The Thibaults (16 page)

In the street he strode ahead, repeating to himself: “Keep calm, and act with firmness!” Five or six years spent in studying science had given him the habit of casting his thoughts in ostensibly logical form. “Jacques does not complain; therefore Jacques is happy.” But, inwardly, he discredited his syllogism. The press campaign against the reformatory haunted his thoughts; notably he recalled an article on “Children’s Jails” that had described in detail the physical and moral degradation of the ill-fed, ill-housed boys, the corporal punishments they were subjected to, the callous treatment often meted out to them by the guards. Unconsciously he made a menacing gesture. The role of rescuer appealed to him. Cost what it might, he would get the poor boy out of it! But how? Any idea of telling his father about it or having it out with him could be dismissed; for it was his father, and the institution founded and managed by him, that he was up against. This feeling of revolt against his father was so unprecedented that at first he felt a certain embarrassment, which soon changed to pride.

He remembered what had happened the year before, the day after Jacques’s return. At the earliest stage of the proceedings M. Thibault had summoned him to his study. The Abbé Vécard had just come. M. Thibault was bellowing: “The young ruffian! We’ve got to break his will!” He had stretched out his plump, hairy hand, had spread out the fingers, then slowly closed them, cracking the joints. A self-satisfied smile had lit up his face. “Yes, I think I’ve found the solution.” And, after a pause, raising at last his eyelids, he had uttered the one word: “Crouy.”

“What! Do you mean to send Jacques to the reformatory?” Antoine had exclaimed. A heated argument had followed. “We’ve got to break him in,” his father had repeated, cracking his knuckles again. The Abbé had demurred. Then M. Thibault had explained the special discipline Jacques would undergo—a regime which, to hear him, was amiably benevolent, paternal. He had concluded in an unctuous tone, with measured emphasis. “In these conditions, out of reach of evil influences and purged by solitude of his baser instincts, imbued with a taste for work, he will come to his sixteenth year, and I venture to hope it will then be possible for him safely to resume his place in our family life.” The priest had acquiesced: “Yes, isolation does effect marvellous cures.” Impressed by his father’s arguments and the priest’s approval, Antoine had finished by thinking they were right. But now he could forgive neither his father nor himself.

He walked rapidly, without looking where he was going. In front of the Lion of Belfort he turned on his heel, then went striding on again, lighting cigarette after cigarette, puffing the smoke into the lamp-lit darkness. Yes, he must make haste to Crouy, strike hard, do justice… .

A woman accosted him, murmuring cajoleries. He did not answer, but continued walking down the Boulevard Saint-Michel. “I shall have justice done!” he repeated. “I’ll show up the double-dealing of the directors; I’ll make a public scandal and bring the boy back.”

But somehow the edge of his enthusiasm had been blunted; all the time, his thoughts had been sheering off their first preoccupation, and another impulse kept cutting across his grandiose campaign. He crossed the Seine, well knowing to what place his wayward steps were taking him. After all, why not? With his nerves strung up like this, there was no point in going home to bed. He inhaled deeply, puffed out his chest, and smiled. “One’s got to be a man,” he thought, “to prove one’s strength.” As he blithely entered the furtive, ill-lit street, another rush of generous emotion carried him away. In his mind’s eye he saw his resolution beaconing him to triumph. Now that he was about to realize one of the two projects that had been vying for his attention during the past quarter of an hour, the other, by the same token, seemed to him all but realized. And as, with the assurance born of habit, he pushed open the glazed door, his plans were cut and dried. “Tomorrow’s Saturday—impossible to get away from the hospital. But on Sunday, Sunday morning, I’ll visit the reformatory.”

AS THE morning express did not stop at Crouy, Antoine had to get out at Venette, the last station before Compiègne. He alighted from the train in the highest spirits. Next week he had to sit for an examination, but throughout the journey he had been unable to apply his mind to the medical manuals he had brought with him. The decisive moment was near. For the past two days he had been picturing so vividly the triumphant climax of his crusade that he almost fancied he had already effected Jacques’s release, and the only problem troubling him was how he was to regain the boy’s affection.

