“Let’s go in,” I said. “They must be waiting.”
I knew that Peyssou would have preferred a properly signed and sealed sort of absolution. But I gave those as seldom as I possibly could. Every time La Menou insisted on one, for example, I felt uncomfortable about it. But I’ve already gone into all that.
The table had been cleared, swept free of crumbs, and given a polish. Its beautiful dark walnut top glowed in the lamplight. In front of me there was a large glass already filled with wine. And on the plate beside it a number of small cubes of bread that La Menou had just finished cutting. Quite automatically, I counted them. There were twelve. She had cut one for Momo.
The table in the gate tower is much smaller than the one in the house. No one said a word. We were packed very tightly, elbows touching. We had all noticed La Menou’s mistake, and it had brought the same thought to all our minds: that tomorrow, at the evening meal, maybe our companions would have to remove our plate. The thought weighed on us. It wasn’t so much the idea of dying as the idea of no longer being with the others.
Before the communion itself I said a few words, from which I was careful to banish all rhetoric and even more so any hint of unction. I spoke in the most even, natural tone I could. I wasn’t trying for eloquence. In fact almost its opposite: to translate into words as plainly as I could exactly what I had in my mind.
“As I see it,” I said, “the meaning of what we are doing at Malevil is that we are trying to survive by drawing our nourishment from the land and our animals. People like Vilmain and Bébelle, on the other hand, have an entirely negative conception of existence. They kill, they loot, they burn. To Vilmain, conquering Malevil means simply acquiring a base for his plundering expeditions. If the human race is to continue, then it will owe its future to little groups of people like ourselves, who are trying to reorganize an embryo of society. People like Vilmain and Bébelle are parasites and beasts of prey. They must be eliminated. However, the fact that our cause is a good one doesn’t necessarily mean we’re going to win. And if I were to say now, ‘I pray to God to bring us victory,’ that wouldn’t be any guarantee of victory either.”
This remark, coming from the Abbé of Malevil, caused astonishment in some of those present. But I felt I knew what I was about, and I continued. “In order to win battles, you need an incredible amount of vigilance. And you also need a lot of imagination. I know that you have made me your leader in the event of danger; but that doesn’t mean you are excused from using your own powers of invention too. If you think of any tricks or stratagems or tactics or traps that we haven’t thought of before, then tell me. And if the enemy gives us time, we’ll discuss them.”
I would have liked to stick to that objective tone. But suddenly I changed my mind. Standing with my hands pressed on the tabletop, I looked around at my companions seated in the lamplight. They were so close that they seemed almost to have fused together. A single body. Their faces were tense and a little anxious, but the happiness we were all feeling at being together was what struck me most, and I wanted to express it.
“You know the saying we have in these parts: Each will strengthen each.” (I said it in patois first, then repeated it in French for Thomas.) “At Malevil it so happens that we are very lucky from that point of view. I don’t think I’m wrong when I say that the affection we feel for one another is such that no one here would want to survive if it meant surviving without the others. So this is what I ask of God, that when the victory has been won, we shall all meet here again, safe and sound, in Malevil.”
I consecrated the bread and wine. After I had drunk and eaten, the glass and plate were passed around the table. It was done in profound silence. For my own part, I was only too well aware of the vast disparity between the words I had just uttered and the intense emotion I was feeling. Nevertheless, it seemed to me that somehow or other that emotion had succeeded in spreading to all of them. I could tell from the weight in the others’ glances, the slowness of their gestures. In my speech I had laid the stress mainly on the future of mankind, so that even atheists as entrenched as Meyssonnier and Thomas could participate in the common hope. After all, it’s not necessary to believe in God to have a sense of divinity in the world. In Malevil divinity might also be defined in terms of the bonds between man and man. Meyssonnier blinked furiously as he drank his share of the wine, and when I leaned toward him to ask what he thought of it all, he answered with his usual earnestness, “It’s our vigil of arms.”
