I explained that it wasn’t despair I felt, but fear—which was natural enough.
“In that case,” he said firmly, “God can help you. All the men I’ve seen in your position turned to Him in their time of trouble.”
Obviously, I replied, they were at liberty to do so, if they felt like it.
I, however, didn’t want to be helped, and I hadn’t time to work up interest for something that didn’t interest me.
He fluttered his hands fretfully; then, sitting up, smoothed out his cassock.
When this was done he began talking again, addressing me as “my friend.” It wasn’t because I’d been condemned to death, he said, that he spoke to me in this way. In his opinion every man on the earth was under sentence of death.
There, I interrupted him; that wasn’t the same thing, I pointed out, and, what’s more, could be no consolation.
He nodded. “Maybe. Still, if you don’t die soon, you’ll die one day.
And then the same question will arise.
How will you face that terrible, final hour?”
I replied that I’d face it exactly as I was facing it now.
Thereat he stood up, and looked me straight in the eyes.
It was a trick I knew well.
I used to amuse myself trying it on Emmanuel and Celeste, and nine times out of ten they’d look away uncomfortably.
I could see the chaplain was an old hand at it, as his gaze never faltered.
And his voice was quite steady when he said:
“Have you no hope at all?
Do you really think that when you die you die outright, and nothing remains?”
I said: “Yes.”
He dropped his eyes and sat down again.
He was truly sorry for me, he said.
It must make life unbearable for a man, to think as I did.
The priest was beginning to bore me, and, resting a shoulder on the wall, just beneath the little skylight, I looked away.
Though I didn’t trouble much to follow what he said, I gathered he was questioning me again.
Presently his tone became agitated, urgent, and, as I realized that he was genuinely distressed, I began to pay more attention.
He said he felt convinced my appeal would succeed, but I was saddled with a load of guilt, of which I must get rid.
In his view man’s justice was a vain thing; only God’s justice mattered.
I pointed out that the former had condemned me.
Yes, he agreed, but it hadn’t absolved me from my sin.
I told him that I wasn’t conscious of any “sin”; all I knew was that I’d been guilty of a criminal offense.
Well, I was paying the penalty of that offense, and no one had the right to expect anything more of me.
Just then he got up again, and it struck me that if he wanted to move in this tiny cell, almost the only choice lay between standing up and sitting down.
I was staring at the floor.
He took a single step toward me, and halted, as if he didn’t dare to come nearer.
Then he looked up through the bars at the sky.
“You’re mistaken, my son,” he said gravely. “There’s more that might be required of you.
And perhaps it will be required of you.”
“What do you mean?”
“You might be asked to see ...”
“To see what?”
Slowly the priest gazed round my cell, and I was struck by the sadness of his voice when he replied:
“These stone walls, I know it only too well, are steeped in human suffering.
I’ve never been able to look at them without a shudder.
And yet—believe me, I am speaking from the depths of my heart—I know that even the wretchedest amongst you have sometimes seen, taking form against that grayness, a divine face.
It’s that face you are asked to see.”
This roused me a little.
I informed him that I’d been staring at those walls for months; there was nobody, nothing in the world, I knew better than I knew them.
And once upon a time, perhaps, I used to try to see a face.
But it was a sun-gold face, lit up with desire—Marie’s face.
I had no luck; I’d never seen it, and now I’d given up trying.