In the end, I turned away from him and walked out and found myself back in the street.
Midnight, at Monsieur Dufréty’s
I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me to borrow twenty francs from Madame Duplouy, that way I could have slept in a hotel. It’s true I wasn’t in a fit state to think clearly, I was in despair at having missed the train. But my poor old classmate was pleased to see me and take me in. I feel that all is well.
I will probably be reprimanded for having accepted, even for one night, the hospitality of a priest whose situation is not legitimate (it is worse). The curé of Torcy will call me reckless. He would be mistaken. That was what I told myself yesterday as I climbed those dark, malodorous stairs. I stood for a few minutes outside the door of the apartment. A yellowed visiting card was fixed there with four drawing pins: Louis Dufréty, representative. It was horrible.
A few hours earlier, I might not have dared go in. But I am no longer alone. There is this thing inside me … Anyway, I pulled the bell with the vague hope that I wouldn’t find anyone at home. He came and opened the door. He was in his shirtsleeves, with one of those pairs of cotton trousers that we put on under our cassocks, and barefoot in his slippers. He said to me almost sharply, ‘You should have told me you were coming, I have an office in Rue d’Onfroy, I’m only camping out here. The place is awful.’ I kissed him. He had a coughing fit. I think he was more moved than he would have liked to show. The remains of a meal were still on the table. ‘I have to eat,’ he resumed with poignant solemnity, ‘though unfortunately I don’t have much appetite. You remember the haricot beans at the seminary? The worst of it is that I have to cook here, in the alcove. I’ve started to hate the smell of fried fat, it’s a nervous thing. Anywhere else I would devour it.’
We sat down side by side. I barely recognized him. His neck has grown inordinately longer and above it his head seems quite small, almost like a rat’s head.
‘It’s kind of you to come. To be honest, I was surprised when you answered my letters. Between ourselves, you weren’t all that broad-minded back in the seminary.’
I don’t know what I replied.
‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘I’m going to have a little wash. I’m taking my time today, which I don’t often do. Still, an active life has its good points. But don’t think I’ve become a Philistine! I read an enormous amount, I’ve never read as much. One day, I might even … I have some very interesting notes, very true to life. We can talk about that later. You used to be pretty good at putting together alexandrines, if I remember correctly. I’d value your advice.’
A moment later, through the half-open door, I saw him slip out to the stairs with a milk can in his hand. I was alone again with … My God, it’s true I would have gladly chosen another death! Lungs that gradually melt like a piece of sugar in water, an exhausted heart that needs to be constantly stimulated, or even that strange disease of Dr Laville’s, the name of which I’ve forgotten: I suspect all these must seem rather vague and abstract as threats … Instead of which, merely putting my hand on my cassock in the spot where the doctor’s fingers lingered for such a long time, I think I can feel … Most likely, it’s my imagination, but no matter! However much I tell myself that nothing in me has changed in weeks, or almost, the thought of returning home with … with this thing disgusts and embarrasses me. I was already only too tempted to feel revulsion towards my own body, and I know the danger of such a feeling, which would result in losing heart completely. My first duty, at the beginning of the ordeal that awaits me, should surely be to come to terms with myself …
I have thought a lot about this morning’s humiliation. I think it is due rather to an error of judgement than to cowardice. I lack common sense. It is clear that in the face of death, my attitude cannot be that of men much superior to me, men I admire, like Monsieur Olivier or the curé of Torcy. (I deliberately put those two names together. In such a situation, both would have kept that supreme distinction which is the natural disposition, the freedom of great souls. The countess, too … Oh, I am not unaware that these are qualities rather than virtues, and that they cannot be acquired! Alas, there must be something in me, since I love them so much in other people … It is like a language I might understand very well without being able to speak it. I do not learn from my failures. Which is why, now that I need all my strength, my sense of my own powerlessness grips me so strongly that I lose the thread of my meagre courage, the way a clumsy orator loses the thread of his speech. This ordeal is not new. In the past I would find consolation in the hope of some wonderful, unforeseeable event – martyrdom, perhaps? At my age, death seems so remote that we are not swayed by the daily evidence of our own mediocrity. We do not want to believe that an event like death will have nothing strange about it, that it will probably be neither more nor less mediocre than ourselves: a death in our own image, in the image of our destiny. It does not seem to belong to our familiar world, we think of it as we think of those fabulous lands whose names we read in books. Here was I, just a little while ago, thinking that my anguish had been that of a sudden, momentary disappointment. But what I thought was lost beyond imaginary oceans is actually in front of me. My death is there. It is a death like any other, and I will enter it with the feelings of a very common, very ordinary man. It is even a certainty that I will be no better at dying than I have been at taking care of myself. I will be just as clumsy, just as awkward. People keep telling me, ‘Be simple!’ Well, I’m doing my best. But it’s so difficult to be simple! Lay people say ‘the simple’ as they say ‘the meek’, with the same indulgent smile. They ought to say ‘the kings’.
