Blood Dark

by Louis Guilloux

  And Babinot kept pushing it.

  Moka twisted his red forelock, crossed and uncrossed his legs, cracked his knuckles, sending pleading looks to Faurel, to Lucien, even to Babinot, who smiled, winked, and pushed his bandage, which alas was looking like a rag, back into place. It was no longer, it must be said, the sparkling white bandage that had made such an impression on the grand assembly when he’d appeared at the party that afternoon. It looked like the dressing had been dragged through the dust, rolled in soot.

  “If you knew what this man was to us,” said Faurel, “you’d try to help us avoid this absurd thing . . .” He wanted to say “that is a duel,” but he didn’t want to offend the captain.

  “But again,” said the captain, “did Monsieur Merlin slap Monsieur Nabucet?”

  Out of patience, Faurel replied, “But that’s obvious. There’s no denying that, my dear captain. But when you know him . . .” He would have liked to add, “and when you know Nabucet,” but that was impossible. “A man as worthy as Merlin!”

  Lucien didn’t say anything. This silence seemed strange to Faurel. It didn’t seem that Lucien was very enthusiastic about the cause he had agreed to support.

  Faurel asked, “What are your thoughts, Lieutenant?”

  “In my opinion,” Lucien replied, “it’s useless to try to explain what qualities make Monsieur Merlin worthy. That’s not the question. The slap is flagrant. It would be more productive, the way I see it, to focus on the medical side of the question. Captain, we’ve already spoken this evening in various ways of our client’s infirmity. Note that he didn’t mention this himself and has agreed to fight. I even think that he will be very . . . unhappy if we prevent him. But it’s up to us, Monsieur . . . Moka, Faurel, and me—to take it upon ourselves to insist on this particular side of the question—disability—and we ask you if, under these conditions, you insist on thinking that a fight, especially with swords, is always unavoidable. I insist on this point: that, perhaps overstepping our rights as seconds, it is us who propose the form of a settlement, it being well understood that our client wants to fight.”

  “A question of pure humanity,” said Faurel.

  “Or, at least, of pistols,” said Moka.

  “There’s no chance of pistols!” cried the captain, waving his hands. He’d listened to this speech with impatience. “My client has the pick of weapons. He picked swords, and it’s with swords they will fight.”

  “But he can’t stand up!” groaned the unhappy Moka.

  “Well, too bad for him. He’ll be killed,” said the captain.

  When one has to deal with idiocy . . . Faurel thought. And with meanness, he thought, imagining Nabucet.

  “Poor Cripure,” he muttered.

  “But, come now, gentlemen, come now,” cried Captain Plaire, lifting his arms to the ceiling, “according to you, your client is in part a man of genius, and in part a very weak man, perhaps even—”

  “Captain!” cried Babinot.

  “Well now what?”

  “See here, captain, we don’t want to wrong ourselves by speaking ill of the opponent.”

  “I agree! I agree,” said the captain, “but when all the devils point that way, he slapped someone, and he has to fight!” Wasn’t that obvious?

  Faurel was warming up: “It’s not a question of genius,” he said rather roughly, “but when it comes down to it, Monsieur Merlin is not an ordinary man. You must be aware, my dear captain, that he’s not only the author of a remarkable work on the philosopher Turnier, but he’s also published a few other volumes, including one on The Wisdom of the Medes, which had their moment of fame—Merlin is a scholar. A Sanskritist. And don’t forget either that he’s brought us new insight into Greek tragedy. As for the rest,” Faurel continued, seeing the Captain’s wide eyes, “as for the rest, see here!”

  He went over to a cabinet, which he opened forcefully and rummaged through the papers. All the while, he kept talking as he went about this task.

