The Medusa Child, page 15
And he ordered her to follow him every time he came to find her. Otherwise she and all her family would be sorry. The little girl appeared compliant; she nodded without saying anything, and went on her way.
She said nothing, but she immediately took steps to make sure that there could be no reprisals, and no complicity either.
Only Lucie became something of an accomplice to him, and could be counted on. One at least. He tamed her, subjugated her, body and soul. Where could she run, who could she complain to? And in any case, what would she have complained about? About the cuddles he gave her? Ferdinand never saw that these gave her any grounds for being upset and rebellious, on the contrary. If Lucie behaved like a sullen little savage, it was because she had a foul temper and liked making a fuss, that was all.
*
But where has the little sister gone? A hideous mongrel has taken her place. Does this hissing, grimacing creature even belong to the human race? The blood of a griffon, a wildcat, a night-bird, an octopus and a snake, all these must be flowing under the creature’s daubed skin. Its eyes are stinging spears; they spit poison. Its hisses are more like howls, sharp, distressing and shrill. Its teeth are black, its chops swollen with foul saliva. Its movements are like a lizard’s.
So who is this creature who, since that August morning when she sat astride the wall of the kitchen garden, spitting down on him a look of ink and venom, has come back over and over again to haunt him?
For indeed the creature does come back. Every day, during that interminable time when his mother goes off to the divan in the drawing-room and lets her whirling dreams engulf her, the creature slips into Ferdinand’s bedroom. She undoes the shutters from outside with an iron file, then lifts the latch of the slightly-open window. She enters the room noiselessly, closes the shutters again, then creeps up to the bed where Ferdinand lies prostrate. She leans over him and presses her grimacing face against his. She laughs with a shrill, barely audible laugh, grinds her teeth, cracks the bones of her fingers. She takes out of her pocket an electric torch with a fluorescent glare and points this harsh light alternately into Ferdinand’s eyes and at her own face. From her pocket she also pulls out matchboxes with locusts shut inside them. She presses these stridulating boxes against Ferdinand’s ears, and keeps them there for a long time.
Her pockets are bottomless; she drags an endless succession of new treasures out of them. Slow-worms, slugs or earthworms, which she places on Ferdinand’s face. The slimy little creatures crawl over his motionless face.
From under her pullover, she also brings out the two photos that she pinned on to the ripe tomatoes, and places the images of the little girls in front of Ferdinand’s eyes.
It is said that this great broken body can no longer see, hear or feel anything. Despite this, the unrelenting creature keeps on challenging him. She is sure that he is faking. He always has been a fake, the great swine. She comes to test him out, and above all to say to him, in her own language, borrowed from the animals and creeping insects, what she could never say to him before. She comes to act out her hatred in mime, and, without saying a word, to proclaim her vengeance.
*
The little sister has disappeared. Could it be that Lucie is dead? A mongrel, risen partly from the marsh sludge, partly from the rotten treestumps in the forest, has taken her place. And what about Ferdinand, where has he gone? Who has taken his place? No-one.
There is no-one left under that handsome façade. The body of the glorious Sun King is nothing but an empty hull. The splendid mausoleum is now just a silent, abandoned tomb. What does live there is fear beyond measure. Even desire is dead. Fear alone prevails.
The world has crashed, time has fallen apart. The taste for life has been destroyed for ever, the heart has turned to stone.
Terror reigns as a tyrant; it has banished everything else and hurled life into the dungeons. The whole world, and time, are under terror’s despotic rule. And it has its prince, or rather its court jester: an ugly little girl whose pockets are crammed with evil spells, and whose eyes glitter with hatred. A silent child with a face that speaks.
*
In the mirror there is a dimly-lit bedroom. It contains objects, ornaments, furniture and some pictures, but there is no-one there. A large body is stretched out on a bed. It has been abandoned, like the slough cast off from an animal. It is haunted by darkness. The care it receives keeps it just about alive: rather less so than a plant. The black eyes of the child who comes every day to bend her grimacing face over it stir up in it a terror like that inflicted on the damned.
Two women tiptoe into the bedroom. The mother and the nurse. The mother stoops towards the bed, places a kiss on the recumbent figure’s forehead, gazes for a long time at the blank, expressionless face, then goes over to the chest and pours some water from the pitcher into the bowl. Her reflection in the mirror is blurred; her movements are hesitant. She is still lethargic from daydreaming, her memory is confused, her present torment is all mixed up with old sorrows. She moves through time like a sleepwalker. She does however perform smoothly the actions required by the present moment. She must save her husband’s child, the son she adores. She must take great care of the husband, of the son. She must wash the beautiful, beloved body which has brought desire back to her. The phantom body must be made to shine.
But the mother does not know about the deep, devastating terror that haunts this wonderful body she loves. She knows nothing; she has never known anything.
Her little daughter left the room just before she arrived. She slipped away as unobtrusively as she had come in, leaving no visible signs that she had been there. It is in the desperate heart of the fallen ogre that she buries the traces of her visits.
Third Sepia Drawing
A reddish-brown light passes through the stained-glass windows and catches in its beam the particles of dust hanging in the chancel. The copper door of the tabernacle gleams softly through the lace curtain which veils it. The flame of the night-light hanging on the front of the tabernacle trembles in its red glass holder. A vase of marigolds adorns the altar. The beam of light brushes against the flowers, dulling their colour slightly. The patch of shadow stretching out at the base of the vase on to the embroidered organdie mat is orange. Chrysanthemums in two large vases raise their round heads at the top of the altar steps; they are the colour of rust and old gold. The season of roses, peonies and sky-blue lupins is now past. It is the time of year for sober flowers impregnated with the tones of the earth and the setting sun. Soon these very solemn blooms will go to sit at the side of the dead, as a sign of memory and sorrowful love. Muted, restrained sobs, the chrysanthemums will watch over the mist-enshrouded graves.
The wood of the pews and kneeling stools is dark and shiny, like the glossy husks of chestnuts. On one pew, three marbles which have fallen out of a child’s pocket lie in the form of a triangle with unequal sides. One of the three is large and made of clay. The other two are glass; one is yellow, the other bluish-grey. Left behind on their own like this in the middle of the large pew, they no longer bring to mind childhood or games, but rather some kind of concretions of matter, of fire long since extinguished, of light grown stale, of ashes and dust. It would take no more than the touch of a fingernail to make them roll away, and yet it seems as if they were glued to the wood of the pew, as if nothing could possibly make them move, or pull them off.
The capitals in the sanctuary are sculpted; a monstrous bestiary writhes about in the stones. The birds twist their long, flexible necks like snakes; hybrid creatures, half-goat, half-fish, bears with lions’ manes, clawed toads and winged vipers, bite with teeth and fangs bared into empty space, or into their own tails; their faces have shaggy beards, horns, bulging eyes and thick, protruding, upcurled tongues. They all have gaping mouths; they are hungry for darkness. Their eyes are wild, rolled upwards in rage, ravenous for the meagre morsel that never comes.
A wooden eagle spreads his huge wings in the brightly-lit chancel. He, who can confront the sun in the sky, has no fear of the light. He defies the emaciated collection of creatures grimacing hideously under the vaulted roof, snapping up thin air until their bellies are bloated with it.
The monsters are permanently transfixed in their hunger, their anger; the eagle is halted for ever in his majestic flight. His outstretched wings support the book whose every word blazes like a flame. With his puffed-out throat, beak and claws, he cleaves through the expanse of the nave.
The beam of light has moved somewhat. The orange shadow fades at the base of the vase of marigolds. The beam suddenly begins to vibrate, to quiver slightly. A wasp wheels round in it. It has just come from the ivy-covered wall that surrounds the church. It has been feeding from the umbels, gorging itself on sap, attacking flies. One last fight, one last feast. It came into the church through a crack in a stained-glass window. It floated in on the light. Now it clings to this slender thread of warmth and brightness. There is so much shadow, such great coldness all around. It would like to fly back up towards the daylight high above. But its flight is gradually growing weaker, its strength is dwindling. Its legs cannot gain a hold on the ray of light, its sting is no use to it now. It is getting quite close to the great lectern.
