Malediction

by Sally Spedding

  However, as though in defiance, his pulse thudded even harder against the pillow, young and strong. Seventy years too many away from a natural end.

  Leila... Leila...

  Mathieu smelt his hands that she’d held in the dark, the aftermath, while the hotel’s cremation had added a million evil stars to the watching sky, but there was nothing left of her. Just his own scent of shame and self-loathing.

  His palm clamped over his mouth. Warm, not cold. Keeping oxygen at bay.

  So, I must try harder, much harder. My Consolamentum is too slow in coming. Mon Épuration...

  She’d recognised his voice from the tape that Duvivier had sworn to destroy after Rosh Hashanah, and then torn the drawing into shreds in front of him.

  He’s the real Judas. He has cost me my happiness. Oh, Saint Thérèse, where are you now? On your eternal sick bed, coughing and retching. What earthly use is that to me, or to anyone? Belief and Faith are no more than twin aberrations of the brain – I know that now.

  Better that Father had never given his seed. He’s as wicked as Duvivier and the rest. Worse because he never told me he was one of the rocks of shit that built the FN, and when I trusted him to help, he did nothing. Nothing. And maman, did she know? If so, why wasn’t I smothered at birth... Maman? Maman?...

  Now the young priest’s palm pressed harder. Skin on skin. Watertight. Airtight, until his lungs heaved with neglect and his losing mind slipped away, following Angélique Mathieu’s rosary through the layered dark as it finally met the graveyard of the Seine.

  LXIII

  19.03 hours, with the vast two-tone sky lighting up the farm that jutted like a bright gem from the rollered plains around Prunonnes. The storm was gathering momentum overhead, its deep disturbance reaching the stable block’s solitary occupant who trance-like, patrolled his loose box driven by a distant memory of freedom.

  Duvivier, one hour early, heard its hooves against the door, an eerily hollow sound in the excluding silence, as he left the hire car by the already opened gates and warily followed the gravel drive towards the house. He’d found a damp copy of France Est in the toilettes near Chȃteau-Thierry, and left without doing up his flies.

  Meanwhile, the ‘red mouse’ had been squeaking big time. She’d not enjoyed having the initials GVD carved into her face, and seeing her friend lose her nails.

  How kind. How kind...

  His watch showed 19.07. He’d give it three minutes, no more. He was sweating his own salty rain, basted by a burning ear and hatred as the blind buildings grew before him, their inky shadows defining the many new extensions on either side. The wealth discreet but tangible. Nothing but the best materials.

  Duvivier took in the solid oak door, craftsman bevelled and polished, and not entirely shut. The new marble slabs and the plaque prohibiting hawkers and circulars spelt out in bas-relief bronze. He then realised that none of the detention-camp security lights had responded to his presence. Perched along the roof, designed to swivel and cover the surrounding hectares, their beams were defunct. Immobilised, like his heart, but not his memory. That this man, Georges Véry Déchaux, once partaker of the Eucharist at Ste Trinité, could deny him his rightful place next to his mother, was the only reason he needed. But something made him hold back.

  A death in the pot of Gilgal?

  He crouched his bulk down, listening. His breath rough and uneven.

  Un mausolée. That’s what he’s brought me to. The bastard. Does he now want me to join it?

  Duvivier sat back on his heels, found his torch and fitted the silencer to his automatic.

  Fuck. That bloody horse again...

  He crawled right up to the front door and pushed it with his fingertip. Warm fetid air hit him first. Then the smell. His empty stomach lurched as the beam probed the hallway and up the open slatted stairs.

  He tried the lights. Nothing. Just a tap dripping somewhere, and the squeak of his boots on the new parquet. Then a sudden slip on an island of blood.

  Mon Dieu.

  Its trail led through to the rear, past a kitchen, all granite and chrome, as the abattoir stench intensified. One door left, and the Provençal sealed his lips as he kicked it open.

  Computers, modems a switchboard and filing cabinets marked ACJ – all lines of communication dismembered and knotted, stained by the dead.

  No prayers. I can’t, so don’t ask me... Oh Jesus...

