Sebastien Roch (Dedalus European Classics)

by Octave Mirbeau

  Father de Kern approached Sébastien. He said simply, in an imperious tone, like that of a teacher reminding a pupil of some forgotten task:

  ‘You know you’re taking communion tomorrow.’

  The effect of this sentence was electric. Sébastien leaped up, trembling. It was true. He had to take communion the following morning, in a few hours’ time. Now he would no longer be able to do so. All the others would go, grave and pious, their hands clasped on their chests, all the others would partake at the holy table. He alone, like one of the damned, would stay in his seat, pointed out for universal opprobrium, his face bearing the ineradicable imprint of his infamy, his whole body exuding the stink of hell. Again, he fell face down on the bed and, his eyes filling with tears, he murmured:

  ‘But I can’t now!’

  ‘And who will stop you?’ snapped the priest.

  ‘After what you … After what I … After this sin …’

  ‘Well, my dear child, am I not here? Can I not hear your confession?’

  ‘You!’ cried Sébastien with a surge of horror. ‘You!’

  The priest’s voice once more became caressing and slow, humble and sorrowful.

  ‘Yes, I. I am a priest. I have the power to absolve you … however unworthy, culpable and criminal I might be. I have not lost the sacred character which allows me, miserable wretch that I am, to give you back peace of conscience and proud purity of body, the candour of your little angelic soul. I, who have fallen deep into hell, can restore you to paradise. Listen, I don’t know what took hold of me just now … was I obeying some mad instinct? I don’t know. As God is my witness, my intentions were honourable. They’re frightening, these sudden resurgences of passions which one believed had been extinguished and vanquished by years of prayer and penance …’

  He knelt down, rested his forehead on Sébastien’s knees and continued:

  ‘I don’t want to deny my responsibilities, to diminish my crime. No. I am a monster. But have some pity on me, as I kneel at your feet begging your forgiveness. Nothing has touched you or soiled you because you are a child, but I … To redeem my soul, to erase this sin – and can I ever redeem this soul and erase this sin – what lengthy penances I must do! This flesh I have soiled, this flesh in which sin still sleeps, despite fasting, prayer and chastisement; it will have to be torn out, rooted out, fibre by fibre, with my nails, with …’

  Sébastien saw the instruments of torture, the horror of pincered flesh, broken bones, streaming blood and, seized by dread and pity, he cried out:

  ‘Father! No! No, I don’t want you to do that on my account. I don’t want that. I don’t want that.’

  ‘I have no choice, my dear child,’ replied Father de Kern, with a resigned air. ‘And that torment will be sweet to me, I will bless my sufferings, if you have forgiven me and allowed me, by absolving your sins, which, alas, are my sins, to give your soul back its purity and peace. All I ask is that tomorrow, at communion, you will pray for me.’

  Sébastien stood up, resolved. He felt no pain now He felt an intoxication in his heart, a strength in his limbs, and he would have liked dazzling lights and church fires suddenly to set the room ablaze with their forgiving glow. In his turn, he knelt down fervently at the priest’s feet and, bathed in tears, beating his breast, certain that he would thus redeem a soul and appease God’s anger, he made his confession.

  ‘Father, I confess to committing the sin of impurity; I confess to having taken guilty pleasure. I confess …’

  And as the priest spread his hands in blessing, those hideous, profanatory hands which, a moment before, in the darkness, had soiled for ever the soul of a child, he murmured: ‘Absolvo te’ and thought:

  ‘At least now he won’t go blabbing to Father Monsal.’

  CHAPTER VI

  The road from Vannes to Sainte-Anne is long and dreary. It is how one imagines Biblical landscapes of old, the desolate plains of Asia Minor. It is as if ancient suns, now extinct, have desiccated, sterilised and charred its soil, a soil made of solidified ash and pulverised iron, where only sombre, puny plants manage to grow, where even the water burns the sparse grass like acid, where only the rusty flowers of harsh reeds and heather bloom, faintly pink in the gloom. Instinctively, one expects to see the footprints of the prophets in the dead dust and the tracks of the long paths followed by pilgrims. It must have been in similar landscapes that St John howled out his pain.

  As a setting for their mysteries, religions have always selected wretched and hateful places; they have never wanted joyous nature to burst forth near their birthplace and discomfit the gods. They require shadow, terrifying rocks, distressingly barren lands, sunless skies, skies the colour of sleep, where the drifting clouds perpetuate a dream of future homelands and ethereal resting-places.