On the opposite side, in the vestibule, stand polychrome figures of wood or plaster. Set back a little from the font, an angel stands guard over a collection box. He is a most gentle, courteous guard. Perched on a wooden stand, he kneels with one knee on the plinth and his other leg bent at right angles. His hands are clasped, his wings only slightly open. He is wearing a straw-coloured robe with facings as golden as his hair, and his feathers are ivory-white. There is a slit near the knee on which he is kneeling; when a coin is slipped through it, the angel gives a slight nod of thanks. He is saying thank you on behalf of the church’s stonework, flowers and stained-glass windows; this is made clear by a little sign screwed on to the edge of the plinth: For the upkeep of the church.
There are other collection boxes. The one for the candles is quite plain, and has no courteous angel above it. There could be no sweeter thank you than the slender, flickering flame of a candle lit at the feet of the Madonna. Then there is Saint Antony of Padua’s collection box. He has no flame, nor does he give a sign of any sort to express his gratitude for offerings received. The saint in his monk’s habit is far too preoccupied with gazing at the Infant Jesus whom he is holding up at arm’s length. The upward thrust of his movement carries aloft the prayers murmured at his feet; that is enough. A few sprigs of heather in a stoneware tumbler placed in front of his plinth are all he has for ornament.
A child has taken up position near this statue. It slips something into the slit in the collection box. Looking at this child in the half-light of the vestibule, one is not sure whether it is a boy or a girl. Its short cropped hair is tousled, its appearance unkempt, its movements rather abrupt. Yet it is a girl: one of the boyish kind.
Legend
In fact, Lucie is simply one of the unhappy kind. And as often happens to unhappy children, she has turned nasty. But hers is no small-time nastiness; it thinks big, and plans ahead. It intends to see evil through to its conclusion, as far as death, and even beyond. The wound of shame and fear that was inflicted on her three years ago never closed or healed; instead it became inflamed and swollen. Anger took over from shame, hatred from terror. In the end the infection spread from the wound into her whole being, and the spirit of vengeance was unleashed.
It incubated for a long time, lurking in the dark in the form of a vague sense of ill-being, until the day when it was finally able to break out as a great malignant fever: that wonderful day, that miraculous August morning when the ogre-brother toppled from the top of the wall, struck down by his own violence. Since that day the spirit of vengeance has not abated in Lucie. Quite the contrary, it has gone on relentlessly, perniciously, honing the cutting edge of its weapons in preparation for battle.
Those weapons have been tried and tested, and with what glorious success! It was thanks to them that the ogre stayed pinned on his back after his fall. But that is not enough; for two months now he has been lying in his bed. His mother is taking care of him, he is being pampered, pitied and nursed. The rotter doesn’t deserve any of that. And what if, as a result of the combination of treatments, prayers and magic, he were actually to be cured? It really would be too unfair. The evil swine must die, and quickly! Lucie has set a time limit: by Christmas. She is confident, it is the right time of year; isn’t it nearly All Souls’ Day, the day of the dead? Everywhere the chrysanthemums are poking out the ends of their funereal noses. Aunt Colombe, now completely crippled, is preparing for her great outing to the cemetery. She will go to her Albert’s grave, pushed in her wheelchair by Holy-day-Lolotte.
‘I’m going, whatever the weather!’ the valiant widow has declared. But she peers anxiously at the sky, looking for signs of rain. It won’t do for the cemetery paths to be too muddy on the holy day of the Dead, otherwise her wheelchair will get stuck.
The weather forecast is of little concern to Lucie; what matters to her is to ensure the complete cooperation of the two little dead girls, and indeed of all the dead who are on her side. Lucie is fighting on all fronts, counter-attacking every inch of the way: against the medical treatments, the pious prayers, the white magic which all together are conspiring to bring the murderer-brother, the ogre, back to life.
