The Inferno

by Henri Barbusse

  It was a duel to the end. The two men at the edge of the grave glared at each other like enemies.

  “You must believe.”

  “I do not believe.”

  “You must.”

  “You would make truth different from what it is by threats.”

  “Yes.” He stressed the clear, elementary command. “Whether you are convinced or not, believe. Evidence does not count. The one important thing is faith. God does not deign to convince the incredulous. These are no longer the days of miracles. The only miracle is in our hearts, and it is faith. Believe!” He hurled the same word ceaselessly, like stones.

  “My son,” he continued, more solemnly, standing up, with his large fat hand uplifted, “I exact of you an act of faith.”

  “Get out!” said the man, with hatred.

  But the priest did not stir. Goaded by the urgence of the case, impelled by the necessity of saving this soul in spite of itself, he became implacable.

  “You are going to die,” he said, “you are going to die. You have only a few more minutes to live. Submit.”

  “No,” said the man.

  The black-robed priest caught hold of both his hands.

  “Submit. No discussion. You are losing precious time. All your reasoning is of no account. We are alone, you and I before God.”

  He shook his head with the low bulging forehead, the prominent fleshy nose, wide moist nostrils dark with snuff, thin yellow lips like twine tight across two projecting teeth that showed by themselves in the darkness. There were lines on his forehead and between his eyebrows and around his mouth. His cheeks and chin were covered with a grey layer.

  “I represent God,” he said. “You are in my presence as if you were in the presence of God. Simply say 'I believe,' and I will absolve you. 'I believe,' that is all. The rest makes no difference to me.”

  He bent lower and lower, almost gluing his face to that of the dying man, trying to plant his absolution like a blow.

  “Simply say with me, 'Our Father, who art in heaven.' I do not ask you to do anything else.”

  The sick man's face contracted.

  “No – no!”

  Suddenly the priest rose with a triumphant air.

  “At last! You have said it.”

  “No.”

  “Ah!” muttered the priest between his teeth.

  He twisted the man's hands in his. You felt he would have put his arms around him to stifle him, assassinate him if his death rattle would have brought a confession – so possessed was he with the desire to persuade him, to snatch from him the words he had come to seek on his lips.

  He let the withered hands go, paced the room like a wild beast, then came back and stationed himself in front of the bed again.

  “Remember – you are going to die,” he stammered to the miserable man. “You will soon be in the earth. Say, 'Our Father,' just these two words, nothing else.”

  He hung over him with his eyes on his mouth, his dark, crouching figure like a demon lying in wait for a soul, like the whole Church over dying humanity.

  “Say it! Say it! Say it!”

  The sick man tried to wrest himself free. There was a rattle of fury in his throat. With the remnant of his voice, in a low tone, he gasped:

  “No!”

  “Scoundrel!” cried the priest.

  And he struck him in the face. After that neither man made a move for a while. Then the priest went at it again.

  “At least you will die holding a crucifix,” he snarled.

  He drew a crucifix from his pocket, and put it down hard on his breast.

  The other man shook himself in a dull horror, as if religion were contagious, and threw the crucifix on the floor.

  The priest stooped, mumbling insults. “Carrion, you want to die like a dog, but I am here!” He picked up the crucifix, and with a gleam in his eyes, sure of crushing him, waited for his final chance.

  The dying man panted, completely at the end of his strength. The priest, seeing him in his power, laid the crucifix on his breast again. This time the other man let it stay there, unable to do anything but look at it with eyes of hatred. But his eyes did not make it fall.

  ***

  When the black man had gone out into the night, and the patient little by little recovered from the struggle and felt free once more, it occurred to me that the priest in his violence and coarseness was horribly right. A bad priest? No, a good priest, who spoke strictly according to his conscience and belief, and tried to apply his religion simply, such as it was, without hypocritical concessions. Ignorant, clumsy, gross – yes, but honest and logical even in his fearful attempt. In the half-hour that I had listened to him, he had tried by all the means that religion uses and recommends to follow his calling of making converts and giving absolution. He had said everything that a priest cannot help saying. Every dogma had come out clearly and definitely from the mouth of this rough, common hewer of wood and drawer of water for his religion. If the sick man was right, so was the priest.

  ***

  What was that thing near the bed, that thing which loomed so high and did not stir and had not been there a moment before? It stood between me and the leaping flame of the candle placed near the sick man.

  I accidentally made a little noise in leaning against the wall, and very slowly the thing turned a face toward me with a frightened look on it that frightened me.

  I knew that head. Was it not the landlord himself, a man with peculiar ways, whom we seldom saw?

  He had been walking up and down the hall, waiting for the sick man to be left alone. And now he was standing beside him as he lay in bed either asleep or helpless from weakness.

  He stretched his hand out toward a bag. In doing so, he kept his eyes on the dying man, so that his hand missed the bag twice.

  There was a creaking on the floor above, and both the man and I trembled. A door slammed. He rose as if to keep back an exclamation.

  He opened the bag slowly, and I, no longer myself, I was afraid that he would not have time.

