Malediction

by Sally Spedding

  A saline drip with its forcing bag, a black sphygmomanometer looped around itself, and a pewter dish for the collection of blood.

  He curled up, aware of his pulse quickening as his body slackened under the rubber casing, sweating, slippery, but trying not to be born.

  An infant can survive in water as its lungs involuntarily contract, so here I am. Oh, Mother, I have sinned against you. I have broken the Sixth Commandment into a thousand pieces, so what now do I have to lose?

  And as though to absolve him, the dream of St. Dominic’s mother filled him like a rising sea, and he swam untrammelled in her bloated womb as she cried for his birth. Her longing filled his ears with echoes, deep, deep below the disturbance of boats where only the sturgeon lays its spawn and trawls the bed for worms.

  Thus the priest from the Meuse flatlands slept like a baby until a knock on the door at 05.00 hrs brought him to his senses.

  ***

  05.22 hrs. He dialled his home in the Rue Fosse again, this time from the car. But instead of his father’s reassuring rage, there was no reply.

  XLV

  Day 1 of the Ten Days of Repentance. Thou shalt not kill. But I say Deo Gratias for small mercies. My jeans etc. sink without trace, unlike Father Xavier-Marie’s rosary, which, although he tried to reclaim it, for all we know has already reached the Île St. Germain.

  It’s quiet. Almost too quiet, but still dark enough, which is all that matters. Our Father is with me. And my mother. I can feel it but, what the Hell’s this?

  Merde. Father André said no dogs, and true, we’d never seen one here, but this one’s staring hunger and hope, so at least I’m safe.

  His nose is on my leg as I crawl the last metre to the gap of water, his smell curdled by the mist. I’ve only four minutes, but being a dog, he is unaware of such constraints and places himself underneath, obviously valuing his life more than mine. That is the pity of it and, like Tessier he is easy.

  I slide into darkness, without a signal, of course. Colder than the lake at Les Cailles, but the current isn’t too unhelpful. Marcel was right though. Visibility nil, and the water’s thick like isinglass with the oil and scum worse near the ropes. So my fingers take over...

  Twelve seconds till the fucking beam comes round, and I’m counting. Voilà. Two turns left, one to the right. Now the plastic – so discreet in so many ways, but it’s not appropriate now to think apocalyptically. That’s their problem.

  The little womb door closes, like the laundry men said it would, which is comforting in a comfortless world, don’t you think? And where, I ask myself, would we be without friends?

  I can hear air bubbling through the exhaust valve as I drop to 3.75 metres to avoid the boat’s stern. Now, two hundred and thirty strokes upriver to the Pont des Invalides, past the old soldier then on to the steps. My breathing’s good. Pulse normal.

  It’s black under here, blacker than Hell, but I’m not alone. Something brushes my leg. It can’t be the dog, the current’s wrong, but whatever it is, it’s big. It’s human. My size. Jesus help me. I get out quick, thinking of Le Bébé. Mon Dieu. No, it can’t be...

  I kick my rubber skin off into the flow, then I wait for the blood to return to my hands. Christ, that was close. I see the filthy tramp exactly where he should be. Thank God for creatures of habit. I want to tell him what I’ve seen but there is still Task Five to accomplish.

  His grizzled mouth jerks on some dream and suddenly his snores grind to silence as I finish ahead of schedule and steal his clothes. They cling to me, stinking wet, but no matter, it’s all give and take, for with a quiet push, he slips obligingly into his first decent bath.

  ***

  No fishermen, not yet. But another dog who shits where my friend had his bed. I like that. Come to think of it, Colette always said I had a nice sense of humour when I wasn’t laughing at Jews. It does come in useful sometimes I can tell you.

  Colette…? That’s strange. For a moment when I surfaced I thought I saw her, but maybe it’s just the cast of the new light.

  And talking of lights, they’ve just come on in the Bateaux Mouches. The cleaners are in. Then the laundry vans, Jalibert et Fils. Lined up neatly, taking care. Three of them, thank God for that. One must trust them utterly, although I still have a problem with the boy, Marcel.

  The mist lasts as long as I need it. God again on my side, not theirs, and Mother Seine bears all her sons away as traffic builds up along the Cours-la-Reine – stops and starts, the whispers of other lives. A breeze, cold and fresh. I’ve got dog shit on my shoe which The Pigface won’t like. Good. Start as I mean to go on...

