The priest finally managed to find his cross. He held it tight in his hand as he walked toward the square, supporting himself against the walls in order not to collapse. He knew that if he fell again, he wouldn’t be able to get up. His joints were on fire and his legs weren’t quite obeying the orders of his brain. He looked every bit like a thoroughly hammered drunk, except that the only drunkenness eating away at him on this interminable Via Dolorosa to Place Blanche was pain.
He crossed the boulevard like a blind man, his arms outstretched toward the cars, to the screeching of tires, the screaming of horns and drivers, putting one foot in front of the other in a precarious balancing act, propelled by the movement itself rather than by his own will. The world was now made up only of blurred, multicolored lights, and anarchic voices and noises that echoed painfully in his head. He was unable to make any order out of them. The night had turned into a long tunnel he could not see the end of.
He collapsed on an empty bench on the median strip. How many times had he already walked by there in the past few hours? He’d lost count. He kept seeing himself standing at the edge of a grave, surrounded by young people in white, but he no longer knew who was in the coffin, or if the memory belonged to that day or to the day before or to his youth. He felt trapped, locked up in that everlasting round trip between the den in Rue Blanche and the Montmartre cemetery. He looked at his fists, which he kept obstinately clenched. The neon signs of the sex shops gave them a violet tint. Or was it the red marks of his illness that were turning a dark purple? How would he get out of here? How would he get home? He rummaged in the pocket of his jacket. His wallet was there. This both comforted and surprised him. He couldn’t remember how it had been put back there after he was searched by the waiter with sideburns. He opened it only to realize that there wasn’t a single bill left. How would he get a cab? How would he get back to Poissy? How would he even walk as far as the Métro entrance he saw nearby? He remained there, sitting on the bench, distraught, his tiny cross clenched in one hand, his wallet in the other, staring at the tower of the Moulin Rouge opposite him, and at the mesmerizing movement of its luminous sails. Once again, he thought of the Bayard alarm clock. This time, he was no longer able to put the pieces together in the huge disarray of his memory.
The three young people he’d seen earlier, and who had been watching him from a neighboring bench while passing around a joint and a bottle of Coke, finally approached. One of them slumped down next to him. Later, he wouldn’t remember their faces, only the smell of the one sitting next to him, a smell of whiskey and leather coming off his biker jacket, a black jacket worn despite the heat, with white letters at heart level. He would remember that smell of whiskey, which was markedly different from the smell of vodka in which he would float later, a little farther along his way through the narrow streets of Paris and his purgatory.
“Hey, daddy, you had too much to drink? Aren’t you scared, all alone with your dough in your hand? Aren’t you scared of thieves, daddy?”
Which of the three had spoken? At first impression, it wasn’t the one next to him, who kept silent while absentmindedly swigging his bottle of whiskey and Coke. The other two, standing before him, suddenly looked disproportionately tall.
“What’s the matter? Are you sick?”
“What’s he saying?”
“He says he’s hurting all over.”
“Where does it hurt, daddy? Momo, give him a puff.”
“You crazy or what?”
“Fuck, he says he’s in pain. Give him a puff. Go on, daddy, have a smoke, it’ll do you good.”
They placed the paper cone between his lips. At first, he refused, but the second time, he inhaled and the smell immediately brought back to his mind the cells of Poissy detention center. He inhaled again, and again, and again. He was beginning to forget his body, to take off, to float in the warm air like a smoke ring. The cannabis opened up the doors of his memory, taking him back to his brother, at the very beginning, during the first years of his downward slide, before the hard drugs, before all the problems with the police, before jail.
They took the joint from his mouth. “Go easy on this, daddy, it’s good stuff.”
“Feeling better, daddy?”
“Do you have all you need?”
“Do you want some to take home, daddy? Doctor Momo’s orders. I can give you a prescription if you like.”
The others laughed. Kern did, too, not really knowing why.
“How much have you got on you?”
