The Sermon on the Fall of Rome

by Jérôme Ferrari

  “So now he’s besotted with a Sardinian, well, that doesn’t surprise me,”

  and Claudie held her tongue,

  “But you’d think he could refrain from bringing him back here to the house,”

  and she had held her tongue, for years she had held her tongue. But a few weeks later Matthieu had sent a card to his grandfather for his birthday.

  “Happy birthday, with love from your grandson, Matthieu,” a harmless, ritual card, to which Marcel had sent a two-line reply:

  “My boy, at the age of nearly thirteen, please spare me your idiotic nonsense. It is inappropriate to my age and no longer appropriate to yours. If you have something to tell me, write. Otherwise, desist.”

  Claudie had intercepted this letter and picked up the telephone shaking with fury.

  “You’re a stupid old bastard, Uncle Marcel, and no doubt you’ll die a stupid old bastard, but meanwhile I advise you never to write like that to my son again,”

  and Marcel had begun vaguely whimpering down the phone until Claudie hung up on him, cursing the cruel injustice of a fate that had seen fit to deprive her of her own parents while taking good care to spare this intolerable old fart, who was forever complaining that he was at death’s door and called up in the middle of the night over the slightest cold or the most minor ailment, waxing endlessly eloquent about the cunning progress of the ulcer that should have killed him seventy years ago, whereas in fact he had an iron constitution, as if, having totally neglected his son as a child, he were particularly determined to ruin his life in adulthood, and Claudie dreamed of a delicious plan whereby she would catch the plane out there and go to the village to suffocate him with a cushion or, better still, throttle him with her bare hands, but she was forced to abandon her revenge fantasies, while noting that in the real world she could not possibly entrust her son to this man during the Christmas vacations, nor could she possibly tell him that he must stay in Paris because his paternal grandfather hated him. It was a telephone call to Gavina Pintus that resolved the problem: in a mixture of Corsican and her Barbaggia region Sardinian she declared that she would be delighted for Matthieu to stay with her any time he wanted. Claudie was tempted to refuse, if only to teach Matthieu that emotional blackmail never paid, all the more because she suspected him of being, via Libero, the originator of this most opportune invitation, but she soon accepted it when she realized that it was now she who was in a position to blackmail her son, and she never hesitated to do so, invoking the threat of a canceled vacation at every lapse on the school front or attempt at rebellion, and over the years she rejoiced to note that, in truth, as the daily spectacle of a courteous, industrious and obedient son confirmed, nothing paid so well as blackmail.

  There were two worlds, there may have been an infinite number of others but for him there were just two. Two completely separate worlds, each with its own hierarchy, without shared frontiers, and the one he wanted to make his own was the one that was the most foreign to him. It was as if he had discovered that the essential part of himself was precisely the one that was the most foreign and he now needed to explore it and be reunited with it, because it had been torn away from him long before his birth and he had been condemned to live the life of a foreigner, without his even being aware of it, the life in which everything was familiar to him had become hateful, it was no life at all, it was a mechanical parody of the life he now wanted to forget, for example, by feeling the cold wind from the mountain lashing his face as he and Libero rode along on the back of a jolting 4x4 driven by Sauveur Pintus up the rutted road that led to his mountain hut. Matthieu was sixteen and now spent all his winter vacations at the village and moved around amid the intricacies of the Pintus tribe with the ease of a seasoned ethnologist. Libero’s older brother had invited them to come and spend the day with him and when they got there they found Virgile Ordioni busy castrating some young boars gathered together in a pen. He lured them with food while emitting variously modulated grunts which were considered attractive to porcine ears, and when one of them, spellbound by the charm of this music or, more prosaically, blinded by greed, incautiously came close, Virgile jumped on it, flung it to the ground like a sack of potatoes, caught it by the hind legs and turned it over before straddling its belly, the implacable vice of his massive thighs gripping the misguided animal, which now uttered appalling squeals, doubtless sensing that nothing good was coming its way and Virgile, knife in hand, sliced into the scrotum with a practiced action and plunged his fingers into the opening to extract a first testicle, and cut the cord, before dealing with the second in the same way and tossing them together into a large bowl that was half full. As soon as the operation was completed the liberated porker, displaying a stoicism that Matthieu found impressive, began feeding again, just as if nothing had happened, there among its heedless fellows, which all, one after the other, passed through Virgile’s expert hands. Matthieu and Libero watched the spectacle leaning on a fence. Sauveur emerged from the farm and came to join them.

