All in all, though, it genuinely was a soothing way of occupying himself, and they were right to keep reminding him of it. Hours spent in this way confirmed him in the opinion that he was the King, King Charles the Sixth. This is not to say that he exaggerated his own importance; he was far from supposing himself anything more than one of those pasteboard cards – but the certainty grew in him that he too was one card in particular, perhaps a bad one, a card played in anger, one that always lost, yet nonetheless always the same card, never any other. But still, when a week had passed in this way, in the regular confirmation of his own existence, he began to feel confined within himself. His skin grew taut across his forehead and at the nape of his neck, as if he were suddenly conscious of his own too-distinct contours. No one knew the temptation he was yielding to when he asked after the Mysteries and could hardly wait for them to begin. And when at last the time came, he was more to be found in the rue Saint-Denis than at his Saint-Pol palace.
The fateful thing about these dramatic poems was that they were forever amplifying and extending themselves, growing to tens of thousands of verses, so that at length the time represented in them was real time; much as if a globe were made on the scale of the earth. The concave stage – beneath which was hell and above which, representing the level of paradise, a balcony of unrailed scaffolding attached to a pillar – merely served to undermine the illusion. For the century had indeed made earthly things of heaven and hell: it lived by the powers of both in order to survive itself.
Those were the days of Avignon Christendom, which had gathered around John the Twenty-Second54 a generation earlier, when so many had instinctively sought refuge there that at the place of his pontificate, immediately after he settled there, the mass of that palace had arisen, closed-off and ponderous, like a body serving in an emergency for the homeless soul of all. He himself, however, the small, slight, spiritual old man, still lived openly. While he embarked, barely arrived and without delay, on swift, brisk action in every quarter, the dishes laced with poison were already on his table; the first goblet had always to be poured away, since the piece of unicorn was discoloured55 when the cup-bearer drew it out. In a quandary, not knowing where to hide them, the seventy-year-old carried with him the waxen effigies of himself that had been made to further his destruction; and he scratched himself on the long needles that had been driven through them. It was perfectly possible to melt them down. But the terror these secret simulacra instilled in him was such that, in the teeth of his strong will, the thought often came to him that, if he did so, he might prove his own undoing, and melt away himself like the wax in the fire. His shrunken body became even drier with the fear, and more enduring. Now, however, they were threatening the body of his empire; from Granada, the Jews had been incited to wipe out every Christian, and this time they had bought more terrible hirelings to carry out the work. Nobody doubted, from the very first rumours, that the lepers were plotting; some had already seen them throwing bundles of their fearful decomposition into the wells. If people readily believed this possible, it was not out of mere credulity; quite the contrary – faith had grown so heavy that it fell from their trembling grasp to the very bottom of the wells. And once again the zealous old man must needs avert the poison from his blood. At the time when the fits of superstition were upon him, he had prescribed the angelus for himself and his entourage, to ward off the demons of the twilight; and now, throughout the whole agitated world, the bells were rung every evening for that calming prayer. With this exception, however, all the bulls and missives issued by him were more like spiced wine than a tisane. The empire had not put itself in his hands for treatment, but still he never wearied of heaping proofs of its sickness upon it; and already people were coming from the furthest East to consult this imperious physician.
But then the incredible happened. On All Saints' Day, he had preached longer and more fervently than was his wont; filled with a sudden need, as though to see it again himself, he had exhibited his faith; from out of the eighty-five-year-old tabernacle he had upraised it slowly and with all his strength and displayed it on the pulpit: and thereupon they had cried out against him. All Europe cried out: this was a pernicious faith.
It was at that time that the Pope disappeared. For days on end he remained inactive, prostrated on his knees in his oratory, probing the mystery of those who lead the life of action and, in so doing, harm their souls. At length he reappeared, exhausted by his weighty meditations, and recanted. Time and again he recanted. To recant became the passion of his senile spirit. At times he would even have the cardinals woken at night in order to talk with them about his repentance. And what finally extended his life beyond the usual span was perhaps merely the hope of abasing himself before Napoleone Orsini56 too, who hated him and declined to come.
Jacques of Cahors had recanted. And one might have supposed that God Himself had meant to show him the error of his ways, when so soon after He summoned to Him the son of the Count of Ligny, who thus seemed to have been awaiting his coming-of-age on earth only that he might relish heaven's sensuous delights of the soul as a mature man. Many were alive who remembered this radiant youth in the days of his cardinalate, and how, on the threshold of his adolescence, he had become a bishop and then died, barely eighteen, in an ecstasy of consummation.57 The dead walked: for the air around his tomb, where life in its pure form lay in new-found freedom, had a long-lasting effect upon the corpses there. But was there not something of despair even in that precocious sanctity? Was it not an injustice to all, that the pure fabric of this soul should merely have been briefly immersed in life, to dye it luridly in the rich scarlet vat of the age? Was not something like the blow of a recoil felt when this young prince leaped clear of the earth to make his passionate ascension? Why did radiant spirits not remain among those who laboriously made the candles? Was it not this darkness that had led John the Twenty-Second to assert that before the Last Judgement there could be no perfect beatitude, nowhere at all, not even among the blessed? And indeed, how much stubborn tenacity was needed to imagine that, while here on earth all was confusion, elsewhere there were those who already had their faces turned to the Divine Light, reclining upon angels and soothed by their inexhaustible vision of God.
