Fermina Marquez (1911) (10 page)
XIX
Ten days or so before prizegiving, as Joanny Leniot was standing in the playground, he heard his name being called by Santos Iturria.
"Mama Dolore has something to say to you; come." He followed him. The whole family was on the terrace. He shook their hands. Mama Dolore enquired after his health, was charming. Joanny would have liked to have cut short the meeting. He was above all afraid of being left alone with Fermina. He was no longer so certain that he had not been ridiculous at their last encounter with his talk about his genius. He observed her surreptitiously. He was not surprised that she had discarded her ideas of humility and piety; that appeared natural to him: we outlive our emotions as we outlive the seasons. There was in her lovely frame a central, all-powerful force, of which her thoughts, desires and feelings were just passing modes. She was more beautiful than ever and seemed to have grown taller. He felt a mere child in her presence. He was not made to be loved by her; he ought never to have lost his heart to her.
He wanted to take his leave. But he was obliged to listen to Mama Dolore's word of thanks. "Mr Leniot, you showed my nephew so much kindness that I had no wish to demonstrate my gratitude in speech alone. So please accept this small something; may it remind you of us occasionally." She offered
him a little package, a box wrapped up in tissue paper. Joanny reddened. His pride inclined him to refuse. He was on the point of doing so when Fermina Marquez passed close to him and murmured: "Accept." He obeyed her, made his thanks in a few words and withdrew.
It was only at the end of evening prep that he decided to open the box. It was a gold watch and chain; a thick, heavy chain. The face was in gold. His initials J.L. were engraved on the back. He felt a moment's gay surprise. The watch of Leniot senior was scarcely finer looking than this one. The box bore the name of a rue de la Paix jeweller. Mama Dolore must easily have had to pay five or six hundred francs for it. So the Creole lady cared a lot for him? Why then hadn't she said: "Until our next meeting"? He remembered her words: "You showed my nephew so much kindness ..." So that was it. "But then," thought Joanny suddenly, "but then they paid me off!" Yes, of course that was it. This present was not a token of affection, a present that is made to a family friend. It was the settlement of a service rendered: it was made at the end, at the moment when relations were being brought to a close.
"They paid me off!" Joanny succumbed beneath the insult. "They paid me off!" His cheeks had turned red all of a sudden and the flush remained like the visible mark of a slap, painful as a burn. "They paid me off!" Yes, they wished to owe him nothing; they had dismissed him by generously paying him his wages. Oh! The wretches! Oh! The wretches! And it was with smiles that they destroyed my dignity. That was the way of the rich: they used their money to hurt those they despised. Joanny looked at all his companions, his eyes dry and burning. And he realized that he hated them because they were wealthy. Until that moment, he had not been aware of this. Those two hundred thousand francs his father earned each year from the silk trade brought him the respect and greetings of the folk in his neighbourhood and made his family the potentates of its village in the department of the Loire. Even in Lyons, Leniot senior was a grandee and Joanny, as the only son, had his share of that fame. But what was that compared to the wealth of all these sons of nabobs, to the millions these South Americans had which their fathers sent to Europe aboard ships which belonged to them?
"They paid me off!" His hands clenching his desk, Joanny eyed the prep group, livid with rage. How calm they all were, huddled like this over their exercise books, these sons of kings! "They paid me off!" It was the supreme insult. The poor at least, even if they were striking you, made an effort, grimaced. The rich remained sitting down, spoke to you softly and destroyed you. All his friends' parents would have acted in the same manner. "For those people I am a beggar and they look down on me. They have the gall to despise me who am so intellectually superior to all of them!"
"They paid me off! ..." Joanny remembered an incident in his childhood. One day, his parents had said to one of their workmen: "Please bring your son to spend the afternoons here; he will keep Mr Joanny company." At the end of eight days, the urchin had been returned to his father because he had already taught Mr Joanny lewd expressions. And the workman had been given a present to "pay for the hire of the young lout," Leniot senior had said. Joanny asked for permission to leave prep. He was holding the watch and chain in his closed fist.
At the end of a passage there was an abandoned classroom, next to the detention room. Its door had been boarded up; its window, which overlooked a small yard bounded by the main building and the wall of the riding school, had been blocked up by means of boards nailed to the frame; and higher up, a gap had been sealed off with tar paper. Pupils had amused themselves by piercing this paper with stones. They took pleasure in hearing the reverberation of their missiles as they dropped into this unknown place, on to this floor (or on to those benches?) they had never seen. Many dilapidated things could always be got rid of in this way: pen holders, broken rulers, used-up toiletries. The dreamiest of the younger ones, little Camille Moutier for example, could not imagine the appearance of this lifeless chamber without trembling. And the proximity of the detention room, where we were confined only in the most serious of cases, was all that was necessary to make it a sacred place, consecrated to the fearsome gods.
