My excellent parish priest arrived on the dot of noon, as I was eating cherries. I saw him climb the steps; he was tall, broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped. With rapid movements he changed his shoes, pushing the bad-smelling ones under a kitchen dresser, and taking out a fresher pair. In tune with his usual habit of never staying in one place for long, he was already preparing to leave again; and on the principle that just the once would do no harm, he suggested that I should accompany him.
So we went round the farms together, on the pretext of collecting money for the poor. We were offered drinks everywhere, a polite excuse for not giving us anything else. Soon the farmyards were not vast enough for our uncertain steps. We visited seven or eight families, sitting down at the dark wood tables that smelt of cheap wine and bread, and having a drink. In the perfect mist of my drunkenness, I recall a girl of about twenty, who stayed crouched by the hearth all the time we were in her parents’ house, and who told us flatly that she had nothing to give; she was beautiful, though her features were ravaged by the habit of sexual pleasure; I don’t know whether she gave herself that pleasure, or had lovers, but everything in her expressed a profound knowledge of pleasure, violent, ferocious joy; in fact she looked just a little like me.
Apart from the keys to his church, my priest showed me keys to several presbyteries in parishes which he also served.
“My bachelor apartments,” he told me, “come on, come on.”
I remember an unknown village, our rapid, stiff steps, a blazing sun, our drunkenness which we tried to hide from a few old women who were knitting long socks on their doorsteps, a garden full of brambles and bees. He showed me into an old presbytery which he used as a house of pleasure. In the semi-darkness, with the shutters closed, he (…)* on the tattered couch of a priest’s sitting room; as for me, I was drunk on cheap wine and coarse pleasure, and I let him have his way with me; it caused me less discomfort than the bad treatment I was accustomed to, and I fell asleep on the carpet, as soon as he had finished taking his pleasure.
When it was time to go back home, my priest said: “You haven’t seen everything.” Evening was drawing on and as there was not time to take me to his other bachelor apartments, he led me under a golden sky to ruined farm-buildings that stood at the foot of a little meadow, looking as if they ought to tumble into the stream. These were his too; he had inherited them. He grabbed my arm, picked a bunch of stinging nettles, opened a door, and closed it behind us. Here he is, whipping me with nettles, gathering his strength; here am I, crushed with tiredness and pain, leaning against a chest of drawers in a dead room, a bedroom with no bed, strewn with the wreckage of the ceiling. I can make out nothing but a clock that has stopped, a ploughshare, a chair with the stuffing hanging out, a drawer jutting out of a chest, which I slide out a little more so as to get a better grip. And all the while I fear that my priest will move around too violently in this ramshackle house and bring down what remains of the ceiling on our heads, or that he will go through the worm-eaten floorboards and fall down into the cellar.
Afterwards we retraced our steps, brushing the patches of dust and plaster off our knees. My kingdom, he said to me, referring to the presbyteries and the ruined farms, whose keys he jangled in his deep pockets.
Back at his house, he gave me bread. Affectionately, almost fraternally, he pushed a goblet of wine towards me to restore my strength after the exhaustion of following him. It was a peaceful evening, and a deliciously cool breeze wafted in from the garden. I was so worn-out, so filled with delight that I lost consciousness the moment my head hit the pillow; plunging into a deep, admirable sleep, the best sleep of my life.
THE NEXT MORNING, I was alone as usual. Once again he had left me to my own devices. I wondered if he was at confession, and if he was, whether he would confess everything. I had a suspicion that he, and other young priests of his ilk, liked to share the revelation of their sins, only confessing them among themselves. As for my priest, if I was right about him, he simply wouldn’t admit anything, not even to his colleagues. And so that morning of my life was entirely taken up with speculating about my priest. I saw nothing beyond the present moment, never imagined for a second that happiness was waiting just around the corner; or that it was already heading straight for me. Did I have any idea of what was about to happen? Didn’t I have the faintest inkling?