[62] Here I sit in the cold night, writing, knowing all of this. Perhaps I know it because I met that man when I was a little boy. He was very tall; I even think he must have attracted attention on account of his height.
Unlikely though it may seem, as evening approached I had somehow contrived to get out of the house alone; I was running, turned a corner, and ran right into him there and then. I do not understand how what happened next could have occurred within about five seconds. It will take much longer to tell, no matter how concise I may be. In colliding with him I had hurt myself; I was small, and to me it seemed quite something that I wasn't crying, and moreover, without really thinking about it, I was waiting to be comforted. Since he did no such thing, I assumed he was embarrassed; presumably the right joke that would relieve the whole situation did not occur to him. I was perfectly happy to help him out, but to do so I needed to look him in the face. I have said he was tall. Now, he had not done the natural thing and bent down to me, which meant that he stood at a height for which I was unprepared. There was still nothing before me but the smell and the distinctive roughness of his suit, which I had felt. All of a sudden his face appeared. What was it like? I do not know, nor do I want to know. It was the face of an enemy. And beside that face, right beside it, on a level with those terrifying eyes, like a second head, was his fist. Even before I had time to lower my own gaze, I was running; I dodged past him to the left, and ran straight down a fearful, deserted back street, a street in an unfamiliar city, a city where there was no forgiveness.
In those moments, I experienced something that I understand now: that weighty, massive era of desperation. That era when the kiss of reconciliation between two men was merely the signal for the murderers standing close by. They drank from the
same cup, they mounted the same horse before the eyes of all, and it was rumoured that they slept in the same bed at night; and the upshot of all this intimacy was that their mutual aversion grew so strong that whenever one of them beheld the pulsing veins of the other, the nausea surged within him, as at the sight of a toad. That era in which brother fell upon brother because of his larger share in their inheritance, and held him a prisoner. The King interceded on the ill-used brother's behalf, certainly, ensuring that his liberty and possessions were restored to him; and the elder brother, busy with other matters in faraway places, left him alone and in letters rued the injustice he had done; but the brother who had regained his freedom never recovered his peace of mind after all he had been through. The century shows him in pilgrim's apparel, going from church to church, devising vows that grew more and more peculiar. Hung about with amulets, he whispered his fears to the monks of Saint-Denis, and for a long time their inventories mentioned the hundred-pound wax candle which he thought good to dedicate to Saint Louis. He never had a life of his own; till the very end he sensed the woeful stars of his brother's envy and wrath governing over his heart.58 And that Count de Foix, Gaston Phoebus, admired of all, had he not openly killed his cousin Ernault, the English King's captain, at Lourdes? Yet what was this manifest murder compared to the horrible accident that occurred when, omitting to put down a sharp little knife that he held in his famously beautiful hand, he reached out in fitful accusation and grazed the bare throat of his son as he lay before him? The room was dark, and lights had to be brought, that the blood might be seen that had such remote origins and now was departing for ever from an exalted family, issuing secretly from the tiny wound in this exhausted boy.59
Who could be strong and refrain from murder? Who in those times was unaware that the worst was inevitable? Every so often a strange presentiment would beset a man whose gaze had encountered, that very same day, the savouring scrutiny of his killer. He would withdraw, lock the door behind him, and write his will, concluding with orders for the litter of osier twigs, the Celestine cowl and the strewing of ashes. Foreign minstrels would appear before his castle, and he gave them princely rewards for their song, which dovetailed with his vague premonitions. When his dogs gazed up at him, there was doubt in their eyes, and they grew less assured in responding to his commands. His motto, which had served for a lifetime, subtly acquired a new and palpable secondary meaning. This or that custom, long established, now seemed antiquated, though there appeared to be no alternatives to them. If projects came up, they were largely pursued without any real conviction; certain memories, on the other hand, took on an unexpected quality of finality. In the evenings, by the fire, he felt he might surrender entirely to them. But the night outside, which he was no longer familiar with, was suddenly very loud. His ear, schooled as it was on so many safe and perilous nights, could distinguish the separate elements of silence. But this time it was different. It was not the night that came between yesterday and today, any night – this was Night. Beau Sire Dieu, and then the resurrection. Even a paean hymning a beloved could scarcely reach him at such times: his women were all disguised in aubades and lyrics, unrecognizable under elaborate, lofty, convoluted forms of address, at best to be barely made out in the gloom, like the full and effeminate upward gaze of a bastard son.
And then, before a late supper, that pensive deliberation upon the hands in the silver wash-basin. His own hands. Could a coherence be brought into their works – a sequence, continuity in what they reached for and what they left alone? No. All men sought at once the one thing and its opposite. They cancelled themselves out: there was no such thing as action.
