His curiosity was so great that anger had no place in him. He went up to Bertrand's room. Though it was past nine, the young man was still asleep. His face was ruddy, his mouth relaxed, his breathing heavy. He looked just the way he had done the morning when the portly proprietress of the lupanar had come to claim an indemnity.
“He's sleeping off his orgy,” Aymar thought with horror and disgust.
From that moment his mind was definitely made up. He sought out Josephine. “You've opened the door for your son. I've wished to spare your feelings heretofore, but understand that your son is a dangerous character. And that hereafter I shall carry the key to his room on my person, fire or no fire. And if that doesn't suit you, you may go to the police.”
“I certainly shall,” Josephine began shrilly.
“The upshot will be that your son will be behind the bars of a state institution and not behind the bars at home. Have your choice!” With that he dismissed her.
She ran to Françoise, but the latter would give her little information.
“You do what M. Aymar says,” she warned Josephine, “or you'll find yourself in worse trouble. Monsieur is doing his best to help Bertrand, and if you leave him alone, he'll get him to Paris for you.”
The situation, of course, was beyond endurance. Vague rumors were beginning to circulate in the village, carried there by the Guillemins, that Bertrand had gone insane and had had to be locked in his room.
But Josephine, whenever she was in the village, did not flinch one bit. Her poor Bertrand was ill again. He had such delicate nerves. But he'd surely be better when the cooler weather came, and be in condition to go to Paris. If it hadn't been for the war, the Galliez situation would have been threshed out more thoroughly by the village gossips, but Bertrand was soon reported to have left for Paris, and other important and more startling matters came to the fore.
Chapter Nine
B
ertrand, in his long enforced leisure, ruminated on his case, but could come to no conclusions. Sometimes it seemed to him that if only he were free to go out into the wide fields, he'd feel better. It was this being shut up in such confining quarters that made him so ill. He could hardly breathe. A fierce resentment arose in him. He would kill his uncle next time Aymar came in! But at other times, particularly in the morning, waking from a dream in which he had run madly for his life, pursued by a great white dog, or some similar nightmare, he would experience a sense of joy to find himself safely at home. His tensed body could relax, his panting chest come slowly back to normal breathing.
Urged by his uncle, who vaguely promised to take him to Paris, he opened his books and studied desultorily. There were many things he wanted to ask his uncle, when the latter brought him his meals, or came to take him out for a little walk. But Aymar always turned the conversation to other matters, discussed the war, or economics, state life-insurance and kindred subjects, or sometimes quizzed him in Latin and mathematics. Bertrand did not shine. His memory was bad at times. “The wolf has got the better of him again,” Aymar concluded.
Most of his leisure, however, Bertrand consumed in daydreaming. He liked to think of Thérèse and wondered if she would be willing to see him again. Often he would stand at his window and look down into the court. Françoise would frequently pass by but she would never look up. Then his mother, neat, trim, would walk past, look around quickly and seeing no one near, would throw him a kiss. That always touched him deeply. Or again it was Mme Guillemin bending over the well, her great round bottom bulging up beneath her red skirt which flamed in the sunlight. The sight of these women somehow always brought Thérèse to mind. He could not forget her standing before him in her shift and teasing him: “Take it off with your teeth.” The mad delight of tearing off that last garment!
Occasionally his mother would stand outside his door and talk to him. “I'll get you out,” she would promise. “You'll go to Paris. I have money for you.” As a matter of fact she had lately drawn out all her savings.
One day, in the village, she learnt that Jacques had returned and was going to have a farewell dinner before he left on foot for Paris.
“No, I don't think we'll be able to come over,” she excused herself to Mme Bramond. “Bertrand is leaving tonight to take the train from Arcy. No doubt he will see Jacques in Paris.”
Josephine enjoyed her triumph. Poor Jacques was walking. But Bertrand was riding in the train. And Mme Bramond, feeling the sharp edge of Josephine's words, came back: “Jacques's name was ahead of Bertrand's on the list of those who passed the examination.” She was hoping that that thrust would strike home, although it had been explained to her that the list was purely alphabetical and Bramond naturally came before Caillet. When her false arrow reached its destination and Josephine took leave, a bit discomfited, Mme Bramond had a further source of joy: that ignorant Josephine did not even know that the order of the names was not according to merit, but according to the A B C.
