The Tenth Man

6

A MAN CALLING HIMSELF JEAN-LOUIS CHARLOT CAME UP the drive of the house at St. Jean de Brinac.

Everything was the same as he had remembered it and yet very slightly changed, as if the place and he had grown older at different rates. Four years ago he had shut the house up, and while for him time had almost stood still, here time had raced ahead. For hundreds of years the house had grown older almost imperceptibly: years were little more than changed shadow on the brickwork. Like an elderly woman the house had been kept in flower-the face lifted at the right moment. Now in four years all that work had been undone: the lines broke through the enamel which had not been renewed.

In the drive the gravel was obscured by weeds; a tree had fallen right across the way, and though somebody had lopped the branches for firewood, the trunk still lay there to prove that for many seasons no car had driven up to the house. Every step was familiar to the bearded man who came cautiously round every bend like a stranger. He had been born here: as a child he had played games of hide-and-seek in the bushes; as a boy he had carried the melancholy and sweetness of first love up and down the shaded drive. Ten yards further on there would be a small gate onto the path which led between heavy laurels to the kitchen garden.

The gate had gone: only the posts showed that memory hadn’t failed him. Even the nails which had held the hinges had been carefully extracted to be used elsewhere for some more urgent purpose. He turned off the drive. He didn’t want to face the house yet: like a criminal who returns to the scene of his crime or a lover who returns to haunt the place of farewell he moved in intersecting circles; he didn’t dare to move in a straight line and finish his pilgrimage prematurely, with nothing more to do forever after.

The greenhouse had obviously been unused for years, though he remembered telling the old man who worked in the garden that he was to keep the garden stocked, and sell the vegetables for what he could get in Brinac. Perhaps the old man had died and no one in the village had the initiative to appoint himself as successor. Perhaps there was no one left in the village. From the trampled unsown earth beside the greenhouse he could see the ugly red-brick church pointing like an exclamation mark at the sky, closing a sentence he couldn’t read from here.

Then he saw that something after all had been planted: a patch had been cleared of weeds for the sake of some potatoes, cabbages, savoys. It was like the garden you give to children to cultivate: a space little larger than a carpet. All around the desolation lapped. He remembered what had been here in the old days-the strawberry beds, the bushes of currants and raspberries, the sweet and bitter smell of herbs. The wall which separated this garden from the fields had tumbled in one place, or else some looter had picked his way through the old stonework to get into the garden: it had all happened a long time ago, for nettles had grown up over the fallen stones. From the gap he stood and looked a long time at something which had been beyond the power of time to change, the long slope of grass toward the elms and the river. He had thought that home was something one possessed, but the things one had possessed were cursed with change; it was what one didn’t possess that remained the same and welcomed him. This landscape was not his, not anybody’s home: it was simply home.

Now there was nothing more for him to do except go away. If he went away, what could he do but drown himself in the river? His money was nearly gone: already after less than a week of liberty he had learned how impossible it was for him to find work.

At seven o’clock in the morning (five minutes past by the mayor’s watch and two minutes to by Pierre’s alarm clock) the Germans had come for Voisin, Lenotre and Janvier: That had been his worst shame up to date, sitting against the wall, watching his companions’ faces, waiting for the crack of the shots. He was one of them now, a man without money or position, and unconsciously they had accepted him, and begun to judge him by their own standards, and to condemn him. The shame he felt now shuffling like a beggar up to the door of the house went nearly as deep. He had realized reluctantly that Janvier could still be used for his benefit even after his death.

The empty windows watched him come like the eyes of men sitting round the wall of a cell. He looked up once and took it all in: the unpainted frames, the broken glass in what had been his study, the balustrade at the terrace broken in two places. Then his eyes fell to his feet again, scuffling up the gravel. It occurred to him that the house might still be empty, but when he turned the corner of the terrace and came slowly up the steps to the door, he saw the same diminutive signs of occupation as he had noticed in the kitchen garden. The steps were spotless. When he put out his hand and pulled the bell it was like a gesture of despair. He had tried his best not to return but here he was.