‘On what road?’ Jasmin asked.
Meaulnes did not reply.
In order to change the subject, I said, ‘Now, I’d like to have travelled like that in a cart under the driving rain with an umbrella to shelter me.’
‘And be reading all the way, as though you were indoors,’ said someone else.
‘It wasn’t raining and I didn’t want to read,’ said Meaulnes. ‘All I thought about was watching the countryside go by.’
But when Giraudat again asked what countryside he was talking about, again Meaulnes said nothing. And Jasmin remarked: ‘I know… It’s that famous adventure again!’
He said this in a conciliatory, but self-important, tone of voice, as though he were himself somehow in the secret. He was wasting his time, though: his approach achieved nothing, and since night was falling, everyone hurried away, heads sheltering under smocks from the cold rain.
Until the following Thursday, the weather remained wet. And that Thursday was more dreary even than the one before. All the countryside was bathed in a kind of icy fog as in the worst days of winter.
Millie, taken in by the bright sunshine of the previous week, had got the washing done, but it was no use thinking of putting it out to dry on the garden hedges or even on lines in the loft, the air was so damp and cold.
Talking about this to Monsieur Seurel, she got the idea of hanging out the washing in the classrooms, since it was Thursday, and working the stove up to full heat. To save on the fires in the kitchen and dining room, we could cook our meals on the stove and spend the whole day in the main classroom.
At first – I was still so young – I thought of this novelty as a festive occasion.
Some festivity! All the heat from the stove was taken up by the washing, and it felt really cold. Outside, in the yard, a winter drizzle fell, weakly and endlessly; and yet it was there that, at nine in the morning, driven mad by boredom, I met The Great Meaulnes. Through the bars of the main gate, against which we were silently resting our heads, we watched a funeral procession arriving from the country to the high point of the town at the crossroads of Les Quatre-Routes. The coffin, which had come in an ox cart, was unloaded and placed on a stone slab at the foot of the great cross where the butcher had recently seen the gypsy sentries. Where was he now, the young captain who had so brilliantly led the attack? The curé and the choir-boys halted in front of the coffin, according to custom, and we could hear the melancholy sound of singing in the distance. We knew that this would be the only event of the day and that otherwise it all would flow past like yellowed water in a gutter…
‘And now,’ Meaulnes said, suddenly, ‘I’m going to do my packing. I’ve got to tell you, Seurel: I wrote to my mother last Thursday to ask if I could complete my education in Paris. I’m leaving today.’
He went on looking towards the town, with his hands resting on the bars, level with his head. There was no point in asking if his mother, who was rich and granted his every wish, had also granted this one. Nor was there any point in asking why he suddenly wanted to go off to Paris!
But he certainly had some feelings of regret and fear about leaving the dear town of Sainte-Agathe, from which he had set out on his adventure. And I, for my part, felt a huge sense of desolation rise up inside me, unlike any that I had experienced before.
‘Easter’s coming!’ he said, with a sigh, by way of explanation.
‘As soon as you find her there, you’ll write to me, won’t you?’ I asked.
‘Of course, I promise. You’re my friend and my brother, aren’t you?’
And he put a hand on my shoulder.
Gradually, I came to realize that it was really over, since he wanted to finish his schooling in Paris. Never again would I have my tall friend with me.
There was only one hope that we would be reunited, and that was in the house in Paris where he might find the trail of the lost adventure… But what a meagre hope it was for me, when I saw Meaulnes himself so sad!
My parents were informed. Monsieur Seurel appeared quite amazed, but soon accepted Augustin’s reasons. Millie, a real housewife, was chiefly sorry at the thought that his mother would see our house in a state of unaccustomed disarray… The trunk, alas, was quickly packed. We looked for his Sunday shoes in the cupboard under the stairs, some linen in the wardrobe and then his papers and schoolbooks – all that a young man of eighteen possesses in this world.
