The Devils of D-Day (10 page)

Father Anton smiled. ‘It is kind of you to feel such
concern. But you really needn’t worry.’

‘No, no,’ I told him. ‘I’d like to. That’s if you don’t
mind.’

‘Of course not.
We can have a game
of chess together after dinner.’

I said to Madeleine, ‘I’ll run you home.’

Father Anton switched off the light in the room where the
demon’s remains lay scattered. For a moment we paused at the door, looking back
into the pitch darkness. I could have sworn I felt a light breeze, sour with
the same
odour
that had pervaded the tank, coursing
out of the room. Of course, it was impossible. The room had no windows. But all
the same, there was this strange, unsettling sensation, as if you were awakened
in the night by the breath from some creature’s nostrils on your cheek.

Father Anton closed the heavy door and locked it. Then he
stood before it, and crossed himself, and spoke a prayer I’d never heard in my
whole life.

‘O devil,’ he whispered, ‘thou who hast touched no food,
drunk no water, tasted not the sprinkled flour nor known the sacred wine,
remain within I command thee. O gate, do not open that the demon within
may
pass; O lock hold thyself firm; O threshold stay
untrod
.
For the day of the Lord is at
hand, when the dead shall rise and outnumber the living, in His name’s sake,
amen.’

The old priest crossed himself again, and so did Madeleine.
I wished right then that I’d had that kind of religion, too- the kind of
religion that gave me words and actions to guard me against the devils of the
night.

‘Come,’ said Father Anton. ‘Perhaps you’d like a calvados
before you take Mademoiselle
Passerelle
home.’

‘I think I could use it,’ I told him, and we went upstairs,
with only one backward glance at the door that held back the bones of the
demon.

After drinks and cakes, I drove Madeleine home through the
streets of Pont
D’Ouilly
to her father’s farm. The
snow had eased up, and now the
Orne
Valley was silent
and cold and the hills surrounding the river were as white as furniture covered
in dust-sheets. There was a pale moon rising, weaker than last night, and the
snow-grey fields were patterned with the footprints of birds and stoats.

I stopped the car at the gate. Madeleine buttoned up her
coat and said, ‘You won’t come in?’

‘Maybe tomorrow.
I promised Father
Anton a game of chess. I think he’s deserved it.’

She nodded, and reached out for my hand. ‘I don’t know how
to thank either of you.

It’s like a great weight that’s been taken off my family’s
shoulders.’

I rubbed my eyes. I was feeling the strain of what we had
done this afternoon, both mentally and physically. My arms were aching from all
that
chiselling
and hammering, and my mind was still
a little tender from those claustrophobic moments inside the tank. I said,
‘Thank me tomorrow, when I can work out why the hell I wanted to do it in the
first place.’

She smiled. ‘I thought Americans were just naturally
helpful.’

‘More like naturally nosey!’

She leaned across the car, which wasn’t difficult, because
the 2CV’s so tiny that you’re sitting pressed together like canned frankfurters
in any case. Her lips touched my cheek, and then we kissed, and I suddenly
discovered that Norman farm girls have a really good
flavour
that almost makes demon-hunting worthwhile.

I said quietly, ‘I thought French people kissed each other
on the cheeks.’

She looked at me closely, and said: ‘That’s only when
they’re handing out medals.’

‘Isn’t that what you’re doing now?’

She didn’t answer for a long time, but then she said: ‘
Peut-etre
,
monsieur
.
Qui
sait
?’

She opened her door and climbed out into the snow. She
stayed where she was for a while, looking up and down the white and silent
road, and then she leaned into the car and said, ‘Will I see you tomorrow?’

‘Sure. Why don’t you come up to Father Anton’s sometime
during the morning? I guess we have a lot of phoning to do. Calling up all
those priests and getting rid of all those bones.’

Her breath smoked in the reflected light from the Citroen’s
headlights. She said
,
‘Sleep well,
Dan. And, again – thank you.’