  “Gentlemen, I was his student back in the day, and if my memory serves, I should be able to find, in these papers, an old photo and maybe more than one. I’d be pleased if you would take a look at them, my dear captain. Be assured,” Faurel said, to flatter him, “that I perfectly understand your point of view, which is that of a man of honor and a soldier, and that of a friend, too. But we”—and he continued to rifle feverishly through the papers—“but we have ours too. Permit me to say that Monsieur Merlin represents, in our eyes, the noblest thing we have in the world: the Spirit incarnate, if you’ll allow me to use such a grand word. We don’t think of Monsieur Merlin as a man of genius, captain, but, as we said, he’s a worthy man. With looks that are deceiving, and through a life of infinite sorrows,” (despite himself, Faurel fell back into eloquence) “infinite sorrows,” he continued, thinking of Toinette, “and whatever people might want to think—excuse me, Monsieur Babinot—of the bad example of behavior he has given us, this man, you understand, is a master to us. In a certain way, he represents the best that our civilization has to offer, even if it’s an intelligence that denies itself, but that’s perhaps where its grandeur lies. We have for him, and for what he represents, an infinite respect, and it would be a terrible thing . . . Hang on!” he cried, “look, here’s the photo! It’s that man there you’d like to see fighting with a sword!”

  He threw the photo on the table. The captain picked it up. It was one of those photos from the end of the school year, taken in the June sunlight, already announcing the next vacation. The aged Cripure—he already seemed old, thought the photo was taken twenty years before—was standing next to his students, head bare, without his goatskin. His hands were in his pockets and his shoulders slumped, scowling, seeming to reproach the circumstance that had dragged him there among those idiots in a gesture that was supposedly friendly. The shoulders slumped, the knees bent, and the clumsy photographer had pressed the shutter at the moment when the sun caught the lenses of the pince-nez and made them flash. As for his legendary feet, they seemed even more enormous in the photograph. They looked like two pediments riveted to the ground, and it seemed like the astonishing statue that rose from them could never be torn away. Captain Plaire had never seen anything like it. It was comical and horrific at once. Besides, even Cripure’s face, as the photo showed it, and in spite of the flashing pince-nez, had nothing of the duelist in it. It was more like the face of an ordinary petty bourgeois, not warlike, sick, bored, a sad face like many in Europe, which had so shocked him when he came back from Indochina.

  “Wait! Wait! Wait!” murmured Captain Plaire.

  “Here,” said Faurel, “I’ve got a few more.” He threw four or five more photos onto the table, pulling them from the bottom of a box.

  “May I?” said the captain, picking up the photos which he examined one by one with a profound attention and increasing astonishment. “Oh! But,” he said, “so it’s true? I thought, you see, in looking at the first photo, that those big feet . . .well, I thought it was a mistake of the cameraman’s, you see. But no, it’s the same in all these. There’s no mistake, none at all. Wait! Wait!” He didn’t stop looking at the photos with an air of surprise and anger. “What’s all this, eh?”

  Nabucet hadn’t told him the whole story when he had come, Babinot at his side, to find him at the mess hall where he was finishing dinner. Nabucet had presented Cripure as a sort of troublemaker, a giant “rather badly put together,” a dangerous personality, a notorious subversive, unhappy with himself and others, someone bitter who needed to be taught a lesson. But he hadn’t mentioned his feet, he hadn’t said anything at all about what this shocking photo revealed at first glance, even to someone like Captain Plaire. And once again the captain murmured, “Wait, wait, wait.”

  He put the photos down on the table and, crossing his arms behind his back, he took a few steps around the room.

  “I repeat,” said Faurel again, “that our shared duty is to prevent this encounter . . . I see that the captain is changing h
is mind,” he said, smiling.

  The captain didn’t reply. He reflected and remembered.

  How sly memory is, he thought. The little incident he was remembering was one he hadn’t thought of since childhood. He did the math: now, I’m fifty-eight. This must have happened when I was thirteen, and Nabucet was ten. It’s been exactly forty-five years. One day, during Carnival, they’d worn disguises, a whole band of kids, adorned with trinkets stolen from their mothers. The game was to guess the person under the costume. But, on the street corner, towards the end of the day, Plaire had met Nabucet, whom he’d recognized right away under his mask, and he’d run happily over to Nabucet, shouting, “There he is, Nabucet, I see you, that’s it!” And poor Plaire had gotten, in return, a massive whack on the hand from a cane. The captain could see the scene, and felt his astonishment as if it were yesterday. Of all the children playing the game, only Nabucet had thought to arm himself with a cane, to make use of his mask to hit people. “Wait, wait, wait.”

