A Burnt Out Case (19 page)

‘See who it is,’ he said, ‘but keep him away.’ She heard a car draw up. It was probably the representative of one of the two rival breweries. Each man made the tour of the outstations three times a year and gave a party to the local chief and the villagers with his brand of beer gratis for everyone. In some mysterious way it was supposed to aid consumption.

They were shovelling the dried heads out of the
camion
when she came into the yard. Two men sat in a small Peugeot truck. One of them was African, but she couldn’t see who the other was because the sun on the windshield dazzled her, but she heard him say, ‘What I have to do here should take no time at all. We will reach Luc by ten.’ She came to the door of the car and saw that it was Querry. She recalled the shameful scene weeks before when she had run to her car in tears. Afterwards she had spent the night by the roadside bitten by mosquitoes rather than face another human being who might despise her husband too.

She thought gratefully, ‘He has come of his own accord. What he said was just a passing mood. It was his
cafard
which spoke, not he.’ She wanted to go in and see her husband and tell him, but then she remembered that he had told her, ‘Keep him away.’

Querry climbed out of the truck and she saw that the boy with him was one of the
mutilés
from the leproserie. She said to Querry, ‘You’ve come to call on us? My husband will be so glad . . .’

‘I am on my way to Luc,’ Querry said, ‘but I want to have a word with M. Rycker first.’ There was something in his expression which recalled her husband at certain moments. If
cafard
had dictated that insulting phrase the
cafard
still possessed him.

She said, ‘He is ill. I’m afraid you can’t see him.’

‘I must. I have been three days on the road from the leproserie . . .’

‘You will have to tell me.’ He stood by the door of the truck. She said, ‘Can’t you give me your message?’

‘I can hardly strike a woman,’ Querry said. A sudden rictus round the mouth startled her. Perhaps he was trying to soften the phrase with a smile, but it made his face all the uglier.

‘Is that your message?’

‘More or less,’ Querry said.

‘Then you’d better come inside.’ She walked slowly away without looking back. He seemed to her like an armed savage from whom she must disguise her fear. When she reached the house she would be safe. Violence in their class always happened in the open air; it was restrained by sofas and bric-à-brac. When she passed through the door she was tempted to escape to her room, leaving the sick man at Querry’s mercy, but she steeled herself by the thought of what Rycker might say to her when he had gone, and with no more than a glance down the passage where safety lay she went to the veranda and heard Querry’s steps following behind.

When she reached the veranda she put on the voice of a hostess as she might have done a clean frock. She said, ‘Can I get you something to drink?’

‘It’s a little early. Is your husband really sick?’

‘Of course he is. I told you. The mosquitoes are bad here. We are too close to water. He hadn’t been taking his paludrin. I don’t know why. You know he has moods.’

‘I suppose it was here that Parkinson got his fever?’

‘Parkinson?’

‘The English journalist.’

‘That man,’ she said with distaste. ‘Is he still around?’

‘I don’t know. You were the last people to see him. After your husband had put him on my track.’

‘I’m sorry if he troubled you. I wouldn’t answer any of his questions.’

Querry said, ‘I had made it quite clear to your husband that I had come here to be private. He forced himself on me in Luc. He sent you out to the leproserie after me. He sent Parkinson. He has been spreading grotesque stories about me in the town. Now there’s this newspaper article and another one is threatened. I have come to tell your husband that this persecution has got to stop.’

‘Persecution?’

‘Have you another name for it?’

‘You don’t understand. My husband was excited by your coming here. At finding you. There are not so many people he can talk to about what interests him. He’s very alone.’ She was looking across at the river and the winding-gear of the ferry and the forest on the other side. ‘When he’s excited by something he wants to possess it. Like a child.’

‘I have never cared for children.’

‘It’s the only young thing about him,’ she said, the words coming quickly and unintentionally out, like the spurt from a wound.

He said, ‘Can’t you persuade him to stop talking about me?’

‘I have no influence. He doesn’t listen to me. After all why should he?’

‘If he loves you . . .’

‘I don’t know whether he does. He says sometimes that he only loves God.’

