Not that the world took such trouble with me. By the age of twelve, a boy born to poverty already understands many things. And why did I even need to understand? I had seen. Lust is not understood, it is seen. I had seen those savage faces fixed suddenly in an indefinable smile. God, why do we not realize more often that the mask of pleasure, stripped of all hypocrisy, is the same as the mask of anguish? Oh, those voracious faces that still appear to me in dreams – one night out of ten, perhaps – those pained faces! As I sat huddled behind the counter of the tavern – because I constantly escaped from the dark lean-to where my aunt thought I was busy learning my lessons – they loomed above me and the light of the dim lamp, hanging by a copper wire, always set swinging by some drunkard, made their shadows dance on the ceiling. As young as I was, I could very well distinguish one kind of intoxication from another, and it was the other, and only the other, that really scared me. The maid who worked in the tavern – a poor lame girl with an ashen complexion – only had to appear for those dazed eyes to immediately take on a fixedness so heartrending that I still cannot think of it with composure … Of course, people might say that these are a child’s impressions, that the unusual precision of such memories, the terror they inspire in me after so many years, make them somewhat suspect … Well, perhaps, but let high society take a look for itself! I don’t think we can learn much from those over-sensitive, over-changeable faces which are good at pretending and which hide in order to satisfy their lust just as animals hide in order to die. That thousands of people spend their lives in a state of disorder and prolong to the verge of old age – sometimes well beyond that – the never-satisfied curiosities of adolescence, I don’t deny, of course. What do we learn from these frivolous creatures? They may be the playthings of the demons, but they are not their true prey. It seems that God, with what mysterious design I do not know, would not let them fully commit their souls. Likely victims of a wretched legacy of which they present only a harmless caricature, retarded children, soiled but uncorrupted brats, Providence allows them to benefit from certain immunities of childhood … And then what? What to conclude? Because there are harmless maniacs, should we deny the existence of dangerous madmen? The moralist defines, the psychologist analyses and classifies, the poet sings his song, the painter plays with his colours like a cat with its tail, the actor emits his stage laugh, so what? I repeat that we don’t know madness any better than we know lust, and society protects itself from both of them, without wishing to admit it, with the same insidious joy, the same secret shame, and almost with the same means … What if madness and lust were one and the same?
A philosopher at ease in his library will of course have a different opinion on this matter than a priest, especially a country priest. I think there are few confessors who do not feel, over time, a kind of dizziness at the crushing monotony of those confessions. Not so much because of what they hear as because of what they sense through the words, so few of them and always the same, whose stupidity is overwhelming when you read them but which, whispered in the silence and the darkness, swarm like worms and smell of the sepulchre. And we are haunted then by the image of that always open wound, through which the substance of our wretched species drains away. What effort the brain of man might have been capable of if the poisoned fly hadn’t laid its larva in it!
We priests are accused, will always be accused – it is an easy charge to make! – of feeling, deep in our hearts, an envious, hypocritical hatred of virility. But anyone who has any experience of sin is aware that lust threatens constantly to stifle both virility and intelligence beneath its parasitical vegetation, its hideous proliferation. Incapable of creating, it can only tarnish the frail promise of mankind from the moment of conception; it is probably the origin, the fountainhead of all the flaws of our race, and when, lost in the great wild forest whose paths we do not know, we meet it face to face, just as it emerged from the hands of the Master of Spells, the cry that bursts forth from our entrails is not only one of horror but of imprecation: ‘It is you, and you alone, who unleashed death on the world!’
The fault of many priests who are more zealous than wise is to assume bad faith: ‘You’ve stopped believing because you’re embarrassed by belief.’ The number of priests I’ve heard saying things like that! Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say: purity is not prescribed to us, like a punishment, it is one of the mysterious but obvious conditions – as experience confirms – of that metaphysical knowledge of oneself, knowledge of oneself in God, that we call faith. Impurity does not destroy this knowledge, it wipes out the need for it. People have stopped believing because they have lost the desire to believe. You have lost the desire to know yourselves. This profound truth, your truth, no longer interests you. You may say that the dogmas you used to accept are still present in your thoughts, and that only reason rejects them. No matter! We only really possess what we desire, for there is no such thing for man as total, absolute possession. You no longer desire yourselves. You no longer desire your joy. You could only love yourselves in God, so you have stopped loving yourselves. And you will never again love yourselves in this world or in the next – eternally.
(At the bottom of the page, in the margin, are the following lines, crossed out several times but still decipherable: I wrote this in a great, unqualified anguish of heart and senses. A torment of ideas, images, words. The soul falls silent. God falls silent.)
* * *
I have the feeling that this is nothing yet, that the true temptation – the one I await – is coming up behind me, rising towards me, slowly, and these ravings are merely its forerunner. And my poor soul awaits it, too. It is silent. Body and soul held spellbound.
