Sebastien Roch (Dedalus European Classics)

by Octave Mirbeau

  ‘Do you know what women look like?’ he asked Bolorec.

  Bolorec, replied in thick, surly tones, though unsurprised by this unexpected question:

  ‘Like everyone else. Except they have hair under their arms.’

  ‘Really? Have you ever …?’

  He did not finish the sentence. And he longed for night to come so that he could be alone, enclosed by the silent partitions, alone with his imaginings.

  The following day, after the morning bell, Sébastien’s curtains remained closed. No sound came from his cubicle. When making his rounds, Father de Kern noticed this, drew them aside and saw the child in his nightgown, kneeling by his bed, sound asleep. He must have been surprised by sleep in mid-prayer for his joined hands were still clasped. His cheek rested on the blankets which were damp with fresh tears.

  ‘Poor little mite!’ thought the priest, with a stab of remorse.

  He did not want to wake him, so that Sébastien would not open his eyes and find the face he loathed before him. Gently he closed the curtains again. A monk was passing.

  ‘Put that child back to bed,’ he commanded. ‘He’s not well. And tell him to have a good sleep.’

  CHAPTER VII

  A little attic room under the eaves. There is deep silence; the movement and life of the school, contained by walls, yards and tall buildings, does not penetrate this far. A narrow iron bedstead, with white curtains; between the two windows, against the wall, a kind of writing-desk, with paper, an inkpot and two volumes of Father Huc’s Travels in Tibet; on the mantelpiece, a plaster statue of the Virgin. Such is the room where Sébastien lies, separated from his schoolmates barely an hour ago, led there by a little, sallow, bony monk, jangling the keys in his hand like a jailer. He examines this furniture in astonishment and listens fearfully to the silence. A moment ago, another little monk, this one fat and paunchy, brought him his dinner. Sébastien attempted to question him, but in vain. The little monk made a few mysterious gestures and left without speaking, bolting the door. It is half-past twelve, the time when the pupils leave the refectory and go out to play. The little prisoner opens one of the windows and tries to get his bearings. The horizon is enclosed on all sides by rooftops, bristling with chimneys and black pipes. Above, the sky is a milky white punctured with pale azure; beneath, against a grey façade, there are descending lines of windows and, below them, a yard, sadder, damper, darker than a well, a cold yard crossed by tradesmen, with black caps on their heads and dirty overalls flapping round their legs. All of a sudden, to his left, he hears a confused sound like a distant buzzing. It is the schoolboys playing in the yards. With a lump in his throat, he lets out a long sigh. At that moment, he is thinking of Bolorec whom the same monk, the sallow, bony one, came to find and lead off somewhere too. But where? Where could he be? Would he be able to see him? He scans the windows opposite. But the windows are dark; they reveal nothing of what is going on behind their opaque eyes. Baffled, he sits at the table, puts his head in his hands and thinks. He cannot understand what is happening to him. Why is he in this room? Vaguely, he guesses that Father de Kern is not uninvolved in this new turn of events. But how? Whilst he is thinking, he notices words carved with a penknife into the wood of the table and blacked in with ink. They are prayers, invocations, some half-effaced by subsequent rubbing. Sébastien reads: ‘My God, have pity on me and give me the strength to endure your justice.’ Also: ‘My God I have sinned, I must be punished. But spare my parents. Oh, dear sweet father, oh, dear sweet mother, oh, dear sweet sisters, forgive me for causing you so much pain!’ And: ‘Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!’ All these prayers are signed in large, deeply-scored letters: ‘Juste Durand.’ Sébastien recalls that Juste Durand was expelled from the school. He goes pale; a sharp pain twists his entrails. He too is going to be expelled. But why? He sits there going over the story of his life since the day of the Sainte-Anne pilgrimage. Four days have passed since then, four days of feeling lethargic and stunned, during which his spirit has been able to rest a little. Father de Kern has not spoken to him again; it is obvious he is avoiding him. Even in study periods he does not meet his eye. Is he really repentant? In any case, he has submitted to the boy’s will, for Sébastien slipped a letter into his cell on the sly, in which he forbade him, begged him never to address another word to him. And the priest has done as he was asked. Freed from that gaze, that voice, that incessant pursuit, he intended to devote himself to his work and to follow the lessons attentively. But he is ceaselessly distracted by painful thoughts. His sin is still too recent; he cannot forget it. Even in his extreme depression, he suffers from shuddering, jolting, lacerating moments of anguish. Of course, he is calmer now; but not sufficiently calm for the images not to reappear from time to time, stoking the fire in his veins, precipitating the poison in his flesh. He has been able to pray and that has relieved him. During recess, he has stayed by Bolorec’s side. Despite everything, Bolorec offers him some kind of refuge because Sébastien finds him interesting; because sometimes too he makes him laugh with the fierce spontaneity of his questions, the unexpectedness of his responses and his meaningful silences. Both have gone back to their old habit of sitting under the arches near the music rooms. Bolorec carves and often sings. Sébastien watches him carve and listens to him singing. It soothes him, tears him away from his consuming obsessions. Yesterday, whilst he was sculpting and singing, Bolorec suddenly stopped and said:

  ‘I’m so bored here. I’m bored! Are you?’

  ‘Yes, I’m bored too,’ Sébastien replied.

  ‘It’s no good, I’m bored – bored, bored, bored!’

  After a pause, Bolorec started again:

  ‘Well, I’ve just thought of something. This time, we’ve got to leave.’

  Those words, like a friendly breeze, brought to Sébastien’s nostrils the scent of fields and the freshness of spring water; those words, like a cheery light, brought to his eyes a vision of open spaces. But his enthusiasm soon evaporated.

  ‘Leave? And go where?’

  Then Bolorec, very serious, traced a broad gesture in the air with his short arms, as if embracing the whole universe.

  ‘Where? Just go, anywhere. Listen, on Wednesday, during the walk, we can hide. Then, when they’ve all gone, we can wait for nightfall and skedaddle.’

  Sébastien remained deep in thought.

  ‘Yes, but the police will catch us, and anyway we’ll need money.’

  ‘Well, we’ll steal it. Haven’t you ever stolen anything? I have. Once I stole a rabbit off an old woman.’

  ‘It’s wrong to steal. We shouldn’t steal.’

  ‘Not steal?’ replied Bolorec, shrugging his shoulders. ‘Well, why should she have a rabbit? Why has Kerdaniel got his pockets full of money and a gold watch, while we have no money and no gold watches, or anything, even though we’re at the same school? I’ll steal some money Kerdaniel and we can go.’

  ‘But where?’ Sébastien persisted.

  ‘I don’t know. To my house.’

  ‘Then our parents will send us to another school.’

  ‘So what? At least it won’t be this one.’

  Sébastien groaned.

  ‘But then we won’t be together any more. What will become of me without you?’

  ‘You’ll manage, you’ll manage. So, you don’t want to go then? You prefer to be shouted at all the time and for me to be hit, because my father’s a doctor and yours is an ironmonger? I don’t say anything because they’re stronger than me, but I’m waiting. I have a great-uncle who was a leader in the Revolution. He killed aristocrats! Papa is a royalist and calls him a brigand. But I love my great-uncle …’

  ‘He killed aristocrats!’ echoed Sébastien, terrified by the look of hatred on Bolorec’s face as he spoke.

  ‘Yes, he killed aristocrats. He killed over five hundred. I love him, my great-uncle, I think of him all the time. If there’s another Revolution, I’ll kill some too. And I’ll kill some Jesuits as well.’

 
; Bolorec went on talking about his great-uncle and there was no more mention of leaving.

  Sébastien recalls this conversation, whose every word returns to him, accompanied by Bolorec’s wild grimaces. Perhaps they had been overheard. However, he is sure that there was no one near them and that they had spoken quietly. Each time a pupil passed by under the arches and entered the music rooms or came out, they had stopped talking, not trusting anyone. Everyone else was playing in the yard far away; and the priests were walking about, along the fences, beneath the elms. He is sure no one heard them. With meticulous precision, he thinks back to when he was sitting on the steps, he sees Bolorec next to him, with his red face and fiery glare; he sees the yard, he sees everything, right down to a flock of sparrows pecking at the sand, cocky and quarrelsome. He then remembers that, at one point, one of the music rooms was left open. There is no one in the room. On a chair, in front of a desk, lies a violin. Bolorec says nothing; but Sébastien stares at the violin. This violin attracts him, fascinates him; he wishes he could hold it in his hands, feel it vibrate, throb, complain and cry. Why should he not enter that room? Why not take the violin? No prying eye is watching him; that corner of the yard is deserted, quite deserted.