There was no action except where the mission brothers were. Once he had seen their manner of conducting themselves, the King devised their charter himself. He addressed them as his ‘dear brothers’; never had anyone meant so much to him. They were granted express permission to go among the laity as the characters they played; for the King desired nothing more than that they might infect the many, and draw them into their powerful and ordered action. For himself, he longed to learn from them. Did he not wear upon his person, just as they did, the vestments and symbols of an inner meaning? When he watched them, he believed it must be possible to learn these things: how to come and go, how to speak out and how to break off so that there could be no doubt what was meant. Immense hopes flooded his heart. Every day he sat in the best seat, his seat, in that restlessly lighted, strangely indefinite hall of the Hospital of the Trinity, sometimes leaping to his feet in excitement and then controlling himself, like a schoolboy. Others wept; but he was filled up with gleaming tears within, and could only press his cold hands together in order to endure it. Occasionally at critical moments, when an actor who had said his piece suddenly walked out of his wide-eyed gaze, the King would uplift his face and would be startled – how long had He already been there, Monseigneur Saint Michel up there near the edge of the platform, in His silver armour that gave back bright reflections?
At moments such as that, he sat bolt upright. He looked around as if on the brink of a decision. He was very close to grasping the nature of that other action, the counterpart of this one on the stage, that great, anguished, profane passion in which he himself was playing a part. But all at once he lost it again. Their movements were devoid of meaning. Blazing torches were borne towards him, and formless shadows were cast into the vaulting above. People he did not know were tugging at him. He wanted to play his part: but from his mouth there came nothing, and his motions failed to make gestures. They crowded about him so strangely that he began to think he ought to be carrying the cross. And he wanted to wait for them to bring it. But they were stronger than he was, and slowly pushed him out.
[63] Outwardly, a great deal has changed. I do not know how. But within, and before You, Lord, within ourselves and before You who look on, are we not without action? We do discover that we do not know our part; we look for a mirror; we should like to remove our make-up and whatever is false and be real. But somewhere a forgotten piece of our disguise still adheres to us; some trace of exaggeration remains in our eyebrows; we do not realize that the corners of our mouths are twisted. And thus we go about, a laughing-stock and a demi-being, with neither a real existence nor a part to play-act.
[64] It was in the amphitheatre at Orange. Without properly looking up, aware only of that shattered, rustic quality that is now the hallmark of its façade, I had entered by the attendant's little glass door. I found myself among prone columns and low mallow shrubs; but it was only for a moment that they hid from me the open shell of the tiered auditorium, which lay there, divided up by the afternoon shadows, like an enormous concave sundial. I walked quickly towards it. Climbing through the ranks of seats, I felt how small I was becoming in this setting. At the top, some way above me, a few visitors were standing in unequal groupings, in attitudes of idle curiosity; their clothing made a disagreeably distinct impression, but they were on a negligible scale. For a while their eyes were upon me and they marvelled at how small I was. This made me turn around.
Oh, I was wholly unprepared. A play was being performed. An immense, indeed a superhuman drama was in progress, the drama of that awesome backdrop, the vertical tripartite structure of which was now visible, resonant with sheer magnitude, almost annihilating, and suddenly measured in its very immeasurability.
I was so overcome with joy that I sat down. What confronted me now, with the shadows arranged in what looked like a face, with the darkness gathered into the mouth at the centre, bounded at the top by the symmetrically curled, dressed hair of the cornice – this was the mighty antique mask, disguising everything, behind which the whole world was puckering into a face. Here, in this vast inward-turned circle of seats, there reigned an expectant, empty, absorbent existence: everything that could happen was right there, the gods and Fate. And it was from there (if you looked up) that the heavens, lightly, over the perimeter of the walls, made their eternal entry.
That hour, I now r
ealize, shut me out for ever from our theatres. What do they have to offer me? Why should I sit before a stage set where this one wall (the icon-screen of Russian churches) has been pulled down, since we no longer have the strength to press the gas-like action through its hardness till it comes out in full, heavy drops of oil. Nowadays plays fall in pieces through the holed coarse sieve of our stages, and pile up, and are tidied away once there are enough. This is the selfsame underdone reality that litters our streets and houses, except that more of it accumulates than can normally be managed in a single evening.
*(Let us be honest about it: we do not have a theatre, any more than we have a God. That would require true community, whereas each individual one of us has his own ideas and anxieties, and allows others to see as much of them as suits his purposes. We are forever watering down our understanding, stretching it to go round, instead of wailing at the wall of our common distress, behind which that which passeth understanding would have time to gather its forces.)
[65] If we did have a theatre, would you, tragic woman,60 stand there time and again, so frail, so naked, so utterly without the pretext of a role, before those who satisfy their impatient curiosity with the spectacle of your grief? You inexpressibly moving woman, you foresaw the reality of your own suffering that time in Verona when, little more than a child, playing at theatre, you held the roses like a mask before you, the better to hide yourself.