  06.36. Notre-Dame’s in the clear now and in just over six hours all my Jews will be snuffling into their sauce nivernois, slipping the caviare down their throats. Then the honey sweetmeats, for a happy and prosperous New Year. Ignoring the heart of my soul, and deaf to the chants of Our Lady’s choir. Reddening the water.

  A girl gives me ten francs. She smells of the kind of flowers brought in for Toussaint. Something I can never forget. There’s concern in her eyes, but I’m afraid it’s misplaced.

  “Jean-Baptiste?”

  I confess I’d not heard the car. I was expecting the Laguna but get the queer instead, in something red. A Xantia. What’s going on? Where’s Plagnol? Merde alors. Cacheux’s white as a wafer. For a moment as I climb in, he watches the girl’s legs, her scarf blown against her mouth as she crosses the bridge. Then he says with his eyes she doesn’t matter. As if I bloody well care.

  “Where’s Plagnol?” That does matter.

  “Sniffing round some pouffiasse near the Place du Canada.”

  I knew it. Crétin. Worse. A man whose olfactory parameters are limited to cunt is a liability. Proven.

  I try not to look Cacheux in the eye when I thank him, and although it hurts to say so, the queer has probably saved my life.

  “All part of the service.”

  I get in.

  The polythene skin covering my seat sighs as I sit down. He’s come well prepared, and because he has the advantage, he takes it. His hand’s on my knee and stays there. He lights a Silk Cut and passes it to me, but as I’m still trembling it falls into my lap.

  “You OK?”

  “So so.”

  “I’m still sore, you know.” He retrieves the cigarette for me, taking longer than necessary. Draws hard then kills it. His left hand rests on his fly. “Would you like to see?”

  I feel vomit rising.

  He drives past the end of the Quai D’Orsay towards the Place de la Résistance, trapped too long in the shadows of stuff from Spain. He bites his lip till it’s blue.

  One eye in the rear view mirror and his deep frown has changed him. For the first time, fear leaches into my stomach. Wrong place, wrong time. Maybe.

  The white Laguna, like a whale, suddenly lies close up, nudging us. Cacheux’s heel’s on the floor but the cobbles are winning.

  Merde.

  The lights are in our favour over the river again, weaving a web into the Place de la Concorde, wide and grey. But I’m too numb to fart.

  “Fuck it.” He slots in a CD. Songs of the Auvergne. Not him at all. Something’s definitely up. He pushes me off the wheel with half a word. A crack of glass before his head butts the window. His blood, the dog’s blood – all the same. Babylon and catastrophe. I pull up, stroke his cheek, which he’ll be sure to misinterpret, then try to exit, but Plagnol’s already there. His pig face peering in, too busy smiling to notice that same black Toyota and its blonde driver as it sweeps past.

  “Use this!” Cacheux’s quick with his shirt at least, but the wound has a life of its own. It’s disconcerting to see the queer’s blood so much deeper than mine, whatever that means. Have I been sold short? I wonder, taking over, making him lie on the back seat. We can’t risk being seen. When I look up, that Celica’s gone and my phone is ringing.

  It’s 6.59. “Melon to the Wine Merchant…”

  I take the message and pretend no problem
s, when in reality we have an emergency. There’s a tunnel south west of the Port de la Tournelle. That’s where we rendezvous afterwards. Meanwhile, I’m beginning to suspect there are too many worm holes in these Elysian Fields.

  Hélas.

  XLVI

  At the moment when the Breton cast his mother’s rosary into the water and watched its refusal to sink, Nelly Augot accompanied by Colette, pulled on the bell rope outside 50, Rue de St. Aubin in the 5ième.

  Five storeys of oxidised stone reared upwards to the yellow sky, its overall austerity unaffected by a row of filigree balconies on the third floor and upper dormer windows jutting from a steep mansard roof. Colette still felt a wreck, despite four hours’ sleep in Cubzénaut station’s new waiting room and a wash under her clothes with hot water.

  “I speak first. OK?” But Nelly looked pale behind her charity-shop glasses and Colette saw her hand tremble as she pulled the bell rope again. “Come on Monsieur Père Supérieur. Get your bloody skates on.”

