The Wicked Go to Hell

I remember that the sky that morning was white. You know, the sort of sky on which you’d like to scrawl portents in feathery writing! A sky that would stir up humankind to fashion the world anew
…
or to put an end to it once and for all!

Paris had drooped like a faded flag on the front of a public building. The weather was warm and joyless.

I gave a sigh and ran two at a time up the steps which led to the imposing and very dirty entrance of the Service.

Once you’re through the porch, the smell of the world outside slips away from you, along with some of its colour. You begin moving in a bizarre element which is a little nebulous, a tinge acrid and very uncertain.

This is down to the fact that here in this building things happen… How can I explain it?… Let’s just say things, and leave it at that!… Things which are not known to the man in the street—which is as well for his peace of mind—and of which we never speak, which is as well for ours.

Because before telling you any more, I must admit something: we do actually have a conscience. But it is so deeply buried under our DUTY that we are practically unable to hear its voice when, as happens with everyone’s conscience, it starts to protest.

It’s better that way, believe me.

When I walked into the Old Man’s office, he was ensconced, almost lying, in his swivel chair with his hands clasped over his stomach. His eyes were half-closed and he seemed to be meditating or listening… My arrival did not disturb his concentration. With a brief nod he motioned me to take a seat… Or rather the seat, since there were only two in the Old Man’s office: his and the Client’s. It is an office where people come, in theory, alone. For the Old Man is much too focused to have several people in at a time.

So I sat down and I waited.

When you’re sitting opposite someone like him, the only thing you want is to be elsewhere.

All of us here are scared of him. And we do not forgive him for creating such fear in us because no one can explain it. He is cordial to everyone, kindly even. He has a fifty-something’s face, placid if a little too lined. There is sadness in his eyes, which should earn him sympathy. But the overall effect conveys something which makes the blood run cold. I think it must come from its being so calm. A man is intended to live, to do things, to talk… But he doesn’t talk much and when he does speak his voice always sounds unfeeling. He never says anything that concerns himself, personally. You are left with the depressing sense that his person and his personality have never been introduced to each other.

After a brief moment, I also started listening. Curious noises were coming from a room nearby. There was a muffled thud and then what could have been a groan. It did not take me long to understand. I’d heard that kind of sound somewhere before.

Some of our colleagues were “attending” to some guy and, if I could trust what I was hearing, they weren’t going easy on him.

Eventually, the Old Man sat up. His chair creaked. He winked, which was his way of saying hello. Then, gesturing towards the source of the sounds, he shook his head and murmured:

“He won’t talk.”

I had no idea whom he meant but even without knowing the patient in question, I was thinking the same thing. There was a kind of rhythm to the blows and the cries which followed them. Now, rhythm is a form of habit and you don’t break a man who has got into the painful habit of being hit.

As if he’d been following my train of thought, the Old Man said:

“Will he?”

His expression seemed more disillusioned than usual. Because of those sad blue eyes of his, you feel you should ask him what is wrong. But then you notice those two powerful hands, as still as two wild animals stalking prey, and you say nothing.

“Men who yowl never talk,” he said. “From the start they settle into pain and thereafter you can go on hitting them but they just put up the shutters.”

I knew all that. I gave the nod of agreement which he was expecting and he went on:

“It’s the fifth time he’s been questioned. It’s four times too many! From the first session I knew it was a waste of time… Nothing! The hell with him!”

He reached out his hand for the internal phone. He pressed a button and almost instantaneously the “noises” stopped.

A breathless voice growled: “Hello!”

“Go easy,” sighed the chief. “You’re overdoing it!”

He did not wait for the man at the other end to react. With a circular, elegant movement of his hand, he hung up, taking care not to snag the wire between the cradle and the receiver.

“Just like kids,” he sighed. “You give them a drum and they’re not happy until they’ve stove it in.”

He fell silent, listening hard, as sharp-eared as a sick man.

After a while, he reached for a box of matches.

“Listen, Mérins, it was because of this customer that I sent for you.”

I did not react.

