Chocolat

  I nodded. “When were you planning to go?”

  Without hesitation: “Sunday. He’ll be going to church then. With a little luck I’ll be able to get in and out of the cafe without even meeting him. It won’t take long.”

  I looked at her. “You’re sure you don’t want company?”

  She shook her head. “It wouldn’t be right, somehow.”

  Her prim expression made me smile, but all the same I knew what she meant. It was his territory — their territory — indelibly marked with the traces of their life together. I didn’t belong there.

  “I’ll be all right.” She smiled. “I know how to handle him, Vianne. I’ve managed before.”

  “I hope it won’t come to that.”

  “It won’t.” Absurdly, she reached out and took my hand, as if to reassure me. “I promise it won’t.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  Sunday, March 23 — Palm Sunday

  THE BELL PEALS OUT FLATLY against the whitewashed walls of the houses and shops. Even the cobbles resonate with the sound; I can feel its dull buzz through the soles of my shoes. Narcisse has provided the rameaux, the palm crosses which I distribute at the end of the service and which will be kept in lapels, on mantelpieces, at bedsides, for the rest of Holy Week. I will bring you one too, pere, and a candle to bum by your bedside; I see no reason why you should be denied. The attendants look at me with thinly veiled amusement. Only fear and respect for my habit prevents them from laughing aloud. Their rosy nursery nurse faces glow with secret laughter. In the corridor, their girlish voices rise and fall in phrases made unintelligible by distance and the hospital acoustics:

  He thinks he can hear him — oh yes — thinks he’s going to wake up — No, really? — No! — Talks to him, darling — heard him once — praying? Then schoolgirl laughter — hihihihihi! — like scattered beads on the tiles.

  Of course they dare not laugh at me to my face. They might be nuns in their clean white uniforms, their hair tied back beneath starched caps, their eyes lowered. Convent children, mouthing the formulae of respect ? oui, mon pere, non, mon pere — with a heart full of secret mirth. My congregation too has this truant spirit — a pert glance during the sermon, unseemly haste towards the chocolaterie afterwards — but today everything is orderly. They greet me with respect, almost with fear. Narcisse apologizes that the rameaux are not real palms, but cedar twisted and plaited to approximate the more traditional leaf.

  “It’s not an indigenous tree, pere,” he explains in his gruff voice. “It won’t grow properly here. The frost scorches it.”

  I pat his shoulder in a fatherly gesture. “Not to worry, mon fils.” Their return to the fold has mellowed my mood so that I am avuncular, indulgent. “Not to worry.”

  Caroline Clairmont takes my hand between her gloved fingers. “A lovely service.” Her voice is warm. “Such a lovely service.” Georges echoes her words. Luc stands at her shoulder, looking sullen. Behind him, the Drous, with their son, sheepish in his sailor collar. I cannot see Muscat amongst the departing congregation, but I suppose he must be there.

  Caroline Clairmont gives me an arch smile. “It looks as if we did it,” she says with satisfaction. “We’ve got a petition with over a hundred signatures on it?”

  “The chocolate festival.” I interrupt her in a low voice, displeased. It is too public a place to discuss this. She fails to take the hint.

  “Of course!” Her voice is high and excited. “We distributed two hundred leaflets. Collected signatures from half the people in Lansquenet. Visited every house”— she pauses, correcting herself scrupulously — “well, almostevery house.” She smirks. “With a few obvious exceptions.”

  “I see.” I make my voice frigid. “Well, perhaps we could discuss this at some other time.”

  I see her register the snub. She reddens. “Of course, pere.”

  She is right, of course. There has been a measurable effect. The chocolate shop has been almost deserted for the past few days. The disapproval of the Residents’ Committee is no small matter, after all, in such a closed community, as is the tacit disapproval of the Church. To buy, to cavort, to gorge beneath the very eye of that disapproval…That takes a greater courage, a greater spirit of revolt than the Rocher woman gives them credit for. After all, how long has she lived here? The erring lamb returns to the fold, pere. By instinct. She is a brief diversion for them, that’s all. But in the end they always revert to type. I do not fool myself that they do it out of any great feeling of contrition or spirituality — sheep are no great thinkers — but their instincts, bred in them from the cradle, are sound. Their feet bring them home, even when their minds have wandered. I feel a sudden burst of love for them today, for my flock, my people. I want to feel their hands in mine, to touch their warm, stupid flesh, to revel in their awe and their trust.

