The attacks, though, have disappeared. There are no more attacks. I’ve deliberately cut out meat and vegetables. Whenever I feel a little dizzy, I take a very small quantity of bread dipped in wine. And fasting seems to agree with me. My head is clear and I feel stronger than I did three weeks ago, much stronger.
People have stopped being bothered by my dizzy spells. The truth is that I, too, am starting to grow accustomed to this sad face of mine which can’t get any thinner and which still, inexplicably, retains an air of youth, I don’t dare say: of health. At my age, a face doesn’t sag, the skin, stretched taut over the bones, remains elastic. There’s always that!
I’ve just reread these lines written last night: I spent a good, very restful night, and feel full of courage and hope. It is a reply from Providence to my complaints, a reproach full of gentleness. I’ve often noticed – or thought I caught – that imperceptible irony (I unfortunately can’t find another word). It’s like the shrug of a mother watching her child take its first tentative steps. Oh, if only we knew how to pray!
The countess now only replies to my greeting with a very cold and very distant nod of the head.
Today I saw Dr Delbende, an old doctor who is thought of as heavy-handed and doesn’t practise much any more, because his colleagues are always making fun of his velvet trousers and his permanently greased boots, which give off an odour of tallow. The curé of Torcy had told him I was coming. He made me lie down on his couch and for a long time palpated my stomach with his long hands, which weren’t in fact exactly clean (he’d just returned from hunting). As he examined me, his big dog, lying in the doorway, followed each of his movements with extraordinary, adoring attention.
‘You’re in a pretty bad way,’ he said. ‘Just from this’ – he seemed to be calling his dog to witness – ‘it’s easy to see you haven’t always eaten your fill, have you?’
‘I think I used to,’ I replied. ‘But now—’
‘Now it’s too late! And what about alcohol, eh, what about that? Oh, not what you’ve drunk, of course. What was drunk for you, long before you were born. Come and see me again in two weeks, I’ll give you a note for Professor Lavigne in Lille.’
My God, I am well aware how heavily heredity weighs on shoulders like mine, but the word alcoholism is hard to take. As I dressed, I looked at myself in the mirror, and my sad face, a little yellower every day, with that long nose, those deep lines that descend as far as the corners of my mouth, the short but hard beard a bad razor can’t get rid of, suddenly struck me as ugly.
The doctor must have caught my gaze, because he started laughing. The dog responded by barking, then jumping for joy. ‘Down, Fox! Down, you filthy beast!’ Finally we went into the kitchen. All that noise had cheered me up somewhat, I don’t know why. The tall fireplace, filled with bundles of sticks, was blazing like a haystack.
‘Whenever you’re bored, feel free to drop by. That’s something I wouldn’t say to everyone. But the curé of Torcy told me about you, and I like your eyes. They’re loyal eyes, a dog’s eyes. I also have dog’s eyes. It’s quite rare. You and I and Torcy are the same breed, a strange breed.’
The idea of belonging to the same breed as those two robust men would certainly never have occurred to me. And yet I realized he wasn’t joking.
‘What breed is that?’ I asked.
‘The breed that keeps standing. And why does it keep standing? Nobody really knows. Are you going to say: the grace of God? Only, I don’t believe in God, my friend. Wait! No point reciting your little lesson to me, I know it by heart: “The spirit blows where it will, I belong to the soul of the Church.” Nonsense like that. Why stand rather than sit or lie down? The physiological explanation doesn’t hold water. The hypothesis that there’s a kind of physical predisposition isn’t borne out by the facts. Athletes are generally peaceable and terribly conformist citizens, and they only recognize effort that pays – not ours. Obviously, you people invented paradise. But as I was saying the other day to Torcy, “Admit that you’d see it through, with or without paradise.” And anyway, between ourselves, everyone gets into your paradise, don’t they? The workers in the vineyard, right? When I’ve worked a bit too much – I say worked a bit too much the way people say they’ve drunk a bit too much – I wonder if we aren’t simply proud people.’