  “You’ve never seen the like of that before, have you, Matthieu?”

  Matthieu shook his head and Sauveur gave a little laugh.

  “He’s good, Virgile. He knows how it’s done. There’s no more to be said.”

  But Matthieu was not thinking of saying anything at all, not least because the pen was now an arena for an interesting turn of events. Virgile, seated on a pig whose scrotum he had just cut open, let fly an oath and turned to Sauveur, who asked him what was up.

  “There’s only one here. Just the one! The other one hasn’t come down!”

  Sauveur shrugged his shoulders.

  “That happens.”

  But Virgile was not prepared to admit defeat. He cut off the single testicle and continued rummaging in the empty scrotum, shouting,

  “I can feel it! I can feel it!”

  and went on cursing because the pig, that was paying very dearly for its late puberty, was making desperate efforts to escape its tormentor’s grip, it twisted this way and that, the dust flew, and it uttered cries that now seemed almost human, so that Virgile eventually gave up. The pig stood up and sought refuge in a corner of the pen, with a sullen air and shaking legs, its long ears, spotted with black, dangling over its eyes.

  “Will it die?” asked Matthieu.

  Virgile joined them, the bowl under his arm, wiping the sweat from his brow and laughed and said,

  “Oh no, he’ll not die. He’s just a bit dazed. They’re tough, pigs. They don’t die like that,”

  and he laughed again and asked,

  “Well, guys, how’s it going? Shall we go and eat?”

  and Matthieu realized that the bowl contained their meal and tried not to let any of his surprise show because this was his world, even if all of it was not yet known to him, and each surprise, however daunting, must be denied on the spot and made over into habit, though in this case the dullness of habit was a far cry from the relish Matthieu felt as he stuffed himself with pigs’ balls grilled over a wood fire, while a great wind drove the clouds toward the mountain, above a little chapel dedicated to the Virgin, a completely white chapel at whose foot burned the scarlet candles Sauveur and Virgile occasionally lit in honor of their companion in solitude, and the hands that had built this chapel had long since been swept away by the wind, but they had left traces of their existence here, and higher up, along a steep slope, the remains of collapsed walls could be seen, almost invisible because they were of the same red color as the granite rock from whence they had arisen before the mountain took them back, slowly absorbing them into its bosom, all covered in stones and thistles, as if to make a show, not of its power, but of its tenderness. Sauveur heated a pan of terrible coffee on the fire, speaking to Virgile and his brother in a language Matthieu did not understand but knew to be his own, and he listened to them, as he drank the boiling hot coffee, imagining that he could understand them, although their words had no more meaning for him than the roar of the river whose unseen torrents could be heard
surging along the base of a steep chasm that ripped through the mountain like a deep wound, a furrow traced by God’s finger at the beginning of the world. After the meal they followed Virgile into a room where cheeses were drying and he opened a vast old trunk that was filled with an appalling collection of relics, curb bits, rusty old stirrups, pairs of military boots of all sizes with leather so stiff they seemed as if made of bronze, and he took out an army rifle wrapped in rags, as well as various pieces of ironmongery which Matthieu was amazed to learn were Sten guns that had been parachuted down in such great numbers that they could still be found in the maquis, where they had been waiting for sixty years to be retrieved, and Virgile laughed and told them his father had been a great resistance fighter, the terror of the Italians, in the days when Ribeddu and his men trod the same ground, moving silently at night, their ears cocked for the sound of aircraft engines, and Virgile patted Matthieu on the shoulder as he listened open-mouthed, picturing himself as a formidable hero, too.

  “Come on. We’re going to fire it.”

  Virgile checked the rifle, took some bullets and they went and sat on a great rock overhanging the ravine and, one after the other, they fired across at the mountain’s opposing face, the echo of the shots was lost in the forest of Vaddi Mali and great drifts of mist were now rising up from the sea and the valley, Matthieu felt cold, the recoil from the rifle hurt his shoulder and his happiness was complete.

