‘Yes, Monsieur.’
The abbé took out of his cupboard a bottle with the sort of label children use on their school exercise books: ‘Monsieur Le Couec’s calvados’. He filled two glasses, and was about to fill a third when Jean stopped him.
‘Father, I mustn’t … being fit … you know … I’m trying to stay fit even though I don’t have my bike.’
‘You’ll have your bicycle back tonight, a priest’s word on it.’
‘Papa won’t give in that easily.’
‘I know how to persuade him. But before dinner you need to go to Tôtes and meet someone at a café.’
‘In that case, it’s Maman who won’t let me go so easily. She doesn’t like me going out on my bike at night.’
‘I’ll take care of it.’
‘The man you’ll meet at the café — it’s Les Amis de Tôtes,’ Yann said, ‘will be wearing a white carnation. He’ll be drinking cider, and you’ll go up to him to shake hands and say, “Good evening, Monsieur Carnac,” and he’ll reply — pay attention, it’s important — “All right, son?” After you’ve exchanged a few words, you’re to leave together and bring him here. He will have a car, a motorbike or a bicycle. He’s short, clean shaven, and his hair’s going grey. You won’t know his real name, any more than you know mine.’
The abbé emptied his glass of calvados. Red blotches appeared at his neck and throat.
‘Now I’m going to see your father,’ he said.
Albert, who had just had to deal with a lecture from Antoine du Courseau about the absolute necessity of returning Jean’s bicycle to him, felt like the victim of a plot when the priest then came to him demanding the same thing. It irritated him to be, as he saw it, pushed around, and Jean was briefly in real danger of having his bicycle confiscated until he was twenty-one. Monsieur Le Couec guessed what had happened, and quickly changed his insistent tone to one of gentle flattery, with the result that Jean found himself reunited with his cherished bicycle. He immediately set about oiling its chain and hubs and pumping up its tyres.
‘I’ll take him with me,’ the priest said. ‘We have things to talk about. He can sleep at the rectory tonight. I’ll send him back to you for his breakfast, because I have nothing to give him.’
‘Behave yourself!’ Jeanne implored, no longer knowing whether her child was a monster or a man already worthy of a priest’s company.
On the road to the rectory, the priest offered Jean a monologue all to himself.
‘God is all goodness. He will forgive me, after my penitence, for having lied to your parents. Lives are at stake. One day all of this will be much clearer to you than it is today. This evening I only ask you to trust me, as your spiritual guide and your friend … In fact, as I am your confessor, how is it possible that I don’t know why you have been so severely punished by your father?’
Jean began to think his legs would fail him. The confessional lent itself to the lie of omission, but here on the road, face to face with the priest, who had stopped and was staring at him in his rough and tender way, it was infinitely harder to wriggle out of the truth. He made a vague gesture to signify everything and nothing, intending to play down the matter.
‘Oh, it was nothing, just some stories about girls!’
‘Is that all it was?’ the abbé said. ‘Hardly enough to hang a Catholic, I’d have said. If you knew what I heard at confession. But you’re a bit on the young side, all the same … It’s true that you look a good deal older that thirteen … Girls could easily think you were older. Anyway, you’re not having your head turned, are you?’
‘No, Father.’
‘That’s the essential thing. We’ll talk about it again. At this moment, what needs our attention is Monsieur Carnac. I knew him at the seminary, but he gave up … didn’t have the vocation … Some are like that … I’m not talking about myself. When I look at my life, I don’t think I could have been anything but a priest. Well, I am a priest and there’s never been a day when I haven’t been happy to be one, when I haven’t thanked God for having taken me into his service, for having given me the health that my ministry demands, and the strength — or innocence if you prefer — not to have been undermined by any doubt.’
They arrived outside the rectory. Monsieur Le Couec took a large key from his pocket and opened the glazed door. Yann was sitting next to the stove, positioned so that he could not be seen from either the window or the door. He put down a book and Jean read its title: it was an anthology of poets. How could a man who was being hunted by all the police in France be interested in poetry? Yann intercepted his look.
‘Do you sometimes read poems when you’re alone?’
‘No, Monsieur. Only in class, when the teacher recites them to us.’
‘And what does he recite to you?’
‘Jean de La Fontaine, Victor Hugo, Albert Samain.’
‘La Fontaine I understand … some nice lines in Victor Hugo too …
Yesterday from my skylight was a view
That I blinked at with stares like an owl’s,
Of a girl waist-deep in the Marne who
Was washing brilliant white towels
or this, which isn’t bad:
The dreamy angel of the dusk who floats upon its breezes
Mingles, as it bears them off in the flutter of a wingbeat,
The dead’s prayers and the living’s kisses.
But Samain is for idiots.’
Yann had uttered the few lines of poetry in a tone that made Jean shiver, and he stared intently at the handsome giant, who had been suddenly altered as he recited Hugo in his steady, calm voice with a lack of restraint that was almost embarrassing.
‘A fine time for reciting verses,’ the abbé broke in. ‘Time’s getting on. How long will it take you to get to Tôtes, Jean?’
‘Thirty kilometres … at my usual speed I should be there in an hour and a half.’
‘Perfect! Before nightfall. And then you can do the return trip with Monsieur Carnac in the dark.’
Yann began to walk up and down, stroking his chin and looking so distracted that both Jean and the priest watched him for a moment without daring to interrupt.
‘He needs to go!’ Monsieur Le Couec said finally.
‘I know … I’ve just thought of something. There’s still a danger. What if there’s a gendarme there instead of Carnac?’
The abbé sat down hard on a rocking chair that nearly overturned under his weight.
‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’ he exclaimed. ‘That would be the end of everything. My dear Jean, I can’t let you run that risk.’
‘Father, don’t worry, I won’t talk … They won’t get a word out out of me.’
‘No,’ Yann said firmly. ‘On the contrary. I’m not going to send you there unless you undertake to give us away if you find that a policeman has taken Carnac’s place. It’s an order I’m giving you. We’ll exonerate you immediately … Swear it!’
‘I can’t swear something like that.’
Monsieur Le Couec jumped up, his expression threatening.
‘Swear it!’
Jean, who had begun to acquire a certain talent for equivocation, crossed his fingers behind his back and murmured, ‘I swear.’
‘Louder.’
‘I swear.’
‘All right, you can go!’ Yann said.
The priest kissed Jean and then, to conceal his emotion, opened the cupboard and took out the bottle of calvados again to pour himself another glass.
Jean was so happy to have his bicycle back that he set out for Tôtes without a second thought for the importance of his mission. From the moment the abbé had lent his support, he did not even wonder what it was all about. There would be plenty of time for the mystery to be cleared up later. His bike was riding divinely, without a sound, even though he had perhaps very slightly over-tightened the chain. It was a question of adjustment, just as it was for the tyres, hardened by their immobility over the recent weeks. Jean concentrated on regulating his breathing to the speed of his pedals, pacing himself progressively. A decent average demanded good tactics and knowing how to use the road conditions, Georges Speicher had told a reporter from L’Auto. You pedal with your legs but also with your head. It’s pointless to over-stress your heart by racing every time you’re challenged on the flat, otherwise the slightest gradient becomes an ordeal. Jean, his attention fixed on the road ahead, did not allow himself to be distracted by anything, except for the drive leading to the Malemorts’ château, where he slowed down to glance through the open gateway: the marquis, in riding boots, was unsaddling his bay mare, which Chantal was holding it by its bridle. After Malemort he gave himself up to the enjoyment of a series of wild ups and downs in the road, diving with the fields into pretty hollows with brooks at the bottom and then climbing back up to apple orchards and an old church or a farm of red bricks with meadows around it. Just before Tôtes his rhythm was disrupted by potholes, and he had to zigzag his way around the areas where the road was being repaired and occasionally take to the verge, among the loose gravel. The setting sun was softening the landscape’s colours: greens turning to grey, copses darkening as if, suddenly, life was about to stop, to freeze for the night and only awake with the new dawn and the breath of the dew, with colours freshly alive, an opal sky and sheep on their knees nibbling the brilliant grass in their pasture.