  Is this what I have been praying for, pere? Is this the lesson I was meant to learn? I scan the crowd again for Muscat. He always comes to church on Sunday, and today, this special Sunday, he cannot have missed…And yet as the church empties I can still not see him. I do not recall him taking Communion. And surely he would not have left without exchanging a few words with me. Maybe he is still waiting in St Jerome’s I tell myself. The situation with his wife has troubled him greatly. Perhaps he needs further guidance.

  The pile of palm crosses at my side diminishes. Each one dipped in holy water, a murmured blessing, a touch of the hand. Luc Clairmont pulls away from my touch with an angry mutter. His mother remonstrates weakly, sending me a feeble smile across the bowed heads. There is still no sign of Muscat. I check the church’s interior: but for a few old people still kneeling at the altar it is empty. St Francis stands at the door, absurdly jolly for a saint, surrounded by plaster pigeons, his beaming face more like that of a madman or a drunkard than that of a holy man. I feel a twitch of annoyance at whoever placed the statue there, so close to the entrance. My namesake, I feel, should have more weight, more dignity. Instead this lumbering, grinning fool seems to mock me, one hand held out in a vague gesture of benediction, the other cradling the plaster bird to his round belly, as if dreaming of pigeon pie. I try to recall whether the saint was in the same position when we left Lansquenet, pere. Do you remember, or has it been moved since, perhaps by envious people who seek to mock me? St Jeromes, in whose name the place was built, has less prominence: in his dark alcove with the blackened oil-painting behind him he is shady, barely visible, the old marble from which he was hewn stained a nicotine-yellow by the smoke of a thousand candles. St Francis, on the other hand, remains mushroom-white in spite of the plaster’s dampness, crumbling away in happy insouciance of his colleague’s tacit disapproval. I remind myself to have him moved to a more appropriate spot as soon as possible.

  Muscat is not in the church. I check the grounds, still half-believing that he may be waiting for me there, but there is no sign. Maybe he is ill, I tell myself. Only serious illness would prevent such an assiduous churchgoer from attending service on Palm Sunday. I change my clean cassock for my workaday soutane, leaving the ceremonial vestments in the vestry. The chalice and sacramental plate I lock away for safekeeping. In your day, Pere, there would have been no reason to do so, but in these uncertain times nothing can be taken on trust. Vagrants and gypsies — not to mention some of our own villagers might take the prospect of hard cash more seriously than that of eternal damnation.

  I make my way towards Les Marauds with a quick step. Muscat has been uncommunicative since last week, and I have only seen him in passing, though he looks doughy and ill, hunched like a sullen penitent, his eyes half hidden beneath the puffy folds of his eyelids. Few people visit the café now, afraid perhaps of Muscat’s haggard looks and quick temper. I went there myself on Friday; the bar was almost deserted. The floor had not been swept since Josephine’s departure. Cigarette-butts and sweet-wrappers slid underfoot. Empty glasses cluttered every surface. A few sandwiches and a reddish, curling thing which might have been a slice of pizza stood forl
ornly beneath the glass counter. Next to them, a pile of Caroline’s leaflets, held down with a dirty beer glass. There was a low under-stench of vomit and mould beneath the rankness of Gauloises.

  Muscat was drunk. “So it’s you.” His tone was morose, just this side of belligerent. “Come to tell me to turn the other cheek again, have you?” He took a long drag of the cigarette clamped wetly between his teeth. “You should be pleased. Haven’t gone near the bitch in days.”

  I shook my head. “You mustn’t be bitter,” I told him.

  “I can be what I like in my own bar,” said Muscat in his slurred, aggressive way. “It’s my bar, isn’t it, pere? I mean, you’re not going to give that to her on a plate as well, are you?” I told him I understood what he must be feeling. He took another drag on his cigarette and coughed laughter and stale beer into my face.

