5
Every person condemned to death will be beheaded.
He jumped as if someone had clapped him suddenly on the shoulder while he thought himself alone. The words had come into his head, the syllables had written themselves into a space, and he had automatically carried on:
‘Article 12 of the Penal Code.’
It had been a mistake to fall asleep in the afternoon. Then, when he was back downstairs, Tati had stared at him too insistently, as if there was something different about him. Her gaze still followed him, in the darkness of the attic, under the blue-tinged moon.
Men sentenced to hard labour will be assigned the most arduous work. They will have a ball attached to their feet and will be chained two by two.
This time it seemed to him it was a cheerful voice that went on:
‘Article 15 of the Penal Code.’
The voice of his lawyer, Maître Fagonet, who was twenty-eight years old and looked younger than him. He would come into the cell with his robe swishing the air, a slight whiff of apéritif on his lips and traces of the smile he had flashed at his girlfriend as he left her in the car, a hundred metres from the prison.
‘Well then, son. What are we going to say to good old Oscar today?’
The examining magistrate’s name was Oscar Darrieulat. Maître Fagonet thought it was more fun to call him Oscar.
‘So, have you checked out Article 305?’
The memory was so clear, Fagonet’s presence so real, that Jean had to sit up in bed, eyes wide open in the darkness, out of breath, just as when he would throw off his sheets as a child, being subject to sleepwalking.
The extraordinary thing was that he had not thought about this for years. What was more, while the events were really taking place, he had hardly been conscious of them.
It was too complicated. They kept asking him questions. His lawyer was continually quoting the articles of the Penal Code to him:
‘Murder shall be punished with death, whenever it shall have preceded, accompanied, or followed any other crime. So you see, my boy, why you absolutely must not admit the business with the wallet.’
It hadn’t seemed so tragic, back then. Even to his jailer, who used to say cheerfully every morning:
‘Sleep well, did you?’
And the magistrate, the famous Oscar, was polite, seeming not to wish to dwell on certain details.
‘Sit down … Now, you say he hit you first, but not hard enough to leave a bruise? Very well, I’ll accept that. But it’s the gentlemen of the jury you will have to convince, isn’t it?’
The magistrate’s wife had telephoned him during their interrogation. And he had replied:
‘Yes, my dear … yes, dear, yes, all right … Yes, I’ve written it down. Three kilos …’
Three kilos of what?
Every person condemned to death will be beheaded …
He turned over heavily in bed, his nerves on high alert.
‘Article 321, my boy. Without Article 321, we’ve had it. That’s the one I’m going to plead. But unless you help me …’
Murder, and also wounds and blows, shall be excusable, if they have been provoked by blows, or grievous bodily harm …
Maître Fagonet would run a comb through his thick, lustrous hair.
‘You went up to him on the bridge without any criminal intent. You just wanted him to give you back some of the money he had won from you. You talked to him about Zézette. He laughed at you. You made a gesture, and he thought you were going to hit him. But he hit you first. You lost your head, and as the pair of you struggled, you pushed him over the parapet.’
Maître Fagonet pronounced in a different voice:
‘They won’t believe us.’
‘Then what?’
‘We’ll benefit from the element of doubt.’
Sometimes he would tell the prisoner about a play he had seen the previous night.
And the trial, too, had been like a stage play. People had stared at him with curiosity. And he surprised himself by looking back at them while thinking of something else.
‘Gentlemen, be upstanding for the court.’
And suddenly, years later, lying on a mattress that smelled of mildewed hay, he finally realized that all that had been serious, that he really had run the risk of being executed by guillotine.
Every person condemned to death …
He would have liked to get out of bed and go down to be with Tati, so as not to be alone. He felt badly frightened. He was covered in sweat and had the feeling that something, his heart no doubt, was malfunctioning inside his chest.
‘You see before you, gentlemen of the jury, a young man who is the victim of …’
