‘Listen,’ I said, ‘there is the Christian soldier …’ My voice was shaking as it shakes whenever some indefinable sign warns me that, whatever I do, my words will, depending on the will of God, either bring consolation or cause shock.
‘The knight?’ he replied with a smile. ‘At school, the good fathers still swore by his helm and his shield, they gave us the Chanson de Roland as if it were the French Iliad. Obviously those fine, upstanding fellows weren’t what the young girls think, but anyway, you have to see them as they presented themselves to the enemy, shield against shield, elbow to elbow. They were as good as the high-flown image they made an effort to live up to. And they didn’t borrow that image from anyone. Our races had chivalry in their blood, the Church only had to bless them. Soldiers, nothing but soldiers, that’s what they were, the world hasn’t known any others. They were protectors of the City, but they weren’t its servants, they dealt with it as equals. The highest military incarnation in the past, the soldier-farmer of ancient Rome, they virtually erased from history. Not that they were all either just or pure. But they stood for justice, a kind of justice that from time immemorial has haunted the sadness of the destitute, or occasionally filled their dreams. For when it comes down to it, justice in the hands of the powerful is only an instrument of government like any other. Why is it called justice? Let us rather say injustice, but calculated and effective, based entirely on the terrible experience of the weak man’s resistance, his capacity for suffering, humiliation and misfortune. For injustice to be maintained at the exact degree of tension, the wheels of the immense machine for making rich people have to keep turning, without the furnace exploding. And then one day the rumour went around the Christian lands that a kind of police force of the Lord Jesus was going to emerge … A rumour isn’t much, I grant. But wait, when we think about the fabulous, uninterrupted success of a book like Don Quixote, we’re forced to realize that if mankind hasn’t yet finished taking revenge on its own great disappointed hope by laughing at it, it’s because it had borne it for a long time, had been heavily influenced by it! Righters of wrongs with their iron fists. You may well say: those men struck big blows, heavy blows, they forced their way into our consciousness. Even today, women pay very dearly for the right to bear their names, their poor soldier names, and the naive allegories that were drawn on their shields by some clumsy cleric fire the imagination of the wealthy masters of coal, gas and steel. Don’t you find that comical?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Well, I do! It’s so funny to think that lay people identify with these high-flown figures even after seven hundred years of domesticity, laziness and adultery. But they can whistle for them. Those soldiers belonged only to Christendom, Christendom no longer belongs to anyone. There is no more, there never will be a Christendom.’
‘Why?’
‘Because there are no more soldiers. No more soldiers, no more Christendom. Oh, you’ll say that the Church survives, and that’s the main thing. Of course. Only, there’ll be no more temporal kingdom of Christ, that’s over. The hope of it died with us.’
‘With you?’ I exclaimed. ‘There are no lack of soldiers!’
‘Soldiers? Call them military. The last true soldier died on 30 May 1431, and it’s you people who killed her! Worse than killed her: condemned her, cut her to pieces, then burned her.’
‘We also made her a saint …’
‘Because God wanted it. And the reason He raised that soldier so high is precisely because she was the last. The last of such a breed could only be a saint. God also wanted her to be a saint. She respected the ancient pact of chivalry. The old sword, never surrendered, rests on knees that the proudest of our people can only kiss with tears. I like that, you know, that discreet reminder of the cry at tournaments: “Honour to the Ladies!” That’s enough to make your learned men who so mistrust women screw up their eyes with resentment, eh?’
The joke would have made me laugh, for it is very much like those I heard so many times at the seminary, but I could see that his eyes were sad, with a sadness I am familiar with. And that sadness strikes deep into my soul; when confronted with it I feel a kind of stupid, insurmountable shyness. ‘What is it you blame the men of the Church for?’ I finally said, foolishly.
