The man was lying in bed. They
moved about him carefully. He stirred faintly,
said a few words, asked for a drink, smiled and then
became silent under the rush of thoughts.
That morning they had seen him fold
his hands, and they had asked him whether he wanted
them to send for a priest.
“Yes-no,” he said.
They went out, and a few minutes later,
as if he had been waiting outside the door, a dark-robed
priest entered. The two were left alone together.
The dying man turned his face toward the newcomer.
“I am going to die,” he said.
“What is your religion?” asked the priest.
“The religion of my own country, the Greek Orthodox
Church.”
“That is a heresy which you
must instantly abjure. There is only one true
religion, the Roman Catholic religion. Confess
now. I will absolve you and baptise you.”
The other did not reply.
“Tell me what sins you have
committed. You will repent and everything will
be forgiven you.”
“My sins?”
“Try to remember. Shall
I help you?” He nodded toward the door.
“Who is that person?”
“My-wife,”
said the man with slight hesitation, which did not
escape the priest, who was leaning over him with ears
pricked. He smelt a rat.
“How long has she been your wife?”
“Two days.”
“Oh, two days! Now I have
struck it. And before that, you sinned with
her?”
“No,” said the man.
The priest was put out of countenance.
“Well, I suppose you are not
lying. Why didn’t you sin? It is
unnatural. After all,” he insisted, “you
are a man.”
The sick man was bewildered and began
to get excited. Seeing this, the priest said:
“Do not be surprised, my son,
if my questions are direct and to the point.
I ask you in all simplicity, as is my august duty
as a priest. Answer me in the same simple spirit,
and you will enter into communion with God,”
he added, not without kindness.
“She is a young girl,”
said the old man. “I took her under my
protection when she was quite a child. She shared
the hardships of my traveller’s life, and took
care of me. I married her before my death because
I am rich and she is poor.”
“Was that the only reason-no other
reason at all?”
He fixed his look searchingly on the
dying man’s face, then said, “Eh?”
smiling and winking an eye, almost like an accomplice.
“I love her,” said the man.
“At last, you are confessing!”
cried the priest. He buried his eyes in the
eyes of the dying man. The things he said fairly
hit him as he lay there.
“So you desired this woman,
the flesh of this woman, and for a long time committed
a sin in spirit? Didn’t you? Eh?
“Tell me, when you were travelling
together, how did you arrange for rooms and beds in
the hotels?
“You say she took care of you?
What did she have to do for you?”
The two men scanned each other’s
faces keenly, and I saw the misunderstanding between
them growing.
The dying man withdrew into himself
and became hardened, incredulous before this stranger,
with the vulgar appearance, in whose mouth the words
of God and truth assumed a grotesque aspect.
However, he made an effort:
“If I have sinned in spirit,
to use your words,” he said, “it proves
that I have not sinned in reality, and why should I
repent of what was suffering pure and simple?”
“No theories now. We are
not here for theorising. I tell you, a sin committed
in spirit is committed in intention, and therefore
in effect, and must be confessed and redeemed.
Tell me how often you succumbed to guilty thoughts.
Give me details.”
“But I resisted,” moaned
the unfortunate man. “That is all I have
to say.”
“That is not enough. The
stain-you are now convinced, I presume,
of the justice of the term-the stain ought
to be washed out by the truth.”
“Very well,” said the
dying man. “I confess I have committed
the sin, and I repent of it.”
“That is not a confession, and
is none of my business,” retorted the priest.
“Now tell me, under exactly what circumstances
did you yield to temptation with that person, to the
suggestions of the evil spirit?”
The man was swept by a wave of rebellion.
He half rose and leaned on his elbow, glaring at
the stranger, who returned his look steadily.
“Why have I the evil spirit in me?” he
demanded.
“You are not the only one. All men have
it.”
“Then it is God who put it into them, since
it is God who made them.”
“Ah, you are a debater!
Well, if it gives you pleasure, I will answer you.
Man has both the spirit of good and the spirit of
evil in him, that is to say, the possibility of doing
the one or the other. If he succumbs to evil,
he is damned. If he triumphs over it, he is
rewarded. To be saved, he must earn salvation
by struggling with all his powers.”
“What powers?”
“Virtue and faith.”
“And if he does not have enough virtue and faith,
is that his fault?”
“Yes, because that comes from
his having too much iniquity and blindness in his
soul.”