He laughed noisily, and his laughter was painful to hear. It was as if his dog thought the same: it had suddenly interrupted its scampering about and lain down flat on its belly, humbly, raising towards its master a calm, attentive gaze, a gaze that seemed detached from everything, even from the obscure desire to understand a pain that echoed deep in its insides, to the last fibre of its poor doggy body. And with the tip of its muzzle carefully placed on its crossed paws, its eyes blinking, its long back run through with strange quivers, it growled softly, as if at the approach of an enemy.
‘I’d like to know first of all what you mean by keeping standing?’
‘That would take a long time. To cut things short, let us admit that the vertical position only suits the mighty. To take that position, a sensible man waits until he has the power – the power or its outward sign, money. But I didn’t wait. In the third year, during a retreat, the superior of the school in Montreuil asked us to take a motto. Do you know the one I chose? “Face up to things.” Face up to what, I ask you, a boy of thirteen! …’
‘Face up to injustice, perhaps.’
‘Injustice? Yes and no. I’m not one of those people who are constantly talking about justice. First of all, word of honour, I don’t demand it for myself. Who on earth would I demand it of, since I don’t believe in God? To suffer injustice is the condition of mortal man. Look, ever since my colleagues spread the rumour that I don’t sterilize anything, my clientele has disappeared, my only patients now are a bunch of yokels who pay me in poultry or baskets of apples and think I’m an idiot anyway. In one way, in comparison with the rich, these fellows are victims. But you know what, Father? I tar them with the same brush as their exploiters, they’re no better than them. While waiting for their turn to exploit, they swindle me. Only …’
He scratched his head, looking at me out of the corner of his eye, without seeming to, and I noticed that he had turned red. On his old face, that redness was beautiful.
‘Only, it’s one thing to suffer injustice, it’s quite another to put up with it. They put up with it, and it degrades them. That’s something I find hard to take. It’s a feeling we can’t control, right? When I find myself at the bedside of a poor devil who doesn’t want to die quietly – it’s a rare thing, but we do observe it from time to time – my damned nature really gains the upper hand and I feel like saying to him, “Get out of there, you fool! I’ll show you how it’s done correctly!” Pride, right? Always pride! In a sense, young man, I’m not a friend of the poor, I have no desire to be their Newfoundland dog. I’d rather they sorted things out without me, that they sorted things out with the mighty of this world. But no, they spoil the profession, they make me ashamed. It’s awful to feel a connection with a bunch of good-for-nothings who, medically speaking, are no more than garbage. A matter of breeding, I guess. I’m a Celt, a Celt from head to foot, our breed is sacrificial. The rage for lost causes, right? Anyway, I think mankind is divided into two distinct species, depending on the idea we have of justice. For some, it’s a balance, a compromise. For others—’
‘For others,’ I said, ‘justice is something like the fulfilment of charity, its triumphant coming.’
The doctor looked at me for a long while with an air of surprise and hesitation, which I found quite embarrassing. I think my words had displeased him. But then they were only words.
