“What’s this rag?” he asked his mother, intrigued.
“I’ve been getting it since Papa died. I joined the Society, you know. You pay only twenty francs a year and they handle all the formalities, the crematorium, settling all the bills. Can you imagine that? Instead of having to pay eight hundred or a thousand francs, like everyone else, you pay only twenty francs a year, it’s quite a saving. Pity we didn’t know about it for Papa’s death. It was after the ceremony that they came to talk to me about it…”
Jean Calmet felt acute discomfort. He opened the newspaper, instantly spotted the Society’s device – the same as the one which decorated the pediment of the crematorium with its big Roman letters:PER IGNEM AD PACEM
and a sinister vignette showed flames spurting from a kind of alcohol-fried chafing dish against a black background.
“You read this in detail?” he asked.
“From cover to cover,” replied his mother. “It’s very interesting and thorough.”
Jean Calmet shivered. He began to perspire on the veranda overheated by the afternoon sun; the heavily sweetened tea nauseated him. He skimmed through the newspaper, he read:In case of death outside the Canton of Vaud, in Switzerland or abroad, our society gives the family a reimbursement equal to the amount that it would have spent if the incineration had taken place in the Canton, i.e. cost of incineration, cost of coffin, shipping charges from the border of Vaud to the nearest crematorium, organist’s services.
With regard to the shipping of ashes, it is possible to send these to Switzerland, by mail, without difficulty…
and he imagined the postman’s face when, on the arrival of the bound parcel, a thin trickle of velvety ash begins to run, and he instantly gathers it up and brings it to the deceased’s family. He had to make an effort to remind himself that his father’s ashes were shut up in an urn behind the padlocked grating of a columbarium guaranteed by the police administration. He went back to the newspaper. On the first page, a member had sent in a little poem, ‘The Last Fire’, which ended with these lines:If by fire we are consumed,
Then ashes suddenly are we!
But in earth where we lie buried,
What shall we be next summer?
Let us not impose gardening
On those who have seen us die!
Jean Calmet dropped the horrible sheet, but his mother picked it up, folded it respectfully and set it clearly in sight on the table. In spite of himself, from his seat, he read another fragment of an article that was bathed in the yellow four-o’clock sun:First, we’ll talk about France. In Paris, the hall of ceremonies comprises two hundred seats (chairs and armchairs). It is sumptuously decorated with mosaics and a sculptural composition: ‘The Return of the Eternal’. One of the clauses of the decree of 31 December 1941 expressly states: “Immediately after incineration, the ashes are to be gathered in an urn in the presence of the family.” The persons attending the services do not leave the crematorium before the restitution of the ashes. This waiting period varies from fifty to sixty minutes.
He paused, took a sip of tea, resumed reading the paper:Strasbourg – There are two chapels: one with three hundred seats and the other with eighty. The main hall has an organ, the small one a harmonium. The ceremonies are identical, regardless of which hall is used.
The day before or two days before the service, the coffin is generally placed in the refrigerated cellars of the crematorium. An hour before the beginning of the ceremony, the coffin is set on a catafalque, the latter being covered by a pall embroidered with gold. A podium is available to any speakers for religious or secular speeches. A charge is made for the use of the organ or harmonium. Strasbourg has no columbarium.
He became excited, he turned the page. The doctor’s silhouette appeared, massive, before the big clock.
Marseille – The coffin, covered with a black pall with gold fringe, is placed on a catafalque in the centre of a large hall furnished with benches. Two hundred persons can be seated there. A well-placed rostrum allows any speakers to make themselves heard easily. No music is possible. The coffin is brought by pallbearers into the adjacent room, where the ovens are located.
The persons attending the services may then leave, but they may also wait (about an hour) for the return of the urn, either remaining inside the crematorium or going out into the neighbouring cemetery. Covered with the pall, the urn is borne on a small litter, then placed in the columbarium or transported to another place…
That was too much. Furious, Jean Calmet crumpled the crackling double sheet, made it into a ball and hurled it into a corner of the veranda, behind a colony of green plants.
“What’s wrong with you?” Madame Calmet said timidly. “Did something offend you?”
What was the good of replying? He was humiliated by his act. He looked at the bent old woman in anger; it grieved him that she was his mother, that she must die, that she too would be reduced to ashes before he could tell her at least a part of what had been oppressing him for years. Did she suspect anything? Had she guessed, deep in her heart, the anguish of her Benjamin, his terrors, his need for affection, that hunger torturing him body and soul? Then Jean Calmet did something that he had never done, that he had never even dreamt of doing: he rose, he walked towards his mother, he lifted her from her armchair, and he embraced her, pressed her against him, slight, bony, he hugged the ridiculous little being who did not struggle, who did not react; she simply allowed herself to be squeezed to the point of breathlessness, she puffed harder, Jean Calmet thought of Thérèse’s panting under the golden bedspread. You, too, have been Ophelia, he pondered, hugging the emaciated body; you, too, have enchanted, soothed, cherished, you were Circe, Melusina, you were Morgana, you were all the fairies in the tales, and now your bones jut out and the wrinkles lacerate your face!
Suddenly Jean Calmet remembered a boarding house in Corbeyrier, where he had spent a few weeks in the winter with his mother when he was small. They would gather in a tidy, low parlour, on straw chairs; groups of ladies and bronchitic kids played cards, the golden crusts of the leftovers from supper and café au lait still lay about under the chandeliers of the glass-enclosed dining room. Papa would send postcards from Lutry. On the morning of 1 January, the owner had executed a wildcat with buckshot in the snow-covered hedge. He had aimed at it for a long time. Jean Calmet was seven years old, he could not turn the rifle aside; the animal, wounded in the throat, fell on the ground, plop, they had picked it up from the frozen gravel that stuck to the earth and they had thrown it into an open garbage can in front of the pension. Jean Calmet used to cough at night. His mother would get out of bed; the chafing dish was out, she would give him what was left of the cold cough mixture. He used to dream of a poster for Player’s cigarettes that showed a blond, pasty-faced doll-woman in the snow; such faces are seen, even nowadays, on the mannequins of cheap clothing stores. In the afternoon, after the midday nap, a little girl – also seven – would pee in a chamber pot without closing her door. Jean Calmet waited for the ceremony of the toilet paper, the cotton underpants and the gaiters…
“You’re angry about the newspaper?” asked a frail voice. Jean Calmet had felt the weak torso vibrate with the tremor of the voice.
No, he wasn’t angry. He was shocked, uneasy. He was no longer thinking about it. His mother’s small body, her protruding shoulder blades, the rabbit’s ribs had filled him with another anguish. He bent down, he brushed his lips over the forehead criss-crossed with tiny star-shaped wrinkles. Towards her temples, a lock of white hair stuck out and tickled his lips unpleasantly.
“You know, since Papa was burned, I get a pile of things that I knew nothing about. And I’ve joined the Society, thinking that I’ll be needing it before long.”
A silence. The pair were still standing in the light that was turning brown.
“Staying for supper?”
The voice trembled. It was a humble query, an entreaty, she did not dare believe that he would: Jean is wild, Jean always runs awa
y; even when he was a child she used to call him the little Cat that Walked by Himself… Poor old voice. Poor bent skeleton, poor imploring face, poor gaze dimmed with tears, vacant, grey, bluish, washed out by the years of obedience. She would die. You, too, my beloved, at the crematorium…
God is a bastard.
Jean Calmet left Les Peupliers before supper. He would not have had the strength to eat sitting across from this old woman with her slow movements: this hand that can no longer cut the meat, this mouth that drools a little, that hisses when chewing, this noisy mouth…
While he was going back up to town, he was followed by the worn-out gaze as by a very old reproach: the iris that had been forget-me-not blue and that had faded, that had grown pale, that had begun to resemble the gaze of the blind – but perhaps it is because the heart now sees into it clearer and deeper than any eye? Jean Calmet mused and saw again scenes of his childhood. Then he recalled the knots of arthritis on the old hands, brownish speckles, nearly violet stains. Soon she will lose her memory, she will confuse everything, she will no longer be able to find her way about alone… Her master is dead. She must die. Who will close the eyes of the poor shrivelled-up thing on her pillows? Jean Calmet choked at the wheel of the Simca, which moved ahead ten yards at a time in the crowded streets of the evening.
During this time, the Gymnase had set up a day for study trips all over the country, and 2G, Jean Calmet’s class, wanted to go to Bern, a bit derisively, a bit out of an old, atavistic respect, but also an ironic way to make fun of the Swiss capital, its banks, its big hotels, its stodginess, its dialects that resemble Dutch.
“Can we take along friends?”
Jean Calmet had agreed.
They were to meet in the main terminal of the Gare de Lausanne. One fine morning at the end of May, they assemble wearing cowboy hats, Indian neckerchiefs, boots; they carry US Army knapsacks full of comic books and cartons of cigarettes. A few guests in the bunch: boys from the École des Beaux-Arts, two girls from the École Normale… A few yards away, François Clerc assembled his students.
“Where are you going?” asks Jean Calmet.
“To Payerne. The Abbey Church, you know, the museum, then a walk over the hills…”
François smiles when Jean Calmet tells him that he is going to Bern.
“You’re going to steep yourself in the Federal mystique?”
To be sure, this Bernese project makes everyone laugh. Jean Calmet is somewhat stung, even if he is having fun, even if he is laughing, too. He knows all too well that Bern vaguely intimidates him: the authority of Bern, its history as father and cement of the Confederation, its military power, its alliances, the execution of its enemies in the subjugated territories, the mystery, too, of those phrases so often repeated on the shores of Lake Léman and in such a tone of respect and childish irritation: “They decided, in Bern… Go ask Bern for it… The Federal Council has voted… Bern demands…”
He came back to his students, counted them with a discreet glance. Marc was missing. Would he come? Jean Calmet was getting ready to go to Platform I when, at the last minute, a very handsome couple came through the great glazed portal: Marc and Thérèse. Jean Calmet gulped, a lump came into his throat; he began to tremble, but his eyes did not leave the couple that came dancing across the waiting room, which was full of noise.
They were holding hands.
They had no bags.
Marc, thin and long, the lock of hair on his cheek, his face and hands tanned, his body lithe, and his legs slim in the patched trousers!
Thérèse had untied her braid. The copper flood fell in two cascades on her bare shoulders. She was wearing a little white blouse with gold thread; her thighs, her legs stretched the cloth of the jeans at every step.
They come up to Jean Calmet smiling with graciousness. They shake hands with him, talk to him!
Jean Calmet mumbles words of greeting, nervously counts his tickets again, it seems to him that he is unsteady, that he may faint on the spot: “Let’s go,” he says in the black light.
Platform brutally light, big green train, stamping of feet along the walkway, reserved coach, bounding onto the platform, races, cries, calls. Jean Calmet was pinned between Béatrice and Daisy; across from him Christophe unwrapped packs of chewing gum and offered them all around. Jean Calmet has closed his eyes, he plunges into opaque birdlime, he chokes. Marc and Thérèse. The whole day. They get out of bed. They come gambolling down from the Place de la Cité to the station. Hand in hand. Radiant in the early morning, in the wind from the lake still cool from the mountain night of Savoy and from the flatlands on the banks of the Rhône. And he, Jean Calmet, lonely and glum before them! He felt spite and anger. Towards them, towards himself, towards the light and towards the wind that was flying through the compartment, all the windows of which were open. For a moment, he was away in the acrid mud. He splashed and floundered. He sank into it. He died of shame…
When he reopened his eyes, the train was crossing the green plateau before the Bernese Alps, which were all white like the ones on wrappers of chocolate: meadows, villages, blue woods, more pastures, huge, flowered, overgrown, and the emerald shadow at the edges of the fields. Marc and Thérèse were standing at a window, their hair mingling; Marc had put his arm over her bare shoulders. He squeezed that sweetness against him, he screwed up his eyes against the wind, he would often place his head on the neck of Thérèse and caress his forehead, his nose, his lips against her skin streaming with the morning air.
“Deer! Deer!”
Three animals had bounded out of a wood; they skirted the edge of the fields with great leaps, disappeared in the brush.
Marc and Thérèse raised the window and sat, one against the other, their legs stretched out, feet up on the seat across the way. How good-looking they are, thought Jean Calmet. How innocent they are. Marc is the lover of Thérèse. When I tried to love her, I was impotent and ridiculous. Im-po-tent. I’m miserable. I’m jealous. My God, what have I done that you take everything from me? I’m wrapped up in myself, separated from the others, deprived, guilty, because of Your Law, which I submit to like a humiliated child. Will the barrier fall? Will sweetness be given to me, rendered up to me, before the final plunge into darkness?
They reached Bern.
At once, the city seemed solemn and in good health. A weight fell on their shoulders: eight centuries of power and indestructible vigour. They did not sing any more. It took a few moments to recover from the shock. They reached the heart of town: Marktgasse, Bärenplatz; all of a sudden the cupolas of the Federal Palace shone in the blue sky. Columns, monumental staircases, high walls, outbuildings, verdigris roofs; with absolute certainty the edifice expressed strength, perpetuity, faith in democratic virtue, domestic wisdom, contempt for fashions. All of it squat, close-set, and breathing at the same time, flanked by huge, solemn banks, the health of an old man vigorous and thriving on his heap of gold.
That power irritated Jean Calmet. Now his students had begun to laugh again. They deciphered, amid gibes, the patriotic devices and the cantonal coats of arms of the ornamental pediments. Some of them intoned revolutionary songs, into which they mockingly slipped fragments of hymns of sacred Switzerland; others essayed a dance step, miming drunkards stunned by so much splendour. The mirth was at its height when a detachment of cadets, led by a little captain of dragoons, came out on the square at a ceremonial step. “Zu miiin’ Befehl, halt!” Forty stiff caps, visors pulled down over their domes, forty uniforms gleaming like pistachio candy, then the “Attention!” that cracks and echoes several times among the colonnades of the holy square. Thirty yards away, Jean Calmet and his class heard the guttural dialect of the officer, who became ecstatic and revealed the endless mysteries of the Palace.
They walked, they went down little arcaded streets, they took a break under a clock from which emerged and strutted characters in costumes of pomp and coupled wagons. They went past still other banks, which mystically reproduced the pediment-cupola-c
olumn style of the Federal temple; they stopped in front of embassies, whose iron gates, coats of arms and armoured limousines with whitewall tyres in the courtyard of honour had them dreaming up parodies of espionage films. They bought beer and frankfurters at refreshment stands, they ate and drank in the open air, congregating on the green benches of a mall overlooking the Aar, they threw their empty bottles into the river, they got themselves bawled out by the park attendant who called them “Frenchy students,” they sang a stanza of ‘L’Internationale’ at the top of their lungs right in the face of the very sheepish, shocked old man; finally they arrived at the Bear Pit, and they were happy at once, they enjoyed themselves with genuine pleasure that seemed to come from their very recent childhoods. It was a broad stone-walled pit, divided into several airy territories, at the centre of which a big, dry tree that was scratched all over stood like a tortured prisoner. At the bottom of the pit, in the first cavity, a very tall, very dark, plump bear, his shoulders humped with fat, stood and implored the spectators, making a comic imitation of a man who is praying, who clasps his hands, who spreads them apart, who again makes a gesture of supplication. He rolled his round eyes, but his defiant, cruel bearing, his sharp teeth, the thread of drool on his long, mobile snout, his claws above all, long and curved like blades of black steel, gave him a look of paradoxical, comic ferocity. He danced, he grunted, he waddled about on his formidable hind legs. A fellow tossed him a handful of carrots; the bear dropped back down with suppleness, they heard his claws lacerate the ground, he ran to the feast, he gobbled up the carrots noisily. Jean Calmet remembered what they had told him, as a child, one day when he had come to see the Pit with his parents: a kid had fallen into it, the keeper had gone away to do some shopping, nobody had been able to act, the child had been devoured by the huge bear under the horrified gaze of his parents and the crowd! The doctor had not spared him a single detail, boasting of the bear’s speed, its extraordinary voracity. “And you know,” he had added, staring curiously at his own son, “he devoured the boy whole; at the end of the meal there was nothing left but his two shoes.” The doctor once more. His father once more. Could it be he, that muscular, insatiable male at the bottom of the pit? Had he reappeared once more, to oppress his youngest child? Nothing but his two shoes! Terror-stricken, Jean Calmet relived the paternal narrative, re-experiencing his terror of that day, despite himself seeking on the cobblestones – covered with fresh excrement and the remains of vegetables – traces of the horrible meal, bloodstains, and the two innocent little shoes that the animal had not wanted.
The Tyrant Page 13