The Mahé Circle (5 page)

Frans, who must have heard this, did not stir.

‘Anyway, where I found him wasn't much fun. This little bar, nobody else there, just him in his corner, and the barman who wanted to go to bed … I can tell you, he was far gone!'

‘“Frans,” I says to him, “your wife's dead!”

‘And I was shaking him and shaking him, and shouting:

‘“Hear me? Your wife's dead!”

‘Well, he just looked at me and Gène – Gène was with me – just like he's looking at us now.

‘“You got to come with us,” I says. “Understand?” I says. “We've got to bury her, your wife … There's these papers to sign, and I don't know what else, but the mayor wants you
there.”

‘Well, he just goes on drinking. Has the bottle of plonk in front of him. We help ourselves, Gène and me, he just lets us, he goes on drinking, pays us no attention at all.

‘“He's always like this?” I asks the boss, “when he comes in here?”

‘“Every time.”

‘“Where does he sleep?”

‘“Don't ask me. When I turf him out, he goes away. Must go to some other bar.”

‘So I says to Gène:

‘“What d'you think, what'll we do?”

‘Because, see, it was nearly midnight. And I know his crafty little ways, he could have got away from us.

‘“Damn it all,” I says to Gène. “Don't you want to sleep in a bed tonight?”

‘Gène's wife's not around, is she? No? OK. So we got him by the shoulders. He let us, and we kept telling him:

‘“You got to sober up, pal, because your wife's dead. Dead, do you understand?”

‘Well, we couldn't just walk the streets all night. So we took him up the Ramparts. To Flore's place, know what I mean? And there's these sailors there, and a few girls, without a stitch on … Even … Eh
Gène, we played the pianola, didn't we, and we stayed there, right?

‘“Got to feed him coffee to sober him up,” that's what I told the madam, “on account of his wife's died. And that's why we're here, come to that.”

‘Only, him! Yeah, you, clown face! Don't look so innocent! Soon as we had our backs turned, he's swallowed down our drinks! Then when he'd had the coffee, he started throwing it up all over the place, even got some on my
trousers, and the old girl was for chucking us out. And it was this tart, dark girl she was and fat – ask Gène what she looks like – that went and fetched some ether from her room …'

‘You finished yet, Gustave? What'll we do with him?'

‘We'd better take him to the town hall. Come on, Frans, come with me,' said the mayor. ‘Not drunk now, are you?'

The man shook his head and walked off alongside the
mayor in the blue overall, while Polyte and a few other men followed behind, still passing comments.

‘Where've they put her?'

‘In the lock-up.'

‘It'll stink the place out, like it did before. Have to disinfect it, like last time. Remember old Mouchi? Say, doctor, they ever tell you about old Mouchi? This old fellow, so old, no one knew when he came to the island. Sort of
Italian, he was, you couldn't always understand what he was on about. Once a year, in the spring, he used to shave off his hair and his beard with the shears you use for sheep, and then you wouldn't recognize him, you'd think he was a priest. And then the rest of the year
he let it grow, so you couldn't hardly see his eyes out of all the bristles. Every afternoon, he'd go to sleep on a bench, in the square. He had a room of some sort, just by the barber's. Nobody'd ever been in there. Anyway, one day, people said Mouchi hadn't
been out of his place for a week. So we go to fetch the mayor, the other one, the one before this one, and he says:

‘“Polyte, you go in to Mouchi's and take a look.”

‘And when we opened the door, all these fleas jumped out at us, we had to run back out. And there he was, Mouchi, naked as the day he was born, long, long beard and hair, like I said, and stark naked, standing up at the table, leaning over
it, and he was dead! Couldn't go in, because of the vermin. We had to get a sulphate spreader we use for the vines. And we filled it full of formalin, and we puffed it out in front of us to go in. And when somebody touched him, he fell over like a tree trunk, and
nobody could bend him after that. I'm right, aren't I, lads? We stuffed him in a box, and put him in the lock-up, like Frans's wife. And when we went to fetch the flags for the Fourteenth of July, months later, it was still as full of vermin as his
room …'

The men stood around outside the little white-painted town hall, into which Frans and the mayor had gone. The doctor had to move away, since he could see along the tamarisk walk his wife, Mariette and the children coming to meet him. It was time
for Silver Beach.

He saw no more of Frans that day. Nor did he hear any news of him, since the people at the Pension Saint-Charles knew nothing about the affair.

Next day, as usual, he went out early, in order to leave the bedroom free for his wife and children to get up and wash. He heard the bells ringing. The church door stood open.

As he stood in the middle of the square, he saw two old men coming out of the church, carrying what looked like a coffin. Behind, in the shadows, he glimpsed a flash of red, and close by a white shirt-front, against a black suit.

He recognized at the foot of the church steps the grocer-mayor's handcart, shafts in the air. Frans himself had to steady the cart as they loaded the coffin on to it.

Then a choirboy ran down the steps, carrying the cross on its long black haft. Finally came the priest, muttering prayers.

The two men pushed the cart, one holding the shafts, the other from the side, for all the world like stonemasons on the way to a building site.

Frans was in black, a suit which seemed rather too big for him, but looked almost new. He was wearing a starched collar and a black ribbon for a tie. He had proper shoes on his feet, and they seemed to be
uncomfortable to walk in.

Elisabeth must have owned no other dress than the red cotton one, as she was still wearing it. Someone had given her some black stockings, her mother's perhaps, which were corkscrewing on her thin legs. Her younger brother, aged about
eleven, was wearing a first communion suit. The youngest child wore a blue dress, to which the doctor paid little attention.

The choirboy was walking quickly, flapping his surplice, underneath which one could see his heavy hobnailed boots. They all passed behind the houses round the square, and into an avenue of olive trees the doctor had not yet discovered.

