Sebastien Roch (Dedalus European Classics)

by Octave Mirbeau

  As he stood there, motionless, he suddenly glimpsed between the leaves Father de Kern walking with Jean de Kerral. Jean looked happy and the priest was talking and gesticulating, the smooth, graceful gestures he affected when he was reciting poetry or telling stories, and which Sébastien knew so well that he could have recited the verses just from the gestures marking their rhythm. Both walked slowly the length of the avenue. Jean hopped along, very small, his face lifted towards the priest; the priest with his slim torso and strong hips, outlined by the soutane. Occasionally, the thickness of the foliage hid them from view, then they reappeared a moment later in a gap, haloed in greenery. Sébastien then remembered that he had often seen them together; he also recalled that Guy de Kerdaniel, Le Toulic and many others liked to follow the priest, listen to him and cling jealously to the folds of his soutane. And he suddenly saw what the priest wanted from them. Yes, it really was that. From so far away, he could not hear what the priest was saying to Jean de Kerral, but he knew by heart that florid, intoxicating language, to which he had succumbed and which had led him to that room where Jean would go, where he had perhaps already been. ‘Oh, little restless soul which I can read so well!’ Doubtless he repeated the same things in the same soft voice, speaking all the time of his soul. All at once, Sébastien experienced a strange, intense feeling of pain and pity for those little victims, but mingled with that feeling was, to his astonishment, jealousy and also hateful admiration for that attractive, accursed priest. What could he be jealous of? What was there to admire? He did not know. Sébastien searched deep in his memory to find the precise, particular, unmistakable circumstances that could change his still hesitant suspicions into absolute certainties. A multitude of forgotten details, a quantity of tiny facts not understood at the time came back to him, details and facts to which, being ignorant of such things, he had paid little attention up till then.

  Yes, that had been what lay behind it all! It explained undercurrents of behaviour, special favours suddenly withdrawn, constantly changing preferences and protections. He remembered how one night he had felt ill and, obliged to get up, he had seen as he came back to the dormitory a shadow coming out of Jean’s cubicle, next to his own. That person, worried no doubt at being seen by someone walking down the corridor, had immediately slipped back into the cubicle. Was it Jean’s cubicle? Yes, because as he approached, he had noticed that the curtains enclosing it were still moving slightly. Was that shadow Father de Kern? Yes. Although the episode happened several months ago and despite the furtive nature of the apparition, he recognised it immediately from the shadow it cast on the illumined background of the dormitory wall. He should have waited and spied on the shadow from behind his curtains, pressed his ear to the partition. However, not believing in wickedness, he had thought nothing of it and had said to himself that his eyes had deceived him and that the shadow was merely a shadow, not even the shadow of a man, the shadow of some fixed object, possibly set in motion by a gust of air fanning the flame of the lamp. Yes, that was what lay behind it all! That was why during swimming lessons, Father de Kern always took Jean aside, in order to teach him to swim, taking obvious guilty pleasure in holding him from beneath the water. The memories came flooding back, crowding in, tearing away, one by one, each hypocritical veil, ripping off each lying mask. Each action, each word, each gesture of the priest could be linked to some intended act of lust. His kindness and indulgence were all besmirched by ignoble intentions and impurities. Sébastien’s imagination, prey to the obsession of sin, engulfed all his schoolmates in a common martyrdom. Did not all of them, wretches like himself, bear the frightful stigmata of this priestly kiss, the stamp of that monstrous embrace? The pale faces, sickly appearance, limp gait, large, mournful eyes beneath bruised lids, did they not speak of the infamy of this devourer of little souls, the crimes of this child-murderer? Gripped by a need to justify himself by universalising his shame, driven by the urge to conjure up firm evidence of sins and tangible filth, he made his doubts real, dramatised his hypotheses with evocations of lubricious scenes and images, with which his corrupting obsession bombarded him.

  Suddenly, the wood all around him became enclosed in thick walls, day turned to dark night. He recognised the terrible room, the low, white bed at the end, like a sepulchre, and the livid brightness of the window, where the awful shadow crossed and re-crossed. He saw Jean, Guy, Le Toulic, all the pupils, one after the other, enter, struggle, surrender, already vanquished, to prepubescent vice; he heard their sobs, their shouts, deadened by gags and furious fists; their cries, their laughter, the thuds, stifled in crumpled pillows; and what he saw was a horrible tangle of little naked bodies, little gasping throats, the sound of battered flesh, broken limbs, something dull, hoarse, criminal, murderous. The hallucination went on. Other faces invaded the room, people singing. Dishevelled, drunk, stinking of alcohol, they danced obscene dances, surrounding him with diabolical laughter, impudent grimaces, brushing against him with touches that burned like flame: ‘It’s us, don’t you recognise us! We are the years of your youth, your years of ignorance and purity. If only you knew how you bored us. And how ugly we were. Look how nice we are now that Father de Kern has shown us what pleasure is. We don’t want you any more. He’s waiting for us. Goodbye!’ Other figures appeared. They were half-clothed with chests bared and they blew cigarette smoke in his face. ‘We are your prayers, your poetry, your ecstasies. Oh dear. We’ve had enough of souls and we’re off to a rendezvous with Father de Kern. Goodbye!’ They made masturbatory gestures and displayed engorged genitals: ‘And me? Why did you run away from me? Why do you reject my kisses?’ It was Marguerite. ‘Come, come with me. I know a place where the flowers intoxicate like the breath from my lips, where the fruits are more delicious than the flesh of my body. There I will teach you things you do not know, lovely things which Father de Kern taught me and which will make your teeth chatter with pleasure. Look at me. Am I not beautiful like this?’ She raised her skirt, proffered her body for him to kiss, a body already prostituted and soiled. ‘And then in the evening we will go into the woods; we will hide in a dark clearing; I will make you a soft, smooth bed and I will lie on top of you. Wouldn’t you like that?’ She beckoned to him, yielding, her hands bold, breathing hard, her eyes rolling back beneath fluttering lids: ‘I will give you all the pleasures lust can offer and you will die beneath my caresses. No? All right, then, I will go back to Father de Kern. Goodbye!’