‘Triumphant! Triumphant! How clean your triumph is, my boy. You’re going to tell me the kingdom of God is not of this world? Agreed. But what if we gave the clock a little push all the same? What I’m reproaching people for is not that the poor are still with us. And I’ll give you people your due, I’m even happy to accept that the burd
en should fall on old beasts like me to feed them, clothe them, look after them, wipe them clean. What I don’t forgive you, since you have charge of them, is that you hand them over to us so dirty. Do you follow me? After twenty centuries of Christianity, damn it, there shouldn’t still be any shame in being poor. Or else you betrayed your Christ! I can’t get away from that. For heaven’s sake, you have everything you need to humiliate the rich and bring them to heel. The rich are hungry for consideration, and the richer they are, the hungrier. If only you’d had the courage to put them in the back row, next to the font, or even out on the church porch – why not? – it would have made them think. They would all have envied the poor men’s pews, I know them. Everywhere else the first, but here, in the house of Our Lord, the last, do you see? Oh, I know perfectly well it isn’t easy. If it’s true that the poor man is in the image and likeness of Jesus – Jesus himself – it would be embarrassing to let him climb into the churchwarden’s pew and show everyone a derisory face from which, in two thousand years, you haven’t yet found a way to wipe away the spittle. The social question is above all a matter of honour. It’s the unjust humiliation of the poor man that makes for poverty. Nobody is asking you to fatten up people who in any case, from father to son, have lost the habit of getting fat, who would probably remain as thin as rakes. And we’d even be willing to admit, at a pinch, for reasons of convenience, that the idiots, the idlers, the drunkards and all those frankly compromising phenomena should be eliminated. The fact remains that the poor man, a true poor man, an honest poor man, left to his own devices, will plump himself down in the last seats in the house of the Lord, his own house, and that we’ve never seen, and will never see, a Swiss guard adorned with feathers like a hearse come and get him from the back of the church and take him into the choir, with the respect due to a prince – a prince of Christian blood. That idea usually makes your fellow priests laugh. Futility, vanity. But why on earth do they lavish such tributes on the powerful of the earth, who revel in them? And if they consider them so ridiculous, why do they make them pay so dearly for them? “They would laugh at us,” they say, “a fellow in rags in the choir – that would quickly turn to farce.” Fine! Only when the fellow has finally changed his outfit for another made of pine, only when you’re sure, absolutely sure, that he’ll never again wipe his nose with his fingers, or spit on your rugs, what do you do with the fellow? Come on! I don’t care if people think I’m a fool, I’m on the right track, the Pope himself wouldn’t make me budge. And what I’m saying, my boy, is what your saints did, so it can’t be so stupid. On their knees before the poor man, the lame, the leper, that’s how we see your saints. An odd army, where the corporals merely give a passing tap of friendly protection on the shoulder of the royal host, while the marshals prostrate themselves at his feet!’
He broke off, a little embarrassed by my silence. True, I don’t have much experience, but I think I’m able to recognize a certain tone that betrays a deep wound in the soul. Someone other than I might at that moment have been able to find the words needed to convince, to placate. I don’t know those words. A true pain that comes from man belongs first of all to God, it seems to me. I try to receive it humbly in my heart, as it is, I try my best to make it mine, to love it. And I understand the hidden meaning of an expression that has become banal – ‘to commune with’ – for it is true that I commune with this pain.
The dog had come and placed its head on his knees.
(For two days, I’ve been reproaching myself for not having replied to what amounted to an indictment, and yet, deep down, I can’t blame myself. Besides, what could I have said? I am not the ambassador of the God of the philosophers, I am the servant of Jesus Christ. And what would have come to my lips, I fear, would have been only a doubtless very strong argument, but one that was also so weak that for a long time it has convinced me without placating me.)
There is no peace but in Christ.
* * *
The first part of my programme is on its way to being realized. I have undertaken to visit every family at least once every three months. My fellow priests are only too pleased to call this plan extravagant, and it’s true that it will be hard to keep to such a commitment because I absolutely mustn’t neglect any of my duties. People who claim to judge us from afar, from their comfortable offices, where they repeat the same work every day, can hardly be expected to grasp the disorder, the disjointed nature of our daily life. We barely manage to carry out our regular tasks – those whose strict execution makes our superiors say: Now there’s a well-maintained parish. And then there are the unforeseen things, which are never insignificant! Am I where Our Lord wants me? That’s a question I ask myself twenty times a day. For the Master we serve does not merely judge our life – He shares it, He takes it on Himself. We would have much less difficulty in contenting a God who was a surveyor and a moralist.
I announced this morning, after High Mass, that any young sportsmen of the parish wishing to form a team could meet in the presbytery, after vespers. I didn’t make this decision lightly, I carefully noted in my registers the names of the likely members – probably fifteen, at least ten.