  “Are you convinced?” asked Faurel.

  The captain stopped pacing and sat down in his chair, saying, “Gentlemen, it’s not a question, in fact, of making Monsieur Merlin fight with swords. I find this document,” he said, pointing to a photo, “absolutely convincing. I regret that I wasn’t better informed of Monsieur Merlin’s physical state. I owe you an apology,” he said, addressing himself to Faurel, Moka, and Lucien.

  “Ah! Permit me, permit me,” cried Babinot.

  “To do what, Monsieur?” said the captain, ready with a sharp word.

  “Permit me, my dear captain. On the contrary, we explained to you that he was disabled. I was the first to say so.”

  The captain looked at Babinot severely. “It wasn’t completely clear to me,” he said.

  “Are you still holding out for swords, Monsieur Babinot?” asked Faurel.

  “Ah,” Babinot replied, “I will second the captain’s opinion.”

  Discipline is the primary force of armies, thought Lucien.

  “Seeing that he hasn’t spoken of pistols as of now,” said Moka, who was thinking aloud.

  “Be reassured, Monsieur,” the captain replied. “The duel will not take place.”

  “Ah!” cried Moka happily.

  “Ah!” said Faurel.

  “I say: bravo,” said Babinot, clapping his hands. And once more he snuffled his nose (his trumpet) and repeated, “I say again and again: bravo!”

  Only Lucien remained impassive. The captain turned to Babinot. “You understand, Monsieur, the real state of the question?”

  “My dear captain it doesn’t seem impossible to me . . .” “That he can fight a duel with swords?”

  “Ayayayay!”

  “Devil take it!” cried Babinot, “it never seemed possible to me, in fact . . .”

  “That’s good.” The captain cut him off briskly and rudely, “I know now what to think.”

  Before he’d seen the photographs of Cripure, the captain had believed that everything they told him about the opponent’s handicap was exaggerated, and that they wanted to use that to force Nabucet give up the idea of swords and agree to fight with pistols, which he wanted to avoid at all costs. He’d been so insistent about his wish to fight with swords, he’d so emphatically repeated to the captain that in no way was he to accept pistols, that Plaire, far from thinking there was another goal behind it, had innocently believed that it was the others who wished to fool him and that they demanded pistols because pistols would give Cripure an enormous advantage. Things had been presented to him in such a way that he thought he was fighting step-by-step to get them to conform to what his client had legitimately demanded. But as soon as he’d seen that astonishing photograph, things looked radically different. He was starting to understand what Nabucet meant when he’d talked about teaching that individual a lesson. In the captain’s vocabulary, teaching someone a lesson meant something very precise and not very far removed from what was commonly called giving an enemy what he deserved. And of course, with honor at stake, the captain would have been in agreement. But he understood now that what Nabucet meant to say was infinitely subtler than that. As for Nabucet, he knew perfectly well Cripure couldn’t fight a duel with swords if he’d wanted to, and that he’d be faced with the dilemma of either a cowardly refusal of the combat or accepting it—knowing full well he’d be killed.

  In a word, Plaire had been deceived.

  “Allow me one more remark, my dear captain,” said Babinot.

  The captain allowed it, with rather bad grace.

  “See here,” said Babinot, bringing his hands together so that the fingers touched at the tips, “see here, let’s try to understand one another: you think that Monsieur Nabucet committed in sum, an . . . abuse when he demanded swords and refused pistols knowing full well—let us understand—that Monsieur Merlin is crippled. Is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fine,” continued Babinot. “But,” he said, getting up, and his hands disappearing beneath the tails of his coat, “so much the better! But in that case, cripples would make a nice game, it seems, of administering slaps to the healthy, imagining that . . .”

  They didn’t let him finish. A general cry of reproof met these words.

  “Merlin certainly never made that low calculation,” said Faurel.

  “Ah! Permit me!”

  “Not at all! Not at all!”

  “He slapped him in spite of himself,” said Moka.

