A Question of Loyalties

by Allan Massie

  I lay in the sun listening to the crickets for a long morning, and then, suddenly, aware of the demanding hunger of youth, drove over the little hills to Les Baux.

  Was it that evening that the curé visited? I think it was. At any rate, when I entered the drawing room for the aperitif I had become accustomed to share with my grandmother, I found him there: a small man, with a strangely pink face – a complexion that is rare in Provence – and very pale blue eyes.

  ‘Do you play chess?’ he asked, after the conventional preliminaries, and when I said yes, invited me to visit him that evening after dinner.

  ‘I am starved for a game,’ he said. ‘The schoolmaster is the only other chess-player in the village, and of course we are not on speaking terms.’

  ‘Why “of course”?’ I asked my grandmother when he had gone.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘the schoolmaster is a terrible man, an atheist and a red. Our masters in Paris think that type suitable for the instruction of young French men and women, for the formation of their intellects and characters. But the curé is a good man, though timid.’

  He was certainly a good chess-player, far too good for me, and there was no timidity evident in the way he brought his queen into play early in the game. He beat me three times within the hour. I apologised for not being able to give him a better game.

  ‘It’s no matter,’ he said. ‘It is a pleasure simply to move the pieces, and a change from playing over the games of the masters. Besides, I am pleased to meet you. I would have done so before, but I have been away. Perhaps your grandmother told you. Besides, I knew you as a child.’

  ‘You’ve been here a long time then.’

  ‘Twenty-five years, and I hope, God willing, to die here, despite everything. I was a protégé of your great-uncle, the Bishop. He took me from the village school – not here, but only a dozen miles away. I owe everything to him. My mother was poor and a widow. We were poor in a way that nobody is now.’

  He filled his pipe and then produced a bottle of marc and two stubby glasses.

  ‘I’m afraid that I didn’t even know that I had a Bishop among my relations,’ I said, ‘but then I know very little – shamefully little, I suppose, about my family.’

  ‘But you have come here to find out,’ he said, puffing away. The tobacco was cheap shag with a pungent aroma …

  ‘I suppose so,’ I said, ‘but it is all very strange, and I am not making much progress.’

  ‘No.’

  He fell silent. There was no electricity in his house and the oil lamp was smoking. The remains of his supper stood on a table in the middle of the room, giving off a smell of sour cheese. He sucked on his pipe and lifted his chin and I could see a watermark on his neck. The skin was grimy below it, and his nails were black.

  ‘It is a great pleasure for your grandmother to have you here. She has been waiting a long time. She has often said so to me.’

  He puffed out smoke. I could think of no reply to make.

  ‘Are you a good Catholic?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. That’s to say …’

  ‘But then,’ he pursued his thought, apparently paying little heed to my answer, ‘what after all is a good Catholic? One who keeps the observances of course, but then? Your grandmother is a great woman, and I revere her. She has shown fortitude and few of my parishioners would be as charitable to poor Marthe as she has been, and yet … you understand that I say nothing against her, I owe everything to your family, even, I sometimes think, my faith, and yet there are times, I must confess, when I think there can be too much faith. Faith excludes humanity. Of course you know that “Humanity” is the name of our Communist newspaper, and that is not what I mean, but I have seen faith elevated and distorted, so that only the Church was remembered and Christ forgotten. Do you follow what I am saying? I am only a simple country priest, who has forgotten all the philosophy and most of the theology he learned at college, and no doubt I often stray from what is true, but … do you know that General de Gaulle calls the Holy Father the “Nazi Pope”?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘And that distresses me, because I fear the truth in the charge …’

  ‘You must have known my father.’

  ‘Did anyone?’

  ‘I’m sorry. What do you mean?’

  He was silent. His pipe had gone out, and he made great play with the business of relighting it. Then he swallowed his marc, in one gulp, without a grimace, and filled his glass and topped up mine.

  ‘What happened to him?’ I asked. ‘How did he die?’

