Читать книгу Farewell My Only One - Antoine Audouard - Страница 18

IX

He came to the priory with her and we spent the evening laughing and singing. Our queen with the bright, shining face was not to be outdone. She loved being the only woman amongst all these men who for the most part had not known any and were discovering the mystery in her eyes. Arnold had lit a fire in the hearth because it had been cold. Late in the evening, we saw their hands searching for one another, as well as the looks they exchanged, which were evidence of an intimacy in which we had had no part to play. My friends left the room one after the other to return to the dormitory which was on the second floor. I did not want to leave – and silence set in. The bell of Saint-Victor chimed: I had lost track of time, I think it was for the vigil.

Go forth, o daughters of Zion,and behold King Solomon,with the crown with which his mother crowned himon the day of his wedding,on the day of his gladness of heart.

I began to laugh to myself and they looked at me. I glanced and saw the dying embers; I was dying with them – on the day of his gladness of heart. I desired your death, Solomon Abelard, I want you to be accursed and to die in pain.

I went up to bed with the others.

I thought that I had got over it all, but the night was still long. I could not sleep. I kept my eyes open: the crackle of the fire, the breathing of men in the night hours, the world at prayer. I was alone. Alone: in a sense.

I could hear them.

Softly spoken words, stifled laughter, silences . . . the rustle of material, the creaking of the wood . . . My God, why are they making love here, a few feet away from me? Why continue to crush me and trample me, as if I had done harm? I know I have blasphemed with words, but You are my witness that I have sinned very little – the lowliest priest is a hundred times worse than me. My God, remember your servant Job and do not allow him to fall into the hands of Satan, be merciful . . .

I rose and went down the first few steps of the staircase, and in a low voice, like that of a supplicant, I said: ‘Peter . . .’ Nothing had changed; our friends were all asleep, and I was the only wretch to share in their fornication without being a part of it. I wanted to escape and join my beloved statues, but it meant going past them – he inside her, in her warmth and her tenderness, each of them lost in the other’s desire, each of them trying unsuccessfully to muffle any noise.

Heloise was smiling, her eyes closed, lost in a world which I would not enter. Would I not touch her? It was as well. Did she not love me? That was as well, too.

But I still loved her.

I felt very much alive as I walked out into the night. Heloise’s shadow was alongside me and would not leave. She bathed beside me in the Bièvre stream and she laughed as she caught moonfish with her hands. She stripped off her surcoat, her gown and her blouse as women do in eastern fairy tales – a dance in which the naked flesh is never revealed because one veil always conceals another.

Sing, my love, sing of your new love for the greatest philosopher in the world! Sing of the astonishment coursing through both your bodies as the master’s disciples leave the house and, eyes dull with sleep, join me beside the river.

They are silent, there is nothing to say, nothing to do, except eat the grapes that Christian had picked from the vineyard at Saint-Victor, to spit out the coarse skin and let the juice dribble down our chins.

Sing, my love, sing of your so potent love which will live fearlessly for all too brief a time! Sing of the joys that are so short-lived, sing of what is obvious but inexplicable! You are alone now and you are saying things to each other which none can hear and none can understand while he, stroking you gently with his large hands, is reawakening your body and you are surprised to discover that you desire that pain – what am I saying? – that you are calling out for it, demanding it.

You two seem to have been waiting for so long – and yet, when terror was my mistress, I alone knew what it was about your skin, your eyes, the murmurs of your hearts . . .

The bells chimed for Matins, then Prime: the dawn clothed us without covering us. It was cold, as beggars and the poor can attest every night God grants to them. Arnold had fallen asleep against my shoulder – a giant who can drift off fearlessly into sleep. Christian stretched.

‘Do you think we can go back?’

‘I feel like some bread.’

The nearest bakery was by the Laas enclosure: we waited there happily like scrawny cats as the heat burned our limbs. A child with his eyes full of sleep was talking in a strange language to his fingers as if they were visitors charged with a mission.

‘Where has the canon gone?’ asked Arnold

‘To Chartres, on pilgrimage.’

‘I hope for his sake that he didn’t place himself under the protection of the Virgin.’

Christian began to laugh, then Arnold, and finally me. We laughed till the tears came and we had to stop.

‘The Virgin,’ said Christian, hiccupping.

We set off, still laughing, juggling the burning hot bread in our hands. A group of nuns looked at us disapprovingly.

‘It’s not particularly funny,’ I said eventually.

Arnold’s expression was always cheerful, but a cloud had already come over Christian’s face. The air reverberated with the sounds of the world awakening. Men were stretching and saying their prayers, others were opening their eyes to their hunger. How to go on living and hoping for one more day? The earth, newly drenched by the dew, gave off scents of the forest as well as the sewers of the city; by a curious effect of the dawn light, Notre-Dame seemed to be emerging like the mist from the ruins of Saint-Etienne.

‘Who would believe that the folly of wise men is more foolish than that of other men?’ said Christian eventually.

‘The folly of love – isn’t that what others call wisdom?’

‘No doubt. If he didn’t have so many enemies . . .’

‘His friends are more powerful than his enemies,’ said Arnold.

‘You know very well that he’ll be on his own at the end,’ Christian muttered.

‘That’s not true,’ said Arnold somewhat pompously. ‘I’ll be there, wherever I am.’

Christian grimaced in disbelief, perhaps a mite contemptuous. Arnold looked at him menacingly, a hand was raised, a punch was thrown. I had to shout at them to stop.

‘That’ll do!’

They glared at each other, this French lion and this Italian bee, with such hostility that it made me – and very soon them too – want to smile. We all embraced.

‘Are we going to wait by this door all day?’ Arnold asked.

‘No, open it,’ said Christian.

‘You do it.’

Arnold demurred.

‘What did the Child say?’ he asked.

‘Don’t you know? He was summoned to Vézelay. The prior died and they want to elect him.’

‘Our Peter, the Child who loves miracles?’

‘The very same. I don’t think we can go on calling him the Child . . .’

Arnold shrugged as he pushed open the front door. We followed him, climbing the stairs in silence. We found Peter Abelard alone, standing by the ashes in the hearth. The back of his powerful, rigid neck did not move. His black linen robe was crumpled like a sack. He did not look at us.

‘Peter?’

I spoke in a low voice – almost as if I didn’t want him to hear.

‘Peter?’

He did not stir.

‘Peter?’

‘Love – and do as thou wouldst.’

It was his voice – so deep that we scarcely recognised it – not the voice of the master but that of a man who has discovered an unknown country within himself.

‘I often wondered what that really meant . . .’

He turned towards us at last. Tears were flowing down the two vertical folds of his cheeks. His face had grown old. We had never seen him weep.

‘So that’s what it was . . .’