  He drew a package out of the bag. It made a slight sound. When he saw the roll of banknotes in his hand, I observed the extraordinary gleam on his face. All the sentiments of love were there, adoration, mysticism, and also brutal love, a sort of supernatural ecstasy and the gross satisfaction that was already tasting immediate joys. Yes, all the loves impressed themselves for a moment on the profound humanity of this thief's face.

  Some one was waiting for him behind the half-open door. I saw an arm beckoning to him.

  He went out on tiptoe, first slowly, then quickly.

  I am an honest man, and yet I held my breath along with him. I understood him. There is no use finding excuses for myself. With a horror and a joy akin to his, I was an accomplice in his robbery.

  All thefts are induced by passion, even that one, which was cowardly and vulgar. Oh, his look of inextinguishable love for the treasure suddenly snatched up. All offences, all crimes are outrages accomplished in the image of the immense desire for theft, which is the very essence and form of our naked soul.

  Does that mean that we must absolve criminals, and that punishment is an injustice? No, we must protect ourselves. Since society rests upon honesty, we must punish criminals to reduce them to impotence, and above all to strike them with terror, and halt others on the threshold of evil deeds. But once the crime is established, we must not look for excuses for it. We run the danger then of always finding excuses. We must condemn it in advance, by virtue of a cold principle. Justice should be as cold as steel.

  But justice is not a virtue, as its name seems to indicate. It is an organisation the virtue of which is to be feelingless. It does not aim at expiation. Its function is to establish warning examples, to make of the criminal a thing to frighten off others.

  Nobody, nothing has the right to exact expiation. Besides, no one can exact it. Vengeance is too remote from the act and falls, so to speak, upon another person. Expiation, then, is a word that has no application in
the world.

  CHAPTER XIII

  He was very, very weak and lay absolutely still and silent, chained fast by the baleful weight of his flesh. Death had already put an end to even his faintest quiverings.

  His wonderful companion sat exactly where his fixed eyes fell on her, at the foot of the bed. She held her arms resting on the base board of the bed with her beautiful hands drooping. Her profile sloped downward slightly, that fine design, that delicate etching of eternal sweetness upon the gentle background of the evening. Under the dainty arch of her eyebrows her large eyes swam clear and pure, miniature skies. The exquisite skin of her cheeks and forehead gleamed faintly, and her luxuriant hair, which I had seen flowing, gracefully encircled her brow, where her thoughts dwelt invisible as God.

  She was alone with the man who lay there as if already in his grave – she who had wished to cling to him by a thrill and to be his chaste widow when he died. He and I saw nothing on earth except her face. And in truth, there was nothing else to be seen in the deep shadows of the evening.

  A voice came from the bed. I scarcely recognised it.

  “I haven't said everything yet that I want to say,” said the voice.

  Anna bent over the bed as if it were the edge of a coffin to catch the words that were to issue for the last time, no doubt, from the motionless and almost formless body.

  “Shall I have the time? Shall I?”

  It was difficult to catch the whisper, which almost stuck in his throat. Then his voice accustomed itself to existence again and became distinct.

  “I should like to make a confession to you, Anna. I do not want this thing to die with me. I am sorry to let this memory be snuffed out. I am sorry for it. I hope it will never die.

  “I loved once before I loved you.

  “Yes, I loved the girl. The image I have left of her is a sad, gentle one. I should like to snatch it from death. I am giving it to you because you happen to be here.”

  He gathered himself together to have a clear vision of the woman of whom he was speaking.

  “She was fair-haired and fair-skinned,” he said.

  “You needn't be jealous, Anna. (People are jealous sometimes even when they are not in love.) It was a few years after you were born. You were a little child then, and nobody turned to look at you on the streets except the mothers.

  “We were engaged in the ancestral park of her parents. She had bright curls tied with ribbons. I pranced on horseback for her. She smiled for me.

  “I was young and strong then, full of hope and full of the beginning of things. I thought I was going to conquer the world, and even had the choice of the means to conquer it. Alas, all I did was to cross hastily over its surface. She was younger than I, a bud so recently, blown, that one day, I remember, I saw her doll lying on the bench that we were sitting on. We used to say to each other, 'We shall come back to this park when we are old, shall we not?' We loved each other – you understand – I have no time to tell you, but you understand, Anna, that these few relics of memory that I give you at random are beautiful, incredibly beautiful.

  “She died the very day in spring when the date of our wedding was set. We were both taken sick with a disease that was epidemic that year in our country, and she did not have the strength to escape the monster. That was twenty-five years ago. Twenty-five years, Anna, between her death and mine.

  “And now here is the most precious secret, her name.”

  He whispered it. I did not catch it.

  “Say it over again, Anna.”

  She repeated it, vague syllables which I caught without being able to unite them into a word.

  “I confide the name to you because you are here. If you were not here, I should tell it to anyone, no matter whom, provided that would save it.”

  He added in an even, measured voice, to make it hold out until the end:

  “I have something else to confess, a wrong and a misfortune.”

  “Didn't you confess it to the priest?” she asked in surprise.

  “I hardly told him anything,” was all he replied.

