knotted. Now they talked about him; about his work, about the Gymnase. She gave him news of his brothers and sisters. She had received a visit from the pastor. She was only going to services one Sunday a month…

  Jean Calmet looked at photos of his nephews: she had just received them, she tried to find resemblances, bring back memories, spoke of the orchard where nobody had gathered the cherries, she planned – that autumn – to give the crop of apples to the hospital.

  “Since nobody eats them…” she said pensively.

  And lifting her eyes to Jean Calmet:

  “My youngest child,” she said, and her grey eyes, her washed-out eyes, her worn eyes peered anxiously into her son’s eyes.

  Jean Calmet turned his head away and got to his feet. He took a few steps, looked at the clock as if he were seeing it for the first time, studied the wood, the dial, the mechanism, which he could see under the enamel through a rectangular opening.

  He reached the floor above, opened the door of his room, but did not switch on the light. At the back of the room, vaguely illuminated by the light from the hallway, he saw his childhood bed, a table, a little bookcase, where there were still a few of his books from those days. He went past his brothers’ doors, past the room where both his sisters had slept. He opened that door, and a sickish feeling gripped him: what was he looking for among these ghosts? Cries, sobs, laughter rang out on the deserted landing. At the back of his sisters’ room, dolls gleamed weakly. Ill at ease, he switched off the light, the dolls disappeared; he closed the door again without a sound. He went past the study door – “CONSULTATIONS every day from 1 to 7 p.m. except Thursday” – almost entered, retraced his steps, went back to his mother, who had not moved.

  He bent over her and gave her a quick kiss on the forehead. She got to her feet to accompany him. Was she going to suggest that he stay for the meal? She did not dare. She remained silent. She mumbled a goodbye; Jean Calmet wished her well, took her hand again and placed a kiss on it. She walked him to the door:

  “Come back soon!”

  He took the trolley bus and went back up to the Rovéréaz without stopping in a café and without daring to go back out, for fear of being seen by a student or by someone from the secretary
’s office.

  Two days before his death, Jean Calmet still did not know what was going to happen to him. That was Saturday 16 June. He woke up early as usual, but, on that morning, the thought of the duty that he had to perform pushed him to his table right away, and he opened the telephone directory.

  The idea had come to him the night before, between two dreams: he had to write to Bloch. He had to explain Mollendruz to him. Tell him the story. Hide nothing from him about the confusion of the last few weeks; he would understand, he would excuse, so this shame would be washed away; Jean Calmet had not ceased to suffer at the thought of the ignoble words.

  He took an envelope and wrote the address in longhand:Monsieur Jacques Bloch

  Pharmacist

  7, Avenue du Théâtre

  1005 Lausanne

  Then he began his letter.

  My dear Bloch,

  he wrote. But the words did not please him. Dear, after the other night’s insult? Bloch would tear the letter up as soon as he opened it! No, Bloch was good. Bloch knew. He had to trust Bloch. He was an old classmate from school, after all, he would not be able to refuse the clear explanation being given to him.

  Jean Calmet read the letter over and began to write again.

  My dear Bloch,

  You were doubtless astonished the night before last, on the Bessières bridge

  and then he stopped again… Astonished… Actually that was putting it mildly. People had been insulting Bloch for four thousand years. His cousins from Poland had ended up in ovens. In Paris, his grandfather had worn the yellow star. Astonished? It would be burning him again, torturing him, deporting him, annihilating all of his children, all of his race. Speak to him about Mollendruz? What did Mollendruz have to do with it? Jean Calmet was the louse. He was the one who had been unable to withstand a few hours of stupidity. He was the one whose sleep Hitler’s photograph had returned to haunt. He was the one who thought of avenging his humiliation by degrading the first person he passed after running from Thérèse’s place. He was the miserable one who had begun to be violently anti-Semitic because he was enraged by his weakness. Oven-ogre, thought Jean Calmet. Mengele-ogre. Mollendruz bat-ogre. Spineless vampire. Jean Calmet-ogre. And out of revenge. What baseness.