“Show us your dough. How much have you got there, daddy?”
“How much has he got?”
“Fuck, not a cent. What’s this old son of a bitch?”
He didn’t see the leather-clad elbow coming. He felt the impact with his face only later, once he was on the ground and the volley of kicks had started, and he curled up as best he could under the bench in order to bear them. It was the black jacket hitting him. The other two stood by and watched, hands in the pockets of their tracksuits. He felt warm liquid pour out of his nose, flood over his cheek, into his ear, over his neck and hair. For a few moments, his lips had been moving in vain, and nothing and nobody seemed to be granting his prayer. And he wasn’t addressing God, but his brother. Finally, he heard shouting and the blows ceased.
He felt someone pull him out from under the bench. Instinctively, he shielded his head with his arms but a pair of strong hands grabbed them and pulled them away. He gave up fighting, laid himself open, his arms crossed over on the sidewalk asphalt. What could he, a four-foot-ten runt, possibly do? So he gave in to his fate, to his martyred body, to the blows, and even the prospect of death. His muscles relaxed. For a moment, he thought he was being called back to God, yet the seconds lapsed, each one lasting an eternity. When his nose finally allowed a thread of air through, and he was able to breathe, he saw that something had changed, or rather he smelled it. The odor of whiskey had been superseded by that of vodka. When he opened his eyes and looked up at the sky, he saw a big, bearlike head, large and hairy, something prehistoric, watching him, with fur that changed color to the rhythm of flickering neon signs and headlights sweeping over the median strip. He suddenly felt he was being lifted up in the air and placed on a feather comforter. He clung to it, like a child does to a huge cuddly toy, although only God knew just how much the teddy bear stank. His body was weightless, and he felt light as air. Blood was streaming out of his nose. He raised his eyes to the sky. Above him, the sails of the Moulin Rouge were still performing their lazy circular movement, a movement that nothing seemed in a position to stop that night.
He drifted. The streets of Paris, bathed in this nocturnal bustle so typical of sweltering nights, paraded before his half-closed eyes. People watched him go by with astonishment, some pointing their fingers at him, others laughing. But he knew he was now safe, shielded beneath a shell of filth and stench. Nobody would approach him again tonight. He could finally rest. He closed his eyes completely and let himself be cradled. Dried blood had formed a crust on his cheek and neck. He could hear a crackling sound at every sway of his head, at every nod, to the rhythm of the steps that were carrying him from one arrondissement to another. Steps that weren’t his own.
He let his soul drift. He now saw himself dressed in white, alone on the edge of an open grave where his older brother’s body had just been laid. He was seventeen and his dead brother had just turned twenty. The gravediggers were sealing the older brother’s tomb forever, handing him over to the rot of time, to worms, to dust, while the younger one remained on the edge of the abyss, his whole life before him and the experience of pain already rooted deep in his memory.
Three days later, he went back to the cemetery, to bid his brother a final farewell. He’d aged thirty years. He was drained. He walked along the graveled paths. He saw the flowers from the ceremony, from the burial, already wilted. He walked closer. The slab had been upended, and the grave was open, empty, deserted. He looked around. He called out. He could see his
older brother walking away among the graves. He ran after him. The tombs scrolled by, anonymous, cold, smooth. He called out again. His older brother stopped, turned around, his face as it was during adolescence, intact, as it had been when they loved each other and had been close, before the drugs, before the dependency. His older brother spoke. He said goodbye. He held him in his arms. He told him to get on with his life. He told him to seek the light. He told him that his little body was weak but that there was also much strength in it. He finally walked away. He returned to his grave. He vanished forever beneath the earth, after one last smile filled with a youth that would never have the chance to fade.
