Interval . . .

From Anti-Memoirs by Andre Malraux.

‘1965, Off Crete.  In 1940 I escaped with the future chaplain of the Vercors.  We met again shortly afterwards in the little town in the Drome where he was parish priest and where he used to hand out baptismal certificates wholesale to Jews—on condition, however, that they let him baptise them.  “Some of it may stick, after all . . .”  He had never been to Paris, having completed his studies at the seminary in Lyons.  We talked far into the night, as friends do when they meet again, amid the homely village smells.

            “How long have you been hearing confessions?”

            “About fifteen years.”

            “What has confession taught you about men?”

            “Oh, confession teaches you nothing, you know, because when a priest goes into the confessional he becomes another person—grace and all that.  And yet . . . First of all, people are much more unhappy than one thinks . . . and then . . .”

            He raised his brawny lumberman’s arms in the starlit night: “And then, the fundamental fact is that there’s no such thing as a grown-up person . . .”

            He died on the slopes of Glieres.’