Concerto to the Memory of an Angel (4 page)

Although neither the press nor the authorities ever mentioned Olga's disappearance, Marie was convinced that the young woman had died, because she had never come to claim the rest of the money she was owed.

All this talk about murder, the underworld, blackmail, and corruption made Gabriel feel faint. Marie could sense his distress; it was as if she were initiating him to real life, to the world the way it truly is, hostile and violent. In a way, she was teaching him a thing or two.

And henceforth Yvette could go and cry all alone in a corner, for now Gabriel pushed her away, assuring her that he would spend time with her as soon as he had the opportunity. He sent the other penitents packing as well. While he still said mass, and magnificently, he was no longer free: he was obsessed by the poisoner's confessions, haunted by her murders. Marie Maurestier had won. She reigned over Abbé Gabriel, and over the village.

Marie was enchanted that he was now the guardian of her secrets, and she thrilled to see how he lied about her, standing up to those bitter old hags who came to quack in their ugly duck-like voices that they were surprised he devoted so much time to her.

“You're not going to tell us she's innocent, now are you, Father? Otherwise why would she spend so much time in the confession box?”

“Her soul has suffered great injustice—like the horrible accusations you yourself are bringing against her at this very moment, my child, without even a trace of kindness.”

He was better than a confidante; he was an accomplice. They shared not only the truth but also the crime. Were they not committing a crime together?

Their complicity intoxicated her.

 

After five weeks of confession she realized she had told her story until there was nothing left to tell. She came up with a few more misdeeds she had committed during her two trials, but she knew that she was emptying her last rounds and soon she would have no more ammunition.

She was afraid the bell might be tolling for her supremacy.

That Wednesday, the young priest informed his flock that he would be absent the following day and the day after. Just like that! With no further information, and out of the blue! Nor did he divulge anything to Marie.

What was going on?

Was he avoiding her because she no longer fed his shocked curiosity? She wasn't about to go inventing new crimes, now was she! Was she supposed to lie in order to keep him, or turn herself into Scheherazade?

The long hours without Gabriel seemed unbearable. She was in pain. Here she had bared her soul to the priest: was this all she would get, his silence, his sudden absence? In the end, Gabriel was no better than the others.

Weary, disgusted, depressed, on Friday evening at seven o'clock she discovered a rash on her ankles. To punish herself for waiting for him, she placed her feet on a stool and scratched her ankles until they bled. The house was creaking with boredom. In the scent of oilcloth that filled her dwelling, she could not focus her attention on anything, neither the rusty horseshoe on the windowsill, nor the postman's calendar, let alone the newspapers full of classified ads.

 

At eight o'clock, someone rang at her door.

It was Gabriel.

She was overjoyed. He may have gone away, but she was the first person he had come to upon his return. She hid her legs, asked him to come in, offered him something to eat or drink. He declined, with a grave expression, and insisted on standing.

“Marie, I have thought a great deal about what you have told me, these terrible revelations of which I am now the mute guardian—a silent guardian, because I shall never betray the secret of the confession. You see, I went away for two days to think. I conferred with my bishop, and with the priest who trained me at the seminary. Without mentioning your name, I described your case to them in order to know how I should behave. I've come to a decision. A decision that concerns us both.”

As solemnly as if he were asking her hand in marriage, he seized her wrists, firmly. She shuddered.

“You have revealed your sins to God.”

He squeezed her fingers.

“Now you must confess your sins to mankind.”

Marie withdrew her hands and stepped back.

He insisted.

“Yes, Marie! You must take responsibility for your crimes. It's better for justice. Better for the families of the victims. Better for the truth.”

“I don't give a damn about the truth!”

“No. The truth is important to you because you have told me the truth.”

“I told you! Only you! No one else!”

Horrified, she realized that he hadn't understood her at all. She had not been serving the truth, she had been using the truth! She had only used it so that she could captivate him, charm him. It was not as he thought, she had not been speaking to God but to him and him alone.

He shook his head.

“I want you to free yourself in the eyes of man, too. Go back to see the judge and tell him everything.”

“Confess? Never! I didn't fight all those years for that! I can see that you're not the one who had to go through two trials . . . I won, do you understand? I won!”

“What did you win, Marie?”

“My honor, my reputation.”

“A false honor . . . a false reputation . . . ”

“Where honor and reputation are concerned, it's only appearances that matter.”

“And yet you did sacrifice your honor and your reputation. You came to me with your burden.”

“To you, yes. To you alone.”

“To God, too.”

“Yes . . . ”

“But God, like me, has accepted you just as you are: guilty. And God, like me, continues to love you.”

“Oh, really?”

He took her hands again, kneading them in his own, so warm and soft.

“Tell the truth, Marie, tell it to everyone. I will help you, I will support you. That will be my goal from now on. I am living in this village for that purpose alone, for your sake; you are the purpose of my life, you are the reason I pray, the reason I believe. Marie, you are my mission. I will change everything in you, I will bring to life the true Christian who is in you. With the fire of my faith, I will light your own. Together we will succeed. You will do it for me, and for yourself, and for God.”

Marie gazed at him with new eyes. His mission? Had she heard him properly? She was his mission?

When she smiled, he thought he was going to win.

 

The summer months that followed were the happiest she had ever known. Gabriel no longer left her. He got up to see her, he opened the church so that she could come in, he ate his meals quickly so that he could be with her all the sooner, he heard her confession every afternoon and then, in the vicarage, in his house, or in her living room, he spoke to her endlessly—inspired, ablaze, passionate.

Marie took cynical pleasure in her privilege: she had wrenched Gabriel away from the others. She'd won! She had won yet again! He could talk and smile all he liked, and make his gentle gestures and his subtle arguments, she would not obey him. It was pointless, because he was the one who was obeying her.