  The drip he’d heard wasn’t a tap but something else, worse than he’d ever seen in all his years of carnage on the seas, and beyond his imagining. It came from the throats of seven corpses, stacked like a log pile on the central desk.

  Shechita.

  The young women – apart from the redhead – were indistinguishable half-hidden under the only man. In death as in life, the Master and most of his pawns, for where was the blonde-wigged chauffeur – the busy informant from the hostel who, with Kirchner had been shot at in Libourne? He dared not think, instead beamed in on that balding head, the startled eyes and the distinctive brown lump on the end of the nose.

  He took a deep breath, aimed and shot at the général’s dead heart, then puked on to his own feet. Dizzily he waded towards them like a marsh fisherman under too much sun, to pluck the little scroll that had fallen from Déchaux’s chest. The words were almost impossible to read so he wiped the blood off on to his tormentor’s nearest leg.

  TEREFAH. TO BE CAST TO THE DOGS.

  Then replaced it.

  Non merci. I have better things to do with my mouth, mon Général.

  Duvivier set the torch between his teeth – once more the Domini Canis he’d always dreamt of being, with his torch to light the polluted world.

  ***

  He charged outside to where banks of wisteria and honeysuckle smothered the adjoining car port. He walked towards it, trying to recognise the car parked inside and barely distinguishable from the dark. The black Celica.

  Voilà. Not much use to you now, my friend.

  He kicked its alloys for good measure, before reaching the stable block where he shot the bolts and let the Lippizaner loose, catching the hot lather off its white flanks as the captive careered away from the eye of the storm.

  The priest then lifted his gun.

  This is for me, for Arsène and my mother who will soon have her lost son closer than he’s ever been...

  The beautiful ghost snorted, faltered and fell. Its legs cast in a dance of agony. Duvivier stood still, strangely exalted, allowing the huge drops of rain come from over the Ardennes, to soften his skin and drain the unclean blood away.

  LXIV

  Friday October 10th

  “I beg you, God, I have erred, been iniquitous and wilfully sinned before You, I and my household. I beg You with Your Name, God, forgive please the errors, iniquities, and...”

  The Avinu Malkenu had started, and Robert Vidal, one-time priest of the Église de la Sainte Vierge, stood in the porch of the new Synagogue in Eberswïhr, listening to the Kohen Gadol’s words for Friday evening’s Yom Kippur eke out into the night. Words that suddenly and without warning, so profoundly touched his heart that he drew his soaking clothes around him and tightened his eyes shut to contain the tears, as the voice grew in strength.

  “...and been iniquitous and wilfully sinned before You, I and my household...”

  I and my household, the Cordonniers and my father, they are the black worms on this earth, born and raised in Hell, so how then, dear God, am I supposed to still honour them and give them comfort?

  “As it is written in the torah of Moshe, Your servant, from Your glorious expression; For on this day He shall atone for you to cleanse you; from all your sins before God…”

  Vidal ran down the steps, lifted by this unconditional promise of hope. The Latin rote of guilt, even the brief consolation of music now subsumed by the might of a higher Universal Truth. That he still could be saved.

  My penance began with being born, and I’m so weary of it. Mother will understand. Oh, joy. Oh, joy.


  Rainwater puddles sprayed him as he tore along the deserted Avenue Etray, followed by the ram horn’s disintegrating notes, towards the roundabout for Reims and Lanvière. A new future driving him on. He’d see Colette. Make amends for poor Bertrand, and with that pure new soul of his, find somewhere deep in la France profonde to pursue a life of contemplation.

  Ish for Man, Ishah for Woman. Faith and Truth. We can do it. We can do it...

  The homing pigeon with a gun, hid behind a row of billboards until an army convoy heading for Reims finally disappeared. He was sans papiers, like all the rest but buoyed up by a heady freedom. A fresh purpose with the only person who’d ever really loved him.

  He’d driven the Bonnêtre lorry throughout Wednesday night and ditched it yesterday outside Révigny, sensing another tail. No way would anyone be following him to Lanvière. Even now he kept looking back, ears tuned to the slightest change. To the whisper of the grassy verge or the starlings scavenging near a distant farm. Maybe the young woman driver had talked, maybe she hadn’t. It didn’t matter any more.

  The storm was on his side as he dodged into dripping shadows whenever a vehicle swept by along the remorselessly straight road.

  Merci, Napoléon. You built for war, not peace.

  Like the Kommandant in Prunonnes, impatience had made him too early, and at 20.30 hours exactly, Vidal reached his home town. As he passed the small park of broken swings, he hunted in his back pocket for Dégrelle’s soggy little book and flung it into the night sky where it hung like a dead bird on a nearby branch.

  Medex still played host to its scaffolding. Still the smell of stone paint as he sloped past, in the shadows, collar up, hands deep on the only protection he had. Down an unlit passageway less than 500 metres from the Rue Fosse. he noticed Gendarmes, one on each corner and a vehicle halfway down.

  The smell of burning reached him then a fire engine’s siren drawing closer through the town, finally dwindling at his house. No time to stop and investigate.

  He daren’t risk it. Not now. Not even for his precious Deauville.

  His energy suddenly sapped, his lungs heavy as he struggled over the wall at the end of the alleyway, bordering the footpath to the church. He regretted ditching the mobile. At least he could have tried her again.

  Make her be here... make her be here...

  Water had made the track slippery, and three times he fell and scrambled up again as it led to no more than a silty stream round to the northerly end of the graveyard. Treacherous and invisible without the first lamp near the oldest of the tombs. No light. It had been smashed to bits.

  Fuck.

  Vidal cut across the unkempt grass keeping to the wall.

  Colette... Colette...

  Familiar stones under his hands, cold as always, even though they’d once clasped the most wonderful music on earth. They were now repellent and repelling to his happier heart, and he kicked them as he went.

  One for sorrow, one for sorrow, one for sorrow...

  The bells for nine o’clock, twenty seconds late and losing every hour, tolled bleakly overhead. His clothes now moulded like the Neoprene suit as he hovered by the main door. So near the wilted flowers, the severed Virgin, and yet so far.

  Keys?

  Somewhere... Somewhere...

  He’d forgotten Moussac had never given them to him and he’d never had the new ones. He searched every pocket, every lining and recess, ever more agitated until... There, against his heart, through cotton, through leather, lay something folded, changed by the rain. Her face. His only real sanctuary.

  Suddenly he jumped at the rush of sound as the ash-tree crows fled upwards.

  “Father Jean-Baptiste?”

  The autumn night grew cold to match her voice, different, strained, and its chill gripped him. “Colette? Where are you?”

  Je Reviens. I can smell the scent. Oh help me... Where is she?

  He could just make out her umbrella. Domed black against the black tree, but the simulacrum underneath was all too visible. Bald as an egg, creating a perfect but alien oval of her whole face. And her eyes that had wept too much now stared unflinching at the desperate resurrection of the recherché photograph now probably everywhere.

  Where’ve you been that I couldn’t help you? Colette, what have you done?

  “I bury my son on Monday. Le Bébé, remember? That’s what you called him, wasn’t it? According to the media.”

  “Oh, Colette...” He stretched out his hand but she drew back, using her umbrella as a shield.

  “Don’t touch me. Not now. I couldn’t bear it.”

  “I just want to say two things. Please, you must hear me...” his voice diminished to a whisper. “First, I’m a changed man, God knows... Give me another chance Colette.. I’ve thought of nothing but you since...”

  “What’s the second, then?” her tone enough to turn the air to winter.

  “I want to make it up to you. We could have another child, it wouldn’t be too late. You and me somewhere peaceful...” Vidal took a deep breath as though to sustain his memory of the Temple service... “For on this day He shall atone for you to cleanse you; from all your sins before God... Isn’t that wonderful, Colette. Just think of it... A fresh start. With just one soul saved, I save the whole world...”

  “Whose soul? Yours or mine?”

  “Does it matter?”

  But the unborn, the grandchildren she’d never have, swelled into her mind. She puckered her mouth, sucked in her cheeks and spat at his feet.

  That was the signal.

  Silently a group of figures, barely distinguishable from the murky night, stepped forward, united in their intent. That same smell of burning reached him, and Devils’ masks surmounted by flames which licked the dying leaves above. At least twenty stood there. All young. Mostly male.

