“Let’s not waste any time,” she said. “Read it to him.”
Claire took a sheet of paper from her pocket and started reading. It was a lengthy document referring to the Lachaume farm affair, based on the tape recording and the scraps of conversation she had overheard. It was also a complete confession, in which Cousin acknowledged his treachery and underlined Morvan’s heroic conduct.
“That’s what really happened, wasn’t it?” her mother asked when Claire had finished.
Then Arvers spoke for the first time since the old woman’s arrival. His voice was extraordinarily calm.
“Not at all,” he said. “It was Morvan, your son, who talked.”
“You liar!” Claire yelled. “You filthy coward! I heard your voice, I heard you begging for mercy, I remember what you said word for word!”
His only reply was a haughty smile. She rushed toward him, spat in his face, and would have struck him, but her mother, who had retained all her self-possession, held her back.
“Let’s not waste any time,” she repeated. “So you refuse to sign, do you?”
“Absolutely. It was your son who talked, not I. I can’t do anything about it.”
“We’ll soon see about that,” the old woman said. She walked over to the fireplace and withdrew the poker.
“Mother!”
“Let me alone.”
In the short time the mother’s back was turned, while Claire was watching her with horror, he furtively accomplished the first part of the act for which he had been preparing for months. He had been looking for a favorable opportunity ever since Claire had untied his wrists, and the uncertainty of being successful had preyed on his mind—the only chink in his armor that fear had been able to find. With his free hand he seized the little capsule of poison tucked away in a secret pocket under the lapel of his coat and slipped it into his mouth. It took him no more than a second. The success of this maneuver dispelled the last anxiety he had in this world.
34
The old woman turned around and came toward him with the poker in her hand. He kept his eyes wide open and assessed the quality of his own determination from the fact that he was able to grasp with incredible precision every detail of the instrument of torture. The tip gave off a white glow over a length of two or three inches. The rest of the shaft was various shades of red, fading lower down into a dark gray and culminating in the yellow of the brass handle, almost as luminous as the opposite end. He felt a childish pleasure in seeing it was not merely a piece of twisted iron, like the one at the Lachaume farm, but a properly finished article constructed and embellished by a fine craftsman to hold pride of place in a well-to-do home. It was almost a luxury poker, and he was deeply grateful for this, as though the choice of such an instrument was Providence’s way of recognizing his personal qualities.
“Are you going to sign?”
He shook his head with an expression that looked very much like irritation. She was boring him with these questions. Of course he would surmount the ordeal, but for that he had to muster all his physical resources and protect himself against distractions. The contact of the capsule against his tongue was enough to dispel his vexation and restore the composure essential for great feats. His sense of relief expressed itself in a smile.
The smile froze on his lips, and his features became contorted. Every fiber of his body was convulsed. For a moment the pain precluded all thought. The old woman had applied the iron to his right foot. She withdrew it almost at once and with an angry gesture restrained her daughter, who had taken a step toward her with a gasp of horror, as though to stop her.
“Are you going to sign?”
Several seconds elapsed before he was able to shake his head—just long enough for his mind, which for a moment had wandered, to recover its supremacy, to demonstrate that this pain was an essential part of his apotheosis, and to desensitize his flesh with the intoxication of revenge.
He curled his tongue around the capsule. He had only to make a tiny gesture to render that revenge striking and decisive. He would do so in his own good time. He was master of the situation. He had won. He would never yield to brutality, not he—he was made of sterner st
uff than that Morvan! The mother, his most redoubtable foe, was vanquished. Claire had already given up the struggle, and she held her head buried in her arms. As he gave another contemptuous smile, he felt sorry that she could not see him.
He was again taken unawares by the second application of the torture. Fortified in the course of endless sessions of theoretical training, his mind was taken off guard by the unforeseen: he had been expecting the burn on the same foot, and it was his left foot that received it. The spasm made him writhe in every muscle, in spite of his bonds. The mother left the iron on the flesh for a full second. Even before she had withdrawn it, his mind was in control again.
“You’re the one who talked. Will you admit it?’’
He shook his head in the same slow, disinterested manner. He was sorry now that he was unable to speak. He would have liked to hear the sound of his own voice, but he was frightened of letting the capsule slip out of his mouth.
The third stage of the treatment had the same result. The old woman muttered an oath through clenched teeth and went off to plunge the poker into the embers again. During this respite he applied himself to sharpening his mental faculties still further and gathering them together for a supreme effort of will. He had to triumph over his last enemy—Morvan. How many times
had Morvan endured the torture? Six, he recalled—he had carefully counted each piercing scream.
Each piercing scream . . . The comparison that was brought to mind at this recollection was invaluable in helping him accomplish the last steps to his glorious Calvary. He didn’t scream, not he!—he calculated. This revelation of his intellectual superiority overwhelmed him with happiness, and while the old woman, losing her self-possession, repeated the punishment over and over again, disjointed passages of literature seemed to unfurl in the mist that was beginning to form before his eyes.
No beast would have done that, he thought to himself. And, while the fog thickened, he saw the forms of beasts swarming around him—beasts without genius; beasts with uncivilized minds and no real conscience; beasts that alternately assumed the shape of an old witch
with bloodshot eyes exhausting herself pointlessly in futile endeavors, of an imbecile girl hiding her head like an ostrich, incapable of enduring the consequence of her