My God, I give you everything, with all my heart. Only, I don’t know how to give, I just let others take. The best thing is to remain calm. For if I do not know how to give, You know how to take … And yet I would have liked to be – once, just once – liberal and magnanimous with You!
I was very tempted to go and see Monsieur Olivier in Rue Verte. I was actually on my way there, but turned back. I think it would have been impossible for me to hide my secret from him. Since he is leaving for Morocco in two or three days, it wouldn’t have mattered very much, but I sense that in his presence I would despite myself have played a role, spoken a language that isn’t mine. I don’t want to challenge anything, defy anything. The heroic thing, for someone like me, is not to be a hero, and since I lack strength, I would now like for my death to be small, as small as possible, I would like it to be indistinguishable from the other events of my life. After all, it is to my natural awkwardness that I owe the indulgence and friendship of a man like the curé of Torcy. So perhaps it is not unworthy. Perhaps it is the awkwardness of childhood. As severely as I judge myself sometimes, I have never doubted that I have the spirit of poverty. The spirit of childhood is very similar. The two things may well be one and the same.
I am glad I didn’t see Monsieur Olivier again. I am glad I am starting the first day of my ordeal here, in this room. Actually, it’s not a room, a bed has been put up for me in a little corridor where my friend keeps his pharmaceutical samples, in packets that give off a terrible smell. There is no solitude deeper than a certain kind of ugliness, a certain desolate ugliness. A gas burner, the kind that is called, I think, a fish-tail burner, hisses and spits above my head. It seems to me that I am wrapping myself in this ugliness, this misery. It would once have filled me with revulsion. I am glad that today it welcomes my misfortune. I have to say that I haven’t sought it out, and didn’t even recognize it immediately. When, last night, after my second blackout, I found myself on the bed, my first thought was to flee, to flee at all costs. I recalled the time I fell in the mud outside Monsieur Dumouchel’s enclosure. This was worse. I didn’t only recall the hollow path, I saw also my house, my little garden. I thought I could hear the great poplar which, on the calmest nights, wakes well before dawn. I imagined foolishly that my heart had stopped beating. ‘I don’t want to die here!’ I cried. ‘Let me be taken down, let me be dragg
ed anywhere, I don’t care!’ I had certainly lost my head, but all the same I recognized the voice of my poor classmate. It was both angry and tremulous. (He was arguing with someone on the landing.) ‘What do you want me to do? I can’t carry him by myself, and you know perfectly well we can’t ask the concierge for anything more!’ Then I felt ashamed and realized I was a coward.
I really need to make things clear here once and for all. I shall therefore resume my account at the point where I left off a few pages earlier. After my former classmate had left, I was alone for a while. Then I heard whispering in the corridor and at last he came in, still holding his milk can in his hand, very out of breath and very red in the face. ‘I hope you’ll have dinner here,’ he said. ‘In the meantime, we can have a chat. Perhaps I’ll read you a few pages … It’s a kind of diary, I call it: My progress. My case should interest quite a few people, being so typical.’
