The Avignon Quintet

by Lawrence Durrell

  The town began to suffer sleepless nights as the bombing sharpened; from Lord Galen’s best bedroom Von Esslin could hear the sirens, and hear the ambulances plying their trade after each attack. Holes in the pavements became a commonplace. But he had grouped his armour round the castle at Villeneuve, regretting its prominence as a target but insisting to himself that if the bridge was put out of action he could at least disengage in a westerly fashion; but … this was no consolation if one thought of an enemy coming up from, say, Nice. He was teased by all this problematic strategy. Yes, things had changed, there was a new kind of urgency in the air. One day he received a personal order from the Leader telling him to turn out and witness the execution of three “conspirators” in his sector. No explanations were offered. In a cold blue dawn he watched as three young Austrian aristocrats, brown and slender as sheepdogs, entered the prison yard where they were attended by an executioner wearing a top hat and morning dress; their heads were clumsily hacked off with an axe. The General went back to his office in a quiet rage. He had not even been told their names nor why they were being executed. He did not deign to ask either the Gestapo or Smirgel – an icy formality characterised their relations. But he took pleasure in crossing them whenever he could, for he was after all, the military power while they were the civil.

  The ill-omened Fischer was back once more after a refresher course in his macabre trade. He had done fatigues and courses in several of the more notable camps, and the experience had been hardly inspiriting (yes, he had been expecting something inspiring and uplifting, something also a little reassuring). He was tired like everyone else, but lately the way people looked at him without saying anything had begun to play upon his nerves. And then the camps – things were being slowed down steadily for they simply could not cope with the influx of men and women destined for the incinerators. He read a carefully reasoned Gestapo report on the matter which told him that it was no easy task to dispose of bodies – their fats and acids were hard of disposal, made poor and over-acid manures, were not suitable for soaps. It cost a fortune to gas and burn them. In spite of technical advances the rate of obliteration would have to slow down to keep pace with the machines and work task of the present system – some four hundred murder camps. He had walked dispiritedly around Buchenwald in the feathery light snow which creaked under his boots, brooding on the problem. How charming was the forest which surrounded the camp. Snow had made the slopes brindled with dark points of charcoal, stubble-like. Here in this peaceful decor had walked Goethe and Eckermann of whom he had never heard. The tall chimneys of the crematoria fumed softly on the blue icy air. Burning bodies stank like old motor tyres, he reflected, and blood hissed like rain on dead leaves. The situation was a wretched one – they had miscalculated – a humiliating state of affairs for a country with such great technical resources, such long experience, so many fine brains; but there was nothing for it, the whole process must slow down to keep pace with the available means. The latest lists of detainees would be pended and they would be allowed to return to their homes on a temporary basis. Pity. Among them was the little priest of Montfavet – it had not been difficult to convict him of having Jewish origins. It was his own fault, drawing attention to himself by absolving some of the senior officers, friends of Von Esslin. The names of the officers in question had been noted and filed for reference. But the arrest of the little priest had been a pleasant way of checkmating the General, with his superior airs!

  Things at Tu Duc had changed somewhat also with the advent of heavy rainstorms followed by frosts and ice-bound forest roads. In the park another tall pine had been torn down by the mistral. It made a tremendous tearing din in the night, the owls flew whewing in all directions. The old conservatory sprang a leak and rain dripped into it, falling upon the old Freudian sofa, so that it was necessary to rescue it and drag it into the kitchen where at least Constance could lie at ease on it before the fire.

  To her intense annoyance she fell ill, with high temperatures, raging migraine, toothache: indeed a whole congeries of petty troubles which all added up to an overwhelming fatigue, slowly accumulated over months. Strangely all this had tumbled in upon her like a sandcastle by the simple act of announcing Sam’s death to Livia as a historic fact. With that announcement and the realisations of the stark truth she had begun to feel bereft, dispossessed. What was she doing in this bitter and beautiful country?

  She must ask for leave, there was no other way of dealing with it.

