A woman stepped forwards. It was the wife of one of the town councillors, an opponent of Maréchaud and who for the last few minutes had been sympathizing loudly with the lunatic. She gave the fire chief some advice: “Try and get her down gently—the poor young thing is so badly off in that household, where they beat her. And if it’s fear of being dismissed, finding herself without a job, that made her do it, then tell her I’ll take her on. I’ll pay her double.”
Her triumphal act of charity made little impression on the crowd. The woman was annoying them. They were only interested in the capture. The firemen, six of them, climbed the gate, surrounded the house and began to clamber up the walls on all four sides. But no sooner had one of them got onto the roof than the crowd started calling out to warn the victim, like children at a Guignol show.
“Do be quiet!” shouted the woman, which drew cries of “There’s another one! There’s another one!” from the onlookers. Hearing their shouts, the madwoman armed herself with tiles and flung one at the helmet of the fireman who had made it to the top. The five others straight away climbed down again.
While the shooting galleries, fairground attractions and stalls on the place de la Mairie were bemoaning the lack of customers on a night when the takings should have been pouring in, the most audacious delinquents climbed the walls and thronged onto the lawn to watch the hunt. I’ve forgotten what the madwoman was saying, with that underlying note of mournful resignation in her voice that makes someone sound as if they are right and everyone else is wrong. The louts who preferred this performance to the funfair still wanted the best of both worlds, however. Afraid the lunatic would be caught while they weren’t looking, they rushed off to have a quick ride on the merry-go-round. Others, more sensible, settled in the branches of the linden trees and were quite happy letting off Bengal lights or firecrackers.
One can imagine how fearful the Maréchauds were, shut up inside their house amongst all the noise and light.
The town councillor who was married to the lady of charity climbed onto the low wall beside the gate and gave an impromptu address on the spinelessness of the house’s owners. He got a round of applause.
Thinking the applause was directed at her, the madwoman gave a bow, a pile of roof tiles under each arm, because every time a firemen’s helmet glinted she hurled one at it. In her unwordly voice she thanked them for finally understanding her. She reminded me of a female pirate captain alone on the deck of her sinking ship.
Wearying of her, the crowd dispersed. I would have liked to stay on with my father, while my mother, to satisfy that need children have for making themselves feel sick, took the others off to the roller-coaster. And it was true, I did feel that peculiar need more keenly than my brothers. I loved it when my heart beat quickly and erratically. Yet I found this performance, which was deeply poetic, more enjoyable. “You’ve gone quite pale,” said my mother. I made out it was the Bengal lights. I told her they made me look green.
“I’m still afraid it’ll upset him,” she told my father.
“Oh, there’s no one more impervious,” he replied. “He could watch anything, except someone skinning a rabbit.”
My father only said it so I could stay. But he knew that I was overcome by what I was seeing. I could sense that it had deeply moved him as well. I asked him to lift me onto his shoulders so that I could get a better view. The truth was, I was about to faint; my legs were giving way.
By now there were only about twenty people there. We heard trumpets. It was the torchlight procession.
All of a sudden the madwoman was lit up by hundreds of flaming torches, as if the soft glow of the footlights had given way to the glare of flashbulbs, photographing the latest star. And then with a farewell wave, either believing it was the end of the world or simply that they were coming to take her away, she threw herself off the roof, smashed through the awning with a terrible crash and landed in a heap on the stone steps below. Up till then I had been trying to withstand everything, although my ears were ringing and I was devoid of feelings. But when I heard people shouting: “She’s still alive,” I fell off my father’s shoulders, unconscious.
When I came round, he took me down by the Marne. We stayed there until late, lying on the grass and not saying anything.
When we got home, I thought I saw a white figure through the railings, the ghost of the maid! But it was Old Man Maréchaud in his nightcap, gazing at the damage, his awning, his tiles, his lawn, his flower beds, his steps covered in blood, his ruined reputation.
If I dwell on an episode like this, it is because it helps to understand, more than anything else, what a peculiar time the War was, and how I was struck less by what was picturesque than by the poetry of things.
III
WE HEARD ARTILLERY FIRE. THERE WAS FIGHTING near Meaux. People said that some Uhlans had been captured near Lagny, fifteen kilometres away. While my aunt talked about a friend of hers who had fled at the very start, after burying her clocks and tins of sardines in the garden, I asked my father how we were going to take all our old books with us; they were the things that would cost me the most to lose.
But in the end, just as we were about to leave, the newspapers announced that there was no need.
My sisters now went over to J … to take baskets of pears to the wounded. They had found a form of compensation, admittedly not much of one, to make up for all their plans that had fallen through. By the time they got to J … their baskets were almost empty!
I was due to go to the Lycée Henri IV, but my father thought it best to keep me in the country for another year. During that dismal winter my sole source of amusement was rushing to the newsagent to make sure I got a copy of Le Mot, a paper I enjoyed and which came out on Saturdays. It was a day when I never got up late.
Then spring came, which brightened up my first escapades. On the pretext of collecting for charity, several times that spring I went for a walk in my best clothes with a young lady. I carried the collection box; she had the basket of badges. After the second time, my fellow collectors told me how to make the most of these days of leisure that brought me into contact with a girl. From then on we rushed to collect as much money as possible in the morning, handed in our takings to the Lady Bountiful at lunchtime, and spent the rest of the day getting up to mischief in the hills by Chennevières. For the first time I had a friend. I enjoyed going out collecting with his sister. For the first time I got along with another boy who was as advanced for his age as I was, even admired his beauty, his impudence. The contempt we shared for others of our generation brought us even closer. We considered that we were the only ones capable of understanding things; in short, we believed we were the only ones worthy of women. We believed we were men. By a lucky chance we weren’t separated. René was already at the Lycée Henri IV, and I was going to be in his class, in the Remove. He didn’t have to take Greek, but he made the ultimate sacrifice for me, and persuaded his parents to let him do it. This meant we could stay together. Since he had missed the first year, he had to have private tuition. René’s parents, who the year before had given in to his pleas and agreed that he didn’t have to learn Greek, couldn’t understand. In it they saw my good influence, and if they put up with his other classmates, at least I was the only friend of whom they approved.
For the first time, not a single day of that year’s holidays weighed on me. It was then I realised that no one can escape his age, and that my dangerous contempt had melted like ice the moment someone was kind enough to show they cared about me, and in a way that suited me. The progress we made together halved the journey that pride ensures that each of us must travel.
On the first day of the school year, René was an invaluable guide.
With him everything was a pleasure, and twice a day I, who couldn’t take a single step on my own, enjoyed our walks between Henri IV and the station at the Bastille, where we caught the train.
Three years went by in this way, without any other friendships, without any hopes oth
er than our naughty games on Thursdays—with young girls innocently provided for us by my friend’s parents, who invited their son’s and their daughter’s friends to tea together—trifling little favours that we stole, and which they surreptitiously stole—on the pretence of playing forfeits.
IV
WHEN THE FINE WEATHER ARRIVED, MY FATHER liked to take my brothers and I on long walks. One of our favourite places to go was Ormesson, beside the Morbras, a river that was at least a metre wide, across meadows where there were flowers that you never saw anywhere else, and whose names I’ve forgotten. Clumps of water cress or mint hid the marshy banks from our wandering feet. In springtime, thousands of pink and white petals floated on the surface of the water. It was May blossom.
One Sunday in April 1917, as we often did, we caught the train to La Varenne, after which we had to walk to Ormesson. My father said we would be meeting up with some agreeable people at La Varenne, the Grangiers. I knew of them from having seen the name of their daughter Marthe in the catalogue for an exhibition of paintings. I had once overheard my parents talking about a visit from a Monsieur Grangier. He had brought a box of pictures painted by his daughter, who was eighteen. Marthe wasn’t very well. Her father had wanted to give her a surprise: having her watercolours included in an exhibition organised by a charity of which my mother was chairwoman. The watercolours were quite unremarkable; they bore the hallmark of the dutiful pupil of the art class, moistening her brushes with the tip of her tongue.
The Grangiers were waiting for us on the platform at La Varenne. Monsieur and Madame Grangier must have been the same age, almost fifty. Yet Madame Grangier seemed older than her husband; her ungainliness, the fact that she was short, made me dislike her at first glance.
During the walk I would notice that she often frowned, which covered her brow with creases that took a moment or two to fade. So I would have every reason to dislike her, and thus wouldn’t need to reproach myself for being unfair, I hoped she would have a common way of speaking. But in that respect she disappointed me.
As for the father, he seemed a decent fellow, a former non-commissioned officer worshipped by his men. But where was Marthe? I shuddered at the prospect of a walk with no other company except her parents. She was coming on the next train, “in a quarter-of-an-hour,” Madame Grangier told us, “because she couldn’t get ready in time. Her brother is with her.”
As the train drew in, Marthe was standing on the steps of the carriage. “Wait till the train stops,” called her mother … Such recklessness enchanted me.
Her dress, her hat, both very simple, were signs of the scant regard she had for other people’s opinions. She was holding hands with a young boy who looked about eleven. It was her brother, a pale child with the hair of an albino, and whose every movement spoke of illness.
On the path Marthe and I walked in front. My father followed behind, between the Grangiers.
Meanwhile my brothers yawned at their puny new friend, who wasn’t allowed to run around.
When I complimented Marthe on her water-colours, she replied modestly that they were only studies. She didn’t attach any importance to them. She would show me better ones, “stylized” flowers. Since it was the first time we had met, I felt it best not to tell her that I thought flowers of that kind were absurd.
She couldn’t see me properly from beneath her hat. But I was studying her.
“You don’t look much like your mother,” I said.
It was a compliment.
“People sometimes tell me that, but when you come to our house, I’ll show you photographs of Mama when she was young; I look a lot like her.”
I was grieved at this reply, and prayed to God I would never see her when she got to her mother’s age.
Keen to dispel my distress at her painful reply, and not realising that it could only have been painful to me, because luckily Marthe didn’t see her mother in the same way as I did, I told her:
“You’re wrong to wear your hair like that, having it loose would suit you better.”
I was petrified, never having said anything like that to a woman before. And I remembered what my own hair was like.
“You could always ask Mama” (as if she needed to explain herself!). “My hair doesn’t usually look as bad as this, but I was late, and I was afraid of missing the next train. Besides, I wasn’t intending to take my hat off.”
“What kind of girl is this,” I wondered, “who allows some boy to criticise the way she does her hair?”
I tried to guess her literary tastes; I was pleased that she knew Baudelaire and Verlaine, delighted at her way of liking Baudelaire, which wasn’t the same as mine, however. I thought I detected rebellion. Her parents had eventually accepted her likes and dislikes. Marthe resented them for this, taking it as only a token sign of affection. In his letters, her fiancé told her about what he was reading, and while he recommended certain books to her, he forbade others. He had forbidden her to read Les Fleurs du mal. Unpleasantly surprised to find out that she was engaged, I rejoiced that she had disobeyed a soldier who was enough of an idiot to be frightened of Baudelaire. I was glad to get the feeling that he sometimes shocked Marthe. After this first unpleasant surprise, his narrow-mindedness delighted me, even more so because I had feared that if he also appreciated Les Fleurs du mal then their future marital apartment might have been like the one in La Mort des amants. But then I asked myself what business this was of mine.
Her fiancé had also forbidden her to go to drawing classes. I offered to take her—me, who never went to one—adding that I often went there. But, afraid I would be caught out in this lie, I urged her not to mention it to my father. He didn’t know that I cut gym lessons so I could go to the Grande-Chaumière, I told her. Because I didn’t want her to imagine that I concealed going to this art school from my parents because they wouldn’t allow me to see naked women. I was glad for it to be our secret, and shy though I was, I sensed that I already had some power over her.
