God Speed the Night (15 page)

Madame Fontaine and Monsieur Dorget opened the panel doors, making the two rooms one. At the master of the feast’s behest she brought the bowls of fruit to the workers’ table. The gentlemen had reached Armagnac and cigars.

“How old is this tradition?” Marc asked the man beside him. He realized at once he should not have asked such a question, posing as a native of a village twenty kilometers away. But the man misunderstood him with the singing, or perhaps because of his accent. The response was as though he had himself told something. “I know,” the man shouted, nodding.

Gabrielle said, “Very old. It might even once have been a pagan feast, a sacrifice to the gods. Now it is in honor of the Blessed Virgin, to pray for good weather and a bounteous harvest.”

The words, Marc thought, must come from a patterned prayer: she would not have used such a word as “bounteous” otherwise. This, and seeing at the right hand of the master of the feast, a purpled prelate, somehow reminded Marc of who he was, or rather, by his own calculation, of who he was not.

“Do you not drink wine?” he said, for her glass remained full.

“Water, monsieur, but I do not need any.”

“What is my name?” Marc whispered.

“Yes, yes,” she said. “I knew the moment I said it.”

“The priest in the next room—or is it a bishop?—will he recognize you if he sees you closely?” Marc spoke leaning close to her ear and then turning his head that she might speak into his.

For the first time Gabrielle looked directly into the
petit salon
. She had been aware of it on the edge of her vision, but made a little discipline of denying her curiosity. “It is Monsignor La Roque. He will not look at us that closely, never fear.”

The way she said it and the blush that followed closely on the words told Marc much about the monsignor, and something also about Gabrielle. But then he would not have expected a rubber stamp to do what she had done.

The song was about a drummer boy on his way to serve in King Louis’s war. Jacques displayed an intriguing talent: he could whistle two notes at once, and with a sharp sweetness that resembled the sound of a flute. He grinned and bowed afterwards, and pointed to the space between his front teeth.

The guitarist stroked the strings, and choosing his moment, sounded a tremolo. His fellow students called out for everyone to listen to “Our Jules.” Jules tossed back his hair and began to sing. His was a small voice but that somehow added to the poignancy of the song: “These mountains so high keep me from seeing my love…” Marc, his wine glass in hand, sat back and thought of the mountains into which he must vanish some few days hence, and of Rachel. “If I knew where to find her, I would pass over water and have no fear of drowning,” the song went on. Marc tried to distract himself, looking into the other room. The man of the Church cared about neither song nor singer obviously: he talked throughout and the undertone of his voice annoyed Marc. He would have liked to tell him to be silent. He thought then how, given back the security he once knew, he would have enjoyed baiting the ascetic prelate. And there was something in him now that made him want to parade Gabrielle before his eyes. To what purpose? She knew what the man was like. Indeed was not his own hatred of the monsignor—and it was that somehow—based on her character of him? There is a cruel streak in you, Daridan, that mark of the beast in every man, however pale in some. No more than a jeweled cross could make a saint of the cleric in the other room, did persecution assure the innocence of its victim: it assured only the guilt of the persecutor.

Moissac lingered in the vestibule for a few moments before making known his presence. He listened to the singing. He wanted to hear again the song called
Bigarren Kalez-Kale
which had troubled him so marvelously last night. He had learned from one of his men that the high whirring falsetto in the refrain was meant to convey the whinnying of mountain horses. This only provoked Moissac more, for to him there was nothing more exciting than a mare in heat and a stallion about to mount her. Tonight he wanted to see the woman whose voice could melt the marrow in his bones. But he did not propose to play the swain, assuredly not before the most influential men of the countryside. He had dressed carefully in his Sunday suit; carefully but casually. He purposely put on a mended collar; with neither airs nor groveling, he played that which he profoundly wished to be, a man in command of himself. Fearful of being discovered alone and without purpose in the vestibule, he touched the bell alongside the registry, and while he waited glanced at the names in the book. The last signed in, Jean Belloir—for himself and madame—had a signature worthy of a more distinguished document than Madame Fontaine’s guest book.

