‘Are you two married?’ I asked.
‘No, Father.’ I saw a shadow pass over her face. Then she seemed to make her mind up all at once. ‘I don’t want to lie to you, I was the one who didn’t want it.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because of … Well, because of what he is! When he left the sanatorium, I hoped he’d get better, I hoped he’d be cured. Then, if he wanted it one day, maybe … I won’t be a cause of trouble for him, I told myself.’
‘And what did he think about that?’
‘Oh, nothing. He thought I didn’t want it because of my uncle in Rang-du-Fliers, an ex-postman, who has property and doesn’t like priests. I said he’d disown me. The funny thing is, the old man is disowning me, but because I’m unmarried, a concubine, as he puts it. Of his kind, he’s a very good man, the mayor of his village. “If you can’t even get that priest of yours to marry you,” he writes, “you must have become a worthless tramp.”’
‘But when …’
I didn’t dare finish, she finished for me, in a voice that might have seemed indifferent to many, but which I know well, which awakens in me so many memories, an ageless voice, the valiant, resigned voice that calms the drunkard, reprimands restless children, cradles the baby in its swaddling clothes, argues with the ruthless shopkeeper, implores the bailiff, reassures the dying, the voice of housewives, probably the same through the centuries, the voice that stands up to all the miseries of the world … ‘When he’s dead, I’ll have my cleaning. Before the sanatorium, I was a kitchen maid in a preventorium for children, near Hyères, in the south. You know, there’s nothing better than children, children are God.’
‘You may find a similar position,’ I said.
She blushed even more. ‘I don’t think so. The thing is – I wouldn’t like this to get around, but between ourselves, I wasn’t very strong before, and now I’ve caught his illness.’
I fell silent, and she seemed very embarrassed by my silence.
‘It’s possible I had it before,’ she said apologetically. ‘My mother wasn’t very strong either.’
‘I wish I could help you,’ I said.
She must have thought I was going to offer her money, but after looking at me, she seemed reassured, and even smiled. ‘Listen, what I’d really like is for you to slip him a little note, if you can, about this idea he has about educating me. When you think that … Well, you know how it is, we don’t have much time left to spend together, the two of us, so it’s hard! He’s never been very patient, which isn’t surprising, being sick and all! But he says I’m doing it deliberately, that I could learn. Mind you, my illness must have something to do with it, I’m not that stupid … Only, what can I tell him? Just imagine, he’s started teaching me Latin! Me, who never even got my certificate. Besides, when I’ve finished my cleaning work, it’s like my mind is dead, all I want to do is sleep. Couldn’t we at least have a quiet talk?’ She bowed her head and played with a ring she wears on her finger. When she noticed that I was looking at the ring, she quickly hid her hand under her apron.
I was dying to ask her a question, but didn’t dare. ‘Your life is hard,’ I said. ‘Don’t you ever despair?’
She must have thought I was setting a trap for her, and her face became dark and attentive.
‘Aren’t you ever tempted to rebel?’
‘No,’ she replied, ‘only, sometimes there are things I just don’t understand.’
‘What kind of things?’
‘Oh, the kind of thoughts that come when you rest, Sunday thoughts I call them. Sometimes also when I’m tired, very tired … But why do you ask me that?’