  Contrary to all expectations, Hayet’s departure marked the start of a series of disasters that fell upon the village bar like the plagues of Egypt. Yet everything had seemed so promising: hardly had Marie-Angèle Susini announced that a vacancy for a manager had come up than a candidate made himself known. He was a man of about thirty who came from a little town on the coast where he had for a long time worked as waiter and barman at establishments he confidently characterized as prestigious. He was literally brimming over with enthusiasm, without doubt the bar had remarkable commercial potential, which would soon be revealed, just so long as an able manager knew how to exploit it, which, with all due respect to Marie-Angèle, had not hitherto been the case, of course, not everyone chose to be ambitious, but he, for one, was, and vastly so, and wouldn’t be content to run a sleepy little establishment, the clientele from the village would not suffice for him, you couldn’t do business worthy of the name with card players and the local boozers, you needed to target youth and tourists, market a concept, buy a sound system, serve light meals, he also envisaged installing a kitchen, bringing in D.J.s from the mainland, he knew the night scene like the back of his hand and he paced up and down in the bar, pointing out everything that would definitely have to be changed, starting with the furnishings that were enough to make you weep, and, when Marie-Angèle told him that, based on the turnover, she was asking twelve thousand euros as a fee for the management agreement plus the rent, he raised his arms to heaven and exclaimed that it was a bargain, Marie-Angèle would soon be amazed by the transformation she witnessed and for which he would be the project manager, twelve thousand euros was nothing, a gift, he was embarrassed by it, he felt as if he were robbing her and he explained that he planned to invest his capital in the initially necessary works and would pay her the first half of the fee within six months and the balance six months later, plus a year in advance. Marie-Angèle judged the offer a fair one and refused to listen to reason when Vincent Leandri came and warned her that, according to his inquiries, the fellow was a notorious deadbeat whose only professional experience amounted to a few seasonal jobs at seaside food trucks. However, it seemed as if Vincent had proved to be unjustly suspicious. The agreed works were undertaken. The back room was transformed into a kitchen, the furnishings changed, hi-fi material, a sound system, record decks and a magnificent French bar-billiard table were delivered, and, on the eve of the opening, an illuminated sign was hung up above the door. It showed the winking face of Che Guevara, from which a cartoon strip bubble emerged, announcing in neon blue letters,

  El Commandante Bar, sound, food, lounge.

  The following day, at the inaugural evening, the regulars from the village were greeted by the sound of heavy techno that made it impossible for them to hear themselves yelling during their game of belote and discovered to their amazement that, for prestige reasons, the manager had decided not to serve pastis and was offering ruinously expensive cocktails instead, which they drank making faces, and that furthermore there was no way for them to get served again because the manager was busy making merry with a gang of his friends who were downing vast quantities of vodka and ended up dancing naked to the waist on the counter. The friends in question very rapidly became the only regular customers for the bar and the opening hours were reduced to a strict minimum. In the morning it remained closed. At around six in the evening the pounding rhythm of the techno announced the serving of apéritifs. Unfamiliar cars would park all over the place, laughter and shouts could be heard until about eleven in the evening, at which time the whole gang, including the manager, would go down into the town. Around four o’clock in the morning, on their return from a nightclub, the music would start up again, and through their shutters the villagers, doomed to insomnia, would see the manager, with an entourage of appalling-looking girls, crowding into the bar, the door of which was then locked, and rumor had it that the French bar-billiard table had only been bought so as to afford the new manager the level surface he needed for the satisfaction of his lewd desires. At the end of three months Marie-Angèle went to see him and asked him how he was planning to pay the sum owing. He told her not to worry, but she thought it prudent to go again accompanied by Vincent Leandri, who demanded to see the accounts and warned him that if his legitimate curiosity were not satisfied he would be compelled to resort to extreme measures. The manager tried to prevaricate before finally admitting that there was no account book, every evening he took the entire contents of the till and spent them in the town, but that he was confident he could make good in the spring once the first tourists arrived. Vincent sighed.

  “You’re going to pay what you owe next week or I’ll break all your teeth.”