He had followed from a distance, almost in spite of himself. The sloping path was lined with olive trees rustling with intense life. He could scarcely hear himself think for the sounds of birds and cicadas, and walking along, his steps
occasionally disturbed a lizard or grass snake, which left a mark in the dust before vanishing into the dry grass.

The doctor dared go no further. He stood, watching the strange little procession as it wound its way in and out of sight between the zigzags in the path, finally disappearing behind a wall round a garden with leafy trees, which must have been the
cemetery.

That afternoon, on his way back from the beach where he had lain in the shade of the umbrella pines, between
the two women sewing and the children playing in the sand, he took his constitutional down to the
harbour.

A man with no shoes on was using a scraper to clean the grey-green paintwork on the underside of a boat pulled up on land.

Bareheaded, he was wearing canvas trousers and, on his lean torso, a white vest, much worn under the arms.

It was Frans, the ex-legionnaire.

At the end of the jetty, the old man, whom the locals called the Admiral because he had once been topman on a five-master for the Bordes Line, was explaining with gestures to a group of visitors how he had caught an enormous conger eel from the
hole, and that he would perhaps now catch another.

In the cabin of a moored yacht, a gramophone was playing Hawaiian music, and some village boys, in thin underpants instead of swimming costumes, were swimming among the boats.

The man was scraping the paint without looking round, his movements steady, unhurried and regular. No one was taking any notice of him. Further along, a few fishermen, seated on the ground, were mending nets, using their big toe to stretch them
out.

The doctor wandered about like a stray child. He would have liked to approach Frans and talk to him, but he had no idea what to say. It was absurd. He walked in circles, pretending to be interested in the various activities in the harbour, then,
feeling thwarted, he made a sudden about-turn, deciding to rejoin his wife and children, who were sitting on a bench in the square.

But he did not go there straight away. First he walked up the steep path on the left, to the waste ground with its thorny plants.

The army huts glowed red in the setting sun, a warm, deep red, standing out against the dark green of the pines. But there was another red patch, of a quite different tone.

Outside, in front of the dark doorway, Elisabeth was leaning over a tub, washing clothes. There was no sign of the eleven-year-old boy. Perhaps he was swimming with the others in the harbour water with its streaks of oil.

The youngest child was sitting on the ground, playing with a grubby bundle of rags as a substitute doll.

The silence was total in this part of the village. There was no sound of cicadas. In the distance, only faintly audible, came the Hawaiian music from the yacht, a tinny and derisory tinkling.

A warship was once more slipping noiselessly between the island and the coast, on its way to Toulon.

Elisabeth stood up, pushing back her sun-bleached hair from her face. In that movement, she turned towards the doctor, standing there without moving: he must have seemed enormous, and perhaps even threatening in his stupid stillness.

He thought he saw her frown, then she glanced at her little sister, as if to protect her.

‘François, where've you been? We went looking for you in the harbour …'

‘I was just taking a walk. Is it supper time already?'

‘Mariette thinks she heard the bell. You know Madame Harmoniaux doesn't like to be kept waiting.'

They crossed the square. People were already dining on the terrace of the Arche de Noé. Their boarding house looked tiny, its whiteness even more dazzling against the royal blue shutters. It was so small
that he felt he had to bend down and shrink himself as he went into the corridor and then the dining room, laid with white tablecloths, where middle-aged guests were chewing in silence.

‘Fish again,' sighed his wife, who only liked fresh-water fish. ‘Do you think Jeanne ought to eat it?'

He must have said yes, absent-mindedly. He wasn't aware of it.

‘But yesterday, you said …'

‘Oh, yes. Well, she'd better not, then.'

‘But I can't keep asking for rice every mealtime. Perhaps if I had them cook her an egg?'

In front of him, the wine bottle labelled with their name was half-full, standing alongside a bottle of mineral water and their napkins in numbered rings.

What on earth was the explanation? A few moments earlier, just a few seconds, even fractions of seconds before perhaps – it was hard to say – he had been sitting in the garden, his belly in front of him, because they had lunched well, and he was
puffing at his pipe while chatting to Péchade, his good friend Armand Péchade, with whom he had been at medical school, and who was now in practice at Bressuire, a mere fifteen kilometres from Saint-Hilaire. In other words, he knew him well, indeed almost better than his own wife.

And then, suddenly, for no reason, what had been a feeling of well-being was turning into a malaise. Unlike the eyes of a sleeper, which dilate on waking, the doctor's pupils seemed to be contracting. He could see at first only a tiny
section of space, Dr Péchade's mouth and a corner of his cheek. Péchade was saying something. It was extraordinary, almost repulsive, to see the rolls of fat with pink inside, parting, closing, stretching, uncovering the little yellowish bones, irregularly positioned, that were his
teeth. It reminded the doctor of something, he couldn't remember what, and it was only much later, when he had pronounced his famous sentence, that light dawned. What it reminded him of – but he didn't know that yet – was the conger eel that the Admiral had tempted out of its
hole
under the jetty, almost a year ago now, that fat sausage of thick, compact flesh, that skin stretched tight over a life that couldn't quite be crushed out.

He had never before noticed that Péchade had one cheek fatter than the other, nor that his stubble showed through, and in fact he must always have five-o'clock shadow, because even on a Sunday his skin was bluish-grey.

He could hear the words. His friend was talking about typhoid fever. But the syllables were meaningless. The phenomenon was getting worse. It wasn't only the mouth and cheek that he was contemplating, as if they formed a separate piece of
the universe, it was the house, the garden where they were sitting, the women close together on one side, the black iron gate with the road beyond it, and down below, against the sky, the slate-roofed belfry of the church.