‘Then I must speak to him myself. A touch of fever is not going to stop him hearing what I have to say.’ He added, ‘I’m not sure of his room, but there aren’t many in this house. I can find it.’

‘No. Please no. He’ll think it’s my fault. He’ll be angry. I don’t want him angry. I’ve got something to tell him. I can’t if he’s angry. It’s ghastly enough as it is.’

‘What’s ghastly?’

She looked at him with an expression of despair. Tears formed in her eyes and began to drip gracelessly like sweat. She said, ‘I think I have a baby on the way.’

‘But I thought women usually liked . . .’

‘He doesn’t want one. But he wouldn’t allow me to be safe.’

‘Have you seen a doctor?’

‘No. There’s been no excuse for me to go to Luc, and we’ve only the one car. I didn’t want him to be suspicious. He usually wants to know after a time if everything’s all right.’

‘Hasn’t he asked you?’

‘I think he’s forgotten that we did anything since the time before.’

He was moved unwillingly by her humility. She was very young and surely she was pretty enough, yet it seemed never to occur to her that a man ought not to forget such an act. She said, as if that explained everything, ‘It was after the Governor’s cocktail party.’

‘Are you sure about it?’

‘I’ve missed twice.’

‘My dear, in this climate that often happens.’ He said, ‘I advise you – what’s your name?’

‘Marie.’ It was the commonest woman’s name of all, but it sounded to him like a warning.

‘Yes,’ she said eagerly, ‘you advise me . . . ?’

‘Not to tell you husband yet. We must find some excuse for you to go to Luc and see the doctor. But don’t worry too much. Don’t you want the child?’

‘What would be the use of wanting it if
he
doesn’t?’

‘I would take you in with me now – if we could find you an excuse.’

‘If anybody can persuade him, you can. He admires you so much.’

‘I have some medicines to pick up for Doctor Colin at the hospital, and I was going to buy some surprise provisions for the fathers too, champagne for when the roof-tree goes up. But I wouldn’t be able to deliver you back before tomorrow evening.’

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘his boy can look after him far better than I can. He’s been with him longer.’

‘I meant that perhaps he mightn’t trust me . . .’

‘There hasn’t been rain for days. The roads are quite good.’

‘Shall I talk to him then?’

‘It isn’t really what you came to say, is it?’

‘I’ll treat him as gently as I can. You’ve drawn my sting.’

She said, ‘It will be fun – to go to Luc alone. I mean with you.’ She wiped her eyes dry with the back of her hand; she was no more ashamed of her tears than a child would have been.

‘Perhaps the doctor will say you have nothing to fear. Which is his room?’

‘Through the door at the end of the passage. You really won’t be harsh to him?’

‘No.’

Rycker was sitting up in bed when he entered. He was wearing a look of grievance like a mask, but he took it off quickly and substituted another representing welcome when he saw his visitor. ‘Why, Querry? Was it you?’

‘I came to see you on the way to Luc.’

‘It’s good of you to visit me on a bed of sickness.’

Querry said, ‘I wanted to see you about that stupid article by the Englishman.’

‘I gave it to Father Thomas to take to you.’ Rycker’s eyes were bright with fever or pleasure. ‘There has never been such a sale in Luc for
Paris-Dimanche
, I can tell you that. The bookshop has sent for extra copies. They say they have ordered a hundred of the next issue.’

‘Did it never occur to you how detestable it would be to me?’

‘I know the paper is not a very high-class one, but the article was highly laudatory. Do you realize that it’s even been reprinted in Italy? The bishop, so I’m told, has had an inquiry from Rome.’

‘Will you listen to me, Rycker? I’m trying to speak gently because you are sick. But all this has to stop. I am not a Catholic, I am not even a Christian. I won’t be adopted by you and your Church.’

Rycker sat under the crucifix, wearing a smile of understanding.

‘I have no belief whatever in a god, Rycker. No belief in the soul, in eternity. I’m not even interested.’

‘Yes. Father Thomas has told me how terribly you have been suffering from aridity.’

‘Father Thomas is a pious fool, and I came out here to escape fools, Rycker. Will you promise to leave me in peace or must I go again the way I came? I was happy before this started. I found I could work. I was feeling interested, involved in something . . .’

‘It’s a penalty of genius to belong to the world.’

If he had to have a tormentor how gladly he would have chosen the cynical Parkinson. There were interstices in that cracked character where the truth might occasionally seed. But Rycker was like a wall so plastered over with church announcements that you couldn’t even see the brickwork behind. He said, ‘I’m no genius, Rycker. I am a man who had a certain talent, not a very great talent, and I have come to the end of it. There was nothing new I could do. I could only repeat myself. So I gave up. It’s as simple and commonplace as that. Just as I have given up women. After all there are only thirty-two ways of driving a nail into a hole.’

‘Parkinson told me of the remorse you felt . . .’

‘I have never felt remorse. Never. You all dramatize too much. We can retire from feeling just as naturally as we retire from a job. Are you sure that you still feel anything, Rycker, that you aren’t pretending to feel? Would you greatly care if your factory were burnt down tomorrow in a riot?’

‘My heart is not in that.’

‘And your heart isn’t in your wife either. You made that clear to me the first time we met. You wanted someone to save you from St Paul’s threat of burning.’

‘There is nothing wrong in a Christian marriage,’ Rycker said. ‘It’s far better than a marriage of passion. But if you want to know the truth, my heart has always been in my faith.’

‘I begin to think we are not so different, you and I. We don’t know what love is. You pretend to love a god because you love no one else. But I won’t pretend. All I have left me is a certain regard for the truth. It was the best side of the small talent I had. You are inventing all the time, Rycker, aren’t you? There are men who talk about love to prostitutes – they daren’t even sleep with a woman without inventing some sentiment to excuse them. You’ve even invented this idea of me to justify yourself. But I won’t play your game, Rycker.’

‘When I look at you,’ Rycker said, ‘I can see a man tormented.’

‘Oh no you can’t. I haven’t felt any pain at all in twenty years. It needs something far bigger than you to cause me pain.’

‘Whether you like it or not, you have set an example to all of us.’

‘An example of what?’

‘Unselfishness and humility,’ Rycker said.

‘I warn you, Rycker, that unless you stop spreading this rubbish about me . . .’

But he felt his powerlessness. He had been trapped into words. A blow would have been simpler and better, but it was too late now for blows.

Rycker said, ‘Saints used to be made by popular acclaim. I’m not sure that it wasn’t a better method than a trial in Rome. We have taken you up, Querry. You don’t belong to yourself any more. You lost yourself when you prayed with that leper in the forest.’

‘I didn’t pray. I only . . .’ He stopped. What was the use? Rycker had stolen the last word. Only after he had slammed the door shut did he remember that he had said nothing of Marie Rycker and of her journey to Luc.

And of course there she was waiting for him eagerly and patiently, at the other end of the passage. He wished that he had brought a bag of sweets with which to comfort her. She said excitedly, ‘Did he agree?’

‘I never asked him.’

‘You promised.’

‘I got angry, and I forgot. I’m very sorry.’

She said, ‘I’ll come with you to Luc all the same.’

‘You’d better not.’

‘Were you very angry with him?’

‘Not very. I kept most of the anger to myself.’

‘Then I’m coming.’ She left him before he had time to protest, and a few moments later she was back with no more than a Sabena night-bag for the journey.

He said, ‘You travel light.’

When they reached the truck he asked, ‘Wouldn’t it be better if I went back and spoke to him?’

‘He might say no. Then what could I do?’

They left behind them the smell of the margarine and the cemetery of old boilers, and the shadow of the forest fell on either side. She said politely in her hostess voice, ‘Is the hospital going well?’

‘Yes.’

‘How is the Superior?’

‘He is away.’

‘Did you have a heavy storm last Saturday? We did.’

He said, ‘You don’t have to make conversation with me.’

‘My husband says that I am too silent.’

‘Silence is not a bad thing.’

‘It is when you are unhappy.’

‘I’m sorry. I had forgotten . . .’