  After several minutes an old woman wearing a white servant’s cap and matching apron kept the door on its chain. She’d seen enough street dossers and marginaux to know better than to open up. Colette knew exactly what she must be thinking. Their clothes from Beau Monde in Guizac made an esoteric collection – Nelly in leggings and a red sweatshirt appliqued with sheep. She herself sporting a rust-coloured beret and maternity trousers. But nothing had prepared her for the painful memories they brought. Hadn’t she worn exactly the same all those years ago with Bertrand nestled safe inside her? Now the waist was bunched and tied with an elastic band under an equally baggy blouse. But none of this mattered. The first priority was here.

  “In your best Parisian, now. Go on.” she whispered to Nelly. Then realised the woman in front of them was profoundly deaf.

  “Madame, we’ve an appointment with the Abbot of Lagrange Vivray.”

  “You have?” The old housekeeper’s voice, after her lip-reading, was inordinately loud and deep. “But it’s his birthday.”

  “Well then, we can come and give the old con our félicitations.”

  “Nelly!”

  However, the woman was still curious enough to undo the chain, and skewed her head towards them, her hearing aid glistening in her right ear like a huge wax abscess.

  “Our appointment with him is for midday, as we know he goes to St. Nicholas after lunch,” Nelly lied convincingly.

  “Your names?” Two watery eyes looked the visitors up and down.

  Hesitation. “What now?”

  “I’m giving mine,” whispered Colette.

  “OK.”

  The old girl showed no reaction except to wipe an eye with her cuff.

  “I’m Madame Gramme. You’d better come in.”

  “Excellent. Merci.”

  The housekeeper led them into a gloomy hallway tiled in a muted Art Deco design and smelling faintly of pork simmering somewhere in the house’s nether regions. “Watch the steps,” she said, opening another door to sudden darkness in which she took a candle from a holder on the wall and lit it.

  “No way. I’m not going down there.” Colette hung back, fear gripping her legs.

  “Look, we can’t let him wriggle out of this, not after everything you’ve been through.” Nelly tried to take her hand, but Colette pulled away, crying out as the Great Bell from Notre-Dame boomed out midday, reviving all her terrors. “Just remember.”

  “I am.”

  “Come on, then.”

  The stairs ended on stone flags with gaps so wide Nelly almost keeled over in her unfamiliar shoes while their guide was nimble and sure-footed in the wavering light.

  Suddenly she stopped for there was nowhere else to go.

  “Your Lordship!” She knocked at a studded door that was part of the blackness. “Your three o’clock appointment’s here.”

  Colette’s stomach tightened.

  “Entrez.”

  Madame Gramme disappeared, leaving them an expanse of Persian carpet that stretched away to the far wall. Crimson and ultramarine wool glowed in the candlelight. Of the Abbot there was no sign, until Nelly went over to an embroidered screen and stood on tiptoe to see over the top. Colette joined her and gasped.

  “Do come closer so I may see you.” An old man’s voice rang out. But Christian Désespoir was upside down, his blood-filled head cradled by a foam pad. His thin grey pony tail curled on the floor alongside. Colette stared transfixed by the man’s velveteen suit, replica of an eighteenth century hunting costume. By his sinewy agility.

  “Happy Birthday, by the way.” Her voice flinty hard, ignored Nelly’s gesture to leave well alone.

  “That’s most awfully kind,” he replied. “But first may I have the honour of knowing who shares my celebration? And who lied about having made an appointment?”

  Colette calmed herself. She was here for others, not herself.

  “Madame Bataille and Mademoiselle Augot. We do have an urgent matter to discuss, your Lordship. It was the only way.”

  He closed his eyes, then his legs quivered with indecision. Finally, his body curved over, still supported by two large white hands, knuckles rising like sunken rocks until he could stand.

  “Ah. That’s better. Blood to the head, so important as one gets older, don’t you think?”

  The Abbot de Lagrange Vivray rearranged his jacket that had hung off him like the split cupule of a beech nut. His cheeks a startling pink in the cadaverous face, and eyes so deep like Duvivier’s, that Colette could only guess his thoughts. “Eighty-three today, blessed by the Lord’s bountiful Grace.” He crossed himself and went over to a wide window with, it appeared, no view.

  Colette stared at it too.

  An aquarium with no fish. How bloody weird.

