Seven Houses in France

XXII

CHRYSOSTOME HAD NEVER forgotten the words he heard as a child from the parish priest in Britancourt.

‘Cleanliness is the greatest of the virtues,’ the priest told the children after their chance meeting with a syphilitic man who lived in one of the caves near the village. ‘If a Christian keeps himself clean inside and out, he will develop an iron exterior that no enemy sword can penetrate.’

The priest was a lean man who, for many years, had worked as an army chaplain, and his forthright words made a great impression on them all. While the priest was speaking, it seemed to Chrysostome that he was looking at him in particular, as if addressing him directly. He felt proud of this, and that feeling of satisfaction only increased when the priest asked him to stay on after the talk.

‘I am not a prophet like Daniel, but I believe that one day you will be a soldier,’ the priest said. ‘Listen, Chrysostome, if you keep yourself clean, abstain from drink and tobacco, you will be an astonishing marksman, a rifleman comparable to those in Napoleon’s guard. You have amazed everyone with your extraordinarily sure aim with the sling, but if you want to be a real David and defeat the giant Goliath, then you must nurture that gift and encourage it to grow.’

The priest’s words found a sweet, warm, snug corner in Chrysostome’s heart, comparable, metaphorically speaking, to that found by birds’ eggs in their nest. Up until then, there had been nothing remarkable about his life apart from being poor and having no mother, for she had died shortly after he was born, and he felt like a nobody. Then suddenly, there was the priest predicting that he would be a rifleman as good as those in Napoleon’s guard!

A few days later, when the priest tied the blue ribbon of the Virgin around his neck, he promised himself that, one day, he would, indeed, be a soldier and become an excellent shot with a steady hand and a prodigious eye. He would always keep himself clean, and he would never fall ill with syphilis or any similar infection.

The blue ribbon sealed his promise.

Chrysostome worked on a farm in Britancourt from morning to night, and his arms and legs had grown strong from driving the oxen and the plough. At twelve, he had the muscles of a fifteen-year-old, and at fifteen, the muscles of an eighteen-year-old. When the other village boys quarrelled with him and punched him, they would immediately back off when their fists met with flesh as hard as iron, just as the priest had foretold. Chrysostome could even defeat the fittest of wrestlers. On one occasion, a soldier from a neighbouring village yelled an insult that had been doing the rounds among certain people in Britancourt, namely, that there was a reason the priest gave him such special attention. Chrysostome picked up first a stone and then his sling, and left the slanderer lying flat on his back on the ground, unconscious. No one dared provoke his anger after that, not even if they were the size of a Goliath, and people generally spoke well of him and took care to do so loudly.

Then one day, something changed. Chrysostome seemed depressed and cast down. As he walked from the fields to the farm and from the farm to the fields, he never once raised his eyes from the ground. The priest pondered what could be wrong. The boy was fifteen, and would soon turn sixteen. On the other hand, he had not been to confession for a month, whereas, normally, he never let a week pass without confessing. He knew then that Chrysostome was under serious attack, not from the other boys in Britancourt or anyone else who, so to speak, walked the same roads, but from the enemy within. He went to fetch his pupil and brought him back to the church.

First, they prayed, kneeling before the Virgin. Then they went through the main sacristy behind the altar into a second, older sacristy that served as a storeroom and where they kept the images of saints for which there was no room in the church.

In the old sacristy, the smell of damp mingled with that of faded flowers. Any other smells, the wild pinks growing along the edges of the fields, the mimosas in the orchards, the roses in the gardens, along with the scents of all the other flowers in the world, remained, as did the world itself, outside the church walls. The priest and Chrysostome were alone, surrounded by wooden saints.

The priest indicated the two saints nearest to them.

‘This one here is St Luis Gonzaga. That one is St Sebastian,’ he said.

The two saints had a tender look in their eye, but, unlike Chrysostome, they were gazing heavenwards, not down at the ground.

Sebastian was tied to a tree and had arrows stuck in his body, which streamed with blood.

‘You, too, can feel the pain caused by the sharp points of arrows, isn’t that right, Chrysostome?’

Chrysostome kept his head bowed.

‘Except, of course, your arrows come from within.’

The parish priest began pacing up and down between the two saints, his eyes half-closed, his breathing agitated. With each step he took, his cassock rustled, and every time he turned, it created a faint breeze.

Finally, he stopped, his clasped hands pressed to his chest. This was the same posture as St Luis Gonzaga, but the expression on the priest’s face was quite different. His face was made of flesh, for a start, and much thinner than the saint’s, and one could see the veins on his forehead and the lines on his cheeks. At last, he recovered his composure and was able to ask the question he needed to ask:

‘Tell me the truth, now, do you masturbate?’

Chrysostome’s head sank still lower, and the priest remained in that St Luis Gonzaga pose, waiting for his answer.

The answer was inaudible, but to the point. Chrysostome nodded. The priest sat down. He, too, had his head bowed.

‘Sometimes the Lord’s ways are very strange, Chrysostome. He gives us vigour, but the consequences of that vigour are not always pleasing to him and he punishes them. It was vigour that impelled Michel to go with women and, as you saw, the poor wretch ended his days as a prisoner to madness.’

Chrysostome was looking at him, uncomprehending.

‘Michel was the man you saw in the cave, the one who was ill with syphilis,’ explained the priest. ‘He was a member of this parish and often received the Sacred Host from my hand. Then he became a soldier, and vigour drove him to visit unclean establishments, houses of ill repute. And, as you see, the Lord sent him a terrible punishment. As I imagine you know, shortly after you saw him in the cave, he was found drowned in a pool in the river. Now he will be in Hell.’

The smell of damp in the sacristy grew more intense, as did the silence. Had it not been for his eyes, Chrysostome could have been mistaken for another wooden saint, but his eyes had an ardour in them that wood never has. Indeed, at that moment they were like molten iron.

‘Wait one moment,’ the priest said, getting up.

He started rummaging around in a corner full of various bits and pieces, until he found a musket wrapped in a military cape.

‘It’s an 1867 Mauser, but it’s in good condition. I tried it out myself not long ago. Ask your father to show you how to use it.’

Chrysostome stared at the weapon apprehensively, not daring to take it.

‘You guessed correctly. It belonged to that poor unfortunate, Michel,’ said the priest. ‘But don’t worry, you won’t catch syphilis from it. On the contrary, it will protect you from the disease. Owning this weapon will remind you of what happened to him and of the beauty of keeping oneself pure.’

The bell began to toll, calling people to prayer. The priest handed the musket to Chrysostome, indicating that it was time for him to leave. The women of Britancourt always arrived very punctually at church, and he liked to be there at the altar, waiting for them.

‘Yes, the Lord moves in mysterious ways. He gives us vigour and then punishes us for having it,’ he said, as if still pondering the matter. A mischievous smile appeared on his face. ‘However, I think in our case, there is a solution, and I’ll tell you what it is, Chrysostome. The solution lies in … pollutio. Continue along that path. I wouldn’t dare to say so in front of the Virgin, but both these saints, Luis Gonzaga and Sebastian, were soldiers and they won’t be shocked by such manly talk.’

Like the two saints, Chrysostome now had his head raised. He wanted to know more.

‘A minor or venial sin is always preferable to a grave one. Far better a daily pollutio than visiting a house of ill repute. And it’s safer, too, Chrysostome. Don’t forget that. Much safer. Are we in agreement?’

Chrysostome nodded and stored away that word pollutio like another small egg. Then, with the musket underneath his arm, he followed the priest out of the old sacristy, leaving St Sebastian, St Luis Gonzaga and the other wooden saints alone.

The priest did not use the word pollutio again until the time came for Chrysostome to say goodbye to Britancourt. He was twenty by then and setting off to Antwerp to do his military training and join the Force Publique. After six months in the barracks, he would leave for Africa.

They were standing outside the church, waiting for the coach and talking about the Mauser, which Chrysostome was now handing back to the priest since he clearly wouldn’t need it at the barracks.

‘The partridges we Britancourt priests have eaten thanks to you and this Mauser!’ said the priest. ‘I’ve certainly never regretted giving it to you!’

Then, when he heard the jingle of bells announcing the arrival of the coach in the main street of the village, the priest spoke in a different tone:

‘Do you have the blue ribbon with you, Chrysostome?’ he asked.

Chrysostome undid the top buttons of his shirt to reveal his chest and the blue ribbon. The priest’s face lit up with joy.

‘Yes, wear it like that, Chrysostome, in full view! Let the other soldiers see that symbol of your purity! And at difficult times, remember, Our Lady is with you. And I will be praying for you too!’

The coach stopped in front of them. The priest embraced Chrysostome. He was not his son, but he loved him as if he were.

During his first year in Yangambi, Chrysostome did not lack for letters from the priest. Once a month, he would look in his pigeon-hole at the Club Royal and find an envelope with just one word on the return address: Britancourt. In a very firm, upright hand, the priest would bring him up to date on the village news, on the births and deaths, on how things were with his father — ‘he’s had a good crop of beet this year’; he would also summarise the sermons he had given and sometimes, along with comments about the weather, he would speak to him of flowers — ‘there are a lot of poppies this year, some meadows are completely red with them’. The letters were quite long, and Chrysostome read them a little at a time. And with each reading, the words from his childhood nestled deeper down inside his heart. ‘Cleanliness is the greatest of the virtues. If a Christian keeps himself clean inside and out, he will develop an iron exterior that no enemy sword can penetrate.’ He also remembered the priest’s other advice: ‘The solution lies in … pollutio. Continue along that path.’

Thanks to pollutio, he kept himself healthy, pure, and maintained an iron exterior, quite unlike the other officers of the Force Publique stationed in Yangambi. Most of them were infected with some vile disease or other and had to turn to Livo, who gave them a plant called olamuriaki, which helped relieve the pain and discomfort. The worst afflicted were, as always, Richardson and Van Thiegel. On one occasion, after drinking heavily, Richardson had shown them his male member, exclaiming like a madman: ‘What do you think of that, eh?’ Chrysostome thought it disgusting, covered as it was in scabs and ulcers. And the Lieutenant, that loudmouth Cocó, was in an even worse state. His hands shook now, although it was hard to say in his case if this was due to excessive drinking or because he overdid the olamuriaki. And the fool thought himself a good marksman! Didn’t he realise that the other officers let him win in the shooting competitions? Until, that is, Chrysostome came along, because he never played games and would never have allowed anyone to beat him, not even the King himself. If a man wanted to win, then he should improve his aim. He should live in purity and prudence. He should wear a blue ribbon around his neck.

Captain Lalande Biran was better than the other officers. He avoided infection by having only virgins brought to him, thus ensuring Donatien’s health as well, because in that respect, too, his assistant followed him as faithfully as a dog. In other ways, though, Lalande Biran was a strange man. Chrysostome would have liked to talk to the priest about him, but when he tried to put his thoughts down on paper, he couldn’t. He found it hard to explain exactly what the Captain was like. Livo said he was a muano, a servant of the Devil, which is why he could be two or three different men at any one time; it was why his oimbé was always so murky. Perhaps Livo was right. The Captain didn’t drink much, but he smoked a lot; he enjoyed swimming, drawing and writing poetry, and was generous enough to be able to recognise other men’s good qualities. He had often told Chrysostome how much he admired him as a marksman and said that when he returned to Brussels, he would place him at the service of a duke who held a high position at Court and was in need of protection. Believing that the Captain respected him, Chrysostome had felt profoundly disappointed when Lalande Biran gave in to Van Thiegel’s cajolings and sent him off into the jungle in search of girls, as if he were some twopenny-halfpenny officer, on a par with Donatien. That order had been a hard blow to Chrysostome. He went from thinking himself the best soldier in Yangambi to feeling that he was the lowliest of servants. He would have liked to talk to the priest about it, but found having to acknowledge the degradation so shameful that he could not write a single line. In the end, he told Livo, who gave his usual response:

‘The Captain is a muano. A great enemy.’

Livo put his fingers to his eyes to remind Chrysostome of Lalande Biran’s blue-gold eyes, the eyes of a muano.

Life went on for Chrysostome with no great upsets, as long as he kept safely stored away, like eggs in a nest, the words engraved on his heart. Suddenly, though, the enemy’s sword launched a fierce attack on him.

First, with one powerful blow, it snatched the priest from him. He received the priest’s last letter shortly after winning the contest for shooting the most mandrills. ‘The Lord is calling me,’ the priest wrote in a hand that was no longer upright or firm. ‘I will protect you from above. Goodbye, my child.’ For the first time, Chrysostome thought about his life, about the twenty or so years he had been in the world, and a shudder ran through him. At night, clutching the gold medal of Our Lady in his hands, he would pray himself to sleep.

A few weeks later, the enemy’s sword struck again. This was a far gentler attack, or so it seemed, but that only made it all the more dangerous, very dangerous indeed.

One day, on an expedition in search of another virgin for the Captain, Chrysostome came across Bamu. He noticed her at once. Her skin was cinnamon-coloured rather than the deep black of the tribes living near Yangambi, and she had green eyes. And her hair, although short, wasn’t stiff and curly. The most surprising thing, from his point of view as a soldier, was her attitude. When cornered, she did not meekly bow her head, but grabbed a spear with her two hands and forced the askaris accompanying him to take a step back. A grey-and-red parrot flew out of its open cage onto the roof of the hut and started shrieking: ‘Bamu! Bamu! Bamu!’

Chrysostome ordered the askaris to march on and leave the place as quickly as they could, but it was too late. The arrow, just one arrow, but far more lethal than all the arrows fired at St Sebastian, had pierced his heart. And its poison left him feeling confused, intoxicated, incapable of seeing what lay before him, incapable of hearing what the askaris were saying; he was, in short, in love. In his mind he heard the parrot shrieking: ‘Bamu! Bamu! Bamu!’

When he returned to Yangambi, he tried to remove the arrow, but the poison was already flowing in his veins, and nothing could now stop the transformation that had begun in the jungle. He found Livo and asked if he knew a tall girl with light skin and green eyes.

‘Bamu,’ said Livo.

‘Is she clean?’ he asked.

‘She is a child.’

Chrysostome gave a sigh of relief.

Livo had travelled, he had known many white men, and this question did not surprise him. The only thing that shocked him was Chrysostome asking him to act as intermediary, because he wanted to make a formal visit to Bamu and needed the consent of her parents to do this. Unbeknown to Livo, Chrysostome was following the customs of Britancourt peasants, not those of the soldiers of Yangambi.

‘Are you going to send her a present?’ Livo asked. He, in turn, was following African customs.

‘I’d like to, but I don’t know what to give her.’

‘Send her a box of biscuits. I’ll tell you which are my daughter’s favourites. Bamu is sure to like them too.’

As the best marksman in Yangambi, Chrysostome did not have to go every day to keep watch over the rubber-tappers, because he needed time to check the other officers’ rifles and keep them in tip-top condition. Taking advantage of these free moments, he started visiting Bamu, always taking with him a box of biscuits, and what was bound to happen happened; first, there were kisses and then caresses. So powerful was the effect of the sweet poison that he forgot the blue ribbon around his neck and the old words about purity, which had now been relegated to the remotest corner of his heart.

The number of his pollutio increased. Despite that, the danger continued to grow. On one such visit, Chrysostome gave Bamu some emerald earrings and she hurled herself at him, embracing him with arms and legs. This put Chrysostome in a terrible predicament, and only his condition as commençant saved him from plunging into sin.

Naturally, the Virgin was not about to give up the struggle, and that very day, as if fallen from Heaven, she appeared on the beach at Yangambi. Chrysostome saw her from the canoe, on his way back from visiting Bamu, and being utterly oblivious to everything apart from Bamu’s existence, he did not even recognise her. He forgot that it was nearly Christmas and that they were expecting a delegation from Brussels. The canoe travelled a few yards downriver, closer to the beach, and then he understood. It was the Virgin, the statue they were going to place on the island of Samanga.

He saw in that apparition the hand of his parish priest. He had obviously wanted to keep the promise he made in his last letter — ‘I will protect you from above’ — and had placed that symbol of purity there on the beach, where she could best be seen.

When he reached her side, he knelt down and prayed. However, even at that moment of devotion, the image of Bamu was still in his mind, and it was clear that she would never surrender either. Britancourt would fight its corner and so would the jungle. The priest would give him good advice, and so would Livo.

In the struggle that began inside him, sometimes it was the Virgin and all he had learned in Britancourt and from the priest that predominated, but at others, it was Bamu, the jungle and Livo who came out on top. When they set off upriver, for example, and placed the statue on Samanga and celebrated mass, it seemed that victory would go to the First Team, but as soon as the boat set off back to Yangambi, the Second Team — Bamu, the jungle, Livo — returned to the attack. And then, unexpectedly, Livo himself appeared. The Roi du Congo had to pick him up on the river bank, shortly before they reached the mouth of the Lomami.

By the time they reached Yangambi, the competing armies within were at stalemate, but he was troubled by the thought of Bamu waiting for his visit on the farther shore. When he saw Livo walking up to the Club Royal, carrying three baskets on a long pole, he considered talking to him about his dilemma. In the end, though, he didn’t. Livo looked ill, and Chrysostome preferred not to risk infection.