“We find ourselves in a difficult position,” he went on.

At that moment there was a long scream. It was very close. It was an inhuman sound… Whoever uttered it wasn’t thinking about his image.

“Just like him, then,” murmured the Old Man.

His lip curled in an unpleasant smile. But he’s no sadist, as he proved by picking up the phone again and ordering the interrogation to be stopped. After this he seemed calmer, almost relaxed.

He started talking again, about the customer, gesturing towards the right-hand wall each time he spoke, as if the bare bricks had the power to conjure up the punter about whom all I knew was the way he screamed.

“The man’s a spy. He was arrested as he was breaking into a safe in the main lab at Saclay. He had cut the wire to the alarm system but security had connected a second, less obvious one.”

At this point the customer next door started to become a little more tangible in my mind. He ceased to be a groan and began to acquire a definite shape.

“He wasn’t acting on the spur of the moment.”

The Old Man’s voice had reverted to its mechanical rhythm, which was as impersonal as the ticking of a watch.

“He wasn’t acting on his own behalf either! Behind him there’s an organization and we have to find out what it is! Since all the
methods we have used on him have failed, I have no choice but to fall back on the last resort.”

My heart missed a beat and I realized that he was going to ask me to do something special.

And I was right!

“Our man has got to escape and escape he will… with you!”

He looked at me to see my reaction but I’d long been used to letting the sky fall on me without batting an eyelid.

“We’ll lock you both up in the same jail cell… a tough one… the sort of place that gives kindly old ladies the shivers. The pair of you will escape!

“You’ll try to hole up somewhere and you’ll wait. The breakout will be big news. The head of the organization, knowing that his man has escaped, will want to get him back… At some point or other, he’ll break cover… Then, when you’ve got your hands on him…”

He made a chopping motion with the side of his hand. The gesture meant death.

“Got it?”

I had some difficulty unsticking my tongue from the roof of my mouth.

“Yes, chief!”

“Cigarette?” he said.

“No thanks.”

“So you really don’t smoke!” He went on: “You’ll have plenty of problems. First, you’ll have to gain the man’s confidence, because he’ll smell a rat. Wolves are good at sniffing out rats. Anyway, you’ll do your best. You’re smart!”

The hardest thing remained to be said and he didn’t dare say it. You could sense a vague diffidence in him about using the crude words, the grubby but precise, tough words.

He opened the box of matches and started fiddling with it. The thin matchsticks spilt out onto his blotting pad. The Old Man picked them up one by one as he spoke. This gave him an excuse for not looking me in the eye.

“Your second problem: the escape… Keep telling yourself, old son, that you’re acting unofficially.”

He repeated the word, spelling it out with great vehemence:

“Un-off-icia-lly! The minute you leave this office I shall disown you! You know what that means?”

Sure, I knew. He couldn’t help taking a sly sideways look at me.

“If you run into trouble, I won’t be able to lift a finger to help you, especially since your escape won’t happen without breakages…

“Look at me!”

I looked at him.

“Nobody’s going to worry if there’s blood on the wall… You got that?”

His blue eyes made me uncomfortable. But mine couldn’t have been exactly restful either, because he looked away.

“Anyway, there it is,” he said with a sigh. “I hope the good Lord above will be with you… Either the good Lord… or the Devil, because hell is where you’re going!”

The corridor was in the form of a T.

To left and right, the metal-barred cell doors ran in a row with depressing uniformity. You looked along the line of them and the bars played tricks with the eyes.

The place was badly lit by a transom window situated high up, which was darkened by bars and nearby walls. There was the sound of footsteps. They were amplified by the echo of the corridor. Hands stuck out from all the cells as they reached for the bars. Pale faces appeared between the hands. It was an eerie spectacle, for the darkness obscured the rest of the bodies so that the prisoners looked like the heads of fallen angels nailed to a backdrop of night, with their hands for wings.

The escort appeared. Four men. Martin, the warder who limped, hobbled briskly a little apart from the group, his pass key swinging as he advanced. The two new men, handcuffed together, walked abreast, like a pair of yoked oxen, while the Bull brought up the rear, a pleasant smile etched on his lips under the flower he perpetually chewed.