Leniot leant with his back against the wall of the riding school, took deliberate aim and with a sudden movement, sent the watch and chain flying through the perforated paper. He heard two sounds: the object must first have hit the wall at the far end of the room and then come down on the wooden floor. — He returned to prep, relieved.
The next day on waking up, an idea occurred to him: wouldn't Mama Dolore be surprised not to receive a letter from his parents thanking her for their son's present? Because of course he would never speak of this matter to his parents. And he could already hear Mama Dolore saying to her niece: "Those Leniots haven't even sent me a note of thanks; those people don't know how to live." And her niece would remember what Joanny Leniot had said in her presence: "Tradesmen, financiers, every sort and kind of common person."
And on prizegiving day (they would certainly come to it), they would be astonished not to see the heavy, fine-looking watch chain on his waistcoat. And were his parents also to come from Lyons to witness his scholastic triumph, they would barely acknowledge the Marquezes about whom he had never said anything to them in his letters. Ah! What a blunder his pride had made him commit. But it was almost stealing! We are without question entitled to take pleasure in the things we are given but we have no right to destroy them; that is truly to wrong the giver. It would have been better not to accept.
No indeed! It would definitely have been better to keep those trinkets. If only to have a physical memento of Fermina Marquez. After all, this watch was not lost. If the prefect of studies were informed that an object as valuable as that could be found in this room, he would not hesitate to have the door broken down. But to notify him of this, Joanny would have to admit the truth. And he could never summon up the courage to do so.
He had fallen out with the Marquezes. He would not see them again. So much the better. He would not seek to make connections like Julien Morot! And as for her, well what of it? It was over! He had been stupid and ridiculous in her presence. It was therefore better that he no longer saw her, that she did not come to remind him any more that he had been stupid and ridiculous at an altogether forgettable moment in his life. And he most certainly had been. It still made him blush. Ah! That seduction plan and all that infantile talk!
For several days, he remained in the depths of despair, wallowing in the reeking swamps of self-contempt. He pulled himself out of this by reflecting with pride: "Here am I, Leniot, with so many grounds to be pleased with myself, filled with self-loathing." He marvelled at his modesty; the contrast created by the apparent good fortune of his destiny and the melancholy of his nature. He compared himself to a king covered in glory and yet weary of life. In a week's time, it would be prizegiving, his wonderful day of triumph, all red and golden. Joanny would be dazed by the applause greeting his name, repeated twenty times by the announcer of the list of prize winners. And despite that, he would take a sombreness of mind and lugubrious thoughts to the rostrum. But no, since this idea afforded him pleasure, his self-satisfaction was restored.
Without lessons to learn, prepared work to do, punishments to fear, the last days of the school year have arrived. They are so marvellous that you no longer remember what you have done with them. I firmly believe they were like great, empty rooms wholly bathed in sunlight: yes, thanks to there being none of the usual lessons and homework, they resembled reception rooms out of which all the furniture has been taken so that there can be dancing. It was the period when I would take stock of my year, congratulating myself for not having merited a single punishment, for I too was an excellent pupil. And I was pleased because I was going to receive, as one might a superb, gold ingot, my form's prize for excellence. It was an important landmark in my life, this prize for excellence: thanks to it, you were certain of having done very well; with it, you did not need to look any higher; you had
made it.
To think that I would never again have the prize for excellence! Joanny was already too old to reread the novels in the series
School Life by Country;
but he knew that these last days can be profitably employed by reading with care
The Ancient City
by Fustel de Coulanges or alternatively Gaston Boissier's masterpiece
Cicero and his Friends.
Meanwhile, he would leaf through his corrected exercise books; the subject of each piece of homework was the memory of a triumph for him. In one of these exercise books, on a flyleaf, he had written down two letters: P.M.; and beneath, a date; the date of the bait on that famous evening when he had taken the decision to seduce a certain girl. He pondered for a moment. Then with a frightening seriousness, above the initials and the date, he set down this phrase taken from the
Commentaries on the Gallic Wars: "Hoc untim ad pristinam fortunam Caesari defuit."
"Mama Dolore has something to say to you; come." He followed him. The whole family was on the terrace. He shook their hands. Mama Dolore enquired after his health, was charming. Joanny would have liked to have cut short the meeting. He was above all afraid of being left alone with Fermina. He was no longer so certain that he had not been ridiculous at their last encounter with his talk about his genius. He observed her surreptitiously. He was not surprised that she had discarded her ideas of humility and piety; that appeared natural to him: we outlive our emotions as we outlive the seasons. There was in her lovely frame a central, all-powerful force, of which her thoughts, desires and feelings were just passing modes. She was more beautiful than ever and seemed to have grown taller. He felt a mere child in her presence. He was not made to be loved by her; he ought never to have lost his heart to her.
He wanted to take his leave. But he was obliged to listen to Mama Dolore's word of thanks. "Mr Leniot, you showed my nephew so much kindness that I had no wish to demonstrate my gratitude in speech alone. So please accept this small something; may it remind you of us occasionally." She offered
him a little package, a box wrapped up in tissue paper. Joanny reddened. His pride inclined him to refuse. He was on the point of doing so when Fermina Marquez passed close to him and murmured: "Accept." He obeyed her, made his thanks in a few words and withdrew.
It was only at the end of evening prep that he decided to open the box. It was a gold watch and chain; a thick, heavy chain. The face was in gold. His initials J.L. were engraved on the back. He felt a moment's gay surprise. The watch of Leniot senior was scarcely finer looking than this one. The box bore the name of a rue de la Paix jeweller. Mama Dolore must easily have had to pay five or six hundred francs for it. So the Creole lady cared a lot for him? Why then hadn't she said: "Until our next meeting"? He remembered her words: "You showed my nephew so much kindness ..." So that was it. "But then," thought Joanny suddenly, "but then they paid me off!" Yes, of course that was it. This present was not a token of affection, a present that is made to a family friend. It was the settlement of a service rendered: it was made at the end, at the moment when relations were being brought to a close.
"They paid me off!" Joanny succumbed beneath the insult. "They paid me off!" His cheeks had turned red all of a sudden and the flush remained like the visible mark of a slap, painful as a burn. "They paid me off!" Yes, they wished to owe him nothing; they had dismissed him by generously paying him his wages. Oh! The wretches! Oh! The wretches! And it was with smiles that they destroyed my dignity. That was the way of the rich: they used their money to hurt those they despised. Joanny looked at all his companions, his eyes dry and burning. And he realized that he hated them because they were wealthy. Until that moment, he had not been aware of this. Those two hundred thousand francs his father earned each year from the silk trade brought him the respect and greetings of the folk in his neighbourhood and made his family the potentates of its village in the department of the Loire. Even in Lyons, Leniot senior was a grandee and Joanny, as the only son, had his share of that fame. But what was that compared to the wealth of all these sons of nabobs, to the millions these South Americans had which their fathers sent to Europe aboard ships which belonged to them?
"They paid me off!" His hands clenching his desk, Joanny eyed the prep group, livid with rage. How calm they all were, huddled like this over their exercise books, these sons of kings! "They paid me off!" It was the supreme insult. The poor at least, even if they were striking you, made an effort, grimaced. The rich remained sitting down, spoke to you softly and destroyed you. All his friends' parents would have acted in the same manner. "For those people I am a beggar and they look down on me. They have the gall to despise me who am so intellectually superior to all of them!"
"They paid me off! ..." Joanny remembered an incident in his childhood. One day, his parents had said to one of their workmen: "Please bring your son to spend the afternoons here; he will keep Mr Joanny company." At the end of eight days, the urchin had been returned to his father because he had already taught Mr Joanny lewd expressions. And the workman had been given a present to "pay for the hire of the young lout," Leniot senior had said. Joanny asked for permission to leave prep. He was holding the watch and chain in his closed fist.
At the end of a passage there was an abandoned classroom, next to the detention room. Its door had been boarded up; its window, which overlooked a small yard bounded by the main building and the wall of the riding school, had been blocked up by means of boards nailed to the frame; and higher up, a gap had been sealed off with tar paper. Pupils had amused themselves by piercing this paper with stones. They took pleasure in hearing the reverberation of their missiles as they dropped into this unknown place, on to this floor (or on to those benches?) they had never seen. Many dilapidated things could always be got rid of in this way: pen holders, broken rulers, used-up toiletries. The dreamiest of the younger ones, little Camille Moutier for example, could not imagine the appearance of this lifeless chamber without trembling. And the proximity of the detention room, where we were confined only in the most serious of cases, was all that was necessary to make it a sacred place, consecrated to the fearsome gods.
