Cloudless May (65 page)

“I imagined you would have resigned yesterday—after that unpleasant scene.”

The Prefect looked at him with anger. “What scene? What are you talking about?”

“Surely you realise that you have no authority now? You owe it to my influence that General Piriac hasn't had you arrested. I assured him you would resign at once.”

As he spoke he had an orgasm of pleasure; he trembled with joy, closing his eyes for a moment. When he looked at Bergeot again he saw that he was smiling.

“You must reassure him. I'm not going to resign.”

Still trembling happily, Thiviers said, “You're forcing me to ruin you openly. How much respect will even your friends have for you when they hear the full story of your investments and your dollars?”

Bergeot shrugged his shoulders. He was, Thiviers saw, in one of his moods of defiance, when anger—or wasn't it simply moral nihilism?—drove him against every instinct of self-preservation. He did not understand this side of Bergeot's nature. It irritated him to find himself faced by it when he had expected confusion and weakness.

“Do as you like,” Bergeot said. “But do you realise what you're doing? There is not a single person in Seuilly, except myself, who can check the stampede which is beginning. People will believe me, me, if I tell them that they are safer in their houses than on the roads. I've talked on the telephone to every mayor, and I'm going to try what I can do in the town. I've had notices printed during the night—”

“You and your notices!” Thiviers felt only an intolerable anger. “You're stupid with vanity. If you weren't, you would see that you must resign. A message has gone to Grosdidier, recalling him. We have every confidence—”

“Grosdidier?” Bergeot said, with a coarse laugh. “He came back from Vichy yesterday—to collect his deed-box and his wife's clothes. He was in Seuilly an hour and left again at once. Your brave Grosdidier is not going to run any risk of meeting a German.”

“It makes no difference—”

“Remove me,” the Prefect went on calmly, “and you have removed the only restraining force in the town.”

“The troops will do any restraining necessary,” Thiviers exclaimed.

After a moment's silence, Bergeot said, without bitterness,

“So that's where we are. You've handed yourself over to Labenne. You'll regret it. He's used a great many beliefs, including socialism; he's used a great many persons, some very unsavoury; he'll use you. And when you've served him he'll kick you out. You don't know what you're doing, your treachery is the exalted kind which gets into history as a misguided idealism. Your victims, men without names, the men who only know how to turn a screw or prune vines, will have another name for it, possibly rough, certainly vulgar. But history is not written by victims.”

Thiviers had recovered his self-control. He was even inspired. Nothing would have given him greater satisfaction than to sit down at his desk and prove, against Bergeot, that innocence, when the State requires it, must suffer unjustly. What is justice? A word. A handsome white cloud. What is the State? Billions of francs' worth of soil, minerals, houses, banks, machinery, firmly anchored to a continent by the cables of ships. Only a fanatic for justice, like that wretched fellow Peguy, or a
nihilist like Bergeot, would risk all this, and with it the cradles and heirlooms of the houses, the gold in strong-rooms, everything that was of value as well as everything that was gentle, modest, long-suffering, down to the last bottle of thin wine and the least bunch of dried herbs in a woman's poor cupboard, for a word, a cloud. If the chapter Peace could not be written without children fearing death—and getting their fingers crushed—then there must be fear—for as long as was needed to bring people to their knees—and deaths, as many as were needed, all anonymous. He felt himself firm, upright, pure—the only man who could make this clear to history. Men who turn screws and prune a vine have their uses, indispensable—which dispense them from trying to write history, or even reading it.

He looked placidly at Bergeot. “And I suppose you will consider General Piriac, when he gets rid of you to save Seuilly, a traitor.”

“Not in the least,” Bergeot said. “Neither he nor Woerth are traitors, they're ordinary generals—without the intelligence to imagine the sort of war this would be, or the heart to fight. Narrow poor heads and dry hearts.”

But his defiance had become lifeless. He was at last feeling his helplessness and the awful weight of his errors. Thiviers saw it and rejoiced.

“You can do nothing,” he said, smiling. “Far better resign quietly, without scandal—so that your friends will still be able to help you afterwards.” He did not say: So that I can help you. He would save this humiliating promise until the Prefect was on his knees.

Bergeot did not answer. He seemed waiting, passively, for the future, his future, to take charge. Thiviers went on,

“And Marguerite? You don't imagine she wants to share your disgrace—?”

This time he had put his hand on the wrong words. He was unlucky. They loosed in him a bitterness, a rough jealousy, which numbed his will and forced him to cry,

“And another thing. You don't know her. You don't know that she was my mistress for three years; it was because I wanted to influence you through her—you were getting out of hand, with your imbecile notions—I set her on to you. You
were my successor . . . as well as the clever nobody I helped—why did I help you? I thought you were a sensible man. . . . I don't want to touch politics myself. You were to be my voice and hand. You fool. I would have made you a Minister . . . Premier . . . why not?”

He stopped speaking. This was not giving him any pleasure. Even although he had not intended it, it should have been a delicious moment, another coupling of his joy and hate. He felt nothing. Nothing. Only vacancy. And a growing terror of this vacancy at the centre of his life. He was being allowed a brief moment of reality, but he could not bear it. It was a hell of dryness. Turning from it, he looked eagerly at the Prefect . . . another's reality is always bearable. He expected to see Bergeot's in his face, but it was placid, with the eyelids stretched like a bandage.

“Are you going to resign?” he asked.

“Why did you tell me this fantastic story?” Bergeot said.

“So that you would know what you're doing. For once—to have everything on the table.”

He saw that Bergeot had believed him.

“I don't believe it,” Bergeot said: “no woman could make herself live with you. Besides, you're impotent, aren't you? I've always supposed you were.”

Strangely, Thiviers felt a pang of grief. “I've been kind to you. I've helped you in every way,” he said.

He took the hat and gloves which Bergeot, with a polite smile, was handing to him. Not until he was going down the stairs, setting his feet carefully in the hollows worn in the stone, did a trembling rage get the better of his sadness.

Bergeot went out, saw that his notices were being posted, talked to people everywhere, with his own hands helped to unload a car into the house, for more than three hours ran here and there with mad energy, and came back to the Prefecture. Lucien told him that Mme de Freppel had telephoned several
times; she wanted to see him at once. While his secretary was speaking, the telephone rang again. “Answer it and tell her I'm too busy, I'll come later.”

Lucien listened and frowned. “It's the
New Order”
he said. “Derval himself. He says, is it true you're resigning? Will you speak to him?”

“Good God, is it my job to answer my telephone? Ask him where he heard such a stupid lie?” Bergeot said. He listened to Lucien talking in a severe voice.

“. . . Nonsense! . . . You could at least give up wasting our time. . . . Certainly not. Neither tomorrow nor any other day. . . .” He put the receiver down, “I'm sorry, sir,” he said, blushing. “Of course I know you don't talk to these people. It was just—”

“You're an idiot,” Bergeot said affectionately, “an indispensable idiot. Get me a glass of coffee.” He hesitated. “No, no, don't bother. I'm going out again.” A moment earlier he had turned with a nervous horror from the burden of talking to Marguerite. Now it was the thing he must do at once. A crack had opened in his mind; into it were pouring his energy, wits, sanity itself. It must be closed—or he must be able to forget it.

It was a little easier to move in the High Street, but traffic was still coming thickly over the bridge. It now included army lorries and soldiers on foot. These were falling into the hands of the military police post at the end of the Quai d'Angers and being turned off to the barracks. Bergeot's car was held up while two enormous lorries were worked round the sharp turn. He saw a soldier drop over the back of the second and slip across the road. He recognised Marie's husband, Pierre. Breathless, Pierre came to a full stop beside the Prefect's car, hidden by it from the police. Bergeot spoke to him. Pierre glanced up, his mind absent, showing only its white. He was covered with grey dust, and carrying his rifle. He seemed almost an idiot. A thin space opened between two cars: flattening himself through it, he disappeared. . . .