  “A slap doesn’t happen like that,” said Babinot. He knew it. He’d found out very recently what had to be done to provoke a slap (or a blow from a belt). His hand touched the bandage.

  “If you’d said that to me before,” said the captain.

  “Before what? Before the photo?”

  “Yes.” And also before he’d remembered the cane. But that he didn’t say. He finished, “I might perhaps had believed it. But it’s too late.”

  “Ah! Fine, fine!” said Babinot, “since you’re all in agreement. You too, I understand, Lieutenant?”

  Lucien, holding his knee between linked hands, bent forward. “I think that Monsieur Merlin won’t accept a form of settlement.”

  There was a silence.

  “But Nabucet won’t either!” said Babinot.

  “That’s less important.”

  Moka saw that everything was in jeopardy and became somber.

  “You believe that Monsieur Merlin doesn’t want a settlement?”

  “I didn’t say he wouldn’t want it.”

  “Unfortunately, I think I understand you,” said Faurel.

  The captain intervened: “Eh, well, I understand it poorly. There’s no other way to get out of this, it seems to me. It’s either the settlement or the combat. And if your client refuses, Lieutenant . . .”

  “You see, Captain, he can neither accept nor refuse.”

  “Yet it’s he who must offer his apologies,” said Babinot.

  “In principle,” said Faurel, “Seen . . . from the outside, he’s completely in the wrong. But he won’t apologize.”

  “He’s arrogant,” said Babinot.

  “I don’t think it has so much to do with his pride,” replied Lucien. I don’t think it will do us any good to discuss his psychology either. The fact is that the situation presents no way out for him. All we can do is to prepare a contract and submit it to him, that’s it.”

  These commonsense words momentarily put an end to the debate. Moka claimed the honor of serving as a secretary. He had beautiful penmanship, and he was proud of it. They seated him at a table.

  Moka, Babinot, and the captain engaged in a new and endless debate about the terms. Lucien lost interest. He took Faurel aside and in a low voice, said, “In my opinion, he won’t even read that paper.”

  “You think?”

  “It’s more or less certain . . . as soon as he knows it’s about a settlement . . .”

  Faurel gave it some thought.

  “I fear that you’re right. But so, in that case . .
.” and he let his arms fall, discouraged. Poor Cripure!

  They moved even further away so that they could talk more easily. The others forgot them anyway, entirely absorbed in their task. From time to time a concept—apologies, honor, intention to offend—rose above the noise of their conversation.

  “You understand,” said Lucien, “Cripure is above all to be pitied in this: we can’t help him. We can do nothing for him, as he can do nothing for us.”

  “Exactly.”

  “We can, at most, prevent him from the duel. He won’t be at all grateful. I predict that his fury will turn on us.”

  It was likely—the deputy could believe it. Cripure would think they had betrayed him. But was that a reason . . .

  “I didn’t say it was.”

  “Do you know . . . I love that man.”

  “And me? Do you think I don’t love him?” replied Lucien. “My poor Cripure! He initiated me, you understand. He was my master in the noblest sense of the word. I adored him and I cursed him. Then, I understood him. I don’t want to say: justified him.”

  The others were still talking behind them. They sat down.

  “Are there things you can’t forgive him for?”

  The reply was slow to come.

  “No . . . I think that everything can be forgiven him. Cripure will disappear. He has a right to all our pity. And then, it will be over.”

  Faurel found that Lucien was quite hard.

  The latter continued, “I discovered that what Cripure taught was contempt.”

  Faurel had never thought of Cripure through that lens, but he agreed that what Lucien said was revealing. He added, “Yes. But at the same time, he was very attached to what he was condemning.”

  An insight.

  “And I thought,” Lucien continued, “that contempt was the same as grandeur. I even believed that all great intelligence was by nature contemptuous. I don’t like to remember those days at all.”

  Faurel asked himself about the value of that life, of the heroism in contemplating the absurdity in it. “And besides,” he said, “the meaning of this life—”

  “The question isn’t to find out the meaning of this life,” interrupted Lucien. “The only question is to find out what we can make of it.”