Malediction

by Sally Spedding

  Swastikas? Here of all places? I’m going mad...

  She moved away from the strange testimonies, along the same cold stone, the same crumbling mortar, and yet... Suddenly, something came away, loose and heavy in her hand.

  Deo gratias!

  This stone was generally smoother, obviously shaped to fit that particular place. She laid it down as though it was the Holy Grail and carefully removed another, and a third, until a definite cavity opened up.

  The smell grew more potent with each withdrawal. All too easy – someone had been there before, but not quite far enough into the massive thickness. Colette imagined tantalising daylight, a quick slither through to the grounds and freedom to hold her son in her arms. She cried out in frustration and for a moment pulled back. The whole thing was useless and would only take up the last of her precious energy. Besides, she could forget grass and sky, what lay beyond was probably more of the same, all underground.

  The thunder made her cling to the wall waiting for the aftermath to pass. Better to try and think things through, she thought, try and plan a strategy while she could, before that needle hit her arm again.

  She would apologise. Confess to having lied. That all the priests were the most Holy of men concerned only for God’s kingdom on earth. That might get some of her things back – her rosary, her own clothes, her bag with the photograph of her son. And now, what was he trying to tell her?

  Talk to me, for Jesus’ sake! Tell me where you are!

  The hole in the wall gradually grew in size. Like a painstaking surgical procedure, each obstacle was eased away, but still it led nowhere. A mocking hollow womb of dreams that stank in her face. The same as the killing tunnel at Drancy, just yards from a different life, a better death.

  She’d lost track of time. After all, the darkness was constant, and with no watch or other means of marking it, seconds, minutes and hours meant nothing. The only thing that mattered was to get out. Her feet were sodden in the silt that slopped around her ankles. Two lead weights, but protection at least against rats. She listened. Water from somewhere. Both her hands felt around the opening and shuddered as a trickle of ice covered her fingers.

  “Oh, Holy Mother.”

  Colette began to cram the discarded stones back into the space, but the pressure from deep behind, forced them back to the edge to fall on her shoes. She screamed to the God of false hope as the flow increased, bringing lumps of mortar and stone flints stinging against her skin. It had all been too easy, too convenient. Obviously whoever was imprisoned there was meant to find this temptation, and she’d been a fool.

  She struggled over to her robes, now almost too heavy to lift, but she managed to drag them to the door and pile them up. She stood on top, gaining some height, but as the flood swilled past the second layer of stones, they subsided, taking her down into the rising current.

  “Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus nunc et in hora mortis nostrae...”

  Even her words were drowned as she hammered in vain on the door, growing more numb and feeble with every breath. Death was now gently at her knees. The rush of water from the wall was more subtle, quietly enveloping. Her clothes splayed out and lifted away leaving her anchored to the floor. Whatever else, she had to lose the boots, but they were laced up too tight for a quick pull to release them. She’d lose her balance if she bent down, and worse, her face would be under water. Had they known that to drown was her greatest fear? Had she given that one away as well?

  So the comforting Sister Agnès, the sublime Marie-Ange and the Percheron peasant had planned a silent end. A mute immersion.

  Not bloody likely!

  She inhaled till her lungs could take no more and yelled while her whole freezing body shook with rage. They’d picked the wrong one this time. She, Sister Barbara, was going to get out, whatever it took. Another breath, another barrage against the lock, as sweet Bertrand hovered in her mind, willing her on, making her remember the smile that Agnès had shared with the hostel receptionist. He’d been there alright. He was telling her...

  Suddenly the water was different. Thickened with brown solids that nudged her before bobbing away leaving a distinctly sulphurous smell. This was a sewer, and each centimetre gained by the filth was a centimetre frozen. Both breasts now unknown save for their stinging nipples, her arms useless as the foul liquid reached her throat.

  With the door next to her back, she stood on tiptoe, but that too was pointless, for her mouth was covered. Her last prayer silent. She held her nose, eyes tight like the triplets, her head just some frozen thing. Colette angled her body into the current and lay floating, spluttering and spewing from wherever she could. Her hands worked like fins to keep herself from sinking as suddenly her eyes opened to a light from above, whose beam fell on her belly.

  Someone was up there watching, but she was too weak to cry out and just before unconsciousness, a loud gargle issued from the wall behind – the water sucking her towards the opening.

  To Hell and back – an obscene birth in reverse. Frantically her arms flayed on either side to move her free of the suction. She took in more filth and dribbled it out, but at least she was clear, feeling the icy flow begin to drain away. She tried to stand but toppled and, again, gasped for breath in the fetid residue. With the beam still following her every move, she managed to reach her robes.

  She hadn’t confessed any more, nor given these Devil’s daughters the satisfaction of submission. It was as though her son had reached out to her, willing her to live, and she had. She had survived.

  ***

  “Well now, did our dear Novitiate relish her baptism?”

  Colette recognised the Sister Superior’s mocking tone that seemed to emanate from way beyond the ceiling. She also heard the tinny echo of her little bell. “But we are none the wiser, are we not?”

  “I told you the truth and that’s all you’re getting!” Colette’s teeth jarred against each other. She could barely speak.

  “I’m afraid Sister Barbara that…” But her words were completely buried by new thunder. Thunder that tore from the Heavens as though to demolish the place. Colette’s heart raced in her chest as she moved to the door, and in shivering delirium she grabbed the slat where normally a handle would have been.

  It opened inwards almost knocking her over. One of the triplets in matching red Wellingtons carried a cloak, none too clean and smelling of stables.

  “Here, take this!” She thrust it at Colette who instantly covered her nakedness. “There’s a note in the pocket,” she hissed, her simple dough face puckered into a frown. Suddenly the beam was on her this time, but only Colette could see it.

  “Victorine. What are you doing?” The Sister Superior’s voice swelled into the terrible calm but the girl was single-mindedly finishing her errand.

  “Don’t worry, they won’t hurt me,” she said. “I’m too important to them. I’ll come again tomorrow.” She then turned and ran up the steps.

  “Tomorrow? Here? Dear God, I can’t last another day…” Colette’s thawing stomach lurched on nothing and when she tried to walk her feet gave way – nerves and tissue welded to ice.

  “You will both be punished for this,” came the Sister Superior’s voice again as the light probed the cell then lingered on Colette’s bare head. “That is my promise.”

  She had to hide, so, having subsided on to the wet-shit floor, she wriggled to the nearest corner, just like Bertrand used to do before he was able to stand. That way the beam couldn’t quite reach her as she burrowed for the letter in the deep slit pocket. Her fingers were so cold they almost missed it.

  At that moment it was the most precious thing and, as she extracted it, the permutations of possible senders reeled through her mind. Chloë? Nelly? But best of all, Bertrand? In the darkness she felt over each Braille dot that made up the words, her excitement fading as each fearsome word was complete: Chloë is dead. I will help you escape.

  “Holy Mary, Mother of God.” Colette stuffed it i
n her mouth then swallowed it. She crossed herself and murmured a little prayer for the girl and her dead baby, aware that she was barely alive herself. Her toes still rigid, her body convulsed by new spasms.

  That same chilling sneer reached her ears. “She’s not paying you any attention, I can tell you.”

  “Somebody will be. You’ll see.”

  The light cut out. Colette could hear the run of rat-like feet overhead. Then nothing, just the suck of waste saturating the earth floor. Colette covered her mouth. Already she was beginning to itch and her stomach heaved in fits and starts. She had to try and get something to Nelly’s mama, or even to Medex and she prayed that brave Victorine would keep her promise.

  ***

  She noticed other sounds had replaced the storm as it rolled eastwards over the Dordogne. Faint shouts and activity in the Chapel as the organ released a fugue into the night. Something was wrong, she could tell. Too much movement, too much clamour. She felt a cold draught on her scalp, then shrieks and cries as someone stumbled into her space. The door crashed shut and was fiercely locked.

  The figure stood sobbing, and Colette could just make out the shorter veil, the same blood colour of her dress.

  “Victorine?”

  The girl fell into her arms, trying to catch her breath, and with a final effort managed to speak.

  “The Percheron’s been hit by lightning, and they’re saying because you’re Sister Barbara, you could have saved her.”

  Colette felt a new tide of madness envelope her that was more terrifying than anything else. Unstoppable, insatiable. Now she really knew what she was up against.

  “Victorine, we’ve got to get out.” But the eighteen-year-old tucked herself further into Colette’s cloak, moaning her sisters’ names.

  “We’ll try and help them as well, but you’ve got to listen. If you’re let out of here before me, I want you to memorise an address, OK? Make sure every word’s gone in, like so.” She tapped her own head. “Micheline Augot, Flat 41, 85, Avenue Renaud, St. Denis, and don’t worry about a post code. You got that? Right, now say it back.”

  Victorine obliged, less falteringly each time, so that at midnight on the second stroke when Sister Agnès silently reclaimed her, she was word perfect.

  XXXII

  Sunday August 24th

  The storms which had inundated the eastern areas had reached as far as Le Mans, but left the Paris basin unrefreshed and the fumes in the Capital undiluted.

  Nelly Augot’s eyes couldn’t take the contacts any more so she dropped them down the lavatory and watched as her disguise sank slowly into the stained bowl. Her chest was sore from coughing and she couldn’t afford anything for it. Not the best shape to be in for a knight in shining armour, she thought, returning to her cramped room that overlooked the tiny Cimitière Raphaël. She slammed the window shut and the afternoon sun blazed its exclusion through the smeared glass.

  No-one had answered at the Doumiez’s flat in Évry. In fact, it had been boarded up and the letterbox jammed open with hypermarket offers that she’d dumped in a bin. She’d tried neighbours to no avail and even stopped people in the Avenue Clemenceau below. What else could she do? It could be tricky calling the police. Maybe there were secrets that weren’t for her to pry into.

  She tipped out the contents of her purse on to the table, scratched with the hearts and arrows of other lovers. She should be so lucky. Apart from a Pole outside the Musée des Lunettes, she’d managed to pull three, all faceless and anonymous.

  Whatever it took. For 200 francs a go she’d let them suck and fumble, but the old boy in the Boulevard St. Hippolyte never made it. He’d been due for prostate tests, so he said, and his dick had been as soft as a wind funnel in a breeze. So she’d let him have a go at her tits instead. The other two, and she winced at the memory, had been quick and jerky and none too clever with their hands. The black from Toulon had come the moment he touched her, and made her bleed. The other, who’d introduced himself as a Charentais, had said he was quite happy with his wife of ten years but could never resist “une poule.” Especially one with nice sturdy legs and a meaty derrière.

  Sometimes she still felt the smell of it on her. The same that hung about her mama. She felt sick with disgust that she did those things, and especially as she’d have to phone to see if Colette had been in touch.

  She coughed again, hot and ill as she counted out 600 francs and what was left of her dole. It had taken three days working the strip between the Avenues Georges Mandel and Raymond Pointcaré. Three long boiling days when, if she’d been a blonde on stilts, she’d have made both their Bordeaux fares in as many hours.

  Nelly saw the stubs of graves above the undergrowth outside, and although she had no particular God to pray to, nevertheless put her hands together and prayed that Colette, who was the mother she’d always longed for, was alright and holding on. Blast the Doumiez’s! Why couldn’t they have just been there for their kid?

  She couldn’t afford to go again; besides, she couldn’t be responsible for the whole bloody world. Nelly quickly primped her hair into some kind of order and straightened her bedspread that looked even more dingy grey in the sunlight. “Roger,” the soft toy dog she’d rescued from a skip in the Rue Calenta perched on guard on the bolster. Something at least to cuddle without having to have another dick between her legs...

  ***

  The hostel was quiet, with most of its occupants out either hustling or shoplifting. Only a few had part-time work, but she hadn’t met one who professed to see Christ as their kindred spirit. not even after the Pope’s Mass when the press had proclaimed a new surge towards the Catholic Church.

