The Devil's Reward

by Emmanuelle De Villepin

  In fact all three of them were upset by this trip: Papyrus for the reasons he so elegantly formulated to his brother; Bette and the Princess because they considered Papyrus to be an erratic force disturbing their spiritual development. In any case he ended up joining them after Christmas in a rather rustic guesthouse in a German-speaking area very close to the Goetheanum, which was Bette’s wish because she did not want to stay at her own home in Basel. Papyrus had clearly stated that he would not attend any lectures, and he was therefore getting ready to hunker down in this deserted place and in the worst weather of the year with only a pile of books he’d brought along to occupy him.

  The night they arrived their host had prepared a decent meal that included a delicious cheese fondue and enough alcohol to lift Papyrus’s spirits somewhat. Other guests ate in silence around them.

  When they were alone, the Princess said to him, “Well, well, you must be really fond of your sister-in-law to spend so many days cooped up in your room reading and yawning.”

  “No, it’s my brother I love and it’s my brother who asked me to do it!”

  “Yes, curious that he was so insistent.”

  “He wants to know she’s not alone in that nuthouse of a sect that you also belong to, my beautiful and adorable friend.”

  “Oh, don’t tease me, it’s really not the moment for that.”

  “Why’s that, because the spiritual retreat has already started?”

  “And you prefer mockery instead of facing what’s bothering you?”

  “And what is it that you think is bothering me?”

  “Bette is in love with you and you’re too much of a rake not to have noticed.”

  “You’re mad! Bette is in love with Geoffroy, otherwise why would she have agreed to marry him?”

  “Did she really have a choice?”

  The gaze of her light green eyes had a strange ambiguity—a sort of painful caress — but Papyrus was too agitated to notice. Bette then returned.

  “This is such a darling little dining room, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, it’s perfect.”

  “Louis, what will you do tomorrow? Won’t you be bored out of your mind?”

  “No worries. I’ll get up late and go out walking. Really, don’t worry about me. And besides, I’ve come prepared. I’ve got War and Peace in my bag. I’ll never have a more perfect moment to get through it.”

  “Oh my poor dear, what a situation your brother’s thrown you into.”

  The slightest wisp of a smile crossed Natasha Bolinkova’s lips. Papyrus hated her.

  The next morning, when he came down at eleven for breakfast, he was greeted like an alien. The owners were already preoccupied with the bratwurst and potato röstis that were to be served at noon. Papyrus waited with his book and then ate like an ogre. He spent the rest of the afternoon walking and then reading in his room until the ladies returned. The first few days went by smoothly like that, but then he did begin to get bored. He hired a car and driver and set off for Basel.

  “Do you speak French?” he asked the driver.

  “Naturally.”

  “There’s no way of knowing. You’re Swiss, right, so I should be speaking German. Well, I’m lucky to fall in with you since I only speak my mother tongue.”

  “Yes, and you’re lucky it’s French!”

  “What do you recommend in Basel?”

  “Walking around of course, and visiting the cathedral. I also advise you to buy some bruns de Bâle” — they’re called brunsli.”

  “What are they?”

  “Chocolate cookies with almonds and cinnamon. You can only get them at this time of year. Läckerli are also good. They’re little gingerbreads with icing typically eaten at New Year’s time — and they’re as good as their name.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Lecker, that means delicious in German.”

  “Oh, I see. I’ll be sure to buy some.”

  He had the driver drop him off at the cathedral, which he visited. Then he walked along the Rhine. The air was bracing and the day was bathed in the intense light of sun on snow. Papyrus thought to himself that things weren’t going too badly. He ducked into a post office and sent off a postcard to Marguerite. It was not quite three p.m. when he stepped into a tearoom with a charming green facade situated along the river. He sat down at a little round table that faced a large Venetian mirror, and what to his wondering eyes should appear but the reflection of the face of the Count de Redan. At first he thought he was hallucinating, but no, the face in the mirror reading with concentration an English newspaper was without a doubt that of his old friend.

  “Charles, you old scoundrel, what are you doing here?”

  “I can’t believe my eyes! And you, what brings you here?”

  “Oh, this is the best thing that could have happened to me!”

  “What? Being here?”

  “No, this place is a sort of purgatory for me. I mean running into you, what good fortune! But you, what brings you here at the holiday season? And please, don’t tell me you’re leaving tomorrow!”

  “Haha! You always made me laugh, Louis. I have no appointments, no schedule — it’s one of the perks of being an old bachelor. And pardon me for saying so, but you completely underestimate the charms of this region. There are many marvelous things to see and visit. But will you have time?”

  “I have all the time in the world.”

  Papyrus told the Count the reason for his being there. The Count remembered Bette well and her enthusiasm for anthroposophy. After Papyrus bought some brunsli and läckerli for Bette and Natasha, as well as for his driver, they went to the museum in the city center.

  “No one recommended the museum to you, how can that be? You’ll see works of Holbein from the Amerbach Cabinet collection. They’re really splendid! Your friends don’t have a thought for anything down-to-earth!”

  Papyrus blushed inwardly, thinking of his down-to-earth encounters with the Princess, but as he was a gentleman he simply made a silent nod of acknowledgment.

  The museum was indeed rich in its holdings of works from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, including some magnificent Strasbourg tapestries, but Papyrus stopped the longest before a series of engravings of a sort of Saint Vitus’s dance with a group of skeletons on a tomb.

  “You seem rather entranced,” murmured Charles de Redan, coming up behind him.

  Papyrus made no reply and continued his examination.

  “It’s known as a danse macabre, an allegorical motif of the Middle Ages representing the universality of death. The dead person buried, you see, might be a king or emperor or pope, but could just as well be a peasant or child. It’s supposed to remind you of the precariousness of your existence and the inescapable triumph of death over vanity. Study it well, Louis, it can only help you with your boastful swagger.”

  “I was in the war, Charles.”

  At the end of the afternoon they said goodbye, but not before agreeing to meet again the next morning to visit Colmar together. When Louis arrived at the guesthouse around six p.m., the ladies were already waiting for him at the dinner table, even though he had been hoping to rest a bit first.

  “Say, at what time do they eat, these Swiss?”

  “Early,” Bette replied laughing. “But they also get up early. Our poor host was very concerned about you this morning and wondered if he should knock on your door to see if anything was the matter.”

  “Well, tomorrow he’ll have nothing to worry about, because I’m getting up at dawn to go to Colmar with you’ll never guess whom.”

  “Whom?”

  “Charles de Redan, my Paris friend.”

  “What a coincidence! And what is he doing here?”

  “He says he’s very fond of this region and is traveling alone. He showed me some very nice things in fact. Oh,
by the way, I brought you some cookies.”

  “Oh, läckerli!” cried Bette, opening the box of cookies. “I love them. Taste this, Natasha. It’s a typical food from around here at holiday time.”

  They ate heartily and drank a lot of white wine. They concluded their meal wrapped in their fur coats sitting on the wooden bench in the hotel courtyard. There they drank pflümli out of little crystal Bohemian glasses and ate more of the cookies Louis had bought in Basel. The crisp cold air gave a particularly sharp clarity to the starry night — a clearness only clouded by the regular puffs of water vapor from their mouths as they breathed.

  “The night is so beautiful that it seems flat, like an immense black stole,” said Natasha.

  “Yes, let’s stop breathing. We’re staining it with our breath,” murmured Bette.

  “Bette, if we stop breathing, we’ll die,” said Papyrus. “Life always causes some stains, but that’s life.”

  “Louis, look, those stars seem so close.”

  “I’m going to bed, my friends,” said Natasha. “Tomorrow we’re getting up early and finishing late. I have to ring out 1922 in top form.” The Princess went back inside the hotel, leaving in her wake a slight scent of lavender and talcum powder.

  “Louis, I’ve never yet thanked you for accompanying me because I thought it a bit odd. But I know you’re rather bored and it bothers me to know you’re by yourself and at loose ends. Plus, you’re far from your young fiancée on account of me.”

  “Well, to tell you the truth, I was a bit worried about this whole thing too, but now I’m very happy with every bit of this escapade.”

  “You think we’re two nutcases, don’t you?”

  “Everyone is trying to make sense of their lives. I don’t judge you.”

  “And you, what sense have you made?”

  “What do you see there?”

  He asked Bette this question while raising his head to the night sky and taking her hand in his. Bette’s little hand was so soft that he felt he would capsize. He told himself he should let go of it, but also that it was too late and that the poison was already coursing in his veins. He then repeated in a shaky voice, “What do you see there?”

  “I see the immensity, but I also see a line which, extended to infinity on my right, arcs back to the starting point on my left. The starting point and the end point overlap eternally.”

  She leaned her head on his shoulder after drinking a sip of pflümli.

  “And you, Louis, what do you see?”

  “I see emptiness. An emptiness that’s impossible to define and to avoid.”

  “Do you believe in God?”

  “I only believe in matter now, Bette.”

  “But matter is made of spirit!”

  “Matter is made of matter.”

  “You don’t believe that yourself.”

  “I saw death triumphant dancing on faith, Bette. In the trenches, there was no more God, no more spirit, as you call it, but instead the awful, incommensurable triumph of matter. Mere kids who minutes earlier were writing to their fiancées, walking here and there to avoid going crazy, trembling with fear—they were eating, sleeping, reflecting. And then seconds later their bodies are blown to bits, a leg here, an arm over there. I came across a hand that had begun decomposing while still gripping the photograph of a woman.”

  “And yet you say they thought, they loved. You don’t say their brain was thinking, or their brain loved. You know there is something that goes beyond mere anatomy.”

  “You’re fooling yourself, Bette.”

  She raised her head to look at him. He had such an air of suffering that she no longer recognized him. He turned his head to her and there what had to happen happened — they kissed. In fact, they devoured each other. It was evident that the passion that expressed itself in their gestures originated far back, so far back that they did not see it coming. What remained of the pflümli tipped over into the snow, and tipping themselves, they gave themselves up to their furious ardor outstretched on the bench. Then they righted themselves. Papyrus took her hand and guided her back to his room. They made love wildly, brutally, as though their need to dissolve into each other was related to some old grievance; then they calmed down, they felt each other, caressed each other. That lasted a long time; they never seemed sated.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Two orderlies entered pushing a cart with our dinners on it. I stared at the trays in horror, but as soon as the orderlies left the room Josephine sprang from her bed to unpack our provisions. She handed me an open-faced cheese sandwich of vache qui rit, a yogurt, and a banana.

  “There, that will tide you over so you don’t starve, and later if you like I have some butter cookies.”

  “I’m being wonderfully spoiled, Josephine, thank you so much. Your cuisine is excellent!”

  Luna and Catherine sat in silence.

  “What are you thinking?” I asked them.

  “About everything you’ve told us…It’s crazy.”

  “It’s not crazy, it’s life, and when passion overtakes you, it totally takes over!”

  “She really got around, your aunt Bette! She wound up doing it with the whole family!”

  “Luna! No disrespect for your grandmother, please!”

  “Oh Catherine, no! I like her frankness. She’s not being disrespectful, simply spontaneous.”

  “Spontaneity is good. Me, I like spontaneous people,” Josephine interjected while munching her sandwich.

  “There are limits. We are after all talking about our own great aunt.”

  Wham! That was aimed at my Josephine to let her know You’re not one of us! My friend got the message and looked back at Catherine perplexed. I think she was wondering where my daughter’s aggressiveness came from. Catherine had absolutely no idea what it felt like to be excluded. She had always lived in a world where she was granted her place. In my life this had not always been the case. I recognized it immediately as soon as any group of people drew itself into a closed circle. I am wildly hostile to such behavior and feel like a hunted animal when I sense any form of exclusion happening. My whole life I’ve been the daughter of the pariah, of the debauched, miscreant drug user judged by a narrow world that only recognizes its own social codes. This is why I’ve always felt close to all minorities: the young against the old, the sick against the healthy, individuals against the masses, Indians against cowboys, and blacks against whites. It takes having lived that experience to know that the smallest drop of gratuitous hostility can create a chasm between you and the other person when fate has confined you within a certain singular position. I have experienced this painful feeling too often, like a sort of castaway in freezing ocean water, and am always terribly sensitive to it. Catherine could never have a sense of the invisible, gut connection that united me with Josephine, and for me at that moment it was my own daughter who was the stranger.

  “I have nothing against Aunt Bette. Especially considering the time back then. It could not have been easy to do all she did,” opined my dear Luna.

  “You’re not kidding!”

  “And did you like her?”

  “As a child I found her too sophisticated and especially the focus of too much adulation. So no, I couldn’t warm to her. Besides that, Gabriel and I loved to spend time doing mock imitations of her dance steps with all those veils and exalted gestures.”

  “And then?”

  “And then she saved my life.”

  “Really?” asked Catherine.

  “Absolutely.”

  “But Mamie, how did it end between her and Papyrus?”

  “It’s a terrible story.”

  “Oh là là! What a soap opera!” said Luna. “But we’re going to get kicked out now. Don’t you tell any bits of the story without us, all right?”

  “And what if I tell it twice,” I replied with an impi
sh wide-eyed stare back at Luna. “It’s going to be hard to spend the evening together and not pick up the thread, right, Josephine?”

  “No, no, we want to hear the first telling too! We don’t want the warmed-over retelling! Please, you two!”

  Mother and daughter left the room as the doctor was arriving on his rounds. I was just able to see Catherine take him aside as they quickly disappeared from my angle of vision. Luna came back and gave me a warm hug and kiss. She murmured that she loved me very much, and hearing that was like being lifted by pink butterflies. Then the doctor entered and she left. He began with me. He told me I had probably taken too many of my antihypertensive pills, perhaps accidentally double the normal dose, which is quite possible. He said I was fit as a fiddle, albeit an old fiddle, and that he would sign my release for the next day.

  “As for you, Madame Morgel, we have ruled out any cardiac problem, and so you’re free to go home tomorrow as well.”

  When we were alone I said to Josephine, “I’m sorry about what happened earlier.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My daughter was not very kind, but it was me she was really aiming at.”

  “But she loves you. She’s constantly here!”

  “Yes, but my daughter never really got the knack for life. You, you have it, I think.”

  Then she suddenly turned grave and serious.

  “It’s not easy. It takes discipline.”

  “And small pleasures. They bring a certain charm and are wonderfully helpful.”

  “It’s true, they help.”

  “Yes, they do. Me, at my age, I always reserve a few daily doses of little things that please me. What do you do that makes you happy, and that’s within reach, of course? Think of the simplest things, one mustn’t be too demanding, either.”

  “Reading a good book, listening to music, walking around at flea markets with Mita my best friend. Drinking my coffee with milk in bed in the morning, putting on a new dress, finding a seat in the subway, watching the sunset at Place du Tertre, eating alone with my mother. And you? What are your pleasures?”

  “For me eating with my mother was always a nightmare, and the Place du Tertre is too far away. Let’s see…I know, watching a thunderstorm at Place Saint-Sulpice, looking out the window of my living room, having a whiskey while watching TV, smoking a cigarette at the end of a meal. Eating a whole seafood platter. All things that are harmful to me, I guess.”