Josephine was determined now that Bertrand must leave that very night. She secretly fitted up a bag with clothes and food, placed money inside and waited impatiently for night to come. She knew that Aymar kept the key to Bertrand's room in the pocket of his waistcoat, and she proposed to steal it from there just as soon as he fell asleep. The affair was risky, but she meant to go through with it. She managed to whisper through to Bertrand: “Wait for me tonight. You're leaving for Paris.”
“Paris,” Bertrand thought. For the moment he was more anxious to go see Thérèse. But there would be women in Paris, too, he decided, and that provided him with an excellent topic for dreaming through the day, until the evening came.
Late at night, as he was lying asleep, he felt someone kiss him. He had been dreaming of Thérèse and for a moment did not fully understand that it was his mother, in her nightgown, who had opened his room and now was saying, between her kisses:
“My darling boy. Get up and leave quickly before your uncle discovers that I stole the key.”
Sleepily he returned her kisses. “Wake up, child. I've got a bag packed with everything you need. Money, too. Quick! You must put a safe distance betweeen you and this prison. Oh, my darling baby. How long will it be before I see you again? I have a mind to go with you.”
She had sat down on the bed beside him, had lifted him up and held him embraced against her bosom. And he, too, put his arms around her and hugged her tightly. He was trying desperately to fight off the fog of his dream. But it had his faculties enmeshed as if in a mist of spiderwebs. He was holding Thérèse and she was taunting him to take off her shift.
“Darling babyâ¦Why, Bertrand! What are you doing?”
“Stop it, Bertrand!” she whispered as loud as she dared. “Bertrand, I tell you!” She struggled against his youthful muscular body, then she ceased and made no further resistance. A strange glow of satisfaction emanated from her sacrifice and caused her features to relax into an ecstatic smile. All the years of her life coalescedâPitamont, Aymar, Bertrand. They were all one. They had melted into a single body, with many arms flailing about her, but with only one face.
When Bertrand awoke several hours later, he noted with dismay his mother lying naked beside him, her limbs flung apart in complete relaxation. Violently disturbed, he rose softly and dressed himself and opened the door. The hall was quiet and dark in contrast to his own room dimly lit by the night sky. He felt again that familiar sensation of wanting to run in the forest. He must get out. He could not quite recall what had happened, but he was filled with a sense of fear and shame from which he thought he could escape by leaving the house.
As he came out into the hall, the figure of his uncle, in a nightgown, suddenly rose before him and blocked his way.
“What are you doing out here? How did you get out? Get back to your room!”
Bertrand bared his teeth. “You can't hold me a prisoner forever!” he screamed. “I'm going to Paris! Let me go, I say! I want to get out! I'm dying!”
“Get back to your room. Get backâ”
Bertrand lowered his head and dashed forward. He heard his uncle gasp as he bowled the man over, but he did not wait to learn what had happened. He ran downstairs. The front door was locked, but in the adjoining room, his uncle's study, the low balcony doors were flung wide open to the night winds. He ran through the room, leaped over the railing and six feet below fell lightly on his feet. Without knowing precisely what he was doing, he took the main road and followed it.
The noise of the commotion aroused Josephine. At once aware of what was happening, she rose to put herself within the safety of her room. She grabbed her torn nightgown, saw the bag Bertrand had forgotten and thought “He'll write and I'll send him money,” and picking up the bag, she slipped into her room. The key which she had plucked out of the lock as she passed, she flung out of the window and into the bushes below.
Bertrand loped along at a fast trot, panting heavily. Finally he flung himself down on the grassy bank bordering the road and lay there breathing in the dew and finding the coolness soothing. Some blades of grass were against his face. He opened his mouth and nibbled them off reflectively.