(The abruptness, the aggressive nature of my unhappiness. The spirit of prayer has left me painlessly, of its own accord, like a fruit falling from a tree …)
The horror only came afterwards. I did not realize that the vase was broken until I looked at my empty hands.
* * *
I know perfectly well that there is nothing new about such an ordeal. A doctor would probably tell me that I am simply suffering from nervous exhaustion, that it is ridiculous to claim to live on a little bread and wine. But first of all I don’t feel exhausted, far from it. I feel better. Yesterday, I had what was almost a meal: potatoes with butter. In addition, I easily get through my work. God knows I sometimes wish I had to struggle with myself! It would give me back my courage, I think. My stomach pains recur sometimes. But when they do, they come as a surprise, I no longer expect them from one moment to the next, as I used to …
I also know that much is recounted, whether true or false, about the inner sorrows of the saints. The resemblance, alas, is only apparent! The saints would not come to terms with their unhappiness, whereas I already feel I am coming to terms with mine. If I yielded to the temptation to complain to someone, the last link between God and me would be broken, and it seems to me that I would then enter into eternal silence.
And yet I went for a long walk yesterday in the direction of Torcy. My solitude is now so profound, so truly inhuman, that it suddenly occurred to me to go and pray at the grave of old Dr Delbende. Then I thought about his protégé, that man Rebattut whom I do not know. At the last moment, my strength failed me.
* * *
A visit from Mademoiselle Chantal. I do not think myself capable this evening of reporting anything of such a conversation, which was so upsetting … Wretch that I am! I know nothing about people. I never will know anything. The mistakes I make do not help me: they trouble me too much. I definitely belong to that race of weak, wretched people whose intentions are good, but who waver all their lives between ignorance and despair.
I rushed to Torcy this morning, after Mass. The curé of Torcy has fallen ill at the house of one of his nieces, in Lille. He won’t be back for another eight or ten days at least. In the meantime …
Writing strikes me as pointless. I can’t confide a secret to paper, I really can’t. Besides, I probably don’t have the
right.
My disappointment was so strong that on learning the news of his departure, I had to lean on the wall in order not to fall. The housekeeper was watching me with a look that was more curious than pitying, a look I have seen more than once in the last few weeks, and in very different people – the countess, Sulpice, others too … It is as if I scare them a little.
The washerwoman, Madame Martial, was hanging the washing in the courtyard, and as I gave myself a breather before setting off again, I clearly overheard the two women talking about me. One of them said more loudly, in a tone that made me blush, ‘Poor boy!’ What do they know?
* * *
A ghastly day for me. And the worst of it is that I feel incapable of any reasonable, moderate appreciation of facts whose true meaning may escape me. Yes, I have experienced moments of helplessness, of distress. But I always, unwittingly, kept that inner peace where events and people were reflected as in a mirror, a stretch of clear water that sent me back their image. Now the source is blurred.
It’s a strange thing – a shameful, thing, perhaps? – but at a time when, no doubt through my own fault, prayer is of so little help to me, I only find a little composure at this table, in front of these sheets of blank paper.
Oh, if only this were all a dream, a bad dream!
Because of Madame Ferrand’s funeral, I had to hold Mass at six o’clock this morning. The altar boy didn’t come, and I thought I was alone in the church. At that hour, in this season, it is hard to see much further than the steps of the choir, all the rest is in shadow. I suddenly heard, distinctly, the weak noise of a rosary sliding along an oak pew and onto the flagstones. Then nothing more. When it came to the blessing, I did not dare raise my eyes.
She was waiting for me at the door of the sacristy. I knew it. Her thin face was even more tortured than the day before yesterday, and there was that contemptuous, hard curl of her lip. I said to her, ‘You know perfectly well I can’t receive you here, go away!’ The look in her eyes scared me, although I didn’t think myself a coward. My God! What hatred in her voice! And there was still pride in those eyes, and no shame. Is it possible, then, to hate without shame? ‘Mademoiselle,’ I said, ‘what I promised to do I will do.’
‘Today?’
‘This very day.’
‘It’s just that it will be too late tomorrow. She knows I came to the presbytery, she knows everything. She’s as sly as an animal! I wasn’t suspicious before: you get used to her eyes, you think they’re good. Now I’d like to tear them out of her, oh, yes, I’d crush them under my foot!’
‘Speaking like this, so close to the holy sacrament, have you no fear of God?’
‘I’ll kill her,’ she said. ‘I’ll kill her or kill myself. Try explaining that away to your God!’