‘Me? Oh, not much. For having secularized us. The first true secularization was that of the soldier. And that was a long time ago. When you whine about the excesses of nationalism, you should remember that you once smiled benignly at the Renaissance jurists who took over Christian law and patiently, under your very noses, your very beards, re-established the pagan State, the State that knows no other law but that of its own salvation – ruthless nations filled with avarice and pride.’
‘Listen,’ I said, ‘I don’t know much about history, but it seems to me that the anarchy of feudal times had its risks.’
‘Yes, I’m sure it did. And you priests didn’t want to run those risks. You left Christendom unfinished, it was taking too long to construct, it cost a lot and brought little in return. Besides, didn’t you once build your basilicas with the stones of the Templars? A new law, when the Justinian code was still within reach? … “The State controlling everything and the Church controlling the State”: that elegant formula must have pleased your politicians. Only, we were there, we soldiers. We had our privileges, and beyond frontiers, our immense fraternity. We even had our cloisters. Soldier monks! It was enough to stir the proconsuls in their graves, and you didn’t need much persuading either! A soldier’s honour, you understand, cannot be caught in the casuists’ trap. You just have to read the trial of Joan of Arc. “On the faith sworn to your saints, on your loyalty to the sovereign, on the legitimacy of the King of France, rely on us,” they said. “We relieve you of everything.” “I do not want to be relieved of everything,” she exclaimed. “So must we condemn you?” She could have replied: “Then I will be damned with my vow.” For our law was the vow. You had blessed that vow, but it is to that vow that we belonged, not to you. No matter! You gave us to the State. The State that arms us, clothes us and feeds us also takes charge of our conscience. We are forbidden to judge, forbidden even to understand. And your theologians approve, as was only to be expected. They hold their noses, but they grant us permission to kill, to kill anyone anyhow, to kill by order, the same permission they grant the executioner. Defenders of the soil, we also suppress the mob, and when the mob is victorious, then we serve it in its turn. No loyalty required. And so we have become military. So perfectly military that, in a democracy accustomed to every kind of servility, the servility of the generals who are also ministers shocks even the lawyers. So exactly, so perfectly military that even a man of great breeding like Lyautey always rejected that slanderous name. And besides, there will soon be no more military men. From the age of seven to the age of sixty, everyone … Everyone will do what, precisely? … Even the word “army” becomes devoid of meaning when nations throw themselves on each other – like the tribes of Africa – tribes of a hundred million men. And the theologians, although increasingly disgusted, will continue to grant exemptions – printed forms, I suppose, drawn up by the scribes of the Ministry of National Conscience? But between ourselves, where will they stop, your theologians? In the future, the best killers will kill without any risk to themselves. Thirty thousand feet above the ground, any stupid engineer, nice and comfortable in his slippers, surrounded by specialist workers, will just have to turn a button to exterminate an entire town and then will hurry home, fearing only to miss his dinner. Obviously no one will call that employee a soldier. Does he even deserve the name “military man”? And you priests, who refused a Christian burial to poor actors in the seventeenth century, how will you bury him? Is our profession, then, so debased that we can no longer absolutely answer for a single one of our acts, that we must share the terrible innocence of our machines of steel? Come now! You consider a poor devil who gets drunk one spring night and beats his girlfriend to be in a state of mortal sin, whereas the man who k
ills whole towns will only have to change his trousers and go and give the consecrated bread while the children he’s just poisoned are finally vomiting their lungs out into their mother’s aprons? Jokers, all of you! It’s pointless to pretend you’re dealing with the Caesars! The ancient city is dead, it is dead like its gods. And the gods who protect the modern city, we know them, they dine in town and are called bankers. Draw up as many concordats as you wish! Outside Christendom, there is no place in the West either for the motherland or for the soldier, and your cowardly compromises will soon have brought both into total dishonour!’
He had stood up, and as he spoke he enveloped me with his strange gaze: his eyes were still pale blue, but in the dim light they seemed golden. He angrily threw his cigarette into the ashes.
