The Town Below. Roger Lemelin
Monsieur Pritontin!” exclaimed Bédarovitch. “We don’t see very much of you.”
There was silence. The Mulots smiled sarcastically, for this man who had just entered was the most despicable of the Soyeux. The choleric Adolphe Pomerleau, tormented by political worries and a fanatic on the subject of social systems (he went about selling pamphlets for little-known movements), now gave a sigh and, indicating his uncle, Anselme Pritontin, addressed the other members of the group.
“Don’t be too hard on him, gentlemen. He has his troubles. He had counted on being appointed churchwarden this year. As if anybody had a better right to the place! A regular churchgoer who never misses mass.”
“He’s a good citizen but not rich enough for them,” said Père Didace Jefferson, who never failed to get in his anticlerical digs, ever since Monsieur le Curé had seemingly gone over to the conservatives.
“The family even made a novena,” Adolphe went on. “I am telling you that my aunt wept when she learned he had lost out.”
“I can just see him carrying the canopy,” put in Denis.
Out at the counter a lively discussion was going on. “Five dollars, Monsieur Pritontin. These chandeliers are not worth even that. No! It’s no use; I can’t give you a cent more.”
“Be fair, Monsieur Bédarovitch. Just look, they’re all bronze and each one holds seven candles.”
“They’re far from being pure bronze — from some impoverished church, you know.”
“Take five, Monsieur Pritontin; it’s a good price,” counselled the Abbé Bongrain in his gruff, good-natured voice.
“But that will not cover half of the expense of an altar for my oldest boy. He has a true passion for playing mass. You can tell that the priesthood is in his blood. Now, if the money were to be spent for sinful purposes, such as I could mention —”
“Good evening, my lads,” the priest called out as his tall figure appeared on the other side of the partition. The Mulots took off their caps and greeted him cordially, and Gus Perrault left Bison and came over to join him. Pritontin, meanwhile, was casting a wary eye over the room. Piety fairly dripped from the Soyeux, seeming to melt his human personality and replace it with a cloud of dignity. It was distasteful to him to see the Abbé Bongrain slapping the Mulots on the back. He was thinking what his own attitude would be if he were a priest.
The abbé would smile at one of the group, make some bantering remark to another. It was plain to be seen that this strong individual, imperturbable as a Pharaoh of old, was a friend to all of them. He was not a handsome man. His stiff straight hair resembled a horse’s mane and could only be close cropped. His features were large and looked as if they had been well kneaded by his big, awkward hands. The eyes alone stood out. Exceedingly mild and filled with blue-grey glints, they were like azure breads that had been inadvertently dropped upon this mass of crude flesh. At first sight, he gave the impression of being a sturdy, square-shouldered, good-hearted child who had nothing to do with the sins of grown-ups. In the confessional he had a gesture for conferring absolution that could be compared only to a vigorous stroke with an axe, arrested halfway. He loved the workers and his priestly soul conveyed the illusion of a benignant deity who was laying his hands upon you. Hypocrites were frank with him, for he had a look that made them shudder. It was through him that the Mulots formed a conception of their God.
“Everything all right, Denis my lad? And when is Gaston going to open his confectionery shop?” Tit-Blanc pricked up his ears at this.
“Next week, I think.”
After whispering to Denis that he too had a fondness for picking apples, the priest went over to Broke Lallemand, who voiced his usual complaint of having no job.
“Gus, can’t you do something for him?”
“The deputy has his name on the list,” replied the president, with an evasive gesture.
“The black list,” said Méo Nolin, who knew all the communist catchwords.
“It’s too bad, but that’s politics for you,” observed Père Didace, a hereditary Liberal.
“With such a government the proletarian will never find work,” declared Adolphe Pomerleau, the leatherworker, who was growing a moustache like Hitler’s.
“It’s the trusts that are devouring us!” cried Bison Langevin.
Adolphe Pomerleau arose majestically and surveyed his audience. He was a small, thin man but he worked his jaws energetically. Running his hand carelessly along the brim of his hat, he began: “It’s the capitalists who have pocketed all the money. And where has all that brought us? To economic liberalism!” He stopped here, staring straight in front of him at the horizon of ideas. Then he lowered his head and sat down, resigned to the explosion which he knew his words would produce.
“Merde!” shouted Langevin. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” He at once darted Gus Perrault an apologetic glance, for he had caught the latter’s frown.
“Keep still!” the Abbé Bongrain sternly commanded. “You elect governments, so put up with them. A social system is something more complicated than you think.” The abbé was at heart a great admirer of Laurier.
Tit-Blanc, who was still drunk, now became aggressive. “You can defend the trusts,” he said to the priest; “you’re part of them.”
This created a chill in the room. The men glanced at one another, knowing that they were about to witness an extermination. The Abbé Bongrain clenched his fists behind his back, but he was quite calm as he bent his gaze on Tit-Blanc.
“Yes,” he said, “a trust that twice has saved your job for you. We are members of a trust, but you came to wake us up in the night last year, when your wife was in childbirth.”
Pritontin, on the other hand, was thrown into a small convulsion by the insult which had been offered to the Church. He came forward, pale and trembling. It was an outrage, a thing like that. Imperceptible hiccups rose from the bottom of his throat, as if his anger had been cut to shreds by the sorrow that he felt.
“Drunkard that you are! If that isn’t a terrible thing, I ask you. And they wonder why religion is on the decline!” He looked to the Abbé Bongrain for support, hoping it would be reported to the Monsieur le Curé that he, Anselme Pritontin, the one whom they had passed over, had defended the Church’s cause.
“Shut your mouth, you pillar of the Church,” said Méo Nolin, who liked to hold forth on justice and equality. “Monsieur l’Abbé can take care of himself. And anyway, you’re a Soyeux; you’re not one of us.”
The priest knew how to deal with such stupidity — a gesture would suffice; he knew how to speak the word of truth to the poor, while remaining charitable toward this fellow Tit-Blanc. But of a sudden all the energy and ardour that was in him died down and he appeared to be smiling at his own weakness, at the weakness of humankind. He was thinking of the rows down there in the mines at Thetford, when he was earning the money to pay for his schooling. He had also shared the pleasures of his fellow workers, but he had found them vain and had sought and attained beauty as he conceived it. Today as yesterday, his life was made up of the “incomprehensible” that had come to take on a soul. At the seminary they had looked upon him as a social climber in a cassock, this big lad from the mines who in fits of anger would let drop a “damn” for the simple reason that he had been used to hearing it down under the earth. Was it his fault if such expressions clung to him like twigs even as he mounted heavenward?
He looked the group over, eager to transmit to them all the goodness of the world as seen through his own eyes; he longed to prove to them that they were really big, however small they might feel themselves to be.
Realizing that it was his turn to speak, Père Didace, the club’s oldest member, arose. He cleared his throat, batted his lashes, and assumed the tone of voice that he used at banquets.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “this