Blood Dark

by Louis Guilloux

“A stove?”

  “In the waiting room . . .”

  He made a gesture with his hand like someone choking. She started to undress him and he let her do it like a passive child.

  The quick transition from the cold night to this warm room had stunned Monsieur Marchandeau. He let his head fall like a man close to sleep or to fainting.

  She held up his head with her hand while still undressing him. Valor in that moment consisted of doing very simple things and doing them well. She’d have plenty of time to break down later. The daze she’d plunged into at her husband’s return dispersed little by little, like a swelling disappears, and the blood that had been blocked in her veins started to flow again, to give her body back all its desirable flexibility and force. She existed only in the tension of her gaze—she felt her eyes pulling from the back of their sockets, the skin of her temples stretching—and down to the smallest and tensest fibers of her being, moving all her person to the thing that needed doing. It wasn’t exaltation but presence, an attention brought to her task, a will, but one that was involuntary. She had become a sort of taut and crystalline character, entirely made up of her actions, gifted with a wonderful and barbaric ability to see herself acting, thinking, and suffering. This state would last for as long as the task was unfinished. Perhaps. Then would the crystal self break? Still it wasn’t clear: she hoped she would control it even after. She astonished herself with the accuracy, the economy and the patience of her movements, as if a double inside of her was acting on her behalf. Her interior distress barely passed into her fingers, and full of goodness and love, forgetting herself, she found a way to smile when she needed to at this deathly face.

  The buttons resisted. Once she got his blazer and vest off, she still had to remove the rest, the most difficult parts, and she kneeled down to untie his shoes. They were knotted like those of a child. She untied one with her teeth. He let her do it, with a limp passivity that multiplied the difficulties of her task. She, all the while, was thinking of a thousand immediate things—bringing him to the bath, rubbing him with alcohol, making a hot water bottle, putting him to bed, making him swallow a hot drink. The maid could have helped her with all these things. Nothing would have been simpler than to leave him for a moment and go wake the maid. She didn’t want to do it, not because she was hesitant to let a maid see the unhappiness that was striking them both—and in what guise! But precisely because this sorrow was something that pertained to both of them and to no one else, she would have refused anyone who offered to help her in that moment. Pain, no less than love, couldn’t be shared, and if anything could help her then, it was the thought that this task to finish was hers alone.

  “Can you stand?”

  He tried, but immediately fell back into his chair, with a limp movement, and he shook his head. She wasn’t sure she could get him in the bath.

  “Wait . . .” She squatted. “Put your arm around my neck.”

  He obeyed clumsily, groping like a blind man. His arm finally reached around his wife’s neck. She steadied him by taking his hand.

  “Stand up.”

  They got up together.

  This time he stayed standing, Claire supporting him almost completely on her shoulder where he rested his head.

  “You’re going to go to bed and sleep.”

  “Yes.”

  It was an almost imperceptible “yes” that lingered in Claire’s ear like the word of a defeated man giving up on himself.

  With little dragging steps they approached the bed. Claire, with one hand, pulled back the covers, touched the sheets. They were cold. Too bad.

  “Can you do it by yourself?”

  “I’ll try.”

  He’d spoken more distinctly. At the same time, he put one knee on the edge of the bed, and with a push on his hips from Claire, he stretched out in a single movement, heaving a sigh as deep and howling as a scream. Then he stuck his hands under the covers and was still. He looked for Claire’s eyes, and his mouth hardened into a child’s frown. He groaned, “Can you believe it! Can you believe it!”

  And he burst into sobs.

  Claire didn’t succumb even a little bit to the contagion of tears, which any other circumstance would have surely produced. But in her state of extreme tension, she experienced something that was more like the opposite of contagion, neither repulsion nor condemnation, but a narrow consciousness of total impossibility, as painful in other ways as its opposite. And then, there was something else.

  A sobbing man is a relatively rare spectacle, something Monsieur Marchandeau had given her little occasion to see. The few times she’d seen him cry—at the death of his father, when Pierre was sent to the front—Monsieur Marchandeau had stayed on his feet and fought his tears. She remembered a man bent under his sorrow but hiding his face in his hands, instead of this time, when the tears leaked out of his eyelids, his hands like strangers, unmoving on the whiteness of the sheet. It looked like the hands didn’t know the eyes were crying. Some kind of immortal curiosity glued that woman in place before this man who cried, lying on his back without resisting. The tears were having trouble finding a path, visibly soaking the depression of the eye before seeming to flow back down, shining like oil in the bushy beard. How could he cry like that without her lifting even a hand? From the depths of his chest came the same low, muted moan as had come in the waiting room, like a cry of agony. She put a hand on his forehead but he didn’t seem to feel the touch. From nearby and faraway at the same time, Claire felt a lurch of pity. She removed her hand, tucked him in, brought the sheet right up to his chin, and disappeared on tiptoe. No, she wouldn’t break down right away. There was something else to do. She quickly returned with a flask and a napkin, and made her husband sit up. She rubbed him down, dosing him with a tincture of iodine, as she’d done for Pierre one evening when he’d come home from the stadium with a bad case of pneumonia after a soccer rematch. A devastating memory, which she pushed away with all her might, but which rooted itself in her, coming back with savage insistence at each gesture she made that was so similar to those earlier ones. She disappeared a second time, not to the bathroom, but to the kitchen, boiled water, made a broth and some grog. He wisely drank the grog and stretched out again, making a little gesture of refusal with his hand, as if he were demanding to finally be left in peace. But he was happy that she sat by his bed and took his hand. A sort of vague smile wandered for an instant over his face, but only an instant, a few seconds at most. Claire, still silent, her husband’s burning hand in her own, looked at him crying and thought he’s going to cry himself to sleep like a little child.

  •

  That was, in fact, how he slept. The sobs quieted, the whimpering tapered off, becoming, in the first moment of sleep, nothing more than a murmur of chagrin, a soft complaint, a slackening, which would soon stop. With precautions that reminded her of the times when Pierre, as a very little boy, had demanded his mother’s presence and her hand before “going to the moon,” she freed her fingers, removing them from the feverish, moist grip of the sleeper. He sighed, turned his head slightly as if conscious of this abandonment, and his lips sketched a frown that gave his sleep a curiously disdainful quality. The whimper came back for an instant, like a protestation or a reproach, then nothing more—a strange and overwhelming dispersal into sleep, absence. She got up.

  More and more she felt her eyes pressing in their sockets and her temples hurting. She passed a hand over her forehead, felt her jaw tighten, her teeth clench, and her whole body jerk into an arch. She wanted to cry out, to run away somewhere from the blood that was beating violently in her head. Her steady hand seized the switch to turn out the light. The vertigo passed. Once again she mastered herself, entirely sure of what she was doing, confident that she would achieve what she had to accomplish.

  She went out on tiptoe, listening one more time for the sleeper’s breathing before softly closing the door. As far as she could tell, he slept peacefully. She could only hope he’d sleep for a long time,
the time it would take her . . .

  But no, not to the doctor’s right away she thought, dressing in haste.

  Despairing was cowardice. Why hadn’t it occurred to him to find Faurel? If anyone could still do something, it was Faurel. She scribbled a note, went into the maid’s room without a sound, and put the note on her night table. Then she went down the stairs, out through the little door her husband had made use of in returning, and half running, half walking, she went toward the deputy’s house. Who could say? Perhaps he could telegraph, call, prevent . . .

  FAUREL had been shocked to the point of indignation when he learned about the challenge to a duel. Not only was it stupid and cruel but also grotesque, and from the first instant, he’d resolved to do everything he could to stop things from going any further. Between Nabucet and that poor, crazy Cripure, anything could happen! At worst, surely, a murder in cold blood. Cripure, feverish and transported by sorrow, was capable of not waiting for the moment of the duel to grab a weapon and bring down Nabucet. Not at all impossible. And Faurel, who didn’t lack a certain imagination, had sadly shuddered at the thought of Cripure’s arrest, of the trial, of his years in a penal colony. Was it really a stretch of the imagination to envision these somber possibilities? Faurel didn’t think so. He thought he knew Cripure well enough to believe him capable of killing Nabucet outside of the laws of the duel. And as for Nabucet . . . Eh, as usual Nabucet had the starring role. His position was strong, and it truly seemed difficult to reach a settlement. He was the wronged party. He was the one who’d gotten slapped, a slap that was apparently so gratuitous. One had to admit, that in this business Cripure had shown himself in the worse light, as a man incapable of mastering an angry impulse, someone completely in the clutches of hate. The result of all that was that Nabucet had every advantage, including the choice of weapons. Poor Cripure! What a mess he’d gotten himself into! And would his whole fate play itself out over that slap? To make things worse, who had Nabucet picked for seconds? That Babinot who was nothing but a hothead and Captain Plaire whom Faurel didn’t know, but who didn’t give the impression of having a great penchant for reconciliation. And Cripure, whom had he picked? Young Lucien Bourcier who never said anything and Moka! Cripure could have at least come to him. When everything was finished and the problem figured out, Faurel promised himself he would give Cripure a friendly reproach for not thinking of him in such a scrape. He would so willingly have been of service. But Cripure hadn’t thought of him, or maybe, once again, his sad imagination had judged Faurel to be an enemy, ready to wrong him. Faurel wouldn’t dream of being offended. He only thought one thing: since they’d chosen him as the arbiter, there was a little bit of hope.

  The most irritating one wasn’t that idiot Babinot. When it came down to it, he could tell him what to do, and Babinot couldn’t be happier than to obey a staff officer. The most annoying one was Captain Plaire. Where the devil had they dug up that stubborn fool who kept repeating in various ways: “I only look to the laws of honor, gentlemen. Nothing but the laws . . .”

  And what a stern attitude!

  Nabucet himself wouldn’t have recognized his even-tempered guest, this morning’s instructor, in this swashbuckler. And it was true that Captain Plaire was not at all the petty bourgeois who’d dreamed of a secluded house and an easy maid. What happened had transformed him. You would have thought he was the one who had to fight.

  And would they never get to the bottom of it?

  •

  “You know,” Captain Plaire explained, “in the past witnesses were called seconds, and they too fought—they weren’t confined, as they are today, to a simple diplomatic function.” This took place at the Café Machin, where they’d met for an initial contact, a preliminary exchange of views. Moka was in charge of organizing the meeting at the café. But Captain Plaire had begun by making rather unpleasant observations that this wasn’t how it was done, that the witnesses weren’t supposed to meet in cafés. The gravity of a conflict over a question of honor had to be maintained, and under the circumstances, the hostess of the café, the fat blond woman who was still at her cash register, the one Cripure had compared, that morning, to a hen on her roost, had given them a private room to use, an empty room, a room no one set foot in, a room for events. But it wasn’t a room decorated by Nabucet, like the one where Madame Faurel had received the Legion of Honor a few hours earlier, and where Babinot, unaware as he still was of his son’s death, had told such good stories. Dust took the place of rugs and of ornament in general. It was so bad no one had dared to sit down, even though there were chairs around a table. A long monologue from Captain Plaire had begun as soon as they entered the room. The mission of a witness, he’d said, is not one to be accepted lightly, and he knew what he was about. He’d been a witness in thirteen duels and this one would be the fourteenth. He could also say without fanfare that he was quite familiar with affairs of honor, and he asked these gentlemen to trust his long experience. Undoubtedly none of them had yet undertaken the formidable honor of being selected for such a task, and the normal procedure, without being totally unknown, was perhaps not very familiar. And then he’d thought it prudent to tell them in so many words how things would happen. The first question for debate was obviously to decide whether there were grounds for a duel or if, on the contrary, they should consider from the beginning the possibility of a settlement. But, in the present situation, there wasn’t a shadow of a doubt. The offense done to Nabucet was so flagrant that the duel was absolutely necessary, and not a fake duel, not one of those shameful comedies so many people engaged in (Captain Plaire, warming to his subject, became, if not eloquent, at least profuse), but a serious combat. A slap, that required an absolute reparation, and there was nothing but a duel to the death which would give it. Babinot, listening to the captain, approved it all with nods of the head and conniving little smiles, cries of “Wait! Wait!” if anyone looked like they were about to speak. He was delighted with what he heard, and enchanted that a captain was saying it. And the captain went on. The choice of weapons belonged to his client and his client had chosen swords. But the combatants shouldn’t be familiar with the weapons, in the interest of justice and equal chances. Some duelists in fact preferred lighter weapons and others heavier ones. They would give them ones neither had used. The captain would take care of everything. That was it. Of course there were plenty of things to say about the duel in general and stories to tell, which Monsieur Babinot could have made good use of, but this wasn’t the moment and anyway all was clear as could be. An elementary case. A slap: a duel. No need to beat around the bush—they had to fight at dawn. All that was left was to choose the field, to inform the combatants, to rent the vehicles, and to ensure the indispensable presence of a doctor. There was no time to lose.