‘Well, I don’t give a damn,’ he resumed. ‘I’ll be dead before that happens.’
His words had moved me to the depths of my heart. Alas, God has again put Himself in our hands – His body and His soul – the body, the soul, the honour of God in our priestly hands – and what these men give unsparingly on all the roads of the world … Would we even be able to die like them? I asked myself. For a moment, I hid my face, horrified to feel tears running between my fingers. To weep in front of him, like a child, like a woman! But Our Lord gave me back a little courage. I got to my feet, dropped my arms and with a great effort – the memory of it hurts me – offered Him my sad face, my shameful tears. He looked at me for a long time. Oh, pride is still quite alive in me. I looked for a smile of contempt, or at least of pity, on his resolute lips – I feared his pity more than his contempt. ‘You’re a nice boy,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t want any other priest than you at my deathbed.’ And he kissed me, as children do, on both cheeks.
* * *
I have decided to leave for Lille. My substitute came this morning. He said I looked well. It’s true that I am feeling much better. I have a thousand rather crazy projects. I have definitely doubted myself too much so far. Self-doubt is not humility, I even think it is sometimes the most exalted, almost insane form of pride, a kind of jealous ferocity that makes a poor wretch turn against himself, as if to devour himself. Therein must lie the secret of hell.
I fear there are within me the seeds of great pride. For a long time now, the indifference I feel to what is generally called the vanities of this world has inspired more mistrust than satisfaction in me. I tell myself there is something disturbing in the insurmountable revulsion I have towards my own ridiculous person. My neglect of myself, my natural awkwardness, against which I have stopped struggling, even the pleasure I feel in certain little injustices that are done to me – and it is the little ones that hurt the most: do these things not hide a disappointment the cause of which, in God’s eyes, is not pure? Of course, all this keeps me, come what may, on fairly good terms with my fellow man, for my first impulse is to blame myself, I easily agree with other people’s opinions. But is it not true that in doing so I am gradually losing confidence, spirit, the hope of something better? … My youth – at least what I have of it! – doesn’t belong to me, so do I have the right to hide it under a bushel? Certainly, if Monsieur Olivier’s words gave me pleasure, they haven’t turned my head. What I retain of them is simply that I can gain the friendship of people like him at the first attempt, people who are superior to me in so many ways … Is that not a sign?
I also remember something the curé of Torcy said: ‘You are not made for a war of attrition.’ And what we have here is indeed a war of attrition.
My God, what if I were to be cured? What if the crisis from which I am suffering were the first symptom of the physical transformation that sometimes happens around the thirtieth year? A phrase I read somewhere has been haunting me for the last two days: ‘My heart is with those at the front, my heart is with those who get themselves killed.’ Those who get themselves killed … Soldiers, missionaries …
The weather is only too suited to my … I was going to write: my joy, but the word would not be accurate. Expectation would be better. Yes, a great, a wonderful expectation, which is even there while I sleep, because it positively woke me up last night. I found myself with my eyes open, in the darkness, and so happy, the impression of my happiness was so inexplicable as to be almost painful. I got out of bed, drank a glass of water and prayed until dawn. It was like a great murmur of the soul, which made me think of the immense rustling of foliage that precedes sunrise. What sun will rise in me? Is God showing me His mercy?
* * *
I found in my letterbox a note from Monsieur Olivier, postmarked Lille, which is where he says he is going to spend his last days of leave, in the house of a friend at 30 Rue Verte. I don’t recall if I told him that I would soon be visiting that city myself. What a strange coincidence!
Monsieur Bigre’s car will come and pick me up at 5.30 this morning.
I had gone to bed very calmly last night, but sleep didn’t come. For a long time I resisted the temptation to get out of bed and take up this diary once again. How dear it is to me! The very idea of leaving it here during my absence, even for such a short time, I find literally unbearable. I don’t think I will resist, I think I will stuff it into my bag at the last moment. Besides, it’s true that the drawers don’t close properly and cannot protect against prying eyes.