  As one leaves the meadows and outlying fields, the road crosses deserted moorland, pinewoods, silent gorges where rocks tumble down the arid slopes. These rocks are so sad, these gloomy expanses so inexpressibly melancholy, for there it is as if the very fount of life had dried up. There everything is smaller, punier, more stunted than elsewhere. It is as if men, animals and plants had had their growth arrested. The trees, weary of growing, knot themselves up in low, scrawny humps, and old people look like withered children. It touches the heart and troubles the imagination, and one can well understand that for this miserable humanity, welded by centuries of dire poverty to this infertile soil, the consoling legends and the prayers which open the mystical door to hope are more necessary than bread itself. Sometimes, like graceful flowers lost in the midst of the harsh moorland plants, one encounters on the road young peasant girls of an ancient beauty, who have the liturgical pallor of figures in stained-glass windows. With their winged headdresses, their coloured scarves revealing bare, supple necks, with their homespun dresses falling in heavy, statuesque folds, they walk slowly along, like Gothic visions, evoking other times, the times when Van Eyck painted his Virgins with their peaceful faces, their straight backs, their long hands joined in prayer.

  Sébastien followed the boys in front, dazed, not knowing what drove him on nor where he was going. After a few hours of leaden sleep, he had got up, his mind and limbs heavy, with a sense of oppression that left him only a distant awareness of some earlier pain. Still stunned, he had mechanically taken communion, without devoting any more attention to this religious act, which normally he found so troubling, than he had to his morning ablutions. It had rained in the night; the storm had broken in a furious downpour; a light mist wrapped about the drenched leaves and the darker greens of the moor broken, here and there, by the white gleam of puddles. The morning air dissipated the heavy stupor clouding his brain, and the walk loosened his stiffened joints and recalled him to an awareness of reality and life. One by one, his memories came into focus: the corridors, the dark stairs, the room and the sinister square of light from the window. It was a moment of fearful anguish, a horrible moment, in which he relived all the torment of that irreparable night with redoubled pain and shame, physical shame and moral pain. Ten paces ahead of him, Father de Kern walked alongside the boys, his prayerbook under his arm, his posture relaxed and elegant, his face very pale, his eyes cheerful and devoid of remorse. Devoid of remorse! It seemed inconceivable to Sébastien. He expected him to feel as weighed down as he did, his eyelids red from weeping, his shoulders sagging beneath the burden of guilt. He might have been able to love him then; he certainly would have pitied him. But not like this. His whole body displayed an ease and freedom of movement, an indifference which was deeply painful to the boy. If the priest had approached him, saddened, contrite, begging forgiveness, Sébastien might well have rejected him, he might well have said to him, ‘No, leave me alone.’ But he would have been pleased nonetheless. In fact, the priest had not glanced at him for a second, had not given him a moment’s thought; instead, with visible, impenitent joy, as if nothing had happened, as if no crime had taken place, he was taking deep breaths of the morning air and of the fresh sc
ents rising from the earth. Sébastien could no longer bear the sight of that priest, so cruel and hateful. To avoid him he briefly considered feigning a sudden illness and staying there alone on a hillock while the others went on ahead. Instead, for the whole of the rest of the walk, he lowered his head and, silent and stupefied, kept his gaze fixed on the backs of the boys walking in front of him.

  As they proceeded, the way became thronged with pilgrims. They were coming from across the moors, in groups, from far distant locations, emerging from gorges, streaming along every path. At the crossroads, there were carriages filled to overflowing, joyful cartloads of people, dallying outside the taverns, mingling glasses of cassis with hymns, already drunk on gin and holy water. If Sébastien’s mind had been clearer he would have enjoyed looking at the costumes the men were wearing and at the women’s headdresses. Brittany’s picturesque history paraded before him in little scraps of cambric, muslin and tulle. Wearing tall bonnets, impish fanchons, imposing diadems and Jewish tiaras, wild Tcherkesse headdresses and sweet little caps, the girls from Saint-Pol, Paimpol and Fouesnant passed by, as did the Bigoudenne girls from Pont-l’Abbé, whose strange, phallic headdresses glitter with tinsel and garish embroidery, along with the pale virgins of Quimperlé, so slim, dainty and nun-like, and the bold housewives of Trégunc and Concarneau, made for love; and the sardine girls from Douarnenez, always quick with saucy repartee, their poor widow’s shawls pulled tight across their narrow shoulders; and the wrack-gatherers from Plogoff, with their strong backs and fecund loins. The moor was bright with flying ribbons, with this procession of living flowers, these snowy flights of migratory birds, shattering the bleak isolation of the plains, the grey solitude of the sky, the stubborn silence of the solitary stones. The breeze blowing across the clumps of reeds brought with it snatches of plaintive melodies and a lingering scent of vanilla, which embellished and softened the austere countryside. But Sébastien felt nothing, heard nothing, saw nothing. Bolorec walked by his side, his face radiant, his eyes shining, his lips busy with songs from home. Amongst the girls passing by he recognised those from his region by their flat headdresses perched high on their heads, the edges flapping in the wind like wings. He kept exclaiming and pinching Sébastien’s arm:

  ‘Hey, look! They’re from home. They’re the ones who dance on the moorland and who sing, you know, the ones who sing:

  When I’m fourteen

  I’ll have fun all night long

  With all my gallant lovers.

  And all day too

  I’ll spend making love.

  When I’m fourteen

  With my gallants

  And my lovers

  All handsome as gulls.

  But Sébastien was not listening to Bolorec, who added:

  ‘Look at those big fellows with their white jackets and green ears of corn stuck in their great hats. They’re from my region as well, those men are.’

  And he started up again, nodding his head to the music:

  ‘When I’m fourteen …’

  As they neared Sainte-Anne, they had to slow down and close ranks. The crowd was getting bigger by the minute, waiting in front of the shops where holy medals, scapulars, sacred hearts in flames and small miraculous images of St Anne and the Virgin were on sale. Near the shops, housewives were grilling sardines over peat fires and selling unidentifiable cold cuts to passers-by. The smell of cider and cheap alcohol was bitter in air already heavy with the stench of humans. Covered in teeming vermin and dried mud, carefully applied for pilgrimages, unlikely-looking beggars swarmed amongst the crowds begging for alms whilst, in the background, could be heard people singing hymns. On both sides of the road, along the verges, cripples and monsters, spewed forth from the mortuary or disinterred from the grave, paraded their festering flesh, nightmare deformities and indescribable mutilations. Crouching in the grass or in the mud of the ditch, some proffered horrible stumps, swollen and bleeding; others proudly displayed a nose cut back to the bone and lips devoured by blackened abcesses. There were some who lacked both arms and legs and dragged themselves along on their stomachs, trying to create some kind of comic effect out of their absent members, incredible, hideous parodies of Nature’s creation. Women with shrivelled, dried-up breasts gave suck to hydrocephalic babies, whilst a kind of terrifying gnome, with dead eyes and a shock of ginger hair hopped along on feet enclosed in enormous fetlocks of soft, sore-encrusted flesh. At one point, the line of schoolchildren stopped and Sébastien saw to his right, propped against a milestone, a section of naked torso, a chest with gaping wounds, breastplated with gleaming pus like armour, a monstrous dropsical belly where there stirred, lifted by the effort of breathing, sticky scales, multifaceted scabs, a mass of putrifying, multicoloured meat so horrible that he turned his head away, his face white, vomit rising to his lips.

  ‘And yet,’ thought Sébastien, ‘I am as disgusting as these wretches. I too am an object of horror now. Every part of my body is now stained with filth that can never be washed away.’

  Addressing Bolorec in a frightened, pleading tone, he said:

  ‘Do I disgust you, tell me, do I disgust you?’

  Bolorec was not listening. He had cast a cursory glance in the direction of the monsters displayed on the verges and was now searching the crowd for people from his village, happy if he recognised someone and could breathe a little of the scent of his own moorlands, rediscover corners of his favourite landscape, reminding him of freedom, of familiar, cosy nooks and trees where he had gouged out the bark and carved a design on the knots. The foolish look of serenity and joy one his friend’s face and the way he turned calmly towards innocent memories were a real torture to Sébastien. He would never again feel that particular delicious pleasure, he would never again see anything in the same light, never again have innocent dreams, never experience past, present or future without the accursed shadow, the defiling, devouring image of his perdition.

  ‘Tell me if I disgust you,’ he repeated.

  Bolorec was not listening. His imagination had taken flight towards the familiar plains, and he was murmuring:

  ‘When I’m fourteen …’

  At that time, there was no garish, ugly basilica, which today stands on that sterile piece of land, impoverished still further by the brutal opulence of the monument, with its mass of carved stone and its giant tower, overshadowed by the colossal statue of St Anne. Near the holy field of Bocenno there was a little village chapel, as humble and poor as the unfortunates who came to worship there. It was a low building made of dark roughcast and scarcely distinguishable from the houses surrounding it. Beneath its primitive ceiling, with its warped, exposed beams, there was no gold, marble or bronze, no proud columns or insolent, decorated altars, like courtesans’ beds. Its only luxury, its only wealth, were the naive votive offerings covering the bare walls, the boats suspended in the naves by sailors rescued from shipwrecks and the white altar where, amid constantly renewed flowers and the eternal flames of candles, the saint – a saint of gilded plaster – dispensed to the faithful the cherished illusion of her miracles and her benevolence.

  Sébastien could not pray. In the same row as him, in the main nave, between the pews, Father de Kern was kneeling at a prie-dieu. He could not see him, but he felt his presence, and that presence froze any religious impulse and poisoned his ardour. Any prayer he began remained unfinished; it immediately slipped away from him, dissipated, ungraspable as smoke. Then it seemed to him that the saint turned her painted but knowing gaze away from him. So he spent the whole service with his eyes fixed on the model of a frigate, a frigate hanging above him in the air on a thin chain. This boat, with its masts and hoisted sails, small as a child’s toy, spoke to him of distant voyages. He wished he could set out, carried away by those gentle sails, over unknown waves, simply sail far, far away and put seas, continents, impassable mountains between him and that man who dared to pray, who could pray, that man whom he could not bear to look at and whose image was everywhere, filled everythi
ng, his thoughts, his prayers, the light in the sky, the mystery of the woods, the wild soul of the moors and the shadows of the night, even the plaster eyes of good St Anne. For a long while too, he was able to forget himself perusing the simple votive offerings recalling extraordinary and consoling adventures: pacified lions, resuscitated corpses, sinners illuminated by grace. As he came out of the chapel, jostling with the others beneath the portal, Sébastien brushed against Father de Kern and it made his skin crawl.

  After lunch, which was served in the gardens of the charterhouse at Auray, the noisy rejoicing and the excitement all around him only aggravated Sébastien’s distress and he felt the need for solitude. Even Bolorec’s company weighed on him and upset him. Alone, he hoped to regain his composure. He withdrew quite a distance from his schoolmates, high up on a slope, and sat on the grass, his back against an oaktree that sheltered him with its shade. From there he watched the other pupils. Some, tired by the long walk, stretched out on the ground and slept, others began to play. Nothing he had seen since the morning had remained in his thoughts. Any images of reality, which normally remained so strongly imprinted on his memory, faded away without leaving the slightest trace. He had already forgotten the chapel, the miraculous fountains, surrounded by the colourful, trusting crowd; he had forgotten the gorges of the Loch and the river humming over the pebbles below; and the road with its steep slopes dominated by enormous sphinx-headed rocks; he had forgotten the Martyrs’ field, with its grim horizons and marshy vegetation, which the briny waters burned and bleached; he had forgotten the calm avenues of the charterhouse, its quiet cloisters enclosing little square rose gardens; he had forgotten the ossuary with its white marble tomb and gaping hole, at the bottom of which the trembling glimmer of a lantern lit up the gathered bones of those shot in Vannes and Quiberon. And he was already forgetting, or, rather, did not even notice, the multiple sensations of the present moment, the softness of the sky, the gentle sun, bright, restful, magical nature, the dreaminess of this forest atmosphere, so devout, so musical, this seemingly underwater atmosphere, in which gentle flowers and sprightly, capricious insects wandered, wavered, zigzagged, shivered and concealed themselves, and where graceful, solitary leaves from time to time detached themselves from the trees, whirling as they fell with a rustle like the brush of wings. He remained entirely untouched by this perfumed peace, these shifting shapes, this constant vanishing of beings and things, in a sort of glaucous transparency and submarine sonority. He who loved so much to set one shape, sound or scent next to another and endow them with identical life and similar significance and breathe the life of his soul into them, remained impervious to the sight, sound and smell of the harmony about him. His senses had been annihilated, his mind had sunk into something black, darker than the ossuary in the charterhouse, and his thoughts were like the bones of those ancient dead, like the dust lodged in the cavities of those empty skulls.