  Her bedroom being so cold, she spent much of her time spread out upon the old sofa in front of the fire, devouring the pamphlets and books which she had brought with her. While the wind rattled the casements she reflected that it might have been upon this very sofa that Dora or the egregious Wolf Man … But who the devil in this country would be interested in such things? It gave her a great sense of loneliness to be locked up here with all this information, like a bank vault, while all round her the icy country was in the grip of the monotonies that war engenders. What she needed now was a spell of calm by the lake, and to this end she contacted the Swiss consul who came up to call on her in his old car. Yes, he was planning on a leave, and would be glad to offer her a seat in his car, but first she must really manage to shake off her ills, and scramble to her feet. The journey, though not fearfully long, was an arduous one, for as soon as the roads approached the mountains the ordinary amenities of travel – hotels, electricity, garages – failed them. But he would certainly go, and take her with him, when the time was ripe. It would anyway take a little time to get the necessary laissez-passer for the two of them, for Geneva must be contacted via Berlin.

  Buoyed up by the thought of escape from the town and its problems she actually persuaded herself back into a state of tolerable health once more, and used her sick leave to walk in the surrounding forest which was, more often than not, snowbound, though the paths were free of access. She would come back to the kitchen grate before dusk, glad of its warmth and the secrecy with which it invested her impoverished intellectual life: a few trivial pamphlets – she gnawed on them like a dog upon a bone. But the death of Livia was completely unexpected.

  As with everything concerning Livia, it seemed motiveless – or simply to belong to that category of events which history might later sum up as a sort of entropy. The sorrow, the abandon, the refusal – it was all there in the gesture: and at the same time a cry for help from the nursery of the human consciousness, for like a hunted animal she had crept back to the one burrow which had once been hers, for however short a time, in that forgotten summer. It made Constance groan in sympathy with what she imagined that profound pain must have been like to her inconstant sister; to carry the weight of it inside her like a stone. She hung there so still, some graphic illustration for a study of conceit – intellectual hubris, which had been her darkest driving force. Yet how had she got in and when? Later Blaise found the abandoned bicycle in the shrubbery by the pool, and one of the big Venetian shutters with weak hinges had been forced. But there were no other marks of her entry, and she had taken the stairs up to “her” room without turning aside into the habitable rooms where Constance dwelt.

  That actual intimation of the fact too was curious in the manner of its advent. They had had an afternoon of blusterous tramontana, continually changing direction and force, and exploding the light snowfalls with mischievous gusts. But towards dusk it ceased abruptly and gave way to a watery sunlight and open sky, preludes to nightfall. She could not say with any accuracy that she “heard” anything, no, but at a certain moment she raised her head from her book like a gun dog who scents the presence of game. She had a feeling that something somewhere was beckoning to her, called for her attention. She stood up and stayed stock-still for a long moment before setting off to follow this enigmatic signal through the labyrinths of the intuition. Once in the hall the stairs beckoned as they always do. It was like following a note of music – perhaps only to find at the end that there was somewhere a musical tap dripping in a
dry tin basin. No, but this was soundless. Up she went, and on the first floor there might have been an excuse to hover a bit, though all the rooms were shut. She threw open the doors with a definitive air, but nothing was revealed apart from traces of mice in the dust, and the obstinate tapping of fronds at the window. It was a long time since she had come up here. Next came the semi-landing with the lunette window, and here the door opened under the pressure of a single finger, and with a sigh and creak. She entered very slowly, gradually revealing to herself the hanging figure with its contrite downcast head, chapfallen now and pale from lack of blood. But all very orderly and condensed – there was no sprawling. The lost eye looked like the withered belly button of some medieval saint. With its light extinguished, the whole face, with its spectral planes, looked penitential, daunted by adversity. The pinions were quite explicitly Gestapo in their expert fit – you could pinion your own arms easily with them. The hair was sad and tired and the partings full of dandruff.

  She took the pulse, though it was merely formality; the stillness told all. Then for a moment she hugged the ankles of the form, crying “Livvie! Livvie!” Then came the problem of releasing the body from its ropes – how could this be done without Blaise? Suddenly she took wing, racing down the stairs and out across the garden to the house of the couple, calling him now in urgent tones, telling him to bring his axe and follow her. Together they retraced their steps until once more they stood before Livia’s body. A dull thwack of Blaise’s axe and it swirled and thumped at their feet upon the floor of the little loft. Blaise crossed himself over and over again and muttered prayers of a sort. Constance sank down upon a chair.