Madame came through the door of the
petit salon
leaving it open on a scene that filled Moissac with longing: men of property enjoying one another’s company and the pleasures of their wealth.

Madame brought out the identity cards for what Moissac knew she wanted to be a routine check. She would not like so important a room of guests disturbed. “Take your work into the parlor,
Monsieur le Préfet,”
she said. “I will bring you coffee and Armagnac.”

“Coffee?”

“And I will tell your friend, the monsignor, that you are here.”

“Did he speak of me?”

“You will be very comfortable there, and you will be able to see what is going on. They will dance perhaps tonight, and I will be grateful that you are here.”

She went off instantly, closing the door between him and his betters, and having answered none of his questions. It did not matter. It was enough that she knew him and the monsignor to be friends. He had not himself told her so. He groped his way through the beaded curtains and settled in a chair where he could observe the harvesters’ table without himself being noticed. It was a great shame that he would soon have to see their work papers also, and therefore interrupt the festivities. He heard it then, the beginning of the song he craved to hear again. He moved swiftly nearer the door, the better to find among those at the table the songbird: she must not be too young, he thought, nor yet too old, and then he cursed himself for such a thought at all.

His eyes fell first on the face of Gabrielle: she too had been caught by the wild vigor of the song. Her eyes had shot up and her lips parted in the excitement. Moissac thought he had never seen anything so beautiful in his life. At first he thought it was she who was singing, but he knew almost instantly that it could not be: there was such innocence in the face—a purity, he could think of no other word; then, when the eyes lowered demurely he felt a gallantry come upon him, a touch in his own soul of the chivalry he so much admired. It was only then that he looked to see who was beside her. He had to move a little to see around Jacques’ great tousled head. He saw Marc as the latter leaned close to Gabrielle to tell her what he had just learned of the origins of the street song. Moissac remembered at once where he had seen him.

Was it possible that the Gestapo was infiltrating the harvesters? But of course he did not know the man was Gestapo: that René had told him he also thought so was proof of nothing. He watched the couple so absorbed in one another that he had to assume they were together, and instinctively he thought the man must fit the signature he had observed in madame’s book. He had forgotten the name, but he could find it from the signature on the identity card. They were registered as monsieur and madame: he remembered that. He lingered a little longer to watch them. This man could not be Gestapo and have this girl for wife: on that Moissac would stake his job.

The song ended and he had scarcely heard it. The harvesters were pushing away from the table and some of them moving chairs. Soon the table was pushed to the wall. In the room beyond he saw the monsignor rise in purple-sashed splendor. Would he come to speak to his friend, perhaps to take him in among the gentlemen? Moissac hastened to the table with the lamp on it in order to be busy and began his search for the I.D. card of the stranger he had first seen at Gaucher’s. Belloir. He had just found the card when Madame Fontaine returned and threw on the wall switch, lighting up the room like a circus tent. Now everyone could see him.

Madame Fontaine said, “The master of the fete requests that you join the gentlemen,
Monsieur le Préfet.”

Moissac no longer minded the light. He gave back into her hands the identity cards to be put away again for the present.

If the master, who was actually the president of the Farmers’ Syndicate, had sent for him, it was the prefect of agriculture who came to shake his hand and find a place for him. Moissac, flattered though he was, soon felt isolated and gauche, and at the sound of the castenets clacking, he longed to be among the workers: he envied all and was at ease with none. The monsignor returned, having gone where all men must at the end of the wine. He gave Moissac the curtest of nods. Among themselves the
châtelains
were commenting freely but with shocking intimacy on the women in the other room. By the time the dancing started Moissac was sweating with discomfort.

The young people wanted jazz. Something with “hot licks.” Marc said the words in English and translated them for Gabrielle. She shook her head, not understanding. Madame Fontaine promised jazz recordings later: she had three Benny Goodman records belonging to her son. But first that night tradition must be obliged. “Where are you from?” she demanded of one and then another, until she had appointed the leadership of a half-dozen dances. That the appointees protested ignorance of the dance did not matter. Madame would lead herself if need be: in truth, she was enjoying herself, but in deeper truth she was determined that the syndicate would dine with her again next year.

