Malevil

  Thomas had already told them. They all looked at me, very pale, without a word. Fulbert was white, at least as far as I could make out his features at all, because he had his back to the two mullioned windows. Our chairs were arranged in two rows facing him, on the other side of the refectory table. I don’t know who had thought to fetch up two of the huge candles from their brackets in the cellar and place them one on each side of his little portable altar, but it was certainly a good idea as things turned out, because the sky outside was getting darker every moment, and the only light filtering through the windows was a wan end-of-the-world twilight.

  There was a chair empty in the front row, beside Miette, but just as I was about to take it I noticed that I would have Momo next to me on my left, and despite the state of panic anxiety I was in, sheer force of habit was still too strong. I automatically changed direction and took my place in the second row, beside Meyssonnier. Peyssou, who had come in behind me, took the chair I had just avoided.

  Never can any Mass have been less attended to, I should think, despite Fulbert’s beautiful dark voice and the dutiful responses of Jacquet in his role as acolyte. Because all our eyes were firmly fixed not on the officiant but on the windows behind him, straining to pierce the sky outside with a mixture of hope and anxiety. And suddenly I felt the sweat stream down my back. The animals, I thought, what about the animals? We shall have wine to drink. But what about them? What can they drink if the water tower has been contaminated? And as for the earth, if that is impregnated with radioactive dust, washed down who knows how deep by the rain, then who can say how long it will be before the poison is no longer there in our harvests? I was amazed that Thomas had never discussed his fears with me. In what delusory security his silence had enabled us to live since the day of the bomb! I had always told myself that the only natural disaster that could threaten us now was an interminable drought, drying up the rivers, reducing the soil to an annihilation of dust. I had never for a moment imagined that the rain we had been waiting for every day, day after day, could bring us death.

  I glanced at Meyssonnier, aware that he had just turned his head in my direction, and what I read in his eyes was not so much anguish as a vast stupefaction. Oh, how well I understood what he was feeling! Because with us peasants, although we do moan and groan about bad weather, when a wet June is rotting the hay for example, we know in our hearts that the rain is our friend, the source of life, that without it we would have no harvests, no fruit, no pastures, no springs. And now we were being forced to conceive the inconceivable: that the rain might kill what it should feed.

  Meyssonnier’s eyes returned to the windows, and mine too. It didn’t seem possible, but the sky had grown even darker. The hill on the far side of the Rhunes valley, bare, blackened, topped by its three gaunt tree stumps, looked like a Golgotha when the darkness lay over all the land. A wan low-lying light was silhouetting it from behind, separating it from the black sky with a pale glowing line. The hill itself was charcoal gray, but above it the piled up clouds were black as ink, with trails of less dark vapor here and there. The spectacle kept changing from moment to moment, heavy with coiling menace. I was almost hypnotized by it.

  And oddly, though I wasn’t praying or listening to Fulbert, my mind had established a link between what I was seeing and his chanted words. In those moments I had forgotten who Fulbert was, all his lies and his deceits, and only his voice had any substance. And even though I wasn’t listening to him, I was aware that this false priest was saying his Mass extremely well, with gravity and deep feeling. I wasn’t listening, yet I was aware what the words were telling, that anguish two thousand years ago, the same that we were all living through again now, our eyes staring at those windows.

  The clouds were so black and low that I was sure the rain must begin to fall now. The minutes that preceded it were endless. It was taking its time, all right! And it became such a torture just waiting that I was almost longing for the rain to fall, to make an end of us, so that Thomas’s Geiger counter could pronounce its sentence of death. I glanced again at Meyssonnier beside me. I saw his Adam’s apple travel up inside his thin neck. He was swallowing the saliva in his mouth. Since his chair was slightly farther back than mine, I could also make out Thomas’s profile beyond. I watched as he pulled apart his dry lips, which had become stuck together, then wet them with his tongue. I was not the only one, I was sure, who could feel the sweat running down my sides and oozing from my palms. We were all in the same state. If my nose had been keen enough, I would have been able to pick up the odor of fear and perspiration being given off by our eleven motionless bodies.

  I was still aware of Fulbert’s chanting in my ears, the sound at least, though not the words, because I was still not even trying to catch them. But now in our guest’s beautiful resonant voice I could discern a crack, a quiver. Ah, so we do have something in common, Fulbert and I, I thought. I felt a desire to tell him so. To tell him that all the hatreds and tensions between us were pointless now that the rain was coming, the rain that would reconcile us forever, and we all knew how.

  Yet when it finally burst, the storm we had all been expecting, it was like an electric shock. We all gave an involuntary start, then the silence became more intense than ever. Fulbert’s voice lost even more of its suavity, it had become hoarse and cracked; yet it did not stop. Fulbert was not without guts, or, it would seem, without faith. Later on the idea crossed my mind that he had turned impostor as the result of a missed vocation. But for the moment my head was void. I just listened. The rain was lashing with such fury against the windowpanes, with a pattering so full of violence and hate that at moments it drowned Fulbert’s voice, and yet, however tenuous it now seemed to me, I never lost it altogether, I clung to it; it was a thread I was following through the darkness.

  It was really dark now, darker than ever, even though the windows were white with rain. The great hall was no longer lit by any glimmer other than that from the two great candles, whose flames were quivering too in the wind coming in under the doors and around the windows. Fulbert’s shadow looked enormous on the wall. There were faint glimmers from the blades of the swords and halberds hanging on it. Everything else in the world was gloom, and I had the feeling that we were crouched there, all eleven of us, in an underground tomb, vainly trying to escape from the death that was above us and all around us.

  The rain eased off momentarily, then a first flash of lightning brightened the two windows, thunder rolled over to the east, behind the hill opposite us. I knew the storms in our part of the world only too well, they are terrifying. I’ve been afraid of them ever since childhood. As I grew up I learned how to conceal the panic they created inside me, but never to conquer it. And now that panic was adding a terrible physical distress to the dread I was already feeling. It was as much as I could do to restrain the trembling in my hands as I watched the zigzags of lightning silhouette the three tree stumps on the hill, and then wait for the rumbling that had to follow.

  At the same time, the wind suddenly got up and began to blow as though the sky had gone mad. It was our east wind. I recognized the howling sound it made as it rushed under the half-ruined vaulting where I had planned to make my office, the way it endlessly rattled the doors and windows and whistled in every fissure of the cliff face. The rain returned with redoubled fury, and the wind hurled it against the windows like innumerable spears. You felt the leaded panes were about to burst inward at any moment. Fulbert, standing with his back to them, must have experienced the same sensation, because I noticed that he had pulled his neck down into his shoulders and was hunching them as though he expected the hurricane to leap on him and savage him without warning. And yet, between two terrifying rolls of thunder, I could still hear his voice.

  I hid my hands away in my pockets and stiffened my neck. The lightning was crawling methodically, savagely closer. The thunderclaps were now gigantic explosions. It was as though Malevil had become a target that the lightning bolts were bracketing with
horrible and conscious precision, according to the dictates of some infernal ordnance manual, before annihilating it with one direct and final hit. There was nothing to be seen now of those former zigzags, broken arrows, insane signatures of pure light against the black of the sky. Only on the windows, every now and then, an icy and blinding glitter, immediately followed by a very loud, very abrupt explosion, like a shell hitting its mark. It was almost beyond the capacity of human ears to endure such a volume of sound. One just wanted to run, to escape, to hide.

  Between two great claps, in one of the storm’s infinitesimal moments of calm, I heard Fulbert’s voice, so thin and shaky now that it seemed to be part of the flickering candle flames. Fulbert’s voice was all I had to cling to. I could also hear a muffled moaning, and it took me a moment to realize, as I leaned forward and peered round, that it was Momo making the noise, his great shaggy head pressed against La Menou’s bony chest and protected by his mother’s frail skeleton arms.

  Without transition, the storm moved off. The distant rumblings returned, almost comforting in comparison. They receded and grew less frequent as the rain and wind rose to a paroxysm. The muscles of my neck, my arms, my shoulders were hurting me, so rigidly had I tensed them to overcome my trembling. I tried to relax them. The rain was no longer coming in separate spears, it was one great waterfall. The little windowpanes were completely obscured by the streaming water, like an automobile windshield, or a porthole washed by waves. The noise had ceased to be a hostile drumming and was now just a series of muffled thuds breaking at intervals through Fulbert’s far-off voice and Momo’s moans.

  I felt someone touch my arm. Meyssonnier. I turned toward him. I was fascinated by the painful way his Adam’s apple pushed its way up inside his throat as he spoke, but I couldn’t actually hear any sound. I bent toward him, I almost pressed my ear against his lips, and I heard “Thomas wants to speak to you.” Since I was standing just then—we were quite mechanically copying the others in the front row, sitting when they sat, standing when they stood—I moved across in front of Meyssonnier and put my head close to Thomas’s.

  He pulled his lips apart with some difficulty, and I noticed that a thick, almost solidified thread of saliva remained unbroken between them as he said, “As soon as the rain stops I’ll go out and check.” I nodded and went back to my place, amazed that he should have felt it necessary to tell me that, so self-evident did it seem. I certainly hadn’t expected him to go out and expose himself to the rain, which I was now quite convinced was loaded with lethal dust. So great was my dread by now that it had killed all hope.

  The two windows were covered with an unbroken stream of water, yet oddly enough they seemed lighter than before. It was as though the sheet of rain was itself giving out light. Beyond it there was nothing discernible but a dense, opaque whiteness. I had the absurd impression that the deluge had completely filled the little valley of the Rhunes, submerged the castle, and was even now sapping the whole cliff as it penetrated all its clefts and crannies.

  I noticed with surprise, and without at all realizing the meaning of it, that a glass filled with wine and a plate containing several cubes of bread were being passed around. I watched Thomas and Meyssonnier as they drank in turn, and from the shock the sight induced in me I grasped that without knowing it they were both taking communion. Presumably they were only too glad to wet their dry mouths with a sip of wine. But at that point they too must have realized what they were doing, because they suddenly caught themselves up and quickly passed me not only the glass but also the plate, without taking any bread.

  I realized then that Jacquet was standing beside me. He noticed my difficulty and took the plate out of my hand. Then as I raised the glass avidly to my lips he bent down and said in my ear, “Leave some for me.” And he was quite right. I was going to drink it all. When I had finished drinking he held out the plate, and along with my own cube I also hurriedly removed the two that Thomas and Meyssonnier had left untouched. It was a pure defensive reflex. I didn’t want Fulbert to know that two of our number had refused communion. At the same time I was amazed at my own instinctive reaction, and at the fact that I was still thinking about safeguarding our future when I was quite certain in my mind that no one in the room had any future. Jacquet had seen my gesture, though it had been masked from Fulbert by Falvine’s vast bulk, and he looked at me with a hint of reproof in those simple doglike eyes, but I knew he wouldn’t say anything.

  All this had taken place, as far as I was concerned, in a sort of cottony vagueness, as though my brain too were obscured by the rain streaming down the windows. I had a bizarre impression that I knew it all already, as though I had lived through this scene and this spectacle in some former existence: the sickly light, the streaming windows, the trophies of weapons on the wall between the windows, Fulbert, whose outline and hollow face I could scarcely make out, the heavy refectory table, and us, grouped behind it, silent, hunched, devoured by terror. A handful of men lost in an empty world. Jacquet had gone back to his place. Fulbert was reciting again, and Momo, now the storm had passed, had stopped his moaning, although as soon as he had gulped down his bread and wine he had immediately pushed his head back under the protection of La Menou’s fierce little arms.

  It was strange how it all seemed so familiar to me, and familiar too was that great baronial hall, which in that half darkness, scarcely mitigated at all by the wan windows and the two big candles, made me think of some crypt where we seemed to be keeping vigil over our own future graves. In the gloom, Miette’s magnificent hair caught a gleam of light, and suddenly an iron hand closed around my heart as I realized that her coming to live with us had been useless, that Miette would never pass life on.