  The manager’s fatalistic response was not lacking in a certain nobility.

  “I haven’t got a bean. Nothing. I’m afraid you’re going to have to break my teeth.”

  Marie-Angèle restrained Vincent and tried to reach some accommodation, but this proved to be impossible, for not only was there not a single sou for the fee but the suppliers had not been paid and the building works had all been done on credit. Vincent clenched his fists as Marie-Angèle tugged him outside, repeating there’s no point, there’s no point, but he made an about turn, took hold of a carafe and broke it over the manager’s head. The latter collapsed with a groan, Vincent was panting with rage.

  “It’s a matter of principle, for fuck’s sake, a matter of principle!”

  So Marie-Angèle had to forgo her payment and settle debts she had not even incurred. She resolved to be more circumspect in choosing next time, but this did not do her much good. The management was now entrusted to a charming young couple whose conjugal strife transformed the bar into a no man’s land from which, by day as well as by night, there arose a din of broken glass, shouting and oaths of unbelievable coarseness, followed by breathless reconciliations, equally unsparing in decibels, whence it emerged that, when it came to coarseness, the couple had unlimited resources, both in rage and in ecstasy, such that scandalized mothers forbade their innocent offspring to go anywhere near this place of debauchery until the young couple were replaced by a lady of perfectly respectable age and appearance who spent her days ranting at the customers and subjecting the prices of drinks to whimsical variations, as if she were devoting every ounce of her energy to ruining her own business, which she achieved in record time and, as she saw summer approaching, Marie-Angèle was in despair, convinced that she was going to have to take matters in hand herself and make good the damage done before it became irreversible. But in June, when she was almost resigned
to having to go back to work herself, she received an offer which overwhelmed her with joy. They came from the mainland. For fifteen years they had been running a bar as a family business in the suburbs of Strasbourg and were now in search of a sunnier clime. Bernard Gratas and his wife had three rather ugly but well-behaved children aged between twelve and eighteen, and came with a bedridden grandmother, who had dementia, and whose senility greatly reassured Marie-Angèle. She needed stability and the Gratas family were stability incarnate. When she explained to them that, having suffered painful inconveniences on the subject of which she had no wish to elaborate, she preferred to be paid in advance, Bernard Gratas made out a check to her on the spot, which miraculously proved to be funded, and Marie-Angèle handed over the keys for the bar and the apartment to them, restraining herself as she did so from flinging her arms around them. The grandmother was settled in beside the fireplace and the Gratas family reopened the bar, now appropriately renamed the Bar des Chasseurs, which, while it lacked originality, was redolent of the best type of traditionalism, and the bruised regulars resumed their old habits, coffee in the morning, games of cards at the apéritif hour and animated debates during the sweet summer nights. Marie-Angèle was delighted, while blaming herself for not having realized long before what her mistake had been. She should not at any price have entrusted her bar to compatriots, if she had given it a moment’s thought, she would at once have looked for a manager from the mainland, the success of the Gratas couple confirmed this to her in a striking manner, simple, hard-working people, whose firm grasp of reality compensated substantially for their manifest lack of imagination, that was what she had needed all along and she had no doubt that they would end up fitting in completely, even if for the moment the villagers, with their somewhat rough-hewn concept of hospitality, never referred to them as anything other than “the Gauls” and only spoke to them to order drinks, everything would turn out for the best, and, as it happened, the more the summer continued, the more the atmosphere became, if not friendly, at least relaxed, and Bernard Gratas was now invited to join games of belote, and Vincent Leandri even decided to shake him by the hand, and soon other customers at the bar followed suit, and only a little more time was needed for the lasting harmony Marie-Angèle dreamed of to settle in. She paid no attention to some signs that should have made her uneasy. Gratas was no longer content simply to serve rounds of drinks, more and more often he would accept a drink himself, to give pleasure to all concerned, and he also began leaving first two, and soon three, buttons of his shirt undone, now favoring a tight-fitting cut, a gold bracelet mysteriously made its appearance around his wrist and, to crown it all, toward the end of the summer he made two acquisitions, a jacket of aged leather and a pair of beard clippers, which, to an alerted eye, of course, could presage only the worst.