Funeral Rites (21 page)

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A posture of Erik's: his thumb was in the space between two of his fly buttons. Like Napoleon, who used to hook
his thumb on his vest. A sick man fearing the rush of blood to his bandaged hand.

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If Paulo's meanness kept him from betraying, it was gentleness and tenderness that made Pierrot a traitor. For two days the inmates, after forcing the doors of the cells and getting hold of some weapons, became the masters of the prison, which will be the place where uncontrolled force is law. The inmates frightened themselves. The guards had fled, closing the outside gates, and we went into the rat trap, unable to get over the walls behind which the armed soldiers and police lay in wait. If one of us showed himself at a skylight, a policeman aimed and fired. We had hardly any ammunition. We were in a panic and didn't know whom to fight. The walls had us well in hand. We had already eaten all the provisions in the stockroom. The water supply had been cut off from the outside. The guards fired from the gates at every shadow they could see in the corridors. We always moved slowly, cautiously, with a thick pallet in front of us to protect ourselves a little. We were trapped; they could let us die of hunger. Or thirst. Or toss grenades. They could smoke us out. Among the minors, fear and the sublimity of the adventure, its exceptional strangeness, the approach of punishment, which they assumed was bound to be cruel, drove the children to love each other, also to seek out oldtimers in whose arms they huddled in the pretense of helping in a fight that already was dragging to a close. I longed to betray. I felt myself delightfully capsizing, as when certain tangos turn a cabaret into a steamer that sinks amidst a smell of decaying flowers. My soul visited Pierrot. When the white flag was waved
at the end of a broom, the militiamen entered, cooped the prisoners up in a few cells, and demanded the guilty ones. The captain questioned a few prisoners, one after the other. Some of the kids knew nothing about the beginning of the revolt.

“It's the political prisoners, eh?”

The captain asked his questions with a toss of his head and a faint grin of complicity at the corner of his lips.

“I don't know, boss. I didn't see.”

“Take him away. We'll see later. Next!”

Another kid replied:

“I was sleeping, sir.”

Grabbing him by the shoulders, the captain shook him and roared, “What do you take me for?”

He drove him with a slap to the opposite wall.

“Next!”

A youngster entered.

“Were you sleeping too?”

“No.”

“Oh, that's a surprise. Well, what do you know?”

Paulo remained silent. He looked straight ahead. The gleam of his gaze was as rigid as a metallic beam. Without his realizing it, his hands went to his pockets, but only the thumbs entered, and hooked on the edge of the opening. And he stood there without moving.

“Well?”

The skin of his little face seemed to have tightened over an indestructible framework of bone.

The captain flicked his keys impatiently and said, “I've got to have them. I want the ringleaders. Otherwise, I'll give the prisoners more than they bargained for!”

Immediately, Paulo's taut metallic gaze seemed to be adorned with frail spring blossoms. His face lit up a little in a strange way: that is, it became darker. Paulo realized
that his silence would cause a lot of trouble for the captain and might even bring on a catastrophe. He thought of nothing definite but yielded voluptuously to a wave of refusal. He said, through clenched teeth, “What do you want me to say? Someone opened my cell. . . .”

“Number what?”

“426.”

“And. . . .”

This “and” was stressed by a movement of the foot with which the captain kicked against the opposite wall a little piece of wood that had been on the floor. It was a soccer player's movement. Paulo immediately felt a brief twinge of shame that reminded him that
he
was not an athlete.

“I don't know what it's all about.”

The captain looked at Paulo. He stared mechanically at the bridge of the boy's nose where he saw the eyebrows meet and give the face that stubborn look which meant he would get nothing out of him.

“Get the hell out!”

Paulo left. Other kids had their turn, were questioned gently or violently. No one talked, since no one knew anything. Pierrot entered. He denounced the twenty-eight inmates who were executed. Accompanied by the warden, the captain of the Militia, the chief guard, and four turnkeys, he made the round of all the cells. He pointed out the fellows in each of them who had prepared the job, the kids who first had knocked at the doors, those who had been most zealous—the spark plugs, the bold, daring, fierce ones. The captain and the warden stood by without batting an eyelash. The kid entered the crowded cell—for all the inmates had been rapidly locked up in batches of twenty in cells meant for a single man—and he stood on tiptoe in order to see the faces at the back, and
because he did not know any of the names, he pushed aside the men who were standing crammed in the sweat and heat of July, the smell, the shadow, bumping against their knees, their chests, their elbows. From the darkest corner of the cell he brought back, at the end of a body that he pulled by the jacket or shirt, the face of a child whom the four turnkeys took in tow.

