The Retreat (13 page)

‘Oh, Monsieur Beyle, I leave the floor to you.'

‘Thank you, but I've spent a good deal of time with that sort, and in a few days I have to leave for Smolensk to set up reserve stores there. Then Danzig. I'm not exactly thrilled by the prospect.'

‘Well, I envy you. