Blood Dark

by Louis Guilloux

  Lucien called him back. “Don’t leave yet, Monsieur . . .we have some things to settle together.”

  “Ah, so we have,” said Cripure, “that’s true!”

  He turned to Lucien. “Thank you, dear friend. It’s very kind on your part. Thank you.”

  “But of course.”

  “With Faurel arbitrating, right?” He thought if anyone could get him out of this business it was Faurel. He didn’t have great confidence in Moka or Lucien, and thought that they wouldn’t dare speak of his handicap, while Faurel would be quite willing.

  “But that goes without saying,” said Moka.

  “Excuse me,” said Cripure, “but this isn’t the place to talk. Moka will explain everything to you . . . elsewhere.”

  And without another word, he fled.

  •

  Meanwhile, Madame de Villaplane went after Simone, whom she had just called a hussy.

  “I forbid you to call Simone that!”

  Simone laughed, without apparent meanness. “Leave it, Otto, leave it my dear.”

  “What?” said Kaminsky. “Go wait for me in my room, Simone, so I can have a moment alone with this . . . old loony.”

  He went over to the “old loony” who stood in the middle of the room, her hands open, her eyes burning, looking in front of her without seeming to see. Kaminsky approached as Simone disappeared, and this time, Madame de Villaplane gave no resistance to the caress he gave to her cheek, and she seemed to take no offense at his informal address: “You too would like very much to leave your world, but you can’t. Come now, dear . . .you’ll stay here with your precious memories . . .”

  This time, Madame de Villaplane turned on her heel with the dexterity of someone possessed and ran out of the room. Moka barely had the time to glimpse her.

  “This is going to be a big scene,” said Kaminsky. “That’s it! I bet you she’s going to scream!”

  Madame de Villaplane’s voice did in fact ring out, more imperious, more pleading than ever. “Monsieur Kaminsky! Monsieur Kaminsky!” And since he didn’t respond quickly enough to her demands, “Otto! Come quick, quick, quick!”

  Abandoning Moka and Lucien, Otto sprinted up the stairs four at a time and went into Madame de Villaplane’s room, slamming the door behind him. “One must say, where your manners are concerned . . .” he began.

  But she didn’t give him time to finish. She threw herself down at his feet and started to wail, with hot tears, “Take me away! Take me away! Take me away!”

  He tried to push her back, to untangle his knees, which she’d wrapped in her arms.

  “Stop crying.”

  “Don’t leave me . . . Otto, if you leave without me, I’ll die, I’m sure of it. Take me away! Take me away!”

  “Stop your cries this instant!”

  “Say you’ll take me away.”

  “First stop shouting. And let go of me why don’t you.” He tore himself violently from Madame de Villaplane’s grip, and she got up, no longer shouting, still wet with tears. They both hesitated for a moment.

  “What do you want with me, when it comes down to it?” he said in an exasperated voice.

  “He has to ask!” she said, brushing herself off, her hands falling back to his knees. “Haven’t I told you a hundred times? Oh, Otto! Otto! You’re cruel,” she murmured.

  He leaned forward, as if he had trouble hearing. “Cruel?”

  “Oh! Yes.” She cried like a little girl, almost without sound.

  “But,” he said, “it’s you who’ve . . . don’t make me be really cruel, dear Madame, no, don’t go against me. You’ve put me in an impossible situation. Good sense . . .”

  “Good sense! Good sense!” Madame de Villaplane interrupted with a bitter laugh, “Oh! Don’t torment me with your good sense, I beg you.” She lapsed back into a sharp, sarcastic voice. “Good sense? But do you know what you’re saying . . .what it means, to me, your good sense? It means,” she said in a sullen voice, “that if you leave without me, everything, for me, is finished. Do you understand?” She got up, approached Kaminsky, and repeated once more, “Do you understand?”

  This time it wasn’t comical anymore.

  “Tell me!” she said.

  Angry with himself for feeling so clumsy, and, in a way he hadn’t predicted, so beaten, he replied, “That’s not the question.”

  “Oh!”

  Shock. Her eyes glazed, her mouth hanging open, she looked at him with scorn, leering. And her fury took over again, not the earlier howling fury but a mute fury. She began to speak almost without moving, with only a brief blink from time to time.

  He stood before her.

  “Heart of stone! I don’t doubt it,” she said, bringing her hands together, and from then on she spoke with her hands joined. “I can’t take it anymore, how many times did I tell you? Is it true?”

  “Yes.”

  “Brute! I can’t go on living like this, and especially, oh, especially . . .”

  She shivered.

  “What?”

  “I don’t want to die like this.”

  In the space of a few seconds, she grew younger and older by turns, passion giving her eyes a juvenile gleam, a warm shine. But since she had spoken of death, it seemed to Kaminsky that her face was decomposing. The eyes aside, she became paler, and her teeth chattered.

  “No, no, no,” she said, shaking her head. And her voice, which was ordinarily so firm, wavered. But she got hold of herself. “No. Not this way. I don’t want this.”

  He sighed.

  “Listen.”

  “I’m listening,” he said.

  “I’m old in years, and I’m afraid of death. But I’m young at heart, younger than my body would lead you to believe. Do you understand?”

  He understood. His gesture indicated that he understood perfectly. And even that he was not without compassion. But what else could he do besides hurt her?

  “And I’m in love.”

  “Yes?”

  He couldn’t stop himself from smiling.

  “With you,” she said.

  He didn’t respond, not even with a look. Madame de Villaplane didn’t consider herself beaten yet. She pushed him towards an armchair where he sat, she made sure, and continued, appearing very calm.

  “I want to tell you everything. Everything.”

  He crossed his legs. This nonchalance didn’t stop her.

  Silence. She pulled back, waiting, perhaps, for him to speak first. But since he said nothing, she raised her head.

  “Otto?”

  “. . .”

  “Dare to look me in the eye and listen. Say something! Look at me.”

  He looked at her.

  “Good. You, you can hear and understand everything. You don’t think it’s ridiculous for a woman of sixty to be in love again. Once again,” she said bitterly, “I’m telling you it’s for the first time. If you knew my life! You, whose spirit is free and profound—”

  “. . .”

  “Yes, I’m sixty. But my body’s no older than forty, it’s true.”

  She suddenly stood.

  “Do you want me to bare myself for you?” She glared at him.

  “Come, calm down,” he said. “What was that?”

  “Calm down, won’t you? No hysterics. What an idea . . .”

  “He doesn’t want me! Oh,” she cried, and leaning towards him, and putting a sharp little fist under Kaminsky’s chin. “You act towards me, like they act . . . all those you pretend to scorn, to hate. You too, Otto, you’re a contradiction of yourself. Cruel!” she gasped. “Think that in any case, I can’t have more than a few years left to live, two, three, maybe five. If you refuse, I’ll finish out my days here, in this . . . cellar, among these memories I hate, people I hate, a whole life I hate,” cried Madame de Villaplane, losing all self-control. The tone of her voice climbed and finished on a horrible, sharp note.

  “Unbearable,” Kaminsky muttered.

  “Unbearable, ah, yes! Yes, it’s unbearable!�
�

  He got up, wanting to take her hand just as he had taken Simone’s a moment ago. She didn’t let him.

  “Those memories you send me back to!”

  “But I think it’s quite the opposite . . .”

  “Ah, ah, ah! You knew I lied, especially when I pretended to be Mercédès? Yes, it was a lie. But that wasn’t the biggest lie. That was when I told you about my prefect father and colonel grandfather.”

  “What? What? Your grandfather wasn’t a colonel and your father wasn’t a prefect?”

  “Oh! The perceptive man! Yes, they were certainly all that. That wasn’t where I lied.”

  “You’re an abyss, dear Madame.”

  “And you, my dear Monsieur, you’re nothing but a little paper-pusher, a pathetic psychologist, despite your grand airs. And again, a heart of stone. You call me dear Madame—will God permit it? Tell me, will you leave me here to die like this? Will you? Listen, I’m not finished . . .”

  This clump of words, this mix of truth and lies, passion and reason, dazed Kaminsky. Just then, she had refused Kaminsky’s hand, but now she took it in hers, raised it to her lips, and held it.

  “Listen. I wasn’t resigned, just the opposite, I was desperate. Nothing but death in sight. Until the day you showed up, there wasn’t an hour where I didn’t curse my life. But I loved you. I thought then that life could be worth it. But you refuse. Listen: I’ll just be near you, I’ll be your maid. What do you say? You can have all the mistresses you want. I’ll be Simone’s maid, without jealousy. But take me out of here. Rip me out of this tomb. Let me die in love. Speak, speak? You don’t say anything! He says nothing!” She said, letting go of his hand. “He refuses! Oh despicable . . .murderer . . .”

  And as her furious delirium took over, she twisted her hands, burst into sobs, while Kaminsky ran away.

  THROUGH streets deserted as if after a plague, between unlit houses, Cripure darted, leaning heavily on his cane. Tired. He went along the walls so as to keep out of sight, since when it came to it, it would be easy for brigands to assault him, knock him down, rob him or—and was it so impossible?—murder him. Footsteps. He shivered. Someone walking down the middle of the road. Who? A man? Yes, something that resembled a man. A thief? The man passed very close to Cripure, his hat low over his eyes. It was Glâtre, also in a hurry, squeezing in his pocket the money that was ready, the exact sum he usually gave to the hostess at the brothel.

  He passed and Cripure breathed a sigh of relief. All the same, it was a warning. Wasn’t he more likely than others to fall prey to robbers? And wasn’t the best defense of running away denied him also?

  •

  The cab, oh what luck!

  Cripure rushed over to it—stopped at the edge of the sidewalk, and cried, “Stop! Coachman, stop!”

  Old Père Yves bobbed his head and sat back in his seat.

  “Well, Monsieur, very well.”

  “Ah!” said Cripure, climbing into the cab, “ah!” He threw in his cane and his grocery bag, and gripping the doorway with both hands, he pulled himself onto the seat, the springs groaning.

  “On your way, coachman!”

  Père Yves clicked his tongue and the cab gently set off.

  Cripure let himself fall back into the cab as the wheels bounced over the badly paved streets, and he half closed his eyes. A lull. Sometimes, you got an unexpected break. It was pleasant to let himself be rocked in that old, creaking cab, with the upholstery trailing in ribbons. Père Yves, sitting up straight on his box, made little noises from time to time to keep Pompon going. The town was almost cheerful, like a town you are arriving in or just leaving. He stretched out, not very different, really, from who he would be tomorrow, afterwards. But no, I can’t think about that. I’ll go tell Maïa everything. That thought made him happy. He contented himself with it for a while.

  The town disappeared, if it’s possible to say that something so unreal could vanish, and with the jingling sound of bells, the cab left the town center.

  How nice it would be to roll along like this for a while, rocked by Pompon’s gentle trot, to go straight ahead without thinking about anything, to let the night come in, to drink in the moon, and to wake up tomorrow in a real dawn, reborn,

  In deinem Tau gesund mich baden.

  But to be reborn! Was everything really given once and for all, and must he finally believe in fate?

  The cab pulled up in front of the low little house, which for the moment was silent and dark. Cripure got down as clumsily as he’d climbed up. After giving Père Yves the usual forty sous, he picked up his cane and grocery bag, and, making sure not to trip on the stone sidewalk, he went up to the door. The cab made a half turn, and while Cripure rang, listening for the sound of Maïa’s clogs and the yapping of the little beasts, Père Yves’s whip cracked the shadows, and the cab faded away to the sound of tinkling bells.

  Maïa came running. Her steps clacked on the wood of the corridor and the little beasts yapped. “Come on, be quiet! Enough, Turlupin, enough Mireille! But the yapping only increased, the little beasts jumping against the door she carefully opened.

  In her rough blue work apron, her arms red from being plunged in dishwater, she appeared. “Where were you, babe? Getting home so late—you should be shamed to show up at this hour . . .”

  He went in, dragging his cane and his grocery bag, head lowered, looking at Maïa from under the brim of his crooked hat. The little dogs jumped for joy around him, and he cursed at them.