  ‘Come with me,’ he says to Bolorec. ‘We’re going to play the violin.’

  Looking as inconspicuous as possible, they slip into the room and half-close the door. Sébastien seizes the violin, turns it over and over, astonished at how light it is; he touches the pegs, plucks at the four strings, which emit shrill, discordant sounds. Then he stands foolishly before this violin, which, in his hands, is no more than an inert, jangling instrument, and he feels an infinite sadness at knowing that a soul lives in it, that a magnificent dream of love and suffering sleeps in its lined box, but that he will never be able to breathe life into that soul nor awaken that dream. An inner voice says to him: ‘Are you not like that violin? Like that violin, have you not a soul, and do not dreams inhabit the void in your little brain? Who knows about that? Who cares? Those who ought to make your soul resonate and your dreams take wing, have they not left you in a corner all alone like that violin abandoned on a chair, at the mercy of the first curious, ignorant or delinquent passer-by who, in order to amuse himself for a moment, takes hold of it and breaks for ever the fragile wood which was made for eternal song?’ Discouraged, Sébastien puts the violin back where he found it and goes out, followed by Bolorec, who watches him with an ironical air. But at the very moment when both are coming out of the doorway, Father de Kern passes, almost brushing them with his soutane, but without stopping, without turning his head. Instinctively, they fling themselves backwards into the room. His eyes on his breviary, the priest continues his slow stroll right to the end of the arches which he then leaves, continuing at the same slow pace towards the other end of the yard. Taken aback, Sébastien asks:

  ‘Do you think he saw us?’

  ‘So what if he did? What does it matter?’

  It was true, what did it matter? They had done nothing wrong. All day he thought of the violin, so sad, on the chair. In the evening, troubled by that sudden encounter with the priest, he tried, slyly, to read his eyes, to see if he could detect in his manner whether anything had changed, whether there was something more severe which implied: ‘I saw you!’ His attitude was the same though; his eyes, indifferent and peaceable, roamed over the vast room filled with the sounds of schoolwork: crumpled paper, books leafed through, squeaking pens. They did not rest upon Sébastien even for one instant.

  Then one morning, a little monk, the little, sallow, bony monk, interrupted the study period and took Bolorec away. Then a quarter of an hour later, he came back and took Sébastien. Sébastien, very red, crossed the room between the raised heads and intrigued faces. He even heard insulting, vicious hissings as he passed: ‘Kiss, kiss, kiss!’ From beneath his desk, Guy de Kerdaniel stuck out a foot to trip him up and said through gritted teeth: ‘Pig!’ Father de Kern sat high up on his chair, his body turned sideways, his face calm, a book open before him. As the murmuring grew around Sébastien, Father de Kern rang his bell and firmly called for silence. Just as on that fateful night, Sébastien climbed stairs, crossed corridors, dark landings and squalid corners. Where was he going? He had no idea. The monk would not reply to his questions, retaining amidst the vile folds of his ill-shaven cheeks the insidious smile of the corrupt priest. Sébastien found this monk irritating and repulsive. His long, grimy coat exhaled a combined odour of latrine and church: his trousers hung in dirt-encrusted folds over wretchedly poor boots with holes in the toes; his back was bent in a servile manner; his ambiguous gaze, both cowardly and cunning, lay in ambush at the corners of his eyelids; there was in that man an odious mixture of jailer, domestic, sacristan and criminal. Sébastien felt a real sense of relief at his departure.

