The Nightcharmer and Other Tales

by Claude Seignolle

  When the electrician returned with the caretaker, it took him almost an hour to restore the electricity. They then went upstairs to notify the new tenant that everything was all right, but repeated knocking yielded no reply.

  Intrigued, the caretaker tried turning the doorknob. The room was empty, the window wide open. They came in and turned on the light. Neither the bed nor the suitcase had been disturbed. Seeing a black shawl entangled with some kind of a long bandage on the floor, the electrician bent down to take a closer look. His curiosity satisfied, he straightened up and his eyes met the mirror.

  He screamed with such terror that his companion was frozen in his tracks. In the depths of the mirror, turned back into transparent glass by the loss of its silvering, which had completely fallen off, he saw the unmistakable greenish and swollen face of a putrefied corpse - the grinning revelation of a crime hidden for several months! A few minutes later the two men tried to move the door, but the small handle was hopelessly jammed. Pushed by the courage of a morbid curiosity, they finally pried the door open with a crowbar.

  A narrow closet, unknown to the caretaker, was behind it. He cautiously looked inside and his repulsion suddenly vanished. "Well, I'll be damned!" he exclaimed in a loud voice, and reaching inside without fear or disgust, he took down from a hook a tall dummy, swollen with seaweed and dressed up in mildewed clothes. The realistic paper mask that he wore like a face from another world reached exactly the height of the mirror - the memory of a time when the summer carnival had to put up with all kinds of ugliness. It fell to the floor with the lightness of a dead leaf.

  At dawn, the ebb tide was forced to surrender a body from among the reefs that had reappeared on the long, colourless beach. A few shell gatherers saw it from a distance, as if it were a crucified, giant starfish. They came closer and saw that it was a svelte human star, rocked by the sea and lying face down amidst the pebbles.

  A fisherman ran up and freed one of her bare feet caught between the rocks. He turned her over and stretched her out on her back. All at once the women kneeled down, driven not only by the respect owed to the dead but also by the heart-rending emotion that gripped them as they saw in her face an angelic beauty beyond the grace of her human body. With their hats in their hands the men stood transfixed, struck by a breathtaking feeling of divinity.

  "She... she looks like..." a woman dared at last, "she looks like the one in the movies."

  "Yes, maybe," someone answered in a whisper of reverence, "but this one is so much more beautiful!"

  The Outlander

  A last remnant of the dying year, this December day drags out its sadness. Over the woods, towards Souesnes, the edge of twilight slowly crushes down upon the horizon and storms Sologne, whose land is now clothed in a ghastly haze. The village of Brandes is still shrouded by the light mist of its bluish breath and the scent of burnt wood. In the long, muddy, and shivering street, all human life has now disappeared; everyone has returned to the cosy world of his tiny home, where everything is light everything is warmth of the heart...

  Meanwhile, master of the forge, Christophe swings the weight of his heavy sledgehammer. Looking like a strong oak-tree branch subdued by some sort of magic, his gnarled arm springs out of his rolled-up sleeve. His iron fist kneads the reddish and living metal, whose scorched and tamed blood gradually oozes out leaving a grayish flesh behind. The glittering of the hearth shines out upon the skin of his arm. His muscles flutter, as though they were weasels imprisoned in a supple red leather pouch. By forging the metal, Christophe's muscles forge themselves. He whistles, so as to encourage the rhythm of his hammer, but it is not a whistle born of joyful lips; it is a song that hisses through hard-working teeth.

  And when Christophe stops hammering, he buries the metal back under the embers to revive it. He listens to the wheezing of the bellows, as if the echo of his own voice were coming out of this huge, dried-up, and hollow toad, breathing through the folds of its flabby skin.

  Everything is stirring around Christophe. As though they were angry, the embers burst out of the hearth, the tongs wriggle away from the cold water, and escaping from the street the evening breeze shelters itself in the soot-covered chimney. Already pitch-dark, the night outside awaits the blacksmith's lassitude, a night that longs to seethe fire die out, so that it might also glean some of the warmth of this lair. But the man is not the least bit tired. Without haste he again hoists up his hammer and molds the metal with precise blows, materializing a shape already formed in his mind. With each new stroke the anvil rings out as soundly as a huge bell. The man is in no hurry to finish. He has no desire to remove the leather apron that makes him look like one of those powerful men of long ago, before iron was even known, when they were still clothed in animal skins. As he stands up straight, Christophe looks formidable, half man, half beast, as if he would actually draw his strength from this tamed and hardened ox-skin.

  He still does not feel like throwing his apron upon the anvil, thus bringing a long day of efforts to a close. He does not have the slightest wish to join his wife, who, in the nearby kitchen, has no desire either of seeing him coming home. There is no longer anything alive between them... Not a word, not even a gesture of friendship. After all the years that have passed by, all alike, they now suffer the torture of childless marriages. And as he works Christophe endures once again the reminder of his untold despair, and he tries in vain to break and shatter a sorrow far more unyielding than the toughest of metals. There would be no children, no tomorrows for his shop. The tools would no longer sing for Christophe, and who knows whose clumsy and unskilled hands they would obey one day? As he stands before the roaring flames of the hearth, this bitter thought gives him meandering chills. No longer able to contain a sudden burst of rage, he pounds the anvil as if he wanted to break it, but his blows are so forceful that the handle lashes out at his hand, bruising his bones and leaving him choking, as if he had gulped down a whole glass of grain alcohol... No children, and a shop made for one, or two, or even three sons...

  Damn it all!

  After staring for a brief moment at the ravenous fire feeding on the imprisoned embers, he walks to the door and opens it. The night outside looks like a wall of nothingness, an omen of the years that lie in wait for him and through which he will have to journey in solitude, dragging along a wife more useless than a shadow. To Christophe this future looks like an immense pond of silt and ink. But fortunately, beyond all this, there would have to be an end. There is an end to everything. Patience was all he needed, but tonight Christophe realizes that he doesn't have much left. It has worn so thin that it is now within a hairbreadth of leaving him.

  A shivering thought races through him, for he has just felt the presence of an invisible and dreadful seducer. And now something shatters in his head and subdues him. An irresistible power seems to control his will with the same precision that he had in handling his hammer. He now stands face to face with the seducer who, speaking to him for the first time, gives Christophe an order as piercing as if a nail were being driven through his temples. "Be done with it. Be done!" Without any will to resist it Christophe feels himself becoming an obedient and docile instrument: a tool now destined to forge his own undoing.

  Crushed, and without questioning this mysterious exigency, he goes around the anvil and looks up to the massive and intertwined rafters of the ceiling. His mind is immediately made up, and as he stares at the beams his unshaven face, anointed with sweat and soot reflects his hopelessness. His lips are searching for a song he used to know a long time ago, but he gives up. His heart refuses to bring back the past. In his defeat Christophe would still like to brag in front of the Christophe who used to be a pillar of strength. But upon Iris soiled cheeks tears are now flowing, as cutting as scythe blades. As he looks back down on the floor they run into his mouth, leaving the bitter taste of his agony, forcing him on his knees, while he takes his head in his hands and abandons himself to his despair. Christophe knows that he is powerless against the
hurried reaper who has come to cut him down like a mere blade of grass.

  Wiping a tired hand across his eyes, he smears his tears, daubing upon his lace the blackness that already inhabits his heart. He knows that such a pain coming with so much force can only be the last one a man could possibly endure. And this thought comforts him somehow and helps him through this unexpected and yet so strangely desired outcome. He struggles to his feet, goes straight to his workbench, and grabs the rope used to restrain the legs of animals about to be shod. The rope is strong, supple, and oily; some hair is stuck to it, and it emanates such a strong smell of life that Christophe inhales its essence for a moment. This pungent scent seems so distant to him that he already sees himself on the other side of this life. No hesitation of any kind will now hinder him as he walks to his death. He acts as though he were performing a simple task, just as any conscientious craftsman would.

  Climbing on top of the anvil, Christophe holds out his arm towards a beam that is almost obligingly separated from the ceiling, and he slips the rope over it. As he ties the knots, they seem to him much too weak for a man of his weight and in a brief soliloquy he murmurs these last words, "A blacksmith with my strength needs at feast three knots." He ties ten of them. Five up against the beam, five down under the slipknot. When at last he passes the rope over his head, he stays still for a moment. Wearing this wreath of hemp awakens within all the compassion he had always felt at the sight of Jesus Christ on the cross, wreathed with His thorny crown. He makes the sign of the cross, not for himself, but in memory of the Lord. Then he quickly slips around his neck this assuaging choker. The smell of wool grease so overcomes him that the last reminder of his human life is an animal scent.

  He hurls himself from the anvil, and the rope suddenly becomes a straight line between the beam and his body. The knots hold on. The rope vibrates, but they resist; they could have hauled the weight of a horse just as well. Wrenching itself free from his broken neck, a loud hiccup carries Christophe's soul away .. . His arms refuse to die; still writhing with life, they are frantically striking the air. . . But he quickly turns purplish-blue under the kisses that death hurriedly drops upon his face... Soon the veil of the dead blacksmith is swinging like a still shadow. Projected through the window by the flames of the hearth, it reaches a nearby path covered with dry leaves... You could almost swear that it is this shadowy double who scatters them around, while they are being dispersed by a gentle breeze skimming the ground.

  Meanwhile, accompanied by the rapping of dry wood, a huge man agilely walks past the first house of the village - the house of Sabeur, the old park ranger. The man emerges from the path that opens up a wide and straight line of sand through the shrub-covered moor, only to end abruptly, no longer leading anywhere. With each step his clogs ring like wooden bells. Within them his feet go back and forth as if they were dry nuts in a shell. From the shoulders of his tall body hangs a large black cape that looks like a living patch of night, cut out from the darkness. His long strides sway his hips, and with each jostling step he looks as if his chest alone were pulling his whole frame forward. His aims thrash the air, reaping through the murk. And thus, holding onto the night, he moves on swiftly and soon finds himself in the heart of the village, as if the moor had just thrust him out, disburdening itself of a parasite. Looking like a giant bat trying to walk on two legs, the newcomer is immediately attracted by the bright lights of an inn. He goes straight to the door and opens it.

  Graubois, the innkeeper, is alone in the dining room when he sees the tall black form coming in. Noticing a table already set the stranger thereupon occupies it, as if the whole dining room belonged to him. Graubois does not dare tell him that this table is his own. He had just left it a moment ago to see what was making so much noise outside.

  Stiff as a poker in her drab clothes, Mrs. Graubois comes out of the kitchen bringing a plate of sausage and hot sauerkraut. She too stares at the stranger without a word, without telling him to go sit at another table. At once she is subdued by his self-assurance, the rough features of his face, and above all by the piercing look in his eyes that stabs her like a needle in the back of her neck. The Graubois are known as a braggart twosome, but the man is so imposing that their awe soon turns into hostile embarrassment. Mrs. Graubois sets her plate on another table while her husband brings knives and forks, which he has just removed from under the stranger's nose. But the latter remains seated without a word of excuse. He does not even pay attention to the woman, who looks at him, holding back her anger.

  How could this couple ever guess that the seeds of a collective tragedy have just been sown, and that like a hundred stalks of crawling ivy they will proliferate, soon to reach into the very soul of this village?

  The innkeeper finally recovers his voice. "What would you like to drink?" he asks, while resting his hand on his wife's arm, so as to contain her growing rage. He fears that she might unleash it upon the stranger and, who knows, drag him into a brawl.

  "A bottle of white wine, and make it quick!" answers the man, flinging his reply at Graubois. He speaks with a strong countryside accent, and his tone is so harsh that each word rings out like an order.

  Mrs. Graubois swallows her anger, and for once she thinks that her husband was right to restrain her from openly insulting the stranger. She now feels that his voice could have broken her with just a few words. So she puts on an air of docility, and when her husband leaves to get a bottle of wine, she gives free rein to her imperious curiosity. "Where are you going to at this hour of the night?" she asks, mustering a smile.

  The man leans his back against the wall and stretches out two legs as long as rake handles. "Maybe here... maybe somewhere..." he replies evasively, without even looking at her. Each syllable seems to strike at another between his tongue and his teeth, as if he were spitting out stones. He then reaches out his hand toward a slice of bread left on the table.

  The innkeeper's wife looks at his long and delicate fingers. His nails are trimmed as if he had never done any manual labour. She now thinks that he might be the schoolteacher of a nearby village, and answering the man's silence, she lets out an "Oh, I see," in a tone of conviction.

  Her husband returns with a glass and a bottle and cautiously places them on the table. He then asks the same question as his wife's, and when he doesn't obtain any answer, Mrs. Graubois motions him to come and sit down in front of her. "Maybe here... maybe somewhere else," she repeats angrily, lingering on each word, "didn't you hear him?"

  "All right, all right," grumbles her husband, who sits down and starts to gulp his cold soup.

  His wife nibbles at her food without chewing anything, swallowing it straight down to save her teeth, which are slowly chipping away, like the falling pieces of an old ruined wall. She swallows a mouthful of cabbage and gets an eyeful of the stranger; a piece of sausage and a glimpse of the man. She eats a little of everything, through her mouth and through her eyes. She blinks like a hen watching both the farmer's hands and the corn on the ground. But soon, with rapid and piercing glances, she no longer eats and gazes hungrily at the stranger.

  He takes his time as he drinks his wine, even though he refills his glass as soon as it is empty. With each sip he looks at the door, while his sullen face seems to take on a malevolent smile. No, it must be only the play of a moving shadow, projected onto him from the lamp hanging above. But gradually anxiety is taking hold of the Graubois, who now fear that the man might have come to rob them, and so they suspiciously stare at him, as if they could somehow read his thoughts. Despite the harshness of his features, there is still an expression of youth on his lips. The stranger must be forty years old... perhaps less, but not more... His protruding face is like an ochered mask slit by two oval-shaped orbits, and the penetrating stare of his green eyes has the steadiness of an animal's gaze. The head appears elongated and out of proportion to his tall and brawny frame. A spindling nose forms a pillar that supports a forehead half-hidden behind his raven-black hair, and the streng
th that exudes from his face has the cutting thrust of a plowshare, ready to tear out any will daring to oppose his own.

  If at first the innkeepers think they can easily read into the stranger's face, they discover that each new glance brings out other particularities that seem to erase what they have just seen, as if his features were shaped into a dozen different facets whose amazing mobility astonishes the Graubois, as much as it disconcerts them.

  His first bottle over, the man asks for another, and as Graubois comes to his table and hesitates, staring at him as if he were some kind of exotic animal, the stranger smiles for the first time. His lips tighten into a thin line, while a stunning and ruthless beauty flickers in his eyes. Graubois winces at the blow and quickly stares at the dresser, even though he knows by heart the design of each plate that it contains. The newcomer takes out of his pocket a leather purse. He casually opens it and with two fingers retrieves a freshly minted gold coin, which he throws on the table. Graubois grabs it immediately, fearing that the man might change his mind, and as he leans on the table the innkeeper sees that the purse is filled with gold coins, which glitter and wriggle in the stranger's hand.

  Graubois's scowling face turns to a mask of complacency. Relieved from his fears, he now needs to talk. "With that much gold, you could buy the whole town," he says, laughing.

  The man puts the purse back into his pocket as he dryly replies, "If there's something to buy, I'll buy it."

  "Well, there's always something for sale," continues Graubois, whose eyes are still bright with feverish greed.

  His wife gets up and joins him at the table. She now has an enticing look on her face. She did not see what the purse contained, but she did catch its reflection in her husband's eyes. Mrs. Graubois turns to the stranger. "Well, in this town you should have no trouble in finding..."