  The Mass drew to its close and the rain still bucketed down. Although the gusts of wind were shaking the windows with tremendous violence, they had not succeeded in opening them, only in driving a little water around their edges, and it had begun to collect in pools on the flagstones at the foot of the wall.

  It occurred to me to ask Thomas to run his Geiger counter over these pools. Then I immediately rejected the idea. I had the feeling that if I hurried things, that meant the verdict would go against us. Pure superstition on my part, and I was well aware of it. But I gave way to the instinct all the same. Alone with myself, what petty acts of cowardice I would permit myself, I who prided myself so on my courage! Having thus delayed the moment of truth, I turned to La Menou and asked her in a calm voice to light the fire. Thank goodness I had complete control of my voice still. Appearances were saved; the collapse was all inside. Though the fire was in fact very necessary. I observed out loud that since we had begun to move around, oddly enough, there seemed to be a tomblike chill in the room.

  The first flame flickered into life. We all huddled around the fireplace, dumb with dread. After a moment I couldn’t stand their silence any longer. I broke away and began pacing up and down the hall, my crepe soles making no sound on the stone floor. The windows were so obscured by the rain they made me feel that the whole of Malevil was under water, about to float away like a new ark. As though the tension of my fear had become too unbearable, forcing me to take refuge from it in absurdity, my head began to fill with other such ideas, all equally idiotic. For example, that of snatching down a sword from between the windows and finishing the whole thing there and then by thrusting it through my body, like a Roman emperor.

  At one and the same instant the gusts of wind redoubled and the rain stopped. I must have become accustomed to the sound of the water thundering against the glass, because as soon as it stopped I experienced a sensation of silence, despite the continued howling of the wind and the constant rattling of the windows. I saw the group around the fire turn as one to look at them, as though all those heads belonged to the same body.

  Thomas detached himself from the group. Without a word, without a glance in my direction, he went over to the chair where he had left his equipment. With slow, competent gestures he pulled on his raincoa
t, carefully fastened it, then in due order slipped on the big goggles, the helmet, the gloves. Only then, after taking up the Geiger counter and arranging the headphones at the ready around his neck, did he start toward the door. The motorcyclist’s goggles, which left only the lower part of his face visible, gave him the air of an implacable robot carrying out some programmed technical assignment, unaware of man’s existence. Raincoat, helmet, boots, all were black.

  I rejoined the group around the fire. I melted into it. I needed to become part of it if I was to bear that waiting. The fire flickered meagerly. Ah, La Menou’s undying concern for thrift! And we huddled closer around her tiny blaze, backs to the door from which our sentence would be pronounced. La Menou was on her hearth seat as usual, with Momo opposite on the far side of the fire. His eyes moved constantly from her to me and then back again. I have no idea what exactly it might have conjured up in his mind, a phrase like “radioactive dust,” but in any case he trusted both his mother and myself to know when there was good cause for fear. His face was drained of color. His bright black eyes were fixed in a stare, and he was trembling in every limb. And we would have been doing the same, all the rest of us, if we had not been taught that grownups are supposed to control themselves.

  My companions were no longer just pale, they were gray. I was standing between Meyssonnier and Peyssou, and I noticed that we were all holding ourselves in the same rather stiff pose: shoulders hunched, heads bent forward, hands thrust deep into our pockets. On the other side of Peyssou, Fulbert was the same ashen color. His eyes were lowered, thereby depriving his fleshless face of any glimmer of life, and he looked more than ever like a corpse. Falvine and Jacquet were both moving their lips. I took it that they were praying. Little Colin seemed agitated and oppressed; he appeared to be having difficulty breathing, and he kept yawning and swallowing all the time. Miette alone appeared almost serene—slightly uneasy, but on our account not hers. She kept looking around at us all in turn, attempting little consoling smiles that no one heeded.