‘Out of friendship,’ I said. ‘Because there are moments when I myself …’
She hadn’t taken her eyes off me. ‘You don’t look very well either, Father, to be fair! Well, the thing is, when I don’t feel up to anything any more, when I can’t even stand, what with that pain in my side, I go and hide in a corner, all alone and – you’ll laugh at this – instead of telling myself happy things, things that would cheer me up, I think about all the people I don’t know who are like me – and there are lots of them, it’s a big world! – beggars pacing up and down in the rain, lost children, sick people, lunatics in asylums howling at the moon, so many of them, so many! I slip in among them, I try to make myself small, and not only the living, you know, the dead, too, who’ve suffered, and people not yet born, who’ll suffer like us … “Why? Why do we suffer?” they all say … It seems to me like I’m saying it with them, I think I can hear them, it’s like a big murmur that cradles me. At moments like that, I wouldn’t change places with a millionaire, I feel happy. What can we do? I can’t help it, I don’t even reason with myself. I’m just like my mother. “If the biggest luck is to have no luck,” she used to say, “I’ve had my share!” I never heard her complain. And yet she was married twice, both times to drunks, worse luck! My dad was the worst, a widower with five boys, real devils. She put on weight like you wouldn’t believe, all her blood turned to fat. No matter. “There’s nothing tougher than a woman,” she also used to say. “The only time a woman should lie down is when she’s going to die.” She had a sickness that took her in the chest, in the shoulder, in the arm, she couldn’t breathe any more. The last night, Dad came home drunk as a lord, as usual. She tried to put the coffee pot on the fire, and it slipped out of her hands. “I’m a silly old fool,” she said, “run to the neighbour and borrow another one and come straight back, before your father wakes up.” When I got back, she was almost dead, with one side of her face almost black, and her tongue moving between her lips, also black. “I have to lie down,” she said, “I’m not feeling well.” Dad was snoring on the bed, she didn’t dare wake him, she went and sat down by the fire. “You can put the bacon in the soup now,” she said, “it’s come to the boil.” And she died.’
I didn’t want to interrupt her because I understood perfectly well that she had never talked for so long to anybody. In fact, she seemed suddenly to wake from a dream, and was very embarrassed.
‘Here’s me talking and talking, and I can hear Monsieur Louis coming home, I recognize his steps in the street. It’s best if I go. He’ll call me again, most likely,’ she added, blushing, ‘but don’t say anything to him, he’ll be furious.’
Seeing me on my feet, my friend reacted with joy, which touched me.
‘The pharmacist was right, he laughed at me. It’s true, the slightest blackout scares me terribly. It was probably just indigestion.’
We decided then that I would spend the night here, on this cot.
I’ve tried to get to sleep again, but it’s impossible. I was afraid the light, and especially the hissing of the gas burner, would bother my friend. I half opened the door and looked into his room. It was empty.
No, I’m not sorry I stayed. On the contrary. I even think the curé of Torcy would approve. Anyway, if it was a foolish thing to do, it shouldn’t matter any more. The foolish things I do have stopped mattering: I’m out of the running.
Of course, there were lots of things about me that might have caused my superiors anxiety. But the fact is, we were looking at things the wrong way. For example, the dean of Blangermont wasn’t wrong to doubt my capabilities, my future. Only, I didn’t have a future, and neither of us knew it.
I also tell myself that youth is a gift from God, and like all gifts from God, there are no regrets involved. Only those He has singled out not to survive their youth are young, truly young. I belong to that race of men. I used to wonder what I would be like at fifty, at sixty. And of course, I couldn’t find an answer. I couldn’t even imagine it. There was no old man in me.
That assurance is sweet to me. For the first time in years, for the first time ever perhaps, it seems to me that I am confronted with my youth, looking at it without mistrust. I think I recognize its face, a forgotten face. It is looking back at me, forgiving me. Overwhelmed by the sense of fundamental awkwardness that made me incapable of any progress, I claimed t
o demand from it what it couldn’t give, I found it ridiculous, I was ashamed of it. And now, both weary of our pointless quarrels, we can sit down together at the side of the road, without saying anything, and for a moment breathe in the great peace of the evening which we will enter together.
It is also very sweet to tell myself that nobody has been guilty of excessive severity towards me – I do not write the great word ‘injustice’. Of course, I am glad to pay tribute to those souls capable of finding a principle of strength and hope in the sense of iniquity of which they are victims. Whatever I do, I am fully aware that I will always be loath to know that I am the cause – even the innocent cause – or just the opportunity for someone else’s sin. Even on the cross, accomplishing in anguish the perfection of His holy humanity, Our Lord does not claim to be a victim of injustice: Non sciunt quod facient. Words intelligible to the youngest children, words one could call childish, but which the demons must have been repeating to themselves ever since without understanding, with growing horror. Just when they were expecting a thunderbolt, it is like an innocent hand descending on their bottomless pit.
