Voisin said impatiently, "None of us want to die, Monsieur Chavel," and Lenotre repeated with what seemed to the hysterical Chavel shocking self-righteousness, "Calm yourself, Monsieur Chavel."
Chavel's voice suddenly gave out. "Everything," he said.
They were becoming impatient with him at last. Tolerance is a question of patience, and patience is a question of nerves, and their nerves were strained. "Sit down," Krogh rapped at him, "and shut your mouth." Even then Lenotre made a friendly space for him, patting the floor at his side.
"Over," the calm Chavel whispered, "over. You weren't good enough. You've got to think up something else..."
A voice said, "Tell me more. Maybe I'll buy." It was Janvier.
5
HE NEVER REALLY EXPECTED AN OFFER: HYSTERIA AND NOT hope had dictated his behavior, and now it took him a long moment to realize that he was not being mocked. He repeated, "Everything I've got." The hysteria peeled off like a scab and left the sense of shame.
"Don't laugh at him," Lenotre said.
"I'm not laughing. I tell you I'll buy."
There was a long pause as though no one knew what to do next. How does one hand over everything one possesses? They watched him as though they expected him to empty his pockets. Chavel said, "You'll take my place?"
Krogh said impatiently, "What'll be the good of his money then?"
"I can make a will, can't I?" Voisin suddenly took the unlighted cigarette out of his mouth and dashed it to the floor. He exclaimed, "I don't like all this fuss. Why can't things go natural? We can't buy our lives, Lenotre and me. Why should he?"
Lenotre said, "Calm yourself, Monsieur Voisin."
"It's not fair," Voisin said.
Voisin's feeling was obviously shared by most of the men in the cell. They had been patient with Chavel's hysteria—after all it's no joke to be a dying man and you couldn't expect a gentleman to behave quite like other people: that class were all, when you came down to it, a bit soft perhaps—but this that was happening now was different. As Voisin said, it wasn't fair. Only Lenotre took it calmly: he had spent a lifetime in business and he had watched from his stool many a business deal concluded in which the best man did not win.
Janvier interrupted. "Fair?" he said. "Why isn't it fair to let me do what I want? You'd all be rich men if you could, but you haven't the spunk. I see my chance and I take it. Fair, of course it's fair. I'm going to die a rich man and anyone who thinks it isn't fair can rot." The peas rolled again on the pan as he coughed. He quelled all opposition: already he had the manner of one who owned half the world. Their standards were shifting like great weights—the man who had been rich was already halfway to being one of themselves and Janvier's head was already lost in the mists and obscurity of wealth. He commanded sharply, "Come here. Sit down here." And Chavel obeyed, moving a little bent under the shame of his success.
"Now," Janvier said, "you're a lawyer. You've got to draw things up in their proper form. How much money is there?"
"Three hundred thousand francs. I can't tell you exactly."
"And this place you were talking about? St. Jean."
"Six acres and a house."
"Freehold?"
"Yes."
"And where do you live in Paris? Have you got a house there?"
"Only a flat. I don't own that."
"The furniture?"
"No—books only."
"Sit down," Janvier said. "You make me out—what's it called?—a deed of gift."
"Yes. But I want paper."
"You can have my pad," Lenotre said.
Chavel sat beside Janvier and began to write: "I, Jean Louis Chavel, lawyer, of Rue Miromesnil 119, Paris, and St. Jean de Brinac... all stocks and shares, money to my account at... all furniture, movables... the freehold property at St. Jean de Brinac..." he said, "It will need two witnesses," and Lenotre immediately from force of habit offered himself, coming forward as it were from the outer office just as though his employer had rung a bell and called him in.
"Not you," Janvier said rudely. "I want living men as witnesses."
"Would you perhaps?" Chavel asked the mayor as humbly as if it were he who were the clerk.
"This is a very odd document," the mayor said. "I don't know that a man in my position ought to sign..."
"Then I will," Pierre said and splashed his signature below Chavel's.