He had a mile and a half to walk along a level, sunlit road. For the first time that year after weeks of rain there was a promise of spring in the dewy fragrance of the March morning. He feasted his eyes on the tender verdure already mantling the ploughlands. Wisps of vapour lingered on the bright horizon, and the hills along the Oise glittered in the young sunlight. For a moment he was weak enough to hope he was mistaken, so pure, so calm was the countryside around him. Could this be the setting of a convict prison?

He had to cross the entire village of Crouy before reaching the reformatory. Then, suddenly, as he came round the last houses, he had a shock. Though he had never seen it and distant though it was, he could not be mistaken. There, in the midst of a chalk-white plain, ringed round on all sides, like a new graveyard, by bare, bleak walls, rose the huge building with its tiled roof, its clock-face gleaming in the sun, and endless rows of small, barred windows. It would have been taken for an ordinary prison but for the gold lettering on the cornice over the first story:

THE OSCAR THIBAULT FOUNDATION

He walked up the treeless drive leading to the penitentiary. The little windows seemed watching from afar the visitor’s approach. Entering the portico, he pulled the bell-rope; a shrill clang jarred the Sabbath calm. The door opened. A brown watchdog, chained to its kennel, barked furiously. Antoine entered the courtyard, which consisted of a lawn surrounded by gravel paths and curved on the side facing the main ward. He had a feeling of being watched, but no living being was in sight except the dog, which, tugging at its chain, was barking lustily as ever. To the left of the entrance was a little chapel topped by a stone cross; on the right he saw a low building with the notice “Staff,” and turned towards it. The closed door opened the moment he set foot on the step. The dog went on barking. He stepped into a hall, with a tiled floor and yellow walls and furnished with new chairs; it reminded him of a convent parlour. The place was overheated. A life-sized plaster bust of M. Thibault, giving an impression of enormous bulk under the low ceiling, adorned the right-hand wall. On the opposite wall a humble black crucifix, garnished with a sprig of box, seemed to be playing second fiddle to it. Antoine remained standing, on the defensive. No, he had not been wrong! The whole place reeked of the prison-house.

At last, in the wall furthest from him, a hatch was opened and a guard put out his head. Antoine threw down his own card and one of his father’s, and curtly told the man he wished to see the superintendent.

Nearly five minutes passed.

Annoyed by the delay, Antoine was just about to start on a round of exploration, unaccompanied, when a light step sounded in the corridor and a bespectacled, plump, fair-haired young man ran up to him with little dancing steps. He was in brown flannel pyjamas and wearing Turkish slippers. All smiles, he held out both hands in welcome.

“Good morning, doctor. What a happy surprise! Your brother will be so delighted,
so
delighted to see you. Of course I know you well; your father, the Founder, often speaks of his grown-up doctor son. And besides there’s a family resemblance. Oh, yes,” he laughed, “I assure you there’s a likeness. But do come to my office, please. And forgive me for not introducing myself before; I’m Falsme, the superintendent here.”

He shepherded Antoine towards his office, shuffling his feet and following close behind with his arms extended and fingers spread, as if he expected Antoine to slip or stumble and wanted to be sure to catch him before he fell.

He made Antoine take a seat and himself sat at his desk.

“Is the Founder in good health?” he asked in a high-pitched voice. “What an extraordinary man he is—he never seems to get older! Such a pity he couldn’t come today as well!”

Antoine cast a mistrustful glance round the room, then scanned without amenity the young man’s face, which for all its pink-and-white complexion had a Chinese cast: behind the gold-rimmed spectacles the two small slanted eyes seemed twinkling and beaming with perpetual joy. The voluble welcome had taken him off his guard, and it upset his calculations to find that the stern prison warden he had pictured was a smiling young man in pyjamas instead of the grim-faced martinet—or, at best, the prim pedagogue—he had expected to confront. It was an effort for him to recover his composure.

“By Jove!” M. Faîsme suddenly exclaimed. “It’s just struck me: you’ve arrived in the middle of mass. All our youngsters are in chapel, including your brother, of course. What’s to be done?” He consulted his watch. “There’s another twenty minutes, half an hour, perhaps, if there are many communions—and that’s quite possible. The Founder must have told you; we are particularly fortunate in our confessor: he’s quite a young priest with go-ahead ideas and any amount of tact. Since he’s been here the religious tone of the institution has wonderfully improved. I’m so sorry to keep you waiting, but really I don’t see how it can be helped.”