At midday, Madame Meaulnes arrived in her carriage. She had lunch at the Café Daniel with Augustin and took him away almost without a word as soon as the horse was fed and harnessed. We said goodbye to them at the door… and the carriage vanished round the corner at the crossroads of Les Quatre-Routes.
Millie scraped her shoes at the door and returned to the cold dining room to put everything back in its place, while I, for the first time for many months, found myself alone facing a long Thursday evening – with the feeling that inside that old carriage my adolescence had just vanished for evermore.
XI
BETRAYAL
What should I do? The weather was clearing a little, and it looked as though the sun might even come out.
A door closed in the school house. Then, again, silence. From time to time my father walked across the yard to fill the coal scuttle which he used to stoke up the stove. I could see the white clothes hanging from their lines and had no desire to go back to this sad place which had been transformed into a drying room, there to find myself confronted by the end-of-year exam, that competition for the Ecole Normale which should from now on be my sole concern.
An odd thing: mixed in with this sense of boredom and desolation, there was almost a feeling of freedom. Now that Meaulnes had gone, now that the whole adventure was over and a failure, I felt at least free of a strange preoccupation, of that mysterious obsession preventing me from behaving like everyone else. Now that Meaulnes had gone, I was no longer his companion in adventure, the brother of that pathfinder. I reverted to being a village boy like the rest. This was easy for me: I had only to follow my most natural impulse.
The youngest of the Roy brothers went past down the muddy street, swinging three conkers tied together on a piece of string, then launching them into the air, to fall into the school yard. So great was my boredom that I enjoyed throwing his conkers back to him two or three times over the wall.
Suddenly, I saw him abandon this childish game and run towards a cart coming down the Chemin de la Vieille-Planche. The cart did not even need to stop for him to clamber up behind. I recognized Delouche’s little cart and horse. Jasmin was driving, with fat Boujardon standing behind. They were on their way back from the fields.
‘Come and join us, François!’ Jasmin shouted. He must already have known that Meaulnes had left.
Heavens! I told no one, but climbed aboard the shuddering cart and stood there with the others, steadying myself against one of the rails. He took us back to Widow Delouche’s place…
Here we are now in the back of the shop with the good lady who is at the same time a grocer and an innkeeper. A ray of white sunshine is glancing through the low window on the tins of food and the casks of vinegar. Fat Boujardon is seated on the window ledge and turns towards us with the laugh of a podgy man; he is eating biscuits with a spoon, digging them out of an open box, standing within reach, on a barrel. Little Roy is producing small cries of pleasure. A sort of unwholesome intimacy has been established between us. From now on, I can see that Jasmin and Boujardon are to be my friends. The course of my life has suddenly changed. I have the feeling that Meaulnes left a very long time ago and that his adventure is an old, sad story, but over now.
Little Roy has found an open bottle of liqueur under the counter. Delouche offers a drop to each of us, but there is only one glass and we all drink out of it. I am the first to be served, with a hint of condescension, as though I were not accustomed to these hunters’ and peasants’ manners… I feel a bit awkward. And since they have just mentioned Meaulnes, I feel an urge to show that I know
his story and to tell a little of it, so as to overcome my embarrassment and regain my self-confidence. How could it harm him, since all his adventures here are over now?
Was I telling the story badly? It didn’t produce the effect that I expected.
The others, being good village lads, surprised by nothing, were not impressed by such a small thing.
‘It was a wedding, then,’ said Boujardon.
Delouche had seen one in Préveranges which was even odder.
The château? There were bound to be some people from round about who had heard of it.
The girl? Meaulnes would get married to her when he had finished his year’s military service.
‘He should have told us about it,’ one of them remarked. ‘He should have showed us his map instead of entrusting it to a gypsy!’
