Chocolat

22

Friday March 7

THE GYPSIES ARE LEAVING. I WALKED BY LES MARAUDS early this morning and they were making ready, stacking their fishing-pots and taking in their interminable lines of washing. Some left last night, in darkness – I heard the sounds of their whistles and airhorns, like a final defiance most superstitiously awaiting first light. It was just after seven when I passed. In the pale grey-green of the dawn they looked like war refugees, white-faced, sullenly tying the last remains of their floating circus into bundles. What was garish and magical-tawdry last night is now merely drab, scorched of its glamour. A smell of burning and oil hangs in the mist. A sound of flapping canvas, the hacking of early-morning engines. Few even bother to look at me, going about their business with tight mouths and narrowed eyes. No-one speaks. I do not see Roux among these stragglers. Perhaps he left with the early crowd. There are maybe thirty boats still left on the river, their bows sagging with the weight of the accumulated baggage. The girl Zezette works alongside the wrecked hulk, transferring unidentifiable pieces of blackened something onto her own boat. A crate of chickens rests precariously on top of a charred mattress and a box of magazines. She flings me a look of hatred, but says nothing.

Don't think I feel nothing for these people. There is no personal grudge, mon pere, but I have my own congregation to think of. I cannot waste time in unsolicited preaching to strangers, to be jeered at and insulted. And yet I am not unapproachable. Any one of them would be welcome in my church, if their contrition were sincere. If they need guidance, they know they can come to me.

I slept badly last night. Since the beginning of Lent I have suffered troubled nights. I often leave my bed in the early hours, hoping to find sleep in the pages of a book, or in the dark silent streets of Lansquenet, or on the banks of the Tannes. Last night I was more restless than usual, and, knowing I would not sleep, left the house at eleven for an hour's walk along the river. I skirted Les Marauds and the gypsies' camp and made my way across the fields and upriver, though the sounds of their activity remained clearly audible behind me. Looking back downriver I could see campfires on the river bank, dancing figures outlined in the orange glow. Looking at my watch I realized I had been walking for almost an hour, and I turned to retrace my footsteps. I had not intended to pass through Les Marauds, but to walk across the fields once more would add half an hour onto my journey home, and I was feeling dull and dizzy with fatigue. Worse, the combination of cold air and sleeplessness had awoken in me an acute feeling of hunger which I already knew would be inadequately broken by my early morning collation of coffee and bread. It was for this reason that I made my way to Les Marauds, pere, my thick boots sinking deep into the clay of the banking and my breath glowing with the light of their fires. I was soon close enough to distinguish what was going on. A kind of party was under way. I saw lanterns, candles stuck onto the sides of the barques, giving the carnival scene a strangely devotional look. A scent of woodsmoke and something tantalizing which might be grilling sardines; beneath that the sharp, bitter scent of Vianne Rocher's chocolate wafted across the river. I should have known she would be there. But for her the gypsies would have left long ago. I could see her on the jetty below Armande Voizin's house, her long red coat and loose hair giving her an oddly pagan look among the flames. For a second she turned towards me and I saw a flare of bluish fire rise from her outstretched hands, a burning something between her fingers lighting the surrounding faces purple…

For a moment I was frozen with terror. Irrational thoughts – arcane sacrifice, devil worship, live burnt-offerings to some savage ancient god – leaped within my mind and I almost fled, stumbling in the thick mud, hands held out to prevent a fall into the tangle of blackthorn bushes which hid me. Then relief. Relief, understanding and a searing embarrassment at my own absurdity as she turned back towards me, the flames dying down even as I watched.

`Mother of God!' My knees almost gave way beneath me with the intensity of my reaction. `Pancakes. Flambeed pancakes. That was all.’

I was half-laughing now, breathless with hysteria. My stomach ached and I dug my fists into my guts to stop the laughter spilling out. As I watched she lit another mountain of pancakes and served them deftly from the frying pan, liquid flame running from plate to plate like St Elmo's fire.

Pancakes. This is what they have done to me, pare. Hearing things – seeing things – which are not there. This is what she has done to me, she and her friends from the river. And yet she looks so innocent. Her face is open, delighted. The sound of her voice across the water – her laughter mingling with that of the others – is alluring, vibrant with humour and affection. I find myself wondering what my own voice would sound like amongst those others, my own laughter meshed with hers, and the night is suddenly very lonely, very cold, very empty.

If only I could, I thought. Walk out from my hiding place and join them. Eat, drink – suddenly the thought of food was a delirious imperative, my mouth filling enviously. To gorge myself on pancakes, to warm myself by the brazier and the light from her golden skin.

Is this temptation, pare? I tell myself that I resisted it, that my inner strength defeated it, that my prayer – please oh please oh please oh please – was one of deliverance, not of desire.

Did you feel this too? Did you pray? And when you succumbed that day in the chancery, was the pleasure bright and warm as a gypsies' campfire, or was it with a brittle sob of exhaustion, a final unheard cry in the darkness? I should not have blamed you. One man – even a priest – cannot hold back the tide for ever. And I was too young to know the loneliness of temptation, the sour taste of envy. I was very young, pere. I looked up to you. It was less the nature of the act – or even with whom you performed it – than the simple fact that you were capable of sin. Even you, pare. And knowing that, I realized that nothing was safe. No-one. Not even myself.

I do not know, how long I watched, pare. Too long, for when I moved at last my hands and feet were without sensation. I saw Roux among the gathering, and his friends Blanche and Zezette, Armande Voizin, Luc Clairmont, Narcisse, the Arab, Guillaume Duplessis, the tattooed girl, the fat woman with the green headscarf.

Even the children – mainly river children, but some like Jeannot Drou and, of course, Anouk Rocher – were there, some almost asleep, some dancing by the river's edge or eating sausages wrapped in thick barley pancakes, or drinking hot lemonade laced with ginger. My sense of smell seemed preternaturally enhanced so that I could almost taste every dish – the fish grilled in the ashes of the brazier, the roasted goat's cheese, the dark pancakes and the light, hot chocolate cake, the confit de canard and the spiced merguez. I could hear Armande's voice above the rest; her laughter was like that of an overtired child. Sprinkled across the water's edge, the lanterns and candles looked like Christmas lights.

At first I took the cry of alarm for one of amusement. A bright spike of sound, laughter, perhaps, or hysteria. For a moment I thought one of the children had fallen into the water. Then I saw the fire.

It was on one of the boats closest to the bank, a little distance away from the revellers. A fallen lantern, maybe, a careless cigarette, a candle dripping burning wax onto a roll of dry canvas. Whatever it was, it spread fast. One second it was on the roof of the boat, the next it had spilled onto the deck. The flames began the same gauzy blue as the flambeed pancakes, but warmed as they spread, becoming the vivid orange of a burning haystack on a hot August night. The redhaired man, Roux, was the first to react. I supposed it was his boat. The flames had barely time to change colour and he was on his feet, jumping from one boat to another to reach the fire. One of the women called after him in distress. But he paid no attention. He is surprisingly light on his-feet. He crossed two other boats in a matter of thirty seconds, yanking at the ropes which bound them together to free them, kicking one untethered barque away from the next and moving on. I saw Vianne Rocher watching with her hands outstretched; the others stood in a silent circle at the jetty. The barques which had been freed from their moorings drifted slowly downriver, and the water itself was choppy with their rocking motion. Roux's boat was already beyond salvation, black pieces of airborne debris drifting on a column of heat across the water. In spite of this I saw him grab a roll of half-charred tarpaulin and try to beat at the flames, but the heat was too intense. A speck of fire adhered to his jeans, another to his shirt; dropping the tarpaulin he beat them out with his hands. Another attempt to reach the cabin, one arm shielding his face; I heard him cry out some angry profanity in his thick dialect. Armande was calling to him now, her voice sharp with worry. I caught something about petrol, and tanks.

Fear and elation, clawing so sweetly, nostalgically, at my viscera. It was so like that other time, the smell of burning 'rubber, the full-throated roar of the fire, the reflections… I could almost have believed that I was a boy again, that you were the cure, both of us absolved by some miracle of all responsibility.

Ten seconds later Roux jumped off the burning boat into the water. I saw him swimming back, though the petrol tank did not rupture until several minutes later, and then it was with a dull thumping sound and not the gaudy fireworks which I had expected. For a few minutes he disappeared from sight, hidden by the strings of flame skating effortlessly across the water. I stood up, no longer afraid of being seen, craning my neck to catch sight of him. I think I prayed.

You see pere. I am not without compassion. I feared for him.

Vianne Rocher was already in the water, hip-deep in the sluggish Tannes with her red coat soaked to the armpits, one hand over her eyes, scanning the river. Beside her, Armande, sounding anxious and old. And when they pulled him dripping onto the jetty I felt relief so great that my knees buckled and I fell into the mud at the river bank in an attitude of prayer. But the elation of seeing their camp burning – that was glorious, like a memory of childhood,, the joy of secretly, watching, of knowing… In my darkness I felt power, pere, I felt that somehow I had caused it – the fire, the confusion, the man's escape – that somehow by my proximity I had brought about a reenactment of that distant summer. Not a miracle. Nothing so gauche as that. But a sign. Surely, a sign.

I crept home in silence, keeping to the shadows. In the crowd of onlookers, of crying children, angry adults, silent stragglers holding hands before the blazing river like dazed children in some evil fairy tale, one man could easily pass unnoticed. One man – or two.

I saw him as I reached the top of the hill. Sweating and grinning, he was red-faced from his exertions, his glasses smeared. The sleeves of his checked shirt were rolled above the elbow, and in the lurid afterglow of the fire his skin looked hard and red as polished cedar. He showed no surprise at my presence but simply grinned. A foolish, sly grin, like that of a child caught,out by an indulgent parent. I noticed that he smelt strongly of petrol.

`Evening, mon pere.’

I dared not acknowledge him, as if by so doing I should be obliged to admit a responsibility of which silence might absolve me. Instead I lowered my head, a reluctant conspirator, and hurried on. Behind me I sensed Muscat watching me, face slickered with sweat and reflections, but when I finally looked back, he had gone.

A candle, dripping wax. A cigarette flicked across the water, bouncing into a pile of stovewood. One of their lanterns, the bright paper catching, powdering the deck with embers. Anything could have started it.

Anything at all.