The Tenth Man

17

THAT NIGHT MADAME MANGEOT DIED. THE PRIEST HAD again been summoned, and from his room on the top floor Charlot heard the sounds of death going on-the footsteps to and fro, the clink of a glass, a tap running, two voices whispering. His door opened and Carosse looked in. He had moved into what he called his own bedroom, but now he was keeping out of the way of strangers.

He whispered, “Thank God, that’s nearly over. It gives me the creeps.”

Death is not private: the breath doesn’t simply stop in the body and that’s the end-whisper, clink, the creak of a board, the gush of water into a sink. Death was like an operation performed urgently without the proper attendants-or like a childbirth. One expected at any moment to hear the wail of the newborn, but what one heard at last was simply silence. The tap was stopped, the glass was quiet, the boards ceased to creak.

Carosse gave a contented sigh. “It’s happened.” They listened together like conspirators. He whispered, “This brings it to a head. She’ll be wondering what to do. She can’t stay here alone.”

“I must go and see the priest home,” Charlot said.

The priest was pulling on his galoshes in the hall. On the way back through the fields he asked curtly, “You’ll be leaving now?”

“Perhaps.”

“Either you will have to go, or Mademoiselle Mangeot will have to find a companion from the village.”

Charlot was irritated by the man’s assumption that human actions were governed incontestably by morality-not even by morality, but by the avoidance of scandal. He said, “It’s for Mademoiselle Mangeot to decide.”

They stopped at the outskirts of the village. The priest said, “Mademoiselle Mangeot is a young woman very easily swayed. She is very ignorant of life, very simple.” He stood like a black exclamation mark against the gray early-morning sky: he had an appearance of enormous arrogance and certainty.

“I wouldn’t have said that. She has seen a good deal of life in Paris. She is not a country girl,” he added maliciously.

“You don’t see more of life,” the priest said, “in one place than another. One man in a desert is enough life if you are trained to observe or have a bent for observation. She has no bent.”

“She seemed to me to have a great deal of gamin wisdom.”

“You didn’t bother, I imagine,” the priest said, “to notice whether it was really wisdom?”

“No.”

“Shrewdness often sounds like wisdom, and ignorance often sounds like shrewdness.”

“What do you want to say-or do?”

“You are a man of education, monsieur, and you won’t retort that this is none of my business. You know that it is my business. But you think because I say you must go or Mademoiselle Mangeot must find a companion that I’m prudish. It is not prudery, monsieur, but a knowledge of human nature which it is difficult to avoid if you sit like we do day after day, listening to men and women telling you what they have done and why. Mademoiselle Mangeot is in a condition now when any woman may do a foolish action. All the emotions have something in common. People are quite aware of the sorrow there always is in lust, but they are not so aware of the lust there is in sorrow. You don’t want to take advantage of that, monsieur.”

The clock in the ugly church struck. It was half past six: the hour when in prison he had made his only attempt to go back on his bargain; the hour when it had first become possible to make out Janvier’s unsleeping eyes. He said, “Trust me, Father. I want nothing but good for Mademoiselle Mangeot,” and turned and strode rapidly back toward the house. It was the hour when one saw clearly…

The lower rooms were in darkness, but there was a light on the landing, and when he entered the hall, he entered so quietly that neither person heard him. They were poised like players before a camera waiting for the director’s word to start. So much sorrow in lust and so much lust in sorrow, the priest had said-it was as if they were bent on exhibiting one half of the truth. He wondered what had just been said or done to slice the line of dissatisfaction on the man’s cheek and make the girl lean forward with hunger and tears.

“Why don’t you leave me alone?” she implored Carosse.

“Mademoiselle,” he cried, “you are alone now-so alone. But you need never be alone again. You’ve hated me, but that’s all over. You needn’t worry any more over this and that.” He knew the game so well, Charlot thought: the restless playboy knew how to offer what most people wanted more than love-peace. The words flowed like water-the water of Lethe.

“I’m so tired.”

“Therese,” he said, “you can rest now.”

He advanced a hand along the banister and laid it on hers: she let it lie. She said, “If I could trust anybody at all. I thought I could trust Charlot, but he lied to me about Michel.”

“You can trust me,” Carosse said, “because I’ve told you the worst. I’ve told you who I am.”

“Yes.” She said. “I suppose so.” He moved toward her beside the banister. It seemed incredible to Charlot that his falsity was not as obvious as a smell of sulphur, but she made no effort to avoid him. When he took her in his arms she let herself go with closed eyes like a suicide. Over her shoulder Carosse became suddenly aware of Charlot standing below. He smiled with triumph and winked a secret message.

“Mademoiselle Mangeot,” Charlot said. The girl detached herself and looked down at him with confusion and shame. He realized then how young she was, and how old they both were. He no longer felt the desire at all: only an immeasurable tenderness. The light on the landing was dimming as daylight advanced and she looked in the gray tide like a plain child who had been kept from bed by a party that has gone on too long.

“I didn’t know you were here,” she said. “How long…?”

Carosse watched him carefully; his right hand shifted from the girl’s arm to his pocket. He called cheerily down, “Well, Charlot, my dear fellow, did you see the priest safe home?”

“My name,” Charlot said, standing in the hall and addressing his words to Therese Mangeot, “is not Charlot. I am Jean-Louis Chavel.”