Malevil by Robert Merle

Author:Robert Merle [Merle, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Armageddon, Post-Apocalyptic fiction, Fiction
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 1973-01-02T06:00:00+00:00

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A little later I had a fairly important conversation in my room with Peyssou and Colin, then they left me in order to go down and make a tour of inspection down by the river. Peyssou was presumably nursing an irrational hope that the wheat was going to sprout there and then. Or else it was simply the farmer’s automatic instinct to go around inspecting his fields after a storm, with no definite purpose in mind, just to set his mind at rest. As for me, I went down to the great hall. The noncontaminated rain and the departure of Fulbert had combined to put me in high good humor, and I was whistling as I wandered over toward La Menou. She was alone, with her back to me, peering into a saucepan.

“Well, Menou, what have you got nice for dinner?”

She answered without looking around. “You’ll see soon enough.” Then she whirled around with a little gasp, and her eyes filled with tears. “I thought it was your uncle for a moment!”

I looked down at her, very moved.

“Just his way of coming in whistling,” she said, “and then saying, ‘Well, Menou, what have you got nice for dinner?’ And the same voice too. It gave me quite a turn... Ah, he was a merry soul, your uncle was, Emmanuel. A man who loved life. Like you. A little too much perhaps,” she added, suddenly remembering that in her old age she had become virtuous and a misogynist.

“Oh, bah, Menou,” I said, reading the thoughts well hidden behind her words. “You’re not going to hold it against Miette because she’s cleaned up your son for you? She hasn’t taken him away from you. She’s only given him a good scrubbing.”

“Maybe,” she said, “maybe.”

I suddenly felt very happy that she’s talked to me about my uncle, and even compared me to him. And because over the past month or so I had often had to speak to her so sharply about the unnecessarily unkind way she treated La Falvine, I smiled at her now. She was quite overcome by my smile and turned away. The old rhinoceros. She wasn’t without feelings really, even if you did have to bore your way through so many layers of tough hide to get at them.

“And you, Emmanuel,” she said after a moment, “do you mind if I ask why you wouldn’t go to confession? It does you good, you know, confessing yourself. It gets you clean inside.”

I would never have believed that I would one day be having a theological discussion with La Menou. I planted myself in front of the fire, hands in my pockets. This had been no ordinary day. I was still wearing my funeral suit. I felt almost as majestic as Fulbert himself.

“While we’re on the subject of confession, may I ask you a question, Menou?”

“Ask away,” she said. “You know you need never stand on ceremony with me.” She looked me up and down, bright eyes all attention in the little skull head, ladle poised in one bony little hand.

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