Blood Dark

by Louis Guilloux

  She got up. He ran after her, took her hand, and kissed it. “My darling! I’d like to have my way with you on a bed of roses . . .”

  “Let go of my hand!”

  “My turtledove, my little flame . . . grass snakes aren’t disgusting animals at all. People give them a bad name.”

  “Otto! Once again . . .” she stomped her foot.

  “My little soul . . . I mean, I don’t want to offend you. I cross my heart. Pardon me dearest, I won’t speak about snakes anymore, no, I won’t say any more, but it’s a pity, chickadee, my little heart, it’s really too bad.”

  He accompanied his speech with all sorts of little bows and caresses which made the parody even funnier. It was a game they’d recently discovered. They called it playing Russian Novel. In the game he had to call her Nastassia and she called him Batuchka.

  “Batuchka,” she said, “don’t you fear God?”

  “Don’t I fear God, Nastassia?” he replied in a trembling voice. “How can you say I don’t fear God?” And violently beating his chest: “Nastassia, yes, it’s the truth, I confess it publicly. I’m a sinner, my soul is a gutter, yes, it’s true I have no fear of God. The proof Nastassia, my little soul, is that this damned grass snake . . .”

  “Batuchka! If I hear you mention that snake one more time . . .”

  “But Nastassia, since it’s a confession?”

  “Touché!” cried Simone, doing a pirouette. “Since it’s a confession, go ahead my dear. I can’t have anyone say I prevented you from confessing, which is to say, saving your soul. We’re all ears,” she said, sitting back down and copying the movements of an old woman—putting on her pince-nez, smoothing a fold out of her skirt.

  “Kaminsky’s confession,” the Polish man declared, standing behind his chair, his two hands pressing into the back. “Hmmm . . .”

  An ambiguous smile parted his full, oval face, pale in the candlelight.

  “A general confession,” he said, rolling his r’s more than ever, “would be too long of an undertaking. I’d have to tell you the story of the little maid, and about my brother I didn’t want to take care of anymore, and a little bit about Madame de Villaplane. For the moment, let’s stick to the story of the grass snake.”

  “In this country, remember, a snake in the grass means a lie,” Simone interrupted.

  “Let it be a lie then,” he replied, unflappable. And he continued, “This snake was in some ways a companion. I’d whistle: she’d come when I called, stand up on the tip of her tail, curl herself around my arm. I’d feed her milk, of course, and it was a spectacle as exquisite as the meals of my little lady friend. She was full of delicacy. When I’d go out, I’d take her in my pocket. She’d sleep soundly there. One day—” Kaminsky gave such a well acted sigh that even Simone was uneasy. “Nastassia, little dear, must I say everything?”

  “All the rest, Batuchka, my little dove. God is listening, which means you must get down on your knees before your brothers.”

  “What follows is harder to say than the rest. Well then, here it is—one day, a devilish idea came into my head. It wasn’t more than a vague idea at the start, a fantasy. And then . . . there was, in our town, a very pious old woman. Her son had died while blaspheming. She believed he was damned. Every day, she’d spend hours at the church, praying for his soul—while my mother was petting her rabbits. So what did I do, Nastassia? What did I do? I went into the church. God forgive me! I took the little grass snake in my pocket, and I put it in the holy water by the door, that’s what I did. Then, I hid behind a pillar, and I waited. In the whole church, there was no one but the little old woman and me. She praying and me waiting. It was a long wait! Finally, she decided to get up, she softly came toward the door and, just as she was about to dip her fingers in the holy water, right at that moment the little snake rose up. And what did the old woman do? She gave a terrible cry, you understand, just terrible! Me, I stayed hidden behind the pillar. I saw her run straight out of the church, as fast as she could. She never came back. She died a few years later without ever setting foot in it again, convinced that she and her son were both damned. It was the devil who told her, which is why people thought she had gone crazy. There. You all have the right to think I was lying. And I do as well,” he said, sitting back down. “But you’re not drinking! You’ve got no drinks,” he cried, uncorking a bottle of champagne. And he refilled the glasses all around. “Ah, ah, ah! One would say my little story had an effect on you. I’m going to give you some advice,” he said, glancing at Bacchiochi, “you must take things in a positive light and not put too much faith in . . .”

  “To the Confabulators,” said Marcelle.

  “That’s it! That’s just the word I was waiting for. Bravo! All this is a joke. It’s literature. Enough about me, let’s talk about other people.” He continued: “Boredom drove a poet crazy after he’d been showered with glory. He believed that he was dead for a long time, and became the custodian of his own museum. He displayed the fountain pen, the portrait of the woman he loved . . . he was otherwise a very kind young man. That’s it, end of story.”

  “Another one,” Simone asked.

  “Fine. In an honorable family, in the countryside very close to here, there was a young girl of thirteen. A vagabond rapes the girl. What happens then? The father can’t bear to look at his daughter. No matter how much the mother begs him, he becomes cruel to the girl. The more the father suffers, the meaner he is. The little girl becomes depressed. She doesn’t play anymore. Lads run after her, laughing, wanting to know about it. She threw herself in a pond. There, end of story. Another one?” asked Kaminsky.

  “A different kind,” said Marcelle.

  “Good. The story of a whore who runs away from a brothel, and the police drag her back by force.”

  “No . . .”

  This time there were more voices protesting. Fat Bacchiochi found that the Pole was overdoing it again. Kaminsky smiled, looking from one to the next.

  “Let’s move on,” he said. “This kind of account frightens you. Let’s move on to something else. Do you all know Monsieur Trémintin?”

  “Yes,” said Francis.

  “And you Marcelle?”

  “Yes.”

  “Simone surely knows him, even though she’s not saying anything.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you, Léo, do you know him?”

  Léo didn’t answer.

  “You’re nodding off, eh?”

  Léo’s big fleshy lip rose. The cigarette butt was stuck to it, like a mole. He closed his eyes almost completely, and gave a scornful shrug. “Not me.”

  “Do you know that you could be taken for a general, if we didn’t know you were just the prefect’s chauffeur?”

  Léo raised his heavy eyelids like nutshells, with their strange white lashes, revealing a stormy gray-blue eye.

  Kaminsky insisted. “How did you get your white hair?”

  The legend was that Léo’s hair had lost its color in a single night, a dramatic night when one of his mistresses, a young girl of twenty-two, had committed suicide right before his eyes. They accused him of killing her and only getting away with it because he had friends in high places, in the police department itself. He was certainly mixed up in something. Besides the young woman’s suicide, there were Léo’s past troubles and some other matters that were mysteriously hushed up, all giving the story some credit, compounded by the fact that since the war started, he hadn’t left the prefecture.

  “Fool,” he murmured.

  “Ah! So you’re awake! Tell me, then, is it true that they wanted to get you out, to make you go to the front? Something serious for once?”

  Léo nodded his head.

  “And who do you think had it out for you? Do you have any idea?”

  “Yes. More than an idea. I know.” His eyelids lowered, he bent over the table with his arms crossed, hunching his neck down towards his shoulders, which were enormous. Kaminsky looked at Léo’s hands.

 
“You have . . . strong hands,” he said.

  “Get on with your story,” Léo shot back. This was getting to be more than enough. “Tell us about Trémintin.”

  “I’m not forgetting Trémintin. So everyone knows him then, except maybe Monsieur Bacchiochi?”

  “What!” Bacchiochi cried, “why I’ve run into him more than a hundred times in your office, my friend.”

  “That’s right. His office is next door to mine. He went there every day for thirty years.”

  “Went there?” said Simone. “Has he died?”

  “No! Wait a minute. He’s only coming a little less regularly. He’s not dead. He’s . . . he’s asleep.”

  “In his office?”

  “In his papers, my dear Francis. His nose in his papers. Asleep. He lost track of time. It happened ten days ago. No one suspected that the division chief was sleeping. When he woke up, it was nine at night. He was surprised himself, very very surprised. He told me, ‘It’s strange, I don’t recognize anything anymore. My boxes, all this . . . It doesn’t look familiar.’ He went out into the night, he went home . . . he thought he was about to die, and he couldn’t shake the idea. Then he had dinner, then he went to bed and slept, and the next morning when he woke up, he still thought he was going to die. He could do nothing to shake the thought. The next morning, it happened again! Since then, he comes to his office every once in a while, shuts himself in, and paces back and forth. He wanders around town for hours, preferring the night. He wanders, he walks. He doesn’t go out in anything but a dark suit, as if he were dressed for a funeral. I left him a little note to invite him to our little party . . .”

  Bacchiochi suspected that Kaminsky was fooling with everyone, and he was a bit worried he’d be asked his professional opinion of this clinical case. Evidently, it wasn’t in his purview, this situation. This one was really pathological. Not his area of expertise. Francis looked at the empty chair.

  “Is that chair for him?”

  “I admit that would be a good joke. But I doubt he’s coming. I really doubt it. He didn’t read my note. He doesn’t read anything anymore. He doesn’t talk to anyone. He . . .wanders.”

  “For ten days now?” asked Bacchiochi.

  “Today is the tenth day. This morning, I saw his wife, imagine that. A strange character: skeletal. And do you know what she told me? Here’s exactly what she said: ‘Yesterday evening, last night really, he came into my room around two a.m. and he sat down on the side of my bed. There, without saying a word, he melted into sobs, and he said to me . . . but it’s not what he said that matters, it’s how he looked at me. He held his finger in my face like you do when you’re scolding a child. He kept on, kept on, and I was afraid. He was wearing his coat, with his hat on his head and a white tie, and tears were running into his beard. Him! And do you know what he said to me? He said, I love you.’ ”

  The only sound was the fire, crackling in the hearth. All the faces were turned towards Kaminsky, and no one was eating or drinking. All of a sudden, a piercing laugh rang out—it was Simone.

  “For once, you didn’t lie,” she cried. “Your story is certainly true from one end to the other. That’s how they are! That’s how they are!” she repeated with fury. “And then? Finish it.”

  Kaminsky shrugged. “Madame Trémintin made a desperate little movement with her hands when she told me this. I understood that she intends to lock up her husband. There. The story is finished. Another one?”

  “That’s enough,” said Simone.

  “Why?”

  “I hate them!” she cried.

  “Everyone here hates them,” he said.

  “No one more than I do . . .”

  “And so . . .what’s to be done?”

  “To choose . . . oneself.”

  He burst out laughing in turn—and kissed her hand.

  •

  In the street, loud steps like the strokes of a hammer. Kaminsky bent his ear.

  “Monsieur Trémintin, maybe?” said Francis.

  “You think? Those are soldiers’ steps?” said Léo. “There’s got to be more than one of them.”

  Kaminsky went over to the window, but instantly jumped back. “In God’s name! I can’t bear to see that. No, no, no!”

  “What’s gotten into him?” Marcelle murmured, hurrying over to the window in turn.

  Kaminsky, pale, squeezed his hands into fists and stamped his foot. “Let them in!” he ordered in a sharp tone. “Let them rest! Let them have something to eat!”

  “But who is it?” said Francis.

  “You won’t be opposed, I hope, if I let them come in? Just look at them! Practically corpses.”

  They all ran to the window: Marcelle, Francis, Léo, Simone, Bacchiochi.

  “Prisoners!”

  Three men came down the street—two Germans and a Frenchman.

  “Horrible, it’s horrible,” murmured Kaminsky, letting himself fall into a chair. “I can’t bear it. Prisoners! Horrible. Francis!”

  “My dear Otto?”

  “Go bring them in. No, no, I can’t bear it! The sight of a prisoner has an effect on me like . . . guilt,” he said, wiping a hand across his forehead. “Excuse me, I’m getting riled up, but I’m not in control of my nerves. Oh, it makes me crazy,” he said, getting up and stomping his foot.

  Simone put a hand on his shoulder. “Calm yourself.”

  “But there’s nothing for it,” Kaminsky began, sullen. “Don’t you understand?”

  “Today they’re in luck.”

  The prisoners came up the street, bending their backs under an enormous load. The poilu followed them, his rifle in a bandolier.

  “I’d really like to know what this is about,” murmured Bacchiochi. “Excuse me!” he yelled. And the poilu raised his head. “Hey! A major here.”

  He saluted, weakly.

  “Come here!”

  “Hep, boys, hurry up,” the poilu cried, “halt!”

  The prisoners immediately stopped, letting their heavy load fall to their feet and sitting down behind it.

  The soldier approached the window.

  “What’s the deal with your men?”

  “Two who were taken in Morocco, Monsieur Major.”

  “In retaliation?”

  “I wish!”

  “Are you going far like that?”

  “Another few miles at least. Except, here you see, they can’t go on anymore, Monsieur Major, sir. They’re mostly done for.”

  “So that’s why you made them go on foot with their equipment on their backs? There were no cars where you’re coming from, eh? Which bastard gave you the order . . . bring them here.”

  And Bacchiochi turned, he too, pale with anger. His fat little hands trembled. “There’s no shortage of bastards . . .”

  The prisoners came in, dragging their kits in their hands. They swayed in their boots.

  “Leave the baggage in the hall!” said the poilu.

  Kaminsky, leaning against the wall, watched them come in and trembled.

  “Do they speak French?” asked Bacchiochi.

  “Not a word.”

  “Look at those poor men! Let them sit down, by God! I can tell they’re done for with just one glance. Late-stage tuberculosis. And they made them . . . Me too, Kaminsky, my friend, these things make me crazed too, because you see, it’s not the first time. And all this because there are some sort of idiots somewhere. Bring the bottles. Make them something to eat, we’ll take them in the car right away, eh Léo. Fuck your orders, you understand?” he said to the poilu. “This is on me. What are they putting in the bottles?”

  “Hot tea,” said Marcelle.

  “That works.”

  “I’m putting together some cakes and some fruit.”

  “Good.”

  Kaminsky gave them money, many bills, which they took with indifference.

  “It’s not to the camp I’m taking them, but to the hospital. You tell that to your superiors, my good man.”

  “Very
good, Monsieur Major.”

  “And if ever the bastard skrimshanker who gave you that dirty job falls under my watch, you can tell him I’ll give him special attention, oh yes. Where is my cap? Are you ready, Léo? Quick, let’s go. They should already be in bed.”

  For a long time after the prisoners left, they didn’t speak. They didn’t dare look at each other either. It was with discomfort that they came back to their places at the table.

  The fire was dying, but no one thought to revive it.

  “Much will be pardoned you,” Simone finally said.

  Kaminsky sent her a sharp look. That better not have been a joke!

  “How do you mean, dear Simone?” He had stopped calling her Nastassia.

  “As you yourself understand it: because you have loved greatly.”

  “Enough of that! I’m far from being a good man. As for forgiveness, the idea disgusts me.”

  “Is that true, dear Otto?”

  “There is no shadow of that cowardice in me,” he said, raising his eyes to his mistress with a look that was thoughtful and tender. “Did you see their faces?”

  “And so, dear Otto, those men must hate their persecutors and get revenge?”

  “Hate them and get revenge, yes.”

  “Yes?”

  “Until death.”

  She took his hand and held it. “I love you for that as well,” she said. “For that too, you will be pardoned.”

  He smiled. “Because I’ve hated often?”

  “You said so.”

  “Well then, dearest Simone, for once at least, let me tell the whole truth. I will only receive a middling pardon, because I have only experienced middling love and middling hate.” He looked into her eyes. “I never fully commit myself to anything.”

  She hesitated, then said, “Out of caution?”

  “Alas, no,” he replied. “By nature.”

  She gave a smile that was oddly complicit, and squeezed Kaminsky’s hand more tightly in her own. “So there was a bit of theatrics in that affair?”

  “What affair?”

  “The business of the prisoners?”

  He thought for a moment. “No,” he said, “but it never lasts long.”

  She smiled again. “You wouldn’t throw yourself into the sea for me, would you?”