The Avignon Quintet (132 page)

A corridor of fires the whole length of the square was cleared and organised by the crowd, while the victims were mobilised at one end in a group, looking pathetically like a group of schoolgirls about to participate in a race. They were in fact about to be forced to run the gauntlet, launched by a committee of old hags who brandished several large pairs of scissors such as dressmakers use to cut up lengths of cloth for their creations. Each was first shorn of her hair, had her face smacked soundly and her dress torn or pulled down over her shoulder; then with a sound push she was launched upon her course down the gauntlet where the public waited to take a smack at her with a belt or a switch. Conspicuous were the old women who in this way compensated for loveless lives, calamitous disappointments, or simple childlessness. They whipped away as if they were invoking fertility on the young bodies of virgins – they say that in Roman Italy statues were whipped to provoke fertility. The victims, for their part, though they cried tears of shame and indignation at the cries of “Prostitute!” were glad enough to escape with their lives, for the mood was ugly and the crowd under the influence of the drink had become temperamental and capricious. Already a fight or two had broken out among the spectators, and there were several disputes among armed onlookers somewhat the worse for red wine. But the best was yet to come.

It was rather like a Roman triumph, in which the best and most lucrative hostages, or those whose rank carried prestige beyond the common crew, were displayed at the end of the procession. So it now proved, for with a crackle of drum beats a smaller group emerged from the shadows guarding a single prisoner,
pièce de résistance
, it would seem of the evening’s pieties. She, for it was a woman, walked with a deathly pale composure inside a square of guards who looked vaguely like beadles, though they carried the short trident of the Camargue cowboys as part of their fancy dress. They guarded her preciously though she did not seem to need guarding. She walked quietly with apparent composure and lowered head but her pallor betrayed her mortal fear – her skin glowed almost nacrous in the warm rose of the
flambeaux
. Her hands were tied behind her back. “
There! There!
” cried the crones as the little group advanced. “There she is at last!” It was clear that they spoke of the Evil One herself. The woman as she advanced overheard the tumult and slowly raised her head. Her wonderful head of blonde hair rippled upon her shoulders, her blue eyes were wide and cold. Her nervousness gave her the air of almost smiling. It was as if she had stage fright, she hung back in the wings, so to speak, for she had never acted this part before. “
Up! Up! Up with you!
” cried the crowd, indicating the rostrum upon which at last they mounted her, attaching her wrists to a column of wood. A pandemonium of rage broke out. The women with the scissors scuttled up on to the dais and waving to the crowd histrionically made as if to chop off her tresses, pulling them to full length so that they gleamed like the fruit of the silkworm’s agony. “Justice!” shouted the madman down below and the crowd echoed him. “Vengeance! Justice! Prostitute! Traitor!” The scissors began their work and the blonde tresses were shorn and thrown into the crowd as one throws meat to a pack of dogs. They were torn to bits. Meanwhile the phalanx of kettle-drums – for new musical reinforcements had arrived – kept up a heart-shaking tattoo, such as might accompany the last and most dangerous act of a trapezist. They tore down her dress until she stood there clad only in her shift; the more they tried to debase her the greater her beauty was. Her little ears were pointed, like those of a tiny deer. And now they poured water on her head and shaved her with a cut-throat razor until she was as bald as an egg. “Shame on you!” they cried hoarsely, for she did not seem to be repentant at all, she did not weep. The truth was that she was too afraid. Everything had become a blur. She felt her wrists tugging at the post. They held her upright, for she felt on the point of fainting.

Then came something which, though quite unpremeditated, might easily have been expected, given the context of such an evening. She was pelted with refuse from the dustbins. God knows, there were enough of these. A pile of refuse built up around her feet. Eggs were not plentiful. Then a young man, extremely drunk, mounted the stage and rather unsteadily produced a heavy revolver. The crowd roared. He took up several menacing postures as he flourished the weapon and pointed it at her, so as to show the crowd what her deserts should really have been had they not been true patriots and civilised people. That is, at any rate, what the majority of the crowd thought.

As for the young man, so far-gone in wine, he was bursting with civic pride and a deep-seated sense of misgivings about his own inconspicuous role in the war and the Resistance. He longed to affirm by some dramatic act that he was an adult and a warrior of principle. Lurching about on the rostrum in front of the victim he took the roars of the crowd for approval. At first he had had in mind to fire a few shots as an alarm, or
a feu de joie
or … to tell the truth the devil only knew what. But this was the hated concubine of the Gestapo chief, after all. The cries which exhorted justice and vengeance had gradually worked on his fuddled adolescence until, almost without thinking, he placed the cold barrel of the pistol against the brows of the tethered woman, right between the eyes, and pulled the trigger.

As always in such instances there are people who say they did not mean it, that it was all a mistake, that they were misinformed; and it is true that a moan of surprise and shock was heard from the crowd but it was rapidly drowned in the roars of approval and the music of the kettle-drum. Nevertheless a silence fell, or a lessening of noise, and the crowd wept, for people felt that they had gone too far. And then pushing into the crowd came a small group of nuns who quietly but firmly forced their way up on to the stage to take possession of the mortal remains of Nancy Quiminal.

Then as if to finally wash away and quite expunge every trace of these ignoble proceedings a thunder broke loose and it began to rain as it can only rain in the City of the Popes. Gutters brimmed and overflowed, leaves were broomed from the trees, the fires hissed and spat but went out. And the crowd began to slink away, at first hiding under eaves and in doorways, and then disappearing for good. The curfew habit was still deeply engrained. By midnight the rain had veered off and a candid moon shone in the sky. There was no sign of either enemy or friend. Even the lunatics had disbanded. Each had gone about his former task as if he had returned from a holiday. De Larchant had found his way to the cathedral where a terrified sacristan who recognised him surrendered the key of the organ loft. The grave strains of Bach suddenly swelled like a dark sail in that lightless cavern. Taillefer had gone back to the railway station to resume his job. Baudoin de St.-Just sat at a table in the rain outside the café playing a hand of solitaire with a pack of cards he had appropriated.

