Philippe Claudel - Brodeck

Buller was writing a letter at his desk with his back to Orschwir and Diodemus. He took his time finishing the letter, reread it, slipped it into an envelope, sealed the envelope, and placed it on the desk; then, finally, he turned to face his guests, who — it goes without saying — were still on their feet and hadn’t moved a muscle. Buller gazed at them in silence for a long time, obviously trying to divine something about the men he’d be dealing with. Diodemus felt his heart beating as though it would burst, and his palms were clammy with sweat. He wondered what he was doing there and how long the ordeal would last. Buller’s tic made his chin jerk at regular intervals. He picked up his riding crop, which lay handy on the bed beside him, and stroked it slowly, gently, as if it were a pet. At last he said, “Well?”

Orschwir opened his mouth wide, found no reply, and looked at Diodemus, who couldn’t even swallow, much less speak.

“Well?” Buller said again, without indicating any genuine impatience.

Gathering all his courage, Orschwir managed to ask in a strangled voice, “Well what, Captain?”

This question elicited a smile from Buller, who said, “The cleansing, Mr. Mayor! What else would I be talking to you about? How much progress have you made with the cleansing?”

Once again, Orschwir stared at Diodemus, who lowered his head and tried to avoid his companion’s eyes. Then the mayor, who’s ordinarily so sure of himself, whose words sometimes sting like whips, whom nothing impresses, who naturally behaves like the rich, powerful man he is, began to stammer and fall apart in the face of a uniformed creature little more than half his size, a minuscule fellow afflicted with a grotesque tic, who sat there caressing his riding crop like a simpering woman. “The thing is, Captain,” Orschwir said. “The thing is, we … we didn’t entirely … understand. Yes. We didn’t understand … what you … what you meant.”

Orschwir drooped, his shoulders sagging, like a man who’s made too great an effort. Buller laughed softly, stood up, and started walking around inside the tent, pacing back and forth as if deep in thought. Then he came to a stop in front of his two visitors. “Have you ever observed butterflies closely, Mr. Mayor? Or you, Mr. Schoolmaster? Yes, butterflies, any sort of butterflies at all. No? Never? That’s a shame … a great shame! I’ve dedicated my life to butterflies, you see. Some people focus on chemistry, medicine, mineralogy, philosophy, history; in my case, my entire existence has been devoted to butterflies. They fully deserve such devotion, but not many people are able to see that. It’s a sad state of affairs, because one could learn some lessons of extraordinary importance for the human race by contemplating these splendid, fragile creatures. Consider this, for example: the earliest observers of one species of Lepidoptera, known by the name of Rex flammae , noted certain behavior that seemed baseless at first; after further observations were made, however, it proved to be perfectly logical. I don’t hesitate to use the word ‘logical’ when speaking about butterflies, which are endowed with remarkable intelligence. The Rex flammae live in groups of about twenty individuals. It’s believed that some sort of solidarity exists among them; when one of them finds a quantity of food large enough to nourish the entire group, they all gather for the feast. They frequently tolerate the presence among them of butterflies not of their species, but when a predator suddenly appears, it seems that the Rex flammae warn one another, in who knows what form of language, and take cover. The other butterflies that were integrated with the group an instant earlier apparently fail to receive the information, and they’re the ones that get eaten by the bird. By providing their predators with prey the Rex flammae guarantee their own survival. When everything’s going well for them, the presence of one or more foreign individuals in their group doesn’t bother them. Perhaps they even profit from it one way or another. But when a danger arises, when it’s a question of the group’s integrity and survival, they don’t hesitate to sacrifice an individual which is none of their own.”

Buller stopped talking and went back to pacing, but he didn’t take his eyes off Orschwir and Diodemus, who were sweating profusely. Then he spoke again: “Narrow-minded persons might find the conduct of these butterflies lacking in morality, but what’s morality, and what’s the use of it? The single prevailing ethic is life. Only the dead are always wrong.”

The captain sat at his desk again and paid no more attention to the mayor and Diodemus, who silently left the tent.

A few hours later, my fate was sealed.

De Erweckens’Bruderschaf- —“The Brotherhood of the Awakening” I spoke of earlier — held a meeting in the little room reserved for it in the back of Schloss’s inn. Diodemus was there, too. In his letter, he swears to me that he wasn’t a member of the brotherhood and that this was the first time they’d ever invited him to a meeting. I don’t see why that’s important. First time, last time, what’s the difference? Diodemus doesn’t give the names of those who were present, just their number: six of them, not counting him. He doesn’t say it, but I believe that Orschwir must have been one of the others, and that it was he who reported Adolf Buller’s monologue on butterflies. The group weighed the captain’s words. They understood what there was to understand, or rather, they understood what they were willing to understand. They convinced themselves that they were the Rex flammae , the brilliant butterflies the captain had talked about, and that in order to survive, they would have to remove from their community those who didn’t belong to their species. Each of them took a piece of paper and wrote down the names of the alien butterflies. I presume that it was the mayor who gathered up the papers and read them.

All the pieces of paper bore two names: Simon Frippman’s and mine. Diodemus swears he didn’t put down my name, but I don’t believe him. And even if that were true, the others couldn’t have had much difficulty persuading him to include my name in the end.

Frippman and I had many things in common: we hadn’t been born in the village, we didn’t look like the people around here (hair too black, skin too swarthy), and we came from far away, from an obscure past and a painful, wandering, age-old history. I’ve related my arrival in the village, riding in Fedorine’s cart after having made my way amid ruins and corpses, orphaned of my parents and orphaned of my memory. As for Frippman, he’d arrived ten years ago, babbling a few words of the local dialect mixed with the old language Fedorine had taught me. Since many found him impossible to understand, I was asked to serve as interpreter. It seemed likely that Frippman had suffered a severe blow to the head. He kept repeating his last name followed by his first name, but apart from that, he didn’t know a lot about himself. As he appeared to be a gentle sort, people didn’t drive him away. A bed was found for him in a barn attached to Vurtenhau’s farm. Frippman was full of heart. He did day labor for this or that employer — haymaking, plowing, milking, woodcutting — without ever seeming to grow tired and received his wages in food. He didn’t complain. He whistled tunes unknown to us. The village adopted him; he let himself be tamed without difficulty.

Simon Frippman and I were thus Fremdër— “scumbags” and “foreigners”—the butterflies that are tolerated for a while when everything’s going well and offered as expiatory victims when everything’s going badly. What was odd was that the men who decided to turn us over to Buller — that is, to send us to our deaths, as they must certainly have known! — agreed to spare Fedorine and Amelia, even though they were alien butterflies, too. I don’t know that one should speak of courage when referring to this omission, to this desire to spare the two women. I think rather that the gesture was like an attempt at expiation. Those who denounced us needed to keep a region of their conscience pure and intact, a portion that would be free from the taint of evil and would therefore allow them to forget what they’d done or at least give them the ability to live with it, in spite of everything.