Great French Short Stories

by Paul Negri

  Doubtless he was expecting his prodigal son, because he recognizes him immediately. He opens his arms. The boy then kneels before him, and hiding his forehead with one arm, he raises his right hand for pardon:

  “Father! Father! I have gravely sinned against heaven and against you. I am not worthy to be called. But at least, like one of your servants, the humblest, let me live in a corner of our house.”

  The father raises him and embraces him.

  “My son, blessed is this day when you come back to me!” And his joy weeps as it overflows his heart. He raises his head from his son’s brow which he was kissing, and turns toward his servants:

  “Bring forth the best robe. Put shoes on his feet, and a precious ring on his finger. Look in our stables for the fattest calf and kill it. Prepare a joyful feast, for my son whom I thought dead is alive.”

  And as the news spreads rapidly, he hastens. He does not want another to say:

  “Mother, the son we wept for has returned to us.”

  Everyone’s joy mounting up like a hymn troubles the older son. He sits down at the common table because his father invites him and urges him forcibly. Alone, among all the guests, for even the humblest servant is invited, he shows an angry expression. To the repentant sinner why is there more honor than to himself, who has never sinned? He esteems order more than love. If he consents to appear at the feast, it is because by giving credit to his brother, he can lend him joy for one evening. It is also because his father and mother have promised him to rebuke the prodigal tomorrow, and because he himself is preparing to admonish him seriously.

  The torches send up their smoke toward heaven. The meal is over. The servants have cleared the tables. Now, in the night, when not a breath is stirring, soul after soul, in the weary house, goes to sleep. And yet, in the room next to the prodigal’s, I know a boy, his younger brother, who throughout the night until dawn will try in vain to sleep.

  The Father’s Reprimand

  Lord, like a child I kneel before You today, my face soaked with tears. If I remember and transcribe here your compelling parable, it is because I know who your prodigal child was. I see myself in him. At times I hear in myself and repeat in secret those words which, from the depth of his great distress, You have him cry:

  “How many hirelings of my father have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!”

  I imagine the father’s embrace, and in the warmth of such love my heart melts. I imagine an earlier distress, and even,—ah! I imagine all kinds of things. This I believe: I am the very one whose hearts beats when, from the top of the hill, he sees again the blue roofs of the house he left. What keeps me then from running toward my home and going in?—I am expected. I can see the fatted calf they are preparing . . . Stop! Do not set up the feast too quickly!—Prodigal son, I am thinking of you. Tell me first what your Father said to you the next day, after the feast of welcome. Ah! even if the elder son prompts you, Father, let me hear your voice sometimes through his words!

  “My son, why did you leave me?”

  “Did I really leave you? Father, are you not everywhere? Never did I cease loving you.”

  “Let us not split hairs. I had a house which kept you in. It was built for you. Generations worked so that in it your soul could find shelter, luxury worthy of it, comfort and occupation. Why did you, the heir, the son, escape from the House?”

  “Because the House shut me in. The House is not You, Father.”

  “It is I who built it, and for you.”

  “Ah! you did not say that, my brother did. You built the whole world, the House and what is not the House. The House was built by others. In your name, I know, but by others.”

  “Man needs a roof under which he can lay his head. Proud boy! Do you think you can sleep in the open?”

  “Do you need pride to do that? Some poorer than I have done so.”

  “They are poor. You are not poor. No one can give up his wealth. I had made you rich above all men.”

  “Father, you know that when I left, I took with me all the riches I could. What do I care about goods that cannot be carried away?”

  “All that fortune you took away, you have spent recklessly.”

  “I changed your gold into pleasures, your precepts into fantasy, my chastity into poetry, and my austerity into desires.”

  “Was it for that our thrifty parents strove to instil into you so much virtue?”

  “So that I should burn with a brighter flame perhaps, being kindled by a new fervor.”

  “Think of that pure flame Moses saw on the sacred bush. It shone, but without consuming.”

  “I have known love which consumes.”

  “The love which I want to teach you, refreshes. After a short time, what did you have left, prodigal son?”

  “The memory of those pleasures.”

  “And the destitution which comes after them.”

  “In that destitution, I felt close to you, Father.”

  “Was poverty needed to drive you back to me?”

  “I do not know. I do not know. It was in the dryness of the desert that I loved my thirst more.”

  “Your poverty made you feel more deeply the value of riches.”

  “No, not that! Can’t you understand me, Father? My heart, emptied of everything, became filled with love. At the cost of all my goods, I bought fervor.”

  “Were you happy, then, far from me?”

  “I did not feel far from you.”

  “Then, what made you come back? Tell me.”

  “I don’t know. Laziness perhaps.”

  “Laziness, my son? What! Wasn’t it love?”

  “Father, I have told you. I never loved you better than in the desert. But each morning I was tired of looking for my subsistence. In the House, at least there is food to eat.”

