Now, when the heavy red curtain went up after the traditional three knocks, he was there in the middle of the stage with his avenging drum. It was only his uniform that had changed: it now transported the audience three centuries into the past, to the time of Richelieu’s cats. All the little seamstresses in Random had donated their time and talents, ransacked their attics, and salvaged the slipcovers from discarded chairs and the lace from old-fashioned dresses. Reconstituted, the illusion of velvet and guipure was complete. Behind the rural policeman, now transformed into a herald in his cardboard boots with their wide turn-downs and his battered felt hunting hat adorned with cocks’ feathers, was a backdrop painted in ochers and pinks that represented something like the Place des Vosges in trompe l’oeil — for the near-sighted, at least. Descending from the flies on a couple of ropes was the pediment of a porch on which a station signboard announced MEUNG-SUR-LOIRE, which merely had to be altered according to the place changes, which, given the geographical complexity of the story, allowed the action to move on from one scene to the next, as the decor of the rechristened square stood for every other square. The props were minimaclass="underline" stage left, a horse trough; stage right, an inn table with wooden benches around it and above it an imitation wrought-iron inn sign: HÔTEL DU FRANC MEUNIER. Opinions were already divided in the audience, and subdued murmurs began to be heard. Was the “Franc” to be seen as the declaration of a claim to their French identity under the very nose of the occupier, and did the “Meunier” — the Miller — mean that the country was being put through the mill? Soon, though, a few local scholars spread the word that no, no, it really is called that in the novel. And anyway, after he had executed a whole lot of rat-tat-tats and tried out some unprecedented drum rolls, Louis XIII’s rural policeman pulled a scroll out of his game bag, untied its red ribbon, held it at arm’s length, and began to read: “Oyez, oyez, take notice! Any resemblance to true facts and to characters now living or who have previously lived is in no way attributable to the adapters of this historic play, but to the true facts and to characters now living or who have previously lived.” There followed a short introduction describing the young d’Ar-tagnan’s departure from his parents’ house, armed with the letter of introduction from his father to Monsieur de Tre-ville, the captain of the king’s musketeers. “And now, let the show commence!” The rural policeman had taken it into his head to dramatize his number by twirling his drumsticks in his fingers, but at the last rehearsal one of them had landed down in the prompter’s box and our little aunt had come within an ace of having an eye gouged out, so she had decided that enough was enough.
Even when she was perched on two fat dictionaries, her eyes barely came up to the level of the boards. Clutching the edge of the stage, with the pages typed by her nephew spread out under her nose, she mouthed all the actors’ dialogue as they spoke it. When one of them forgot his lines she made her voice heard in her own particular fashion — inherited from her years of practice of saying prayers and going to church — which was to speak loudly in a low voice, so that she could sometimes be heard by the audience, who now and then joined in in chorus as the actor spoke his words.
There were now three people on stage. Watched by a pretty blonde, the apprentice musketeer was clashing swords with a gentleman. Since the swords were made of wood, the director had asked his pal Andre to sharpen two big butcher’s knives against each other in the wings. The success of this sound effect depended on perfect synchronization. It had been decided that they would exchange thirty thrusts. So as not to spoil his effect, the young man with the trembling hands, who already overindulged in wine, asked Aunt Marie to count with him. She was afraid of a thirty-first thrust, which would have ruined the scene but which didn’t happen. Everything would have been perfect if Andre, who was playing the innkeeper, hadn’t made his entrance carrying his knives — to the great delight of the audience.
In spite of its brocades and laces, Milady’s green gown was not guaranteed to be of the correct period, but the palpitating young bosom swelling its décolleté was of a universal nature. A fact that didn’t escape her fellow actors. Hidden in her prompter’s box, our little aunt was keeping a weather eye open and casting an occasional glance over her spectacles. When the gentleman-carpenter got a little too close to the graceful young woman, she discreetly called him to order by tapping her pencil on the boards. In his departing instructions her nephew had made no allusion to it, but she was not unaware of the fact that the beautiful Milady was his unofficial fiancée.
She came from a nearby village. They had met at a wedding. In rural communities, wedding processions are the most efficacious of all matrimonial agencies. Both families take a lot of trouble in matching the couples. These two families had thought that the tall, sad, recently bereaved young man might find some sweet consolation in the beautiful, radiant sun taking his arm. At any rate, he had found his Milady in Emilienne.
Because the young starlet had absolutely no acting experience, an occasion presented itself for her to try out her talents in a Passion play put on in Random by the assistant priest. This was an unusual kind of exercise, closer to an Easter reading than to theater proper, but it had the advantage of entertaining the faithful while at the same time offering them an edifying spectacle. Nevertheless, the project came up against a veto from the bishop of Nantes, who had forbidden mixed performances ever since Saint Veronica had given birth to a child whose paternity was much disputed between the apostles in one of the communes in his diocese. This affair had created a great stir among the right-thinking, “THE RETURN OF SODOM” was the headline of one article in Le Phare, which then began: “When shall we see a Virgin Mary who has been made pregnant by her son?” The young assistant priest, who was far more frightened at the idea of the women being played by men in drag, leaped courageously to his own defense. He managed to get an appointment at the bishop’s palace and pleaded his cause. “Again!” thundered the bishop, suddenly abandoning his preliminary unctuousness (“Well, so you’re at Random. Do you like it? Good, good,” all the time rubbing his hands in a circular movement. “And to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”). “No, no, NO! — you’re at least the tenth person to ask me the same thing. No mixed performances of Passion plays.” But the young abbe had not embarked on his appeal without due preparation: “No doubt, Monsignor, but have you considered the disastrous effect on our faithful, accustomed to the beautiful madonnas in our churches, of an imperfectly shaved Virgin, with hairy hands and size ten shoes?” His argument registered, and after a few objections that were soon swept aside, the bishop surrendered: “Very well, but in that case I will only allow you three women — the Virgin Mary, about fifty years old, which is to say the right age for the part [which reduced the risks], Mary Magdalene [no instructions; a sinner has to be allowed to sin], and the wife of Pontius Pilate.” The abbe thanked his superior warmly and, while he was kissing the purple stone at the extremity of the arm stretched out toward him, vainly racked his brains to find any trace of a wife of Pilate he might have come across in his reading of the gospels. But that was how Emilienne inherited the nonspeaking role created by episcopal fantasy.
Dressed in a long white tunic girdled with a golden cord, she illuminated the Passion play with her presence. When she gave her husband the towel to dry his hands on, the men in the audience felt their palms grow moist. Their attention was so riveted on her golden tresses and her curves that the priest was the only one to tear his hair when Christ on the cross, in the center of the darkened stage, with only his face visible in the spotlights, suddenly declared in a voice full of conviction, as if he’d just finished a hard day’s work in the fields, “I’m parrrched.” It’s true that there was nothing in that to shock an audience accustomed to speaking and hearing the local patois.