  “Hands up.”

  A voice he recognised.

  Marcel Jalibert... Yet another Judas.

  The Parisian took the Browning, tossed it back to one of the others, then booted Vidal on the shin. Once, twice, before slugging him in the chest.

  “For the dead who can’t speak!”

  Vidal managed to raise his arms as Jalibert stepped forward and frisked him with expert hands. Vidal groaned her name. Heard the other man load the rifle, saw its muzzle glint in the darkness, and could smell already his own death.

  “You’re bloody fools,” he muttered witheringly. “I’ve friends in high places.”

  “Who? God Almighty?” Jalibert sneered, moving the barrel from side to side.

  “You wait.”

  “No. You wait, you Nazi scum. We’ll get the lot of you. Priests, my arse. Pretty rich, isn’t it? And you used Madame Bataille here to take you to the Pope’s Mass, to put on a show, to set things up. You’ll rot soon enough...”

  Silence as the masked eyes stared and smoke trails hung in the dark. His church, too; livid against the end of night.

  “Still, she’s just promised to be a good friend to us, and all the poor Jews stuck in La belle France. Because of bastards like you, there’s more of them getting out from this country than any other in Europe. They know what’s coming, unlike the poor fuckers fifty years ago. That’s why we need people like her.”

  “Yep. She’s going to be brilliant.” Brigitte Caumartin stepped in. His former Confirmation pupil now relishing her bit of power.

  “Colette?” Vidal looked around as he gripped a tombstone loose in the wet earth.

  “She’s gone. Sorry. Got work to do. Taking over where Bertrand left off.”

  Jalibert kicked him again.

  “What do you mean?” Vidal cried.

  “He was one of us. Didn’t you know? One of our best. You really should have left him alone.”

  Vidal gaped.

  “His death was nothing to do with me.”

  “That’s what they all still say. Vichy murderers.”

  “I tried to rescue him from the river. I really did. Colette believe me!” he yelled into th
e night.

  “Well, you didn’t try hard enough, Father,” Jalibert sneered. “So there we are. And now it’s just you and us. L’Armée Contre Juifs – just one – against our twenty-two. How it should be, but one Devil is still one too bloody many in my book.”

  Vidal took deep breaths, tried to rationalise, to remember Number 26, Rue Salacroux, and the keen, knowledgeable associate with a gift for drawing.

  “I don’t believe this. You helped plan the attack at the Pont de l’Alma. You were there and your papa. We all saw you. For fuck’s sake, Marcel Jalibert.”

  A murmur of disbelief rose up from those behind, but no-one intervened as the leader steadied himself, tilting his head into the sight while Vidal continued.

  “So you betrayed him, even your friends here, by giving us information. It was you who drew up the tidal chart amongst other things. Very useful indeed. Even your foreplay to sweeten up old Hermans on the boat. I bet Déchaux paid you well for that. No wonder you let Bertrand Bataille die...”

  His syllables were lost among the first hail of bullets that cracked towards the steeple and the smell of carbine hung in the air. But he kept going. “And why didn’t Déchaux cotton on after you’d messed up my father’s flat? I’ll tell you. No-one’s ever taken you seriously. You’re just a bunch of hot-head wankers.”

  “The next is for you, mon curé,” Jalibert laughed, cocking his rifle, taking aim. “Better say your prayers pretty damned quick. What will it be, an Acte de Contrition? An Acte d’Offrande? What do you think is best, Brigitte?”

  But the former supermarket cashier had gone, and the rest were following, their flames diminished to little more than sparks beyond the ranks of graves. Their fifth columnist was on his own

  “Come back!” Jalibert yelled after them. “What you playing at? We’ve not finished.” He looked at Vidal then at his deserters. Panic flickered behind the mask and for a moment he seemed unsure what to do.

  That moment was all she needed.

  With the strength of a woman reborn, Colette wrenched his rifle from his grasp and threw it for Vidal.

  “Poor Bertrand. You just used him for your own ends, like you’d have used me. Except that I’ve not been unemployed, without hope of ever finding work. You’re no better than this man you were going to kill, but you think by taking the moral high ground you can destroy people’s lives.”