The Devil's Reward

by Emmanuelle De Villepin

  “Perfect,” replied Geoffroy politely, while Papyrus, who was resigned to everything, looked out the window at the large brick church that dominated the square.

  “Is that their cathedral?”

  “Yes,” said Aunt Bette, “it’s the Frauenkirche, like our Notre-Dame. Go inside, it’s worth it.”

  “Someone spoke to us about a very nice lake a few miles from here, I’d like to go there if it’s possible.”

  “Steiner’s lecture is the day after tomorrow and we return to France the next day.”

  “Okay,” said Geoffroy, “then we could leave for the lake this evening and stay there until we come back for the lecture. What do you think?”

  “You will not have seen very much of Munich.”

  “Yes, but for me,” Geoffroy insisted, “I’d really like to spend some hours on that lake.”

  Aunt Bette cast a puzzled look at Papyrus, who was careful not to oppose his brother. She therefore yielded, though perhaps a bit disappointed by this change in their program.

  “Okay, I’ll see about renting a car that we can take to Lake Berg tomorrow morning, and I’ll reserve three rooms for us.”

  The two brothers were very relieved to see that the unpronounceable things they’d ordered off the menu turned out to be a delicious pork roast and an excellent apple tart with raisins. They drank beer with their meal and after rounding things off with a little plum schnapps were feeling quite jolly. Aunt Bette then took her leave to continue the errands and visits she had lined up, insisting that she didn’t have much time left to do everything she wanted to accomplish. The brothers called to the waiter to settle the bill and then went off to visit the cathedral.

  “Say, Geoffroy,” asked Papyrus, “what made you want to change Bette’s program?”

  “I hate this place.”

  “You hate it? Really?”

  “Do you like it here?”

  “No, but I don’t mind staying two more days.”

  “Not me.”

  Uncle Geoffroy was calmer and less unsettled than Papyrus, but when he got something into his head he could be as stubborn as a mule. They entered the cathedral, which they both found remarkable.

  “I prefer ours in Amiens.”

  “Oh là là, Geoffroy! Are you turning into an anti-urban hillbilly?”

  “That’s right, I’m a chauvinistic provincial. So are you, you just don’t want to admit it. This is the first time either of us has been out of France, don’t forget.”

  “So it’s normal to feel a little out of sorts abroad.”

  “If we were in Rome, I assure you we wouldn’t be feeling the same way,” Geoffroy snapped back.

  “I admit it’s a bit odd to find ourselves in Germany after all those bastards did to us!”

  During this whole exchange, they advanced toward the Gothic nave. Suddenly something hit the stone floor at their feet with a light metallic ring. Since there was not much light, they had to bend over to search for the unknown object. Papyrus then discovered it was his holy medal, now resting in the middle of a footprint with a little tail near the heel.

  “Oh my, it’s the medal that saved my life!”

  “What’s it doing there?”

  “I have no idea!”

  “It must have fallen from your pocket.”

  “Yes, it must have. I’d been looking for it for a while and couldn’t find it. I must have forgotten that I’d put it in this pocket.”

  “Show it to me. It’s still got the bullet lodged in the middle. That is really unbelievable.”

  “Yes, unbelievable. And to think I never thanked that child.”

  “That child must be a beautiful young woman by now. Brother, it’s time to go thank her!”

  The two left the church and went strolling through the streets, smiling at the lederhosen that they had never seen before. They bought themselves two long ivory pipes that had deer-hunting scenes sculpted on them as well as two fancy hats topped with pheasant feathers. For Bette they bought a delicate coral cameo.

  In the evening, after having freshened up, shaved, and changed clothes, they met Bette in the hotel’s large drawing room. She looked splendid in her emerald dress, which matched her big green eyes, and they both made the same movement to take her arm. She smiled, took one arm on each side, and they strode into the dining room where a chamber orchestra was playing Strauss. From the beginning of their stay Geoffroy had tried to take the lead. He ordered champagne and other items off the menu as best he could understand them. Bette looked on amused. She then announced that all was ready for their departure the next morning to Berg on the shores of Lake Starnberg.

  “You’ll see it’s a very nostalgia-filled location, but since you’re determined, we’ll go there.”

  “Lakes are always nostalgia-filled,” replied Geoffroy. “It’s their prerogative. Do you know why?”

  “Because they’re always dreaming of being as big as the sea and yet always confined by their banks,” said Papyrus.

  “It’s because their water is troubled and their strong winds cannot transport it anywhere except to the opposite shore,” added Bette.

  “Or perhaps it’s because they enclose their shoreline inhabitants in a vicious circle. It’s a closed universe that does not regenerate and dies its own slow death. Nothing new enters and nothing exits, everything is continuously recycled, that’s what makes the lake atmosphere so heavy,” Papyrus concluded.

  “So tomorrow we’ll sleep in the village where King Ludwig II of Bavaria was found drowned in very mysterious circumstances.”

  “Why do you say that the people along the lake are more shut in than others?” asked Geoffroy.

  “I’ve observed it,” said Papyrus.

  “But what are you saying? Geneva is full of foreigners!” Bette shot back.

  “Perhaps,” said Papyrus. “But it’s clear that coastal people are more open to otherness.”

  “Picardy residents, for example, are very welcoming. They’re so open they even marry Swiss women!” said Geoffroy with a knowing glance at Bette.

  “Oh my goodness,” Bette sighed, “I certainly feel guilty toward our Picardy relations. Since the death of Enguerrand I’ve not gone back there, I receive news only rarely, and myself I only write at holiday time. But what do you expect? He was my reason for being in Picardy. And you, do you receive news from Picardy?”

  “It’s curious that you bring up the Louvenel family. If you can believe it, just today while we were visiting the cathedral, the medal that your young sister-in-law gave me and that I thought I’d lost fell from my pocket.”

  “Oh, and so you suddenly found it again?”

  “Yes, by a stroke of luck, because we were in the nave and it was quite dark. It had fallen into a recessed footprint set within a yellowish stone.”

  “The Teufelstritt,” Bette murmured as her face whitened.

  “The what?”

  “The Teufelstritt…It means the devil’s footstep.”

  “Okay, here we go, now what’s that all about?” asked Papyrus half in jest and half irritated. “Really Bette, you spend too much time with these anthroposophy sophists!”

  “Say what you like, but it’s rather odd, don’t you think? This medal that saved your life disappears and then reappears at the very place where according to legend the devil was standing when he mocked the ‘church with no windows’ designed by the architect Halsbach. And it’s true that from that precise spot if one is looking at the altar, one cannot see any windows.”

  “So our marvelous Bette believes in the devil.”

  “Your Ahrimanian spirit keeps you from evolving, Geoffroy. You are drowning in the material, completely deaf to the language of spirit. I pity you.”

  “No Bette, don’t be offended. You know us, we’re just simple, unsophisticated cavalrymen.”

&nbs
p; “Yes, but I don’t like your teasing.”

  She was very beautiful pouting like an angry young child. Papyrus enjoyed being with her despite her odd notions. They were total opposites. She was ethereal, communing with the stars, while he was stuck in the mud of his war memories. She soared high among the eternal wisps of spirit while Papyrus and Geoffroy remained grounded in the reality of the trenches. If they followed her to Munich, it was certainly not out of devotion to Rudolf Steiner and certainly not on account of her charming almond eyes. They followed her because she was a ray of light that penetrated the black sticky wall of their nightmares. The only price to pay was putting up with all these odd conversations.

  “I would even say, my dear Louis, that you should not waste another minute and go ask my young sister-in-law to marry you. She must be of age to get married now, and it would seem to me that all signs clearly point in that direction.”

  The next morning, a hired car brought them to Berg on the shores of Lake Starnberg. The weather was lovely and as soon as they’d deposited their bags at the hotel they went out for a long walk. The climate was pleasantly cool. The sun and the little waves lapping the shore harmonized tranquilly with the surrounding forest of beech trees. Bette ran ahead crying to them, “I’ll hide. You try to find me!”

  To give her time to find a hiding place, the men walked away from the forest and closer to the shore. Across the lake they could see the Possenhofen castle, where the Empress Sissi was raised. They let a few minutes go by and then split up to try to find Bette. It was then that what was bound to happen happened.

  Papyrus walked off to the right toward the hotel, while Geoffroy went left toward the little chapel erected at the place where Ludwig II of Bavaria is said to have died. It was Geoffroy who found her crouched behind some ivy bushes, and when Papyrus finally turned and came back he found Bette and Geoffroy in each other’s arms lost in a passionate kiss. It’s true Papyrus was not the stuffy type, but it must have shaken him up a bit to find himself suddenly the odd man out within their little trio. He turned quietly and walked back to the hotel. Later that evening when they all met up again, Bette and Geoffroy acted as though nothing had happened.

  Back in Munich they barely managed to arrive on time for the all-important Steiner lecture. Bette was as giddy as a teenager at her first ball. As for the men, they dragged their heels plenty, but they had promised and promises mattered even to these rough-edged rakes. The Four Seasons Hotel was packed and they had to squeeze their way through the many attendees. The lecture was entitled “Anthroposophy and the Knowledge of Spirit” — just reading it elicited yawns from the two cavalrymen. Bette’s fanatical zeal gave her the courage to fight her way to the front row. Rudolf Steiner arrived onstage, his pince-nez dangling from a little cord.

  “I really want to introduce you to him at the end of the lecture. You don’t speak the language, but it doesn’t matter. Let yourself be transported by the sheer energy pouring out of this man. Don’t try to understand him, just let yourselves be gently rocked. Can you promise me that?”

  Aunt Bette would not be able to introduce anyone, because as Steiner was attempting to lay out his thinking with a charisma that even the two roughnecks had to acknowledge, a certain brouhaha broke out and disturbed the proceedings. A man hurled an epithet that Bette translated for Geoffroy and Papyrus.

  “Oh dear, they’re calling him a traitor. They’re nationalists and they’ve sworn to get rid of him!”

  Everything happened very quickly. Steiner’s supporters, who luckily were more numerous than the small group of nationalists who had come to assassinate him, surrounded the speaker to protect him. Bette, Geoffroy, and Papyrus were among those who gathered around and brought him to a side door that allowed the unhappy lecturer to get away. Everything happened so quickly; afterward Bette was visibly shaken and in tears.

  They escorted her back to the hotel and all the while she said the most incomprehensible things.

  “They’ll kill him, you’ll see. Those men are servants of Ahriman, they will destroy him.”

  The two men tried to calm her, but Bette was all stirred up.

  “All these signs we’ve been sent: the medal falling on the Teufelstritt, the Russian friend who tells me worrisome things. I know you’re here to support me and that you don’t understand what I’m telling you, but you saw with your own eyes what happened, didn’t you?”

  Papyrus left the two of them. He found himself back at the Four Seasons Hotel without realizing it. This city was not without its charms, but he and Geoffroy both felt similarly disoriented there. Bette’s crazy notions could not persuade a man like him, and yet an inexplicable low-level anxiety had come over him. He felt as though Munich were in the grip of hostile subterranean forces. Occult forces? Certainly not. Ahriman was not the jailor of Munich, but there were, without a doubt, postwar troubles and an unsettled political climate in this country that had so recently emerged from monarchy. How was he to explain to Bette that there was nothing more dangerous than man in his abominable material being, and that there was nothing spiritual about it — of that he was one hundred percent certain.