  And he resumed, speaking calmly, with his full voice:

  “I wrote poems during our engagement, poems about ourselves. The manuscript was named after her. We read the poems together, and we both liked and admired them. 'Beautiful, beautiful!' she would say, clapping her hands, whenever I showed her a new poem. And when we were together, the manuscript was always with us – the most beautiful book that had ever been written, we thought. She did not want the poems to be published and get away from us. One day in the garden she told me what she wanted. 'Never! Never!' she said over and over again, like an obstinate, rebellious child, tossing her dainty head with its dancing hair.”

  The man's voice became at once surer and more tremulous, as he filled in and enlivened certain details in the old story.

  “Another time, in the conservatory, when it had been raining monotonously since morning, she asked, 'Philip' – she used to pronounce my name just the way you do.”

  He paused, himself surprised by the primitive simplicity of what he had just expressed.

  “'Do you know,' she asked, 'the story of the English painter Rossetti?' and she told me the episode, which had so vividly impressed her, how Rossetti had promised the lady he loved to let her keep forever the manuscript of the book he had written for her, and if she died, to lay it beside her in her coffin. She died, and he actually carried out his promise and buried the manuscript with her. But later, bitten by the love of glory, he violated his promise and the tomb. 'You will let me have your book if I die before you, and will not take it back, will you, Philip?' And I promised laughingly, and she laughed too.

  “I recovered from my illness slowly. When I was strong enough, they told me that she had died. When I was able to go out, they took me to the tomb, the vast family sepulchre which somewhere hid her new little coffin.

  “There's no use my telling you how miserable I was and how I grieved for her. Everything reminded me of her. I was full of her, and yet she was no more! As I recovered from the illness, during which my memory had faded, each detail brought me a recollection. My grief was a fearful reawakening of my love. The sight of the manuscript brought my promise back to me. I put it in a box without reading it again, although I had forgotten it, things having been blotted out of my mind during my convalescence. I had the slab removed and the coffin opened, and a servant put the book in her hands.

  “I lived. I worked. I tried to write a book. I wrote dramas and poems. But nothing satisfied me, and gradually I came to want our book back.

  “I knew it was beautiful and sincere and vibrant with the two hearts that had given themselves to each other. Then, like a coward, three years afterward, I tried to re-write it – to show it to the world. Anna, you must have pity on us all! But I must say it was not only the desire for glory and praise, as in the case of the English artist, which impelled me to close my ears to the sweet, gentle voice out of the past, so strong in its powerlessness, 'You will not take it back from me, will you, Philip?' It was not only for the sake of showing off in a book of great beauty. It was also to refresh my memory, for all our love was in that book.

  “I did not succeed in reconstructing the poems. The weakening of my faculties soon after they were written, the three years afterward during which I made a devout effort not to revive the poems even in thought, since they were not to keep on living – all this had actually wiped the book out of my mind. It was with difficulty that I recalled – and then only by chance – the mere titles of some of the poems, or a few of the verses. Of some parts, all I retained was just a confused echo. I needed the manuscript itself, which was in the tomb.

  “One night, I felt myself going there.

  “I felt myself going there after periods of hesitation and inward struggles which it is useless to tell you about because the struggles themselves were useless. I thought of the other man, of the Englishman, of my brother in misery and crime as I walked along the length of the cem
etery wall while the wind froze my legs. I kept saying to myself it was not the same thing, and this insane assurance was enough to make me keep on.

  “I asked myself if I should take a light. With a light it would be quick. I should see the box at once and should not have to touch anything else – but then I should see everything! I preferred to grope in the dark. I had rubbed a handkerchief sprinkled with perfume over my face, and I shall never forget the deception of this odour. For an instant, in the stupefaction of my terror, I did not recognise the first thing I touched – her necklace – I saw it again on her living body. The box! The corpse gave it to me with a squashing sound. Something grazed me faintly.

  “I had meant to tell you only a few things, Anna. I thought I should not have time to tell you how everything happened. But it is better so, better for me that you should know all. Life, which has been so cruel to me, is kind at this moment when you are listening, you who will live. And my desire to express what I felt, to revive the past, which made of me a being accursed during the days I am telling you about, is a benefit this evening which passes from me to you, and from you to me.”

  The young woman was bending toward him attentively. She was motionless and silent. What could she have said, what could she have done, that would have been sweeter than her silent attention?

  “The rest of the night I read the stolen manuscript. Was it not the only way to forget her death and think of her life?

  “I soon saw that the poems were not what I had thought them to be.

  “They game me a growing impression of being confused and much too lengthy. The book so long adored was no better than what I had done afterwards. I recalled, step by step, the background, the occasion, the vanished gesture that had inspired these verses, and in spite of their resurrection, I found them undeniably commonplace and extravagant.

  “An icy despair gripped me, as I bent my head over these remains of song. Their sojourn in the tomb seemed to have deformed and crushed the life out of my verses. They were as miserable as the wasted hand from which I had taken them. They had been so sweet! 'Beautiful, beautiful!' the happy little voice had cried so many times while she clasped her hands in admiration.