  The pain she felt now, accompanied as it was by a frustrated vexation which cast her back into the deepest depths of her childhood, was as physical as it was banal, though she could not give it a true location – what a crazy mixture of migraine, ulcer, cystitis, all coming so suddenly upon so much fever and fatigue that it seemed to lay rough hands upon her shoulders, pushing her down to the hard kitchen chair. She had put her hands over her ears and pressed them tight but this was not to hear the hoarse question of Blaise, addressed partly to her and partly to the world at large: “Mais pourquoi?” Indeed it was the capital question, but it had been asked of Livia since her birth, for nothing that she did or was entered into the sphere of rational explanations. That echoing “Why” had resounded already in the mind of Constance as she stood, holding the hanging body round the thighs to ease the weight on the rope and facilitate the task of the axe, weeping all the while with the tears coming from some remote and secret stronghold of infancy. The “why” extended in every direction, on all sides. Why, for example, had they not been more alike since they were brought up together by the same inadequate child-hater, deprived of the cuddling and caressing which form the self-esteem of the body so that its image can project faith and acceptance, sure of itself? This was how Constance “read” Livia when she thought of her as a case. The bitter narcissism, the jealousy, the withdrawn and melancholy character had evolved out of this background which Constance had shared with her; Hilary much less, for he had been sent away. Exasperation raged within her as she gazed down upon the face, fast setting into its mould of final secrecy. She had seen much of death professionally, but that is not the same thing.

  Livia had fallen awkwardly with one leg doubled half under her, and she looked now like a dummy, a lay figure such as dressmakers use for their models. Blaise corrected the posture and then, after a moment’s thought, took off his scarf and lashed the ankles together. Meanwhile her sister sat there and stared at her, though she was really staring at her own thoughts and memories. What lasted was the stinging exasperation – never to have been confided in. And now this maladroit and graceless act to round everything off; she hoped, Constance hoped, that it would not compromise her own departure to Geneva. It was a troubling thought, and as if to echo it, Blaise said: “What shall we do with her?” His own mind told him that it would be best to bury her in the garden in some secret corner and say nothing to a soul.… But this did not appeal to Constance who could foresee searches and questionings following upon a disappearance of that kind. “Happily Madame Nancy is coming this evening with the duty car, so we can take her down to the morgue and I can approach a doctor to certify her death. At least I hope so.” The decision somehow released her frozen energy, and she went into action to prepare the body for easy transportation, pinioning the arms and covering the features. Then they rolled Livia in a coverlet and tied the form once round with a piece of cord. Thus she might be easily carried out of the house. Blaise also was concerned that his wife should not see the body – he said that he would tell her about the matter later on, when all was in order. “Let us have a drink,” he said, “a good drink. What an unhappy thing!” And for once Constance did not refuse the drink in favour of tea or coffee. Between them they placed the silent form upon the sofa, there to wait until they could get it into the back seat of the duty car. Constance hoped that there would be no hitch, or that Quiminal had not forgotten her promise.

  “No, no,” said Blaise; “If she said she will come, she will come. She is a Protestant, after all.”

  He had hardly uttered the prophetic phrase when they heard the peculiar and characteristic seething noise of the Volkswagen engine and the whine of its tyres on the gravel before the gate. They stood up somewhat irresolutely and waited for the girl, who walked down the garden path and clicked open the latch of the kitchen door, to find herself face to face with them. It surprised her to see Constance looking positively ill with distress and Blaise whose sorrow for his friend gave him a hangdog expression which would have been hard to interpret had not the blue eyes also taken in the wrapped and silent dummy on the sofa. She turned and put her arms about Constance, saying simply, “Tell me! Raconte!” and haltingly Constance told her the little they knew about the motives of Livia, and also about their recent meeting at Montfavet. Quiminal sat down on a chair and tapped the finger of her gloved hand upon her lips. “We must avoid any trouble if possible,” she said with decision, and her firm tone reinvigorated the resolve of her friend, who went to the sink in the corner and washed her face and hands slowly and methodically, while they both thought of ways and means to deal with the situation; somehow it would have to be declared – at least to the local authorities – and indeed explained. Slowly a plan began to dawn on them.

  Quiminal said, “Are you fit to come with me? Good! Then you will take her directly to the morgue, dropping me off at the office. I will join you as swiftly as I can with a doctor and with Smirgel – it would be wise to implicate him as he is likely to help rather than hinder. Do you agree? You know the morgue people already.” Constance had been down once or twice to identify or advise them on civilian corpses picked up by the police. Yes, it was feasible, and this way she might avoid taking Blaise with her into town to help – it would spare him unwelcome publicity as a contact of hers. “We’ll have a try,” she said and jumped up with a new resolution.

  Blaise was disappointed but said nothing; he went off to rejoin his wife. Together the two girls managed to carry and arrange the figure in the back of the car, somewhat awkwardly to be sure. Then they set off upon the icy road to Tubain, knowing that they must reach the town before nightfall. This bleak winter dusk with its hint of frost and snow was ideal for such an expedition. The sentries on the checkposts were half-asleep with the cold and could not bother with them – they waved them on almost with impatience. And so across the bridge and into the enceinte of the massive walls, threading their way towards the quarter where the morgue lay. Quiminal was duly dropped off by the square and scampered off like a hare to perform her part of the bargain. Constance went on alone now until she came to the ugly little building which had once been an abbatoir and now did service as a morgue. She ran up the steps and, pressing the bell, lifted the flap of the letterbox to shout through it the name of the warden: “François! C’est Madame Constance. Open up please. Oui, c’est le
docteur.” With the customary sloth and groans the old man turned the key and the high doors swung open. “What do you bring?” he said, seeing nothing but an apparently empty car. “A client,” she replied according to the time-honoured pleasantry among those who dealt in corpses with as much emotion as a butcher does with meat. Grumbling, he turned back and she followed him to take one end of the old and stained stretcher into whose stout frame the slender wrapped form was placed, to be carried into the building where Constance herself elected to undress it before placing it in one of the long oak drawers which covered one whole wall of the establishment. François groaned and grumbled as he assisted her, but it was largely about the difficulty of running things in the present conditions. “Don’t blame me for the smell,” he said with bitterness. “How do they expect me to operate on half-power? No refrigeration plant could take it. The place is beginning to smell to high heaven.” He rambled on between groans as they conducted the body to the theatre where it would be placed upon a marble slab – an old-fashioned one which recalled those upon which fishmongers displayed their catch half a century before. “Careful with her – she’s a friend,” cried Constance in the face of his clumsy and negligent gestures, his attempts to undo the figure which was so professionally tied up by Blaise. “Let me do it.”

  “How old is it?” he said, and then, “A woman did you say?” But he recoiled when he saw who it was. “It’s the nurse of Montfavet,” he said, “I know her all right.” This was an unexpected departure. He went on, “But she is in uniform, part of the army. We can’t take her in here.” This was one of the distinctions which Constance had foreseen and feared. She was examining those dreadful bruises upon the throat when a voice from behind her answered the objection. It was the voice of Smirgel and it said, “I will be responsible. Please do go ahead. A doctor is on his way here.” He seated himself upon the only chair and seemed about to make notes or fill in forms or perform some clerical work. Meanwhile they turned on the arc lamp above the high operating table, and which at once threw up the surroundings with its light. They were in a large crypt with white tiled walls, somewhat greasy; a number of hoses depended from the ceiling, with one of which they were now able to wash the quiet body – water so hot that it contributed a distinct tint of warmth to the marble flesh. They cut off the body’s dark hair which Constance put in her handbag – she would afterwards make keepsakes from it for the three survivors of the shared summer. Strangely enough while she was doing this Smirgel came to her side and stared down upon the recumbent figure for a moment before he gave a very small, a hardly audible sob, but whether of affection or contrition, or both, it was impossible to judge. Constance eyed him keenly and most curiously. “Was she anything to you?” she asked, on the spur of an impulse, but the German did not answer. He went back to his seat where he crossed his legs and closed his eyes. They went on with the preparations, drying her and cutting her nails short. Then came the cheap cotton shroud through which her shorn head peered with an expression of nervous vagueness. And now came Quiminal with a man who was apparently a doctor for he carried the forms which attested to the death of someone “from natural causes”. But first he went through the parody of verifying the death by placing a stethoscope upon the pulse. (The strangulation marks were hidden by the shroud.) Then he went into the outer office and wrote industriously for a moment upon several forms which he thrust upon Quiminal before taking his leave in perfunctory fashion.