Alas, we think we do not cling to anything, and then one day when we have caught ourselves at our own game we realize that the poorest of men has his hidden treasure. The least precious of these, in appearance, are not the least important, on the contrary. There is certainly something unhealthy in the attachment I have to these pages. They have nevertheless been a great help to me during my ordeal, and today they are a valuable testament, too humiliating for me to be complacent, but quite accurate in recording my thoughts. They have delivered me from dreams. That is no small thing.
It is possible, probable even, that they will be useless to me from now on. God is lavishing so many mercies on me, and such unexpected and strange ones! I overflow with confidence and peace.
I have put a bundle of sticks on the fire, and I watch it burn before writing. My ancestors, as well as drinking too much and not eating enough, must also have been accustomed to the cold, for I always feel a kind of stupid awe at the sight of a large fire, like a child or a savage. How calm the night is! I sense I won’t get back to sleep.
I was finishing my preparations this afternoon when I heard the front door squeak. I was expecting my substitute, I thought I recognized his steps. To be quite honest, I was in fact engrossed in a ridiculous task. My shoes are in good condition, but the damp has turned them red, and I was blackening them with ink before polishing them. No longer hearing any noise, I made to go to the kitchen, and I saw Mademoiselle Chantal sitting on the low chair by the fire. She wasn’t looking at me, her eyes were fixed on the ashes.
It didn’t surprise me unduly, I admit. Resigned in advance to suffering the consequences of my errors, whether witting or not, I have the impression that I have at my disposal a suspension of mercy, a reprieve, I don’t want to predict anything, what would be the use?
She appeared a little disconcerted by my hello. ‘You’re leaving tomorrow, I gather?’
‘Yes, mademoiselle.’
‘Will you be coming back?’
‘That depends.’
‘It depends only on you.’
‘No. It depends on the doctor. I’m going to Lille to see a doctor.’
‘You’re lucky to be ill. I think illness probably gives us time to dream. I never dream. Everything happens in my head with horrible precision, it’s like the accounts of a clerk or a notary. Women in our family are very positive, you know?’ She approached me while I was carefully polishing my shoes. I was even doing it quite slowly, and it certainly would not have displeased me if our conversation had finished with a burst of laughter. Perhaps she guessed my thoughts. She said to me all at once, in a hissing voice, ‘Has my cousin talked to you about me?’
‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘B
ut I couldn’t tell you what he said. I don’t remember.’
‘It doesn’t matter! I don’t care about his opinion or yours.’
‘I think you’re only too eager to know mine.’
She hesitated for a moment, then replied simply yes, because she doesn’t like to lie.
‘A priest doesn’t have an opinion, I’d like you to understand that. Lay people judge in relation to the good or the ill they are capable of doing each other, and you cannot do me either good or ill.’
‘You should at least judge me according to … I don’t know … precepts, morality?’
‘I could only judge you according to mercy, and I don’t know what mercies are given to you, I will always be unaware of them.’
‘Come on, now, you have eyes and ears, and you use them like anyone else, I suppose?’
I think I smiled. ‘Oh, they wouldn’t tell me much about you!’
‘Go on, go on! What do you mean?’
‘I fear I may offend you. I remember seeing a Punch and Judy show when I was a child, one day when there was a fair in Wilman. Punch had hidden his treasure in an earthenware pot, and he was flapping his hands at the other end of the stage to distract the attention of the policeman. I think you flap about a lot in the hope of hiding the truth of your soul from everyone, or perhaps forgetting it.’
She was listening to me attentively, her elbows on the table, her chin in her hands, and the little finger of her left hand between her clenched teeth. ‘I’m not afraid of the truth, monsieur, and if you challenge me, I’m quite capable of confessing to you on the spot. I shan’t hide anything, I swear!’
Diary of a Country Priest Page 23