It was towards morning when the night watchman of the morgue heard horses’ hooves followed by the sour buzz of the night bell. He had only just turned in after a full evening of work without light and his temper was ruffled. “What now?” he growled aloud as he opened, expecting some emergency delivery from the town. But it was only a pale tall man with two girls, his daughters. He had a letter from the mayor authorising him to see his wife’s mortal remains. It was the husband of Nancy Quiminal, a man never as yet seen for he was bed-bound by illness. Once he had been a musician and had played in the town orchestra. He was pale and thin and ravaged by illness, and so weak that his two daughters held him by the elbows. The night watchman touched his forelock to him awkwardly in a gesture of sympathy. The nuns had dressed and composed the body and tucked it into its white winding cloth. They awaited only a
pasteur
now to arrange for the funeral. And then the medical certificate, what of that? Was it murder or judicial murder or what? Finally it would prove to figure as an unlucky accident. The family was in no position to contest the official view.

He hoisted a white blind and wound up a long handle so that the long chest-of-drawers swung towards them. Then he drew out a drawer to reveal the quiet form of the murdered woman. She looked like a little wakeful gnome in her snood, she was bald as a baby but with alert little ears like crocuses. Yet what affected them most was the sweet panoramic regard of the wide open eyes, the blue French eyes which held just a gleam of satirical humour in them. There were no powder-markings, just the blue hole neatly drilled between the eyes. The children were on the verge of tears and it was time to go. Her husband put out his hand to touch her pale cheek, left it for a moment and then withdrew it. He said he would come back in the morning and attend to the details with the authorities. But he never did. It remained for her two daughters to accompany their mother to a pauper’s grave – the
fosse communale
.

A day or so later French troops relieved the town and at long last the bells of Avignon recovered their fearful tintinabulation which once, long ago, had driven Rabelais wild with annoyance. For the city the war had ended.

Appendix

LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF
PETER THE GREAT

I
N THE NAME OF THE MOST HOLY AND INDIVISIBLE TRINITY
, We, Peter the First, address all our successors to the throne and to the governors of the Russian Nation!

Almighty God, to whom we owe our life and our crown, has endowed us with his light and supported us with his might, and He has made us come to see the Russians as a people called to dominate all Europe in the future.

I base my thoughts upon the observation that most of the European nations are in a state of old age bordering on decrepitude towards which they are hastening with big strides. In consequence it is easy and certain that they will be conquered by a new and young people when it has reached the apogee of its growth, its maximum expansion. I consider therefore that the invasion of the Occident and the Orient by the northern peoples is a periodic mission decreed by providence – which by analogy in the past regenerated the Romans by barbarian invasions.

The emigration of the peoples of the Polar regions are like the overflowings of the Nile which, at certain fixed times, enrich with their rich silt the impoverished lands of southern Egypt. I found Russia like a small rivulet and I leave to my successors a great river; they in turn will make it into a vast sea destined to fertilise an impoverished Europe; its waves will overflow everything in spite of the dykes which faltering hands may dig to restrain them; waves which my successors will know how to direct. With this objective in view I leave them the following instruction which I commend to their unwavering attention and constant observation.

(1) To keep the Russian nation in a constant state of warlike readiness, keeping the Russian soldier forever at war, and only letting him have a respite if there be need to ameliorate the State’s finances; reform the army and choose the most opportune moments for launching it into the attack. Turn things in such a way that peace can serve the needs of war, and war those of peace, all in the interests of the greatness and growing prosperity of Russia.

(2) Address ourselves to the people of cultivation in Europe, reaching them by any possible means – the officers in wartime and the scholars in peace, in order to let the Russian nation profit from the advantages of other nations without losing her own.

(3) Take part whenever we have the chance in popular affairs and legal disputes in Europe – above all in those which touch Germany, which interest us more deeply as being nearer to us than the rest.

(4) Divide Poland by fomenting internal dissensions and jealousies on a permanent basis; seduce the powers that be with gold, influence the Diets and corrupt them so that they favour the election of a king; seek out dissenters and protect them; send in Russian troops to foreign nations and keep them there until there is a suitable occasion to leave them there for good. If neighbouring states make difficulties, appease them temporarily by splitting up the place until such time as one can secure what one needs to hold permanently.

(5) Provoke Sweden as much as possible until she is forced to attack us, giving us a pretext for conquering her. With this objective in view it is essential that Sweden be separated from Denmark and Denmark from Sweden – by carefully encouraging their rivalries.

(6) Always to give German princesses in marriage to Russian princes in order to increase the number of family alliances; thus to bring the interests of both countries closer together and win Germany to our cause, asserting thus our influence.

(7) For our trade orient ourselves in preference towards England, a power which has great need of us for its fleet and could be useful to the development of our own naval power; offering in exchange for gold our wood and other products, establishing firm links between their sailors and traders and our own, so that we can increase the scope of our own trade and a naval power.

(8) Advance our power without a halt northwards along the Baltic coast and southward around the Black Sea.

(9) To get as close as possible to Constantinople and India, for whoever rules over these regions will be the real ruler of the world. In consequence we must provoke unceasingly troubles between Turks and Persians. We must establish shipyards along the Black Sea, gradually extending our domination over it and over the Baltic – two land masses necessary to us if we envisage the success of the plan. Accelerate the decadence of Persia; penetrate as far as the Persian Gulf; re-establish if possible through Syria the ancient trade routes to advance to India, the entrepôts of the whole world. Once arrived there we will no longer need the gold of England.