Funeral Rites (11 page)

At eight o'clock, exactly when her mistress was waking up under the flowers, the little housemaid walked out by the freezing hospital amphitheater and into radiant sunlight. She walked behind the hearse. The priest had come running up. He was late, but he had come, for in villages the priest is always present at the removal of the body. If the deceased lives too far away from the rectory, the clergy contents itself with going halfway. The family and he, who are ambassadors of two equally illustrious rival kings, choose a place on the road, amidst the fields, where death and God meet. The priest was accompanied that morning by two choirboys who were walking in front of the hearse that contained the tiny coffin, which was adorned with the wreath of artificial pearls in the form of a blue and white star. You have gathered that the younger of the two choirboys, who are in black cassocks and white surplices trimmed with a broad band of old lace, will have the face of Riton and the other
that of Erik. Behind the hearse walked the housemaid, who was followed by an undertaker's assistant.

“A hearse is a basket.
*
I'm behind a basket.”

She had gone to the hospital very early, and when she crossed the porch which was opened for her by a sleepy porter, she found herself in the most flowery of gardens plumed with dawn (it was seven o'clock when she arrived). She saw the hearse of the poor, which seemed to her to be the skeleton of the hearse of the rich; she was not hurt by this. It was drawn by a hairless, nondescript horse and was waiting at the door of the amphitheater. The maid entered. The amphitheater attendant greeted her very quietly. He was chatting with the driver and the undertaker's assistant. The driver said to the maid:

“We're a little early. We pick up at half-past seven.”

The maid thought: “ They bury by mail.” Though it was a silent reflection, the driver heard it, for he added: “I'm talking of picking up the body, of course.” He sniffled and with his sleeve wiped off the drop that was hanging from his nose. At the summit of the maid's soul, in the noblest part of her, the one that did not yield to grief, a nervous voice lost patience and cried: “Be qui-et. Be qui-et.” But the poor girl herself could only hear a murmuring and did not understand what it meant. With her heavy hands, which were chapped from doing laundry, she tightened Madame's crape veils as one tightens a shawl around one's shoulders. She walked very lightly, in silence.

“I'm walking very light, and in the king's flower beds.”

Her poverty and meager salary obliged her to wear
rubber-soled shoes. In that stark white room, the electric bulb was set in the angle of the wall and ceiling, which the inordinately large shadow of the little maid in mourning touched on the opposite wall. The little coffin in which her baby daughter lay, rested on two rather low black trestles.

“She's sleeping, the poor little dear.”

There was enough silence to hear around her the croaking of the frogs that were jumping and diving into the water of the misty swamp in which she was still standing. The coffin was covered with a white sheet on which the nurses had laid the little star-shaped blue and white wreath of pearls that Madame had had delivered the day before. A plump, pink china cherub that trembled at the end of a brass wire floated amidst the artificial pearls. After muttering a brief Hail Mary, the maid leaned against the wall to be more comfortable while waiting for the priest. He came. When the procession reached the church, it had to wait in a corner until the end of the religious ceremony of the funeral of eleven German soldiers who had been killed the day before. It had to wait three hours. Juliette had been unable to cry.

“They'll think I'm not sad,” she thought.

“They'll think I didn't love my little girl.”

“People'll think I killed her, who knows.”

The soldiers of the squad accompanying their dead comrades looked at the little woman in mourning who was standing near the hanging ropes that passed through a hole in the belfry. Finally, the eleven coffins were carried out and taken to the station so that they could rest on the other side of the Rhine. In the church, the prayers of intercession were run off rapidly. The black cassocks, which were too short and had buttons missing (buttons round as boot buttons), exposed the choirboys’
legs, which were bare and hairy in the kind of rubber boots that were often worn by men in the Resistance, and the white lace surplice detracted not a bit from their vigor. They served the priest as one serves a piece of artillery. The servant is the one who passes the ammunition. They served with the same faith, the same devotion, the same promptness: whether it was the incense, the holy water, or the responses. Then, when the ceremony in church was over, they marched out first, preceding the priest, the two undertaker's assistants, and the mourning housemaid. A sexton closed the church door behind them. And on that interminable day began the long night of the maid's journey from the church to the grave and from the grave to her room.

I would have liked to say more about the hero Jean D. in a particular tone, to give an account of him, with facts and dates. But such a procedure is quite pointless and deceptive. Song alone can give some notion of what he meant to me, but the register of poets is limited. Although the novelist can deal with any subject, can speak of any character in precise detail, and can achieve variety, the poet is subject to the demands of his heart, which attracts to him all human beings who have been marked obliquely by evil and misfortune, and the characters in my books all resemble each other. They live, with minor variations, the same moments, the same perils, and when I speak of them, my language, which is inspired by them, repeats the same poems in the same tone.

When Jean was alive he made me suffer terribly, and his death now does the same. His life was a miracle of purity which his death in combat continues to illuminate. During the funeral ceremony, the priest said a few words, including the following: “He died on the field of honor.” On any other occasion, the formula would have made
me shrug and smile, but the priest made this statement about Jean. Apart from the fact that it magnified him by granting him the honors that are at men's disposal (the field of honor is a long, wide vacant lot behind the home of my foster-parents where a few heroes who have come a great distance, sometimes from Japan, go at night to die), the velvet and gold fringe, that statement, coming from a Christian, whose role is to pacify, to shed further light on the figure of Jean, made it stand out more sharply, and showed him as a hero of the just cause against evil, like the pure-hearted knight confronting the beast. That purity impresses me. I now understand the value of symbols, since I wanted to toss a flower on his grave and since the priest's statement produced a kind of physical steadying during my grief, a tension of the thighs and buttocks that enables me to say I am proud of Jean. It was to that purity, to the grandeur of that death, to my child's calm, silent courage that I wanted to dedicate the story which best expresses the secret iridescences of my heart, but the characters I find in it are what I adored in the past, what I still love, but what I want to mutilate hatefully.

Though all these spirited characters have not yet made their exit, nevertheless it is not possible for me to see them in the same lighting. Am I going to love uprightness, nobleness? The more Jean's soul inhabits me—the more Jean himself inhabits me—the fonder I shall be of cowards, traitors, and petty no-goods.

I shall speak first of his presence within me. As soon as he was covered with earth at the cemetery, when the little mound was finished and I took my first step away from the grave, I had the distinct feeling that I was detaching myself from the corpse which for four days, plus a good quarter of an hour before they locked the
coffin, had taken Jean's place, from the corpse into which Jean had been transformed by the prodigy of a well-aimed bullet. Then immediately, not the memory, Jean himself took a place in what I am really obliged to call my heart. I recognize his presence by the following: I dare not do or say or think a thing that might hurt or anger him. And here is another proof of his presence within me: if anyone were to make a remark about him, a remark inoffensive in itself but vulgarly worded, for example: “He's dead, he won't-fart any more,” I would consider it an insult and more than an insult, a profanation, and I would kill the insulter who insults not only my grief but Jean himself, who can hear, for he is inside me and I hear the insult. I would kill him because Jean has only my arms—which are his—with which to defend himself. I would have put up with his being insulted when he was alive, if he couldn't hear. And if he did hear, let him defend himself! He was young and strong. But he now hears with my ears and fights with the help of my fists. I therefore cannot doubt my love when this book which I am writing while he inhabits me is the eager quest for the hoodlums he despises. But I do not feel that I am committing a sacrilege in offering him monstrous stories. My earlier books were written in prison. In order to rest, I put my arm around Jean's neck in my imagination and spoke to him quietly about the latest chapters. As for the present book, whenever I stop writing I see myself alone at the foot of his open coffin in the amphitheater and I relate my tale to him sternly. He makes no comments, but I know that his body which has been disfigured by the bullets, blood, and an over-long stay in the refrigerator hears me and, though it may not approve of me, accepts me.

It is raining this morning, and it grieves me to think
that he is in damp earth. I sit down, and my movement tells me that he can no longer sit. I beg of you, God:

Palace of my memory where the sea coils

Miraculous and wingèd, herds grazing on fear

God of mingled plaster and night gospel of fingers

Frozen by gold weak buttons harmony of woodwinds

Red cap black ark and blue gaze of Spanish wells

God of heaven and bare arms product

Of fear and fire peaceful pillow

Where I dream secret object malaise swarm

Of lost fans end of time god alone

And only house shutter sweet lime-blossom

Refuge god of evening or of sorrowful woods

White tortured bones gift of a happy prince

Palace of my memory where fear coils.

The guard who watches at your door, and these spear flowers

And that sponge, O my God, I am here.

I offer you my song that is drawn by your weary eye

Like a thread wound off through the eye, and my body

All hollowed out by that light golden thread

Will be thread of your dreams, reserve of piety,

Clear recording for your summer harps.

Precious spool, O God, your machines

Have so deep a need for love. Keep nights and my sleep

So that he may sleep, hear me Lord

A tale of nailed bones, of pierced bones, from elsewhere

Paradises closed over twisted boughs,

Shepherdess without echo, moonlight stretched

On the wires of the dryer, walk, walk through

The lost churches of the marbles of the sea.

The boy I carry about inside me smiles and is sadly amused at my being concerned with things of this world.

“Why buy dozens of handkerchiefs?”

Since my life no longer has meaning, since a gesture denotes nothing, I want to stop living. Even if this decision is nullified and renewed every single moment, it prevents me from using the future. Everything must be done within the moment, since the next moment I shall be among the dead, squatting in the field of honor and talking to Jean. Every empty gesture that makes me think life will continue either betrays my wish to die or gives offense to Jean, whose death should lead to mine by means of love. That is how I lace my shoes, and the gesture quickens him. One doesn't wear shoes among the dead. I am therefore as detached from things as the condemned men I used to see in prison.

The only image of Jean I preserve within me is the one which shows him lying in his coffin, where he was still only a man condemned to death since his body had a more terrible and frightening presence than that of a boy who stopped breathing while awaiting the verdict. Although I knew he was dead, I saw him only as a condemned man who cares a little less about things and persists in his game of sleep. He had a haughty contempt in my presence, and his true death occurred only after the ceremony in church.

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Erik, who dressed like a prince, was the executioner's lover for two years. They would meet in the killer's small apartment on the Kronprinzenufer. The windows, like those of a Venetian palace, overlooked a canal. From behind the colored panes one could feel a thick fog rise up from the river. The fog might have set the house adrift had the building not been anchored to rock by the executioner's
presence. But the house was firmer than a lighthouse lashed by storms. It was inhabited by a quiet killer, a man who indulged in guilty but peaceful love affairs.

The two rooms were dark because of the leaded windows. They were simply furnished in middle-class style: oak furniture, a radio, a bed. The walls were adorned with a photograph of the executioner and one of Erik. They led a domestic existence that enabled Erik to do his job in the Hitler Youth and the other to perform his morning murders. Erik played the harmonica. He would sometimes ask for details about an execution. He would insist on being told the victim's last words, on getting an account of his cries, gestures, and grimaces. He was becoming callous. And the executioner, in emptying himself a little into the ears of a boy who loved him, was becoming gentler. He would take long naps on the cushions. He would stroke an old dog whose rheumy eyes moved him to pity, just as he was moved by children's snot, the gum of a cherry tree, the juice of poppies and lettuce, the tears of gonorrhea.