The man sat up again, seized by a
new fit of anger which consumed him like a fever.
“Ah,” he said, “original
sin! There’s nothing that can excuse the
suffering of good people on earth. It is an abomination.”
The priest looked at the rebellious man blankly.
“How else could souls be tried?” he said
quite calmly.
“Nothing can excuse the suffering of the good.”
“God’s designs are inscrutable.”
The dying man flung out his emaciated arms.
His eyes became hollow.
“You are a liar!”
“Enough,” said the priest.
“I have listened patiently to your ramblings
and feel sorry for you. But there’s no
good arguing. You must prepare to appear before
God, from whom you seem to have lived apart.
If you have suffered, you will be consoled in His
bosom. Let that suffice for you.”
The invalid fell back and lay still
for a while. He remained motionless under the
white spread, like a reclining sepulchral statue of
marble with a face of bronze.
He regained his voice.
“God cannot console me.”
“My son, my son, what are you saying?”
“God cannot console me, because He cannot give
me what I want.”
“Ah, my poor child, how far
gone you are in your blindness! Why did you
have me summoned?”
“I had hopes, I had hopes.”
“Hopes? Hopes of what?”
“I do not know. The things
we hope for are always the things we do not know.”
His hands wavered in the air, then fell down again.
“Time is passing,” said the priest and
began all over again.
“Tell me the circumstances of
your sin. Tell me. When you were alone
with this person, when you two were close together,
did you talk to each other, or did you keep quiet?”
“I do not believe in you,” said the man.
The priest frowned.
“Repent, and tell me that you
believe in the Catholic religion, which will save
you.”
But the other man shook his head in
utter anguish and denied all his happiness.
“Religion-” he began.
The priest interrupted brutally.
“You are not going to start
over again! Keep quiet. All your arguments
are worthless. Begin by believing in religion
and then you will see what it means. I have
come to force you to believe.”
It was a duel to the end. The
two men at the edge of the grave glared at each other
like enemies.
“You must believe.”
“I do not believe.”
“You must.”
“You would make truth different from what it
is by threats.”
“Yes.” He stressed
the clear, elementary command. “Whether
you are convinced or not, believe. Evidence
does not count. The one important thing is faith.
God does not deign to convince the incredulous.
These are no longer the days of miracles. The
only miracle is in our hearts, and it is faith.
Believe!” He hurled the same word ceaselessly,
like stones.
“My son,” he continued,
more solemnly, standing up, with his large fat hand
uplifted, “I exact of you an act of faith.”
“Get out!” said the man, with hatred.
But the priest did not stir.
Goaded by the urgence of the case, impelled
by the necessity of saving this soul in spite of itself,
he became implacable.
“You are going to die,”
he said, “you are going to die. You have
only a few more minutes to live. Submit.”
“No,” said the man.
The black-robed priest caught hold of both his hands.
“Submit. No discussion.
You are losing precious time. All your reasoning
is of no account. We are alone, you and I before
God.”
He shook his head with the low bulging
forehead, the prominent fleshy nose, wide moist nostrils
dark with snuff, thin yellow lips like twine tight
across two projecting teeth that showed by themselves
in the darkness. There were lines on his forehead
and between his eyebrows and around his mouth.
His cheeks and chin were covered with a grey layer.
“I represent God,” he
said. “You are in my presence as if you
were in the presence of God. Simply say ‘I
believe,’ and I will absolve you. ‘I
believe,’ that is all. The rest makes no
difference to me.”
He bent lower and lower, almost gluing
his face to that of the dying man, trying to plant
his absolution like a blow.
“Simply say with me, ‘Our
Father, who art in heaven.’ I do not ask
you to do anything else.”
The sick man’s face contracted.
“No-no!”
Suddenly the priest rose with a triumphant air.
“At last! You have said it.”
“No.”
“Ah!” muttered the priest between his
teeth.
He twisted the man’s hands in
his. You felt he would have put his arms around
him to stifle him, assassinate him if his death rattle
would have brought a confession-so possessed
was he with the desire to persuade him, to snatch
from him the words he had come to seek on his lips.
He let the withered hands go, paced
the room like a wild beast, then came back and stationed
himself in front of the bed again.
“Remember-you are
going to die,” he stammered to the miserable
man. “You will soon be in the earth.
Say, ‘Our Father,’ just these two words,
nothing else.”
He hung over him with his eyes on
his mouth, his dark, crouching figure like a demon
lying in wait for a soul, like the whole Church over
dying humanity.
