One Wednesday, before the walk, a pupil came up to Sébastien and asked:
‘Would you like to walk with me? I’m Jean de Kerral. I think you know me.’
Before Sébastien had time to reply, he added:
‘People tease you because you’re an ironmonger, but I don’t mind if you’re an ironmonger, I like you anyway. You’re nice and I like you.’
Jean de Kerral was short, stocky and very ugly, with a fish-like profile and a face sprinkled with freckles. Sébastien liked his bright, kindly eyes. He made small, somewhat feverish, jerky gestures, had a chirping, bird-like voice, and, like a bird, he hopped rather than walked. He had been given the scornful nickname, the Good Samaritan. In fact, Jean had an evangelical role in the yard: he protected the weak and consoled the sad. Whenever a pupil was ostracised for any reason, or beaten or teased, he went to him and showered him with noisy declarations of affection, deafened him with incoherent, effusive outbursts. He was kindly and talkative and so generous that he was easily stripped of all his belongings; but his parents, who knew of his mania, never gave him a thing. His enthusiasm would last about a week. After which, Jean would abandon his friend as abruptly as he had approached him and move on to another.
He spoke again:
‘It saddens me to see you always so alone. Why do you go off whenever anyone gets close to you? Why do you never play?’
Another pupil came running up, out of breath, clothes flying.
‘Ah, it’s Bolorec,’ explained Jean de Kerral, ‘I invited him along for the walk too. He’s very nice is Bolorec, I like him a lot.’
Bolorec took his place beside Sébastien. Plump, with rounded cheeks and frizzy hair growing low on his forehead, a long, shambling torso on legs that were too short and stocky, he, like Sébastien, was a target for his schoolmates’ jokes. He was the son of a doctor, a profession not considered socially acceptable, and a fertile source of ragging. But the jokes fell harmlessly on his flabby flesh and his armour-plated self-esteem without leaving any trace of injury. He seemed not to feel or understand anything and he smiled all the time. Nothing affected this eternal smile, no amount of shoving or kicking, or even the most unpleasant of nicknames.
Bolorec buttoned his jacket, gathered up the string of his top, which was trailing on the floor out of a trouser pocket stuffed with various bulky items, and gave Sébastien a foolishly benevolent stare.
The children lined up and, at a signal from a bell, the little band set off in silence, with one Jesuit at the head and the other at the rear of the crocodile. Skipping happily along, Jean leaned close to Sébastien and said very quietly:
‘You’re pleased to be with me, aren’t you? Bolorec is too. And I’m happy because I don’t like it when people are cruel to others.’
Once they were out in the open, they walked alongside the port for about a hundred metres. It was low tide. Blackish water slept in the narrow channel. On the mud, amid stranded rowing boats, a schooner was perched on her side, keel up, her mast crooked, as if about to topple into the void. Fishing launches here and there revealed their timbers stained with brine and their hulls the same colour as the mud in which they were stuck. Further off, Jean pointed out the St Francis Xavier, a white boat, a lovely, elegant cutter with a streamlined keel, standing straight and proud between her supports, her flag flying on top of the mast. The quays were almost deserted; the landscape of brutally flat, hard, bare fields beneath a low sky closed abruptly round them. Sébastien searched in vain for the sea. He was disturbed by this immobility, these sleeping objects, sad as flotsam, by these dead waters and the disgusting mud, the stench from which made him feel queasy.
When they had left the port and walked along the town’s winding streets, they emerged into the countryside and Jean de Kerral said to Sébastien:
‘Do you live far from here?’
‘Oh yes, far from here,’ said Sébastien faintly, for cautious and fearing a painful rebuff, he only dared reply in shy, almost whispered monosyllables.
‘I live very near here, at the Chateau de Kerral, on the road to Elven. Do you know Elven? Where there’s a large tower. Sometimes we go there for a walk. Haven’t you got a chateau?’
‘No.’
‘Oh, that doesn’t matter. Bolorec hasn’t either.’
The crocodile of children had somewhat disintegrated. Now the piping of many voices accompanied the footsteps of the little band of walkers. He went on:
‘I’m going to be a soldier. I’m going on to Saint-Cyr. What are you going to do? Are you going on to Saint-Cyr as well?’
‘I don’t know,’ stammered Sébastien.
The Count de Chambord, the Usurper, Saint-Cyr: there were always so many things of which he had not the slightest inkling. How could he ever be the equal of the others when he knew nothing about all that apparently vital, indispensable information? He wished he could have asked Jean for explanations, but he did not dare. jean chattered on:
‘Papa says there is no place left now for nobles … either they must do nothing … or else go to Saint-Cyr. Papa doesn’t do anything. He hunts. Have you got a drum?’