As he spoke, I must have had the first of my dizzy spells. He forced me to drink a large glass of wine, and I felt better, apart from a violent pain in the region of my navel, which gradually eased off.
‘What can we do?’ he resumed. ‘We have nothing but bad blood in our veins. The junior seminaries take no account of developments in hygiene, it’s really awful. A doctor said to me once, “You’ve all been undernourished intellectuals since childhood.” That explains a lot of things, don’t you think?’
I couldn’t help smiling at this.
‘Don’t think I’m trying to justify myself! The one thing I believe in is total honesty to others as well as to myself. To each his truth, that’s the title of a fantastic play, by a very well-known author.’
I am reporting his words exactly. They would have struck me as ridiculous if I hadn’t at the same time seen on his face clear signs of a distress I no longer hoped he would confess.
‘If it wasn’t for this illness,’ he resumed after a silence, ‘I think I’d still be at the same point as you. I’ve read a lot. And then, when I left the sanatorium, I had to take my chances and look for a position. That takes willpower, it takes guts, guts more than anything. I suppose you think there’s nothing easier than to place merchandise? A mistake, a serious mistake! Whether you’re selling pharmaceuticals or a gold mine, whether you’re Ford or a humble representative, you always have to know how to handle people. Handling people is the best way to learn willpower, as I’ve discovered. Fortunately, the risky part is over. Within six weeks, my business will have been finalized, and I’ll enjoy the pleasures of independence. Mind you, I don’t encourage anyone to follow me. There are painful moments, and if I hadn’t been sustained by my sense of responsibility towards … a person who has sacrificed the most brilliant situation for my sake and to whom … But forgive me this allusion to the event that …’
‘I am aware of it,’ I said.
‘Yes … I’m sure you are … Anyway, we can talk about it very objectively. As you may imagine, I’ve arranged it so that tonight at least you won’t have to encounter …’
My gaze clearly embarrassed him, I don’t suppose he found in it what he had hoped to read. Faced with his poor, tortured vanity, I had the same painful impression I had had some days earlier in the presence of Mademoiselle Louise. It was the same inability to feel pity, to share anything, the same narrowing of the soul.
‘She usually gets home at this time. I asked her to spend the evening with a lady friend, a neighbour …’
Across the table, he timidly stretched towards me a thin, livid arm emerging from an excessively wide sleeve and placed his hand on mine, a hand that was both very sweaty and very cold. I think he was genuinely moved, except that his eyes were still lying.
‘She has nothing to do with my intellectual development, although our friendship was merely at first an exchange of views, of judgements on men and life. She was head nurse at the sanatorium. She’s an educated, cultivated woman with an above-average background: one of her uncles is a tax collector in Rang-du-Fliers. In short, I felt obliged to keep the promise I made her there. So please don’t go thinking I was swept off my feet! Does that surprise you?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘But it seems to me that you are wrong to stop yourself from loving a woman you have chosen.’
‘I didn’t know you were sentimental.’
‘Listen,’ I went on, ‘if I were ever unfortunate enough to break my vows, I’d rather it was for the love of a woman than as a result of what you call your intellectual development.’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t agree with you,’ he replied curtly. ‘First of all, if you don’t mind my saying so, you’re talking about something you know nothing about. My intellectual development …’
He must have continued for a while longer, since I have the memory of a long monologue to which I listened without understanding it. Then my mouth filled with a kind of sickly-sweet mud, and his face appeared to me with extraordinary clarity and precision before sinking into the shadows. When I opened my eyes, I was spitting out what remained of a slimy thing sticking to my gums (it was a clot of blood), and I immediately heard a woman’s voice saying, in the accent of the Lens area, ‘Don’t move, Father, it’ll pass.’
I regained consciousness immediately. The vomiting had been a great relief. I sat down on the bed. The poor woman made to go out, and I had to retain her by the arm.
‘I’m sorry. I was with a neighbour on the other side of the corridor. Monsieur Louis panicked a little. He wanted to run to the Rovelle pharmacy. Monsieur Rovelle is a friend of his. Unfortunately the shop isn’t open at night, and Monsieur Louis can’t walk very fast, he gets out of breath very easily. When it comes to health, he doesn’t have much to spare.’
To reassure her, I took a few steps up and down the room, and she finally consented to sit down. She is so small that one would easily take her for one of those little girls you see in miners’ cottages to whom it is difficult to give an age. Her face is not unpleasant, quite the contrary, nevertheless it seems that one would only have to turn one’s head to forget it immediately. But her faded blue eyes have such a humble, resigned smile that they are like the eyes of an old woman, an old weaver woman.
‘When you feel better, I’ll go,’ she went on. ‘Monsieur Louis wouldn’t like it if he found me here. It wasn’t his idea for us to talk, he told me in no uncertain terms when he left that I should tell you I was a neighbour.’
She sat down on a low chair.
‘You must have a really bad opinion of me, the room hasn’t even been tidied, everything’s dirty. That’s because I leave for work very early in the morning, at five o’clock. And I’m not very strong either, as you can see.’
‘Are you a nurse?’
‘A nurse? Get away with you! I was a cleaner in the sanatorium when I met Monsieur Louis … I suppose you’re surprised that I call him Monsieur Louis, even though we live together?’ She bowed her head, pretending to rearrange the folds of her thin skirt. ‘He’s stopped seeing any of his old … I mean, his old classmates! You’re the first. In a way, I know perfectly well I’m not meant for him. Only, what can you do? At the sanatorium, he thought he was cured, he got ideas in his head. As far as religion goes, I don’t see anything wrong about living as husband and wife, but apparently he’d promised, right? And a promise is a promise. No matter! At the time, I couldn’t talk to him about such a thing, especially as … I’m sorry … I loved him.’
She uttered the word so sadly that I didn’t know what to say in reply. We both blushed.
‘There was another reason. An educated man like him isn’t easy to treat, he knows as much as the doctor, he knows all the remedies, and even though he’s now in the profession, even with his fifty-five per cent discount drugs are expensive.’
‘What do you do?’
She hesitated for a moment. ‘Cleaning work. The most tiring part is having to rush from one neighbourhood to another.’
‘But what about his trade?’
‘Apparently it brings in a good income. Only, he’s had to bor
row for the desk, the typewriter. On top of that, he hardly ever goes out. Talking tires him out so much! Mind you, I’d get by perfectly well on my own, but he’s got it into his head that he’s going to educate me, as he puts it!’
‘When?’
‘Well, in the evening, at night, because he doesn’t sleep much. Workers like me need our sleep. It’s not that he does it deliberately, he just doesn’t think. “It’s already midnight,” he says. In his mind, I have to become a lady! A man as good as him, well, he can’t help it … What’s for sure is that we wouldn’t be together if …’ She was looking at me extraordinarily closely, as if her very life depended on the words she was about to say, the secret she was about to reveal. I don’t think she mistrusted me, but she lacked the courage to utter the fatal words to a stranger. She was actually embarrassed. I have often remarked in poor women that reluctance to talk about illness, that sense of propriety. Her face turned red. ‘He’s going to die,’ she said. ‘But he doesn’t know it.’
I couldn’t help giving a start. She went even redder.
‘Oh! I know what you’re thinking. A curate from the parish came here, a very polite man, whom Monsieur Louis doesn’t know. According to him, I was stopping Monsieur Louis from returning to his duties, as he put it. Duty, well, that’s not an easy thing to understand. Oh, I’m sure these gentlemen would treat him better than I could, given the bad air in the apartment and the question of food which isn’t what it should be, in spite of everything. (As far as quality goes, I manage, it’s the variety that’s lacking, Monsieur Louis goes off things very quickly!) Only, I’d like the decision to come from him, that would be better, don’t you think? If I left, he’d feel betrayed. Because the fact is, no offence meant, he knows I don’t have much religion. So …’
Diary of a Country Priest Page 26