Our Lady of the Flowers Page 27

  In the morning, the sweepers, impervious to the sweet, sad absences of those sentenced to death, whether dead or not, to whom the Criminal Court gives asylum, stirred up acrid dust, watered the floor, spat, blasphemed, and joked with the court clerks who were setting out the files. The hearing was to begin at exactly twelve forty-five, and at noon the porter opened the doors wide.

  The courtroom is not majestic, but it is very high, so that it gives a general impression of vertical lines, like lines of quiet rain. Upon entering, one sees on the wall a big painting with a figure of justice, who is a woman, wearing big red drapings. She is leaning with all her weight upon a saber, here called a “glaive,” which does not bend. Below are the platform and table where the jurors and the presiding judge, in ermine and red robe, will come to sit in judgment on the child. The name of the presiding judge is “Mr. Presiding Judge Vase de Sainte-Marie.” Once again, to attain its ends, destiny resorts to a low method. The twelve jurors are twelve decent men suddenly become sovereign judges. So, the courtroom had been filling up since noon. A banquet hall. The table was set. I should like to speak sympathetically about the courtroom crowd, not because it was not hostile to Our Lady of the Flowers–I don't mind that–but because it is sparkling with a thousand poetic gestures. It is as shuddering as taffeta. At the edge of a gulf bristling with bayonets, Our Lady is dancing a perilous dance. The crowd is not gay; its soul is sad unto death. It huddled together on the benches, drew its knees and buttocks together, wiped its collective nose, and attended to the hundred needs of a courtroom crowd that is going to be weighed down by so much majesty. The public comes here only insofar as a word may result in a beheading and as it may return, like Saint Denis, carrying its severed head in its hands. It is sometimes said that death hovers over a people. Do you remember the skinny, consumptive Italian woman that it was for Culafroy, and what it will later be for Divine? Here death is only a black wing without a body, a wing made with some remnants of black bunting and supported by a thin framework of umbrella ribs, a pirate banner without a staff. This wing of bunting floated over the Court, which you are not to confuse with any other, for it is the Court of Law. The wing enveloped it in its folds and had detailed a green crepe de Chine tie to represent It in the courtroom. The tie, which lay on the judge's table, was the only piece of evidence. Death, visible here, was a tie, and this fact pleases me: it was a light Death.

  The crowd was ashamed of not being the murderer. The robed lawyers were carrying briefs under their arms and smiled as they greeted each other. They occasionally approached the Little Death quite closely and most pluckily.

  The newspapermen were with the lawyers. The delegates of the Church Youth Centers were speaking in whispers among themselves. They were disputing a soul. Was it necessary to throw dice for it in order to send it to the Vosges? The lawyers, who, despite their long silken robes, do not have the gentle and death-driven bearing of ecclesiastics, kept coming together in little groups and then breaking up. They were very near the platform, and the crowd could hear them tuning up their instruments for the funeral march. The crowd was ashamed of not dying. The religion of the hour was to await and envy a young murderer. The murderer entered. All one could see was strapping Republican Guards. The child emerged from the flanks of one of them, and the other unchained his wrists. Reporters have described the movements of the crowd when a famous criminal enters. I therefore refer the reader, if I may, to their articles, as my role and my art do not lie in describing mob behavior. Nevertheless, I shall make so bold as to say that all eyes could read, graven in the aura of Our Lady of the Flowers, the following words: “I am the Immaculate Conception.” The lack of light and air in his cell had made him neither too pale nor too puffy; the lines of his closed lips were the lines of a sober smile; his clear eyes knew nothing of Hell; his entire face (but perhaps he stood before you like the prison, which, as that woman walked by singing in the darkness, remained for her an evil wall, whereas all the cells were secretly taking flight, flown by the hands, which were beating like wings, of the convicts who were electrified by the singing), his image and his gestures released captive demons or, with several turns of a key, locked in angels of light. He was wearing a very youthful, gray flannel suit, and the collar of his blue shirt was open. His blond hair kept falling over his eyes, you recall the toss of the head with which he drove it back. Thus, when he had everyone in front of him, Our Lady, the murderer, who in a little while would be dead, murdered in turn, tossed his head slightly, while blinking his eyes, which made his curly lock, that fell close to his nose, bound back to his head. This simple scene transports us, that is, it lifts up the moment, as the fakir's oblivion to the world lifts him up and holds him suspended. The moment was no longer of the earth, but of the sky. Everything gave grounds for fear that the hearing might be chopped up into those cruel moments that would pull away trap doors from under the feet of the judges, lawyers, Our Lady, and the guards, and, for an eternity, would leave them lifted up as fakirs, until the moment when slightly too deep a breath would restore the suspended life.

  The guard of honor (members of the colonial troops) entered noisily with their hobnailed boots and rattling bayonets. Our Lady thought it was the firing squad.

  Have I mentioned the fact that the audience was made up mostly of men? But all of them, darkly dressed, with umbrellas on their arms and newspapers in their pockets, were shakier than a bower of wisteria, than the lace curtain of a crib. Our Lady of the Flowers was the reason why the courtroom, all invaded by a grotesque, dressed-up crowd, was a May hedgerow. The murderer was sitting on the criminal's bench. The removal of the chains enabled him to put his hands deep into his pockets. Thus he seemed to be anywhere, that is, rather in the waiting room of an employment bureau, or on a park bench, watching from afar a Punch and Judy show in a kiosk, or perhaps even in church, at Thursday catechism. I swear he was waiting for anything. At a certain moment, he took one hand out of his pocket and, as a while before, flicked back, with, at the same time, a toss of his pretty little head, the blond curly lock. The crowd stopped breathing. He completed his gesture by smoothing back his hair, down to the nape of the neck, and I am thereby reminded of a strange impression: when, in a person who has been dehumanized by glory, we discern a familiar gesture, a vulgar feature (there you have it: tossing back a lock of hair with a jerk of the head) that breaks the hardened crust, and through the crevice, which is as lovely as a smile or an error, we glimpse a patch of sky. I had once noted this in the case of one of Our Lady's thousand forerunners, an annunciatory angel of this virgin, a blond young boy ("Girls blond as boys . . .” I shall, indeed, never weary of this phrase, which has the charm of the expression: “a French guardswoman") whom I used to watch in gymnasium groups. He depended upon the figures that he helped to form and, thus, was only a sign. But whenever he had to place one knee on the floor and, like a knight at a coronation, extend his arms at the word of command, his hair would fall over his eyes and he would break the harmony of the gymnastic figure by pushing it back, against his temples, and then behind his ears, which were small, with a gesture that described a curve with both his hands, which, for an instant, enclosed, and pressed like a diadem, his oblong skull. It would have been the gesture of a nun pushing aside her veil, if at the same time he had not shaken his head like a bird preening itself after drinking.

  It was also this discovery of the man in the god that once made Culafroy love Alberto for his cowardice. Alberto's left eye had been gouged out. In a village, an event of this kind is no small matter. After the poem (or fable) that was born of it (recurring miracle of Anne Boleyn: from the steaming blood sprang a bush of roses, that might have been white, but were certainly fragrant), the necessary sifting was done in order to disengage the truth scattered beneath the marble. It then became apparent that Alberto had been unable to avoid a quarrel with his rival over his girl friend. He had been cowardly, as always, as the whole village knew him to be, and this had given victorious promptness to his o
pponent. With a stab of his knife, he had put out Alberto's eye. All Culafroy's love swelled up, as it were, when he learned of the accident. It swelled with grief, with heroism, and with maternal tenderness. He loved Alberto for his cowardice. Compared to this monstrous vice, the others were pale and inoffensive and could be counter-balanced by any other virtue, particularly by the most beautiful. I use the popular word in the popular sense, which is so becoming to it and which implies the fullest recognition of the bodily powers: guts. For we may say of a man who is full of vices: All is not lost so long as he doesn't have “that one.” But Alberto did have that one. So it made no difference whether he had all the others; the infamy would have been none the greater. All is not lost so long as valor remains, and it was valor that Alberto had just lacked. As for suppressing this vice–for example, by pure and simple negation–that was out of the question, but it was easy to destroy its belittling effect by loving Alberto for his cowardice. Though his downfall, which was certain, did not embellish him, it poetized him. Perhaps Culafroy drew closer to him because of it. Alberto's courage would not have surprised him, nor left him indifferent, but now, instead, he was discovering another Alberto, one who was more man than god. He was discovering the flesh. The statue was crying. Here, the word “cowardice” cannot have the moral–or immoral–sense usually ascribed to it, and Culafroy's taste for a handsome, strong, and cowardly young man is not a fault or aberration. Culafroy now saw Alberto prostrate, with a dagger stuck into his eye. Would he die of the wound? The idea made him think of the decorative role of widows, who wear long crepe trains and dab their eyes with little white handkerchiefs rolled up as tight as snowballs. He no longer thought of anything but observing the external signs of his grief, but as he could not make it visible to people's eyes, he had to transport it into himself, as. Saint Catherine of Siena transported her cell. The country folk were confronted with the spectacle of a child who trailed behind him a display of ceremonial mourning weeds; they did not recognize it. They did not understand the meaning of the slowness of his walk, the bowing of his forehead, and the emptiness of his gaze. To them it was all simply a matter of poses dictated by the pride of being the child of the slate house.

  Alberto was taken to the hospital, where he died; the village was exorcised.

  Our Lady of the Flowers. His mouth was slightly open. Occasionally he would shift his eyes to his feet, which the crowd hoped were wearing selvaged slippers. At the drop of a hat they expected to see him make a dance movement. The court clerks were still fussing with the records. On the table, the lithe little Death lay inert and looked quite dead. The bayonets and the heels were sparkling.

  “The Court!”

  The Court entered by a door that was cut out of the wallpaper behind the jurors’ table. Our Lady, however, having heard in prison of the ceremoniousness of the Court, imagined that today, by a kind of grandiose error, it would enter by the great public door which opened in the middle, just as, on Palm Sunday, the clergy, who usually leave the sacristy by a side door near the choir, surprise the faithful by appearing from behind them. The Court entered, with the familiar majesty of princes, by a service door. Our Lady had a foreboding that the whole session would be faked and that at the end of the performance his head would be cut off by means of a mirror trick. One of the guards shook his arm and said:

  “Stand up.”

  He had wanted to say: “Please, stand up,” but he didn't dare. The audience was standing in silence. It sat down again noisily. M. Vase de Sainte-Marie was wearing a monocle. He looked shiftily at the tie and, with both hands, fumbled about in the file. The file was as crammed with details as the chamber of the examining magistrate was crammed with files. Facing Our Lady, the prosecuting attorney did not let out a peep. He felt that a word from him, a too commonplace gesture, would transform him into the devil's advocate and would justify canonization of the murderer. It was a difficult moment to endure; he was risking his reputation. Our Lady was seated. A slight movement of M. Vase de Sainte-Marie's fine hand brought him to his feet.

  The questioning began:

  “Your name is Adrien Baillon?”

  ‘'Yes, sir.”

  “You were born on December 19, 1920?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “In . . . ?”

  “In Paris.”

  “Very well. Which district?”

  “The eighteenth, sir.”

  “Very well. Your . . . er-acquaintances gave you a nickname . . . (He hesitated; then:) Would you mind telling it to the Court?”

  The murderer made no answer, but the name, without being uttered, emerged through the forehead, all winged, from the brain of the crowd. It floated over the courtroom, invisible, fragrant, secret, mysterious.

  The judge replied aloud:

  “Yes, that's right. And you are the son of . . .?”

