Eat Him If You Like (5 page)

8

THE SHEEP BARN

Mazerat the woodcutter and Bouteaudon the miller guarded the entrance to the tiny barn where they had taken Alain, for want of a better option. The mayor’s nephew, the baker, stood with them, pitchfork in hand. Inside it was dimly lit, and Alain was lying on a pile of straw, which reeked of sheep’s urine. A solitary ray of light slipped under the door, illuminating the barn and the hooves of three rams and a ewe, which all stood staring at Alain.

His appearance was grotesque. His tortured body burnt with pain. Breathing had become mechanical. The outlook was bleak. Feverishly, Alain muttered meaningless words, softly repeating his mother’s name. The villagers continued to clamour outside. It is surprising how quickly people can
lose their heads. Alain lay panting on the floor. With the three men barring the door and Antony and Dubois at his side, he started to think he might still get away alive. 

‘We’ll do all we can to save you,’ said Antony, reassuring him. ‘But it’s not easy with a cowardly mayor and faced with these madmen.’

‘Thank you, thank you …’

Antony’s patient words and actions were worthy of a saint.

‘Oh, Monsieur de Monéys, those men!’ gasped Dubois, as he turned Alain’s face gently towards him.

‘I look a fright, don’t I?’

Dubois placed a ripe fig on Alain’s lips and he sucked on it gingerly. Outside, the mob chanted, ‘Pruss-ian!
Prussian
!’ It was becoming increasingly difficult for Mazerat and his men to block the entrance. Antony and Dubois decided to help them and slipped out, closing the door behind them.

‘Have you all gone mad? When did you ever see a Prussian in Hautefaye?!’ they yelled.

‘He wanted to go to war despite being exempted!’ shouted Bouteaudon. ‘You all proclaim “Long live France!” but how many of you would do the same? Leave him alone and go and fight the Prussians where they really are – in Lorraine! That would be much braver than here at the fair where you’re five hundred against your one neighbour!’

‘Shut him up!’ shrieked Mazière. ‘Bring out the Prussian!’

Roumaillac and a handful of cronies had clambered onto the barn roof, pulled off some tiles and were relieving themselves! Piarrouty was shitting on Alain from above and hurling abuse. Alain was the victim of these people ’s
inner monster, visible in their contorted faces. He lay there his heart close to breaking, as they pissed and shat on him. Thankfully his few defenders – like gentle lights in the mist – were protecting him, despite his gruesome appearance. Alain recognised Bernard Mathieu’s voice yelling at the vile men on the roof.

‘You’re vandalising my building. Get down!’ he shouted, probably from his window.

‘We’re still having a crap.’

‘This is appalling! We’re surrounded by cowards!’ wailed Antony.

Chambort wanted to set fire to the barn. Someone dropped through the hole in the roof and landed in the straw. It was Thibassou, wielding the large knife he had taken from the blacksmith’s workbench earlier. Idly tossing the handle from one hand to the other, he seemed to be mulling over particularly evil thoughts.

‘I’m going to kill you,’ he said. A pool of light shone on the straw nearby.

‘But what have I done to you, Thibassou?’ asked Alain anxiously. There was a wild, feral look in the boy’s eyes.

Thibassou did not reply but shot Alain a look of disdain as he edged closer. The knife blade gleamed.

‘Psst!’ came a voice from behind them.

Anna was hidden in the dark at the back of the barn, close to two goats. Alain hadn’t noticed her. The light coming in through the damaged roof made Anna stand out like a shining beacon sent to save him from despair. She hitched up her dress and called to Thibassou again: ‘Psst!’

The boy was in a quandary. He was torn between
stabbing Alain and going to Anna. She raised her grey and green dress further. She perched on the edge of the feeding trough. Alain could see the smooth, silky skin of her calves and inner thighs and stored it in his memory. She was all sweetness, virtue and light. He was sure her bare flesh would smell fragrant and fresh. Her soft pubic hair rippled gently, clear as day, with an inviting innocence. She sat on the trough with her legs apart, her labia laughing like a clown’s grin. The paleness of her belly could only have been stolen from the moon. It drove the boy wild. Desire swelled in his breeches like a mushroom in a field. Anna removed her dress, and, unable to resist the lure of her small breasts, the youth was compelled to rush forward and kiss them. Thibassou flew, lunged, letting his knife drop as he grabbed her. Her hands roamed over his body. The young devil seemed well practised. He was like a wily wolf, his body and mouth suddenly madly infatuated with her. The way he went at it! Anna turned to look at Alain. She did not lower her gaze. Her delightful breasts, under her tumbling dark hair, were living fruit savoured by lips intoxicated by their good fortune. Her lovely thighs, pert breasts, her back and stomach were a feast for the eyes and the hands. And the charming girl started to enjoy it. Thibassou drove a burning fire into her veins which sent her rump, hips and flanks wild. Beneath his shirt, his thrusting groin was untiring, inexhaustible, and he muttered, ‘Oh, the bitch! What a little whore!’ It was such a sexual frenzy that his entire body was lusting for more. The boy grabbed Anna’s thighs and staggered forwards in the straw, knocking over a pail of milk. Clearly he was not afraid to go deep inside her.
Driven by heat and passion, covered with heavy beads of sweat, he made the most of his chance to take a local beauty. She writhed and arched and the scent she exuded drove him crazy. The air was awash with their sweat and panting. She was giddy and glowing with pleasure, all the while trying to keep her eyes on Alain. Her whole being – legs, hands, feet, heart – was ecstatic.

‘Ahhhh!’ Anna’s voice was hoarse as she started to moan, while the riot continued on the other side of the door.

‘Listen to him suffer! You’ve already done enough to him,’ said Antony and Dubois, asking people to listen to the low moans emerging from the barn.

But it was Anna climaxing, all in an effort to distract the youth.

‘Stay, stay, go on, do it again,’ she said, whispering in his ear. To stop him attacking Alain, she moaned, ‘More!’

‘More, more!’ came the cries of his attackers, thinking the plea came from Alain.

More? What a misunderstanding!

9

THE MAIN STREET

The door burst open. Men grabbed Alain by his shod feet and threw him into the muck heap.

‘You want more? We’ll give you more!’

Nobody noticed Thibassou, dragged by Anna to the feeding trough. Alain overheard his protectors whispering nearby.

‘How can we get them to leave the alley long enough for us to help him escape?’

Dubois had an idea and elbowed his way through the crowd to Alain.

‘Wouldn’t you rather be shot than beaten even more?’ he asked, crouching down.

‘Oh yes, let them shoot me …’

‘Do you hear that, everyone? Go and get your guns! Quick, go home and fetch your guns!’ said Dubois, straightening up.

‘No, no guns!’ sang Mazière and the others. ‘He must suffer.’

Alain found himself in the narrow street once more. He knew the place but it was no comfort to him now. He was subjected to ever more violent threats and gruesome propositions. He also received more deadly blows. They all – how many were there? – blackened his name further, calling him a coward. Oh, the irony! Everyone was venting their worst excessess on him. The flag flying from the mayor’s house witnessed the horror with disgust. Alain was not the only person deserving of pity.

A man with glasses and beady eyes – Sarlat, the tailor from Nontronneau – yelled at Alain and tore at his yellow nankeen suit.

‘Filthy Prussian!’

‘Why do you say that? You know him. You dressed him! And now you’re ripping clothes that you made!’ yelled Antony.

‘I did not make this suit!’

‘Strewth!’ exploded Antony. ‘Look, there, in the lining, that’s your label sewn in there. Your name is on it, Sarlat!’

‘Oh, the filthy Prussian!’ exclaimed the tailor, yanking off a sleeve. ‘He’s been stealing our clothes as well!’

They clawed at his suit and his shirt. Bare-chested, Alain was at the mercy of the rabble. They dragged him to the end of the street. Alain could see the open door of the church opposite. A flaking crucifix hung behind the altar. Christ’s
hair looked too long and it seemed as if he had only been put there so he could gaze down wrathfully at the barbarians.

The priest continued to drink to the Emperor in order to distract as many of the angry mob as possible. But people had been praying for a while for a miracle to happen and had seen no results. So he was now less sure of success. Alain fell to his knees in front of the church, which had become a tavern where the wine would eventually run out.

‘Tell them that if they let me go, I’ll pay for drinks as well. Crack open a barrel,’ he begged. Mazerat was appalled.

‘We won’t drink wine from a Prussian!’ shouted one of his persecutors, who had overheard.

‘Oh, my friends, my friends …’

‘Are you still talking?’ asked a man, surprised. ‘Here!’ He smashed an iron bar down on Alain’s mouth. Alain choked and spat out blood and broken teeth.

The church clock struck three. Alain heard the bells chime, tolling out his pain. He was seized by the mob, who raised him above their heads and engulfed him. The procession set off up the town’s main street. Alain lay flat on his back under the mocking sun, gasping for breath. He felt like a carnival statue, rather like the Black Virgin of Rocamadour or St Léonard of Limousin. Insults continued to rain down on him and the pain in his head was unbearable. He howled as he was passed from person to person. He felt something inside him die, destroyed by the mob’s madness.

Head lolling back, Alain was surprised to see the
upside-down
faces of his helpless protectors. He had thought he would never see them again, certainly not on the way to his grisley end! The whole affair was tragic. No one but
the devil would delight in such a vicious game. Lord have pity on those men. They flung him to the ground. Alain glimpsed whips, batons and hooks in their hands, and felt the thwack of sticks.

‘Knock him out! Knock him out!’

People jostled to get at him, vying to deal the hardest blow. Thibaud Devras, a pig merchant from Lussac, raised his stick and waited for Alain to leave his head exposed. Alain had paid for his daughter’s headstone. He tried to remind Devras of this as he hit him full in the face.

The crowd pushed and shoved in their attempts to strike him and leave their mark on the enemy. One man hit him and then stepped back, leaving his place to another, who, once he had struck Alain, stood aside to be quickly replaced by someone else. The instinctive, collective nature of the massacre diluted responsibility. The bloodshed gave youngsters at the fair the opportunity to prove themselves and join the men. Thibassou was back again. The
fourteen-year-old
swaggered up and down the streets of Hautefaye, showing off his bloodstained baton. He vaunted his ferocity.

‘Hey, you, have you hit him? No? You’re a coward!’ he said, as he and Pierre Brut’s son questioned a boy of their own age.

‘Go and give him what for, ’Poleon,’ a mother commanded her five-year-old.

The child hit Alain. He withdrew his hand and it was spattered with blood. Old Moureau urged people to throw stones at Alain’s head.

‘Three goes, one sou. If you kill the Prussian, you take him home.’ He handed out stones, turning the killing
into a sideshow. People trod on Alain with their left foot, superstitiously believing it would bring them luck. They thrashed him as if they were threshing wheat.

‘We haven’t threshed much wheat thanks to you, scum!
Lébérou!’

Alain was being likened to the mythical monster from Périgord, condemned to roam the country by night. Legend has it that the
lébérou
, his body swathed in an animal skin, would eat dogs, impregnate village women and jump on the backs of nocturnal walkers, forcing them to carry him. The following morning he would take on the form of a caring neighbour.

‘Lébérou, lébérou!’
the cry was immediately taken up by other villagers. Men made the sign of the cross with their forefingers as if warding off a vampire. ‘Prussian, it’s your fault we found the Lac Rouge farmer dead at the bottom of his well, with a dog paw in his mouth!’

‘Prussian, it’s your fault that my brother hanged himself with the halter of his last cow when he came back from burying it!’

‘Prussian, it’s your fault that I don’t know where to get fodder this winter. There’s no maize, no beans, nuts or turnips. Scoundrel! Here, take that!’

It’s your fault! It’s your fault! They blamed Alain for all their woes. The drought, his fault! The problems with Prussia, his fault! His heart, bones, blood, feet and eyelids became a mush, barely held together by pieces of flesh. They were smashing his entire body. The earth of the main street, arid for so long, was joyfully soaking up his blood. Alain was jostled and kicked by clogged feet. He was no longer
present; his dilated pupils were vacant. Murguet dragged a fork across Alain’s stomach as though he were turning clods of earth. Enough is enough!

There was a crossroads in the town centre. On the left, on the corner of the road leading to Nontron, sprawled the long inn belonging to Élie Mondout, grocer and tobacconist. In painted lettering on the pink-brick façade were the words:

The tables were set with pewter dishes and iron forks, and Élie Mondout’s customers sat gawping at Alain. By now he was nothing more than pig or poultry feed.

‘Filthy Prussian, take that for my son who you sent to Reichshoffen!’

Piarrouty bashed him once more in the head with his weighing hook and made for the inn, shouting, ‘I saw his brains!’ He drew vast amounts of water and went to wash his hook, much to Élie Mondout’s astonishment.

The innkeeper had been busy rushing to and fro, making soup from leftover meat, slicing ham and bread, cooking up last year’s chestnuts, and bringing up demijohns of wine
from the cellar. No doubt he hadn’t even realised what was happening in the town square behind the kaleidoscope of colourful clothing.

But now, emerging from the kitchen, he was speechless. He found his comfortably seated customers following the spectacle that was unfolding in the thronging inn. People rose in turn to participate in the carnage. Roland Liquoine stamped on Alain’s chest, sending pain searing through his heart. A miller with a flail said he was threshing barley, and his ferocious zeal caused Alain even more suffering. Murguet took a swing at Alain’s crotch, shouting, ‘Snake! Snake!’ with unparalleled fury. He roared several times and then sat down. Another man aimed at Alain’s face, which was streaming blood. Alain was terrified. The Marthon notary, whom Alain had arranged to see on Bretanges business, pitched in too. Clutching his leather briefcase and wearing a white silk tie, he kicked Alain on his already battered mouth with the tip of his black patent-kid shoes. Lamongie left the table and planted a fork deep in Alain’s right eye, blinding him. He then returned to his seat and ordered a carafe of wine from the appalled ashen-faced innkeeper.

‘Get away! Get away from my inn, you savages! Get away from here or I’ll shoot you!’ he said, going off in search of his gun.

‘Don’t do that, Élie. There are six hundred of them and you can’t stop them,’ said his wife, waylaying him.

‘But we can’t let them kill him like that! Where’s Anna?’