The river was fuller than it had been for weeks, and full of colour. During the afternoon a few clouds had come up. A pure white, they altered the colour of the water at several depths; all the Loire's family of rivers might have been turning under and over between her banks like dolphins. Bergeot knew
this road from his first day at school in Seuilly, when Bonamy brought him here. There was not a turn in it which had not the shape of one of his desires, as it came to him for the first time—or one of his faults. Today all he wanted from this stone and that elm was the assurance that he had not lost them.

When he came into her room he saw that Marguerite had been anxious. She was trembling with impatience, with nerves, with a feverish need to make him obey her quickly. . . . What has she decided I must do? Run away? . . . He kept back his new knowledge. Deliberately cruel, he wanted to keep a little longer this advantage he had over her. Besides, so long as he said nothing, he could believe he was calm.

She begged him to resign. All the arguments she had been joining together for hours fell on him at once. He felt bruised, but his mind was quite deaf. She saw he was not listening. In a gentler voice she asked him to put his ambition on one side for a time, for as long as his friends advised, and live, simply live. . . . “You still have something to live for. For our happiness, for the things we can enjoy together—the essay on Bergson you are always going to write, Mozart, the damson jelly you like. We'll live very simply, Sophie shall teach me to cook. And then our child.”

He let her finish this little poem, and said coldly,

“My friends? Thiviers, of course. It's true he was my friend before he was yours. But I believe you were more intimate with him.”

She turned pale. The meaning of his words was too clear, even before she looked at him and his smile. He knew he was behaving badly in allowing himself such a smile, but he was suddenly full of pain. He wanted to ignore it. She was, he was pleased to see, in despair.

He waited a long time for her to find courage to speak. He saw her recovering, not from her despair, from the shock. Almost with pity, he saw her poor mind seeking a way out. Then he saw only himself and the injury to his pride. Was it his pride?

“You let me talk to you about the child,” she said with contempt. “How vile.”

He did not answer.

“You haven't even asked me whether it's true. You've taken
Thiviers's word, the word of a man who is determined to ruin you. He's always been jealous of you.”

He felt almost too tired, of everything, to speak.

“Is it true?”

“No. Of course not.” She looked at him like a child proud of its courage. Her eyes gleamed. “I made use of him, of course. I flattered him shamefully. But why not? I needed him. As for anything else”—her face changed, she smiled timidly; her voice, that deep voice, vibrating at the base of her throat, lightly rough, gentle—“my love, you've known me for four years, you know all my ways and tricks—you know the truth about me.”

It was the one thing he did not know. He was certain she was lying. She was too perfect in her part—voice, gestures, feelings, were a pinch of salt too moving. If she had not been acting, she would have made mistakes, chosen the wrong words. He felt it—without knowing how to reach in her her real feeling, how to get from her, even without words, her real voice. And he was tired, his mind dull and bored, his body broken.

Marguerite had touched him. Looking at her hand on his arm, he said mildly,

“How boring all this is. Why do you bother?”

If he had shown any interest, if he had even been angry, she would have gone on denying with all the cunning and tenderness in the world, until he believed her because he wanted to. His indifference was too much. He saw her lose her courage, and with it her false honesty. Her eyes grew dull. Suddenly she began to talk without humility, without even any tenderness.

“You know nothing about my life. You think, because your father was a poor man, that you know something about poverty. It's not true. You were given an education, you had parents, friends. It's only your ambition that has made difficulties for you. I had nothing. Do you understand? Nothing.” She hesitated, and said awkwardly, “I shan't try to make you believe me. You would never be fit to understand how, in my life, one mistake, one deceit, forced me to make others, one lie forced me to tell a hundred. When I married I thought all that was over. I was counting without myself. I was greedy and restless, I wanted so much to live, not to die of boredom in a house where everything, every gesture, was repeated at the same
minute every day. It would have suited someone with no appetite for living; but I, I was always so hungry. Thiviers was a way out—the only one. After all. . . . No, I'm not telling you the truth about myself. I'm trying to, but it's useless, I can't. I'm making excuses, I'm still lying. . . .”