  “Lucie Baillon.”

  “And an unknown father. Yes. The accusation . . .” (Here the jurors–there were twelve of them–took a comfortable position, which, though suiting each of them individually because it favored a certain propensity, was consistent with each one's dignity. Our Lady was still standing, with his arms dangling at his sides, like those of that bored and delighted little king who from the stairway of the royal palace witnesses a military parade.)

  The judge continued:

  “. . . on the night of July 7 to 8, 1937, entered, and no trace has been found of forced entry, into the apartment situated on the fifth floor of the building located at number 12 Rue de Vaugirard and occupied by M. Paul Ragon, sixty-seven years of age.”

  He raised his head and looked at Our Lady:

  “Do you acknowledge the facts?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “The investigation specifies that it was M. Ragon himself who opened the door for you. At least, that is what you have stated without being able to prove it. Do you still maintain it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then, it appears that M. Ragon, who knew you, seemed delighted with your visit and offered you liquor. Then, without his expecting it, with the help . . . (he hesitated) . . . of this tie, you strangled him.”

  The judge took the tie.

  “Do you recognize this tie as belonging to you and as being the instrument of the crime?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The judge had the soft tie in his fingers, a tie like a piece of ectoplasm, a tie that had to be looked at while there was still time, for it might disappear at any moment or stiffen in the dry hand of the judge, who felt that if it did actually become erect or disappear, he would be covered with ridicule. He therefore hastened to pass the instrument of the crime to the first juror, who passed it to his neighbor, and so on, without anyone's daring to linger over recognizing it, for each of them seemed to be running the risk of being metamorphosed before his own eyes into a Spanish dancer. But the precautions of these gentlemen were futile, and though they were not aware of it, they were thoroughly changed. The guilty gestures of the jurors, seemingly in connivance with the destiny that governed the murder of the old man, and the murderer, who was as motionless as a mediumistic subject who is being questioned, and who, by virtue of such immobility, is absent, and the place of this absence, all these darkened the courtroom where the crowd wanted to see clearly. The judge droned on and on. He had reached the following point:

  “And who gave you the idea of this method of committing murder?”

  “Him.”

  The entire world understood that Him was the dead man, who was now replaying a role, he who had been buried and devoured by worms and larvae.

  “The victim?”

  The judge started shouting frightfully:

  “It was the victim himself who showed you how you were to go about getting rid of him? Come, come now, explain what you mean.”

  Our Lady seemed embarrassed. A gentle modesty prevented him from speaking. Shyness too.

  “Yes. You see . . . M. Ragon was wearing a tie that was too tight. He was all red. So he took it
off.”

  And the murderer very gently, as if he were consenting to an infamous deal or a charitable action, admitted:

  “So I thought that if I tightened it, it'd be worse.”

  And a little lower still, barely loud enough for the guards and the judge (but it was lost on the crowd):

  “ ‘Cause I got good arms.”

  The judge, overwhelmed, lowered his head:

  “You wretch!” he cried. “Why?”

  “I was fabulously broke.”

  Since the word “fabulous” is used to qualify a fortune, it did not seem impossible to apply it to destitution. And this fabulous impecuniousness made for Our Lady a pedestal of cloud; he was as prodigiously glorious as the body of Christ rising aloft, to dwell there alone and fixed, in the sunny noonday sky. The judge was twisting his beautiful hands. The crowd was twisting its faces. The clerks were crumpling sheets of carbon paper. The eyes of the lawyers suddenly looked like those of extra-lucid chickens. The guards were officiating. Poetry was kneading its matter. Alone, Our Lady was alone and kept his dignity, that is, he still belonged to a primitive mythology and was unaware of his divinity and his divinization. The rest of the world knew not what to think and made superhuman. efforts not to be carried off from the shore. Their hands, the nails of which had been ripped away, clung to any safety plank: crossing and uncrossing their legs, staring at stains on their jackets, thinking of the family of the strangled man, picking their teeth.