The Lost Estate (13 page)

Brand-new books also did the rounds, books the titles of which I had eagerly read on the spines of the few in our library:
La Teppe aux Merles, La Roche aux Mouettes, Mon ami Benoist…
Some of us were leafing through these volumes on our knees while writing our dictation with the other hand. We didn’t know where they came from: they might have been stolen. Other pupils were turning the compasses round inside their desks, while still others, hastily, Monsieur Seurel’s back being turned as he continued the dictation while walking from the desk to the window, had one eye shut and the other fixed on the blue-green, speckled view of Notre-Dame de Paris. Meanwhile, the new arrival, pen in hand, winking, with his fine profile outlined against the grey pillar, was enjoying all this furtive activity going on around him.

However, bit by bit the whole class began to get worried: the objects, which were being passed along in turn, one by one reached The Great Meaulnes who, carelessly, without looking at them, put them down next to him. Very soon there was a
heap, geometrical and multicoloured like the pyramid at the feet of the woman representing Science in an allegorical painting. Monsieur Seurel was inevitably going to notice this unusual display and realize what was going on. In any case, it would occur to him to inquire into the events of the previous night – and the presence of the gypsy would make it that much easier for him…

Indeed, he very soon stopped in surprise in front of Meaulnes.

‘Whose is all this?’ he asked, pointing at ‘all this’ with the back of his book, which he had shut on his index finger.

‘I don’t know,’ Meaulnes replied, gruffly, without looking up.

But the stranger interrupted. ‘It’s mine,’ he said. And he immediately added, like a young lord, with an elegant, expansive gesture that the old schoolmaster was unable to resist, ‘But it is entirely at your disposal, Monsieur, if you should wish to look at it.’

So, in a matter of seconds, noiselessly, as though to avoid disturbing the new state of affairs that had just arisen, the whole class gathered inquisitively around the teacher, who was bending his head, half bald, half curly-haired, over this treasure and the pale young man who was explaining everything as required with an air of calm triumph. Meanwhile, silent on his bench and completely abandoned, The Great Meaulnes had opened his rough-work book and, with a raised eyebrow, was absorbed in solving a difficult maths problem…

Time for the morning break arrived while we were still engaged in this. The dictation was not finished, and disorder reigned in the class. In reality, the break had lasted all morning.

So at ten o’clock, when the dark and muddy yard was invaded by the boys, it was soon easy to see that a new master was presiding over the games.

I can only recall the most bloodthirsty of all the new delights to which the gypsy, that morning, first introduced us: it was a kind of tournament in which the horses were the big boys, carrying the younger ones on their shoulders.

Divided into two groups and starting from opposite sides of the yard, they charged at one another, trying to throw off their
opponents through the violence of the impact while the riders, using their scarves as lassos or their outstretched arms as lances, attempted to unseat their opposite numbers. Sometimes the opponent dodged a horse, which then lost its balance, falling into the mud with its rider underneath. There were boys who had been half unseated: the horses caught them by the legs and, still eager for the fray, hoisted them back on their shoulders. The slim rider with the bandaged head, mounted on Big Delage, with his overgrown limbs, his red hair and his protruding ears, urged on the two rival groups and steered his mount skilfully, roaring with laughter.

At first, standing at the classroom door, Augustin watched the setting-up of these games with irritation. I was standing beside him, not sure what to do.

‘He’s a sly one,’ he snarled, his hands in his pockets. ‘Coming here, this morning, was the only way for him not to attract suspicion. And Monsieur Seurel was taken in by it!’

He stayed there for a long while, his close-cropped head bare to the wind, cursing the mountebank who was going to have all these boys bludgeoned, when only recently Meaulnes had been their chief. And, as the peaceable lad I was, I could only agree with him.

As the teacher was not there, the battles continued everywhere, in every corner. In the end the smallest boys were climbing on each other; they were running around and falling over before even clashing with their opponents… Very soon, all that was left standing, in the middle of the yard, was a determined, seething mass, out of which, from time to time, emerged the new leader’s white bandage.

By now, The Great Meaulnes could stand it no longer. He bent down, put his hands on his thighs and shouted, ‘Come on, François!’

I was surprised by this sudden decision, but still jumped without hesitation on his shoulders, and in an instant we were in the thick of the scrum, while most of the combatants ran away in fright, shouting, ‘It’s Meaulnes! The Great Meaulnes is here!’

In the midst of those who remained, he started to turn round
in a circle, saying to me: ‘Reach out your arms and grab them as I did last night.’

Intoxicated by the battle and sure of victory, I caught hold of the little ones as we went past; they struggled, wavered for a moment on the shoulders of the big boys, then fell into the mud. In no time, only the new arrival, mounted on Delage, was left; but the latter, not anxious to get into a fight with Augustin, suddenly straightened up, bent backwards and threw off the white knight.

With his hand on his mount’s shoulder, like a captain holding his horse’s bit, the boy stood there and looked at The Great Meaulnes with some astonishment and immense admiration.

‘Well done!’ he said.

But at that moment the bell rang, scattering the pupils who had gathered round us in the hope of some interesting scene. And Meaulnes, annoyed at not having overthrown his enemy, turned his back and said angrily, ‘We’ll settle this later!’

Until midday, lessons went on as they do when holidays are approaching, mingled with amusing interludes and conversations, this time centred on the schoolboy-mountebank.

He explained how he and his partner had been immobilized by the cold weather: they didn’t consider putting on evening performances, since no one would come to them, so they decided that he would go to school to keep him occupied during the day, and his friend would look after the tropical birds and the performing goat. Then he described their journeys round the countryside: the rain falling against the leaky zinc roof, having to get out of the caravan to push it up the hills. The pupils at the back of the room left their desk to come forward and listen, the more practically minded taking advantage of this opportunity to get warm around the stove. But soon even they were overcome with curiosity and shifted over to the chattering group, straining their ears, while still touching the stove with one hand to keep their places.

‘And what did you live on?’ Monsieur Seurel asked, following everything with the rather childlike curiosity of a schoolmaster and asking lots of questions.

The boy paused for a moment, as though this was a detail that he had never considered.

‘Well,’ he answered, ‘from what we had earned during the previous autumn, I think. Ganache looked after the accounts.’

No one asked who Ganache was. But I remembered the big fellow who had unsportingly attacked Meaulnes from behind on the previous evening and knocked him down…

IV

WE HEAR ABOUT THE MYSTERIOUS ESTATE

The afternoon brought the same amusements and, through the rest of the school day, the same disorder and the same underhand dealing. The gypsy had brought along other precious objects: sea shells, games, songs and even a little monkey which scratched faintly inside his gamekeeper’s pouch. Monsieur Seurel had to pause constantly to look at what the sly rogue had pulled out of his bag… When four o’clock came, Meaulnes was the only one to have finished his school work.

Everyone left unhurriedly. It seemed as though the hard and fast line between lessons and playtime, which made school life simple and ordered like the succession of night to day, had been eliminated. We even forgot to nominate to Monsieur Seurel the two pupils who had to stay behind to sweep out the classroom, as we usually did at around ten to four. Yet this was something that we never forgot because it was a way of marking and hastening the end of the lesson.

As it turned out, on that day it was the turn of The Great Meaulnes. And in the morning I had chatted to the gypsy and warned him that newcomers were always chosen to make the second sweeper on the day that they joined the class.

Meaulnes came back to the room as soon as he had fetched the bread for his snack. As for the gypsy, he kept us waiting for a long time and came in last, running, just as night was falling…

‘You stay in the room,’ my friend had told me, ‘and while I have him occupied, you take back the map he stole from me.’

So I sat on a little table near the window, reading by the last light of day, and saw both of them moving back the school
benches, without a word: Meaulnes, sternly silent, his black smock fastened with three buttons at the back and with a belt round the waist, and the other boy, delicate, nervous, his head bandaged like a wounded soldier. He was wearing a shabby coat: I had not noticed earlier that there were tears in it. Driven by almost savage eagerness, he was picking the tables up and pushing them around at breakneck speed, with a smile hovering on his lips. It was as though he were playing some extraordinary game, the aim of which was known only to himself.

In that way, they reached the darkest corner of the room, to move the last table.

In that spot, Meaulnes could have thrown his enemy over in an instant without anyone outside having a chance of seeing or hearing them through the windows. I could not understand why he was letting such an opportunity slip. The other boy had gone back towards the door and would escape at any moment, claiming that the job was finished, and we would not see him again. The map and all the information that Meaulnes had taken so long to gather, to piece together and to assemble, would be lost to us…

At any moment, I was expecting a sign or a gesture from my friend that would signal the start of the battle, but the tall boy did not make a move. From time to time, he simply looked closely and questioningly at the gypsy’s bandage which, in the half-dark, seemed to be extensively marked with black spots.

The last table was moved and nothing happened; but just as they were both returning to the end of the room where they would give a final brush to the doorway, Meaulnes lowered his head and, without looking at our enemy, said in an undertone, ‘Your bandage is red with blood and your clothes are torn.’

The other boy looked at him for a moment, not surprised at what he was saying, but deeply moved at hearing him say it.

‘They tried to take your map away from me,’ he answered. ‘Just now, on the square. When they found out that I wanted to come back here and sweep out the classroom, they realized that I was going to make peace with you, so they rebelled against me. But I did save it from them, even so,’ he added,
proudly, handing the precious folded sheet of paper to Meaulnes.

Meaulnes slowly turned towards me.

‘Do you hear that?’ he asked. ‘He’s just fought and been wounded for us, while we were setting a trap for him!’

Then, switching to the familiar
tu
from the formal
vous
(which he had been using even though it was not customary between pupils at Sainte-Agathe), he held out his hand and said, ‘You’re a true friend.’

The mountebank took Meaulnes’ hand and stood there for a moment, speechless with emotion. After a short while, he continued, driven by curiosity:

‘So you were setting a trap for me! That’s a laugh! I guessed as much and told myself: they’ll be really surprised when they get the map back off me and find out that I’ve completed it…’

‘Completed?’

‘Oh, hang on now! Not altogether…’

Then, in a change from this playful tone, he came closer to us and said, slowly and seriously: ‘Meaulnes, I have to tell you something. I, too, went where you did. I was there for the extraordinary festivities. I thought, when the boys at the school told me about your mysterious adventure, that it must be the old lost estate. To make sure, I stole your map… But I am like you: I don’t know the name of the château, or how to get back there. I’m not sure of the whole way from here to there.’

How eagerly and with what curiosity and friendly feeling we clustered round him! Meaulnes keenly asked him questions… Both of us felt that, if we pressed our new friend hard enough, we might even get him to tell us what he claimed not to know.

‘You’ll see, you’ll see,’ the boy replied, a little irritated and uncomfortable. ‘I’ve just added a few details to the plan which you didn’t have – that’s all I could do.’

Then, seeing how full we were of admiration and enthusiasm, he said, with pride and sadness, ‘Look, I might as well tell you. I’m not like other boys. Three months ago, I tried to put a bullet through my head: that explains why I have a bandage round my forehead, like the men mobilized from the Seine in 1870…’
⁹

‘And this evening, while you were fighting, the wound reopened,’ Meaulnes said, in a friendly tone.

But the other boy, without taking any notice, went on in a faintly grandiloquent way, ‘I wanted to die. And since I didn’t succeed, I shall only go on living in order to amuse myself, like a child or a gypsy. I’ve given everything up. I have no more father, or sister, or house, or love… Nothing, except playfellows.’

‘Those fellows have already betrayed you,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he replied sharply. ‘It’s the fault of someone called Delouche. He guessed I was going to join forces with you. He demoralized my troops, who were so well disciplined. You saw the assault on the house yesterday evening: how it was carried out, how well it worked! Never, since I was a child, have I set up anything that went off so well…’