"All right, all right now, you scared me… You're not as sick as all that!"
"Who on earth is this girl?" he thought. He had kissed her as if he were bringing a glass of cool water to his lips. He was on fire. His throat, the inside of his mouth seemed to crack from the heat, dried out by the intensity of the flames. This bright, soft skin quenched his thirst. At the same time he felt totally lucid, with the kind of lucidity that comes from sleeplessness and fever. He had forgotten the names of these young girls and his own. The mental effort it took to understand his present condition, in this place he didn't recognise, was too difficult for him. He wore himself out trying, but in the meantime his soul drifted light and serene, like a fish in the water, like a bird blown along by the wind. He didn't see himself, Jean-Marie, but someone else, a nameless soldier, defeated, but refusing to give up hope, a wounded young man who did not want to die, a desperate man who refused to despair. "Even so, we have to make it through… we have to get away, from this blood, from this mud dragging us down… We're not just going to lie down and die… Are we, well, are we? That would be too ridiculous. We have to hang on… hang on… hang on…" he muttered, and when he came to, eyes wide open, clinging to his bolster, sitting up in bed, he gazed at the night with its full moon, the silent, sweet-smelling night, the sparkling night, so gentle after the heat of the day and which, for once, the farmhouse welcomed through its open doors and windows so it could refresh and bring peace to the suffering man.
25
When Father Péricand found himself forced to continue the journey on foot, the boys filing after him, each carrying a blanket and haversack and dragging their feet in the dust, he had decided to head away from the Loire, an area fraught with danger, towards the woods; but soldiers had already set up camp there and, since planes were bound to spot them from the air, the danger seemed just as great amid the trees as on the river banks. And so, leaving the main road, he took a path covered with stones, virtually a footpath, trusting his instinct to lead him to some isolated house, just as when, in the mountains, he led his group of skiers towards a refuge hidden by the fog or snowstorm. It was a beautiful June day, so brilliant and hot that the boys felt intoxicated. Silent until now and well-behaved, too well-behaved, they began jostling each other, shouting, and Father Péricand could hear laughter and snatches of whispered songs. He listened more closely and, hearing an obscene refrain mumbled behind him, as if through half-closed lips, he suggested they all sing a song together. He struck up, energetically enunciating the words, but only a few voices joined in. After some moments everyone fell silent. He too walked on without speaking, wondering what this sudden freedom might awaken within these poor children, what disturbing desires? What dreams? One of the younger ones stopped suddenly and cried, "A lizard, oh! A lizard! Look!" In the sunshine, between two rocks, agile tails appeared, disappeared; they could see their delicate flat heads; their throats pulsating in and out to a rapid, frightened beat. The boys watched, entranced. Some of them even knelt down on the path. The priest waited a few moments, then waved to them to move on. The children meekly got up, but at that very moment pebbles flew out of their hands with such dexterity, such surprising speed, that two of the lizards-the most beautiful, the biggest, their skin a delicate blue-grey colour-were killed on the spot.
"Why did you do that?" the priest exclaimed, upset.
No one replied.
"Well, why? What a spineless act!"
"But they're like snakes, they bite," said a boy with a long pointed nose and a pale, dazed expression.
"Don't be ridiculous! Lizards are harmless."
"Oh! We didn't know, Father," he replied in a sly voice, with a feigned innocence that didn't fool the priest.
But he knew it was neither the time nor the place to insist; he just nodded briefly as if he were satisfied with the answer and added, "Well, now you know."
He organised them into lines to follow him. Until now he had let them walk as they liked, but he suddenly thought that some of them might try to run away. They obeyed him so perfectly, so mechanically-no doubt used to hearing the whistle blow, to standing in line, to being docile, to enforced silence-that it broke his heart. He glanced at their faces, which had suddenly became glum and lifeless-as closed as a house when the door is locked, the life within withdrawn, absent or dead.
"We'd better hurry up if we want to find shelter tonight," he said. "As soon as I know where we'll be sleeping and after we eat (you'll be getting hungry soon!) we can make a campfire and you can stay outdoors as long as you like."
He walked among them, talked to them about his young boys from the Auvergne, about skiing, mountain climbing, trying to interest them, to get closer to them. All in vain. They didn't even seem to be listening; he realised that anything he said to them-encouragement, reprimands, information-would never sink in, for their souls were shut off, walled up, secret and silent.
"If only I could look after them for longer," he thought to himself. But in his heart he knew he didn't really want to. He only wanted one thing: to be rid of them as soon as possible, to be relieved of his responsibility and this feeling of unease he felt weighing down on him. The duty of love which, until now, he had felt was almost simple, so great was the Grace of God within him, now seemed almost impossible to feel. "Even though," he thought humbly, "it would mean that, for the first time perhaps, I would really have to try, it would be a true sacrifice. How weak I am!"
He called over one of the younger boys who was always lagging behind. "Are you tired? Do your shoes hurt?"
Yes, he had guessed correctly: the lad's shoes were too tight and hurting him. He took his hand to help him, talking to him quietly and, since the boy was slouching-his shoulders stooped, his back round-the priest gently placed two fingers round his neck and pulled him up straight. The young boy didn't resist. In fact, with a distant, indifferent look on his face, he leaned his neck against the hand that held it, and this light, insistent pressure, this strange, ambiguous caress (or rather this expectation of a caress) made the priest blush. He took the child by the chin and tried to look into his eyes, but his eyelids were lowered and he couldn't see into them.
He walked faster, trying to collect himself with an internal dialogue, as he always did at sad moments. It wasn't exactly what you'd call a prayer. Often it wasn't even a collection of words recognisable as human speech. It was a kind of intangible meditation from which he emerged bathed in joy and peace. But both abandoned him today. The pity he felt was corrupted by a stirring of anxiety and bitterness. It was only too clear that these poor wretches were lacking Grace: His Grace. He wanted to be able to shower them with Grace, inundate their barren hearts with love and faith. It would take but a sigh from our Crucified Lord, the flutter of a wing from one of His angels to bring about the miracle, but nevertheless he, Philippe Péricand, had been chosen by God to soften them, to unlock their souls, to prepare them to receive God. He suffered because he was incapable of bringing it about. He had been spared the moments of doubt and the sudden hardening of the soul that take hold of some believers, abandoning them, not in the hands of the princes of this world, but in a terrible darkness halfway between Satan and God.
His temptation was different: it was a kind of impatience to be holy, the desire to gather liberated souls around him, a ripple of urgency which, once he had opened someone's heart to God, propelled him towards other conquests, leaving him forever frustrated, dissatisfied, disappointed with himself. It wasn't enough! No, Lord Jesus, it wasn't enough! The old heathen who had confessed, taken Communion in his final hour, the sinful woman who had renounced vice, the pagan who had wanted to be baptised. Not enough, no, not enough! He recognised something similar in the way a greedy man hoards his gold. And yet, no, it wasn't exactly like that. It reminded him of certain moments he'd spent at the river when he was a child: the quiver of joy every time he caught a fish (yet now he didn't understand how he could have liked such a cruel game, and even found it difficult to eat fish; vegetables, dairy products, fresh bread, chestnuts and that country soup so thick the spoon stands straight up in it all by itself, these were all he needed to sustain him). But as a child he had been fanatical about fishing and he remembered his anguish when the sun began to set on the water, when he had hardly caught any fish and he knew the day was nearly over. He had been criticised for his excessive scruples. He himself feared they might not come from God but from an Other… Yet never had he felt that anguish as he did today, on this journey, beneath this sky where lethal planes sparkled, among these children whose physical bodies were the only thing he could hope to save…