So it gives me great joy to think that the reproaches from which I have sometimes suffered were only made to me in common ignorance of my true destiny. It is clear that a reasonable man like the dean of Blangermont was too determined to predict what I would be later and was unconsciously resenting me today for the faults I would have tomorrow.
I have loved people naively (in fact I doubt I can love any other way). Such naivety would in the long run have become dangerous for me and for my fellow man, I feel. For I have always resisted quite clumsily an inclination of my heart that is so natural I allow myself to believe it invincible. The thought that this struggle will finish, no longer having an object, had already come to me this morning, but at the time I was still stunned by Dr Laville’s revelation. It only entered me little by little. It was a thin trickle of clear water, and now it overflows from my soul and fills me with coolness. Silence and peace.
Oh, of course, during the last few weeks, the last few months that God grants me, for as long as I am able to keep charge of a parish, I will try, as I did before, to act with caution. But when it comes down to it, I will have less care for the future, I will work for the present. That kind of work seems to be what I am suited for, what fits my capabilities. For I have no success except with little things, and so often tormented by anxiety as I am, I have to admit that my triumph lies in the little joys.
This crucial day will have been like all the others: it did not end in fear, but the one that is now beginning will not open in glory. I am not turning my back on death, but nor am I confronting it, as Monsieur Olivier would surely know how to do. I have tried to look at it as humbly as I can, although not without a secret hope of disarming it, winning it over. If the comparison did not seem so foolish, I would say that I looked at it as I had looked at Sulpice Mitonnet, or Mademoiselle Chantal … Alas, that would require the ignorance and simplicity of little children.
Before I knew what my fate was to be, I was often afraid that I wouldn’t know how to die when the moment came. The fact is, I am terribly impressionable. I recall something said by good old Dr Delbende, reported, I think, in this diary: that monks or nuns are, apparently, not always the most resigned to dying. Today, these qualms give me comfort. I can well understand why a man who is sure of himself, of his own courage, may desire to make of his death agony a perfect, accomplished thing. Failing which, mine will be what it can be, and nothing more. If the words were not very bold, I would say that for a person who is truly in love, even the most beautiful poems cannot equal a shy, hesitant declaration. And on mature reflection, this comparison should not offend anybody, for a human being’s death agony is before anything else an act of love.
It is possible that the Lord may make mine an example, a lesson. I would be just as happy if it moved people to pity. Why not? I have loved my fellow man very much, and I really feel that this earth of the living has been sweet to me. I will not die without tears. Since nothing is more alien to me than stoic indifference, why would I wish for an impassive death? Plutarch’s heroes inspire both fear and boredom in me. If I entered paradise in that disguise, it seems to me that I would make even my guardian angel smile.
Why be anxious? Why plan ahead? If I am afraid, I will say I am afraid, without shame. May the Lord’s first look, when His holy face appears to me, be a look that reassures!
I fell asleep for a moment with my elbows on the table. Dawn cannot be far, I think I can hear the milk wagons.
I would like to leave without seeing anyone. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem easy, not even if left a note on the table promising to come back soon. My friend wouldn’t understand.
What can I do for him? I fear he would refuse to meet the curé of Torcy. I fear even more that the curé of Torcy would surely wound his vanity and commit him to some absurd, desperate enterprise, which he is stubborn enough to undertake. Oh, my old master would surely gain the upper hand in the long run. But if that poor woman was telling the truth, there is not much time left.
There is not much time left for her either … Last night, I avoided looking straight at her, I think she would have read my thoughts in my eyes, and I wasn’t sure enough of myself. No, I wasn’t sure enough! However much I tell myself that another person would have provoked the words I dreaded rather than wait for them, I’m not entirely convinced. ‘Leave,’ he would have said to her, I suppose. ‘Leave, let him die far from you, reconciled.’ She would have left. But she would have left without understanding, once again obeying the instinct of her race, her gentle race destined since time immemorial for the knife. She would have lost herself in the crowd of men with her humble unhappiness, her innocent rebellion, which has no other language with which to express itself than the language of acceptance. I don’t think she is capable of cursing, for the unfathomable ignorance, the supernatural ignorance of her heart is the kind that an angel guards. Isn’t it terrible that there is nobody to teach her to raise her brave eyes towards the Gaze of all Resignations? Would God have accepted from me the priceless gift of a hand that does not know what it gives? I did not dare. The curé of Torcy will do as he chooses.
I said my rosary, with the window open on a courtyard that is like a dark well. But I get the feeling that above me the corner of the wall facing east is starting to turn white.
I’ve rolled myself in the blanket and even pulled it up over my head a little. I’m not cold. My usual pain no longer bothers me, although I do feel like vomiting.
If I could, I would leave this house. I would like to retrace the steps I took through the empty streets yesterday morning. My visit to Dr Laville and the hours spent in Madame Duplouy’s tavern have left me with nothing but a vague memory, and as soon as I try to focus my mind and evoke specific details, I feel an extraordinary, insurmountable weariness. What suffered in me then is no longer, can no longer be. A part of my soul remains insensitive and will remain so to the end.
Of course, I regret my weakness in front of Dr Laville. I should be ashamed, though, to feel no remorse, for what idea of a priest must I have given to that man who was so resolute, so firm? No matter, it’s over. The mistrust I had of myself, of my person, has been dispelled, I think, for ever. That struggle has come to an end. I no longer understand it. I have come to terms with myself, with this poor carcass.
It is easier than people think to hate oneself. The grace is to forget oneself. But if all pride were dead in us, the grace of graces would be to love oneself humbly, like any of the suffering limbs of Jesus Christ.
(Letter from Monsieur Louis Dufréty to the curé of Torcy.)
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LOUIS DUFRÉTY, REPRESENTATIVE
Lille, February … 19 …
Father,
I am sending you without further delay the information you were good enough to request. I will compl
ement it at a later stage with an account to which my state of health has not allowed me to put the finishing touches and which I intend for the Young People’s Journal of Lille, a very modest review for which I write in my spare moments. I will make sure to send you a copy as soon as it appears in the bookshops.
It was a great pleasure for me to receive a visit from my friend. Our affection, born in the best years of our youth, was of a kind that has nothing to fear from the ravages of time. I believe in fact that his first intention was not to prolong his visit beyond the hour or two required for a pleasant brotherly chat. At about seven o’clock in the evening, he felt slightly indisposed. I thought I should keep him in the house. My lodgings, simple as they are, seemed to please him a lot, and he gladly agreed to spend the night there. I should add that, given the delicacy of the situation, I had myself asked a friend whose apartment is not far from mine for hospitality.
At about four in the morning, I crept to his room and found my unfortunate comrade lying on the floor, unconscious. We carried him to his bed. Careful as we were, I fear this move may have been fatal to him. He immediately began bleeding profusely. The person who was then sharing my life, having pursued serious medical studies, was able to give him the necessary care, and to inform me as to his condition. The prognosis was extremely grave. However, the bleeding stopped. While I was waiting for the doctor, our poor friend regained consciousness. But he did not speak. Thick drops of sweat were running over his forehead and his cheeks, and his eyes, barely visible between his half-open lashes, seemed to express a great dread. I observed that his pulse was rapidly weakening. A young neighbour went to fetch the priest on duty, the curate of the parish of Sainte-Austreberthe. The dying man made it clear to me by gestures that he wanted his rosary, which I took from the pocket of his trousers, and which from then on he held clutched to his chest. Then he seemed to recover his strength and in an almost unintelligible voice begged me to absolve him. His face was calmer, and he even smiled. Although a correct appraisal of the situation obliged me not to give in to his desire too hastily, neither humanity nor friendship would have allowed me to refuse him. I add that I think I carried out this duty in a spirit that I am certain will reassure you.
Diary of a Country Priest Page 27