The night before writing what follows I had a dream, which I record too late: “I was imprisoning a boy's cock in a special chastity belt to which there were five keys. Out of
hatred
(I remember that the feeling which made me commit the act that follows was hatred) and of a love of the irreparable, I tossed the keys into a torrent of mud.”

Pierrot did not take revenge. He was among the first to be captured by the militiamen, and as the captain asked him, just as he did all the captives, whether he knew the ringleaders, he, and he alone, said that he did. He did not know any names.

“If I saw them,” he said, “I'd point them out.”

I had been arrested along with the others, but when I was released I felt such joy, such gratitude, that I was unable to keep my self-control. It was at the very moment when my joy opened wide that the captain—was it chance or the result of a very delicate observation or shrewd guess?—asked me whether I knew the ringleaders. I was not afraid. It did not seem to me that I was yielding to a threat but, on the contrary, that I was in a state of happiness in which to refuse would be a crime, one of those states in which you give to a beggar. . . . As the inmates were still confined in the upper section, nobody bothered about me. I was hoping they would forget about me. I was really hoping, but the warden had made a note of my name. Three hours later, when the revolt was over, a guard came to get me. The captain put his gun to my
temple and said, “Either you point out the ringleaders to me or you'll be rubbed out.”

To a lover of justice this method would have seemed abominable. He would have feared that in order to save my hide I might accuse innocent men. The captain wanted only to execute men in order to make an example of them, as a measure of reprisal, and particularly to prove to himself that he was brave since he dared punish with death. This method proved to be an excellent one. The first twelve who were pointed out were real ringleaders. The explanation is as follows: the captain's terrifying face and tone of voice and the coldness of the muzzle of the revolver, which was ready to fire at my temple, caused me such fright that I had no doubt about my death. I felt I was turning white from head to foot or that my whole being was draining out. Instantly a lyric farewell to all that I loved was formulated within me. Everything around me changed meaning. Woods, rocks, sky, women, flames, sea, were suddenly present. The sun lit up the prison. The flowers, the hedges, the accordions, the waltzes, a beach of the Marne, loomed before me and were immediately regretted to a point of despair beyond tears. The accordion! It was through the accordion that my body screamed as it unfolded in pain.

“They are making one end of it writhe, to right and left.”

Then and there everything seemed remote to Pierrot, to belong to another world, to be subject to other laws. Then, his life ended that very moment. Through a thick glass he saw and heard things and people, all except the captain, his voice, his face, his gesture, and his “icy fire.” Pierrot opened his mouth and said nothing. His eyelids burned. He was obsessed by the following thought: “The captain's sore. Anything can make him shoot.” He saw the danger instantly. He articulated with difficulty:

“I'm going to try to see if I recognize them.”

His mouth immediately shut, its corners drooped, it seemed drawn with dryness. His face, which already had the paleness that is called, I think, the greenness of fear, grew uglier with the sagging of the flesh. I could read in it an anguish as grave as that expressed by a landscape in which, beneath the trees of an estate, German officers bury the uniforms, helmets, and guns of a conquered company that has dispersed. The kid felt his life was linked with cruel certainty to the finger which was on the trigger but which he could not see, for he dared not move his head. He feared lest his slightest movement be taken for an act of rebellion. He was subjugated by a kind of hypnosis. The captain's severity was too tense with a will to death and so wavered a little. This wavering was dangerous. It might have made him think that he was acting in a dream and that he would not kill anyone by shooting. Then awareness returned. He looked at Pierrot with more flexibility. He saw his delicate face, his long eyelashes, his freckles, the roundness of his lips, and he saw that despair was like a dead rose upon them. He thought of shifting gently and thus introducing the muzzle of his weapon into the mouth.

“That's how the Militia loosens a tongue,” he thought. “That'll make him come around.”

The warden's presence made him feel uncomfortable. He lowered the revolver. The moment which had lasted God knows how long, with Pierrot's life in mid-air, was thereby broken. Gone too was the extraordinary impression of despair which, by desensitizing him, had placed him above his body, leaving it without a mind. He saw the warden look for a cigarette; he felt as if he himself were standing on his stiffened legs, in the military position of attention. He flexed his right calf a little so as to
rest on that leg. His body grew a little suppler, and he put a hand into his pocket. But though death could not take hold of him in a twinkling (the captain now needed time to aim at the temple), it was present, on the alert, ready to seize upon the first mistake, and in order to succeed he had to remain in a state of hypnosis into which only the highest pitch of danger could put him.

“Come with us.”