  ‘She hasn’t told you?’

  ‘That he was a hero. Nothing else. She has encouraged me to read his papers.’

  ‘Ah, his book?’

  ‘Which book?’

  ‘His confessions. The last time I spoke to him he told me he had been writing his confessions. I have always wondered how much he had done.’

  ‘There’s no book that I have come upon yet. And you haven’t answered my question, Father.’

  ‘Because I can’t.’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘It is not precisely that, though I don’t know precisely. I speak awkwardly. But it is not for me to say, not for me to tell you. But I will say one thing. There were no simple deaths in France at that time, none. There was not even tragedy. There was no dignity, you see. That is the thing. There was no dignity in France and perhaps there never will be again, and without dignity there can neither be a good death nor a simple one. And perhaps the two are the same thing.’

  I played chess with him again, more than once, in the next few days. But I learned nothing.

  ‘If you come on his confessions,’ he said, ‘then, when you have read them, promise that you will speak to me before you form a judgement.’

  Yves had disappeared after staying only one night. Marthe had made no mention of him, but I was aware from the day of our encounter in the kitchen that she regarded me with a certain suspicion. Or perhaps suspicion was not the right word. Perhaps it was shame. When I met her she would lower her eyes, and whenever I tried to engage her in conversation on any subject other than the making of a pot of coffee or a sandwich, she would mutter, ‘It’s not for the likes of me to talk about that, Monsieur Etienne.’ It annoyed me that she addressed me in this way, though I was accustomed to having our college porters call me ‘Mr de Balafré’. But that was different, and back home on the farm Hilda, who was probably younger than Marthe, would call me simply ‘Ettenne’ – the nearest she ever got to the correct pronunciation. It was Yves who had interrupted the progress I had been making with his mother, and I thought of him with resentment.

  Then one day there was another boy in the kitchen. He was younger than Yves and not, it seemed, ‘one of the Germans’ for, unlike the small boy she had led in that afternoon, he was dark-haired and dark-complexioned. He was very thin and looked undernourished, but he greeted me with a smile and lively eyes.

  For a moment we stood and said nothing.

  ‘I’m called Jacques,’ he said. ‘You must be Monsieur Etienne.’

  ‘You don’t need to call me Monsieur.’

  ‘My mother does. She told me to. “Be sure to remember to call him Monsieur,” she said.’ He laughed. ‘But if you don’t like it I won’t.’

  ‘I’m losing count,’ I said. ‘You’re the third I’ve met. How many of you are there?’

  ‘Five altogether. I know you’ve met Yves. Maman said he behaved awfully. But then he does, he is awful. When I see him he pulls my hair, but he can’t now’ – he pointed to his cropped head – ‘the Fathers shaved me, because of lice. Not that I had them. But the others did. It’ll grow again and then I’ll look human, I can’t stand looking like this …’

  ‘You’re home for your holidays. Where do you go to school?’

  ‘With the Fathers. In Avignon. I would have been home three weeks ago, but we went to camp. A praying camp of course. They called it a retreat. I’m glad it’s over. Being wok
en for prayers in the middle of the night isn’t my idea of a joke.’

  He leapt off the table.

  ‘How old are you, Jacques?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m eleven,’ he said, ‘nearly twelve. And you’re nineteen.’

  ‘Nearly twenty,’ I said, and we both giggled.

  ‘Will you teach me how to shoot?’

