The Inferno (12 page)

"How long has she been your wife?"

"Two days."

"Oh, two days! Now I have struck it. And before that, you sinned with
her?"

"No," said the man.

The priest was put out of countenance.

"Well, I suppose you are not lying. Why didn't you sin? It is unnatural. After all," he insisted, "you are a man."

The sick man was bewildered and began to get excited. Seeing this, the
priest said:

"Do not be surprised, my son, if my questions are direct and to the point. I ask you in all simplicity, as is my august duty as a priest. Answer me in the same simple spirit, and you will enter into communion with God," he added, not without kindness.

"She is a young girl," said the old man. "I took her under my protection when she was quite a child. She shared the hardships of my traveller's life, and took care of me. I married her before my death because I am rich and she is poor."

"Was that the only reason--no other reason at all?"

He fixed his look searchingly on the dying man's face, then said, "Eh?" smiling and winking an eye, almost like an accomplice.

"I love her," said the man.

"At last, you are confessing!" cried the priest. He buried his eyes in the eyes of the dying man. The things he said fairly hit him as he lay there.

"So you desired this woman, the flesh of this woman, and for a long time committed a sin in spirit? Didn't you? Eh?

"Tell me, when you were travelling together, how did you arrange for rooms and beds in the hotels?

"You say she took care of you? What did she have to do for you?"

The two men scanned each other's faces keenly, and I saw the misunderstanding between them growing.

The dying man withdrew into himself and became hardened, incredulous before this stranger, with the vulgar appearance, in whose mouth the words of God and truth assumed a grotesque aspect.

However, he made an effort:

"If I have sinned in spirit, to use your words," he said, "it proves that I have not sinned in reality, and why should I repent of what was suffering pure and simple?"

"No theories now. We are not here for theorising. I tell you, a sin committed in spirit is committed in intention, and therefore in effect, and must be confessed and redeemed. Tell me how often you succumbed to guilty thoughts. Give me details."

"But I resisted," moaned the unfortunate man. "That is all I have to
say."

"That is not enough. The stain--you are now convinced, I presume, of the justice of the term--the stain ought to be washed out by the truth."

"Very well," said the dying man. "I confess I have committed the sin,
and I repent of it."

"That is not a confession, and is none of my business," retorted the priest. "Now tell me, under exactly what circumstances did you yield to temptation with that person, to the suggestions of the evil spirit?"

The man was swept by a wave of rebellion. He half rose and leaned on his elbow, glaring at the stranger, who returned his look steadily.

"Why have I the evil spirit in me?" he demanded.

"You are not the only one. All men have it."

"Then it is God who put it into them, since it is God who made them."

"Ah, you are a debater! Well, if it gives you pleasure, I will answer you. Man has both the spirit of good and the spirit of evil in him, that is to say, the possibility of doing the one or the other. If he succumbs to evil, he is damned. If he triumphs over it, he is rewarded. To be saved, he must earn salvation by struggling with all his powers."

"What powers?"

"Virtue and faith."

"And if he does not have enough virtue and faith, is that his fault?"

"Yes, because that comes from his having too much iniquity and
blindness in his soul."

The man sat up again, seized by a new fit of anger which consumed him
like a fever.

"Ah," he said, "original sin! There's nothing that can excuse the suffering of good people on earth. It is an abomination."

The priest looked at the rebellious man blankly.

"How else could souls be tried?" he said quite calmly.

"Nothing can excuse the suffering of the good."

"God's designs are inscrutable."

The dying man flung out his emaciated arms. His eyes became hollow.

"You are a liar!"

"Enough," said the priest. "I have listened patiently to your ramblings and feel sorry for you. But there's no good arguing. You must prepare to appear before God, from whom you seem to have lived apart. If you have suffered, you will be consoled in His bosom. Let that suffice for you."

The invalid fell back and lay still for a while. He remained motionless under the white spread, like a reclining sepulchral statue of marble with a face of bronze.

He regained his voice.

"God cannot console me."

"My son, my son, what are you saying?"

"God cannot console me, because He cannot give me what I want."

"Ah, my poor child, how far gone you are in your blindness! Why did
you have me summoned?"

"I had hopes, I had hopes."

"Hopes? Hopes of what?"

"I do not know. The things we hope for are always the things we do not
know."

His hands wavered in the air, then fell down again.

"Time is passing," said the priest and began all over again.

"Tell me the circumstances of your sin. Tell me. When you were alone with this person, when you two were close together, did you talk to each other, or did you keep quiet?"

"I do not believe in you," said the man.

The priest frowned.

"Repent, and tell me that you believe in the Catholic religion, which
will save you."

But the other man shook his head in utter anguish and denied all his
happiness.

"Religion--" he began.

The priest interrupted brutally.

"You are not going to start over again! Keep quiet. All your arguments are worthless. Begin by /believing/ in religion and then you will see what it means. I have come to force you to believe."

It was a duel to the end. The two men at the edge of the grave glared at each other like enemies.

"You must believe."

"I do not believe."

"You must."

"You would make truth different from what it is by threats."

"Yes." He stressed the clear, elementary command. "Whether you are convinced or not, believe. Evidence does not count. The one important thing is faith. God does not deign to convince the incredulous. These are no longer the days of miracles. The only miracle is in our hearts, and it is faith. Believe!" He hurled the same word ceaselessly, like stones.

"My son," he continued, more solemnly, standing up, with his large fat hand uplifted, "I exact of you an act of faith."

"Get out!" said the man, with hatred.

But the priest did not stir. Goaded by the urgence of the case, impelled by the necessity of saving this soul in spite of itself, he became implacable.

"You are going to die," he said, "you are going to die. You have only a few more minutes to live. Submit."

"No," said the man.

The black-robed priest caught hold of both his hands.