  Sébastien was gasping for breath. He reached out to stop Marguerite fleeing from him; but his hands closed on emptiness. The void became peopled again with chaste images and calm brightness. He looked all around. It was a beautiful day; the wood disappeared into the distance, drowning in its own peaceful, mysterious depths. At his feet a foxglove was growing in the grass, its frail stem laden with purple bells. Everywhere, amid the leaves, schoolchildren were running about, chasing one another, climbing trees. Had he been asleep? Had he dreamed all that in a waking nightmare? He rubbed his eyes. Hashes of his dream briefly sullied that calm resurrection of an untainted nature. Nevertheless, the dream had barely vanished and its impudent images scarcely faded, than Sébastien was overcome with a strange feeling of painfully intense sensuality: fire coursed through his veins; there was unbearable heat in his chest; he felt his muscles engorge, engendered by he knew not what inner turmoil; he felt he was waiting for something undefined, both desired and feared, the complete surrender of his entire being. He longed to soak his body in a bath of icy water, to roll about amongst cool things. He angrily tore up a clump of fresh moss and rubbed his face with it, breathed in its bitter scent of musk and damp earth.

  ‘Why are you all alone here like this, my dear child?’

  At the sound of this familiar voice, Sébastien turned round brusquely, his hands flat on the ground, ready to spring up and flee. Father de Kern was standing to his left, leaning against the trunk of an oak tree, his eyes boring into him. He was chewing a blade of grass.

  ‘Did you fall asle
ep? Are you tired? Are you sick?’ he asked tenderly.

  At first, Sébastien did not reply. Then, all of a sudden, his cheeks aflame, his throat tight with fury, he yelled:

  ‘Go away! Don’t speak to me, never speak to me again, or else I’ll tell, yes, I’ll tell on you! Go away!’

  ‘Come along now, my dear child, calm down. You have been absolved and you have forgiven me. I am so very unhappy about it all …’

  These words, interspersed with silences, fell on Sébastien’s skin like drops of boiling oil.

  ‘No, no, don’t speak to me … ever again!’

  He leaped up and ran nimbly away into the undergrowth, beneath the branches, like a young deer.

  The time had come to set off back to school. They took shortcuts. Behind Sébastien and Bolorec, who were walking along in silence, jean de Kerral was chatting to a companion.

  Did you know there was a miracle at Sainte-Anne this morning?’ he was saying. ‘A very great miracle. Father de Kern told me about it. Three days ago, a Belgian came to Sainte-Anne to stay in a tavern. Even though he was ill, he had walked all the way. As he entered the tavern he died. The innkeeper sent for a priest and a doctor. The Belgian was good and dead. So the priest said a prayer to St Anne and left. The next morning, just as they were going to put him in the coffin, the Belgian sat up straight and said: “I was dead, but now I am alive.” And he asked for something to eat. What had happened was, while the Belgian was dead, a thief, a heathen, had come into his room and searched through his clothes and taken the dead man’s wallet and replaced the money it contained with a little medal of St Anne. He thought he was playing a good trick, this heathen, you see. Well, at the very moment that the Belgian came back to life, the thief died. What’s even more peculiar is that the money stolen from the Belgian turned first to silver then to gold. So now the Belgian’s really rich as well.’

  ‘I know something even better,’ replied his companion. ‘Last year, a Persian came to Sainte-Anne, all the way from Persia. Naturally, he didn’t speak French or Breton and no one knew what he wanted. Well, someone had the idea of placing on his tongue a medal of St Anne, blessed by the Archbishop of Rennes, and all of a sudden this Persian started to speak Breton. I saw it myself. Now he’s the porter at the seminary. What did you ask St Anne for?’

  ‘Well, I asked our mother St Anne to bring Henry V back,’ replied Kerral, ‘because then Papa would get his twenty-five thousand francs back and the bailiff’s clerk would be thrown in prison and his father would have to give back the farm that was confiscated from us … what about you?’