  “Doesn’t buy you bread, does it?” Max Bellino, the stray from Clermont Ferrand in the next room had laughed, but like her and all the others, had sported a cheap crucifix just to get a bed. He’d just joined Les Flammes. Something to do, and at least it entitled him to soup and a roll every day, even though the R.G.P.P. would probably be starting a nice fat file on him.

  She saw the week’s dust and leavings drifted against the stairs, and the resin Jesus in a slow self-absorbed dance from his wire. For some reason as she passed beneath him, she crossed herself. For Colette and Chloë and a ticket for the Paris-Montparnasse TGV at 6.55 in the morning.

  Claude Lefêbvre ignored her as usual. The sleek groomed head stayed posed in front of her p.c. Nelly considered using the payphone, but she wasn’t the only one who reckoned the cool bitch listened in and passed things on.

  “Hi,” Nelly said, deliberately before stepping out again into the hot, thick air. “Mama?” She repeated while the phone in the St. Denis apartment was still ringing. “Mama?”

  Perhaps she’s on the job. Perhaps...

  “Nelly? That you?”

  Micheline Augot seemed more drugged than drowsy, her words slurred together in a way that frightened her caller.

  “You sound bad,” said Nelly, but couldn’t mention her own cough, or the rough loss of her virginity behind the Rue Didier. Give, give, give... All she was used to. There was a pause as though her mother was hauling herself out of bed.

  “Five o’clock,” she muttered. “Jesus Christ…”

  “Mama, have you had a letter or anything from someone called Colette?” Nelly thought she was going to faint in the choking cubicle.

  “A letter? Dear God...” Then came the noise of something falling off the bedside table.

  “Never mind that, mama, I need to know. C..O..L..E..T..T..E..” And as she spelled out each letter, her last image of the poor woman from Lanvière came to mind. “She’s in big trouble.”

  “You watch what you get into my girl. She’s not a dyke, is she?”

  “Stop it!”

  “Well let me think...”

  Nelly pressed her ear against the greasy handset and heard her mama shuffling papers.

  “I did get something yesterday afternoon.”

  “Yesterday afternoon. Oh, mama.”

  “I have other thi
ngs to do, you know.”

  “Quickly. Read it. Now.”

  Outside the booth, a woman in a dark suit impatiently checked her watch.

  “Wait a minute...”

  That minute was the closest thing to eternity. The heat boiling her bones, seizing up her lungs. Micheline Augot coughed over the words when they finally came...

  “Chloë dead. Ask hostel about Bertrand Bataille again. My son. God bless. Colette.” She paused. “Lord knows what that’s all about...” Her mama wittered on as the waiting woman stood closer and knocked on the glass.

  “Piss off,” shouted Nelly.

  “Is that meant for me, my girl?” Micheline snapped, but Nelly had nothing else to say. She put the phone down, slid the door open and stuck her tongue out at the Parisian who called her a tart.

  “Exactly. Got it in one.” And, in that moment, was proud of what she’d done, and knew what she had to do next.

  She slung her bag round her neck and, for the first time since meeting her friend Colette, plucked up the courage to call in at the Gendarmerie near the Place de Mexico.

  XXXIII

  Monday August 25th

  The two churchmen in Room 108 of the Hôpital Malâtre stood dark against the daylight whitened blind. René Martin, Deacon of Les Bourreux, wore his new biretta low over his eyes like a hooded snake. He took both Duvivier’s hands and held them as he spoke.

  “Thank you, Father André for your kind intercessions on behalf of our dear departed. I know God in his great goodness will reward you.” He looked drained, not just from his own intensive prayers but the fact that Pereire’s death would now plunge him into the nest of vipers vying for the office.

  “I could do nothing less.” Duvivier disengaged himself and as he reclaimed the bunch of lilies he’d bought for the bedside, the stamens brushed his chin, leaving indelible sienna smears. He left the over-large Get Well card showing the Gelderland crucifixion where it was, glowing indecently with more life than the body next to it. Bones that seemed mountainous under the sheet. That mischievous mouth closed tight.