  I did, of course. Shooting happened to be one of the few things I was rather good at, but even if I hadn’t been proud of my skill, I would have done what I could to teach him. He had that sort of effect on me, it was a pleasure to please him. In the next fortnight I found myself shedding years, becoming fourteen or fifteen perhaps. We wandered over the hills with a gun, Jacques popping off at any small bird that dared to show itself. Fortunately, despite my instruction, he was a terrible shot. He was an impulsive child, changing direction every few minutes. This characteristic was both physical and mental. He darted and zigzagged up the hillsides and throughout the stories he would tell me of the Fathers who taught him. Every one was a grotesque, he could do all their voices. This one swore by St Antony’s bones – ‘St Antony of Padua, you understand, Etienne, you pray to him when you’ve lost something, you know, but where the bones come into it, I can’t tell you’ – that one sipped cognac in class and would fondle the boys’ necks in the afternoon – ‘But only if they are pretty and have no spots, you understand, I’m quite safe’ – the next was in love with his motor-bicycle – ‘He strokes it when he puts it to bed’ – another spoke to himself – ‘Terrible things he says, you can’t imagine, bring a blush to even my cheeks.’ He lay back on the grass and kicked his legs in the air, and laughed, then sat up and looked at me, his face straight and his eyes gleaming black.

  ‘Etienne, do you think everyone’s mad? I do. Except women maybe. And us of course.’

  ‘What makes you think we’re not mad?’

  ‘We couldn’t be, we’re too sane, it would make no sense if we were mad too.’

  ‘Maybe it does make no sense.’

  ‘Oh no, that couldn’t be. You see, everything makes sense, except people. The world’s not mad, nature’s not mad, these olive trees aren’t mad. Only people.’

  ‘What about rabies and mad dogs.’

  ‘That’s different. That’s a sickness.’

  ‘I see. And why aren’t women mad?’

  ‘Because they aren’t. Give me a cigarette and I’ll think why.’

  ‘You’re too young to smoke,’ I said, passing the packet.

  To prove me wrong, he drew the smoke into his lungs, held it there – I was sure he was counting to ten – and puffed it out through his nose. It hung, blue, in the golden air of the afternoon.

  ‘Because they’re good,’ he said. ‘That’s the difference between men and women. They can live for others. That’s why they’re not mad.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘you only know my grandmother and your own mother. You don’t know any other women. You don’t have the material to judge.’

  ‘No,’ he said, and put his hand on my knee, ‘don’t speak like that. I know enough, and I’m right.’

  It was as if a cloud had crossed over the sun.

  ‘What do you remember about the war, Jacques?’ I asked.

  Then he smiled.

  ‘I knew you were all right,’ he said. ‘Not mad. Like me. That’s the whole point. Can you imagine a women’s army?’

  ‘You’re a very remarkable child.’

  ‘Don’t call me a child.’

  ‘But some women did terrible things during the war. There was, what’s her name, at Belsen, the one who made lampshades out of human skin, you’ve heard of her, haven’t you? And during the épuration’ – I stopped, feeling the ice crack.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I don’t know how much you know, but I remember. You’ve seen Kurt, my half-brother, the German’s son, and you’ve heard stories. They came here, you know, the heroes of the Liberation, and they shaved Maman’s head, because of Kurt and his father. I was five. They did it in front of me. There were women among them, but the leader was Simon, the garagiste. Oh, he was brave, a real hero. I’m glad you taught me to shoot. Do you see why? They tied her to a chair in the kitchen and they shaved her head. Then they drove her down to the village and made her walk through the street. I didn’t see that. I was left in the kitchen, crying my eyes out.’

  He threw himself, face down, on the harsh grass and shook with sobs. I didn’t know what to say or do. I put my hand on his shoulder and felt him heave and squirm and shudder, as if in a fit, trying to expel devils.

  When Marthe brought in the coffee that evening, I watched her, as though in some way she could be marked by the knowledge I had been given. It was ridiculous. She had accommodated herself to experience years ago. The fact that I now knew was only a fact. Of no significance. It was like meeting someone released from prison and supposing that he would be changed by my knowing that. But other people’s knowledge is trivial compared to the fact of what happened. It is only peripheral. The last sunlight fell on the table and my grandmother wiped her lips with her white linen napkin and laid it beside her plate. Marthe closed the door behind her. She was wearing carpet slippers and her retreat was silent.

