`Oh, mon pere, I feel so dreadful about it! But what could I do when that charming woman was so sweet? I mean, I never even thought about it until it was too late, though if there's anyone who should give up chocolates… I mean, the way my hips have absolutely ballooned in the last year or two, it makes me want to die-'
`Two Aves.’
God, that woman. Through the grille I can feel her hungry, adoring eyes. She feigns chagrin at my abruptness.
`Of course, mon pere.’
`And remember why we fast for Lent. Not for vanity. Not to impress our friends. Not so that we can fit into next summer's expensive fashions.’ I am deliberately brutal. It is what she wants.
`Yes, I am vain, aren't I?’
A tiny sob, a tear, blotted delicately with the corner of a lawn handkerchief. `Just a vain, foolish woman.’
`Remember Our Lord. His sacrifice. His humility.’
I can smell her perfume, something flowery, too strong in this enclosed darkness. I wonder whether this is temptation. If so, I am stone.
`Four Aves.’
It is a kind of despair. It frets at the soul, reduces it piece by piece, as a cathedral may be levelled over the years by the erosion of flying dust and fragments of sand. I can feel it chipping away at my resolve, my joy, my faith. I should like to lead them through tribulation, through wilderness. Instead, this. This languid procession of liars, cheats, gluttons and pathetic self-deceivers. The battle of good and evil reduced to a fat woman standing in front of a chocolate shop, saying, `Will I? Won't I?’ in pitiful indecision. The devil is a coward; he will not show his face. He is without substance, breaking into a million pieces which worm their evil ways into the blood, into the soul. You and I were born too late, mon pere. The harsh, clean world of the Old Testament calls to me. We knew then where we stood. Satan walked amongst us in flesh. We made difficult decisions; we sacrificed our children in the Lord's name. We loved God, but we feared Him more.
Don't think I blame Vianne Rocher. Indeed I hardly think of her at all. She is only one of the influences against which I must fight every day. But the thought of that shop with its carnival awning, a wink against denial, against faith.. Turning from the doorway to receive the congregation I catch a movement from within. Try me. Test me. Taste me. In a lull between the verses of a hymn I hear the delivery-van's horn as it pulls up in front. During the sermon – the very sermon, mon pere! – I stop mid phrase, certain I hear the rustle of sweet-papers.
I preached with greater severity than usual this morning, though the congregation was small. Tomorrow I'll make them pay. Tomorrow, Sunday, when the shops are closed.
6
Saturday, February 15
SCHOOL FINISHED EARLY TODAY. BY TWELVE THE STREET was rampant with cowboys and Indians in bright anoraks and denim jeans, dragging their schoolbags – the older ones dragging on illicit cigarettes, with turned-up collars and half a nonchalant eye to the display window as they pass. I noticed one boy walking alone, very correct in grey overcoat and beret, his school cartable perfectly squared to his small shoulders. For a long moment he stared in at the window of La Celeste Praline, but the light was shining on the glass in such a way that I did not catch his expression. Then a group of four children of Anouk's age stopped outside, and he moved on. Two noses snubbed briefly against the window, then the children retreated into a cluster as the four emptied pockets and pooled resources. A moment of hesitation as they decided who to send in. I pretended to be occupied with something behind the counter.
`Madame?’
A small, smudgy face peered suspiciously up at me. I recognized the wolf from the Mardi Gras parade.
`Now, I have you down as a peanut brittle man.’
I kept my face serious, for this purchase of sweets is serious business. `It's good value, easy to share, doesn't melt in your pockets and you can get' – I indicated with hands held apart – `oh, this much at least for five francs. Am I right?’
No answering smile, but a nod, as of one businessman to another. The coin was warm and a little sticky. He took the packet with care.
`I like the little gingerbread house,' he said gravely. `In the window.’
In the doorway the three others nodded shyly, pressing together as if to give themselves courage. `It's cool.’
The American word was uttered with a kind of defiance, like smoke from a secret cigarette. I smiled.
`Very cool,' I agreed. `If you like, you and your friends can come over and help me eat it where I take it down.’
Eyes widened.
`Cool!'
'Hypercool'
`When?’
I shrugged. `I'll tell Anouk to remind you,' I told them. `That's my little girl.’
`We know. We saw her. She doesn't go to school.’
This last was uttered with some envy..
`She will-on Monday. It's a pity she doesn't have any friends yet, because I told her she could ask them over. You know, to help me with the displays.’
Feet shuffled, sticky hands held out, shoving and pushing to be first in line.
`We can'
`I can-'
`I'm Jeannot '
'Claudine-'
'Lucie.’
I sent them out with a sugar mouse each and watched them fan across the square like dandelion seeds in the wind. A slice of sunlight glanced off their backs one after the other as they ran – red-orange-green-blue – then they were gone. From the shaded arch of St Jeromes I saw the priest, Francis Reynaud, watching them with a look of curiosity and, I thought, disapproval. I felt a moment's surprise. Why should he disapprove? Since his duty visit on our first day he has not called again, though I have heard of him often from other people. Guillaume speaks of him with respect, Narcisse with temper, Caroline with that archness which I sense she adopts when speaking of any man under fifty. There is little warmth in their speech. He is not a local, I understand. A Paris seminarian, all his learning from books he does not know the land, its needs, its demands. This from Narcisse, who has had a running feud with the priest ever since he refused to attend Mass during the harvesting season. A man who does not suffer fools, says Guillaume, with that small gleam of humour from behind his round spectacles, that is to say so many of us, with our foolish little habits and our unbreakable routines. He pats Charly's head affectionately as he says it, and the dog gives his single, solemn bark.
`He thinks it's ridiculous to be so devoted to a dog,' said Guillaume ruefully. `He's far too polite to say so, but he thinks it's inappropriate. A man of my age…’
Before his retirement Guillaume was a master at the local school. There are. only two teachers there now to deal with the falling numbers, though many of the older people still refer to Guillaume as le maitre d'ecole I watch as he scratches Charly gently behind the ears, and I am sure I sense the sadness I saw in him at the carnival; a furtive look which is almost guilt.
`A man of any age can choose his friends where he likes,' I interrupted with some heat. `Perhaps monsieur le cure could learn a few things from Charly himself.’
Again that sweet, sad almost-smile.
`Monsieur le curd tries his best,' he told me gently. `We should not expect more.’
I did not answer. In my profession it is a truth quickly learned that the process of giving is without limits.
Guillaume left La Praline with a small bag of florentines in his pocket; before he had turned the comer of Avenue des Francs Bourgeois I saw him stoop to offer one to the dog. A pat, a bark, a wagging of the short stubby tail. As I said, some people never have to think about giving.
The village is less strange to me now. Its inhabitants too. I am beginning to know faces, names; the first secret skeins of histories twisting together to form the umbilical which will eventually bind us. It is a more complex place than its geography at first suggests, the Rue Principale forking off into a hand-shaped branch of laterals – Rue des Poetes, Avenue des Francs Bourgeois, Ruelle des Freres de la Revolution – someone amongst the town planners had a fierce republican streak: My own square, Place Saint-Jerome, is the culmination of these reaching fingers, the church standing white and proud in an oblong of linden trees, the square of red shingle where the old men play petanque on fine evenings: Behind it, the hill falls away sharply towards that region of narrow streets collectively called Les Marauds.