I wouldn’t have employed the expression myself. I’d have found it too melodramatic, but it was accurate. A trained priest would have spoken of “recollection.” A little tarnished by overuse, but a good word still. You could almost see it happening. After being scattered, fragmented by our usual multifarious concerns, we were all returning into ourselves, collecting ourselves together into a still whole. Catie, for example, usually so lively and irrepressible; for once she wasn’t thinking of what she could get out of her body and out of others’ bodies. She was thinking, period. And since she wasn’t used to it, she was looking rather tired.
There was great seriousness around our table, and concern for others. Courage too. First and foremost the courage to remain silent, and to look our guest that evening in the face. No one had any wish to name him, but he was there.
Thomas, who had looked quite normal while telling his story, had now gone rather pale. Killing Bébelle had shaken him. And perhaps he was also thinking that if the knife had been just that little bit closer, only an inch or so, then he would not have been here now, seated at this table around which we were all gathered, so fragile, so mortal, with no strength other than in our friendship.
As soon as La Menou had taken communion I sent her to fetch Jacquet in from the ramparts. She was surprised, since there could be no question of her relieving him, but she obeyed. As soon as she’d left I asked Thomas, who happened to be holding the plate at that moment, to take an extra piece of bread. I also asked him to go out and replace Jacquet when he appeared.
When communion was finished, we decided that apart from the noncombatants—La Falvine, Evelyne, and La Menou—who would go and sleep upstairs in the house, we would all stay in the gate tower that night. There were five beds, and we needed no more, since Colin and Peyssou were about to leave—in pitch darkness—to take up their post in the dugout, and I had decided there was nothing to be gained by having more than one sentinel up on the wall. Evelyne found it a bitter pill to swallow, being separated from me, but she obeyed without a word.
This double departure—of the two men out to the dugout and the three noncombatants up to the house—was carried out swiftly, efficiently, with a minimum of noise. As soon as there were just the five of us left—Miette, Catie, Jacquet, Meyssonnier, and myself, Thomas being already up on the ramparts—I wrote down the watch roster on a piece of paper and placed it under the base of the lamp, after having turned down the flame. I had put myself down for the four o’clock watch and also requested that the person coming off duty from each watch should wake me up. This obligation was going to be unpleasant for me, but I was counting on it keeping my sentinels awake. I had asked Jacquet to bring me down a mattress, and I lay down in one corner of the kitchen. The four others went up to their various beds on the upper floors, each keeping his or her weapon at the head of the bed and sleeping fully clothed.
As for myself, I slept very little that night, or thought I slept very little, which comes to much the same thing. I had more Bébelle-type dreams. I was defending myself against attackers with the butt of my rifle, but it just passed right through their skulls without hurting them. In the course of my waking moments, during which I had the feeling that I was getting more rest than when I was asleep, at first anyway, sudden serious omissions sprang into my mind. In the event of a general alert, I hadn’t assigned the others specific places on the walls and gate-tower battlements. Or defined our objectives.
Another problem I hadn’t thought of: some method of communicati
on between the dugout and the ramparts. It was absolutely essential that anyone in the dugout perceiving an enemy approaching the palisade should be able to warn us with a signal that the attackers would not notice. That way we would gain precious seconds in placing our forces.
I nagged away at this problem during the second watch but didn’t find any solution. I knew it was the second watch, because Miette had woken me up, according to orders, then Meyssonnier at the end of his stint, and the whole of that time I was constructing absurd contraptions of wire sliding through rings to join the dugout to the ramparts. I must have dozed too, and even dreamed, because the absurdities proliferated. There was one point at which I realized with joyful relief that the answer was a flashlight.
I must have gone off into a deeper sleep eventually though, because I started violently when Catie shook me by the shoulders and told me in a low voice that it was my turn on duty, nibbling a little at my ear as she whispered into it.
Catie had left one of the panels in the battlements propped open, and someone, Meyssonnier perhaps, had brought up one of our little benches. A happy idea, because the opening was too low to keep watch through it comfortably other than seated. I took several deep breaths. The air was deliciously fresh, and after my troubled night I felt a rather amazing sensation of youth and strength. I was certain Vilmain was going to attack. We had killed his Bébelle, he would want to punish us. But I wasn’t so sure that he was going to attack without making a last attempt to find out what he would have to face when he did. Since he now knew, from Hervé, of the existence of the palisade, he must be asking himself, and not without anxiety, what lay behind it. If I had grasped the workings of his army-conditioned mind rightly, then his honor was ordering him to avenge Bébelle, while at the same time his professional training would not allow him to attack blind.
The darkness was slow to pale, and I could still only just distinguish the presence of the palisade forty yards in front of me, especially since the ancient planks of which it was made tended to melt into the surroundings. The strain on one’s eyes in bad visibility is very tiring, and several times I found myself rubbing my eyelids with my left hand and screwing up my face in an attempt to ease it.
Since I kept tending to doze off, I got to my feet, paced to and fro a little, and recited all the La Fontaine fables I could remember in a low voice. I yawned. I sat down again. A flash of lightning lit up the sky over toward Les Sept Fayards. I was surprised, because there was no hint of thunder in the air, and it took me two or three seconds to realize that Peyssou and Colin had signaled to me from the dugout with their flashlight. At the same instant the palisade bell rang twice.
I stood up, heart battering against my ribs, temples thudding, palms damp. Ought I to go? Was it a trick? One of Vilmain’s traps? Was he going to fire his bazooka into the palisade the moment I opened the Judas?
Meyssonnier appeared at the door of the gate tower, gun in hand. He looked at me, and that look, asking me for action, restored all my presence of mind. I said in a quiet voice, “Is everyone awake?”
“Yes.”
“Call them out.”
But there was no need. I saw that they were all already there, brought down by the bell, guns in hand. I was pleased by their silence, their calm, the swiftness of their reactions. In a very low voice, I said, “Miette and Catie at the two tower slits. Meyssonnier, Thomas, Jacquet, on the wall, behind the merlons. Meyssonnier in command. No fire without his signal. Jacquet, open the gate for me and close it when I’m through.”
“You’re going alone?” Meyssonnier asked.
“Yes,” I said, very curt.
He said nothing more. I helped Jacquet unbolt one side of the gate as quietly as possible. Meyssonnier touched my shoulder. In the half light he handed me something. It was the key to the cat-door padlock. He looked at me. If he had dared, he would have suggested going in my place.
“Gently, Jacquet.”
Despite all the oil in the world, the gate hinges always squeaked as soon as either half of the gate was opened more than forty-five degrees. I pulled it open gently until the opening was just wide enough for me to slip through with my belly pulled in.
Although the night air was cool, the sweat was running down my cheeks. I crossed the bridge, made my way between the moat and the new wall, then stopped to pull off my half boots. I crossed the remaining distance to the palisade slowly, treading carefully in my stockinged feet and trying to keep my breathing quieter and quieter as I got nearer to my goal. At the last moment, instead of opening the Judas, I held my breath and glanced through the tiny spyhole that Colin had fitted beside it. It was Hervé, with another, shorter young fellow beside him. No one else. I opened the Judas. “Hervé?”
“Yes, it’s me.”
“Who’s with you?”
“Maurice.”
“Right. Listen to me. I’m going to open the little sliding door. Pass your guns through first. Then Hervé will come in alone. I repeat, alone. Maurice will wait there.”
“We understand,” Hervé said.
I removed the padlock, slid the cat door up, and hooked it in position. The two rifles appeared. I said tersely, “Further in, the rifles. Barrels first. Push them in.”
They obeyed, and I let the door slide down again. I opened both breeches. No bullets in either or in the magazines. I leaned them both against the palisade. Then I unslung the Springfield from my shoulder. That done, I let Hervé in, closed the cat door behind him, led him to the main gate, and not until it had closed behind him did I return to fetch his companion.
Before that morning I hadn’t envisaged precisely how we ought to use the ADZ. Now I realized that it worked perfectly as a kind of air lock. It enabled us to admit visitors one by one, after making sure they were disarmed. Once back in the gate tower, I took the sheet of paper on which I had made out the watch list for the previous night, and on the back, in pencil, even before questioning Hervé again, I wrote down the new orders that I had worked out in my head.
While I was still writing, La Menou, La Falvine, and Evelyne appeared. The first promptly set about reviving the fire and sharply ordered the second, who looked anxious to stay, to go and do the milking. As for Evelyne, she stood glued against my side, and when I didn’t send her away she took my left arm and pulled it around her waist, clutching my hand firmly by the thumb. She stayed there absolutely quiet and still, watching me write, fearing that she would lose her advantage if she tried to push it any further. Hesitating over a word, I lifted my eyes from the paper and noticed our visitors watching Miette and Catie with interest. An interest that was certainly reciprocated, as a glance at Catie made clear. She was standing in a very martial pose, left hand holding the barrel of her gun with its butt on the floor, right thumb hooked into her cartridge belt, pelvis thrown forward and to one side, eyes fixed on Hervé in a brazenly appreciative stare.
We were still by no means all present and correct, since Peyssou and Colin were still on guard in the dugout and Jacquet was up on the ramparts. Thomas, I noticed, was sitting at the far end of the table and not looking at Catie. Meyssonnier, standing behind me, was reading over my shoulder what I wrote, thus making it clear to everyone that he wasn’t my second in command for nothing.
As soon as I had finished my writing, La Menou blew out the lamp and I began questioning Hervé.
He had some interesting things to tell us. The previous evening, Bébelle had not come alone to reconnoiter Malevil. There had been another veteran with him. And both had set out from La Roque on bicycles. But Bébelle had hidden his beside the road two hundred yards short of the castle, then ordered the veteran not to intervene whatever happened. The veteran lay low, heard the shot, saw Bébelle fall, and went straight back to La Roque. Vilmain immediately announced that since Malevil had “knocked out” two of his best men he was going “to wipe out” Malevil as a reprisal. But beforehand, “to strengthen his rear” and perhaps also in order to counteract any feeling of failure, he ordered a night at
tack on Courcejac: six men under the command of the Feyrac brothers. Unfortunately, that morning, the veteran who had reconnoitered Courcejac with Maurice had stolen two hens. The Courcejac men were keeping a watch, and as soon as the group of attackers appeared they opened fire and killed Daniel Feyrac. Jean Feyrac, insane with rage, ordered an all-out onslaught and massacred them all.
“What does that mean, ‘all’?”
“The two young brothers, a couple of old men, the wife, and the baby.”
A silence. We looked at one another.
After a moment I said, “And what did Vilmain have to say about their exploits?”
“‘Reprisal. Good military practice. They knock out one of your men. You wipe out the village.’”
Another silence. I signaled Hervé to go on. He coughed to make sure his voice didn’t crack. “After Courcejac, Vilmain wanted to attack Malevil right away. But the veterans didn’t agree. Jean Feyrac was on their side: ‘We can’t just go attacking Malevil bullheaded like that. It’s got to be reconnoitred first.’”
“Jean Feyrac said that?”
“Yes, it was Feyrac.”
I was sick with disgust. “Wipe out a village,” yes, when it was easy game. But Malevil, that was different. Malevil made these gallant fellows think twice. And the proof was that when Vilmain again asked for volunteers, not one of the veterans came forward. So Hervé and Maurice had little difficulty getting the detail.
“What did Vilmain say?”
“‘If these little assholes succeed, they get promoted to veterans. If they buy it, we go in, is that understood, you men?’”
“And the veterans?”
“Pretty lukewarm.”
“All the same, if Vilmain gives the order to go in, they’ll go in?”