My failure makes me dig deeper. I try to take advantage of the moment to excite their curiosity and decide to explain who the gypsy was, where he came from and his strange destiny… Boujardon and Delouche are not interested: ‘He’s the one to blame for everything. He made Meaulnes unfriendly – Meaulnes who was such a good comrade! He’s the one who arranged all those idiotic night-time attacks and raids, after marshalling us all together like a school battalion.’
‘You know,’ Jasmin said, looking at Boujardon and giving little shakes of his head, ‘I did just the right thing reporting him to the police. That’s someone who brought harm to the town and would do it again!’
I almost agree with them. No doubt everything would have turned out differently if we had not made such a mystery about the matter and seen it in such a tragic light. It was Frantz’s influence that upset everything…
Then, suddenly, while I was taken up with these thoughts, there was a noise in the shop. Jasmin Delouche quickly hid his flask of liqueur behind a barrel, while fat Boujardon jumped off his window ledge, and landed on a dusty, empty bottle which rolled away under his foot and almost brought him down. Little Roy was pushing them from behind, to get them out more quickly, half suffocating with laughter.
Without entirely understanding what was going on, I fled with them. We crossed the yard and climbed up a ladder into a hayloft. I heard a woman’s voice calling us good-for-nothings!
‘I didn’t think she’d be back so soon,’ Jasmin whispered.
Only now do I see that we were doing something unlawful there, stealing cakes and liqueur. I’m as disappointed as the shipwrecked sailor who thought he was talking to a man and suddenly realizes that it’s a monkey. I’m so fed up with all these adventures that I don’t even want to leave the hayloft. Anyway, night is falling. They get me to go by the back way, across two gardens and round a pond. I end up in a wet, muddy street, with the lights of the Café Daniel shining on it.
I’m not proud of my evening’s work. I’m at the crossroads of Les Quatre-Routes. Without wishing to, I can suddenly see, at the bend of the road, a hard, fraternal face smiling at me, a final wave of the hand… and the carriage vanishes.
A cold wind is making my smock flutter, reminding me of that winter that was so tragic and so beautiful. Already, everything seems to me to have got harder. In the large classroom where I am expected for dinner, there are brisk draughts of air cutting through the meagre heat given out by the stove. I shiver and I am told off for my afternoon’s disappearance. I don’t even have the consolation – in trying to recapture the routines of the past – of being able to take my usual place at table. It hasn’t been laid that evening because each of us is going to eat off our knees, as best we can, in the dark classroom. In silence, I eat the griddle cake that should have been a reward for this Thursday spent at school; it has burnt on the ring of the stove, where it had cooked.
That evening, all alone in my room, I went to bed quickly to stifle the regret that I could feel rising up from the depths of my sadness. But twice in the night I woke up, the first time thinking I could hear the creaking of the nearby bed where Meaulnes used to turn over suddenly, in a single movement; and the second time, his light footsteps, like those of a hunter stalking some prey through the attics at the back of the house…
XII
THREE LETTERS FROM MEAULNES
In all my life, I have only received three letters from Meaulnes. They are still at home in a drawer. Every time I read them, I feel the same sadness as before.
The first arrived as early as two days after he left.
My dear François,
Today, as soon as I got to Paris, I went to look at the house. I saw nothing. There was no one. There will never be anyone.
The address that Frantz gave is that of a little, two-storey private house. Mademoiselle de Galais’ room must be on the first floor. The upper windows are the ones most hidden by trees, but looking up from the pavement you can see them very clearly. All the curtains are drawn, and you would have to be mad to hope that, one day, the face of Yvonne de Galais might appear, looking through one of these curtains.
It’s on a boulevard. The rain was falling a little on the already verdant trees. You could hear the clear bells of the trams that kept passing by.
For almost two hours, I walked backward and forwards under the windows. There’s a wine merchant’s where I stopped to drink, so that I would not be mistaken for a burglar planning a robbery. Then I returned to my hopeless watching.
Night fell. The windows lit up all around, but not in that house. There is definitely no one there; and yet Easter is coming.
Just as I was about to leave, a girl or young woman, I couldn’t tell, came and sat down on one of the benches that were damp with rain. She was dressed in black with a little white collar. When I left, she was still there, not moving despite the evening chill and waiting for something or someone unknown. You see: Paris is full of mad people like myself.
Augustin
Time passed. I waited in vain for a word from him on Easter Monday and all the days following – days that are so calm after the great excitement of Easter that it seems nothing is left except to wait for the coming of summer. June arrived, bringing examinations and dreadful heat, which settled in a stifling haze over the countryside, with not a breath of wind to dispel it. The nights were no cooler and so gave no respite from this torment. It was during this unbearable month of June that I received a second letter from The Great Meaulnes.
June 189–
My dear friend,
Now all hope is lost. I have known that since yesterday evening. The pain, which I hardly felt at first, has been getting more intense since then.
Every evening I went to sit on the bench, waiting, thinking and, in spite of all, hoping.
Yesterday, after dinner, the night was dark and stifling. Some people were chatting on the pavement under the trees. Above the black leaves, turning to green where lit by the street lamps, the apartments on the second and third floors were lit up. Here and there was a window that the summer heat had opened wide… You could see the lamp on the table, alight but barely able to dispel the warm darkness of June around it; you could see almost to the back of the room… Ah, if only Yvonne de Galais’ black window had been lit as well, I think I should have dared to go up the stairs, knock on the door, go in…
The girl I mentioned before was there again, waiting as I was. I thought that she must know the house and I asked her about it.
‘I know that at one time,’ she said, ‘a brother and sister came to spend their holidays in that house. But I heard that the brother ran away from his parents’ home and that they never managed to find him. And the girl got married. That explains why the rooms are empty.’
I left. I had only taken ten steps when my feet stumbled against the pavement and I nearly fell. That night – it was last night – when the women and children had finally ceased their noise in the courtyards, and it was quiet enough for me to sleep, I began to hear the cabs passing in the streets. Only occasionally did they go by, but when one had gone past, try as I might to avoid it, I would hear the next: the bell, the horses’ hooves clicking
on the roadway… and the sounds repeated: the forsaken city, your lost love, endless night, summer, fever…
Seurel, my friend, I am in great distress.
Augustin
Letters that confided much less in me than might appear! Meaulnes did not tell me why he had gone so long without writing, nor what he intended to do now. I had the impression that he was breaking off our friendship, because his adventure was over, just as he was breaking off from his past. And, indeed, even though I wrote to him, there was no answer – just a word of congratulations when I passed my Brevet simple.12 In September, I learnt from a school mate that he had come to stay with his mother at La Ferté-Angillon on holiday. But that year, as we had been invited to Vieux-Nançay by my Uncle Florentin, that’s where we had to spend the holidays. And Meaulnes went back to Paris without my being able to see him.
After school resumed – to be exact, towards the end of November, while I had settled in, with grim determination, to study for the Brevet supérieur, in the hope of qualifying as a schoolteacher the following year without having to go through the Ecole Normale in Bourges – I received the last of the only three letters that I ever had from Augustin:
I still go past that window. I am still waiting, without the slightest hope, out of pure madness. At the end of these cold autumn Sundays, just as night is falling, I cannot bear to go back home and close the shutters on my windows, without returning there, to that icy street.
I am like the madwoman in Sainte-Agathe who would come out of her front door all the time and, shading her eyes, look towards the station to see if her dead son was coming home.
Sitting on the bench, shivering, miserable, I like to imagine that someone will gently take my arm… I should look round and she would be there. ‘I’m a bit late,’ she would say, simply. And all the sorrow and the madness fade away. We go into our house. Her furs are icy cold and her veil is damp. She brings in the taste of the mist with her from outside, and while she is going over to the fire, I can see her frosty blonde hair and her fine profile with its sweet lines bending over the flames…
The Lost Estate (Le Grand Meaulnes) Page 13