The mayor said, "Better have someone reliable. That man would sign anything for a drink," and he squeezed his own signature in the space above Pierre's. As he bent they could hear the great watch in his pocket ticking out the short time left before dark.
"And now, the will," Janvier said. "You put it down—everything I've got to my mother and sister in equal shares."
Chavel said, "That's simple: it only needs a few lines."
"No, no," Janvier said, "put it down again there... the stocks and shares and money in the bank, the freehold property... they'll want something to show the neighbors at home what sort of a man I am." When it was finished Krogh and the greengrocer signed. "You keep the documents," Janvier told the mayor. "The Germans may let you send them off when they've finished with me. Otherwise you've got to keep them till the war ends..." He coughed, leaning back with an air of exhaustion against the wall. He said, "I'm a rich man. I always knew I'd be rich."
The light moved steadily away from the cell; it rolled up like a carpet from one end to the other. The dusk eliminated Janvier while the clerk sitting by Voisin could still find light enough to write by. A grim peace descended, the hysteria was over and there was no more to be said. The watch and the alarm clock marched out of step toward night, and sometimes Janvier coughed. When it was quite dark Janvier said, "Chavel." It was as if he was calling a servant and Chavel obeyed. Janvier said, "Tell me about my house."
"It's about two miles out of the village."
"How many rooms?"
"There is the living room, my study, the drawing room, five bedrooms, the office where I interview people on business, of course bathroom, kitchen... the servants' room."
"Tell me about the kitchen."
"I don't know much about the kitchen. It's a large one, stone paved. My housekeeper was always satisfied."
"Where's she?"
"There's no one there. When the war came I shut the house up. I was lucky. The Germans never hit on it."
"And the garden?"
"There's a little terrace above a lawn: the grounds slope and you can see all the way to the river, and beyond that St. Jean..."
"Did you grow plenty of vegetables?"
"Yes, and fruit trees: apple, plum, walnut. And a greenhouse." He continued as much to himself as to Janvier: "You don't see the house when you enter the garden. There's a wooden gate and a long curving gravel drive with trees and shrubs. Suddenly it comes right out in front of the terrace, and then divides: the left-hand path leads off to the servants' quarters, and the right round to the front door. My mother used to keep a lookout for visitors she didn't want to meet. Nobody could call without her seeing him arrive. My grandfather, when he was young, used to watch in just the same way as my mother..."
"How old's the house?" Janvier interrupted.
"Two hundred and twenty-three years old," Chavel said.
"Too old," Janvier said. "I'd have liked something modern. The old woman has rheumatics."
The darkness had long enclosed them both and now the last light slid off the ceiling of the cell. Men automatically turned to sleep. Pillows like children were shaken and slapped and embraced. Philosophers say that past, present and future exist simultaneously, and certainly in this heavy darkness many pasts came to life: a lorry drove up the Boulevard Montparnasse, a girl held out her mouth to be kissed, and a town council elected a mayor; and in the minds of three men the future stood as inalterably as birth—fifty yards of cinder track and a brick wall chipped and pitted.
It seemed to Chavel now his hysteria was over that that simple track was infinitely more desirable after all than the
long obscure route on which his own feet were planted.
PART TWO
6
A MAN CALLING HIMSELF JEAN-LOUIS CHARLOT CAME UP the drive of the house at St. Jean de Brinac.
Everything was the same as he had remembered it and yet very slightly changed, as if the place and he had grown older at different rates. Four years ago he had shut the house up, and while for him time had almost stood still, here time had raced ahead. For hundreds of years the house had grown older almost imperceptibly: years were little more than changed shadow on the brickwork. Like an elderly woman the house had been kept in flower—the face lifted at the right moment. Now in four years all that work had been undone: the lines broke through the enamel which had not been renewed.