  “That’s good, pere.” His breath was foul and hot, like an animal’s. “That’s very good. Course you understand. Course you do. The church took your balls when you took your vows. Stands to reason you shouldn’t want me to keep mine.”

  “You’re drunk, Muscat,” I snapped.

  “Well spotted, pere,” he snarled. “Not much gets past you, does it?”He made a sweeping gesture with the hand which held the cigarette. “All she needs is to see the place like this,” he said harshly. “That’s all she needs to make her happy now. Knowing that she’s ruined me”— he was close to tears now, his eyes filling with the drunkard’s easy self pity — “knowing she’s thrown our marriage wide open for people to laugh at?” He made a filthy sound, half-sob, half belch. “Knowing she’s broken my fucking heart!” He wiped his nose wetly on the back of his hand.

  “Don’t think I don’t know what’s going on there,” he said in a lower voice. “The bitch and her queer friends. I know what they’re doing.” His voice was getting louder again, and I looked around awkwardly to see his three or four remaining customers gaping at him curiously. I pressed his arm in warning.

  “Don’t lose hope, Muscat,” I urged, fighting my disgust at finding myself so close to him. “This is no way to win her back. Remember that many married couples have moments of doubt, but?”

  He sniggered. “Doubt, is it?” He sniggered again. “Tell you what, pere. Give me five minutes alone with her, and I’ll solve that problem for her for good. I’ll fucking win her back, no doubt about that.”

  He sounded vicious and stupid, his words barely formed around his shark’s grin. I took him by the shoulders and articulated clearly, hoping that at least some of my meaning might penetrate. “You will not,” I said into his face, ignoring the gaping drinkers at the bar. “You will conduct yourself with decency, Muscat, you will follow the correct procedure if you wish to take action, and you will keepawayfrom both of them! Understood?”

  My hands were gripping his shoulders. Muscat protested, whining obscenities. “I’m warning you, Muscat,” I told him. “I’ve tolerated a great deal from you, but this kind of — bullying — behaviour I will not tolerate. Do you understand?”

  He muttered something, apology or threat I could not tell. At the time I thought it was I’m sorry, but thinking back it might just as easily have been You’ll be sorry, his eyes glittering meanly behind his half-shed drunkard’s tears.

  Sorry. But who would be made to be sorry? And for what?

  Hurrying down the hill towards Les Marauds, I wondered again if I had misread the signs. Could he be capable of violence towards himself? Might I, in my eagerness to prevent further disturbance, have overlooked the truth of the matter, the fact that the fellow was on the far edge of despair? When I reached the Cafe de la Republique it was shut, but a small circle of people were standing outside, apparently looking up at one of the first-floor windows. I recognized Caro Clairmont and Joline Drou amongst them. Duplessis was there too, a small dignified figure with his felt hat and his dog cavorting at his feet. Above the sound of voices I thought I could hear a higher, shriller sound which rose and fell in varying cadences, occasionally almost resolving itself into words, phrases, a scream…

  “Pere.” Caro’s voice was breathless, her face flushed. Her expression was like that of the wide-eyed and eternally gasping beauties of certain glossy top-shelf magazines, and I found myself flushing at the thought.

  “What is it?” My voice was crisp. “Muscat?”

  “It’s Josephine,” said Caro in excitement. “He’s got her up there in the top room, pere, and she’s screaming.”

  Even as she spoke another volley of noise — combining screams, shouted abuse and the sound of projectiles smashing — came from the window, and a shower of debris scattered onto the cobbles. A woman’s voice, high enough to shatter glass, screeched — though not, I thought, in terror but in wild and simple rage — followed almost at once by another explosion of household shrapnel. Books, rags, records, mantel ornaments…the mundane artillery of domestic strife.

  I called up towards the window. “Muscat? Can you hear me? Muscat!”

  An empty canary-cage came hurtling through the air.

  “Muscat!”

  From inside the house, no answer. The two adversaries sound inhuman — a troll and a harpy — and for a moment I feel almost uneasy, as if the world has turned a little further into the shadows, broadening the crescent of darkness which separates us from the light. Open the door and what might I see?

  For a dreadful second the old memory hits home and I am sixteen again, opening the door of that old church annexe still referred to by some as the chancery, passing from the church’s murky half-light into a deeper gloom, my feet almost soundless on the smooth parquet, with the strange thudding and groaning of an unseen monster in my ears. Opening the door, heart trip hammering in my throat, fists clenched, eyes wide…and seeing on the floor in front of me the pallid arching beast, its proportions half-familiar but bizarrely doubled, two faces raised towards me in frozen expressions of rage-horror-dismay.

  Maman! Pere!

  Ludicrous, I know. There can be no connection. And yet looking at Caro Clairmont’s moist and feverish countenance I wonder if perhaps she feels it too, the erotic belly-thrill of violence, the moment of power when the match strikes, the blow falls, the petrol ignites…

  It was not simply your betrayal, pere, that made my blood freeze and the skin of my temples tauten like drumskins. I knew about sin — the sins of the flesh — only as a kind of disgusting abstraction, like lying down with animals. That there might be pleasure in it was almost incomprehensible. And yet you and my mother — hot, flushed, working at it in that mechanical way, oiled with and against each other like pistons, not quite naked, no, but more lewd for the vestiges of clothing — blouse, crumpled skirt, soutane drawn up…No, it was not the flesh which so disgusted me, for I looked at the scene with a distant, disgusted disinterest. It was because I had compromised myself for you, pere, only two weeks before, had compromised my soul for you — the bottle of oil slick against the palm of my hand, the thrill of righteous power, the sigh of rapture as the bottle flies into the air and ignites, splashing across the deck of the pitiful houseboat in a bright wave of hungry flick-flicking flames, flick-flick-flick against the dry tarpaulin, crisss against the cracked dry wood, licking with salacious glee. They suspected arson, pere, but never Reynaud’s good, quiet boy, not Francis, who sang in the church choir and sat so pale and good during your sermons. Not pale young Francis, who had never so much as broken a window. Muscat, perhaps. Old Muscat and his tearaway son might have done it. For a time there was coldness towards them, unfriendly speculation. This time, things had gone too far. But they denied it steadfastly, and after all, there was no proof. The victims were none of ours. No-one made the connexion between the burning and the changes in the Reynaud fortunes, the parents’ separation, the boy’s departure for a select school in the North…I did it for you, pere. For love of you. The burning boat on the dry flats lights up the brown night, people running out, screaming, scrabbling at the baked-earth banks of the arid Tannes, some t
rying hopelessly to drag out the few remaining bucketfuls of mud from the riverbed to throw over the burning boat, I waiting in the bushes, mouth dry, belly full of hot joy.

  I could not have known of the sleepers in the houseboat, I tell myself. Wrapped so tight in their drunken darkness that even the fire failed to waken them. I dreamed of them later, charred one into the other, melded like perfect lovers. For months I screamed in the night, seeing those arms reaching longingly towards me, hearing their voices — a breath of ash — mouthing my name from whitened lips.

  But you absolved me, pere. Only a drunkard and his slattern, you told me. Worthless flotsam on the filthy river. Twenty Paters and as many Aves paid for their lives. Thieves who had desecrated our church, insulted our priest, deserved nothing more. I was a young boy with a bright future ahead, with loving parents who would grieve, who would be terribly unhappy if they knew. Besides, you said persuasively, it might have been an accident. You could never know, you said. God might have meantit this way.

  I believed it. Or pretended to. And I am still grateful.

  A touch on my arm. I start, alarmed. Looking into the pit of my memories I am momentarily dizzied by time. Armande Voizin stands behind me, her clever black eyes fixing me. Duplessis is at her side.

  “Are you going to do something, Francis, or are you going to let that bear Muscat commit murder?” Her voice is crisp and cold. One claw grasps her stick, the other beckons witchlike at the closed door.

  “It isn’t…” My voice is high and childish, not my own at all. “It isn’t my business to interv?”

  “Rubbish!” She raps my knuckles with her stick. “I’m going to put a stop to this, Francis. Are you going to come with me, or are you going to stand there all day gawping?”