Leniot leant with his back against the wall of the riding school, took deliberate aim and with a sudden movement, sent the watch and chain flying through the perforated paper. He heard two sounds: the object must first have hit the wall at the far end of the room and then come down on the wooden floor. — He returned to prep, relieved.
The next day on waking up, an idea occurred to him: wouldn't Mama Dolore be surprised not to receive a letter from his parents thanking her for their son's present? Because of course he would never speak of this matter to his parents. And he could already hear Mama Dolore saying to her niece: "Those Leniots haven't even sent me a note of thanks; those people don't know how to live." And her niece would remember what Joanny Leniot had said in her presence: "Tradesmen, financiers, every sort and kind of common person."
And on prizegiving day (they would certainly come to it), they would be astonished not to see the heavy, fine-looking watch chain on his waistcoat. And were his parents also to come from Lyons to witness his scholastic triumph, they would barely acknowledge the Marquezes about whom he had never said anything to them in his letters. Ah! What a blunder his pride had made him commit. But it was almost stealing! We are without question entitled to take pleasure in the things we are given but we have no right to destroy them; that is truly to wrong the giver. It would have been better not to accept.
No indeed! It would definitely have been better to keep those trinkets. If only to have a physical memento of Fermina Marquez. After all, this watch was not lost. If the prefect of studies were informed that an object as valuable as that could be found in this room, he would not hesitate to have the door broken down. But to notify him of this, Joanny would have to admit the truth. And he could never summon up the courage to do so.
He had fallen out with the Marquezes. He would not see them again. So much the better. He would not seek to make connections like Julien Morot! And as for her, well what of it? It was over! He had been stupid and ridiculous in her presence. It was therefore better that he no longer saw her, that she did not come to remind him any more that he had been stupid and ridiculous at an altogether forgettable moment in his life. And he most certainly had been. It still made him blush. Ah! That seduction plan and all that infantile talk!
For several days, he remained in the depths of despair, wallowing in the reeking swamps of self-contempt. He pulled himself out of this by reflecting with pride: "Here am I, Leniot, with so many grounds to be pleased with myself, filled with self-loathing." He marvelled at his modesty; the contrast created by the apparent good fortune of his destiny and the melancholy of his nature. He compared himself to a king covered in glory and yet weary of life. In a week's time, it would be prizegiving, his wonderful day of triumph, all red and golden. Joanny would be dazed by the applause greeting his name, repeated twenty times by the announcer of the list of prize winners. And despite that, he would take a sombreness of mind and lugubrious thoughts to the rostrum. But no, since this idea afforded him pleasure, his self-satisfaction was restored.
Without lessons to learn, prepared work to do, punishments to fear, the last days of the school year have arrived. They are so marvellous that you no longer remember what you have done with them. I firmly believe they were like great, empty rooms wholly bathed in sunlight: yes, thanks to there being none of the usual lessons and homework, they resembled reception rooms out of which all the furniture has been taken so that there can be dancing. It was the period when I would take stock of my year, congratulating myself for not having merited a single punishment, for I too was an excellent pupil. And I was pleased because I was going to receive, as one might a superb, gold ingot, my form's prize for excellence. It was an important landmark in my life, this prize for excellence: thanks to it, you were certain of having done very well; with it, you did not need to look any higher; you had
made it.
To think that I would never again have the prize for excellence! Joanny was already too old to reread the novels in the series
School Life by Country;
but he knew that these last days can be profitably employed by reading with care
The Ancient City
by Fustel de Coulanges or alternatively Gaston Boissier's masterpiece
Cicero and his Friends.
Meanwhile, he would leaf through his corrected exercise books; the subject of each piece of homework was the memory of a triumph for him. In one of these exercise books, on a flyleaf, he had written down two letters: P.M.; and beneath, a date; the date of the bait on that famous evening when he had taken the decision to seduce a certain girl. He pondered for a moment. Then with a frightening seriousness, above the initials and the date, he set down this phrase taken from the
Commentaries on the Gallic Wars: "Hoc untim ad pristinam fortunam Caesari defuit."
XX
Since I left Saint Augustine's, taking away my last prize for excellence under my arm, I have visited our dear old school on two occasions. My first visit took place in the spring of 1902, several years after the institution had closed for good; and the second was more recently when I had written a large part of this tale. Saint Augustine's had just been expropriated for I don't know what reason, and it could not be entered without the administration's special authorization.
"It's not even worth the trouble to go and ask them for it, they don't grant it to anybody," the caretaker told me through a narrow grille built into the main door.
So I had to content myself with a look at the outer walls and, from the tramway platform, the tops of the trees in the grounds towards Bagneux. A few minutes later, I found myself on the place du Theatre-Franc,ais, which was practically deserted because it was Sunday morning. This visit had barely taken me more than an hour. My childhood and youth strike me as being already so far away as in reality they are near to the place du Theatre-Franc,ais which I go past almost every day.
It is of my first visit in 1902 that I wish to speak at length.
At first sight, you could not tell that anything had changed. The entrance was that same bare hall, with a great, black cross nailed up in the middle of the yellowish wall. And on the right was the caretaker's lodge with a grille and a high, openwork barrier. And in the lodge was the same caretaker as in our day, grown a little old - notably his imperial which had turned grey; and his decorations, instead of being spread out on his blue livery dolman with its silver buttons, were condensed into one single but enormous rosette which adorned the buttonhole of his rather ordinary jacket. He undoubtedly missed the sumptuous and sober livery of Saint Augustine's.
He recognized me almost at once and greeted me gaily with an oath in Spanish.
"Forgive me, sir; but I am so pleased when I see one of my old pupils again. And really all of you are my pupils a little bit: I brought you up. You were so small when you were sent here. You French boys, that was one thing; but I don't understand those South Americans who used to send their children here at such a young age with half the world separating them. Those poor abandoned mites. I've fought in wars, sir; I'm a hard man; well sometimes I've wept, yes wept, seeing them unable to get used to this place. And as for those who used to die! The Negroes, you know. More died in that sick bay than you were told about. "Their parents have taken them away," was the way they used to explain it. Sure, their parents took them away in a box . . . That poor little fellow who was so good at his work and so gentle, Delavache from Haiti, well, he died in my arms upstairs; that's the truth. Ah! When I think back on it! ...
"Sure there were some amongst them who were not up to much; madcaps who would do things which shouldn't be done. But the folk from those tropical countries, they're like the natives in the colonies; they're precocious, too warm blooded. But what the heck! Most of them were in good health and kind hearted, real gentlemen who respected the good Lord and had no fear of anything. Yes, for a fine generation, that's all I need say.
"Look, let's go and sit on the steps of the visiting room. I've put a bench there and that's where I smoke my pipe after lunch. You've got the time, haven't you?
"When the school was sold, as somebody was required to look after the buildings and the grounds, I was appointed the caretaker with a small salary. I could've found a more lucrative post. But I know nobody any more. And I was set in my ways here. I like the open air; I could never get used to those flats in Paris, they're so small. Remember I have the whole of these grounds to walk about in ...
"And so you said to yourself, just like that: 'That's an idea, I'll go and take a stroll round Saint Augustine's; that was kind of you. I felt sure you'd come back some day. I still see quite a few old pupils. It's easy for those living in Paris to come. Through them, I get news of the others. Many have died, sir, many have died. Some of them were just too rich, you see; that was their undoing. No sooner were they let out than they started to live it up. Those foul women are capable of anything. Besides, you have only to see where they come from; anyway, try as you will, what's bred in the bone will out in the flesh. Some lost everything gambling or on the stockmarket and killed themselves; others quite simply caroused to theif deaths. What can one do? Well, too bad for them: you reap what you sow. What's sad is the death of that poor, little chap who was so clever, Leniot, Leniot (Joanny). You didn't know about it? It was his poor father who told me about it in tears, on this very spot. Well here it is: he died in his barracks during an epidemic four months after he was enlisted. Those garrisons in the east are tough for recruits, above all the blockhouses. Anyway he has died. A young chap who had started out so well. It appears that he had already obtained two degrees and a prize at the Faculty of Law in Paris before he was twenty-one.
I also get occasional visits from South America. They come to spend a year with us in Europe. So Marti minor is in Paris at this moment. He came to see me a fortnight or eighteen days ago. Mr Montemayor from Valparaiso, I saw him as well; about a year ago now. He brought along one of his brothers whom I didn't know, who wasn't raised here . . . It's strange about those South Americans: of two brothers (it's an observation I've often made), of two brothers, the elder one is always more — how should I put it? — more European: a pink-and-white complexion, chestnut hair and sometimes blue eyes as well; in a word, you would swear he was a Frenchman. The younger one, by contrast, has a dark colouring and the hair of a black man! In short, he's a real Indian. You know, just like the two Iturrias; do you remember them well?