Mindful of the investigation he proposed to carry out, Antoine made no show of friendliness.

“As the buildings are empty for the moment,” he said, standing up and fixing his eyes on the little man, “I presume there would be no objection to my having a look round the institution. I’ve heard it so much discussed ever since I was a boy that I’d like to have a nearer view of it.”

“Really?” The superintendent seemed surprised. “Nothing could be simpler, of course,” he added with a smile, but made no sign of moving. For a moment he seemed lost in thought, the smile still lingering on his lips. “Really, you know, the buildings aren’t particularly interesting; more like a miniature barracks than anything else. And when I’ve said that, you know as much about them as I do.”

Antoine remained on his feet.

“Still, it would interest me,” he repeated. The superintendent stared at him, his little slotted eyes twinkling with amused incredulity. “I mean what I say,” Antoine added in a determined voice.

“In that case, doctor, I’ll be delighted… . Please give me time to put on a coat and shoes and I’ll be with you.”

He went out. Antoine heard an electric bell ring. Then a big bell in the courtyard clanged five times. “Aha!” he thought. “That’s the alarm; the enemy is within the gates!” Unable to bring himself to sit down, he walked to the window; the glass was frosted. “Steady now!” he adjured himself. “And keep your eyes open. The first thing’s to make sure. Then to act. That’s the line to take.”

After a good while M. Faîsme returned.

They went out together.

“You see here our main quadrangle!” he said, turning the pompous nomenclature with a laugh. The watchdog started barking again; he ran up to it and gave it a violent kick in the ribs that sent it slinking back into the kennel.

“Are you anything of a gardener? But of course a doctor must know his way about in botany, eh?” He halted, beaming, in the middle of the little lawn. “Do give me your advice. How’m I to hide that bit of wall? What about ivy? Only it would take years, wouldn’t it?”

Ignoring the question, Antoine walked on to the main building. First they visited the ground floor. Antoine went in front; nothing escaped his observant eye, and he made a point of opening every door without exception. The upper half of the walls was whitewashed; up to the height of six feet they were tarred black. All the windows, like those in the office, had frosted glass, and here there were bars as well. Antoine tried to open a window, but a special key was necessary; the superintendent produced one from his pocket and turned the latch. Antoine was struck by the dexterity of his short, .fat, yellow fingers. He cast a shrewd exploring glance into the inner court, which was quite empty—a large rectangle of dry, well-trodden mud without a single tree and enclosed by high walls topped with broken glass.

M. Faîsme described with gusto the uses of the different rooms: class-rooms and shops for carpentry, metalwork, electricity, and so forth. The rooms were small, clean, and tidy. In the refectory servants were just finishing clearing the deal tables; an acrid smell came from the sinks in the corners.

“Each boy goes to the sink after the meal to wash his bowl, mug, and spoon. They never have knives, of course, nor even forks.” When Antoine gave him a puzzled look, he added with a grin: “Nothing with a point, you know!”

On the first floor there were more class-rooms, more workshops, and a shower-bath which did not seem much used, but of which the superintendent was evidently particularly proud. He bustled from room to room, flapping his arms and prattling away. Now and then he would stop to push back a carpenter’s bench, pick up a nail from the floor, turn off a dripping tap, set perfect order in each room he entered.

On the second floor were the dormitories. They were of two sorts. The greater number contained ten low bedsteads, spread with grey blankets and arranged in rows; each was fitted with a kit-rack as in French military barracks, which these resembled, except that in the centre of each room was a sort of iron cage enclosed in fine-meshed wire netting.

“Do you shut them up in that?” Antoine inquired.

M. Faîsme flung up his arms in a gesture of comical dismay, then began laughing again.

“Certainly not! That’s where the watchman sleeps. It’s quite simple; he puts his bed plumb in the middle, at an equal distance from each wall. In that way he can see and hear everything that goes on, in perfect safety. And he has an alarm-bell, too; the wires go under the floor.”

The other sort of dormitory consisted of rows of adjoining cells, built of solid stone and barred like the animal-cages in a menagerie. M. Fa
î
sme had stopped on the threshold. Now and then his smile had a pensive, disillusioned air which gave his doll-like features the melancholy that pervades the Buddha’s face in certain statues.