The Shelter (Survivors Book 1) (3 page)
Read The Shelter (Survivors Book 1) Online
Authors: Jean Levant
“None of them”, I told him.
“Well, Jews then. Jews or Arabs. Or both together. Since they were longing for it, they’ve had their big one in the end.”
After heaping opprobrium on three or four continents, the irascible woodman sit back and fell silent with a sulky expression. Maybe he began to understand that his version of events did not withstand criticism.
There was a silence that was finally broken by doctor Krug.
“And you, Francesca?” he asked, still watching his hands which made appear and then disappear various geometrical figures. “I know you have some personal views on the matter: what do you think of those terrible events we spoke of?”
“How could I know, Ariane?” she protested, weakly blushing. “You know that I am the worst positioned person here to answer this question.”
“That’s right,” Krug said. ‘You’re the very last person who should know something about that. So my question wasn’t about what you know but about what you think: nothing prevents you to think, I presume?”
The way she turned and glanced at him would have touched the worst of men but not his cold-blooded heart. I never felt the inhumanity of this character, literally and figuratively, under its civilian appearance better than on this occasion.
Fortunately for the poor Francesca, Lussius, so discreet for now, involuntarily came to her rescue by observing: “So she’s not of yours? Is she therefore a—a survivor?”
“A survivor, she?!” Lenfant shouted. “She wouldn’t have passed two days, or rather two nights in the conditions that I endured! Besides, she obviously doesn’t know what we’re talking about. No, believe me, she and her cronies were kindly stayed in their shelters while all the witches of hell unleashed above their heads. Me, I was just in the middle of the chaos and I met a girl. A pretty good one for survival although she’s dead now. She seemed to know a lot. I’ve always thought she was American: you know one of these rich Americans who come to show their big new car or their big new yacht on the coast. Well, she had a funny theory for explaining all that mess, that it was an asteroid that struck the moon, and everything was planned long ago by governments and their cronies, so that they’d time to build underground shelters. Naturally, there was no room for fellows like me. This is why the news had been kept secret, at least for the guys who were to attend the big show in the front row seats. She said that they were pieces of moon falling on us little pieces by little pieces. According to her, this explained everything: balls of fire, earthquakes, tidal waves. I didn’t believe her at that time; maybe I should: after all, she was an upper class girl; she had first-hand information, not like us.
Dr. Krug let him finish, with courtesy but without much interest, as it seemed to me.
“I see that you begin to understand the purpose of the meeting,” he said. “Sharing your personal experiences, drawing some similarities and some differences then deducing the cause of the plight that has affected all of you. This is why I asked Dr. Leone to pick up all documents in the file she thought to help, so that we can proceed together with their examination. For this purpose, each of you was asked to write a detailed account of the tragedy, without forgetting to include your personal journey. I’m glad that you have positively responded to that request,” he added, pointing at the printed sheets that his collaborator had piled in three distinct bundles.
“Not me,” the woodman said. “If you think I’m going to play your little game, then you make a big mistake.”
“Oh yes, Mister Pierre, I may assure you that we also have your side of the story.”
The irascible man stared at the third sheaf of leaves and then looked staggers at Dr. Leone.
“You—you stole my notebook! I understand now where he’s gone!”
“I have borrowed it, Mister Lenfant, not stolen,” she corrected him. “As you stubbornly refused to cooperate, I had to find a way. Don’t worry, I put back it where you had hidden it. Christine hardly took over one night for typing, although your writing gave her some problems.”
“You’ve given it to the Coun-Countess?” he stammered, with a horrified look.
“Only to Christine, the secretary.”
“That’s what I say!” he yelled. “And she read it?”
“Very likely. How could she transcribe it otherwise?”
Within a few seconds, the madman’s face changed through all the colors that human face can take. Although the secretary did not amaze us with her kindness, his reaction seemed to be clearly disproportionate. It would not bother me that she read my story, even if I am willing to acknowledge that I did not put in my “story” everything that I would be able in a diary. In fact, I would have liked. The defiant and lofty secretary would have lost probably none of her arrogance, her insolence, her cold contempt for us, despicable insects, but I believe that it would have been made her admit that I was not so uninteresting that she assumed.
“You―you could have res-respect my w-will, this is what you c-could have done!” he miserably babbled, losing his arrogance all at once.
“How important is it that your secrets are known, Pierre? All that’s over now,” Ariane told him with a hint of cruelty. “Don’t you think that those extraordinary circumstances have justified a small infringement to good manners? Instead, I congratulate Dr. Leone for her initiative. Yes, because everything must be put on the table. We need to understand what happened.
You
must understand it. There is no other way. Believe me all of you.”
Group therapy—because it was something like that—is normally quite entertaining and even exciting for people of sane mind. Yes I claim that talking about ourselves and even more hearing ourselves spoken of is the favorite activity of a large number of people including myself. Not only I am not afraid of it but I usually feel great pleasure, which perhaps explains that stern people like Francesca is that wary about it (I do not mean to include the woodman who certainly has other reasons for not wanting to talk about himself). Some people went so far as to falsely suggest that is the only reason for what I wrote books (may their souls rest in peace): it’s not my conception of literature indeed.
Obviously, the situation was anything but normal. And to tell the truth, the notion of normality made no longer sense. In any case, I felt quite detached at this moment of the interview, or the therapy, not really concerned so that I could take all the fun out of it as an impartial observer. This added to the enjoyment of sharing a secret with a higher being like Ariane. My feeling was strange, I admit, and perhaps guilty, in the light of the situation. With what I knew, I should hate him and his fellow creatures, I was well aware of it but I was not able. It is possible that I am a traitor. Or at least that I would seem so to those who would read these lines if our species was to survive and our descendants would be eager to know the darkest chapter of our History. Too bad! However, I should add, to sketch a line of defense for my future and hypothetical trial, that when the enemy defeated you, so entirely and definitively, what good would it be wasting your time to hate him, what good would it do to fight still? The only reasonable option which remains to you are to learn from him—even learn to love him if it is required—or to disappear. This is what Dr. Leone was trying to do in her own way, I thought. The term collaborator had been very accurately chosen by Ariane to call her. That said, if you want to search for culprits, she was surely not as good as me. All proved that she had ignored so far the gravity of the plight, a curious ignorance in fact, almost inexplicable, that she unconsciously revealed by her speaking. And it was even clearer that she was not aware of
whom
she gave herself to.
To put an end to this topic, I don’t believe at all that we, humans, have deserved what happened to us. I am not a fanatic like Lussius. On the contrary, I consider that our fate is unfair, iniquitous and immoral. Simply, I think that morality and justice have nothing to do with it. Was it fair and moral that Neanderthal man disappeared to make room for his successor, the so-called Homo Sapiens, that is to say us? And didn’t we push him a little to the grave? If we were found ourselves in the other way around, would we have done better than Ariane and his fellow beings? Or just like the same? Or even worse?
I was expecting that Ariane asked me to start and I was not mistaken. He wished that we took turns to read our own text. Personally, as I said, it did not scare me at all. Nowadays—I mean just before the disaster— writers are rarely allowed to address listeners and feel them so captivated. In fact, I almost could dispense with notes. While I believed reading, my eyes were running forward; and going along, I reinvented my own story, for the sake of accuracy or clarification. More than once, I completely stopped reading to rely only on my memory, while watching my audience, especially Francesca, probably because she was right across from me. Anyway, I brought the chandelier closer and began my story.
