The Tenth Man

15

THE GREAT ACTOR CAROSSE SAT IN THE POTTING SHED AND considered his situation. He was not cast down by his somewhat humiliating circumstances. He had the democratic feeling of a duke who feels himself safely outside questions of class and convention. Carosse had acted before George V of Great Britain, King Carol of Rumania, the Archduke Otto, the special envoy of the President of the United States, Field Marshal Goering, innumerable ambassadors, including the Italian, the Russian and Herr Abetz. They glittered in his memory like jewels: he felt that one or another of these great or royal men could always when necessary be pawned in return for “the ready.” All the same he had been momentarily disquieted early that morning in St. Jean, seeing side by side on the police station wall a poster that included his name in a list of collaborators at large and an announcement of a murder in a village more than fifty miles away. The details of the crime were, of course, unknown to the police, otherwise Carosse felt sure that the description would have read homicide. He had acted purely in self-defense to prevent the foolish little bourgeois from betraying him. He had left the body, he thought, safely concealed under the gorse bushes on the common, and had borrowed the papers which might just get him past a formal cursory examination. Now that they could no longer be useful to him, and might prove dangerous, he had burned them in the potting shed and buried the ashes in a flower pot.

When he saw the two notices he had realized it was no good going further. Not until those notices everywhere had become torn and windblown and discoloured by time. He had got to lie up and there was only one house where that was possible. The man Charlot had already lied to his mistress by supporting Carosse’s imposture, and he had broken the law by harbouring a collaborator: there was evidently here a screw that could be turned sharply. But as he sat on a wheelbarrow and considered the situation further his imagination kindled with a more daring project. In his mind a curtain rose on a romantic situation that only an actor of the finest genius could make plausible, though it was perhaps not quite original: Shakespeare had thought of it first.

Watching through a knothole in the wall he Saw Charlot cross the fields toward St. Jean: it was too early for market and he was hurrying. Patiently Carosse waited, his plump backside grooved on the edge of the wheelbarrow, and he saw Charlot return with the priest. Some time later he saw the priest leave alone, carrying his attache case. His visit could have only one meaning, and immediately the creative process absorbed the new fact and modified the scene he was going to play. But still he waited. If genius be indeed an infinite capacity for taking pains, Carosse was an actor of genius. Presently his patience was rewarded: he saw Charlot leave the house and make his way again toward St. Jean. Brushing the leaf mold off his overcoat Carosse stretched away the cramp like a large, lazy, neutered cat. The gun in his pocket thumped against his thigh.

No actor born has ever quite rid himself of stage fright and Carosse crossing in front of the house to the kitchen door was very frightened. The words of his part seemed to sink out of his mind; his throat dried and when he pulled the bell it was a short timid tiptoe clang that answered from the kitchen, unlike the peremptory summons of his previous visit. He kept his hand on the revolver in his pocket; it was like an assurance of manhood. When the door opened he stammered a little, saying, “Excuse me.” But frightened as he was, he recognized that the involuntary stammer had been just right: it was pitiable, and pity had got to wedge the door open like a beggar’s foot. The girl was in shadow and he couldn’t see her face; he stumbled on, hearing his own voice, how it sounded, and gaining confidence. The door remained open: he didn’t ask for anything better yet.

He said, “I hadn’t got beyond the village when I heard about your mother. Mademoiselle, I had to come back. I know you hate me but, believe me, I never intended this-to kill your mother too.”

“You needn’t have come back. She knew nothing about Michel.” It was promising; he longed to put his foot across the threshold, but he knew such a move would be fatal. He was a man of cities, unused to country isolation, and he wondered what tradesman might at any moment come up behind his back-or Charlot might return prematurely. He was listening all the time for the scrunch of gravel.

“Mademoiselle,” he pleaded, “I had to come back. Last night you didn’t let me speak. I didn’t even finish the message from Michel.” (Damnation, he thought, that’s not the part: what message?) He hedged: “He gave it to me the night he died,” and was astonished by the success of his speech.

“The night he died? Did he die in the night?”

“Yes, of course. In the night.”

“But Charlot told me it was in the morning-the next morning.”

“Oh, what a liar that man has always been,” Carosse moaned.

“But why should he lie?”

“He wanted to make it worse for me,” Carosse improvised. He felt a wave of pride in his own astuteness that carried him over the threshold into the house: Therese Mangeot had stepped back to let him in. “It’s worse, isn’t it, to let a man die after a whole night to think about it? I wasn’t villain enough for him.”

“He said you tried once to take the offer back.”

“Once,” Carosse exclaimed. “Yes, once. That was all the chance I had before they fetched him out.” The tears stood in his eyes as he pleaded, “Mademoiselle, believe me. It was at night.”

“Yes,” she said, “I know it was at night. I woke with the pain.”

“What time was that?”

“Just after midnight.”

“That was the time,” he said.

“How mean of him,” she said. “How mean to lie about that.”

“You don’t know that man Charlot, mademoiselle, as we knew him in prison. Mademoiselle, I know I’m beneath your contempt. I bought my life at the expense of your brother’s, but at least I didn’t cheat to save it.”

“What do you mean?”

He had remembered the mayor’s description of how they all drew lots. He said, “Mademoiselle, we drew in alphabetical order starting at the wrong end because this man Charlot pleaded that it should be that way. At the end there were only two slips left for him and me, and one of them was marked with the death token. There was a draft in the cell and it must have lifted the slips of paper and shown him which was marked. He took out of turn-Charlot should have come after Chavel-and he took the unmarked slip.”

She pointed out doubtfully the obvious flaw: “You could have demanded the draw again.”

“Mademoiselle,” Carosse said, I thought at the time it was an honest mistake. Where a life depended on it, one couldn’t penalize a man for an honest mistake.”

“And yet you bought your life?”

He was playing, he knew it, a flawed character. The inconsistencies didn’t add up: the audience had to be stormed by romantic acting. He pleaded, “Mademoiselle, there are so many things you don’t know. That man has put the worst light on everything. Your brother was a very sick man.”

“I know.”

He caught his breath with relief: it was as if now he couldn’t go wrong, and he became reckless. “How he loved you and worried about what would happen to you when he died. He used to show me your photograph…”

“He had no photograph.”

“That astonishes me.” It was an understatement: momentarily it staggered him. He had been confident, but he recovered immediately. “There was a photograph he always showed me; it was a street scene torn out of a newspaper-a beautiful girl half hidden in the crowd. I can guess now who it was: it wasn’t you, but it seemed to him like you, and so he kept it and pretended… People behave strangely in prison, mademoiselle. When he asked me to sell him the slip…”

“Oh, no,” she said, “no. You are too plausible. He asked you… That wasn’t how it happened.”

He told her mournfully, “You have been filled with lies, mademoiselle. I’m guilty enough, but would I have returned if I was as guilty as he makes out?”

“It wasn’t Charlot. It was the man who sent me the will and the other papers. The Mayor of Bourge.”

“You don’t have to tell me any more, mademoiselle. Those two men were as thick as thieves. I understand it all now.”

“I wish I did. I wish I did.”

“Between them they cooked it perfectly.” With his heart in his mouth, he said, “I will say goodbye, mademoiselle-and God bless you.” Dieu—he dwelt on the word as though he loved it, and indeed it was a word he loved, perhaps the most effective single word on the romantic stage: “God bless,” “I call God to my witness,” “God may forgive you”-all the grand hackneyed phrases hung around Dieu like drapery. He turned as slowly as he dared toward the door.

“But the message from Michel?”