Muscat is not in the church. I check the grounds, still half-believing that he may be waiting for me there, but there is no sign. Maybe he is ill, I tell myself. Only serious illness would prevent such an assiduous churchgoer from attending service on Palm Sunday. I change my clean cassock for my workaday soutane, leaving the ceremonial vestments in the vestry. The chalice and sacramental plate I lock away for safekeeping. In your day, Pere, there would have been no reason to do so, but in these uncertain times nothing can be taken on trust. Vagrants and gypsies – not to mention some of our own villagers might take the prospect of hard cash more seriously than that of eternal damnation.
I make my way towards Les Marauds with a quick step. Muscat has been uncommunicative since last week, and I have only seen him in passing, though he looks doughy and ill, hunched like a sullen penitent, his eyes half hidden beneath the puffy folds of his eyelids. Few people visit the café now, afraid perhaps of Muscat 's haggard looks and quick temper. I went there myself on Friday; the bar was almost deserted. The floor had not been swept since Josephine's departure. Cigarette-butts and swee twrappers slid underfoot. Empty glasses cluttered every surface. A few sandwiches and a reddish, curling thing which might have been a slice of pizza stood forlornly beneath the glass counter. Next to them, a pile of Caroline's leaflets, held down with a dirty beer glass. There was a low under-stench of vomit and mould beneath the rankness of Gauloises.
Muscat was drunk. `So it's you.’
His tone was morose, just this side of belligerent. `Come to tell me to turn the other cheek again, have you?’
He took a long drag of the cigarette clamped wetly between his teeth. `You should be pleased. Haven't gone near the bitch in days.’
I shook my head. `You mustn't be bitter,' I told him.
'I can be what I like in my own bar,' said Muscat in his slurred, aggressive way. 'It a my bar, isn't it, pere? I mean, you're not going to give that to her on a plate as well, are Your I told him I understood what he must be feeling. He took another drag on his cigarette and coughed laughter and stale beer into my face.
`That's good, pere.’
His breath was foul arid hot, like an animal's. `That's very good. Course you understand. Course you do. The church took your balls when you took your vows. Stands to reason you shouldn't want me to keep mine.’
'You're drunk, Muscat,' I snapped.
`Well spotted, pere,' he snarled. `Not much gets past you, does it?’
He made a sweeping gesture with the hand which held the cigarette. `All she needs is to see the place like this,' he said harshly. `That's all she needs to make her happy now. Knowing that she's ruined me' – he was close to tears now, his eyes filling with the drunkard's easy self pity – `knowing she's thrown our marriage wide open for people to laugh at-' He made a filthy sound, half-sob, half belch. `Knowing she's broken my fucking heart!' He wiped his nose wetly on the back of his hand.
`Don't think I don't know what's going on there,' he said in a lower voice. `The bitch and her queer friends. I know what they're doing.’
His voice was getting louder again, and I looked around awkwardly to see his three or four remaining customers gaping at him curiously. I pressed his arm in warning.
`Don't lose hope, Muscat,' I urged, fighting my disgust at finding myself so close to him. `This is no way to win her back. Remember that many married couples have moments of doubt, but-' He sniggered. `Doubt, is it?’
He sniggered again. `Tell you what, pere. Give me five minutes alone with her, and I'll solve that problem for her for good. IT fucking win her back, no doubt about that.’
He sounded vicious and stupid, his words barely formed around his shark's grin. I took him by the shoulders and articulated clearly, hoping that at least some of my meaning might penetrate. `You will not,' I said into his face, ignoring the gaping drinkers at the bar. `You will conduct yourself with decency, Muscat, you will follow the correct procedure if you wish to take action, and you will keep away from both of them! Understood?’
My hands were gripping his shoulders. Muscat protested, whining obscenities. `I'm warning you, Muscat,' I told him. `I've tolerated a great deal from you, but this kind of – bullying – behaviour I will not tolerate. Do you understand?’
He muttered something, apology or threat I could not tell. At the time I thought it was I'm sorry, but thinking back it might just as easily have been You'll be sorry, his eyes glittering meanly behind his half-shed drunkard's tears.
Sorry. But who would be made to be sorry? And for what? Hurrying down the hill towards Les Marauds, I wondered again if I had misread the signs. Could he be capable of violence towards himself? Might I, in my eagerness to prevent further disturbance, have overlooked the truth of the matter, the fact that the fellow was on the far edge of despair? When I reached the cafe de la Republique it was shut, but a small circle of people were standing outside, apparently looking up at one of the first-floor windows. I recognized Caro Clairmont and Joline Drou amongst them. Duplessis was there too, a small dignified figure with his felt hat and his dog cavorting at his feet. Above the sound of voices I thought I could hear a higher, shriller sound which rose and fell in varying cadences, occasionally almost resolving itself into words, phrases, a scream…
`Pere.’ Caro's voice was breathless, her face flushed. Her expression was like that of the wide-eyed and eternally gasping beauties of certain glossy top-shelf magazines, and I found myself flushing at the thought.
`What is it?’
My voice was crisp. ` Muscat?’
`It's Josephine,' said Caro in excitement. `He's got her up there in the top room, pere, and she's screaming.’
Even as she spoke another volley of noise – combining screams, shouted abuse and the sound of projectiles smashing – came from the window, and a shower of debris scattered onto the cobbles. A woman's voice, high enough to shatter glass, screeched – though not, I thought, in terror but in wild and simple rage – followed almost at once by another explosion of household shrapnel. Books, rags, records, mantel ornaments… the mundane artillery of domestic strife.
I called up towards the window. ` Muscat? Can you hear me? Muscat!' An empty canary-cage came hurtling through the air.
` Muscat!' From inside the house, no answer. The two adversaries sound inhuman – a troll and a harpy – and for a moment I feel almost uneasy, as if the world has turned a little further into the shadows, broadening the crescent of darkness which separates us from the light. Open the door and what might I see? For a dreadful second the old memory hits home and I am sixteen again, opening the door of that old church annexe still referred to by some as the chancery, passing from the church's murky half-light into a deeper gloom, my feet almost soundless on the smooth parquet, with the strange thudding and groaning of an unseen monster in my ears. Opening the door, heart trip hammering in my throat, fists clenched, eyes wide… and seeing on the floor in front of me the pallid arching beast, its proportions half-familiar but bizarrely doubled, two faces raised towards me in frozen expressions of rage-horror-dismay.
Maman! Pere! Ludicrous, I know. There can be no connection. And yet looking at Caro Clairmont's moist and feverish countenance I wonder if perhaps she feels it too, the erotic belly-thrill of violence, the moment of power when the match strikes, the blow falls, the petrol ignites…
It was not simply your betrayal, pere, that made my blood freeze and the skin of my temples tauten like drumskins. I knew about sin – the sins of the flesh – only as a kind of disgusting abstraction, like lying down with animals. That there might be pleasure in it was almost incomprehensible. And yet you and my mother – hot, flushed, working at it in that mechanical way, oiled with and against each other like pistons, not quite naked, no, but more lewd for the vestiges of clothing – blouse, crumpled skirt, soutane drawn up… No, it was not the flesh which so disgusted me, for I looked at the scene with a distant, disgusted disinterest. It was because I had compromised myself for you, pere, only two weeks before, had compromised my soul for you – the bottle of oil slick against the palm of my hand, the thrill of righteous power, the sigh of rapture as the bottle flies into the air and ignites, splashing across the deck of the pitiful houseboat in a bright wave of hungry flick-flicking flames, flick -flick against the dry tarpaulin, crisss against the cracked dry wood, licking with salacious glee. They suspected arson, pere, but never Reynaud's good, quiet boy, not Francis, who sang in the church choir and sat so pale and good during your sermons. Not pale young Francis, who had never so much as broken a window. Muscat, perhaps. Old Muscat and his tearaway son might have done it. For a time there was coldness towards them, unfriendly speculation. This time, things had gone too far. But they denied it steadfastly, and after all, there was no proof. The victims were none of ours. No-one made the connexion between the burning and the changes in the Reynaud fortunes, the parents' separation, the boy's departure for a select school in the North… I did it for you, pare. For love of you. The burning boat on the dry flats lights up the brown night, people running out, screaming, scrabbling at the baked-earth banks of the arid Tannes, some trying hopelessly to drag out the few remaining bucketfuls of mud from the riverbed to throw over the burning boat, I waiting in the bushes, mouth dry, belly full of hot joy.