"And now that I think about it, he came too, Iturria major. Santos, as you all used to call him. He came, hang on, two years ago in 1900; of course, the year of the Fair. He even spent two afternoons with me here. The first time he brought his wife. A lovely-looking person he married, Mr Iturria (Santos), a blonde lady, a German I think. Because after leaving Saint Augustine's, the two Iturria boys went to study in Germany ... A lovely-looking person, my word! And the two of them together made a handsome couple ... He told me that their father had become minister of war in their country, in Mexico. That doesn't surprise me: they were such fine people, those Iturrias, and so intelligent! We need men like that today in France. It's not that there aren't any. But people no longer pay any attention to merit; it's money that determines everything these days. So you can be honest or not as you like, seeing that you have the readies . . . What you used to learn in this school of Saint Augustine was precisely not to attach any importance to money. For us, it was just a means to succeed in turning out a decent person. That was why you were brought up the hard way. And there was even too much strictness; they could easily have let you come and go as you pleased in these grounds. It's true you wouldn't really be put off going there for a smoke without permission, you and your gang of old daredevils! . . . You know when all's said and done, there's nothing like discipline to form men and real men like those of my day. All those bourgeois nowadays look like workers who have won first prize in the lottery and think only of pampering themselves ..."
I listened to the old boy fairly absent-mindedly. I looked at the playground before us. It was nothing more than a field of tall grasses, whose long, delicate tips swayed in the wind. Slender stalks had grown in between the pebbles, those pretty, smooth pebbles of the Seine valley, all veined with delightful colours. Beyond, the grounds drew my gaze; doubtless, nature had blurred their outline; but to what extent? I would have liked to go and see straight away. "Well now, sir, I can see that I've bored you enough with my chatter. I'll leave you to look round on your own: it's better: I would get in the way. Everything is open and you can stay for as long as you like. When you leave, I'll be in my lodge."
I rather took to the sentimental tone of the old soldier. He understood what a visit to the school meant to one of
his
old pupils; and the elegiac turn to his words was not wholly unintentional. Above all, I admired the delicacy of feeling conveyed at the end: "I would get in the way."
And in truth, I had really no idea where to start my visit. I saw everything higgeldy-piggeldy, without method, endlessly retracing my steps. The stones of the terrace's central staircase were loose. The branches of the mighty trees which had no longer been pruned for years, grew in every direction. Grass overran the avenues. In front of the visiting room, purslane, which doubtless had broken out of the large orange-tree pots where it had been planted, crept and bloomed between the paving stones.
I sat down in my old place at prep. What a fantastic thing time is! Nothing had changed; there was a little more dust on the desks; that was all. And here was I, grown to manhood. If, by dint of listening to this silence, I were suddenly to make out a faraway murmuring of both voices and footsteps beyond the passage of the years . . . And if all the pupils of my day were suddenly to come back into this prep room and if, waking to the noise, I were to find myself facing my texts and schoolboy exercise books again . . . "Many have died, sir, many have died."
I returned to the grounds, to the sunshine. The village lads had succeeded in smashing a few of the chapel's stained-glass windows with stones. The house in which the prefect of studies used to live was completely ruined. The statue of Saint Augustine on the terrace had almost entirely lost its gilt. I took a long time to rediscover the site where the tennis court had been installed in Fermina Marquez' day — I had to go through a thicket which certainly used not to exist then. I caught myself saying out loud: "What about Fermina Marquez?" Yes, what had happened to her? I presumed she was married now! And I liked to think she was happy.
I went back to the terrace. Over yonder lay Paris where I would be in a little while, so removed from all that. Above me, the birds made their innocent voices heard; indifferent to the changes of regime, they continued to celebrate the glory of the kingdom of France from one summer to the next and perhaps, like the caretaker, to extol the education we received at the school of Saint Augustine as well.
Over the visiting room — the Louis XV part of the buildings — I saw a bull's eye window with all its sumptuous mouldings stained by the rain. The panes had been broken, the frame pulled out and so it stayed, wide open to today's sunshine, to the sky's blue: this Parisian sky, so astir with activity, with mists, vapours, halo of lights, balloons and Sundays. The bull's eye no longer reflected anything of all that! The bull's eye was pierced on the outside of the deserted attics which nobody went to see any more.
What else was missing in this inventory of fixtures? Ah! Yes: on the wall of the main courtyard, the marble plaque on which were engraved the names of the PUPILS WHO DIED FOR THEIR COUNTRY AND THEIR FAITH
was cracked.
"It's not even worth the trouble to go and ask them for it, they don't grant it to anybody," the caretaker told me through a narrow grille built into the main door.
So I had to content myself with a look at the outer walls and, from the tramway platform, the tops of the trees in the grounds towards Bagneux. A few minutes later, I found myself on the place du Theatre-Franc,ais, which was practically deserted because it was Sunday morning. This visit had barely taken me more than an hour. My childhood and youth strike me as being already so far away as in reality they are near to the place du Theatre-Franc,ais which I go past almost every day.
It is of my first visit in 1902 that I wish to speak at length.
At first sight, you could not tell that anything had changed. The entrance was that same bare hall, with a great, black cross nailed up in the middle of the yellowish wall. And on the right was the caretaker's lodge with a grille and a high, openwork barrier. And in the lodge was the same caretaker as in our day, grown a little old - notably his imperial which had turned grey; and his decorations, instead of being spread out on his blue livery dolman with its silver buttons, were condensed into one single but enormous rosette which adorned the buttonhole of his rather ordinary jacket. He undoubtedly missed the sumptuous and sober livery of Saint Augustine's.
He recognized me almost at once and greeted me gaily with an oath in Spanish.
"Forgive me, sir; but I am so pleased when I see one of my old pupils again. And really all of you are my pupils a little bit: I brought you up. You were so small when you were sent here. You French boys, that was one thing; but I don't understand those South Americans who used to send their children here at such a young age with half the world separating them. Those poor abandoned mites. I've fought in wars, sir; I'm a hard man; well sometimes I've wept, yes wept, seeing them unable to get used to this place. And as for those who used to die! The Negroes, you know. More died in that sick bay than you were told about. "Their parents have taken them away," was the way they used to explain it. Sure, their parents took them away in a box . . . That poor little fellow who was so good at his work and so gentle, Delavache from Haiti, well, he died in my arms upstairs; that's the truth. Ah! When I think back on it! ...
"Sure there were some amongst them who were not up to much; madcaps who would do things which shouldn't be done. But the folk from those tropical countries, they're like the natives in the colonies; they're precocious, too warm blooded. But what the heck! Most of them were in good health and kind hearted, real gentlemen who respected the good Lord and had no fear of anything. Yes, for a fine generation, that's all I need say.
"Look, let's go and sit on the steps of the visiting room. I've put a bench there and that's where I smoke my pipe after lunch. You've got the time, haven't you?
"When the school was sold, as somebody was required to look after the buildings and the grounds, I was appointed the caretaker with a small salary. I could've found a more lucrative post. But I know nobody any more. And I was set in my ways here. I like the open air; I could never get used to those flats in Paris, they're so small. Remember I have the whole of these grounds to walk about in ...
"And so you said to yourself, just like that: 'That's an idea, I'll go and take a stroll round Saint Augustine's; that was kind of you. I felt sure you'd come back some day. I still see quite a few old pupils. It's easy for those living in Paris to come. Through them, I get news of the others. Many have died, sir, many have died. Some of them were just too rich, you see; that was their undoing. No sooner were they let out than they started to live it up. Those foul women are capable of anything. Besides, you have only to see where they come from; anyway, try as you will, what's bred in the bone will out in the flesh. Some lost everything gambling or on the stockmarket and killed themselves; others quite simply caroused to theif deaths. What can one do? Well, too bad for them: you reap what you sow. What's sad is the death of that poor, little chap who was so clever, Leniot, Leniot (Joanny). You didn't know about it? It was his poor father who told me about it in tears, on this very spot. Well here it is: he died in his barracks during an epidemic four months after he was enlisted. Those garrisons in the east are tough for recruits, above all the blockhouses. Anyway he has died. A young chap who had started out so well. It appears that he had already obtained two degrees and a prize at the Faculty of Law in Paris before he was twenty-one.
I also get occasional visits from South America. They come to spend a year with us in Europe. So Marti minor is in Paris at this moment. He came to see me a fortnight or eighteen days ago. Mr Montemayor from Valparaiso, I saw him as well; about a year ago now. He brought along one of his brothers whom I didn't know, who wasn't raised here . . . It's strange about those South Americans: of two brothers (it's an observation I've often made), of two brothers, the elder one is always more — how should I put it? — more European: a pink-and-white complexion, chestnut hair and sometimes blue eyes as well; in a word, you would swear he was a Frenchman. The younger one, by contrast, has a dark colouring and the hair of a black man! In short, he's a real Indian. You know, just like the two Iturrias; do you remember them well?