The curé of Eutichamps has intervened with the count (he’s an old friend of the chateau). The count didn’t refuse the land, he just wants to rent it out by the year: 300 francs a year for five years. At the end of this lease, unless there is a new agreement, he will regain possession of the said land, and any improvements, any buildings that have gone up, would become his property. The truth is, he probably doesn’t believe in the success of my enterprise; I even assume he’s trying to discourage me by this haggling, which is so unlike his position and his character. He said some quite harsh things to the curé of Eutichamps: that muddled intentions, however good, were a danger to everyone, that he wasn’t the kind of man to make commitments to vague projects, that I first had to prove I could walk before trying to run, and that he wanted to see what he calls my guinea pigs in their jerseys as soon as possible.
I only had four enrolments – not very good! I knew, of course, that there was already a sports club in Héclin, luxuriously endowed by Monsieur Vergnes the shoemaker, who provides work for the populace of seven communes. True, Héclin is twelve kilometres away, but the village boys can easily get there by bicycle.
In the end, we did exchange a few interesting ideas. I got the impression these poor young people were being put off by their more vulgar classmates, who attend dances and run after girls. As Sulpice Mitonnet, the son of my former bell ringer says, ‘The tavern makes you sick, and it’s expensive.’ While waiting for things to improve, and for as long as we don’t have sufficient numbers, all we propose is to set up a modest study circle, with a games room, a reading room and a few magazines.
Sulpice Mitonnet had never much drawn my attention. He doesn’t enjoy good health, and has just finished his military service after being deferred twice. Now, for better or worse, he plies his trade as a painter and is considered lazy.
I think he suffers more than anything from the coarseness of the surroundings in which he is forced to live. Like many of his peers, he dreams of a job in town, because he has good handwriting. Alas, the coarseness of the big towns, while it may be of another kind, strikes me as no less to be feared. It is probably more insidious, more contagious. A weak soul cannot escape it.
After his friends had left, we spoke for a long time. There is an expression in his vague, even evasive eyes that I find quite moving: the expression of a creature doomed to incomprehension and solitude. Mademoiselle Louise has the same expression.
* * *
Madame Pégriot informed me yesterday that she wouldn’t be coming to the presbytery again. She would be ashamed, she said, to take any more money for such insignificant work. (It is true that my somewhat frugal regime and the state of my linen leave her a great deal of free time.) Conversely, she added that ‘she is not in the habit of giving up her time for nothing’.
I tried to turn the thing into a jok
e, but couldn’t get a smile from her. Her little eyes blinked with anger. Despite myself, I feel an almost insurmountable revulsion at the sight of that round, flabby face, that low forehead that pulls her meagre bun towards the top of her skull, and above all that fat neck with its thick horizontal grooves, always gleaming with sweat. We cannot control such impressions, and I am so afraid of betraying myself that I am sure she reads my thoughts.
She ended with an obscure reference to ‘certain people she has no desire to meet here.’ What does she mean?
* * *
The governess came for confession this morning. I know the curé of Heuchin is her spiritual advisor, but I couldn’t refuse to hear her. Those who believe that the sacrament allows us to enter immediately into the private lives of people are truly naive! If only we could get them to experience it for themselves! Previously accustomed to my little penitents in the seminary, I still find it hard to understand through what terrible metamorphosis people end up giving such a schematic, inscrutable image of their inner lives … I believe that, once past adolescence, few Christians are guilty of sacrilegious confessions. It is so easy not to make confession at all! But there is worse. There is that slow crystallization of small lies, subterfuges, ambiguities around matters of conscience. The shell keeps something like the shape of what it covers, that’s all. By force of habit, and with time, the least subtle eventually create for themselves an entire language of their own, which remains incredibly abstract. They do not hide much, but their sly frankness resembles those tarnished panes of glass that only allow in a diffuse light, in which the eye can make out nothing.
What, then, remains of confession? It barely skims the surface of conscience. I do not dare say that beneath that surface conscience decays, but rather that it petrifies.
* * *
A terrible night. As soon as I closed my eyes, sadness seized hold of me. I can unfortunately find no other word to describe a feeling of faintness that cannot be defined, a true haemorrhage of the soul. I woke abruptly with a great cry in my ear – but is cry the right word? Obviously not.
Diary of a Country Priest Page 8