I was also proud that she preferred me to the countryside, because we hadn’t once mentioned our surroundings. Sometimes her parents called out: “Look over to the right, Marthe, the Chennevières hills are so lovely,” or her brother would come and ask her the name of a flower he had just picked. She took just enough notice of them so that they didn’t get annoyed.
We sat in the meadows at Ormesson. In my innocence I regretted having been so distant, so hasty over things. “After a less romantic, more natural conversation,” I thought, “I could impress Marthe, win her parents over by talking about the history of the village.” But I didn’t. I imagined my reasons were deep ones, and that after everything that had happened, a conversation unrelated to our mutual concerns could only break the spell. I believed that something important had happened. And in fact this was actually the case, as I realised afterwards, because Marthe had slanted the conversation in the same way as I had. But being unable to understand this, I had the impression that I had said something significant. I thought I had made a declaration of love to someone who was insensitive. I had forgotten that Monsieur and Madame Grangier could have easily overhead everything I was saying to their daughter; yet could I actually have said it while they were there?
“Marthe doesn’t frighten me,” I kept telling myself. “It was just her parents and my father who stopped me putting my arm round her neck and kissing her.”
Deep down inside me, a different boy was glad that these spoilsports had been there; the same boy who was thinking—
“It’s just as well we weren’t alone together! Because I still wouldn’t have dared kiss her, but I wouldn’t have had an excuse.”
Which is simply the coward’s way out.
We caught the train back from Sucy. Having more than half-an-hour to wait, we sat outside a café. I had to endure Madame Grangier’s compliments. They were humiliating. She reminded her daughter that I was still at the lycée and wouldn’t be taking the baccalauréat for another year. Marthe asked for a glass of gre
nadine; I ordered one too. That same morning I would have thought it a disgrace to drink grenadine. My father couldn’t understand me. He always let me help myself to apéritifs. I was terrified that he would tease me about my moderation. He did, but obliquely, so that Marthe wouldn’t realize that I was drinking grenadine to copy her.
When we got to J …, we said goodbye to the Grangiers. I promised Marthe I would bring her a collection of Le Mot as well as Une Saison en enfer that Thursday.
“Another book that my fiancé would appreciate!” And she laughed.
“Now then, Marthe!” said her mother, frowning, shocked by such disobedience.
My father and brothers had been bored, but what did it matter! Happiness thinks only of itself.
V
AT SCHOOL THE NEXT DAY I DIDN’T FEEL THE need to say anything to René, to whom I told everything, about how I had spent my Sunday. I was in no mood to put up with him taunting me for not having kissed Marthe while no one was looking. And something else surprised me; I now found René less different than my other classmates.
Loving Marthe, I had less love to spare for René, my parents, my sisters.
I resolved to make an effort and not see her before the day we were due to meet. Yet, unable to wait, on Tuesday evening my weak will found plenty of good reasons to take her the book and the newspapers after dinner. I told myself that Marthe would see evidence of love in my impatience, and if she refused to see it then I knew how to make her.
I ran like a maniac for a quarter-of-an-hour to get to her house. Then, afraid of interrupting her dinner, I waited at the gate for ten minutes, bathed in sweat. During this time I thought my racing heart might slow down. Quite the reverse, it beat faster. I almost went away, but for the last few minutes a woman had been watching me with interest from a nearby window, wondering what I was doing skulking in the doorway. That decided me. I rang the bell. I went in. I asked the maidservant if Madame was at home. Almost immediately Madame Grangier came into the small room where I had been shown. I started, as if the maid ought to have known that I had asked for “Madame” out of politeness, and that I really wished to see “Mademoiselle”. Blushing, I begged Madame Grangier to forgive me for disturbing her at this time of the evening, as if it were one o’clock in the morning: but since I was unable to come on Thursday, I had brought her daughter the book and the newspapers.
The Devil in the Flesh Page 2