Was Kern dreaming? To what lands in his memory had his delirium and his fever taken him? He was now going through a gate. He heard the soil crunch under his feet. There was thick foliage all around him. He could finally lie on the ground. A blanket, a bed, or something akin to it. Rest his painful, motionless limbs. Spread his arms on the cool, damp grass. Sink into unconsciousness. Where was he? Above him, the black form of Notre Dame rose against the night, like a gigantic spider with a heavy body supported by its flying buttresses. He could see the apse drawing nearer. He reached out to try to touch it. He saw a figure come away from it, and walk around it. A white, pure, female figure with silky hair. He watched as she walked up the steps, nervous and suspicious, saw her knock on the door and wait, growing impatient. The door opened, allowed her to slip in, and another form took her place in the doorway: larger, darker, that of a man whose face remained concealed in the shadows, and who took the time to give a worried look outside before closing the door and also disappearing.
At last, he closed his eyes. He could feel that he was sinking once and for all, and yet he couldn’t quite fall asleep. Because of that light, distant still, shifting, immaculate, but which kept coming toward him and to which he felt irresistibly drawn.
They start walking again before dawn. They want to reach the village situated on the hill before the first rays of the sun. To seal off the area as quickly as possible, quietly, and in the dark. Later, they won’t find anything. Later, once it’s daylight, it’ll be too late. That’s what the sergeant said last night, and the sergeant is well-respected.
By the light of their lamps, before leaving the partly dried-up wadi, they fill their flasks at the murky trickles of water flowing here and there. It’s going to be a sweltering day. August here is unforgiving and you must never run out of water. It must be used sparingly. That’s what the sergeant reminds the second lieutenant in a few words, as the latter is already starting on his canteen when their ascent up the ridge has barely begun.
At the end of the day, once the operation is accomplished, they’ll go back to the base camp, probably by chopper, at worst by truck, and drink warm beer until their thirst is fully quenched, and think about the day to follow, about the next mission, and never mention the past. That’s how the Pursuit Commandos spend their resting hours.
Halfway up the slope, there’s the scheduled stop to radio in for confirmation. The orders are confirmed. To make a sweep of a village in the forbidden zone, where activity appears to have resumed. Check everyone’s documents. Do some clearing up. Stop the villagers from returning to live there. And—who knows?—perhaps recover the radio they’ve been chasing after for days, a PRC10 they lost during an engagement, and which some conscripts said they’d already glimpsed twice, through binoculars, on the back of a Fellagha on the run. The sergeant has turned this into a personal affair. The sergeant has great respect for equipment. He doesn’t like to see knowledge in the enemy’s hands. The young second lieutenant knows this, and he would quite like to recover the radio and give it to the sergeant as a trophy, as a first sign of complicity. Ever since he’s assumed the command of the paratroopers, the second lieutenant feels he’s being sized up, judged, and sometimes disapproved of by his junior. It’s the classic clash of styles between an old veteran who learned everything in Indochina, and a boy from a good family, from a long line of soldiers, fresh out of officer school. The sergeant has never taken the liberty to make a single criticism. Not once. However, his silence speaks volumes. His silence and some of his attitudes. Like the brief, practically imperceptible disgust he showed when, earlier on, the second lieutenant held out his flask to offer him a drink of water. The second lieutenant suspects it will take time to earn respect. Time, and passing the test of commanding open fire.
For now, they walk a few more minutes in almost total darkness. Their eyes have gotten accustomed to it. At times, they check with the soles of their combat boots that the stones are solid. A fall wouldn’t be dangerous but it would make noise. In this setting, the smallest rolling pebble can be heard within a five-hundred-yard radius. Behind them, they sense daylight breaking. They must pick up the pace, and reach the ridge from which they’ll be able to control part of the djebel. They’ll leave the AA52 machine gun all set up on the top of the hill, then come back down to the right, toward the first mechtas of the village and there, in those loam houses, they’ll achieve the final objective of their mission.
FRIDAY
NEVER BEFORE HAD HE SEEN THE DAWN AS A REBIRTH. PERHAPS it was because he’d slept out in the open and there was something new and unblemished about this sunrise over Île de la Cité. Perhaps it was because of the violent events of the night before. Perhaps because he’d been afraid—for his life and his body.