  So that was how Papyrus met Steiner. But I should add that Steiner’s influence on later events would continue, through the offices of Aunt Bette, naturally. As I retell all this I realize how much of it is at the origin of many later events that would mark our lives. I had never really thought about it before, I was so preoccupied by holding together the thousand different pieces of our existence. As for Geoffroy and Bette, they became so serious that on the way back to Amiens, Geoffroy proposed and she accepted.

  Upon his return, Papyrus went to knock at the door of his future father-in-law to see what had become of little Marguerite.

  Chapter Eleven

  I saw a documentary on television about something called music therapy, I think. This technique is being used to treat certain cases of dementia, autism, anorexia, and similar disorders. But what I found most striking was the use being made of it with children who have motor skill problems. A little boy in the film who had great difficulty walking had chosen to focus on the violin. Whenever he moved, even a little bit, the sound of a violin was instantly triggered. In this way he was taught that his movement had an impact on the environment. It’s important to realize, explained the therapist, that when we move from point A to point B we are affecting the world around us, even if we may not notice it.

  For the young patient the violin that accompanied his movements testified to his ability to change the order of things. If we were really conscious of how much each of our actions affects the rest of the world, we might not dare to do anything. If Aunt Bette had not discovered Steiner, perhaps she never would have saved my life.

  Catherine did not return to the apartment until lunchtime. She was very pale and her makeup had run. She gave us one of those tired smiles that signals an all-out fight and a Pyrrhic victory that comes too late after too much effort.

  She gave a loud kiss to Luna and caressed my cheek.

  “Are you all right?” I asked timidly. “Do you want to eat some of this nice mâche salad that Madame Joseph prepared for us? Here’s some cheese and a nice fresh baguette.”

  “Great. I’ll get myself a plate and utensils.”

  She left and came back to sit with us. We were very curious to know how things had gone but pretended we weren’t so as not to overwhelm her. Especially me — obviously the overeager mother is immediately suspect. Thankfully Luna couldn’t stand the suspense and as soon as her mother had sat down, she launched in.

  “So?”

  “Luna, don’t leap at your mother, let her tell us what she wants to.”

  If one’s going to pretend, one might as well go all the way, even though I risked killing the momentum started by my granddaughter.

  “My dear, what can I say? He asked me to forgive him. We talked for a long time. He begged me to return
to the house. That’s it.”

  “And so things are exactly where they were before,” said Luna, clearly annoyed.

  “In a way, yes. Oh, Mom, he wants to speak with you. He’s very intent on explaining something to you.”

  “Explaining what? That it’s difficult to remain eternally in love even when one deeply loves someone? That’s very nice, but tell him I’m already very familiar with the whole business.”

  “You hold it against him?” Catherine asked.

  “Not against him as a man, but as a son-in-law.”

  “But you’re not going to give him the silent treatment?”

  “Of course not, what do you think!”

  After lunch Catherine went to lie down and I stayed with Luna. Lorenzo had gone back to Milan. Luna told me about her boyfriend.

  “In September he’s going to Toronto for six months to study because he got a scholarship, then he’ll return to Milan. I’d like to go with him.”

  “Well, do it then!”

  “Mom will hit the roof!”

  “Oh no she won’t, I won’t permit it. She’ll miss you, of course.”

  “She’s not like you.”

  “Oh no? Are you so sure? When she went off to live in Italy I wasn’t too happy, I can tell you that. But what can you do? That’s the way it is with children. You spend your life either wanting them to be happy without you or disappointed when that’s exactly what happens. It’s the most ambivalent and complicated of relations, and the whole thing is inevitably sprinkled with bad faith since what mother will admit to being a cannibal? For fathers it’s different. The uterus creates special complications, don’t you think?”

  “Mamie, I’ve not had kids, so I have no idea.”

  “For daughters too it’s complicated. My mother, for example, I hated her so much and loved her so much too. I felt constantly betrayed by the differences between us and she probably did too. As though the fact of being of the same flesh created in one and the other the expectation of being absolutely identical. When really everything set us apart.”