In the drive the gravel was obscured by weeds; a tree had fallen right across the way, and though somebody had lopped the branches for firewood, the trunk still lay there to prove that for many seasons no car had driven up to the house. Every step was familiar to the bearded man who came cautiously round every bend like a stranger. He had been born here: as a child he had played games of hide-and-seek in the bushes; as a boy he had carried the melancholy and sweetness of first love up and down the shaded drive. Ten yards further on there would be a small gate onto the path which led between heavy laurels to the kitchen garden.
The gate had gone: only the posts showed that memory hadn't failed him. Even the nails which had held the hinges had been carefully extracted to be used elsewhere for some more urgent purpose. He turned off the drive. He didn't want to face the house yet: like a criminal who returns to the scene of his crime or a lover who returns to haunt the place of farewell he moved in intersecting circles; he didn't dare to move in a straight line and finish his pilgrimage prematurely, with nothing more to do forever after.
The greenhouse had obviously been unused for years, though he remembered telling the old man who worked in the garden that he was to keep the garden stocked, and sell the vegetables for what he could get in Brinac. Perhaps the old man had died and no one in the village had the initiative to appoint himself as successor. Perhaps there was no one left in the village. From the trampled unsown earth beside the greenhouse he could see the ugly red-brick church pointing like an exclamation mark at the sky, closing a sentence he couldn't read from here.
Then he saw that something after all had been planted: a patch had been cleared of weeds for the sake of some potatoes, cabbages, savoys. It was like the garden you give to children to cultivate: a space little larger than a carpet. All around the desolation lapped. He remembered what had been here in the old days—the strawberry beds, the bushes of currants and raspberries, the sweet and bitter smell of herbs. The wall which separated this garden from the fields had tumbled in one place, or else some looter had picked his way through the old stonework to get into the garden: it had all happened a long time ago, for nettles had grown up over the fallen stones. From the gap he stood and looked a long time at something which had been beyond the power of time to change, the long slope of grass toward the elms and the river. He had thought that home was something one possessed, but the things one had possessed were cursed with change; it was what one didn't possess that remained the same and welcomed him. This landscape was not 'his', not anybody's home: it was simply home.
Now there was nothing more for him to do except go away. If he went away, what could he do but drown himself in the river? His money was nearly gone: already after less than a week of liberty he had learned how impossible it was for him to find work.
At seven o'clock in the morning (five minutes past by the mayor's watch and two minutes to by Pierre's alarm clock) the Germans had come for Voisin, Lenotre and Janvier: That had been his worst shame up to date, sitting against the wall, watching his companions' faces, waiting for the crack of the shots. He was one of them now, a man without money or position, and unconsciously they had accepted him, and begun to judge him by their own standards, and to condemn him. The shame he felt now shuffling like a beggar up to the door of the house went nearly as deep. He had realized reluctantly that Janvier could still be used for his benefit even after his death.
The empty windows watched him come like the eyes of men sitting round the wall of a cell. He looked up once and took it all in: the unpainted frames, the broken glass in what had been his study, the balustrade at the terrace broken in two places. Then his eyes fell to his feet again, scuffling up the gravel. It occurred to him that the house might still be empty, but when he turned the corner of the terrace and came slowly up the steps to the door, he saw the same diminutive signs of occupation as he had noticed in the kitchen garden. The steps were spotless. When he put out his hand and pulled the bell it was like a gesture of despair. He had tried his best not to return but here he was.
7
THE FLAGS OF REJOICING HAD BEEN MONTHS OLD WHEN Jean-Louis Charlot had come back to Paris. The uppers of his shoes were still good, but the soles were nearly paper thin, and his dark lawyer's suit bore the marks of many months' imprisonment: He had thought of himself in the cells as a man who kept up appearances, but now the cruel sun fingered his clothes like a secondhand dealer, pointing out the rubbed cloth, the missing buttons, the general dinginess. It was some comfort that Paris itself was dingy too.
