At night, among this gathering, I seemed to see imperceptible movements which I tried to catch with one eye, but which always eluded me. Did these stone people touch one another or make love once the creatures of flesh and blood had at last left them in peace? It appeared unlikely – only the spirit still illuminated their lives. Clasped in Niobe’s arms, however, I did feel that with a few centuries’ patience she might have been mine.
Peter’s friends had accepted me from the moment I joined them; this may have been kind-heartedness, but it might also have been casualness; I believe it was simply that the master had chosen me and that there was nothing more to be said.
Arnold spoke to me about his dreams: I feared for his purity which would later be his downfall, and I was alarmed by what he remembered from the lessons – not logic or reason, but fire to enflame his fury. I noticed that he was often in conflict with Cervelle, that ageless boy with the ugly but intelligent face, who used his mind to put an acceptable distance between himself and the world. Cervelle never spoke of what he believed in, he never admitted that he was frightened or in love; of all of us, he was the only one whose mind was sufficiently agile to drive Abelard into entrenched positions on rare occasions. Christian had a luminous faith and sweetness about him; although he lived an angelic life, he did not believe that the body was the enemy of the soul.
Peter the Child was wholly good.
When the master asked me to stay behind, the others withdrew without saying anything. After the lesson he took me with him and we would wander off to the Isle of Jews or the Isle of Cows and laze about together on a sandbank. During the night he dictated his notes for future treatises and tried new arguments or fresh analogies on me; I would reply and encourage him, timidly to begin with, then with increasing boldness. Watching the assurance with which, in front of everyone, he subsequently developed what we had attempted by trial and error, I felt a pride in my heart at having been singled out.
One day, Cervelle, with his customary irony – sardonic and ungenerous, but always fair – began calling me John. When, pretending not to mind, I asked him why, he sniggered:
‘Are you not the disciple whom Jesus loved?’
‘I must have her,’ said Abelard slowly, separating each word.
Tears, which I immediately held back, welled up in my eyes.
‘William, I need her,’ he repeated as if in a dream – and there was no need for him to utter her name. I knew.
Heloise had sometimes come to listen to him. As far as I knew, they had not exchanged more than three words.
A sort of routine had become established between her and me that I found impossible to break: we would walk together a little at the end of the lesson before she disappeared, giving the excuse that she could not keep her uncle, the canon, waiting. Whenever I was with her, the words that I had promised myself I would say the previous night vanished, and I was left speechless as a mule.
She told me about her life in snatches: she described her vast childhood home, at Montmorency, surrounded by vineyards, and the gut-wrenching pain she experienced when as a girl she was sent away to board with the nuns at Argenteuil. She remembered that on the morning of her death, her mother, Hersende, had put a flower in her hair: in the evening the flower was no longer there. She spoke of Dido, of Cornelia, and of the heroines whose destinies rent her heart and seemed, without her understanding why, to conjure up her own fate. Her Latin was elegant and classical – images sprang forth effortlessly from her lips. She had chosen her friends: she could express the music of Virgil or the almost vulgar enthusiasm of Catullus, the elegance of Horace, the sadness of Ovid. She did not speak about Abelard – and I never questioned her.
‘It’s unreasonable,’ I eventually said to my master.
‘You’re talking about reason?’
A strange paralysis gripped my heart and mind and made me incapable of uttering simple words. This object you’re playing with, just as you do with the Categories of Aristotle, has for the past fortnight been the blood pumping through my veins, the air that I breathe . . . This woman, whom you want to take away from me and who does not belong to me is, nevertheless, mine . . . You are my master in all matters, you know what I know better than I do myself, but you are taking away what you have given me, and worse still – you are stifling me, crushing me, draining my life away . . .
I had said nothing. Only that wretched remark ‘It’s unreasonable’, which made no sense at all and, more to the point – as I knew only too well already – would only provoke him.
It was only later that I became aware of everything that silence signified – and that ultimately my fate, my wretchedness and perhaps my good fortune were contained there in their entirety.
I did not see Heloise in the days that followed. I did not know what to expect, what to fear. If she went away, I would be protected from my master’s unbearable threat; if she came no more, my love would be fixed in an absence, in a dream. And yet, of course, as I waited for her, I retained neither much logic, nor much grammar.
We were a noisy group, happy but chaotic, and after our lesson we never tired of continuing to argue and discuss things as we crossed the square in front of the cathedral, jostling some of the shopkeepers as we turned into the Jewish quarter before passing the Petit Pont, where some new masters had already installed themselves, attracting the curious with strange syllogisms.
With Arnold, I instigated rebellious tactics to eliminate the transgressions of this base world; with Christian, I spoke about Heloise – not, God forbid, my silent passion, but about the curious attachment the master had developed for this girl whom he did not consider beautiful.
‘He will have her,’ said Christian fatalistically. ‘We must just pray that she doesn’t cut his hair while he’s asleep.’
I did not laugh. He noticed it.
When the others went to bed the three of us often stayed up late discussing our hopes and our fears; we still drank the thick, tepid ale – or else that bitter Étampes wine which went down without one noticing. That was when we were all excellent friends.
One night, when Arnold had finally fallen asleep, stretched out like a bearskin rug in front of the fire, Christian and I went for a walk among the statues. We were drunk of course. More than ever, it seemed to me that we were in the midst of a forest of stone, two figures who could have been struck motionless and dumb at a wave of the hand – that was how Christian would become a prophet and I an apostle.
For a long time he made me talk about my wanderings and about the people I had come across – the wise men and the warriors, those who were born under a magic constellation, those who had come back from the world of the dead. I told him about Courtly Love and the tournaments, the perfumes of Spain, and about waiting for the Lady.
‘Do you still want to know what I do?’
‘I’m no longer so sure.’
‘You’re right. It’s best kept a secret. I don’t know it myself.’
He looked at me solemnly.
‘All sorts of people dwell within me and sometimes, when I’ve finished drawing an initial, I feel furious that the universe is not mine so that I can celebrate the glory of God and the greatness of man.’
‘Nothing more?’
He pummelled me with his fists and we could not stop laughing.
‘Come on now,’ he said when we had calmed down, ‘close your eyes and trust your little brother Christian!’
He slipped off my gown and my tunic and he placed his hands on my bare shoulders.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Don’t be frightened,’ he whispered, ‘I’ve actually been to Sodom, but it was as an angel . . .’
‘Can I open my eyes now?’
‘If you promise me you won’t be afraid.’