  Jacques said: ‘I’ve never told anyone what I told you yesterday. That they made me watch it.’

  We were in the car going to the cinema, in the late afternoon. Jacques sat with his arms hugging his knees, his feet on the dashboard.

  ‘I had to tell someone,’ he said. ‘I never thought I would be able to.’

  We ran through the village. The garagiste, Simon, was standing by his pumps. He waved as we passed. I saw him in the rear mirror, standing gazing after us, his hands on his hips, cigarette in the corner of his mouth, beret pulled down over his eyes.

  ‘He’s my mother’s cousin, you know,’ Jacques said, ‘and he used to sell petrol to the German officers on the Black Market. I know a lot about him. He likes to talk of the war, he was a big shot then. Like a lot who were in the Maquis, he played both sides.

  ‘The Germans can’t have been here long though,’ I said. ‘This was the unoccupied zone after all.’

  ‘Oh yes, and the Milice – they were the Vichy police, you know – were worse even than the Gestapo, some people say. But you see, Etienne, it was all mad, I don’t really understand what happened then, except that people were hateful, at their worst, like school bullies. I suppose Simon was a school bully.’

  ‘Do you speak to him ever?’

  ‘No, of course not. We don’t forget things, we southerners. I told you I was glad you had taught me to shoot. That’s my duty, you see.’

  And he began to whistle a little tune which I couldn’t identify, and then he talked about the movie we were off to see. He knew a lot about movies, Jacques, and I couldn’t understand how, for I was sure that the Fathers wouldn’t let their charges be exposed to the corrupting influence of the cinema. But it was the least of the things I didn’t understand.

  Now, looking back over more than thirty years, I wonder at my naivety and lack of curiosity, my failure to try to understand Jacques. Of course we all have an ability, perhaps innate, to hide from whatever is unwelcome. Sarah, I reflect, thinking of what she may be up to in South Africa, chooses not to see how injustice succeeds injustice or to admit that revolutions always destroy what is good in people as well as whatever may be evil in social structures.

  What I couldn’t believe that evening, and then easily forgot, in fact happened. Jacques shot Simon through the back of the head, stepping out from behind his petrol pumps. He did this the day before his own eighteenth birthday, choosing the date exactly so that he would escape the guillotine.

  So, when I think of Jacques, the first image is something I never actually saw: not the boy who lazed chattering on the hillside or with his knees drawn up beside me in the front of that old Citroën, but instead a thin figure slipping into the dark blanket of the evening shadows.

  For years that sharp act shone a
cross the wasteland of my own indifference, incomprehensible because beyond my range of sympathy, belonging, it seemed to me, more to the clear imperatives of the Trojan War than to the hesitating morality by which I lived myself.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I HAD BEEN there five weeks, perhaps six. Jacques had left, though it can’t have been time for him to return to school; yet I cannot now recall why he had gone.

  One evening my grandmother said: ‘I think you feel you belong here.’

  I couldn’t reply, for it would have been brutal to tell her she was wrong.

  ‘It will be yours,’ she reminded me again. ‘Indeed it is rightfully yours now.’

  She poured me a glass of marc and took one for herself.

  ‘I am glad,’ she said, ‘that you were so ready to take care of the little boy. I hope it didn’t bore you.’

  ‘Not at all,’ I said, ‘he is charming.’

  It was a word I couldn’t have brought myself to utter in English, even though charm is, I suppose, an English characteristic rather than a French one. Eddie, after all, was the epitome of charm; he used charm as he had done all his life to evade the demands of the intellect, and the charm of others.

  Aware of this perhaps, I said again: ‘He is charming.’

  ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘I have been wondering if I should explain him to you. Had you not liked him I don’t think I would have done so. He doesn’t know himself, of course.’

  ‘I don’t understand you,’ I said, when she fell silent.

  ‘I am sorry,’ she said. She smiled. She hardly ever smiled, and, when she did so, you could see that she must have been beautiful as a girl.