Ignorance Read Free

box. The curé used to buy his sisters barley-sugars from Madame Baudry’s shop and post them home. Once we started boarding, he’d bring some in for Marie-Angèle and me. He said: you two mopes need cheering up! On his Sunday afternoon visits to the convent he gave me news of my mother. He visited her in hospital, so that he could tell me how she was keeping. She’s fine, Jeanne, never you fear.
    Marie-Angèle poked me with her elbow. She whispered: look at his big nose!
    He was pretending he hadn’t seen us, hadn’t heard Madame Baudry’s greeting. He jerked his face away. He withdrew, back inside the house, and slammed the door.
    The hermit, Madame Baudry said: the recluse. So unsociable! He thinks I don’t know about him but I do. Everybody does.
    Distracted from her aches and pains, she was in a better mood, so I could risk asking her a question.
    What’s a recluse?
    So she recounted the tale. Marie-Angèle began smiling now, because her mother was keeping us company for five minutes longer, before delivering us in at the high wooden door. She could still hold her gloved hand, look into her face as she spoke. Coming from a foreign background, he was always a bit of a misfit. He and his wife didn’t mix with their neighbours. They kept themselves very much to themselves. He kept his wife hidden away. Then, when she died, he went a bit crazy.
    Marie-Angèle corrected her mother: he kept his beautiful young wife hidden away. Then, when she died, he went a bit mad.
    Madame Baudry continued her recital. So now he pretended that he was gone too. He kept the shutters fastened in the daytime and took no notice when boys threw stones at them, rarely went out, crossed to the other side of the street when he saw people coming. Goodness knows what he found to do, alone in that house. He was certainly a bit peculiar.
    Marie-Angèle said: you forgot to tell the bit about his eating such strange food!
    Madame Baudry shrugged. I understood he might soon cease interesting her. A lost cause. Other stories would press in, replace his. But Marie-Angèle’s eyes gleamed. She said: and nobody knows how his wife died. Madame Baudry said: well, let’s say she died mysteriously. Marie-Angèle chimed in: Bluebeard!
    I’d only dared read that story once. The young woman trapped inside the courtyard, no way out, the sun beating her head like a gong of death, the enraged husband, the huge Blackamoor, striding nearer and nearer, his upraised sabre about to whistle down, slice her skin, cause her unimaginable agony. He was coming to get you. You had no choice, you couldn’t hide, you were powerless, your death advanced second by second, closer and closer. A gilded purple turban, a gold coat and gathered gold trousers, slippers with curled-up toes, his black eyes shot red sparks, his beard sprang out like blue spittle. He would hack at you and hurt you, his curved scimitar blade jabbing and slicing your flesh while you writhed and begged for mercy, he laughed, his blade twisting inside the mouth of your wound, blood everywhere, blinding you, you’d slip in your blood and fall and he’d lean over and stab you repeatedly, your blood spurting out while you screamed. Then you’d die.
    Jesus died in agony, hung from the cross, his flesh pierced by nails. The Jews’ fault: they betrayed him. Was my mother still a Jew underneath? Was I? In church every Sunday we prayed for the conversion of the Jews to the One True Faith, and celebrated the heroic martyrs who died defending it. The martyrs refused to marry pagans like Bluebeard. The Lives of the Saints listed the tortures: slashed with swords, breasts torn off, eyes gouged out, racked on the wheel, made to walk naked into brothels where soldiers waited for them. I wouldn’t be brave enough to stand up for what I knew was right. I’d turn pagan and marry Bluebeard rather than be hurt so much. Then after death I’d be punished and burn in hell for ever more. You could shut all this away