Then she shut the car door, and walked through the
snow-topped gate-posts into her father’s farmyard. I watched her for a while,
but she didn’t turn round, so I backed up the car and drove off towards Pont
D’Ouilly
, with only a quick sideways glance at the hulk of
the Sherman tank which now rested in the hedge like the black discarded
chrysalis of some monstrous insect.

The library, with its rows of leather books and its dismal
portraits, was chillingly cold; so while we played chess after dinner, Father
Anton allowed us the extravagance of two large elm logs on the fire, and we sat
with glasses of Napoleon brandy beside the flickering flames, talking and
playing slow, elaborate games until almost midnight.

‘You play quite well,’ observed Father Anton, after
checkmating my king for the third straight time. ‘You’re out of practice,
though, and you’re too impatient. Before you move, think – and then think
again.’

‘I’m trying to. I guess I have other things on my mind.’

‘Like our demon? You mustn’t.’

‘It’s kind of hard to forget.’

Father Anton took a pinch of snuff and poked it
ceremoniously up his left nostril. ‘The devil thrives on fear, my friend. The
more you fear him, the fiercer he becomes. You must think of what we have
downstairs in the cellar as nothing more than a heap of stray bones, such as
any hound might have buried in the cabbage-patch.’

‘Well, I’ll try.’

Father Anton moved his pawn to rook six, and then sat back
in his studded leather armchair. While I frowned at the chessboard and tried to
work my way out of a situation that, on the face of it, looked like a fourth
checkmate in three moves, he sipped his brandy ruminatively, and said,
‘Does
it surprise you that demons actually lived? That they
had flesh, and bones?’

I looked up. He was staring at the fire, and the flames
reflected from his spectacles.

I said, ‘I don’t know. I suppose it does. I wouldn’t have
believed it unless I’d seen it for myself.’

Father Anton shrugged. ‘It seems strange to me, you know, that
in an age as pragmatic as ours, an age so bent on seeking evidence and
demonstration, that the tangible manifestations of religion, like demons and
devils, should be scoffed at.’

‘Come on! Not many people have ever seen a demon.’

Father Anton turned his head and looked at me seriously.
‘Haven’t they? They’d be surprised. Demons and devils have evolved like the
rest of us, and
it’s
remarkable how many of them still
hide on the face of the earth.’

‘Does the same go for angels?’ I asked him. ‘I mean – do we
have anyone on our side?’

Father Anton shook his head. ‘Angels never existed as actual
creatures. The name “angel” describes a state of divine energy that is terrible
in the classic sense of the word. I know that angels are the messengers of God;
and that they often protect us from harm and from the temptations of Satan. But
I know enough about them to say that, in this life, I would prefer not to meet
one. They are fearsome to say the least.’

‘Can they be summoned, like demons?’

‘Not in the same way. But if you’re interested, I have a
book on my shelves on the invocation of angels. It was a great
favourite
of the Reverend Taylor when he was here during
the war, surprisingly. Perhaps his involvement with your country’s demons
alarmed him sufficiently to seek some assistance from the cohorts of God.’

We fell silent for a few minutes while I made my next move
on the board. Outside the tall windows, the snow began to fall again, thick and
silent, piling softly on to northern France until it looked like the moon. An
easterly wind was blowing across Poland and Germany and Belgium, bringing low
clouds and an endless winter of grey cold.

Father Anton inspected the chessboard.
‘
Ce
n’est
pas mal,
ca
,’
he said, nodding his head in approval. But then
his bony, liver-spotted hand moved his queen across towards my king, and he
said:
‘
Malheureusement
,
c’est
eche
et mat.
‘

With one move, he had stymied my king; and all I could do
was lift my hands in surrender. ‘I guess I had to learn the hard way. Never
play chess with nonagenarians.’

He smiled. ‘We must play some more, if you’re staying in the
Suisse
Normande
.

You’re a worthy opponent.’

‘Thanks,’ I said, lighting a cigarette. ‘But I’m afraid that
baseball’s more my style.’