Yet in her happiness she did not take into account the power of conviction that inhabited the priest.

There was a trap she had failed to see: by insisting, Gabriel was leading her onto the terrain of exchange and discussion. Already in July, not to be outdone, she answered him, grew bolder, ventured into the field of ideas. And this was a terrain where he was better prepared than she was. Progressively, without her actually realizing, while she imagined she was resisting him, he was influencing her, transforming her, suggesting new foundations for her ideas, and instilling ideals in her that until now had always been foreign.

She no longer spoke about God the way she used to.

God used to belong to her collection of weaponry; she would say “God” the way you fire a gun; peremptorily, with the way she said “God” in a loud voice she could obtain silence, she could chase intruders, and create a void around her. Some­times, to reinforce her arguments, she would quote pell-mell from the Gospels and the Fathers of the Church, scattering shot against her adversaries to rebuff them or hurt them, if she couldn't kill them; she aimed quickly, precisely, fired right in the bull's eye. God had enabled her in succession to establish her virtuous reputation and endure the petty quarrels that others picked with her.

Now she saw God not as a terrible, avenging god but as a fount of tenderness. When Gabriel, who said “our dear Lord” rather than “God,” murmured the name of the Creator, he gave the impression he was evoking a vital source, the best wine to drink, or even a remedy for every ill. By his side, Marie was initiated into a new theology; she renounced her former sheriff for the god of love, a kindly, merciful Jesus, six foot four inches in height, like Gabriel, and who had Gabriel's features.

Before Gabriel came into her life, she had forced herself to observe a narrow, repetitive piety, reassuring in its very boredom. But now she was passionately interested in the essence of the prayers and sermons; she even read the Gospels from time to time in the evening.

In fact, she did not realize that he was gaining powerful influence over her. While the origins of that influence may have been sexual, the reality had become spiritual. Marie dreamed of Good, she was moved by stories of forgiveness, she attained ecstasy when he told her stories of the saints, particularly Saint Rita, whom he had studied and made the subject of his dissertation at the seminary.

“Patron saint of lost causes? Then she is my patron saint,” thought Marie as she went to bed.

They spent long hours together locked in battle, which drained him and filled her with enthusiasm.

She believed that she was in control of the situation as always, when in fact it was Gabriel who was expanding his dominion. She shivered in his presence.

“Overwhelm me,'” she seemed to be saying with each sentence. “Do with me what you like.”

This was the first time she had ever encountered the bliss of submission. For while the young man may not have penetrated her physically, he dominated her intellectually; by letting herself be manipulated, she experienced the fulfillment of the masochist who allows herself to grow attached. The violence in her soul was finding an outlet. All her life this tormented creature had played at being the strong, hard woman, and now at last she was discovering her true nature: a slave. By leaving her own self behind she found repose. The drive to control had given way to abandonment; she succumbed to a sensual, dizzying delight as she became an object in Gabriel's hands and mind.

One day, irritated because she had tried his patience, he exclaimed, red with anger, pointing his finger at her: “You are the devil, but I will turn you into an angel.”

That day she shivered to the depths of her body, from her thighs to her scalp, a sort of orgasm that occurred nightly whenever she recalled the scene.

From that moment on she lowered her guard. She thought like him, felt like him, breathed like him.

“You and I are possessed by Good,” he declared.

She thought: With you, I will follow Good and Evil equally, since I am in your possession. But she did not argue with him.

But still she resisted and did not relent altogether. In the evening, alone, she went into raptures, telling herself again and again that yes, she would confess her crimes to mankind, yes, she would sacrifice her comfort for the sake of righteousness. And yet every morning her courage failed her.

“If I agree, will you come to see me in prison?”

“Every day, Marie, every day. If I manage to convince you, we will be bound forever. Not only before mankind but also before God.”

A marriage, in a way . . . Yes, surely, he was asking her to marry him.

More and more often, she imagined herself describing their union
urbi et orbi
, to the television, to journalists, to the police, to the judges. “He's the one, Abbé Gabriel, who persuaded me to reveal everything. Without him I would have continued to deny my crimes. Without him, I would have taken the truth with me to my grave. Gabriel has not only made me believe in God, he has made me believe in man.” In her daydreams, this woman, never a talkative sort, became downright eloquent, and she could wax on forever about the metamorphosis she owed to the young man. She hoped they would take a picture of the two of them, either in court or in the visitors' room at the prison.

To be sure, there were moments when she realized that their situation would not be equal: he would be free, she'd be in prison. But is one free when one is a priest? No. Does one despair when, every day, one receives the visit of the person one loves? Not to any greater degree. Does love not require one to favor the other?

“Sacrifice is the measure of all love.”

That is what Gabriel had said in one of his sermons from the pulpit. Marie had immediately understood that he was addressing her, and she was resolved to apply the maxim: she would sacrifice herself! So that the entire world would know that Gabriel was a great priest, she would confess. So that the entire world would learn of the power this young man had over her, she would embrace her punishment. So that the entire world would remember them as an extraordinary couple, she would embrace her penance. She could not give a child to Gabriel, so she would replace that child with glory: she would make him a media success, give him a judicial scandal and a place in History; their twin performance would be the subject of conversation for many years—how she had deceived justice so extravagantly during her trials, how he had left his spiritual imprint upon a terrible sinner. Without him Marie would have remained irredeemable. A lost cause. Thank you, Saint Rita, for inspiring him. When the history of morality meets the history of saints . . . No more, no less. And anyway, who knows? Perhaps for Gabriel it could even lead to Rome?

In a state of exaltation, she yielded to a multitude of feverish dreams.