The Thibaults (100 page)

“What about your headaches?”

“Oh, I began to feel ever so much better almost from the day I got there. Yes, Mühlenberg cured me outright. In fact, I’ve never felt in better form, or my mind so untroubled.” His face lit up at the memory of it. “Untroubled, without a worry in the world—and all the time full of thoughts and projects, the maddest fancies! I almost think the seeds of everything I’ll write in my lifetime were sown during that wonderful summer, in that bright air. I can remember days when I was so carried away—oh, I knew then what it means to be drunk with happiness. Why—I hardly dare to talk about it—there were times when I started jumping in the air and scampering up hill and down dale as if I’d gone off my head! Then I’d fling myself on my face into the grass, and start sobbing, crying my heart out for the ecstasy of it all. Can you believe that? Well, it’s true; yes, so true that I remember some days when I had been crying like that and had to come back by a roundabout path, so as to bathe my eyes at a little spring I’d discovered on the mountainside.” He lowered his eyes, walked some steps in silence, then, without looking up, repeated: “Yes, but all that was two and a half years ago—ancient history!”

He did not speak again before they left.

The train drew out without a whistle, with the obdurate insistence and docile force of machines that function like clockwork. Dry-eyed, Jacques watched the empty platform recede and, as the speed accelerated, the myriad lights of the suburbs dance past the pane. Then all was darkness, and now he pictured himself being pitched headlong and defenceless into the black night.

Cooped up amongst all these strangers, he looked round for Antoine, and saw him standing a few yards away, in the corridor. His back was half turned and he, too, seemed to be lost in thought, staring out into the darkness. Jacques felt a sudden wish for closer contact with him and, once again, an irresistible yearning to unburden his heart.

He edged his way to his brother’s side and tapped him briskly on the shoulder.

Wedged between other passengers standing in the corridor and a pile of luggage, Antoine supposed that Jacques had merely a word to say to him and, without shifting his position, turned his head and leaned a little to one side. In the crowded corridor where they were penned like cattle, across the roar and rattle of the train, Jacques brought his mouth near Antoine’s ear and began speaking in a hurried whisper.

“Look here, Antoine, you’ve got to know… . To start with, I led

He had intended to say: “I led an unspeakable life. I sank lower and lower. I was an interpreter, a guide, lived by my wits. I got in with Achmet—worse, with the whole underworld, the Rue aux Juifs. My friends were down-and-outers: old Kriiger, Celadonio, Carolina, and their bunch. One night, on the quays, they clubbed me on the head; that was when my headaches started. Then I was in Naples. In Germany I lived with Rupprecht and ‘little Rosa’—what a pair they were, those two!—and at Munich, because of Wilfried, I was held by the police.” But the more fluently such avowals rose to his lips, and the more copiously the turbid flood of memories came pouring from the depths, the more he realized that the “unspeakable” life he had led was quite literally unspeakable; no words could cope with it.

Losing heart, he merely said to his brother in a low voice: “Antoine, I led an unspeakable life. Yes, unspeakable.” He tried to put into the flat, ungainly epithet all the indignities, the foulness of the world. “Unspeakable!” he said again, with an accent of despair, and gradually the repetition of the word acted as an anodyne, as efficacious as a full confession.

Antoine had turned round and was facing him, decidedly ill at east and worried by the nearness of so many strangers. Still, despite his fear that Jacques might raise his voice, and apprehensive of what he might be going to say, Antoine did his best to put a good face on it.

But Jacques, who was leaning against a panel of the corridor, did not seem inclined to embark on further explanations.

Presently the passengers began to file out of the corridor to their seats in the crowded car, and soon Antoine and Jacques were sufficiently isolated to be able to talk without being overheard.

Jacques, who till now had been in a silent mood, seemingly reluctant to go on with the conversation, suddenly turned to his brother again.