“Say it! Say it! Say it!”
The sick man tried to wrest himself
free. There was a rattle of fury in his throat.
With the remnant of his voice, in a low tone, he
gasped:
“No!”
“Scoundrel!” cried the priest.
And he struck him in the face.
After that neither man made a move for a while.
Then the priest went at it again.
“At least you will die holding a crucifix,”
he snarled.
He drew a crucifix from his pocket, and put it down
hard on his breast.
The other man shook himself in a dull
horror, as if religion were contagious, and threw
the crucifix on the floor.
The priest stooped, mumbling insults.
“Carrion, you want to die like a dog, but I
am here!” He picked up the crucifix, and with
a gleam in his eyes, sure of crushing him, waited
for his final chance.
The dying man panted, completely at
the end of his strength. The priest, seeing
him in his power, laid the crucifix on his breast again.
This time the other man let it stay there, unable to
do anything but look at it with eyes of hatred.
But his eyes did not make it fall.
When the black man had gone out into
the night, and the patient little by little recovered
from the struggle and felt free once more, it occurred
to me that the priest in his violence and coarseness
was horribly right. A bad priest? No,
a good priest, who spoke strictly according to his
conscience and belief, and tried to apply his religion
simply, such as it was, without hypocritical concessions.
Ignorant, clumsy, gross-yes, but honest
and logical even in his fearful attempt. In the
half-hour that I had listened to him, he had tried
by all the means that religion uses and recommends
to follow his calling of making converts and giving
absolution. He had said everything that a priest
cannot help saying. Every dogma had come out
clearly and definitely from the mouth of this rough,
common hewer of wood and drawer of water for his religion.
If the sick man was right, so was the priest.
What was that thing near the bed,
that thing which loomed so high and did not stir and
had not been there a moment before? It stood
between me and the leaping flame of the candle placed
near the sick man.
I accidentally made a little noise
in leaning against the wall, and very slowly the thing
turned a face toward me with a frightened look on
it that frightened me.
I knew that head. Was it not
the landlord himself, a man with peculiar ways, whom
we seldom saw?
He had been walking up and down the
hall, waiting for the sick man to be left alone.
And now he was standing beside him as he lay in bed
either asleep or helpless from weakness.
He stretched his hand out toward a
bag. In doing so, he kept his eyes on the dying
man, so that his hand missed the bag twice.
There was a creaking on the floor
above, and both the man and I trembled. A door
slammed. He rose as if to keep back an exclamation.
He opened the bag slowly, and I, no
longer myself, I was afraid that he would not have
time.
He drew a package out of the bag.
It made a slight sound. When he saw the roll
of banknotes in his hand, I observed the extraordinary
gleam on his face. All the sentiments of love
were there, adoration, mysticism, and also brutal
love, a sort of supernatural ecstasy and the gross
satisfaction that was already tasting immediate joys.
Yes, all the loves impressed themselves for a moment
on the profound humanity of this thief’s face.
Some one was waiting for him behind
the half-open door. I saw an arm beckoning to
him.
He went out on tiptoe, first slowly, then quickly.
I am an honest man, and yet I held
my breath along with him. I understood
him. There is no use finding excuses for myself.
With a horror and a joy akin to his, I was an accomplice
in his robbery.
All thefts are induced by passion,
even that one, which was cowardly and vulgar.
Oh, his look of inextinguishable love for the treasure
suddenly snatched up. All offences, all crimes
are outrages accomplished in the image of the immense
desire for theft, which is the very essence and form
of our naked soul.
Does that mean that we must absolve
criminals, and that punishment is an injustice?
No, we must protect ourselves. Since society
rests upon honesty, we must punish criminals to reduce
them to impotence, and above all to strike them with
terror, and halt others on the threshold of evil deeds.
But once the crime is established, we must not look
for excuses for it. We run the danger then of
always finding excuses. We must condemn it in
advance, by virtue of a cold principle. Justice
should be as cold as steel.
But justice is not a virtue, as its
name seems to indicate. It is an organisation
the virtue of which is to be feelingless. It
does not aim at expiation. Its function is to
establish warning examples, to make of the criminal
a thing to frighten off others.
Nobody, nothing has the right to exact
expiation. Besides, no one can exact it.
Vengeance is too remote from the act and falls, so
to speak, upon another person. Expiation, then,
is a word that has no application in the world.