That is why she is here at the feet of Saint Antony. She has come to address her lethal petitions to him. Long gone is the time when she used to slip coins, pretty pictures and squares of chocolate through the slit in the collection box. The halo of beautiful imagery that surrounded the death of Anne-Lise Limbourg has vanished. The mirage was struck by a cruel, cold shaft of light thrown out by the ogre, and disappeared instantly. The joyful cherubim and good angels who used to flutter around Anne-Lise’s memory have long since fallen like flies at the end of summer. The long, shining table in the Lord’s kingdom, to which the little red-headed girl was invited, has been overturned, the white tablecloth torn to shreds. The Infant held up on high by Saint Antony does not bear consolation in his hands, nor, above all, forgiveness. The globe he holds is a bomb, a cannonball, for crushing the hearts of ogres.
All Lucie’s old imagery has been turned on its head. Father Joachim’s sickly-sweet stories have turned to acid. For a time – those two years during which she kept her eyes evasively lowered – Lucie lost all her powers of imagination. She no longer saw anything, either inside or outside herself. The ogre’s body had blinded her, preventing her from either seeing or dreaming. Then she raised her eyes again amid the animal life of the marshes, and found that she had gained a new kind of sight. And now she sees both the external world and the invisible one in a different way.
Yes, Anne-Lise and Irène have indeed been invited to the Lord’s table. But now the Lord is angry, his table is the colour of lightning, and the angel-guests have eyes and talons like barn-owls, and giant butterfly wings with fiery ocelli, and they carry long two-edged swords shaped like lightning flashes. The cherubim no longer laugh; they have large toads’ eyes and horned backs like newts, and they hiss like snakes.
Lucie stands in front of the collection box and slips her offerings through the slit. Rusted nails, hedgehog quills, lizard tails, shards of glass, spines and thorns. And with clenched teeth she chews over her bellicose prayers. She asks the saint to intercede angrily with almighty God on behalf of her and the two little buried girls. She demands that justice be done, that the life wrongfully given to her false-hearted brother be taken away from him at once. And what is more, that he be damned, that he go off to burn in hell. She forbids the saint to listen to the prayers that others might address to him, such as her mother, or that idiot Lolotte, or some over-pious local woman. Lucie puts the saint on guard against the prayers of adults; they are so stupid, they see nothing and understand even less; all unknowing they throw children to the wolves and fondly shelter ogre-stranglers in their midst. It is she, she alone who must be listened to, whose wishes must be granted.
‘You see,’ she tells Saint Antony, ‘it was a rope like the one you wear as a belt that Irène hanged herself with, because of him. So you’re not going to let the dirty pig live, you’re not going to let him start all over again, are you? If ever he gets up again, I’ll hang myself, and it’ll be your fault this time. So go and knot the rope round his neck instead, like they do to cows when they take them to the abattoir, and drag him straight off to death and hell.’
Such are the prayers with which Lucie aims to thwart the others that are likely to be addressed to Saint Antony. But she also has to combat the care with which Ferdinand is surrounded. That is why she slips into his room at the end of each afternoon, while her mother lazes on the divan in the drawing-room next door. Let her loll to her heart’s content on the beastly divan! She, Lucie, has suffered enough on that bed of misery; her mother might as well suffer on it in her turn as she lies there endlessly ruminating her fears.
*
She goes over to the bed and bends towards the motionless invalid. She does nothing wrong: just shows herself to him, no more than that. She forces him to see her. They say that he cannot see anything, and that may be true; although he keeps his eyes open, his gaze is that of a blind man. Nonetheless Lucie feels that somewhere in the depths of that absent, dead gaze, her brother must be able to see everything. And it is the things he sees that are keeping him bedridden. That means that he must not be given any respite. He must be crushed again and again with images. She must prove to him that she hates him, that she has always detested his brutish caresses, his loathsome kisses, his purulent embraces. And she does prove it to him, by forcing her stare straight in his face as he lies there. She places her eyes in front of him like a mirror, so that he can see himself as she sees him, as the two little girls he killed saw him. And she puts slimy little creatures on his face: like the caresses and kisses he so often inflicted on her.
