20

Tuesday March 4

THE FIRST GREEN OF THE SPRING CORN GIVES THE LAND A mellower look than you and I are used to. At a distance it seems lush – a few early drones stitch the air above its swaying, giving the fields a somnolent appearance. But we know that in two months' time all this will be burnt to stubble by the sun, the earth bared and cracked to a red glaze through which even the thistles are reluctant to grow. A hot wind scours what is left of the country, bringing with it drought, and in its wake, a stinking stillness which breeds disease. I remember the summer of '75, mon pere, the dead heat and the hot white sky. We had plague after plague that summer. First the river gypsies, crawling up what was left of the river in their filthy floating hovels, staying stranded in Les Marauds on the baking mudflats. Then the sickness which struck first their animals and then our own; a kind of madness, a rolling of the eyes, feeble jerking of the legs, bloating of the body though the animals refused to take water, then sweating, shivering and death amongst a, heaving of purple-black flies; oh God, the air was ripe with them, ripe and sweet like the juice of afoul fruit. Do you remember? So hot that the desperate wild animals came off the dried marais to the water. Foxes, polecats, weasels, dogs. Many of them rabid, flushed from their habitat by hunger and the drought. We would shoot them as they stumbled onto the river banks, shoot them or kill them with stones. The children stoned the gypsies too, but they were as trapped and desperate as their animals and they kept coming back. The air was blue with flies and the stench of their burning as they tried to halt the disease. Horses succumbed first, then cows, oxen, goats, dogs. We kept them at bay, refusing to sell goods or water, refusing medicine. Stranded on the flats of the dwindling Tannes, they drank bottled beer and river water. I remember watching them from Les Marauds, the silent slouching figures over their campfires at night, hearing the sobbing of someone – a woman or a child, I think – across the dark water.

Some people, weaklings – Narcisse amongst them began to talk about charity. About pity. But you stayed strong. You knew what to do.

At Mass you read out the names of those who refused to co-operate. Muscat – old Muscat, Paul's father – barred them from the cafe until they saw reason. Fights broke out at night between the gypsies and the villagers. The church was desecrated. But you stood fast.

One day we saw them trying to hoist their boats across the flats to the open river. The mud was still soft and they slid thigh-deep in places, scrabbling for purchase against the slimy stones. Some pulled, harnessed to their barques by ropes, others pushed from behind. Seeing us watching, some cursed us in their harsh, hoarse voices. But it was another two weeks before they left at last, leaving their wrecked boats behind them. A fire, you said, mon pere, a fire left untended by the drunkard and his slattern who owned that boat, the flames spreading in the dry electric air until the river was dancing with it. An accident.

Some people talked; some always do. Said you had encouraged it with your sermons; nodded wisely at old Muscat and his young son, so nicely placed to see and hear, but who, on that night, had seen and heard nothing. Mostly, though, there was relief. And when the winter rain came and the Tannes swelled once more, even the hulks were covered over.

I went round there again this morning, Pere. The place haunts me. Barely different to the way it was twenty years ago, there is a sly stillness to the place, an air of anticipation. Curtains twitch at grimy windows as I walk by. I seem to hear a low, continuous laughter coming at me across the quiet spaces. Will I be strong enough, pere? In spite of all my good intentions, will I fail? Three weeks. Already I have spent three weeks in the wilderness. I should be purged of uncertainties and weaknesses. But the fear remains. I dreamed of her last night. Oh, not a voluptuous dream, but one of incomprehensible menace. It is the sense of disorder which she brings, pere, which so unnerves me. That wildness.

Joline Drou tells me the daughter is as bad. Running wild in Les Marauds, talk of ritual and superstition. Joline tells me the child has never attended church, never learnt to pray. She talks to her of Easter and the Resurrection; the child gabbles a farrago of pagan nonsense in return. And this festival; there is one of her posters in every shop window. The children are crazed with excitement: `Leave them alone, pere, you're only young once;' says Georges Clairmont indulgently. His wife looks at me archly from beneath her plucked eyebrows. `Well; I don't see what actual harm it could do,' she says simperingly. The truth is, I suspect, that their son has shown an interest. `And anything which reinforces the Easter message-' I do not attempt to make them understand. To rail against a children's celebration is to court ridicule. Already Narcisse has been heard to refer to my brigade anti-chocolat, amidst disloyal sniggering. But it rankles.

That she should use the Church's celebration to undermine the Church – to undermine me. Already I have jeopardized my dignity. I dare not go further than this. And with every day her influence spreads. Part of it is the shop itself. Halfcafe, half-confiserie, it projects an air of cosiness, of confidences. Children love the chocolate shapes at pocket money prices. Adults enjoy the atmosphere of subtle naughtiness, of secrets whispered, grievances aired. Several families have begun to order a chocolate cake for lunch every Sunday; I watch them as they collect the beribboned boxes after Mass. The inhabitants of Lansquenet-sous-Tannes have never eaten as much chocolate. Yesterday Denise Arnauld was eating eating! – in the confessional. I could smell the sweetness on her breath, but I had to pretend to maintain anonymity.

`Blesh me, mon pere, I have shinned.’

I could hear her chewing, hear the flat little sucking sounds she made against her teeth. I listened in growing rage as she confessed to a list of trifling sins which I barely even heard, the smell of chocolate growing more pungent in the enclosed space by the second. Her voice was thick with it, and I felt my own mouth moisten in sympathy. Finally I could not bear it any longer.

`Are you eating something?’ I snapped.

`No, pere.’ Her voice was almost indignant. `Eating? Why should I’

'I'm sure I can hear you eating.’ I did not bother to lower my voice but half-stood in the darkness of the cubicle, my hands gripping the ledge. `What do you take me for, an idiot?’

Once again I heard the sucking sound of saliva against the tongue, and my rage flared. `I can hear you, Madame,' I said harshly. `Or do you imagine you are inaudible, as well as invisible?’

'Mon pere, I assure you-'

`Quiet, Madame Arnauld, before you perjure yourself still further!' I roared, and suddenly there was no smell of chocolate; no lapping sound, simply a gasp of tearful outrage and a panicked scuffling as she fled from the cubicle, her high heels skidding on the parquet ass she ran.

Alone in the cubicle I tried to recapture the scent, the sound, the certainty I had felt, the indignation – the rightness of my anger. But as the dark closed around me, scented with incense and candle smoke and not a trace of chocolate, I faltered, doubting. Then the absurdity of it all struck me and I doubled up in a paroxysm of mirth as unexpected as it was alarming. I was left shaken and drenched with sweat, my stomach churning. The unexpected thought that she would be the only person to fully appreciate the humour of the situation was enough to provoke another convulsion, and I was obliged to cut short confession, pleading a slight malaise. My walk was unsteady as I made my way back to the vestry, and I caught a number of people looking at me strangely. I must be more careful. Gossip abounds in Lansquenet.