The First Man Read online

  1. The sentence ends there.

  who, completely off balance, fell pitifully on his back, one eye weeping and the other immediately swelling. The black eye, a crowning blow much sought after because for several days it would visibly confirm the winner's triumph, brought a roar from the audience worthy of the Sioux. Munoz did not get to his feet immediately, and Pierre, Jacques's closest friend, quickly stepped in and authoritatively declared Jacques the winner, then helped him on with his jacket and put his cape on his shoulders, and led him away surrounded by a retinue of admirers, while Munoz got up, still crying, and dressed in his small circle of dismayed supporters. Jacques, dizzy with the rapidity of a victory he had not even hoped would be so complete, could hardly hear the congratulations around him and the already embellished accounts of the fight. He wanted to be glad, and he was glad, somewhere in the vanity of his ego, and yet, when he looked back at Munoz as he was leaving the green field, a bleak sadness suddenly seized his heart at the sight of the crestfallen face of the boy he had struck. And then he knew that war is no good, because vanquishing a man is as bitter as being vanquished.

  To round out his education, he was taught without delay that the Tarpeian Rock is near the Capitol.1 The next day, in fact, he thought he should swagger and show off in response to the backslapping admiration of his classmates. When, at the beginning of class, Munoz

  1. In Rome, traitors were thrown to their death from the Tarpeian Rock. The meaning is: Pride goeth before a fall—Trans.

  did not answer to his name, Jacques's neighbors commented on his absence with ironic snickers and winks to the victor, and Jacques gave in to temptation, puffed out his cheeks, and showed the others a half-closed eye; without realizing that M. Bernard was watching him, he was indulging in a grotesque mimicry that vanished in the blink of an eyelid when the master's voice resounded in the suddenly still classroom: "My poor teacher's pet," he said, deadpan, "you have as much right as the others to the 'sugar cane.' " The conqueror had to stand up, fetch the instrument of torture, and, amidst the fresh smell of cologne that surrounded M. Bernard, assume the ignominious position to be punished.

  The Munoz affair was not to end on this lesson in applied philosophy. The boy's absence lasted two days, and Jacques was vaguely worried despite his swaggering air when, on the third day, an older student came in the room to inform M. Bernard that the principal was asking for the pupil Cormery. They were only summoned to the principal's office in serious cases, and the teacher, raising his bushy eyebrows, simply said: "Hurry up, kiddo. I hope you haven't done anything foolish." Jacques, his legs unsteady under him, followed the older pupil down the length of the corridor over the cement courtyard with its ornamental peppertrees that the dappled shade did not protect from the torrid heat, to the principal's office at the other end of the corridor. The first thing he saw as he entered, in front of the principal's desk, was Munoz flanked by a scowling woman and man. Although his classmate was disfigured by an

  eye that was swollen and completely shut, Jacques was relieved to find him still alive. But he did not have time to enjoy that relief.

  "Was it you who hit your classmate?" asked the principal, a small bald man with a pink face and an energetic voice.

  "Yes," Jacques said in a toneless voice.

  "I told you so, Monsieur," said the woman. "Andre is no hooligan."

  "We had a fight," said Jacques.

  "I don't need to know about it," said the principal. "You know I forbid all fighting, even outside school. You injured your classmate and could have injured him even more severely. By way of a first warning, you will stand in the corner at every recess for a week. If you do it again, you will be expelled. I will inform your parents of your punishment. You may return to your class." Jacques, thunderstruck, did not move. "Go on."

  "Well, Fantomas?" said M. Bernard when Jacques returned to his class.1 Jacques was weeping. "Go ahead, I'm listening." With a catch in his voice, the child first announced the punishment, then that Munoz's parents had complained and he had told about the fight. "Why did you fight?"

  "He called me 'teacher's pet.' "

  "Again?"

  "No, here, during class."

  1. Fantomas was the masked hero of a series of pulp novels—

  Trans.

  "Ah! He was the one. And you thought I hadn't sufficiently defended you."

  Jacques gave M. Bernard a heartfelt look. "Oh no, oh no! You ..." And he burst out in real sobs.

  "Go sit down," said M. Bernard.

  "It's not fair," said the child through his tears.

  "Yes, it is," gently told him1

  The next day, at recess, Jacques took his place in the corner at the end of the playground, his back turned to the yard and to the happy cries of his classmates. He shifted his weight from one leg to the other;a he was dying to run around with them. From time to time he glanced back and saw M. Bernard strolling in a corner of the yard with his colleagues and not looking at Jacques. But, the second day, he did not see M. Bernard come up behind him and tap him lightly on the back of his neck: "Why such a long face, shrimp? Munoz is in the corner too. Here, I give you permission to look." Munoz was indeed on the other side of the playground, alone and morose. "Your accomplices refuse to play with him for the whole week you're in the corner." M. Bernard laughed. "So you see, you're both being punished. That's the way it should be." And he leaned over the child to say to him, with an affectionate laugh that caused the heart of the convict to overflow with love: "You know, moustique, to look at you, you wouldn't think you could throw such a punch!"

  1. The sentence ends there. a. M'sieur he tripped me

  This man who today was talking to his canary and who called Jacques "kiddo" though he was forty years old—Jacques had never stopped loving him, even when the years, distance, and finally the Second World War had partly, then completely cut him off from his teacher, of whom he had no news, and he was as happy as a child when in 1945 an elderly Territorial in a soldier's greatcoat rang his doorbell in Paris, and it was M. Bernard, who had enlisted again: "Not for the war," he said, "but against Hitler, and you too, kiddo, you fought— oh I knew you were made of the right stuff, you haven't forgotten your mother either I hope, that's good, your mother's the best thing in the world—and now I'm going back to Algiers, come see me," and Jacques had been going to' see him for fifteen years, and each time it was the same: before leaving he would embrace the deeply moved old man who clung to his hand on the doorstep, and this man had launched Jacques in the world, taking on himself alone the responsibility for uprooting him so that he could go on to still greater discoveries.a

  The school year was drawing to a close when M. Bernard summoned Jacques, Pierre, Fleury, a kind of prodigy who did equally well in all subjects—"he has a polytechnic brain," the teacher said—and Santiago, a handsome boy who was less gifted but succeeded by virtue of diligence: "Now," said M. Bernard when the classroom was empty. "You're my best students. I've

  a. The scholarship

  decided to nominate you for secondary-school scholarships. If you pass the examination, you'll have scholarships and you can continue your studies at the lycée through the baccalaureate. Elementary school is the best of schools. But it leads to nothing. The lycée opens all doors. And I would rather see poor boys like you go through those doors. But for that, I need your parents' authorization. Off with you!"

  They left in amazement and did not even discuss it before they parted. Jacques found his grandmother at home alone picking over lentils on the oilcloth cover of the dining-room table. He hesitated, then decided to wait for his mother to arrive. She came home visibly tired, put on an apron, and came to help the grandmother sort the lentils. Jacques offered to help, and they gave him the thick white porcelain bowl where it was easier to separate the pebbles from the good lentils. Staring into his plate, he announced his news.

  "What's this all about?" said the grandmother. "At what age do you do this baccalaureate?"

  "In six years."<
br />
  His grandmother pushed her plate away. "Did you hear that?" she asked Catherine Cormery.

  She had not heard. Jacques slowly repeated the news. "Ah!" she said. "It's because you're intelligent."

  "Intelligent or not, we were going to apprentice him next year. You know perfectly well we have no money. He'll bring home his pay."

  "That's true," said Catherine.

  Outside, the day and the heat were beginning to fade. At that time of day, with the factories all working, the

  neighborhood was empty and silent. Jacques gazed out at the street. He did not know what he wanted, only that he wanted to obey M. Bernard. But, at nine, he could not disobey his grandmother, nor would he know how to. Still, she was obviously hesitating. "What would you do afterwards?"

  "I don't know. Maybe be a teacher, like M. Bernard."

  "Yes—in six years!" She was sorting the lentils more slowly. "Ah!" she said. "No, after all, we're too poor. You tell M. Bernard we can't do it."

  The next day the three others told Jacques their families had agreed. "How about you?"

  "I don't know," he said, and the thought that he was even poorer than his friends left him sick at heart.

  The four of them stayed after school. Pierre, Fleury, and Santiago gave their answers. "And you, moustique?"

  "I don't know."

  M. Bernard gazed at him. "All right," he said to the others. "But you'll have to work with me afternoons after school. I'll arrange it, you can go." When they had left, M. Bernard sat himself in his armchair and drew Jacques close. "Well?"

  "My grandmother says we're too poor and that I have to go to work next year."

  "And your mother?"

  "It's my grandmother who decides."

  "I know," said M. Bernard. He thought a moment, then put his arm around Jacques. "Listen: you can't blame her. Life is hard for her. The two of them alone, they've brought you up, your brother and you, and

  made you the good boys you are. So she's bound to be afraid. You'll need a little money besides the scholarship, and in any case you won't bring home any money for six years. Can you understand her?" Jacques nodded without looking at his teacher. "Good. But maybe we can explain it to her. Get your satchel, I'm coming with you!"

  "To our place?" said Jacques.

  "Yes, it will be a pleasure to see your mother again." Minutes later M. Bernard was knocking on their door in front of a bewildered Jacques. The grandmother came to the door, wiping her hands on her apron; the strings were tied too tightly, making her old woman's paunch protrude. When she saw the teacher, she made a gesture as if to comb her hair. "So it's the grandmom," said M. Bernard, "hard at work as usual? Ah! You're a worthy woman." The grandmother invited him into the room that you had to cross to get to the dining room, seated him near the table, brought out glasses and a bottle of anisette. "Don't put yourself out, I came to have a little talk with you." He began by asking about her children, then her life on the farm, her husband; he talked about his own children. At that moment Catherine Cormery came in, panicked, called M. Bernard "Monsieur le Maître," went to her room to comb her hair and put on a clean apron, and returned to perch on the edge of a chair a little away from the table. "You," M. Bernard said to Jacques, "go out on the street and see if I'm there. You understand," he said to the grandmother, "I'm going to speak well of him and he's liable to think it's the truth." Jacques left, dashed down the stairs, and

  stationed himself by the door to the building. He was still there an hour later, and the street was already coming to life, the sky through the ficus trees was turning green, when M. Bernard emerged from the stairs at his back. He scratched Jacques's head. "Well!" he said. "It's all settled. Your grandmother's a good woman. As for your mother . . . Ah!" he said. "Don't you ever forget her."

  "Monsieur," the grandmother suddenly said. She was coming out of the hall. She was holding her apron in her hand and wiping her eyes. "I forgot . . . you told me you would give Jacques extra lessons."

  "Of course," said M. Bernard. "And it won't be any picnic for him, believe me."

  "But we won't be able to pay you."

  M. Bernard studied her carefully. He was holding Jacques by his shoulders. "Don't worry about that," he said, shaking Jacques. "He's already paid me."

  Then he was gone, and the grandmother took Jacques by the hand to go back to the apartment, and for the first time she squeezed his hand, very hard, with a kind of hopeless love. "My child," she said. "My dear child."

  For a month M. Bernard kept the four children after school every day and made them work for two hours. Jacques would go home both tired and exhilarated, and then have to start on his homework. His grandmother would look at him with mingled pride and sadness.

  "He got a good head," Ernest said with conviction, tapping his own head with his fist.

  "Yes," the grandmother would say. "But what's to

  become of us?" One evening she gave a start: "What about his First Communion?" Actually religion had no part in their lives.1 No one went to Mass, no one invoked or taught the Ten Commandments, nor did anyone refer to the rewards and punishments of the hereafter. When someone's death was reported in the grandmother's presence, "Well," she would say, "he'll fart no more." If it was someone for whom she was deemed to have at least some liking, "Poor man," she would say, "he was still young," even if the deceased had long since been old enough to die. It was not a matter of ignorance on her part. For she had seen many die around her. Two of her children, her husband, her son-in-law, and all her nephews in the war. But that was just it: she was as familiar with death as she was with work or poverty, she did not think about it but in some sense lived it, and besides, the needs of the moment were even more urgent for her than they were for Algerians as a whole, who by their daily cares and their common lot were denied the funerary piety that flourishes in civilizations at their height.a Death for them was an ordeal to be faced, as they had faced those that preceded it, which they never spoke of, where they tried to show the courage that for them was a man's principal virtue; but meanwhile one tried to forget it or push it aside. (Hence the comic air that all interments would assume. Cousin Maurice?) If to that general inclination is added the