“You know, Antoine, the really appalling thing is not feeling sure of what is … normal. No, not ‘normal’—that’s a stupid word. How shall I put it? Not knowing if one’s feelings, or, rather, instincts are … But you’re a doctor, of course; you must know.” His brows were knitted and his eyes fixed on the darkness. He spoke in a low tone, hesitating over his words. “Listen! There are things that work up one’s feelings; one gets a sort of sudden impulse towards this or that, an impulse that rushes up from what lies deepest in one. Isn’t that true? Well, it’s impossible to know if other people have similar feelings, similar impulses; or if one’s just a—a freak of nature. Do you see what I mean? You, Antoine, you’ve had to deal with so many people, so many cases, that I suppose you know what is—how shall I put it?—ordinary, and what is exceptional. But for the rest of us, who don’t know—well, you can guess how agonizing it can be. Let me give you an example. There are all sorts of inexplicable desires that crop up all of a sudden when a boy’s thirteen or fourteen— vague, incoherent thoughts that get hold of his mind, and he can’t shake them off. But he feels ashamed of them; they seem like festering sores and he tries to hide them from the world at all costs. Then one day he discovers that nothing’s more natural; why, they have even a beauty of their own! And that everyone, without exception, has the same desires. Do you see what I mean? Well, there are other dark impulses, things of the same sort, instincts that well up in one, and about which—even when one’s grown up, Antoine, even at my age—one wonders, one can’t be sure… .”

Suddenly his face grew tense, exasperated; a disturbing thought had flashed across his mind. He had just realized how quickly, how easily, the old allegiance to his brother had come back, linking him up, through Antoine, with his past and all its implications. Only yesterday that chasm had seemed unbridgeable. And now—a few hours together had been enough to …! He clenched his fists, lowered his eyes, fell silent.

A few minutes later, without once having raised his head or opened his lips again, he went back to his seat.

When, surprised by Jacques’s abrupt departure, Antoine decided to follow, he found his brother settled down for the night, it seemed, in the dimly lit compartment; his eyelids shut upon his tears, Jacques was feigning sleep.

WHEN, at eight in the evening, just before taking the train to Lausanne, Antoine had looked in on Mile, de Waize, to tell her he would be away for twenty-four hours, his remarks had failed to take immediate effect on the old lady. For nearly an hour she had been seated at her desk struggling to concoct a letter to the railway company, complaining that a basket of vegetables had gone astray between Maisons-Laffitte and Paris; and exasperation had prevented her from thinking of anything else. It was only later on, when she had disposed of the letter more or less to her liking, had undressed for bed. and was saying her prayers, that one of Antoine’s remarks flashed back into her mind: “Please tell Sister Céline that Dr. Thérivier has been warned and will come, if needed, at a moment’s notice.” At once, all eagerness to shift her responsibility then and there, without troubling about the hour, without even finishing the prayer, she hurried across the flat to transmit the message to the nurse.

It was nearly ten o’clock. The lights were off, and M. Thibault’s room was in darkness but for the fitful glow from the log-fire, kept constantly burning to purify the air. Every day the need for ventilation made itself more acutely felt, and this expedient was proving inadequate to carry off the pungent vapour from the poultices, the smell of the menthol in the liniments, and, worst of all, the odours emanating from the old man’s person.

For the moment the pain had abated; the old man lay in an uneasy doze, snoring and groaning in the darkness. For many months he had not enjoyed the deep oblivion of real sleep. Going to sleep, for him, had ceased to mean the loss of consciousness; it meant only that for a brief spell he lost track of the slow lapse of time, minute by minute, and let his limbs sink into a partial torpor. But never for an instant did his brain stop working, calling up a stream of pictures, like an incoherent film in which fragments of his past life were flashed upon the screen; and though this pageant of the past might hold his interest, it was as exhausting as a nightmare.

That night M. Thibault’s torpor was not profound enough to free him from a haunting dread, which, mingling with his hallucinations and growing stronger every moment, set him running before an invisible pursuer, across the buildings of his old school, along the dormitory, down the corridors, through the chapel, and out into the playground. There, outside the gymnasium door, in front of the statue of Saint Joseph, he crumpled up, his head buried in his arms. And then, suddenly, from a coign of darkness, that terrifying, nameless Thing, which had been on his track night after night, leapt forth upon him. Just as it was about to crush his life out, he awoke with a start.