But in another moment he was all aquiver. His body tensed. Someone was coming along the road. He rose cautiously and retreated behind the hedge of a field. His uncle was after him! No. Through the darkness came an indistinct shape, a man with a knapsack on his back, treading with an even pace, and marking every second step with a tap of his cane on the ground.
A wild desire to lay his hands on that man coursed through Bertrand's body and set his brain aflame. His eyes were so hot that he could not blink without a stab of pain. Every part of his body was sore and so sensitive that every stitch of clothing on his back pressed on his skin like the point of a needle. He quickly disengaged himself therefrom, tearing the buttons off in his haste. As his clothes fell about him in a heap, he felt much better. But the sudden contact of his naked body with the cool wind called attention to a feeling of distention in his bladder. He relieved himself, making an are of his water away from his clothes.
Now he truly felt free and unencumbered, and with long, silent strides, raced after the man, who had disappeared into the night. In a few minutes he had caught up with the figure, indistinctly visible in the darkness. Instinctively his hands itched to be at that throat. With a cry, he bounded over the hedge and leaped at the man who turned, startled and defenseless, and crumpled up before the violence of the attack.
Though a moment before Bertrand's hands had itched to be at the man's throat, they made no move to seize and hold his prey. The tension was not in his limbs but in his face, in the masseter muscles of his jaws. His mouth had opened wide. His teeth had dug through cloth and flesh. His face was inundated with a warm fountain, which he licked at greedily.
He dragged his kill to the hedge bordering the road. It did not occur to him to use his hands for this task. He used his teeth and tugged. His arms and legs stemmed his body, pushed at the ground, and thus pulling backwards he reached the side of the road. There he began to devour bits of flesh torn from the throat. What he wanted was the flesh of the body, but the heavy cloth of the suit hampered him. As hard as he pulled he could not tear it off, and his teeth could not rip through the tough material. But already his appetite had been largely satisfied. What he craved now was sleep. His head dropped on the body of his kill. He dozed. How long he knew not.
But when he awoke, it was with a start. He was chilly and had had a bad dream, a tangled dream of blood and flesh, of fighting and of shouting and leaping. His hand reached forth to find the blanket which in his disturbed sleep he had evidently pushed off. But the blanket would not come. It must be stuck between the bed and the wall. He pulled. How heavy that blanket was. What was that white, heavy object, like a head of winter cabbage chewed by worms?
The ravaged face of his friend, Jacques Bramond, appeared plain before him. “Will these nightmares never stop?” he complained, and released his hold on the blanket. The head fell back. “Decidedly this is too real. Now how can I wake myself up? I know, I'll get out of bed.”
But there was no stepping down to the floor from this bed. He was awake. This was reality. In the thinning darkness he saw the mutilated corpse. His own mouth was sticky with clotted blood.
“God, is it real?” he cried out. “Or will I yet wake up from this nightmare more horrible than any I have ever had?”
The sound of his voice was too clear to be denied.
He fell on the body and burst into violent tears: “Jacques! Jacques!” But Jacques could not answer.
“Oh! I knew it was real, I knew it was real! I knew I was kept locked up for a better reason than Uncle would tell me.”
He wept. He gnashed his teeth. He tore out his hair. When his emotion had spent itself a little, his first desire was to run home to his mother. But a vague recollection of having done a horrible thing to his mother restrained him. “Was that reality, too? No, no! Never! And yet⦔ No, he could not go home.
That
might be as true as this.
This
caused him to burst out weeping again. What a monster he was! Truly fit only to be locked up forever. But with the light of day gradually sifting through the atmosphere, he began to think of caution. He must go somewhere. If he should be found here, by the villagersâby old Bramond himself! God forbid!
Filled now less with horror at himself than with fear for his own safety, he rose hastily and considered. A few hundred feet away was a forest. If he could drag the body there?
He was surprised at his own composure. He took the body by the shoulders and snaked it along through a break in the hedge, and across the field to the trees. “You were certainly a stocky fellow, Jacques,” he found himself thinking. About a hundred yards into the woods he felt safe. With his hands he scraped away the soft leafy mold until he had made a shallow grave.