In his pocket Charlot had a razor wrapped in a bit of newspaper with what was left of a tablet of soap, and he had three hundred francs. He had no papers, but he had something which was better than papers—the slip from the prison officer in which the Germans had carefully recorded a year before the incorrect details he had given them—including the name Charlot. In France at this moment such a document was of more value than legal papers, for no collaborator possessed a German prison dossier authenticated with most efficient photographs, full face and profile. The face had altered somewhat, since Charlot had grown his beard, but it was still, if carefully examined, the same face. The Germans were thoroughly up-to-date archivists: photographs can be easily substituted on documents, plastic surgery can add or eliminate scars; but it is not so simple to alter the actual measurements of the skull, and these the Germans had documented with great thoroughness.
Nevertheless no collaborator felt a more hunted man than Charlot, for his past was equally shameful: he could explain to no one how he had lost his money—if indeed it was not already known. He was haunted at street corners by the gaze from faintly familiar faces and driven out of buses by backs he imagined he knew: deliberately he moved into a Paris that was strange to him. His Paris had always been a small Paris: its arc had been drawn to include his flat, the law courts, the Opera, the Gare Montparnasse and one or two restaurants—between these points he knew only the shortest route. Now he had but to sidestep and he was in unknown territory: the Metro lay like a jungle below him; Combat and the outer districts were deserts through which he could wander in safety.
But he had to do more than wander: he had to get a job. There were moments—after his first glass of wine in freedom—when he felt quite capable of beginning over again: of re-amassing the money he had signed away; and finally in a burst of daydream he had bought back his home at St. Jean de Brinac and was wandering happily from room to room when he saw the reflection of his face—Charlot's bearded face—in the water decanter. It was the face of failure. It was odd, he thought, that one failure of nerve had ingrained the face as deeply as a tramp's, but, of course, he had the objectivity to tell himself, it wasn't one failure, it was a whole lifetime of preparation for the event. An artist paints his picture not in a few hours but in all the years of experience before he takes up the brush, and it is the same with failure. It was his good fortune to have been a fashionable lawyer: he had inherited more money than he had ever earned; if it had depended upon himself he would never, he believed now, have reached the heights he had.
All the same, he now made several attempts to earn his living in a reasonable way. He applied for the post of a teacher at one of the innumerable language institutes in the city. Although the war still
muttered outside the borders of France, the Berlitzes and kindred organizations were already doing a thriving trade: there were plenty of foreign soldiers anxious to learn French to take the place of peacetime tourists.
He was interviewed by a dapper thin man in a frock coat which smelled very faintly of mothballs. "I'm afraid," he said at length, "your accent is not good enough."
"Not good enough!" Charlot exclaimed.
"Not good enough for this institute. We exact a very high standard. Our teachers must have the best, the very best, of Parisian accents. I am sorry, monsieur." He enunciated himself with terrible clarity, as though he was used to speaking only to foreigners, and he used only the simplest phrases—he was trained in the direct method. His eyes dwelt ruminatively on Charlot's battered shoes. Charlot went.
Perhaps something about the man reminded him of Lenotre. It occurred to him immediately after he had left the institute that he might earn a reasonably good living as a clerk: his knowledge of law would be useful, and he could explain it by saying that at one time he had hoped to be called to the bar, but his money had given out...
He answered an advertisement in 'Figaro': the address was on the third floor of a high gray building off the Boulevard Haussmann. The office into which he found his way gave the impression of having been just cleaned up after enemy occupation: dust and straw had been swept against the walls and the furniture looked as though it had been recently uncrated from the boxes in which it had been stored away ages ago. When a war ends one forgets how much older oneself and the world have become: it needs something like a piece of furniture or a woman's hat to waken the sense of time. This furniture was all of tubular steel, giving the room the appearance of an engine room in a ship, but this was a ship which had been beached for years—the tubes were tarnished. Out of fashion in 1939, in 1944 they had the air of period pieces. An old man greeted Charlot: when the furniture was new he must have been young enough to have an eye for the fashionable, the chic, for appearances. He sat down among the steel chairs at random as though he was in a public waiting room and said sadly, "I suppose like everyone else you have forgotten everything?"
The Tenth Man Page 4