We finished our brandy as the carved mahogany clock on the
mantelpiece struck twelve. The logs in the grate sparked and dropped, and all
around us was the silence of a dark clerical mansion in the heart of a small
wintry village in the shouldering hills of Normandy. Father Anton spoke. ‘This
is a brave thing you have done today. You must
realise
that. I know that Madeleine is appreciative, but I am, too. I’m very sad that,
for all these years, there hasn’t been a man among us with sufficient courage
to do what you did, and open the tank up.’

‘You know what they say,’ I told him. ‘Ignorance is bliss.
If I’d known as much as you do about devils and demons, I probably wouldn’t
have gone near it.’

‘Nonetheless,
monsieur
,
I am grateful. And I want you to wear this tonight, my crucifix, as a
protection.’

He lifted the large silver cross from around his neck and
passed it over. It was weighty, and embossed with the figure of Christ. I held
it in my hand for a moment, and then I offered it back to him. ‘I can’t wear
this. This is yours. You need protection as much as I do.’

Father Anton smiled.
‘No,
monsieur
.
I have my wits and my
training to protect me, and above all I have my God.’

‘You don’t think that it – well, might attack us?’

The old priest shrugged. ‘You can never tell with devils. I
don’t yet know which devil this is, although we’ve guessed it might be one of
the thirteen demons of Rouen. It might be powerful, it might be weak. It might
be treacherous or wrathful. Until we have done the seven tests on it, we shall
not be able to find out.’

‘The seven tests?’

‘Seven ancient tests which identify whether a devil of hell
or of earth; whether it spreads its evil by pestilence or by fire; whether it
is high in the ranks of the evil
Sephiroth
, or
whether it is nothing more than a servile thing that creeps upon the face of
the earth.’

I rose from my chair and walked across the room. Outside,
the snow tumbled and twisted through the night, and the front of Father Anton’s
house was like a pale execution yard,
untrod
,
unmarked with blood:

‘Are you frightened?’ Father Anton said, in a husky voice.

I paused for a moment to think. Then I said: ‘Yes, I think
so.’

‘Then kneel here,
monsieur
,
if you will; and I shall say a prayer for you.’

I turned round. He was sitting by the dying fire with a look
of real concern on his face. I said gently: ‘No thank you, father. Tonight I
think I’ll trust to luck.’

I
was to sleep in a high green-painted iron bed in a small room on the uppermost floor.
Father Anton lent me a voluminous white nightshirt, white bed-socks, and a copy
of
L’lnvocation
des
Anges
,
leather-bound and smelling of dust, to read by the light of my shaky bedside
lamp.

We said goodnight on the second floor, where Father Anton himself
slept, and then I creaked up through the gloomy house to the long narrow
corridor where my own room was. Antoinette had left the light on upstairs,
despite Father Anton’s usual frugality, and I was grateful for it. I beetled
along that corridor as if the ten evil
Sephiroth
were
panting down my neck, closed my door and locked it.

The room was plain, but it wasn’t bad. Apart from the bed,
there was a cheap pine dresser with a mirror, and one of those vast French
wardrobes in which to hang my crumpled coat and shirt. There was a washbasin in
one corner, and a circular window with a view over the snowy rooftops of Pont
D’Ouilly
. I washed with hard kitchen soap, rinsed my mouth
out with water, and then pulled on Father Anton’s nightshirt. I looked like Stan
Laurel in one of those movies where Laurel and Hardy have to spend the night in
a haunted house.

The springs complained noisily when I climbed into bed. I
sat upright for a while, listening to the sounds of the house and the night
outside; and then I opened the book that Father Anton had lent me, and started
to read.

My French was so halting that it took me half an hour to
read the first page, and that was a lengthy apology from the author, Henri St
Ermin
, for his platitudinous style and his lack of talent
with a pen. I couldn’t have agreed with him more. I skipped the text and looked
at the engravings instead.