He let the shadows and the timid light of daybreak caress him. He was smiling like a fool and breathing through his mouth to escape the inexpressible stench he was steeped in, and which originated from the sleeping bag he was lying in. He hadn’t tried to move his limbs yet. For the time being, he chose to keep them numb and anesthetized by the night. He knew that as soon as he got up to return to that massive stone building he could see on the other side of the green fence, his body would make him pay for the excess, the imprudence, the received blows, and maybe even for his sins the night before. He had caressed a woman’s breasts. And brushed their soft tips with his lips.
The garden was deserted. Soon, its gates would reopen and tourists would swamp it with casual slowness. He would then have to extract himself from the sleeping bag and resume his double life as a priest and an investigator. Meanwhile, he took advantage of this strangely late waking hour. He was absent from the world, absent from himself, and that helped him regain his strength and partly come around.
He heard footsteps on the gravel. The leaves of the bush behind which he was hidden rustled and Krzysztof’s hairy face peered out between two branches.
“You OK?”
“I’m OK, Krzysztof. Thank you for what you did last night.”
“Last night?”
“You picked me up from the ground, didn’t you? It was you, wasn’t it?”
“Bouvard Clichy, yes, yes.”
“What were you doing so far from your usual neighborhood?”
“Neighborhood?”
“What were you doing there?”
“Polska Misja Katolicka.”
“The Polish Catholic Mission, of course. And you were going home to sleep?”
“Notre Dame home, yes.”
“Notre Dame home. You brought me all the way here? You carried me on your back like Saint Christopher with the baby Jesus.”
“Here, yes. OK, OK.”
“I think you saved my life last night, Krzysztof.”
“OK, OK. No problem.”
The Pole held out a stale croissant to Father Kern. “Musi ksiadz jesc.”
“Is this for me?”
“Musi odzyskac sile.”
“Thank you, Krzysztof. What about you? Do you have food for yourself?”
His only reply was to pull out a can of cheap beer from his pocket, knock it back in a few sips, burp loudly, and throw it against the fence that separated Square Jean-XXIII from the Notre Dame garden. Kern bit into the croissant. Krzysztof had probably obtained it from the café on the corner of Rue du Cloître. Sometimes, the woman who owned it woul
d give him the previous day’s croissants in exchange for a few hours during which the Pole promised not to beg from the patrons who sat at the outdoor tables. Kern was hungry. He even picked the crumbs off his bloodstained shirt, which made Krzysztof laugh. It was perhaps the most delicious croissant the priest had ever eaten.
“You find killer?”
“No, Krzysztof, I haven’t found the killer yet.”
The vagrant grew somber and withdrew into silence. Then, as though after a lengthy internal debate, he ended up partially unzipping his padded jacket and slipping his hand into the opening. He pulled out a faded color photo, protected with transparent adhesive that had turned yellow in parts. It was of a little girl of ten or twelve, wearing a white First Communion dress, with a wooden cross hanging around her small, slender neck. Next to her, with his arm around her shoulders, there was a man in a brown suit and a flower-patterned necktie, with a careful side part in his blond hair, and a blissful smile. It took Father Kern awhile to recognize the Polish vagrant in this slightly stiff, awkward-looking dad who was posing before the camera lens in his Sunday clothes, and whose smile gave his face an adolescent and—it had to be said—fundamentally happy expression. What had happened since the day when this picture had been taken? What event could have made Krzysztof stumble down this endless slippery slope until he ended up behind a bush in Square Jean-XXIII, in the 4th arrondissement in Paris? Kern knew only too well. He’d seen it so many times during the course of his priesthood. Misery needed a trigger, a separation, an illness, a family tragedy. A human being would fight for a long time before toppling over. Fate would have to attack relentlessly then, finally, deal you the deathblow.
The Madonna of Notre Dame Page 13