She came out with these ravings without raising her voice. On the contrary, at times I could barely hear her. I could hardly see her either, at least I could hardly make out her features. One hand placed on the wall, the other letting her fur hang down against her hip, she was leaning towards me. Her shadow, so long on the flagstones, had the shape of an arch. My God, the people who think that confession brings us into dangerous proximity with women are quite wrong! The liars or the maniacs we rather feel sorry for, and the humiliation of the others, the sincere ones, is contagious. It was only now that I realized the secret domination of that sex over history, its inevitability. A man in a rage simply looks mad. And the poor girls of the people I knew in my childhood, with their gesticulations, their cries, their grotesque bombast made me rather laugh. I knew nothing of that silent anger, that great impulse of the whole of a woman’s being towards evil, how she makes it her prey – that freedom, that naturalness in evil, the hatred, the shame … It was almost beautiful, with a beauty that is not of this world – or of the next – the beauty of an older world, from before sin, perhaps? – from before the sin of the angels.
I rejected this thought as best I could. It’s absurd, dangerous. First of all, I didn’t think it was a good thing to think, but nor did I formulate it very well. Mademoiselle Chantal’s face was quite close to mine. Dawn was slowly rising through the grimy stained-glass windows of the sacristy, a winter dawn, terrifying in its sadness. The silence between the two of us, of course, had only lasted a moment, long enough for a Salve Regina (and indeed the words of the Salve Regina, so beautiful and so pure, really had come to my lips without my realizing it).
She must have noticed that I was praying. She stamped her foot angrily. I took her hand, an excessively small, supple hand, which stiffened somewhat in mine. I suppose I must have gripped it more tightly than I had intended. I said to her, ‘Kneel first!’ She bent her knees slightly before the altar. She placed her hands on it and looked at me with an air of unimaginable insolence and despair. ‘Say: My God, I do not feel capable at this moment of doing anything other than offend You, but it is not I who offends You, it is this demon I have in my heart.’ She nevertheless repeated this word for word, in the voice of a child reciting. She is almost a little girl, after all! Her long fur had slipped completely to the floor, and I was stepping on it.
She stood up again abruptly, escaped from me rather, and with her face turned towards the altar said between her teeth, ‘You can damn me if you like, I don’t care!’
I pretended not to hear. What would have been the point? ‘Mademoiselle,’ I resumed, ‘I shan’t continue this conversation here, in the middle of the church. There is only one place where I can hear you.’ And I pushed her gently towards the confessional.
She herself got on her knees. ‘I don’t want to confess.’
‘I’m not asking you to. But just think how many shameful things these wooden partitions have heard in confession. In a way, they are impregnated with them. You may well be a noble young lady, but here pride is a sin like any other, one more piece of mud on a heap of mud.’
‘Enough of that!’ she said. ‘You know perfectly well that all I ask is justice. Besides, I don’t care about mud. Being humiliated as I am, that’s mud. Since that horrible woman entered the house, I’ve eaten more mud than bread.’
‘These are words you’ve learned in books. You’re a child, you should speak like a child.’
‘A child! I haven’t been a child for a long time. I know everything there is to know. I know enough for a lifetime.’
‘Calm down!’
‘I am calm. I wish you were as calm as I am. I heard them last night. I was just beneath their window, in the grounds. They no longer even bother to close the curtains.’ She began laughing, horribly. As she had not wanted to remain on her knees, she had to hold herself bent double, her forehead against the partition, and she was choked with anger. ‘I know perfectly well that they’ll do whatever they can to get rid of me, no matter what. I’m supposed to be leaving for England next Tuesday. Mother has a cousin there, she thinks it’s a very convenient, very practical idea … Convenient! That’s a laugh! But she believes everything they say, no matter what, just like a frog swallowing a fly. Ugh!’
‘Your mother …’ I began.
She replied with words that were almost obscene, which I dare not report. She said the unfortunate woman had been unable to defend her happiness, her life, she was a fool and a coward.
‘You listen at doors,’ I went on, ‘you peer through keyholes, you’re just like a spy, a fine, proud young lady like you! I’m nothing but a poor peasant, I spent two years of my youth in a wretched tavern you wouldn’t have wanted to set foot in, but I wouldn’t behave like you, not even to save my own life.’
She stood up abruptly and leaned against the confessional with her head bowed, her face as hard as ever.
‘Stay on your knees,’ I cried. ‘On your knees!’
She obeyed me again.
I had reproached myself the day before yesterday for having taken seriously what was perhaps nothing but obscure jealousy, unhealthy daydreams, nightmares. We have so often been warned against the wickedness of those whom our old treatises
call so amusingly ‘persons of the opposite sex’! I could well imagine how the curé of Torcy would have shrugged. But that was because I was alone at my table, reflecting on words mechanically retained in my memory, words whose tone had been lost irrevocably. Now, though, I had before me a strange face, distorted not by fear, but by a deeper, more inner panic. Yes, I am familiar with a rather similar distortion of the features, though I had only previously observed it in the faces of the dying and I put it down naturally to a simple physical cause. Doctors like to talk of the ‘mask of agony’. Doctors are often wrong.
Diary of a Country Priest Page 12