  “Yes, servants look after that. So, what brought you back was hunger.”

  “Cowardice also perhaps, and sickness. . . . In the end, that food I was never sure of finding weakened me. Because I fed on wild fruit and locusts and honey. I grew less and less able to stand the discomfort which at first quickened my fervor. At night, when I was cold, I thought of my tucked-in bed in my father’s house. When I fasted, I thought of my father’s home where the abundance of food served always exceeded my hunger. I weakened; I didn’t feel enough courage, enough strength to struggle much longer and yet . . .”

  “So yesterday’s fatted calf seemed good to you?”

  The prodigal son throws himself down sobbing, with his face against the ground.

  “Father! Father! The wild taste of sweet acorns is still in my mouth, in spite of everything. Nothing could blot out their savor.”

  “Poor child!” says the father as he raises him up. “I spoke to you perhaps too harshly. Your brother wanted me to. Here it is he who makes the law. It is he who charged me to say to you: ‘Outside of the House, there is no salvation for you.’ But listen. It was I who made you. I know what is in you. I know what sent you out on your wanderings. I was waiting for you at the end of the road. If you had called me . . . I was there.”

  “Father! might I then have found you without coming back?”

  “If you felt weak, you did well to come back. Go now. Go back to the room I had prepared for you. Enough for today. Rest. Tomorrow you will speak with your brother.”

  The Elder Brother’s Reprimand

  The prodigal son first tries to bluster.

  “Big brother,” he begins, “we aren’t very much alike. Brother, we aren’t alike at all.”

  The elder brother says:

  “It’s your fault.”

  “Why mine?”

  “Because I live by order. Whatever differs from it is the fruit or the seed of pride.”

  “Am I different only in my faults?”

  “Only call quality what brings you back to order, and curtail all the rest.”

  “It is that mutilation I fear. What you plan to suppress comes also from the Father.”

&n
bsp; “Not suppress—curtail, I said.”

  “I understand. All the same, that is how I curtailed my virtues.”

  “And that is also why now I still see them in you. You must exaggerate them. Understand me. It is not a diminution of yourself, but an exaltation I propose, in which the most diverse, the most unruly elements of your flesh and your spirit must join together harmoniously, in which the worst in you must nourish the best, in which the best must submit to . . .”

  “It was exaltation which I also sought and found in the desert—and perhaps not very different from the one you propose to me.”

  “To tell the truth, I wanted to impose it on you.”

  “Our Father did not speak so harshly.”

  “I know what the Father said to you. It was vague. He no longer expresses himself very clearly, so that he can be made to say what one wants. But I understand his thought very well. With the servants, I am the one interpreter, and who wants to understand the Father must listen to me.”

  “I understand him quite easily without you.”

  “You thought you did. But you understood incorrectly. There are not several ways of understanding the Father. There are not several ways of listening to him. There are not several ways of loving him, so that we may be united in his love.”

  “In his House.”

  “This love brings one back here. You see this, for you have come back. Tell me now, what impelled you to leave?”

  “I felt too clearly that the House is not the entire universe. I myself am not completely in the boy you wanted me to be. I could not help imagining other cultures, other lands, and roads by which to reach them, roads not yet raced. I imagined in my self the new being which I felt rushing down those roads. I ran away.”

  “Think what could have happened if, like you, I had deserted our Father’s House. Servants and thieves would have pillaged all our goods.”

  “That would not have mattered to me, since I was catching sight of other goods . . .”

  “Which your pride exaggerated. My brother, indiscipline is over. You will learn, if you don’t yet know it, out of what chaos man has emerged. He has just barely emerged. With all of his artless weight, he falls back into it as soon as the Spirit no longer supports him above it. Do not learn this at your own expense. The well-ordered elements which make up your being wait only for an acquiescence, a weakening on your part in order to return to anarchy . . . But what you will never know is the length of time it was needed for man to elaborate man. Now that we have the model, let us keep it. ‘Hold that fast which thou hast,’ says the Spirit to the Angel of the Church, and He adds, ‘that no man take thy crown.’ That which thou hast is your crown, that royalty over others and over yourself. The usurper lies in wait for your crown. He is everywhere. He prowls around you and in you. Hold fast, my brother! Hold fast.”

  “Too long ago I let go my hold. And now I cannot close my hand over my own wealth.”

  “Yes, you can. I will help you. I have watched over your wealth during your absence.”

  “And moreover, I know those words of the Spirit. You did not quote them all.”

  “You are right. It goes on: ‘Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out.’ ”

  “‘And he shall go no more out.’ That is precisely what terrifies me.”

  “If it is for his happiness.”

  “Oh! I understand. But I had been in that temple . . .”

  “You found you were wrong to have left, since you wanted to return.”

  “I know, I know. I am back now. I agree.”

