At the rendezvous in Rome a messenger was missing: tale by Roger Quesnel

This tale by Roger Quesnel, dated Bayeux in April 1949, is presented as a fiction inspired by the physical and moral distress of the villages of Bessin after the fighting. The preface to his republication, more than a quarter of a century later, specifies that the characters and the place must not be identified with real people. Some shape tweaks have been made. The friendly dedication of 1949 to Abbé J. C. has become a tribute to the memory of Abbé J. Chemin, former parish priest of Vierville, resting near the rebuilt church.

Through fields, crossing barriers and embankments, Jean-Pierre rushes to the temporary church: a rectangular barracks placed on a bare moor, under a pastel blue sky crossed by white clouds. At the foot of the cliff, the sea changes color with the sky. The child is ten years old. His left sleeve, rolled and pinned to his black schoolboy's apron, hides a pink stump, a memory of a day in June 1944.

That day, he was waiting for the end of the battle at the bottom of an old drinking trough covered with dry mud. Blood suddenly invaded him and he lost consciousness. Old Grégoire, a blacksmith and master chanter of the parish since always, seized him and took him away despite the gusts. Forgetting his own safety, he ran to a Red Cross truck, about a hundred meters away, where the injured were picked up without distinction of uniform. The child was embarked there.

The fighting was faring away. Grégoire, exhausted, his clothes torn, his hands injured by brambles and barb, wanted to join his church to celebrate the Liberation in his own way: ring the bell. The rope was already going up when a last shell hit the bell tower. In his chest open, he rolled on the three steps of the gate. On the side of the deserted road, his hands opened and closed in anticipation of death. The last vibrations of the bell mixed with his agony; when he died, the bronze crashed on the baptismal font.

The Christ on the cross, placed for centuries between the nave and the choir, now dominated the broken bell and the blacksmith's body. The village had no other victims of this lightning assault. Grégoire was remembered as a man who drank willingly, but above all a brave and solid ringer. Jean-Pierre, suffering on a hospital bed, also received pity from the inhabitants, who did not know the exact severity of his injuries and hoped for his recovery.

Then, in the midst of the accumulated ruins, we gradually stopped thinking about the mutilated bell, the crushed font and the dismantled bell tower. Spring has returned with its soft colors, pink and white hawthorn, dog games and laughter on a sunny threshold. A new Easter Eve, after the morning mass, Jean-Pierre quickly moves away from the new parish priest. Since his return, he reserves this moment for a discreet pilgrimage to the old church.

Kneeling near the bronze lying, he caresses it with his only hand. He therefore renounces to immediately go for the sweets that, according to tradition, the bells returning from Rome disperse in the meadows covered with dew and the corners of the family orchard. Since the cruel year, a sadness remains: his bell is missing from the rendezvous of Rome, and Gregory is no longer there to announce the Resurrection.

For several years, the child has been praying for the bell and the bell. He asks God to keep his old friend with him and to forgive him for his anger, his swearing and his excessive taste for cider and alcohol. He wants the angels to also lead their poor abandoned bell to Rome. In exchange for the lost arm, he hopes for a beautiful new bell for his village.

Leaving the sanctuary, he feels a little pain, but keeps deep inside him a whole faith. In the village that still heals his wounds, no one knows his secret. Life resumes with the hard daily work of the countryside and its familiar scenes. Six yellow ducklings go to the bath for the first time behind their green and blue mother, whose eyes bear both pride and instinctive fear of the man.

Jean-Pierre grows up without giving up his miracle. Every year, while the other bells are supposed to leave for Rome and then bring gifts to the children, his remains motionless on the slabs. It takes all his innocence to continue hoping. The laughter of a villager, claiming in front of another child that this trip is just a joke, even troubled his heart for a moment.

One evening close to Easter, however, he notices that the broken bell has disappeared. Without ever having doubted the goodness of heaven, he looks up and thanks God. Apparently, nothing has changed around him: the little donkey of master Anselme returns from the grass with Maria, the daughter of the house, between his dented and shiny copper cans.

A light bell, beautifully chiseled at its base, is soon installed on a temporary frame near the door of the barracks. The Sunday crowd is waiting for his blessing. In his red cassock, Jean-Pierre seems a little lost among the conversations; Grégoire's soul also seems present to him.

The narrator wonders: is it a miracle or simply the result of a subscription intended to support the new parish priest, to find the Angelus and not to wait for the reconstruction of the church? Why did Master Anselme give birth to the idea? Why did Mr. Charles, a vacationer for more than thirty years and reputed to be thrifty, sign such a big check? Why did modest families give so generously? Jean-Pierre, on the other hand, is certain that Grégoire interceded for all. The story leaves open the possibility of a faith rewarded by the generosity inspired by men.

Once the ceremony is over, joy wins the village and enters the homes. No one particularly thinks of Jean-Pierre, since no one knows his secret. The child, hurt by human madness, nevertheless believes himself to be the happiest: he has the best part of this shared joy. He hopes to replace Gregory one day and make the Angelus of peace resonate in turn on this campaign that he loves.

Reconstructed or uncertain passages:
- This is a fictional literary story, not a factual testimony about identified people. The original text bears April 1949; the preface describes a republication more than a quarter of a century later, which does not agree with the approximate 1959 dating of the file name. No day of republication is affirmed.

Archive image: https://vierville.cordelle.eu/Photos2008/1959c-ContePascal1.jpg