"Submit. No discussion. You are losing precious time. All your reasoning is of no account. We are alone, you and I before God."

He shook his head with the low bulging forehead, the prominent fleshy nose, wide moist nostrils dark with snuff, thin yellow lips like twine tight across two projecting teeth that showed by themselves in the darkness. There were lines on his forehead and between his eyebrows and around his mouth. His cheeks and chin were covered with a grey layer.

"I represent God," he said. "You are in my presence as if you were in the presence of God. Simply say 'I believe,' and I will absolve you. 'I believe,' that is all. The rest makes no difference to me."

He bent lower and lower, almost gluing his face to that of the dying man, trying to plant his absolution like a blow.

"Simply say with me, 'Our Father, who art in heaven.' I do not ask you to do anything else."

The sick man's face contracted.

"No--no!"

Suddenly the priest rose with a triumphant air.

"At last! You have said it."

"No."

"Ah!" muttered the priest between his teeth.

He twisted the man's hands in his. You felt he would have put his arms around him to stifle him, assassinate him if his death rattle would have brought a confession--so possessed was he with the desire to persuade him, to snatch from him the words he had come to seek on his lips.

He let the withered hands go, paced the room like a wild beast, then came back and stationed himself in front of the bed again.

"Remember--you are going to die," he stammered to the miserable man. "You will soon be in the earth. Say, 'Our Father,' just these two words, nothing else."

He hung over him with his eyes on his mouth, his dark, crouching figure like a demon lying in wait for a soul, like the whole Church over dying humanity.

"Say it! Say it! Say it!"

The sick man tried to wrest himself free. There was a rattle of fury in his throat. With the remnant of his voice, in a low tone, he gasped:

"No!"

"Scoundrel!" cried the priest.

And he struck him in the face. After that neither man made a move for a while. Then the priest went at it again.

"At least you will die holding a crucifix," he snarled.

He drew a crucifix from his pocket, and put it down hard on his breast.

The other man shook himself in a dull horror, as if religion were contagious, and threw the crucifix on the floor.

The priest stooped, mumbling insults. "Carrion, you want to die like a dog, but I am here!" He picked up the crucifix, and with a gleam in his eyes, sure of crushing him, waited for his final chance.

The dying man panted, completely at the end of his strength. The priest, seeing him in his power, laid the crucifix on his breast again. This time the other man let it stay there, unable to do anything but look at it with eyes of hatred. But his eyes did not make it fall.

. . . . .

When the black man had gone out into the night, and the patient little by little recovered from the struggle and felt free once more, it occurred to me that the priest in his violence and coarseness was horribly right. A bad priest? No, a good priest, who spoke strictly according to his conscience and belief, and tried to apply his religion simply, such as it was, without hypocritical concessions. Ignorant, clumsy, gross--yes, but honest and logical even in his fearful attempt. In the half-hour that I had listened to him, he had tried by all the means that religion uses and recommends to follow his calling of making converts and giving absolution. He had said everything that a priest cannot help saying. Every dogma had come out clearly and definitely from the mouth of this rough, common hewer of wood and drawer of water for his religion. If the sick man was right, so was the priest.

. . . . .

What was that thing near the bed, that thing which loomed so high and did not stir and had not been there a moment before? It stood between me and the leaping flame of the candle placed near the sick man.

I accidentally made a little noise in leaning against the wall, and very slowly the thing turned a face toward me with a frightened look on it that frightened me.

I knew that head. Was it not the landlord himself, a man with peculiar ways, whom we seldom saw?

He had been walking up and down the hall, waiting for the sick man to be left alone. And now he was standing beside him as he lay in bed either asleep or helpless from weakness.

He stretched his hand out toward a bag. In doing so, he kept his eyes on the dying man, so that his hand missed the bag twice.

There was a creaking on the floor above, and both the man and I trembled. A door slammed. He rose as if to keep back an exclamation.

He opened the bag slowly, and I, no longer myself, I was afraid that he
would not have time.

He drew a package out of the bag. It made a slight sound. When he saw the roll of banknotes in his hand, I observed the extraordinary gleam on his face. All the sentiments of love were there, adoration, mysticism, and also brutal love, a sort of supernatural ecstasy and the gross satisfaction that was already tasting immediate joys. Yes, all the loves impressed themselves for a moment on the profound humanity of this thief's face.

Some one was waiting for him behind the half-open door. I saw an arm
beckoning to him.

He went out on tiptoe, first slowly, then quickly.

I am an honest man, and yet I held my breath along with him. I /understood/ him. There is no use finding excuses for myself. With a horror and a joy akin to his, I was an accomplice in his robbery.

All thefts are induced by passion, even that one, which was cowardly and vulgar. Oh, his look of inextinguishable love for the treasure suddenly snatched up. All offences, all crimes are outrages accomplished in the image of the immense desire for theft, which is the very essence and form of our naked soul.

Does that mean that we must absolve criminals, and that punishment is an injustice? No, we must protect ourselves. Since society rests upon honesty, we must punish criminals to reduce them to impotence, and above all to strike them with terror, and halt others on the threshold of evil deeds. But once the crime is established, we must not look for excuses for it. We run the danger then of always finding excuses. We must condemn it in advance, by virtue of a cold principle. Justice should be as cold as steel.

But justice is not a virtue, as its name seems to indicate. It is an organisation the virtue of which is to be feelingless. It does not aim at expiation. Its function is to establish warning examples, to make of the criminal a thing to frighten off others.

Nobody, nothing has the right to exact expiation. Besides, no one can exact it. Vengeance is too remote from the act and falls, so to speak, upon another person. Expiation, then, is a word that has no application in the world.

He was very, very weak and lay absolutely still and silent, chained fast by the baleful weight of his flesh. Death had already put an end to even his faintest quiverings.