  ‘I asked our mother St Anne to let me win the gymnastics prize.’

  Their conversation continued in this vein, with talk about St Tugen who cures rabies and St Yves who resuscitates sailors.

  At the top of the hill at Ponsal, on the left, towards Vannes, the view opens out. It is a sombre landscape, with undulating hills sliced by deep ravines and clad in wild woods that seem to be lying in ambush. The fields are enclosed by steep, fortress-like banks. On the right, the black moorland descends towards the estuaries of the rivers Baden and d’Auray, furrowed with natural trenches in the flat parts, defended by escarpments that rise up menacingly, like citadels.

  Abruptly changing the subject, Jean pointed at the countryside and said:

  ‘This would be a great place for sniping at them …’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The revolutionaries of course. Oh I’d love it if I was an officer and they came back. I’d kill loads of them.’

  Passing swiftly on to another idea, he demanded of Bolorec who was walking peaceably along in front, steps ponderous and legs bowed.

  ‘What did you say to our good mother St Anne, eh?’

  Bolorec shrugged his shoulders, disdaining to turn round.

  ‘I said “shit”,’ he said, ‘that’s what I said.’

  Jean let out a sad groan:

  ‘That’s very bad, you know. That’s a sacrilege. I like you a lot, but you deserve to be reported to Father de Kern for that.’

  They fell silent. Along the whole length of the crocodile of children, the lively chatter gradually died away. It had been a tiring day. Now feet trailed along the ground, steps grew heavier, shoulders hunched forward, bodies ached with walking. The return was completed in silence.

  Sébastien had been unable to recover his equanimity, nor extinguish the ardent passions burning in his body. The poison was in him, having travelled through his whole flesh, insinuating itself deep into his marrow, ravaging his soul, leaving him no physical respite, nor a moment of mental peace, in which he might be able to cling on to the scraps of reason that seemed to be fast abandoning him. He was pursued by hallucinations; he would slip suddenly into terrifying dizzy spells. He resisted in vain, trying to reawaken his defeated conscience and intermittently summoning up all his courage, but he could not stem that inner invasion of fire nor defend himself against the progressive numbing effect of that poison, and with every second that passed, his body grew more troubled, his willpower further weakened. He tried to take an interest in what he saw happening around him, but everything merely reflected impure images back at him. He shut his eyes, but in the darkness the images multiplied and became more clearly defined. They passed before him from left to right, cynical, solitary or in obscene troupes; they disappeared, then renewed themselves ceaselessly, more numerous and more insistent. He tried to pray, to beg for the help of Jesus, the Virgin and St Anne, whose smile begets miracles, but Jesus, the Virgin and St Anne only showed themselves to him in provocatively naked forms, as abominable temptations that came and squatted upon him, delved into his skull and sank sharp, tearing talons into his skin.

  If at least he had been able to pour out his heart to a true friend, to void himself of the frightful secret suffocating and devouring him. The secret was often there on his lips, like vomit. Often he was on the point of confessing it, of shouting it out to Bolorec. Shame held him back; his friend’s disconcerting nonchalance and coarse sarcasm dissuaded him. Haunted by the belief that Bolorec perhaps already knew something and in the hope of making him admit to something first, he merely asked him over and over:

  ‘Do I disgust you? Tell me if I disgust you.’

  ‘You get on my nerves!’ replied Bolorec, whose mood had darkened now that he could no longer see the white head-dresses of the women from his region flitting past him.

  Sébastien made an effort to try and distract himself from this environment that reminded him all too forcibly of his mistake, that was too directly involved in his sin; he tried to recall the tranquil sensations and calm faces of before. He thought of Pervenchères, of the peaceful, strong, cheerful child he had been then: of the beloved paths he once ran along, of the forest he had so often visited, of his river brimming with shrimps. He recalled his father and his comical eloquence and the solemn buffoonery of his mannerisms, and his hat with its worn silk, each year more threadbare and which, when he put it on, made him look like an old-fashioned caricature; he thought of François Pinchard again and his dismal workshop, Aunt Rosalie and her corpse-like stiffness as she lay on the big white bed surrounded by the watchful old harpies. But happy or sad, joyous or funereal, all memories evaded him. One image and one image alone dominated, swallowed up all others: Marguerite. Not even the real Marguerite from home, who was quite troubling and mysterious enough in her pleated smock and short little girl’s dress, but the Marguerite of his woodland dream, the Marguerite of Father de Kern, unclothed, violated, violating, the shameless, swooning monster with lips that exuded vice and hands that brought damnation. Then, despairing of putting these obstinate images to flight, he unconsciously abandoned himself to them. His shame at seeing them, remorse at listening to them, terror at feeling their ardent caresses and at breathing in their erotic exhalations, all vanished; then he reproached himself for having rejected Father de Kern so harshly, he missed the priest’s room and started to hope to return there and savour the violent lusts that boil
ed in his body. He took pleasure in imagining an audacious rendezvous with Marguerite, future caresses and embraces, the unknown contours of her sexual organs.