‘No.’
‘I have, a real one, made of leather. Papa gave it me. The farmer is teaching me to play it. He was the drummer in the regiment. He’s very good at it. I am too now I play the drum. And Papa has given me a red hussar’s uniform too. When I go out for the whole day, I put on my hussar’s uniform and I bang the drum. It’s really good fun. That’s how I’m learning to be an officer. Have you got a hussar’s uniform?’
‘No.’
‘Well, what have you got then? What do you do for fun when you’re at home? You should ask your father for these things.’
Sébastien felt his heart swell with some unnameable emotion; either regret at not owning a red hussar’s uniform like Jean de Kerral, or joy at hearing for the first time since he left Pervenchères a voice that spoke gently to him, words which were neither mockery nor insults. All of a sudden he felt towards this person speaking to him a great tenderness, profound recognition, the irresistible surge of a soul giving itself to another soul. Moved, he took Jean’s hand, squeezed it very hard in his own and, his eyes dim with tears, he said:
‘I really like you.’
‘And I like you too,’ replied Jean de Kerral.
Bolorec said nothing at all and followed the crocodile, with his tiny steps and too short legs. Red-faced, the veins standing out on his neck, he kept puffing out his cheeks and then deflating them with a blow from his own fist, intrigued by the quiet explosion, the dubious put-putting noise that emerged from his lips. Between each operation, he smiled that neutral, troubling smile, which expressed nothing and was addressed to no one, that fixed smile, like the smile death sometimes brings to the frozen lips of its chosen victims.
They were walking down a broad road lined with tall chestnut trees whose bare branches touched and crossed, forming a filigree of twigs above their heads, a kind of open-work vault decorated with the sky’s pearl-grey silks and pink lacework. On either side, drystone walls clothed in the gold embroidery of mosses, encrusted with the delicate jewellery of lichens and ferns, bordered grasslands, fields and little undulating meadows, each separated from the next by broad wooded slopes or, sometimes, by flashes of granite spikes, sharp and straight, driven into the earth. This was no longer the usual flat, boundless, gloomy moorland, infinite and dreary, spreading out the cankerous velvet of its sombre carpet over the barren soil, spangled with the pale silver of pools of water. Here, proliferating life germinated in the fields, shivering with the lively emerald green of the nascent rye and young corn. The softly beguiling sky was infused with a subtle, contained glow that was becoming filled with a translucent tissue of clouds, woven with threads of milky gold and washed with softest mother-of-pearl. Bathed in this tepid, infinitely diffuse, infinitely penetrating light, which bestowed celestial depths even on the trunks of trees and the fissures in the rocks, beneath this caressing light which left worlds of joy s
hining on each fragile ellipsoid of grass, every shape and every colour sang. What tune they sang Sébastien would have been incapable of describing or expressing, but he savoured the harmonious, almost divine music and admired the harmonious, almost divine beauty. It was like a miracle of resurrection taking place within him, a majestic ecstasy of love which swelled his whole being, a kind of intoxication, a nuptial delight, to celebrate his heart’s betrothal.
‘Can we always go on these walks together?’ Sébastien said imploringly.
Jean de Kerral replied:
‘And we will always play together in the yard, with Bolorec too.’
‘I really like you,’ said Sébastien again.
‘And I like you too.’
This was a magical moment for Sébastien. His worst days were over, he no longer dreaded any suffering or torment. His confidence was reborn, increased, fortified by the voluntary, spontaneous, eternal gift of his own heart, which he had just bestowed. He now walked more proudly, his limbs moved more fluidly, finding in everything things to admire or respect, promising himself to love Jean, to be devoted to him to the point of sacrifice. For the first time, he felt brave, longing to offer himself in battle. An unfamiliar strength coursed through his veins, making his pulse and heart beat faster. No obstacle seemed insurmountable to his courage. He could even have defied Guy de Kerdaniel.
They stopped in a pine forest. Between the avenue of trunks, the earth, strewn with dry needles, was all pink, and their feet sank softly into the moss. The smell of turpentine was everywhere, bitter, strong, mingling with vague scents of marine plants carried on the wind from the west. In fact, far away towards the west, striped by the dark bars of the pines, a strip of iridescent water could be seen, almost blending into the sky. Some of the pupils chased a squirrel. The boldest climbed into the branches of the tree, whilst the others barked like dogs and threw stones at the terrified creature. Sébastien and Jean sat down at the foot of a tree; Bolorec, standing leaning against the trunk, cut a rough boat shape from a piece of bark. All three, from time to time, watched the hunt and pointed up at the squirrel, which, confused by the noise, fled from tree to tree, leaping from branch to branch, its tail in the air.
‘You’ll never guess what I’m thinking,’ said Jean. ‘I’m thinking I should ask my father’s permission for us to go and stay at our place. I’d love you to come and stay for the holidays. Mother would like it too, and Papa, and the Reverend Fathers too. You will beat the drum and wear my uniform. Last year, Papa didn’t want Bolorec to come, but you’re different, because you’re … well, because Bolorec is too scruffy.’
In a rambling, disjointed narrative, he described the Kerral chateau, his father, who had a huge blond moustache, his mother, who was very pretty, their large carriage and the six hunting dogs which chased foxes and tracked down hares.
Sébastien drank in Jean’s words greedily. He already imagined himself as a pampered guest, caressed by a beautiful lady in a chateau, which he pictured resplendent, with broad moats, massive towers, crenellated walls, like the ramparts of Vannes. His heart was drowning in fathomless hope.
Jean went on:
‘Do you know the story about Papa’s six hunting dogs and the bailiff’s clerk?’
‘No,’ replied Sébastien, annoyed at not knowing everything about his friend.
‘What! You don’t know it? But everyone at school knows it. Well, one day, my father was coming back from a hunt; he hadn’t caught a thing and was not at all pleased. As he got nearer Elven, who should he see on the road but the bailiff’s clerk. He’s a nasty clerk, a very nasty clerk. He says bad things about priests, never goes to mass, and his family own a farm near the chateau, confiscated land bought cheap off us after the Revolution. Anyway, a really nasty piece of work. Papa says to himself: “Since my dogs haven’t had a chance to hunt anything, I’m going to let them chase the bailiff’s clerk.” Funny, eh? He unleashes them, puts them on the scent and the dogs are off …’
Bolorec abandoned his piece of wood and listened with great interest to this tale of a human hunt and, all of a sudden, his eyes alight with laughter, he stamped his feet with joy and with all his might yelled:
‘Bow wow!’
‘You can imagine,’ continued Jean, ‘how the clerk bolted, feeling the dogs at his heels. You can just imagine it, can’t you? He leaps into the undergrowth, his hat flies off; he gets all tangled up in the reeds and the brambles, he rips his trousers, he falls over, gets back on the road, his face all bloody, and escapes as fast as his legs can carry him towards Elven. The dogs stick as close to him as if he was a hare.’
‘Bow wow!’ Bolorec started up again, his pleasure expressing itself in horrible grimaces.
‘Apparently, it was really funny. No hat, hair all over the place, dogs right behind him snapping at his trousers. Luckily for the nasty bailiff’s clerk, he was not far from Elven. He went into the church and barely had time to close the door behind him; he collapsed onto the flagstones and fainted away out of fear. Another second and he would have been caught and gobbled up by the dogs. They don’t mess about, you know, those dogs …’
For the third time, Bolorec gave a lengthy bark, revealing his teeth between each yowl, teeth which seemed to worry cheerfully at the snatched prey.
‘Bow wow!’
Jean de Kerral concluded:
‘Well, the father of this nasty man took my Papa to court and Papa was ordered to pay this nasty man twenty-five thousand francs because, after this joke of a hunt, his son had fallen ill and had lost his mind. But Papa will get his revenge, because he’s going to stand for election and bring back the King. When you come to our house, you’ll see the dogs. They’re very fine dogs.’
Sébastien listened to his friend’s voice, that voice twittering like a bird singing a love song high up on a branch. He already loved those dogs; he loved Monsieur de Kerral, despite his large, blond moustache, which now held no fear for him; he loved the chateau; he loved everything except the nasty bailiff’s clerk, whom he could not forgive for not allowing himself to be devoured by Monsieur de Kerral’s fine dogs and for having cost the man so much money.