  The others listened to this monologue in the deepest silence. Lucien stayed very calm. As for poor Moka, he was distressed. As much as he’d spoken of the duel with Cripure himself, the thing hadn’t appeared to be all that serious. He hadn’t believed it. The idea that Cripure could fight a duel was so crazy, that even considered as a reality, Moka hadn’t been able to believe it. For once, he’d lacked imagination. But Captain Plaire’s speech had made up for that. From the first words of the speech, he’d started to realize that it wasn’t all fun and games anymore, and his old teacher would be forced into a meeting on the field, ayayayay oh oh! And with swords! If only they’d chosen pistols! But nothing to be done, and nothing to be said. Nabucet had his choice of weapons and they were all stuck with it. That left Faurel. He might know how to settle this. He was used to diplomacy, and he wasn’t a cutthroat like that terrible captain. But they’d had all the trouble in the world in bringing the captain around to Faurel’s house. What good was it? he’d said. Why did they need a referee? Once again, the case was extremely simple. Were the four of them so green that they needed help appropriately overseeing this affair? If he’d had the Chateauvillard Code in hand, he could have proved to them, with supporting quo
tations, that only in the case of a disagreement among the witnesses, when, for example, they couldn’t come to a consensus on the start of the quarrel, or on the reciprocal roles the combatants had taken in it—in sum, when it wasn’t possible to determine with certainty which side was in the wrong—and only if all the witnesses were agreed, would it be useful to have recourse to an arbiter, a person of influence in title or reputation. But that wasn’t the case. This affair was the simplest of all the ones he’d been involved in, all of which let it be noted, gentlemen, had been settled on the field. And doubtless he would have held to that uncompromising position if Babinot hadn’t observed that Nabucet himself wouldn’t be opposed to this arbitration, that he’d take it as a surety. Besides, there was no way, no fear that this arbitration could go against the wishes of his client. The facts were the facts. A slap was a slap. They would not risk heading toward a settlement. This speech didn’t have a great impact, but everyone stuck to their positions, Cripure’s seconds insisting on the question of pistols, and Captain Plaire refusing to entertain them. In the end he’d decided that they should indeed have recourse to Faurel’s mediation. He didn’t say, but he thought it was astonishing that Nabucet hadn’t asked Faurel to be his second. But that was another question that was none of his business. And whatever he believed, it was decided they would go to Faurel’s, who had a higher rank than Captain Plaire, eh, since he was an officer of the state.

  •

  But, it had been more than a half hour at Faurel’s, comfortably seated in the great parlor, and they were still stuck on the same points. Faurel had ordered liqueurs brought in by a young, pretty chambermaid whom the captain hadn’t even noticed. God knew how striking, under any other circumstances, he would have found that charming face. But he was focused on the duel and kept repeating: “My only concern is for the laws of honor, gentlemen, nothing but the laws of honor.”