  1. Three illegible lines in the margin, a. La Mort en Algerie.

  harsh work and struggle of daily life, not to mention, in the case of Jacques's family, the awful wear and tear of poverty, it becomes hard to find a place for religion. For Uncle Ernest, who lived by his senses, religion was what he saw; that is, the priest and the ritual. Calling on his gift for comedy, he never missed an opportunity to mimic the ceremony of the Mass, accompanying it with a [sustained] onomatopoeia to represent the Latin words, and to conclude he would play both the faithful bowing their heads at the sound of the bells and the priest seizing the opportunity offered by their bowed heads to take a surreptitious drink of the Communion wine. As for Catherine Cormery, only she with her gentleness might have suggested faith, but in fact that gentleness was her faith. She neither dissented nor agreed, laughed a little at her brother's jokes, but would call the priests she met "Monsieur Cure." She never spoke of God. In fact, that was a word Jacques never heard spoken throughout his childhood, nor did he trouble himself about it. Life, so vivid and mysterious, was enough to occupy his entire being.

  With all that, if a civil burial was mentioned in the family, it was not unusual for his grandmother or even his uncle paradoxically to deplore the absence of a priest: "like a dog," they would say. This because for them, as for most Algerians, religion was part of their civic life and that alone. They were Catholic as they were French; it entailed a certain number of rituals. Actually those rituals numbered exactly four: baptism, First Communion, marriage (if they were married), and funeral rites. Between these ceremonies, which neces-

  sarily were far apart in time, they were occupied with other things, and most of all with surviving.

  So it was taken for granted that Jacques would make his First Communion like Henri, who had kept a mo
st unpleasant memory not of the ceremony itself but of its social consequences and especially the visits he was obliged to make over several days, the armband on his arm, to friends and relatives, who had to present him with a small amount of cash, which the child was embarrassed to take; the grandmother would then appropriate the entire sum, returning only a very small proportion to Henri, because Communion "cost good money." But this ceremony did not take place until around the child's twelfth year, after he had spent two years being taught the catechism. So Jacques would not have to make his First Communion until his second or third year at the lycée. But it was that prospect that caused the grandmother to give a start. She had a dark and somewhat frightening picture of the lycée as a place where you had to work ten times as much as at the neighborhood school, because these studies led to better jobs and because, to her way of thinking, no improvement in material circumstances could be gotten except by more work. She wished for Jacques to succeed with all her heart on account of the sacrifices she had just agreed to in advance, and she calculated that the time taken by catechism would be subtracted from the time for work. "No," she said, "you can't be in the lycée and at catechism at the same time."

  "Fine. I won't make my First Communion," said Jacques, who was hoping above all to escape the ordeal

  of the visits and what for him was the unbearable humiliation of accepting money.

  The grandmother stared at him. "Why? It can be arranged. Get dressed. We're going to see the priest." She stood up and went with a resolute air into her bedroom. When she returned, she had taken off her camisole and her work skirt, had put on her one going-out dress [ ]1 buttoned to the neck, and she had knotted her black silk scarf around her head. The strands of white hair at the edge of her scarf, her sharp eyes and firm mouth made her the very picture of determination.

  At the sacristy of the church of Saint-Charles, a dreadful pile of modern Gothic, she seated herself, holding Jacques's hand while he stood beside her, before the parish priest, a fat sixty-year-old with a round, rather soft face, a big nose, and a good smile on his thick lips, under a crown of silvery hair; he was clasping his hands on his robe stretched by his parted knees. "I want this child to make his First Communion," said the grandmother.