The clamouring in the woods stopped. The squirrel had been caught. Two boys carried it in triumph, hanging by its tail from a stick, like a trophy. They set off back to school. The return route was delightful. However, in Sébastien’s heart there was a shadow of doubt. Jean’s tale troubled him a little, aroused a vague sense of remorse. Images came into his mind which were not at all reassuring, but brutally symbolic, where the inflexible and barbaric law of violence is affirmed. François Pinchard and the carpenter Coudray, Guy de Kerdaniel and himself, Bolorec, a martyr fiercer than his executioners, the squirrel, the bailiff’s clerk, Monsieur de Kerral’s dogs, all of them, in the depths of his consciousness, jostled together, linked by strange analogies, suddenly illuminated by fierce glimmers of light. Clenched fists, gaping maws, tearing hands, savage mobs, a dark and disturbing intimation of undying hatred, a confused and fleeting vision of universal violence: all this created in him a sense of unease which the walk and Jean’s twittering voice soon dispelled. Bolorec had gone back to carving his boat; the crocodile of children had re-formed, and evening came, tinging the horizon with a dull orange gleam which bestowed on the firmament a mystic light like the effect of light through stained glass. Beneath the canopy of chestnut trees, a soothing, church-like shadow enveloped the columns of trunks and the network of branches; purplish clusters of lilacs sprang from stony escarpments and blazed against the greener background of the meadows. Within his heart, troubled only temporarily, happiness returned, clear and serene; remorse evaporated, hope reappeared, unsullied. A few farmworkers passed by on the road, sheathed in long, coarse, white shirts, some drunk, all vermin-infested and covered in mud. Sébastien watched them go by, and he saw in them supernatural beings, saints come down from the stained-glass windows in a church, angels flown from the chapel arches, accompanying him and watching over him. Everything was
enlarged, embellished, ennobled by his imagination and took on the happy, exultant forms of tenderness and prayer.
As they walked back alongside the port, he saw more things to console him. Everything had come to life and was shining brightly. The tide was rising, slapping lightly against the walls of the quay and the submerged hulks. Set upright again by the waves, the schooner bore her mast proudly, gilded by the last rays of sunlight; a few fishing launches were being rowed back in, sails furled, with a sound like rustling silk; and the seagulls skimmed the gleaming water in bold, playful flight. The air was impregnated by a salty smell mixed with powerful gusts of coal tar. The child breathed it in voluptuously, his soul filled by the enchantments of travel, the vast blue sea, the diffuse scattering of light. His imagination leaped the bounds of earth, which seem hard-edged and darker at this hour, blocking the horizon, and he reached up towards the concept of infinity.
In the little square near the school with its Gothic houses, two young girls of the same height, with the same graceful, delicate build, and wearing identical clothes, stood with their mother to watch the pupils go by.
‘They’re Le Toulic’s sisters. He’s in your class, you know the one who always comes top,’ explained Jean. ‘Mama always calls them “the two husbandless girls”, because they would like to marry, but they can’t find anyone. They have no money. Le Toulic’s father used to be in charge of the wolfhounds. He died. The girls are very pretty, though!’
They were indeed charming, clothed in shadow, their delicate twin silhouette against the backdrop of a shop whose lamps were just being lit. Beneath the veil through which he could just make out their faces, bathed by the errant beams of the evening light, Sébastien glimpsed the glow of a double sun, setting far off in the deep waters of their eyes, and he felt moved.
He did not work at his studies that evening, filled with indolence when faced with his books, overcome by weariness at the prospect of having to conjugate irregular verbs. His elbows resting on his dictionary, his penholder idle between his fingers, he sat daydreaming for a long time. His head was full of too many things, the day had been filled by such a tangled succession of events that he needed to try to coordinate them, savour them one by one and attempt to extract from them some new rule of conduct, some insight into a more appealing future. However, he could not focus on any one of those mobile, turbulent images. Everything swarmed about inside his brain: landscapes, boats, idyllic gardens, chateaux decked out for parties and glimpsed at the far end of long, brightly-lit avenues, drums beating, dogs barking, squirrels leaping. He paused a moment to contemplate Le Toulic’s profile. He was sitting not far away on the right, bent over his sheet of paper, barricaded in with books, swotting away at his homework, frowning, cheeks pink, fingers inky. He felt a strong urge to get to know him better, to talk to him about his two sisters, sweet as they were in the trembling indecision of evening. He suddenly felt for him a fierce friendship. Maybe Le Toulic would also invite him to visit his home, like Jean de Kerral. That would be an unforgettable time spent in the company of that mother and those two girls. Doubtless they would take walks together by the port, on the shore; he briefly saw a veil lifted on those privileged interiors, imagined entering on an equal footing into those unknown lives, which he had believed closed to him and whose captivating mystery was intensified by the odd word caught here and there. His dream changed direction, grew bolder and moved towards the impossible, venturing into the forbidden worlds where Guy de Kerdaniel ruled. He reined it in and went back to its point of departure, reality: Jean de Kerral with his gentle, seductive voice, to those unexpected promises, which had suddenly broken his bonds and set him free to live. At last, Sébastien fixed his stare on Jean’s back; the boy was seated three rows in front of him. The whole of his new-found life was there, resurrected in that agile back, shifting, sometimes rigidly upright, sometimes bent, and seeming to glow with the glamorous tales of the afternoon. That back blazed like the sun. Joy sang out all around; joy sang out everywhere.
Sebastien Roch (Dedalus European Classics) Page 8