Read Eat Him If You Like Online
Authors: Jean Teulé
Eat Him If You Like (7 page)
Well, to think that Alain was deemed to have a weak constitution by the medical board! He did not know why he was still alive, but his heart continued to flutter in his chest. The people towing him turned to the right, towards whatever fate awaited him.
‘Burn him! Roast him!’
‘Burn him! If not, the Prussians will come and set us alight!’ urged the villagers, hoping to ward off the spectre of a fire.
‘After shoeing him like an ox, we’ll cook him like a pig!’
‘He needs to be plucked before we cook him!’ proposed a raucous female voice that sounded familiar.
The mob paused to think. A large group went in search of
wood – branches, planks and broken furniture. They tossed it onto Alain’s chest with needless brutality. He had become a wheelbarrow – his legs the shaft and his head the wheel.
‘Take the Prussian over there, where the firewood is!’
They also needed some straw and a means of lighting the fire.
‘Hey, Thibassou, here’s one sou. Run and fetch some matches from Mousnier’s inn and bring some newspaper as well. The
Dordogne Echo
will do fine!’
Chambort arrived with a bale of straw, followed by a villager yelling at him for stealing his fodder.
‘That’s worth thirteen sous, you know!’
‘Never fear. Napoleon III will pay you back for your straw bale because we’re using it to save France!’
‘I know the mayor’s a coward but where’s the priest?’ cried Mazerat from afar.
‘Passed out in the church from drinking in an attempt to avert this disaster. He’s snoring at Christ’s feet,’ boomed Bouteaudon’s voice.
Mazière and Buisson dragged Alain along by his legs. Bumping on the ground, his head oozed a long trail of brains and blood. The tragic carnival was reaching its climax. The villagers had destroyed his body and now they were going to burn it. Alain was going to the theatre of hell. He was nothing more than a rag doll, and burning him would mark the end of the festivities. He was driven out of the village on a tidal wave of abuse.
Menacing river banks closed in on him, echoing with baying voices. Memories of profoundly happy, peaceful occasions from his comfortable former existence came rushing back.
Alain had fallen from grace and was now being dragged by his ankles towards the fairground. The murder that the crowd was about to commit was a declaration of love for France. People hurled chestnut branches onto Alain’s chest, onto the man they saw as a human wheelbarrow, all the while shouting ‘Long live the Emperor!’ Alain endured their blows without much struggle. They hauled him along the path to a place that seemed to be a rubbish tip. They had arrived at the dried-up lake, where each year a bonfire was lit on midsummer’s night.
Mazière, Buisson and the younger Campot brother came to help the other men, and they dumped Alain’s body on the dried-up lake bed. The water had evaporated after months of searing heat. Alain lay on his back on the parched, cracked earth, his head turned slightly to one side. He was still breathing slightly.
‘Hooray! He’s not dead! He’s not dead! We’re going to burn him alive!’
Alain had been dreaming of a quick and easy death. Or rather, he had been praying for it. He heard the voice of his childhood friend Chambort – now a blacksmith in Pouvrières – organising the construction of the funeral pyre. Alain had known him so well; how could his old friend
have turned against him so suddenly?
‘Bring more wood; bring vine shoots and cartwheels, and pull up the fence posts!’
They had now reached the fringes of the livestock fair. Chambort spread straw over his former playmate’s chest. Alain could still move his left foot. He wanted to escape. Chestnut branches and planks were piled on top of him. Alain still needed to go and buy a heifer for Bertille. He pushed at the heap of wood with his fingers, but Chambort jumped on him.
‘Trample on the pyre to make a good fire!’
Chambort stood on the vine shoots and packed down the wood with his feet. He waddled around, putting on airs. He trampled the wretched Alain underfoot from his makeshift platform.
‘Long live the Emperor!’ he called. ‘Long live the Empress and the young imperial Prince!’
Some cattle farmers and horse traders who had been at the far side of the fair all afternoon were oblivious to what had been happening. They were astounded to see a pyre being erected atop a fellow human being.
‘They’ve caught a Prussian and they’re going to burn him! War has reached Hautefaye!’ shouted some in a panic, hurrying along their cattle and getting away from the fair as quickly as possible.
‘We must go to Nontron and tell the police!’ said a farmer’s wife, losing her headdress as she raced downhill, prodding her heifer’s rump into a gallop.
Some visitors, having grasped the situation more clearly, were appalled by the mob’s brutality and cradled their heads
in their hands. Many, mesmerised, watched what followed. Chambort descended from the pyre.
‘The youngest should light the fire,’ he decided, ‘just like on midsummer’s night. Come closer, children. Hey, you there, what’s your name?’
‘Pierre Delage, but people call me ’Poleon,’ replied a young boy of five with bruised bare feet who was clinging to his mother’s threadbare skirt.
‘His father gave him that nickname after the Emperor,’ she explained, ‘when he returned from fighting the Russians in the Crimea.’
‘Very good. And where is your heroic husband?’
‘He died in the Battle of Forbach.’
‘Really?’ said Chambort, looking pained. ‘Then come, Napoleon, set this Prussian alight. The Emperor will send you a medal and some shoes.’
‘Shoes? Go on,’ said the poor mother to her child.
‘Don’t do it, Pierre!’ shouted Dubois and Georges Mathieu.
‘If you do, the police will put you in prison!’ added Antony and Bouteaudon.
‘Don’t do it!’ yelled Mazerat.
The villagers turned and chased Alain’s protectors away. The child hesitated, but Jean Campot lit a match and held it out to him.
‘Come on, Napoleon, burn the pig …’
The child knelt to light the paper, but he couldn’t keep the flame alive. The match went out too quickly; he had to start again. Alain could smell the wood. A third match sparked near one of his ears and the
Dordogne Echo
caught fire, the
flames spreading quickly to the straw and the vine shoots. He tossed about beneath the conifer branches. Logs blazed and the smell of resin hung in the air. Alain still appeared to be moving behind the curtains of fire as they sprang up.
Alain watched the hazy crowd dance through the yellow and orange waves, throwing their hats and sticks up to the sky. A low, regular drone like a beehive filled the air.
‘Long live the Emperor!’ coughed the mayor, still sporting his sash, as he inhaled a cloud of smoke.
The men found killing a human being just as easy as harvesting their crops, and they danced and spun in circles. Alain was still alive and his heavy breathing sounded like air escaping a bellows. The end was nigh. His hair smouldered, his chest caught fire. He was finding it harder and harder to breathe. A woman was yelling wildly. It was the schoolmaster’s wife, her treacherous red lips drawn back in a grimace, revealing her fangs. Near her stood Anna – the girl whose hand Alain would have liked to hold as he watched their child playing in the vineyard. She gazed at him, weeping, and mouthed a sentence he could not hear. It seemed she was promising him something. Her look fuelled the flames round Alain’s heart and it burst from his shattered chest. One crazed yet dreamy eye remained open.
His ashes floated towards the blue sky, a sky that sang and called to him. He left the pleasures of this world, victim of a misunderstanding that could not have had a more gruesome outcome. His ashes finally rose above the fathomless world of fools and the depravity of these people, guilty of a crime beyond their comprehension. His flesh was now roasting in its own juice. It was a wretched end. Several people asked,
‘Who was he?’ They had spent all afternoon massacring a man without even enquiring who he was.
‘We’re cooking a fine pig!’
Alain had become a spit roast. The skin on his thighs and shoulders crackled and blistered, swelling with bubbles full of boiling fat. They burst and a glistening, even appetising juice spurted out.
‘It would be a shame to waste this fat!’ said Besse ruefully. ‘Does anybody want to try it?’
A mother took a six-pound loaf of bread from her basket and sliced it up. With a spatula, she scooped up some of the fat pooling near Alain’s elbows and spread it on the bread, distributing it to her children.
‘Eat up! Eat up, darlings. It’s not every day you get something on your bread these days. Blow on it. It’s hot.’
More slices of bread dripping with scalding human fat were passed around, and good men wolfed them down.