  “What good can you look for elsewhere, which here you do not find in abundance? Or better—here alone your wealth is to be found.”

  “I know that you kept my riches for me.”

  “The part of your fortune which you did not squander, namely that part which is common to all of us: the property.”

  “Then do I personally own nothing else?”

  “Yes. That special allotment of gifts which perhaps our Father will still consent to grant you.”

  “That is all I want. I agree to own only that.”

  “How proud you are! You will not only be consulted. Between you and me, that portion is risky. I would advise your giving it up. It was that allotment of personal gifts which already brought on your downfall. That was the wealth you squandered immediately.”

  “The other kind I couldn’t take with me.”

  “Therefore you will find it intact. Enough for today. Find rest now in the House.”

  “That suits me well, for I am tired.”

  “Then blessed be your fatigue! Now go and sleep. Tomorrow your mother will speak to you.”

  The Mother

  Prodigal son, whose mind still rebels against the words of your brother, let your heart now speak. How sweet it is, as you lie at the feet of your mother, with your head hidden on her lap, to feel her caressing hand bow your stubborn neck!

  “Why did you leave me for so long a time?”

  And since you answer only with tears:

  “Why weep now, my son? You have been given back to me. In waiting for you, I have shed all my tears.”

  “Were you still waiting for me?”

  “Never did I give up hoping for you. Before going to sleep, every evening I would think: if he returns tonight, will he be able to open the door? And it took me a long time to fall asleep. Every morning, before I was totally awake, I would think: Isn’t it today he will come back? Then I prayed. I prayed so hard that it was not possible for you not to come back.”

  “Your prayers forced me to come back.”

  “Don’t smile because of me, my child.”

  “Oh mother, I have come back to you very humble. See how I place my forehead lower than your heart! There is not one of my thoughts of yesterday which does not become empty today. When close to you, I can hardly understand why I left the house.”

  “You will not leave it again?”

  “I cannot leave it again.”

  “What then attracted you outside?”

  “I don’t want to think of it any more. Nothing . . . Myself . . .”

  “Did you think then that you would be happy away from us?”

  “I was not looking for happiness.”

  “What were you looking for?”

  “I was looking for . . . who I was.”

  “Oh! son of your parents, and brother among your brothers.”

  “I was not like my brothers. Let’s not talk any more about it. I have come back now.”

  “Yes, let’s talk of it further. Do not believe that your brothers are so unlike you.”

  “Henceforth my one care is to be like all of you.”

  “You say that as if with resignation.”

  “Nothing is more fatiguing than to realize one’s difference. Finally my wandering tired me out.”

  “You have aged, that’s true.”

  “I have suffered.”

  “My poor child! Doubtless your bed was not made every evening, nor the table set for all your meals?”

  “I ate what I found and often it was green or spoiled fruit which my hunger made into food.”

  “At least did you suffer only from hunger?”

  “The sun at mid-day. the cold wind in the heart of the night, the shifting sand of the desert, the thorns which made my feet bloody, nothing of all that stopped me, but—I didn’t tell this to my brother—I had to serve . . .”

  “Why did you conceal it?”

  “Bad masters who harmed me bodily, exasperated my pride, and gave me barely enough to eat. That is when I thought: ‘Serving for the sake of serving! . . .’ In dreams I saw my house, and I came home.”

  The prodigal son again lowers his head and his mother caresses it tenderly.

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “I have told you. Try to become like my big brother, look after our property, like him choose a wife . . .”

  “You have doubtless someone
in mind, as you say that.”

  “Oh, anyone at all will be my first preference, as soon as you have chosen her. Do as you did for my brother.”

  “I should have preferred someone you love.”

  “What does that matter? My heart had made a choice. I renounce the pride which took me far away from you. Help me in my choice. I submit, I tell you. And I will have my children submit also. In that way, my adventure will not seem pointless to me.”

  “Listen to me. There is at this moment a child you could take on already as a charge.”

  “What do you mean and of whom are you speaking?”

  “Of your younger brother who was not ten when you left, whom you hardly recognized, but who . . .”

  “Go on, mother! What are you worried about now?”

  “In whom you might well have recognized yourself because he is like what you were when you left.”

  “Like me?”

  “Like what you were, I said, not yet, alas, what you have become.”

  “What he will become.”

  “What you must make him become immediately. Speak to him. He will listen to you, doubtless, you the prodigal. Tell him what disappointment you met on your way. Spare him . . .”

  “But what causes you such alarm about my brother? Perhaps simply a resemblance of features . . .”

  “No, no! the resemblance between you two is deeper. I worry now for him about what first did not worry me enough for you. He reads too much, and doesn’t always prefer good books.”

  “Is that all it is?”

  “He is often perched on the highest part of the garden, from where, as you know, you can see the countryside over the walls.”

  “I remember. Is that all?”

  “He spends less time with us than in the farm.”