Behind the screen, an unwonted candle was lighting up a corner usually left in darkness; two shadows wavered on the wall, cornice-high. He heard whispering: Mademoiselle’s voice. Once before she had come like that, by night, to call him; Jacques was having convulsions. One of the children ill? What time was it?

Then Sister Céline’s voice recalled him to the present. He could not quite catch what they were saying; holding his breath, he listened hard.

A few words came clear: “Antoine told me the doctor had been warned … will come at once …”

Someone ill? Of course—
he
was ill. But—why the doctor?

Again that nameless form of fear was prowling in the shadows. Was he worse? What had happened? Had he slept? He had not noticed any change for the worse in his condition. Still, the doctor had been called in. In the middle of the night. He was dying. No hope left.

Then all he had said—without believing it—announcing that his last hour was near, came back to his mind. A cold sweat broke out on his body.

He tried to shout: “Help! Antoine!” But all that passed his lips was a wordless cry—so agonizing, however, that Sister Céline, thrusting aside the screen, rushed to the bed and turned on the light.

Her first notion was that he was having some sort of fit. The old man’s face, usually a sickly yellow, had turned scarlet; his eyes were wide open, his lips working inarticulately.

M. Thibault, meanwhile, paid no attention to what was happening round him. Centred on its fixed idea, his brain was functioning with ruthless clarity. In a few seconds he had reviewed the whole course of his illness: the operation, the months of respite, the relapse, and then the gradual decline of his strength, the way his pain was growing more and more recalcitrant to treatment. It all linked up together, everything grew clear. And all at once a bottomless abyss yawned where a few minutes ago there had been that bedrock of security, lacking which it is impossible to live. So sudden was the glimpse of the abyss that his whole balance was thrown out; his mind went limp, incapable of thought. Human reason is so vitally bound up with the future that once all likelihood of a tomorrow is ruled out, and every prospect seems converging on the blind alley that is death, the faculty of thinking falls to pieces.

The old man’s hands clutched at the sheets in blind, desperate panic. He tried to cry out, but in vain. The world was toppling over, dissolving into chaos, and he was being swept under, foundering in floods of darkness. Then fear forced a way across his strangled throat in a hoarse gasp that rose and fell, choked out at once.

Unable to straighten up her bent back so as to look at the bed, Mademoiselle began screaming.

“Bless and save us! What is it? What’s happening, Sister?”

The nurse did not answer. The old woman fled from the room.

Somebody must be sent for—but who? Antoine was away. Then she remembered the priest, Abbé Vécard.

The servants were still in the kitchen; they had heard nothing. At Mademoiselle’s first words Adrienne crossed herself, while Clotilde, pinning her shawl round her shoulders and picking up her purse and keys, made for the door.

THE ABBÉ VÉCARD lived in the Rue de Grenelle, near the administrative offices of the Archbishopric, where he was now in charge of the Department of Diocesan Charities. When Clotilde came he was still up, working at his desk. She had kept her taxi and, a few minutes later, they were at M. Thibault’s door.

Perched on one of the hall chairs, Mademoiselle was waiting for them. At first the priest failed to recognize her, so different she seemed without the braids encircling her forehead; tightly drawn back, her hair fell squirming down her dressing-jacket in corkscrew wisps.

“Please, M. l’Abbé,” she pleaded, “oh, please go to him at once, to make him less afraid.”

Nodding to her, without stopping, he went to the sick-room.

M. Thibault had flung away the counterpane; to get-away from this bed, from this accursed house, was now his one idea—anywhere to escape the Thing hounding him down. He had got back his voice and was hurling abuse at the women.

“Filthy strumpets! Bitches! Ah, I know all about you and your beastliness!”

Suddenly his eyes fell on the priest standing in the doorway, lit up by the hall lamp. He showed no surprise, and merely paused a moment before crying:

“Not you! I want Antoine. Where’s Antoine?”

Dropping his hat on a chair, the priest moved quickly forward. Impassive as ever, his features did not reveal how deeply he was moved; only the slightly raised arms, the half-opened hands, conveyed his longing to help his old friend. Going up to the bed, without a word, in all simplicity, he made the sign of benediction.

Then his voice rose through the silence, saying the Lord’s Prayer: