The Tenth Man

9

FOR TWENTY-FOUR HOURS IT WAS STRANGE AND BITTER TO BE living in his own house as an odd-job man, but after another twenty-four it was familiar and peaceful. If a man loves a place enough he doesn’t need to possess it: it’s enough for him to know that it is safe and unaltered-or only altered in the natural way by time and circumstance. Madame Mangeot and her daughter were like temporary lodgers. If they took a picture down it was only for some practical purpose-to save dusting, not because they wished to put another in its place; they would never have cut down a tree for the sake of a new view, or refurbished a room according to some craze of the moment. It was exaggeration even to regard them as legal lodgers: they were more like gypsies who had found the house empty and now lived in a few rooms, cultivated a corner of the garden well away from the road, and were careful to make no smoke by which they could be detected.

This was not entirely fanciful: he found they were in fact afraid of the village. Once a week the girl went into Brinac to the market, walking both ways though Charlot knew there was a cart they could have hired in St. Jean, and once a week the old woman went to Mass, her daughter taking her to the door of the church and meeting her there afterwards. The old woman never entered until a few moments before the Gospel was read, and at the very first moment, when the priest had pronounced the Ita Missa, she was on her feet. Thus she avoided all contact outside the church with the congregation. This suited Charlot well. It never occurred to either of them as strange that he too should avoid the village.

It was he who now went into Brinac on market day. The first time that he went he felt betrayed at every step by familiar things. It was as though even if no human spoke his name the signpost at the crossroads would betray him: the soles of his shoes signed his name along the margin of the road, and the slats of the bridge across the river sounded a personal note under his tread which seemed to him as unmistakable as an accent. Once on the road a cart passed him from St. Jean and he recognized the driver-a local farmer who had been crippled as a boy, losing his right arm in an accident with a tractor. As children they had played together in the fields round St. Jean, but after the boy’s accident and the long weeks in hospital obscure emotions of jealousy and pride kept them apart, and when they met at last it was as enemies. They couldn’t, like duellists, use the same weapons: his own strength was matched against the crippled boy’s wounding tongue which bore the bedsores of a long sickness.

Charlot stepped back into the ditch as the cart went by and put up his hand to shield his face, but Roche paid him no attention; the dark fanatical eyes watched the road in front, the great lopped torso stood like a ruined buttress between him and the world. In any case, as Charlot soon realized, there were too many on the roads to attract attention. All over France men were picking their way home, from prison camps, from hiding places, from foreign parts. If one had possessed a God’s-eye view of France, one would have detected a constant movement of tiny grains moving like dust across a floor shaped like a map.

He felt an enormous sense of relief when he returned to the house: it was really as if he had emerged from a savage and unaccountable country. He came in at the front door and trod the long passage to the kitchen as though he were retreating into the interstices of a cave. Therese Mangeot looked up from the pot she was stirring and said, “It’s odd the way you always come in at the front. Why don’t you use the back door like we do? It saves a lot of cleaning.”

“I’m sorry, mademoiselle,” he said. “I suppose it’s because I came that way first.”

She didn’t treat him like a servant: it was as if in her eyes he was just another gypsy camping there until the police turned them out. Only the old woman sometimes fell into an odd apoplectic rage at nothing at all and swore that when her son returned, they would live properly, like the rich people they were, with servants who were really servants, and not tramps taken off the road… On these occasions Therese Mangeot would turn away as if she didn’t hear, but afterwards she would fling some rough inapposite remark to Charlot-the kind of remark you only make to an equal, giving him as it were the freedom of the street.

He said, “There wasn’t much to be got in the market. It seemed absurd to be buying so many vegetables with this big garden here. Next year you won’t have to…” He counted out the money. He said, “I got some horsemeat. There wasn’t even a rabbit there. I think the change is right. You’d better check it.”

“I’ll trust you,” she said.

“Your mother won’t. Here’s my account.” He held out to her the list of things he had bought and watched her over her shoulder as she checked. “Jean-Louis Charlot…” She stopped reading. “It’s strange,” she said, and suddenly looking over her shoulder he realized what he had done-he had as near as made no difference signed his name as he had signed it on the deed of gift.

“What’s strange?” he asked.

“I could almost swear,” she said, “that I knew your writing, that I’d seen it somewhere…”

“I suppose you’ve seen it on a letter I’ve written.”

“You haven’t written any letters.”

“No. That’s true.” His lips were dry. He said, “Where do you think you’ve seen it…?” and waited an age for her answer.

She stared at it and stared at it. “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s like those times when you think you’ve been in a place before. I don’t suppose it means a thing.”