‘What does it taste of?’
‘A bit like veal.’
People started flocking towards Alain’s remains for a slap-up feast. Everyone gave an opinion, sounding like great culinary experts.
‘It would taste better washed down with a little glass of white Pontignac.’
Alain could never have imagined they would say such things about him, the deputy mayor of Beaussac. His ashes rose higher, swirling around in the air above the crowd who were feasting as they did on the most important holidays. They devoured their cannibal sandwiches. Anna saw Thibassou take a mouthful and wash it down with white
wine. Eating this body would purge the community. Small satisfied burps mingled with the sounds of chewing. It was a joy to hear. Boiling fat caused overhasty lips to blister.
‘Ouch!’
‘He burnt you! He’s still hurting you.’
A heavy, acrid smoke hung above the dried-up lake, rising slowly. Families danced and children squalled. Unmarried men continued drinking and eyed the charred body that the fire had transformed. Like clouds in the sky or logs in the fireplace, the body changed according to where the person was standing.
‘Look, he resembles a wild boar. What do you think?’
‘A bird.’
‘Those two embers glowing side by side look like Beelzebub’s eyes. You can see his yellow tongue flickering.’
Everybody saw their own personal demons appear. They stood there mesmerised, like children.
‘A stag!’
He was no longer a man. Madame Lachaud delivered a sharp blow between the legs of his charred remains with a spade. His chest split open to reveal a dazzling interior. Fire tongs in hand, she continued rummaging around inside. Her husband started to worry.
‘What are you looking for?’
‘His treasures. Ah look, look, his nuts!’
Madame Lachaud’s proud husband observed her passing Alain’s testicles from one hand to the other to cool them down. He found her devilish attitude amusing.
‘You wouldn’t …’
Perverse like no other, she did as she pleased and munched
them defiantly, staring at Anna. She bit down hard. With her bodice open and her voluminous breasts glistening with sweat, she looked like a rabid dog. From between the jaws of the victim’s burnt skull, big bubbles emerged and popped noisily, giving her a fright.
‘What’s that Prussian gibbering about now?’
‘He’s saying: “I’d love to fuck you, but my cock’s burning”,’ translated her husband.
Around them, people roared with laughter. A man takes a long time to burn. On the horizon, the setting sun was weeping blood. The scene was grisly. The ashes from Alain’s charred corpse were dispersed in all directions by the wind. They slipped under the soles of the men who were leaving as they wiped their greasy mouths contentedly on their sleeves.
‘There are too many Prussians in Lorraine to put up with one in our village! This one’s burning. I think we’ve made an example of him.’
‘I’m glad I hit him in the face four times with my stick, and that those blows really counted against that de Monéys.’
‘Against who?’
‘Against the Prussian.’
‘Oh yes, me too. I whacked the Prussian too.’
‘You missed a wonderful roast!’ they told everyone they met. ‘He had as much fat as three sows, that Prussian. He would have lasted us the whole week!’
The ratter retched on hearing all the culinary details.
‘Oh, don’t act all high and mighty!’ laughed the cannibals. ‘You eat rats, and old ones at that!’
‘But that was Monsieur de Monéys.’
‘What?’
As they exhaled, fatty residue landed on men’s shoulders. The burnt remains of Magdeleine-Louise and Amédée de Monéys’s son floated up in the air and drifted southwards. The moon gave off an oppressive light that night. Falling leaves whirled and sparred on the path that led to Bretanges. A young man carrying a lantern ran in the direction of the distant house. A frail mother stood at the open
drawing-room
window worrying about her son. Even though it was dark, the heat was still suffocating. She closed the lid of the piano and saw a plume of smoke rising up over Hautefaye. The sound of running footsteps was like a downpour on the dust. It was their servant, Pascal.
‘Why is he running so fast when it’s so hot?’ wondered Alain’s mother, in surprise.
‘Madame de Monéys! Madame de Monéys!’
Pascal burst into the seventeenth-century house.
‘It’s Alain, he’s been …’
A terrible scream tore through the countryside and the night.