As they passed the other gawping prisoners, he got a buzz out of rapping the knuckles showing white around the bars of the cell doors. And all the while without losing his smile or breaking his mayoral step.

When they reached the end of the corridor, that is, of the second branch of the T, Martin opened a door and stood back to let the new arrivals past. The two men stepped into the cell, the first holding his manacled hand behind his back so as not to impede his companion.

Martin slammed the door shut behind them. The noise was almost physically painful. It was the sound of freedom imploding.

Both newcomers stood motionless, again like two oxen, unmoving and dejected, looking around the cell where a third prisoner was already seated. Unaccustomed to the semi-dark, they could barely make him out.

“Turn round!” barked the Bull.

Unprotesting, they turned, slowly, taking care not to become snarled up in their chain.

The chief warder seemed even bigger on the other side of the bars. He filled out his clothes like some voluminous, flabby, vaguely repulsive thing: he looked like a heap of entrails.

“Hands!”

Each of the newcomers raised the hand that was chained. The Bull put his own large fists, which were swollen and smooth-skinned, through the bars and unlocked their manacles.

“I’m taking your bracelets off,” he said. “If it were up to me, I’d leave them on… For a couple of jailbirds like you two, I think bracelets have got more style.”

He gave a ponderous chuckle.

“Still,” he sighed, “regulations is regulations.”

For a moment he stared at the two inmates. Both men’s faces were covered with bruises. The prisoner on his right had one eye half-shut because his eyebrow was gashed. The upper lip of the prisoner on his left was split.

The Bull sucked on his flower. A ripple of mirth seemed to rise up from his abdomen. It shook his entire body.

“Well now, boys,” he said, “looks like somebody’s been trying to rearrange your faces for you!”

The two men still did not move. They both seemed numb. Their dazed condition pushed their broad shoulders down.

“You can rub your wrists,” the Bull obligingly informed them.

And when the newcomers did not take up the suggestion:

“Don’t be shy,” the chief warder persisted. “They all do it.”

His eyes filled with spite. That is, the gleam in them became more insistent and they seemed whiter, and stared more fixedly.

The two men did not react.

“Suit yourselves, scumbags.”

Martin walked away slowly down the corridor… One by one, the hands of the other prisoners disappeared from the bars and their pale faces melted into the darkness.

“Right, I still got a couple of things to tell you,” said the chief warder. “Two important things, things you’ll find useful. First, my name is Duroc, but you won’t need to use it since all the guys here call me the Bull… You’ll soon find out why.”

He gave another of his glutinous laughs.

“The second thing: I don’t like people who don’t toe the line… Or put it this way: they don’t like me.

“When I see guys like you two walk through the door, with their mugs already mangulated, well, I can’t help myself.”

Suddenly he pushed one arm roughly into the cell and achieved the difficult feat of hitting the men with the flat and then the back of his hand… He must have perfected the trick long ago because he performed it at incredible speed.

“I just can’t help myself,” he said in a soft, piping voice which contrasted comically with his corpulence. “It’s just like when a dog sees a tree… it makes him want to take a leak.
And when I see men like you two, it makes me want to slap somebody… Have you got that?”

When both men said nothing, he screamed:

“Have you got that?”

“Me, I got the message loud and clear,” muttered the smaller of the pair.

“Same here,” said the other. “On that I got no complaints.”

The Bull spat out his flower into the cell. He poked the tip of his disgusting tongue over his greedy lips.

“You seem like a couple of nice, wised-up young fellas… Well. We’ll see!… We’ll see…”

He started to turn away, then stopped.

“Lemme put you in the picture about one other thing: the guy in the corner can’t talk… A deaf mute who killed his wife. I hope you all get along together. Just in case it don’t work for the three of you, I got to tell you that house rules don’t allow fights!”

He stared at them grimly, one after the other.

“Be good!”

He turned on his heel and walked off, whistling under his breath.