They left for the cells where the prisoners were parked in lots of twenty. No doubt the movements of his legs and the necessity of climbing stairs made him realize again that he was still in a world where one suffers and bleeds. The beginning of that walk was for him a march both to death and to the light. But, unlike the victim who is awakened at dawn and whose last walk is a march to the light and to death, Pierrot felt, from the hope that reanimated his body, that light would be. However, the gravity of the act he was about to perform, the dignity with which it was invested, which was all the greater in that the gestures were familiar, and the solemnity of the moment, without destroying his fear, which idealized it by destroying everything around it and allowed to subsist only the extreme limit of his being and his memory of his despair, without destroying his panic desire by leaving him insensitive to consequences, that is, to life outside of self since it became a cause, met within him at the same instant and made of it a pure act of faith. Even the all-too-present death to which he still belonged invited him to be honest, to be straightforward. Death is sacred. Any being it has touched, if only with the tip of its wing, is taboo. He knows that it is stronger than he, he blesses it for having spared him, and, in order to tame or perhaps discourage it when it is too close, he makes himself a carapace of the brightest virtues, particularly of the
justice that makes man unassailable. Anyway, Pierrot thought that his denunciations would be verified. Without making any mistakes at first, he pointed out those who were responsible. The gravity of his act and his almost automatic movements did not permit him to be seriously concerned with his cronies’ indignation. He perceived their contempt only through the mist of his lucidity. The captain and the warden accepted his decisions without examination. They recognized the choice of heaven. The finger of a child. Perhaps they were under the sway of his pure and fresh authority. For those brutes the child was playing the role of the pendulum. His very silence added to the exceptional nature of his case, dehumanized him. In the first three cells—there were twenty in all-Pierrot chose ten victims. Having reached that number, he hoped that the captain would say that he was satisfied. He was expecting others; he did not say a word. The very slight scruple that Pierrot had had at first when he was threatened with the revolver and thought it was a matter of offering up several lives in exchange for his own, completely disappeared.

“It's not possible that they're going to butcher all those guys,” he thought, “but it would be some job punishing them all!”

From then on, he felt a certain shame. He thought less of himself for not sending a few men to the scaffold and he thereby felt less afraid of himself and his act. He felt that his feet were burning, not as if he had walked on live coals, but with a slow, imperious heat that rose up all through his legs. With the passing of fear the blood circulated faster. I thought of my youth in winter, when before I left for school my mother filled my sabots with embers and shook them until the wood was warm. I would then trudge through the snow along roads edged with
slush. In the seventh cell, he designated the victim simply with a gesture of his chin, but it was so haughty that he felt he was defying ten thousand years of morality and disposing of them. When he inspected the other cells, every gesture, look, and sigh of the huddled men seemed to him charged with contempt. When he plunged into the midst of their warm, damp mass, it was disgust that seemed to separate them so that he could pass. The cells were as jammed as a subway during rush hour, and Pierrot dug his way in, wormed through the crowd, pursued by disgust. The atmosphere of the cells was too like that of the subway the night Riton met Erik there for me not to speak of them. Riton was seventeen. It was the same night that he had executed the rebels who had been betrayed by Pierrot. Just before eleven he bought a ticket at the La Chapelle station to go back to the barracks. As the tracks are above ground at that station, he had to wait in the darkness because of the general blackout. Yet Riton was able to make out the face of the German tank driver who stood behind him. A face of about twenty-two, fierce eyes, a blond curl that stuck out impertinently from under the black police cap set on the eyebrow and supported by the ear. The neck was massive, as I have already said, and it shot straight up from the collarless uniform that was black down to the boots. Erik was holding a pair of brown gloves. He stood right behind Riton, who was leaning out into space against the central bar, opposite the door. The crowd was dense. People were crushing one another in silence, and, despite the silence, before the train entered the darkness, Riton could see on all the faces the contempt of an entire people. He was alone, young, and already conscious of his solitude and strength, and proud too. No sooner did the train get under way than the shaking of the car flattened the belly
of the Frisou (as the Germans were called) against Riton's behind. The kid thought nothing of it at first. Then he was surprised at continuing to feel a weight and heat against him. In order to verify his impression he ventured a wiggle to disengage himself, though he wanted it to be very slight so as not to discourage the soldier if his impression was correct. The soldier pressed all the more; he had a hard-on. Riton remained still. At each station the car lit up, but no one noticed anything, for all that could be seen was heads and hands clinging to the bar. At most, the sight of the kid provoked disgust, which took the place of thought and prevented observation. Erik was staring straight ahead. As his head was slightly turned so as not to seem to be kissing the kid's hair or beret, his gaze passed beneath the arm of a waiter who was leaning against a post.