Blood Dark

by Louis Guilloux

  With infinite trouble, he arrived at the little square where Moka lived. Curiously empty. Nothing. Not even a dog. Like the streets he’d just walked through—always before or after the thing happened, never during. A church in the middle—square stones, without the shadow of a sculpture or the hint of a smile. If you could imagine that cattle had once lived in something resembling a human society, and they’d had the idea, in their beef brains, to build a church suited to their idea of cattle, this shadowy façade would have been a wonderful example of bovine architecture, something for little cow-archaeologists to work away on. Two short towers, blank and angular, abrupt as a couple of commandments from the Decalogue, made a pretty good likeness of the stunted horns of the beast, and, between the towers, the low portico—it really was a portico—looked like nothing so much as a large, low forehead, bare, boxy, dark, and in front of it, a set of enormous pillars, the only roundness in all those sharp angles, which were obviously the hooves. The haunches stretched back, immense, formidable, taking up more than a third of the square, so still that the spectacle invited fear. Such was the beast. Decked out as if for market. Someone had hung flags everywhere, and the whole forehead was covered in a banner with a patriotic inscription. Besides, this cow, it hadn’t been there so long. The old folks in town remembered a cemetery here instead. One fine day, the cow had arrived in the graveyard, and rummaged around in it, scratching the earth with its hooves, tossing up the dead. No more cemetery. But the dead got revenge—they’d quickly transformed the houses surrounding the square into tombs, and there they hid themselves under various disguises. You could ring their doorbells, but they never appeared without masks. They were generally very well dressed, and they even looked like the living, but a practiced eye could easily see past the surface: no doubt about it, these were the dead you were dealing with, and in spite of all the precautions with which they surrounded themselves, going so far as to decorate each other, fabricating “children” to better hide their plot, even becoming important downtown—some as teachers or doctors, others as bank employees or registry clerks, or even soldiers, going off to war, which was taking the joke a bit farther—they were still the bona fide dead, they were ghosts.

  Cripure had got wind of it, being a little in on the secret, and besides, rather close to the Clopper who must live somewhere around here. And, without there being the slightest irony in it, this square—gray stone, dirt, sky, with its great, gray, snub-nosed façades and its gray premeditations, and on the gray roofs, mansard windows like watch posts—even so this square was what they called the heart of the town. Cattleton. Clopperville. Deathgrad. A heart of stone, a cow heart, a heart of death. Never had this truth been clearer to Cripure than today when he’d been confronted with the animal they had the nerve to call by other, nobler, names though it was, despite false labels, nothing but a will to negate. No. The cow always refused. The cow and its whole charming little family of prefectures and jails, of lycées and banquets, etc., the cow always said no, never yes. Cripure’s eyes wandered for a long time as if he was trying to get deeper into the mysteries surrounding him. “Not a stone that doesn’t cry out to be bombed!” he murmured, “And there are hearts heavy as bombs.” He stopped, lost in thought. He thought with regret of the terrorists, whom he should have joined. Whom he hadn’t joined.

  But the heart of the unhappy hunchback, was it as heavy as a bomb? It didn’t at all match the way she ran, jumping along in this desert, like the sole survivor of a wreck. She bounded forward, clop clop, then turned and bent quickly to the haggard cur, reluctant at the end of his leash.

  No doubt he’d had enough, the dear little pup, of being pulled through the streets morning to night like a toy, when his unending curiosity made him want to run into every stream and doorway.

  But with pretty words the damned hunchback pulled him after her and, still skipping along, she went on her endless way humming tunes from operettas.

  Cripure shivered when he saw her turn towards him. The horrible hunchback! Why couldn’t she stay in her hole! She came towards him in her too-large gown, tied at the waist with a rope. A funny way for a woman to dress, that gown that enveloped her from head to toe, and that she had chosen in blue, like, it occurred to him, the gowns people in prisons and hospitals wore. Horrible little hunchback! And yet it was true that she had eyes in the middle of her face and a pointy nose. Her head was covered with a blue-banded straw hat, and the big brim flopped down like blinders over her skeletal cheeks.

  “Horrible crone! Hurry up and get out of sight!” he murmured, hiding in a doorway as she passed by, close enough to brush him. She hummed:

  “Turn! Turn! Let the waltz open arms

  She charms, she sweetens

  All the passionate hearts.”

  He followed her with his eyes.

  “Damned wreck! I have no pity for you. Die!”

  This unchristian oath didn’t cause him the least bit of remorse. Perhaps a tiny bit of surprise.

  But the hunchback wasn’t the only one. There was also the old lady who had accosted him at the bookstore to explain her beliefs on reincarnation. As the old biddy explained that it was necessary to have faith in order to bear the sadness of life, he could only think of the widow who lived above the bookstore. Only two floors up. For fifteen years now, she’d lean out her window—waiting for what? “Well, well, what a strange insistence on living! Must dissolve, disappear,” he murmured. And the little grocer on the corner, he’d almost forgotten, alone from now on since her husband was blown to bits by a shell, with only their half-witted little daughter? Four sous of pepper here, a nice head of lettuce there . . . until the end. And all the others, and behind that huge army of them, all the ladies who were still laughing, applicants about to enter forever into that world of ashes and darkness. And no one to save them! How horrible to see a girl of forty enter a movie theater, all alone, when she had hoped until that moment for a husband, for a family. No matter what, wherever she went, she would leave an empty room to return to an empty room, not once forgetting, before she left, to double lock the door—on emptiness—and to close her shutters—still emptiness! The next week they’d stare a little less when she entered the theater. Not much time before her novitiate would be accomplished.

  Poor women! They’d believe they’d been disappointed, betrayed by life, and it would actually be by their own hands, their only crime would be not having the force to resist the decay of social rule—that was what was crushing them, not the will of God!

  “And not the will of God, do you understand!” yelled Cripure at the top of his lungs, turning toward the church.

  He raised his hand, and a fist was already closing, but he dropped it back down into formation—someone was appearing from the same direction in which the damned hunchback had faded away, the mayor in person, scraping along the walls, walking on tiptoe like someone who is about to sneak up and say boo! Refreshed, his heart and stomach full of chocolate, sandwiches, and little cakes, he’d lost his air of an errand runner and seemed no more or less lively than any other walker—someone out for a Sunday stroll, smoking a cigarette and thinking about nothing.

  In front of the church, the mayor lifted his hat.

  •

  Run! Run to Moka’s! Fight to the death! Disappear. Don’t wait for the mayor to see him and speak to him—he must hum along, like the other one. Cripure veered away.

  •

  Only someone who’d been in the town for as long as he had, knowing every cranny, every shadow, every stone, who was capable of navigating blind like a mole in his mole hill, could have picked out Moka’s house from among the others, on the first try. You had to be a local! They all looked the same, the same model, all built in the same ungenerous, withdrawn way, with their stingy windows, inviting as arrow-slits, the little fenced-in balconies, their doors with peepholes and little brass plaques like belt buckles, polished every morning by the housekeeper while Mr. Death goes to the National Bank to see if his interest income has
gone up. And all the houses veiled, like a woman in mourning. He climbed the three stone steps. They all had steps going up to their doors, and some even put on naive airs, calling them terraces, as if Mr. Death hoped to deliver great speeches there, or receive a large number of honored guests, so great an effect that the little steps grabbed Cripure’s attention, as if they expressed a long-held dream, reduced, as it was, to the level of a stoop. Speeches or grand parties had been out of the question for a long time, but Mr. Death refused to let go of the idea.

  But his own houses were not so different, after all. When he bought them, it wasn’t for their beauty. If he’d thought only of beauty, he’d never have taken the trouble to become their official owner. When he negotiated with the notary, Cripure had only thought, like everyone else, of the value they’d accrue. But since then, as much as he tried to deny it, a shadow of something was born in him, like a feeling for these houses, a sort of vague tenderness which pushed him from time to time to make the trip over here, just to see them. “Enough of that, enough, it’s awful . . .”

  Cripure had climbed up the three little steps and slowly his hand reached for the bell. Did he pull too hard, or was he dealing with an especially mischievous bell? Its ringing filled the whole house, which echoed like an empty box. And, at the same time, the beast behind him started its terrible roar. No doubt the cow was jealous that someone had gone to visit one of its subjects, and no doubt it had no other way to express its anger than to open its throat and howl. In its powerful bronze voice, a shout of death in reply to Cripure’s disturbing the peace of this place, to his insolence, his nerve, in wanting a door to open.

  The cow’s voice quieted, and like a mocking little laugh the last echoes of the doorbell lingered in Cripure’s ears, but the door still didn’t open, no one came, and Cripure didn’t move, his head bowed like a statue in his niche.

  So the silence fell, returned, and from the interior of the house a loud voice came. Someone was singing his head off:

  “Kiss-es, more kiss-es

  Kiss-es always!”

  It was Moka coming down his stairs—soon Cripure could hear his steps.

  Seeing Cripure, Moka seemed so amazed that he stood for a full minute with his mouth open. “You!” he finally cried, opening the door wide, but forgetting to step aside to let Cripure in. “I’m dreaming! I must be dreaming,” he murmured. At last he gathered his wits. “It’s an exceptional honor! Come in my dear professor. Come inside! You find me so astonished to see you that I’ve forgotten my manners. Please forgive me,” he said, stepping back. And very solemn, he made a bow to Cripure, who finally entered.

  In his joy, Moka closed the door with a big kick, then, turning back to Cripure, he hopped and rubbed his hands. “Put down your things, my dear professor, make yourself comfortable.”

  He tried to help him take off his coat, to take the groceries, the cane, the little hat from his hands. Cripure didn’t let him, putting everything down in a corner of the vestibule. But he didn’t take off the goatskin.

  “I came to see . . . I need to ask . . .”

  “We’ll get to it in just a minute!” Moka interrupted. He raised his hands as if to put them over Cripure’s mouth to keep him from speaking. “Let’s go up to my room first. It’ll be easier for us to talk there. It will be more . . . intimate. This way. Come!”

  They went upstairs, Moka offering his hand to his dear professor to help him with the painful ascension to the second floor where there was such a view! Oh!

  “It’s panoramic . . .you’ll see.”

  Cripure panted. A panoramic view? Hm. A nice view of the cow, no doubt. From up high, they’d get a good look at its spine . . .

  “Here we are.” And Moka pushed open the door with his foot. Of course, he made another bow in stepping aside to let Cripure enter, and he straightened up, brusquely pushed back the red forelock, and, hurried, triumphant, he removed a pile of plates from the seat of an armchair and put them on the floor, crying, “Make yourself comfortable my dear professor! My goodness!”

  Cripure was a wreck. You could see it in the way he dropped into the chair. So much walking, so much running around today! And that climb had finished him off.

  “You did well to come by,” said Moka, lifting another pile of dishes from the other chair, “I was about to go to work, you see. I didn’t even take the time to change.” He gestured to the flower in his buttonhole. And in a low voice, “So, you’ve reconsidered?”

  Cripure didn’t reply.

  “For goodness sakes,” Moka continued, “we couldn’t part on that note!” He touched the end of his nose with his finger. “That was a joke, my dear professor.”

  Cripure still didn’t answer. Maybe he hadn’t even heard? Or had he fallen into one of his usual reveries? He looked around him in a stupor, with the amazed face of a sleeper who has woken up a thousand miles from his house, as if a carpet had transported him by magic. What, but what on earth was this astonishing room, with plates on the walls, and nothing but plates, like a hallucination? An iron bed, a table, two chairs, and the plates . . . the famous plates covered with stamps, arranged in perfect lines on every surface.

  “Curious . . .” The word slipped out.

  “Isn’t it?” said Moka, delighted. Finally, an admirer, someone who understood! “And that, what do you think of that?”

  “That” was a venetian paper lantern, an ordinary Bastille Day decoration, which hung in the middle of the room. An electric bulb was inside it. He lit it: a demonstration.

  “It’s a souvenir.”

  “Oh?”

  “I brought it back from the last ball I went to with her . . .”

  Silence. A silence full of sighs here and there, full of little gestures, hands fidgeting on knees, as if out of impatience, and finally Moka continued:

  “Yes . . . as I said . . . it was a joke.”

  Cripure looked him in the eye.

  “He exists,” said Moka, with mischievous air.

  “Who, my dear boy?”

  “God, of course!”

  “Oh, oh, oh!” Cripure exclaimed. “Him again! God again! No, no, no, no, no, my friend, listen to me. It’s got nothing to do with that . . . character, you understand. Don’t think that I came to . . .”

  “Really?” And how Moka got these ideas! He would have bet his own head that Cripure, full of remorse, had only come to see him to say precisely that . . . to apologize for having said . . .

  “Not at all,” said Cripure, “not at all. I have something to ask you. A great favor.”

  “Anything, my dear professor.”

  “A very important favor.”

  “I repeat that . . .”

  “Thank you, thank you my dear boy. Since we parted ways, which wasn’t so long ago, something quite serious has come up, you understand, something . . . of first priority. Basically, I thought of you,” he said, a smile at the corner of his lips, “in my hour of need, my dear Moka, you’re the first person I thought of. To put it plainly, my friend, I have to fight. I have a duel on my hands, you see, and . . . I’m asking if you would be willing to agree to be my second. There.”

  “Ayayay!” yelled Moka, who hadn’t waited for the end of Cripure’s speech to jump out of his chair. “Ayayay!” he said again, pacing around in a circle without the slightest care for the piles of plates. “Oh my dear little God, what’s happening here! And there I go trying to judge. Oyoyoy!” He waved his hands, bit his fingers, tapped his feet. “Oyoy . . .”

  “There you have it,” said Cripure, his hands on his knees, his forehead bent.

  “A duel!”

  “It can’t be helped, my friend.”

  “Ayayay!”

  “I’m asking you, you understand, to please, after the traditional rules, you understand, to take my interests to heart and . . . to help me find another second, since in this bitch of a town . . .” He scornfully shrugged his shoulders.

  Moka came over to Cripure and very gently asked, “A real duel?�
�

  “How can you ask!” cried Cripure. “A fight to the death!”

  “Oh God, oh God, oh good God!” And Moka took his head in his hands and continued his frenzied dance around the room. “It can’t be settled otherwise?”

  “No.”

  “It has to happen this way?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well then, my dear professor,” said Moka, finally stopping his movements, “it’s understood. I’ll be your second.”

  Cripure fiercely shook Moka’s trembling hands. “Thank you, thank you, my dear boy, thank you.”

  Now he had to tell him what happened, to say whom he was going to fight. But actually, to Cripure’s astonishment, against all expectation, it was Moka and not he who said the despicable name.

  “Nabucet?”

  In a pale, whispering voice it was true, the questioning tone so perfectly mixed with discovery that it was impossible for Cripure to tell if Moka knew, was guessing, or had guessed from the beginning.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh! Nabucet . . .”

  And the two men looked away from each other. Moka did an about-face, lifting a hand to his mouth to bite his nails.

  “. . .vidently.”

  “Right you are.” Cripure spoke to Moka’s back, hunched in that moment. The venetian lantern above Moka’s head like a child’s racket ball.