  Now he is in that room, in that prison, alone, locked in. He guesses that something irreparable is about to take place there. But what? Not knowing exasperates him. Why did those monks refuse to answer his questions? Why did they leave him in this cruel anxiety between freezing walls? He listens. The buzzing coming from the yards has stopped. Above the motionless roofs and impenetrable windows, clouds pass, the only moving, living things around; behind the bolted door there is silence, only troubled from time to time by steps shuffling along the flagstones of the corridor. Never has he been more conscious of the crushing weight of the school, its suffocating walls, its oppressive discipline, the viscous cold of this darkness pressing down on his skull, his shoulders, his back, his whole body and his whole soul. Of the thousand little lives being lived out there, of all that is thought, dreamed, breathed there, not one whisper reaches him, not one sound, nothing, nothing but the hostile step of a guard creeping along close to the walls and listening at doors, a hideous watchman. He looks again at the inscriptions on the desk, Juste Durand’s naive and heartbreaking prayers: ‘Oh blessed mother, St Anne, grant me this miracle; spare my dear sweet father, my dear sweet mother, my dear sweet sisters, the shame of my expulsion from school. Oh good mother St Anne, and you, Holy Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus, I implore you.’ His heart goes out with inexpressible tenderness to this Juste Durand whom he never knew and whom he loves because of his suffering, the twin of his own. Where is he now? Have his parents sent him away; perhaps they had him shut up in a reform school. Perhaps he died. Whilst he sits there feeling sorry for Juste Durand and all those who have passed through this room and not left their names carved into the wood of the desk, the door opens. It is the little, fat, paunchy monk coming in with a broad smile on his lips.

  ‘I am ordered to take you to the Very Reverend Father Rector. But your hair is all untidy. You must comb it a bit. Apart from that, here are your things, Monsieur Sébastien Roch.’

  The monk places a parcel on the table and Sébastien recognises his toilet things, his comb, his brushes, his sponge.

  ‘There. And soon you will have a basin and a pitcher of water. Sort yourself out, Monsieur Sébastien Roch.’

  ‘Do you know how long I have to stay here?’ asks Sébastien.

  ‘I don’t know anything, Monsieur Sébastien Roch,’ demurs the monk with a humble gesture. ‘I do not need to know anything. I am forbidden to know anything.’

  ‘And Juste Durand? Did he stay here long? Did you meet him?’

  ‘Ah, that dear child. I used to bring him his food and take him for walks. A truly edifying young man. His tears could have broken your heart.’

  ‘And Bolorec, where is he?’

  ‘I don’t know. Right, now you’re nice and clean, come with me.’

  Sébastien follows the monk, full of anguish, his legs like jelly.

  The Rector’s study was a large, austere room, with three windows overlooking the older children’s recreation yard. The stiff, neat furnishings comprised various square objects: a broad mahogany desk cluttered with papers, a tall filing cabinet, a small bookcase bearing a few books on open shelving, two armchairs either side of the hearth and, arra
nged on the walls, a portrait of the Pope, the revered image of St Ignatius and various holy objects. When Sébastien came in, the Rector was sitting with his back to the light, his legs crossed beneath his soutane, examining a sheaf of papers. Without looking up, he pointed to a chair, on which Sébastien sat or rather collapsed, and for a few seconds, he continued his reading. His biretta rested on one corner of the desk; he was bare-headed, his face almost completely obscured by blueish shadows, his clear, elegant, strong body silhouetted against the white light of the window.

  The Rector did not give generously of himself to the pupils, amongst whom, however, he enjoyed considerable prestige. When he appeared in class, in study periods or at a ceremony, his presence was an event and caused a sensation. He was always very gentle and yet had an air of majesty, addressing each pupil by name, congratulating one, encouraging another, reprimanding yet another, his remarks always relevant and to the point, in a tone in which fatherly indulgence never quite relinquished teacherly authority. His keen eye, exceptional memory and profound knowledge of everyone’s faults and qualities, were just some of the things that astonished the schoolboys and made them venerate and fear him. They actually took him for someone superhuman. Added to this, he was extraordinarily handsome, with a truly regal bearing; and, beneath the worldly, grave and disenchanted asceticism of his face, there bloomed a lively and beguiling sense of irony, whose melancholy gleam tempered any apparent dryness and impenetrability. Always perfectly groomed, he was adept at using some discreet detail of dress, a white collar or good shoes, to relieve the monotony of ecclesiastical wear. Without knowing why, people loved him, and this deep affection was transmitted almost administratively, like a legacy, from the older pupils to the younger ones. On his birthday, celebrated with great pomp by the whole school, former pupils came from far and wide, thus perpetuating the enthusiasm for a love whose origin no one could explain, except that it seemed part of their education, like learning Latin. No other Jesuit establishment could boast of having at its head a Rector like him. Impressive stories were told about him, embroidered each year with further admirable and mysterious feats. People said he could have become head of a province a long time ago, but that he preferred to stay amongst his dear pupils, whom, however, he saw as little as possible. He spent every holiday in Rome, where he had frequent audiences with the Holy Father, who held his character and his exceptional intelligence in particular esteem.