  She and Nelly peered at some tunnel’s ancient brick wall and the dark almost black beyond. Something was moving inside it, probably rats.

  “Ugh!” Nelly grimaced.

  “But fascinating, don’t you think, ladies? We can see in, but alas, nothing can see out.” He took the biggest chair for himself and pointed to two smaller ones, each with a drawer under the seat. “Where others favour a vista from a normal window, I have pure history.”

  “History?” Nelly ventured.

  “Indeed. This unique tunnel leads to the Seine. S..e..i..n..e. Fluctuet nec mergitur. Which reminds me,” he poured out three glasses of Château La Voile and raised his own to a sinister smile. “Your very good health.”

  The Graves wine looked too much like blood and Colette demurred, seeing her mission evaporate.

  “In 1794 this very section was stuffed with the corpses of our noble French,” he continued. “But mark my words, it’ll come again. This time, from over there.” He pointed north towards The Marais over the Île de St. Louis. Three kilometres as the crow flies to the Unknown Jewish Martyr in the Avenue Geoffroy l’Asnier. So you see, I like to have an outlook on this singular piece of the world. To witness new history being made.”

  Colette and Nelly exchanged glances, and for something to do, Nelly put the wineglass to her lips and drank.

  “I think my papa hid somewhere down here during the riots in May ’68.” She said suddenly, and Colette reached over to take her hand. But already the Abbot’s skin had crinkled into fragile folds across his forehead.

  “A child of Marx, oui?”

  “You could say that. He was proud of what the protesters did. Down with the status quo, long live the revolution.”

  Colette squeezed Nelly’s arm. This wasn’t the place or the time, and her time was running out. She took a deep breath.

  “Your Lordship. Since August 24th we’ve just endured the most degrading and terrifying time of our lives with the Pauvres Soeurs down in Libourne. Look what they’ve done to us. And we’re not the only ones. But I had special treatment.” She showed him her bare eyelids, then whipped off her beret to reveal her shorn head. He looked at her, unblinking. “Tell me why, and what will you do to punish them?”


  His expression changed again. Now reptilian and dangerous, all the blood gone from his face. “You’ve made an absurd mistake, Madame Bataille. All religious orders have certain traditions. All for good reasons.”

  Nelly’s snigger made him look her way.

  “Are you calling me a liar?” Colette began to shake.

  “I am saying you are deluded, and to me, an untutored eye, your blemishes seem – how shall I put it – like self-mutilation.”

  Their anger was drowned by a telephone’s sudden ring and the birthing stutter of a fax. Both women looked round for the source, but beyond the candlelight, the room was secretively obscure. Then the Abbot opened the double doors of a large Louis XVI cabinet on to an array of the latest technology. PC, modems, sound boxes, the works.

  Website, Internet. He’s got the whole world in his wicked hands...

  “So there is electricity,” whispered Colette.

  “Excuse me a moment,” he called. “Help yourselves to more refreshment, do.”

  Désespoir studied the faxed letter then twisted it into a taper for the candle flame to devour.

  Well, well. Our Georges is nothing if not thorough, though he does tend to forget I am now in my eighty-fourth year. He really should climb off my back.

  He shut the cabinet and carried the same candle over to Colette.

  “So why exactly are you both here, pestering an old man. What do you expect me to do?”

  He held it too close; the flame breathed hot on her cheek. She had nothing to lose, and like Jéhanne d’Arc, the vision of her purpose sustained her.

  “I’ve seen proof that you own The Pauvres Soeurs des Souffrances and you manage everything there. I was Number 45, unfortunately. Is that significant to you?” She raised her voice. “Well, it was to them. They had to have that magic total, of course they didn’t bank on poor sweet Chloë Doumiez’s state of mind.”

  “She died,” Nelly said simply.

  “But she wasn’t meant to. They didn’t take into account her despair. She was just another innocent, another sucker to keep the whole sick show going, whatever is going on down there. And I was treated worse than a dog. At least dogs aren’t given truth drugs. Look!” She showed the Abbot the purple souvenirs on her inner arm, but he was studying the label on the wine bottle. “I used to work for Medex, and the Natolyn they shoved in me was their latest product. I should know. So I’ve come to inform you,” she looked over at Nelly who’d slumped as though dozing in the chair, “that when I get home I’ll be taking legal advice. Abduction is dangerous too, Seigneur.”