With the word, tradition, Marc again fell into a reverie that he did not escape even as the dancing started, a
farandole
with Madame Fontaine taking Jacques to the center of the room. Madame’s helpers came from the kitchen and in no time paired off with some of the extra men. Soon all the women were dancing save Gabrielle. Marc, suddenly aware of it, wondered what he should do if one of the old boys decided to come down below the salt and ask her to dance. Small chance, he thought, glancing in at them. But he discovered then the prefect of police. And the prefect had discovered him: no question of that. He sat like a crooked-beaked eagle staring in from under half-closed eyelids. Marc would have liked to dance, tired though he was, anything to get out from under that hooded scrutiny, to stop calling attention.

We ought to dance: he thought of the words, but he did not say them, for he watched with an awed knowingness when the dwarf climbed down from his chair. He came strutting and took up a sadly ridiculous stance in front of Gabrielle. He bowed until his head nearly touched her knees and then asked her to dance.

Gabrielle rose and took the little man’s hands in hers so lightly their fingers scarcely touched, and then they danced, arms length apart, and something of Gabrielle’s barefooted improvisation. Rachel’s shoes sat under the vacant chair. It was a clown’s dance, no, a child’s dance, with the playful strides of the polka turning, and at no change at all in the music, into a mockingly solemn minuet. They were not long dancing apart in a little square all their own until Jacques and madame fell in behind them, urging them to lead and the rest to follow. Gabrielle demurred, shaking her head, but the dwarf clung to her hands, and Jacques and madame turned leaders, the dance becoming a quickstep, a procession of all the couples around the room, then into the parlor, the vestibule, and back by way of the
petit salon
, the
châtelains
cheering them on and slapping at the behinds of the passing girls.

Moissac moved in to sit beside Marc. “Your wife is a kind woman, monsieur. Or don’t you dance?”

“I am a kind man: I don’t dance,” Marc said.

Moissac touched the buckled shoes with his own square-toed brogue. He bent down and picked up one of the shoes. “She must have the smallest feet in the world.”

Gabrielle did not, which was the trouble. Marc said nothing. The police prefect held the shoe as though it were a wounded bird, and examined it, label, size, and leather.

The dancers came rollicking back and madame, seeing Moissac, spun Jacques away from her so that, let unexpectedly loose, he went sliding and tumbling across the room. Madame, a-glisten with sweat, caught up Moissac and pulled him into the dance. Marc wondered if she meant to relieve him of the policeman’s questions. The questions would come. And Moissac had been carried off with the shoe which Marc saw him stuff in his pocket. Marc looked for Gabrielle. Artur, seeing his friend Jacques on all fours, let go Gabrielle’s hands and ran to him. Jacques, however, avoided the dwarf and sprang to the side of Gabrielle.

He circled her, snapping his fingers, stomping his feet, and every time she made to escape him—she did not want to run, she tried to get away without more calling of attention to herself—he caught a bit of her clothing and pulled her back. The other dancers slackened their pace, and soon stood watching, beating time.

“
Bourrée—bourrée!”
Jacques demanded of the guitarist, pounding out its rhythm with his heels. Everyone picked it up.

Gabrielle did not want to feel that rhythm, but she felt it nonetheless, growing stronger and stronger, as much of a pulse as her own heartbeat. Jacques caught her hands, probing with his fingers for them where she had hidden them close to her waist; he mistook her wild look for the dance’s excitement and wet his own lips. He crossed her hands with his and spun her round and round. Philomène began to sing, but it was more like the piercing cry of bagpipes, akin in tune to the song that brought Moissac running. And he came now. Marc watched him, the policeman’s hand in his pocket where the shoe was. The dwarf jumped up and down for attention, Jacques’ or Gabrielle’s, and getting nothing from them or the crowd pressing round but the cries of Go away! Sit down! or, worse, Go lie down! he ran sobbing from the room. The gentlemen rose in their chairs, the better to see. The air crackled with the staccato snapping of fingers, the accented strum of the guitar. There was something in the room, Marc felt, on the point of explosion.