"And now that I think about it, he came too, Iturria major. Santos, as you all used to call him. He came, hang on, two years ago in 1900; of course, the year of the Fair. He even spent two afternoons with me here. The first time he brought his wife. A lovely-looking person he married, Mr Iturria (Santos), a blonde lady, a German I think. Because after leaving Saint Augustine's, the two Iturria boys went to study in Germany ... A lovely-looking person, my word! And the two of them together made a handsome couple ... He told me that their father had become minister of war in their country, in Mexico. That doesn't surprise me: they were such fine people, those Iturrias, and so intelligent! We need men like that today in France. It's not that there aren't any. But people no longer pay any attention to merit; it's money that determines everything these days. So you can be honest or not as you like, seeing that you have the readies . . . What you used to learn in this school of Saint Augustine was precisely not to attach any importance to money. For us, it was just a means to succeed in turning out a decent person. That was why you were brought up the hard way. And there was even too much strictness; they could easily have let you come and go as you pleased in these grounds. It's true you wouldn't really be put off going there for a smoke without permission, you and your gang of old daredevils! . . . You know when all's said and done, there's nothing like discipline to form men and real men like those of my day. All those bourgeois nowadays look like workers who have won first prize in the lottery and think only of pampering themselves ..."
I listened to the old boy fairly absent-mindedly. I looked at the playground before us. It was nothing more than a field of tall grasses, whose long, delicate tips swayed in the wind. Slender stalks had grown in between the pebbles, those pretty, smooth pebbles of the Seine valley, all veined with delightful colours. Beyond, the grounds drew my gaze; doubtless, nature had blurred their outline; but to what extent? I would have liked to go and see straight away. "Well now, sir, I can see that I've bored you enough with my chatter. I'll leave you to look round on your own: it's better: I would get in the way. Everything is open and you can stay for as long as you like. When you leave, I'll be in my lodge."
I rather took to the sentimental tone of the old soldier. He understood what a visit to the school meant to one of
his
old pupils; and the elegiac turn to his words was not wholly unintentional. Above all, I admired the delicacy of feeling conveyed at the end: "I would get in the way."
And in truth, I had really no idea where to start my visit. I saw everything higgeldy-piggeldy, without method, endlessly retracing my steps. The stones of the terrace's central staircase were loose. The branches of the mighty trees which had no longer been pruned for years, grew in every direction. Grass overran the avenues. In front of the visiting room, purslane, which doubtless had broken out of the large orange-tree pots where it had been planted, crept and bloomed between the paving stones.
I sat down in my old place at prep. What a fantastic thing time is! Nothing had changed; there was a little more dust on the desks; that was all. And here was I, grown to manhood. If, by dint of listening to this silence, I were suddenly to make out a faraway murmuring of both voices and footsteps beyond the passage of the years . . . And if all the pupils of my day were suddenly to come back into this prep room and if, waking to the noise, I were to find myself facing my texts and schoolboy exercise books again . . . "Many have died, sir, many have died."
I returned to the grounds, to the sunshine. The village lads had succeeded in smashing a few of the chapel's stained-glass windows with stones. The house in which the prefect of studies used to live was completely ruined. The statue of Saint Augustine on the terrace had almost entirely lost its gilt. I took a long time to rediscover the site where the tennis court had been installed in Fermina Marquez' day — I had to go through a thicket which certainly used not to exist then. I caught myself saying out loud: "What about Fermina Marquez?" Yes, what had happened to her? I presumed she was married now! And I liked to think she was happy.
I went back to the terrace. Over yonder lay Paris where I would be in a little while, so removed from all that. Above me, the birds made their innocent voices heard; indifferent to the changes of regime, they continued to celebrate the glory of the kingdom of France from one summer to the next and perhaps, like the caretaker, to extol the education we received at the school of Saint Augustine as well.
Over the visiting room — the Louis XV part of the buildings — I saw a bull's eye window with all its sumptuous mouldings stained by the rain. The panes had been broken, the frame pulled out and so it stayed, wide open to today's sunshine, to the sky's blue: this Parisian sky, so astir with activity, with mists, vapours, halo of lights, balloons and Sundays. The bull's eye no longer reflected anything of all that! The bull's eye was pierced on the outside of the deserted attics which nobody went to see any more.
What else was missing in this inventory of fixtures? Ah! Yes: on the wall of the main courtyard, the marble plaque on which were engraved the names of the PUPILS WHO DIED FOR THEIR COUNTRY AND THEIR FAITH
was cracked.
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