The sun’s glorious rays were burning off the dew in the garden; but the whitewashed walls of my bedroom remained in limpid shadow, as transparent and cool as an expanse of blue water, reflecting the sky. The shadow derived from the church, the house’s north-facing aspect, and the dampness welling up from the spring, so liberally that it rotted the floorboards and turned the walls green much to the delight of the nettles which love old gardens and priests. The clear June sunlight had roused me from sleep, in that cold, silent house.
I went out. I saw the beautiful Sarladais. It was the start of haymaking. In faraway meadows reapers were hacking down the tall green grass; beside the trees, men were beating iron blades or sharpening their scythes, and the echo of hammer-blows made the rocky cliffs ring all along the Vézère.
I sat down on the church steps, laying my Latin books beside me. Our church stood among low walls of fallen stones, a favourite haunt of snakes. A maze of paths led down from it to the village, and it dominated the hillside, looming over it like a bird of prey. The people of the eleventh century were strange folk, and the carved stone pediment might well provide ideas for any boys who lacked them.
I read for a while. A boy aged around thirteen saw me, registered surprise and leant his bicycle against a wall. Was he going to give me the loaves he was carrying, or leave them in the doorway of the presbytery? He untied the strings which fastened the big, round loaves to the luggage rack.
“Give me the bread,” I said.
I took in his manner, his grace, the smile on his lips. Spring had never created anything more delightful. He rummaged in the leather satchel at his hip, and took out a notebook and a pencil, licking the point delicately with the tip of his tongue.
“It’s for my accounts.”
He picked a few cherries:
“So. You’ll be around then?”
“All summer,” I replied, just as disconcerted as he was.
He left without further ado, and without paying much more attention to his accounts.
I made enquiries about the child, and learned from my priest that he delivered bread to us twice a week. A few days later, when ours was starting to go stale, I was sitting reading in front of the church while maddened bees buzzed about, frantically searching for pollen. That was when I got my chance to speak to him again. He lived in the village and delivered bread to the surrounding district. How I devoured him with my eyes, how passionately I hoped for a joyful outcome! Oh please, I begged silently, let him be bold, let him come quickly to me. I had no idea that my desire could be shared so instantly, or that love was already uniting us with that supreme facility it possesses whenever it wants to.
It was a fine, hot day. On the wooded horizon, ribbons of smoke curled up to meet the sky. Hayricks and men toiling in the fields heralded the full force of high summer. After the shortest possible hesitation, and without any acknowledgement passing between us, we set off together across the verdant countryside, in the direction of a little valley close beside the river. A vast cavern had been hollowed out by prehistoric floodwaters, and its coolness drew us inexorably, watched us walk together into a dark passageway, at the far end of which I could hear a little spring bubbling among the rocks. Stumbling in the gloom, we lit matches; but each went out more quickly than the last as we moved further and further away from fresh air. The last glimmer of daylight disappeared and we continued on together, across the faintly damp floor of the cavern. I took his hand. I love you, I said. I love you too, he replied. We fell into each other’s arms. No embrace was ever sweeter or more passionate than ours. He tasted of love, given and received. I heard him stammer softly in the rock-hewn silenc
e, and then his lips opened like a delicious flower, claiming my most enduring kisses. We went outside and saw that the spring we had heard, emerged in front of the entrance to the rocky hollow, where it became a stream. The boy did not utter a word. Happy to have found this pure water which had flowed so close by us, though it was so far from the cave, he drank long and deep.
Then he gave me an affectionate smile, squeezed my hand and went off to finish his deliveries. I lingered in the meadow where the stream flowed, feeling slightly drunk, breathing in the scents of hay and young grass. I did not move from that spot all day, as though I were in a state of grace. When night fell I returned home to my priest.
I now thought of nothing but the child. Early morning was the moment that best matched the vigour of our burgeoning love. I was sitting reading in my priest’s garden, a finger marking my place between the pages of Caesar’s Commentaries, when I thought I caught a glimpse of him on one of the village paths. Unable to sit there and wait, I went after him. I thought I could recognise the scent of him, here and there as I went, as if the light breeze had not quite dispersed it. In the shadows cast by the rocks, the meadows mirrored the cool freshness of his lips. The mere thought that he had passed this way was enough to make my heart pound in my chest. An unerring instinct was guiding me towards him.
I found him asleep, lying beside the stream in that little valley we knew, the one people called the Devil’s Valley. His bicycle was lying in a ditch, and two or three round loaves were still tied to the luggage rack. I walked towards him. Blackbirds were singing. All around us, thick brushwood alive with birds banked up towards grey rocks that stood out starkly against an intensely blue June sky. Buzzards circled lazily overhead. In the green grass, still soaked with dew, young snakes lay intertwined. He slept. There was scented pomade on his hair; and a trace of tiredness that tensed the muscles in his lovely face. He slept with one hand open, that little hand which I had already held in mine, which seemed to be waiting for me with all the power of love, and the simplicity of friendship.
I sat down beside him. There was something of myself in his mannerisms, his face; we shared the same sex, hence my happiness on that peaceful morning. I took his hand and slowly squeezed it.
“I was asleep,” he said.
“Yes, you were asleep and I woke you.”
I was perfectly aware of the power of my words. It seems to me that I seduced him by the sound of my voice alone. Even in completely innocent circumstances, I spoke a completely different language to the one he was used to hearing. My voice, which was a little hoarse, unsettled him and imposed my will upon him. The emotion I felt when I was with him helped me to change the tone, without even trying to. I spoke to him in an unfamiliar way which uprooted him from his own self and his way of life.
“I haven’t finished my deliveries.”
“I know.”
He stood up. We walked into the darkened passageway where we had been before. In the silence and the darkness of the earth, I said: Where are you? My hand sought out his face, the sweet softness of his lips. We reached what must once have been a bend in the river: I love you, he whispered. And then he fell into my arms, overwhelmed, like our voices in that passageway. In the full light of day he was so in control of himself, a little sly even; but here he showed his true nature, and it was tender and passionate. He was exhausted after delivering the bread, and tiredness seemed to have made him a little drunk. I adored him all the more because, since I could not see him, he was the very image of my heart’s most secret desires. I am your little girl, he said. Everything about him delighted me. He was more like a girl than a real girl; he acted out the role enchantingly against the mysterious backdrop of the cave. I seized him by the hair, and pushed him gently against the damp, cold rock; in the silent passageway, where I could hear the sound of waters bubbling under the earth, I truly believed that I was embracing love in its purest form, and I could have died of happiness.
Once we were out in the meadow again, all his boyish masculinity returned, and with it his courage and his nobility. I made no mention of the little girl he had claimed to be; he must come to appreciate that I could speak both to his soul, in the depths of the cavern, and at other times to the boy in him. He took a knife from his pocket, cut deeply into one of the loaves, and handed me a piece of bread.
“Eat this in remembrance of me.”
Consecrated bread could not have moved me as much.
When I got back to my priest’s house, I sat in the shade of a wall. Arrow-slits defended our church, which had no other opening save a narrow doorway. Two knights sitting astride a single horse, carved into the grey stone, offered ample proof that this was a Templar building. The nice, respectable parish priests would have shuddered with horror if they had raised their eyes a little higher to examine the strange sculptures just under the roof. Even without those abominations, everything about this place proclaimed a fierce determination to express the scandalous opinion that Man was made for Man, and not for Woman; that Woman is the Enemy. I was discovering the true mysteries, the true joy. The whole area was marked with the stamp of the Knights Templar. Crows soared over the rocky cliffs, full of secret lairs and tunnels; a potent magnetic force emanated from the immense hills, covered with undergrowth and chestnut saplings. The countryside was ablaze in the June sunshine; the hay was being brought in under rocks ploughed and shaped by the waters. The summer heat, the shrill cries of insects in a land swarming with snakes, all inflamed my love for this child who, like a freshwater spring, gave himself without a word.
A summer storm thundered down onto the forest out of a cloudless sky. We were intoxicated with summer. The child felt it, just as I did. A Europe of harvests, caves and boy sodomites filled my blood with abominable thoughts. The church’s cool interior gave me respite from the violence of the day. When my eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness I sat down in a pew and opened a missal. I loved Latin; the virile strength of the language was in step with my passions, with my pounding heart. I was young; it pleased me not to be disturbed in this little church where nobody ever came, and to be able to dream of my love in peace. And yet I was afraid; the storm which was rumbling in the distance could not signify anything good.
FOR A FEW DAYS our life was wonderful. He belonged to no one but me; and no one suspected a thing. In the cave I worked him as one might work a piece of clay, a charmingly cool piece of clay. What a delicious task that was in the fierce summer heat! All the time the men were bringing in the hay, I was adoring a child in the depths of the earth. He was born in my arms to the accompaniment of my voice, almost singing with joy. At the end of the passageway I awakened him to full knowledge of himself; and his little mouth babbled tearful thanks in the darkness of the cave, where he freely expressed his need for loving caresses and embraces. One day, I struck a match so that I could see him; stripped of its outer covering, his whole body shone white. His clothes were round his ankles; it was the most radiant sight imaginable. The boy was standing at the well-spring of life, shuffling his feet on the cave floor, drunk, wordless, unhurried, very far from the light; and he was dancing. I struck a second match to see him again, but blew it out almost immediately, blessing the darkness which flung him into my arms.
We went outside, passing from delicious darkness to the hot air and blindness of the mid-afternoon. My greatest wish would have been never to return from that place, and to spend the rest of my life in the cave.
SOMETIME around the twentieth of June, I was eating with my priest:
“The police are in the village,” he said.
My heart stopped in its tracks. “It’s a terrible story,” he went on. “Seems a twelve-year-old boy has been offering his body to some local man. No one knows who. They’re questioning the child at the moment, giving him a good thrashing, in the end they’re bound to make him say what they want.”
I felt as though someone had just struck me on the head with a stick, as though I were about to die. We were sitting at the table
. There was bread in my mouth, but I couldn’t swallow it. I saw myself in prison. At this very moment the one I loved must be suffering too, and suffering terrible violence! I imagined his panic, the terror of being interrogated. The first lightning-bolt had struck him, but the second would be directed at me. I left; I crossed the sun-burned fields of corn without even seeing them. The insects’ cries pierced deep into my heart; the anguish which had taken hold of me at the table became a sharp pain which had entered my chest for ever and which fear kept reviving, like repeated stabs from a knife. That evening I would be arrested, I had no doubt of it. The storm was still thundering far away. All the brutality of the earth was revealed to me; those peasants, beating iron under the rocks, those ears of corn, those horrible insect cries. The thunder’s rumblings echoed off the grey cliffs, riddled with holes where the crows nested. I walked along the river. Delinquent, I repeated to myself over and over again. My highest joy was reprehensible, against the law. At last I fell into a ditch, like a blind man, like a drunkard.
I had to go back. In my current state all I could do was go to the church. I opened the nail-studded door, its rough boards blackened by some unknown fire. I saw candles and a catafalque, made ready to receive a dead body; I climbed up to the altar, opened a prayer-book used by the choirboys, and read this sentence: Sanctum et terribile nomen ejus, initium sapientiae timor Domini. Murmuring the orison calmed my pain. Then I took great strides around the empty church. The coolness of the vaulted space where my footsteps rang on the paving stones reminded me of the cave. I washed my face in the coolness of a holy water stoup. Had someone spied on us? Who had guessed the secret of our love? He too could count himself dead and buried. The child had felt the storm building up. The previous day, in the meadow, he had looked at me with a kind of wild passion, squeezed my hand with a tenderness that was almost painful, and taken his leave without showing his fear too clearly, sure of himself, still believing that he could lie to his family. At this moment he was having to answer for himself not to his family but to the gendarmes. Our village had had to call in reinforcements from the police station in a neighbouring small town; I imagined the terror this twelve-year-old child must be feeling, seeing the gendarmes who had come to the village because of him, making enquiries. Did they promise him forgiveness, if he accused me of shameful acts? Did they threaten him with the House of Correction if he deceived the gendarmes? What did he know of laws, and paternal Power?
The Sorcerer's Apprentice Page 2
