The Sermon on the Fall of Rome, стр. 22

she carries within herself will always preserve her from such things. Marcel feels ashamed of his own sharpness and cynicism and, in that bright morning he feels shame all over again, shame at his own craven heart, his heart filled with darkness, and beside André he feels ashamed of having been such a paltry warrior, ashamed of his contemptible good fortune, ashamed, too, at not even being able to rejoice in it, he views André with jealous respect and is ashamed to be receiving him into this wretched village, all the wedding guests fill him with shame, the Colonna household, still in mourning, and the Susini family, who have allowed their half-wit daughter, pregnant with her umpteenth bastard child, to come with them and Ange-Marie Ordioni, crimson with pride, hugging to his bemedalled chest the big baby boy his wife has just given birth to amid the filth of their shepherd’s hut, he is ashamed of his own parents, of Jean-Baptiste’s obscene and superabundant vitality and of himself, bearing within his breast that craven heart filled with darkness. He watches his sister dancing in André’s arms. The children run around between the rickety tables. Ange-Marie Ordioni gets his son to suck a finger he had dipped in his glass of rosé. Marcel hears the laughter and the accordion playing out of tune, Jean-Baptiste’s stentorian voice. He sits in the sun beside his mother, who takes his hand and shakes her head sadly. She alone does not seem happy to see life resuming its course. For how, indeed, could life be resuming its course when it had not even begun?

“What man makes man destroys”

In August, before she left for Algeria, Aurélie came to spend a couple of weeks at the village with the man who was still sharing her life and was quite astonished to encounter an upsurge of seething and chaotic vitality there that spilled over into everything, but manifestly had its source in her brother’s bar. A diverse and cheerful clientele was to be found there, a mixture of regulars, young people from the neighboring villages and tourists of all nationalities, amazingly brought together in a festive and bibulous communion which, against all expectations, was not troubled by any discord. It was as if this were the place chosen by God for an experiment in the reign of love upon earth and even the locals, normally so quick to complain of the slightest type of pollution, uppermost among which must be counted the very existence of their fellow human beings, wore the fixed and blissful smiles of the elect. Bernard Gratas, returned victorious from his season in hell, now seemed touched by the breath of the all-conquering Spirit. He had been the beneficiary of a lightning promotion that had propelled him straight from the purgatory of doing dishes to the manufacture of sandwiches, a task he performed with good humor and alacrity. Four waitresses moved back and forth across the main bar area and onto the terrace, graciously bearing dishes, behind the counter an older woman seated on a stool looked after the till, a young man who accompanied himself on the guitar sang Corsican, English, French and Italian songs, and when he embarked on a catchy tune, all the customers clapped along with enthusiasm. Matthieu and Libero devoted themselves to improving customer relations, moving from table to table to inquire after the wellbeing of their guests, taking repeat orders for rounds of drinks and tickling little children under the chin after treating them to an ice cream, and they were the masters of a perfect world, a blessed world, one that flowed with milk and honey. Even Claudie had to face facts and observed with a sigh,

“Perhaps he was made for this,”

she looked at her son radiating happiness as he moved from table to table, and said again,

“It’s what makes him happy that counts, isn’t it?”

and Aurélie had no desire to upset her by admitting that Matthieu infuriated her beyond belief and that she saw nothing more in his happiness than the triumph of a spoiled child, a snotty little brat, who by dint of tears and screams has finally obtained the toy he wanted. She watched him playing with his toy in front of a captive audience and flaunting his delight, and there was a real danger that the exasperation it provoked in her would be neither deep nor lasting, since it arose neither from disappointed love, nor even from anger, but was simply the prelude to a terminal form of indifference, the boy she had been so fond of and had so often comforted had slowly changed into a being with no breadth of interests, whose world was bounded by the horizon of his own trivial desires and Aurélie knew that, once she had got the measure of these, he would become a total stranger to her. Before going away she had come to take a fond farewell of her family, her grandfather in particular, and spend time with them. Every evening after dinner she witnessed Matthieu giving his performance, for it had apparently become obligatory to call in at the bar and have a drink there with the family, Matthieu would come and sit at their table, and talk about his plans for special events during the winter, the schemes he and Libero had devised for getting supplies of charcuterie, the accommodation for the waitresses, and the man who was sharing Aurélie’s life at that time, and would do so for several months more, seemed to find all this of great interest, asking pertinent questions, and offering his opinion, as if it were essential for him to win Matthieu’s affection, unless, as Aurélie was beginning to suspect, he was basically an idiot who was delighted to have encountered another idiot with whom he could feel at ease making idiotic remarks of all kinds. But at once she reproached