  First things first, he had to get out of his dressy clothes, take off that tailcoat, the too-tight vest, to get back into his old hunting jacket and slippers. To breathe again, by God!

  He put his bag down in the corridor, handed his hat and his cane to Maïa, took off his goatskin and went into the kitchen. All the while she was muttering stories that he didn’t even listen to, gossip from the neighborhood maybe, or something about her stew, and she helped him out of his clothes and back into the old ragged pants, the black jacket, the velvet vest, the big slippers, and the red scarf. He still wasn’t saying anything. But she didn’t need him to respond in order to keep talking. It was often like that when he came home from town, especially in the evening. He didn’t say a word, sometimes not responding for hours, even to questions. It depended on what he had seen on the way, or more often, what he had drunk. She didn’t pay attention to it anymore.

  She carefully folded the dressy clothes and put them back in place in the wardrobe. Cripure, arranging his muffler, sat on the edge of the bed. He bent his head, deeply absorbed, it seemed, in the contemplation of his slippers. Maïa set the table.

  All four of the dogs slept around the stove.

  •

  “Maïa?” He thought he spoke very loudly, shouted even, but Maïa didn’t move.

  “Maïa?”

  “What’s going on? You’re not coming down with something at this hour,” she said, turning around. “Yer face looks like a wet cabbage. What’s wrong with you?”

  He lowered his head, and like a child admitting a mistake: “Maïa, I’m going to fight.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m going to fight a duel.”

  He said it with his chin trembling, close to tears, in a little pale, wavering voice. His fat hands hung between his knees and his forehead was lowered. He looked at the wench through his eyepiece, with an air of pleading.

  “He’s dreaming!” muttered Maïa.

  “No. I’m not dreaming. I’m fighting tomorrow morning, at dawn.” It was obvious to him she hadn’t yet understood—from the way she was looking at him, fists balled on her hips, eyebrows raised, and that dazed air, like a fat gossip at the washbasin who doesn’t believe her ears! But soon, by tomorrow in any case, she’d understand perfectly when they brought him home on a stretcher.

  “So I’m the one who’s dreaming?” she said. He was going to fight? How? With who? And why did he need to fight? “Who’s that you want to fight?”

  He hesitated—the modes
ty of hate—to pronounce the name of his opponent. He tried twice before admitting in a whisper, “Nabucet.”

  She bent down, squinting her eyes, her fists still balled on her hips.

  “Eh?” she said. “That cow pie? What’d he do to you?”

  In spite of everything, a little smile slipped across Cripure’s face, but so lightly, so sneakily, that it went unnoticed.

  “To me?”

  “Who then?”

  He didn’t dare reply. Too late, in any case, to turn back. But . . . it was stupid to have told this woman. What could she understand about the whole business? A duel, what would that even mean to her? Did she even know what a duel was? And could she understand the gist? Dear God! I don’t dare tell her I was the one who slapped the man . . .

  “I gave him a—” he made a gesture. She understood.

  Cripure lowered his head, brought his hand back between his knees. Maïa’s fists finally left her hips and her too-short arms lifted and flapped like flippers. He heard her breathing in and out. Cripure’s lowered eyes could see nothing more than Maïa’s feet in their wooden clogs, as if they were riveted to the floor.

  “A whack?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why on earth did you give him a whack?”

  He made a vague gesture.

  The ideas he gets, she thought, stunned, are things no one will ever understand. The whole time they were together, she’d lived as if under a threat.

  “And how’s it going to go?”

  “With pistols,” he said, still not raising his eyes.

  And an instant later, he added, “at twenty paces.”

  This time her clogs moved.

  What kind of a stupid business had he gotten himself into! A duel! She’d seen that before on the stage at fairs—handsome gentlemen in golden suits and wigs who slung their swords around while complimenting each other. But that was all stuff for the theater, not real life! And because of a slap! If she’d had to fight a duel every time she’d gotten slapped! She’d run into no small few who weren’t satisfied, like Cripure, with insulting her. But it didn’t frighten her! She’d always known how to defend herself. Him? He was trembling.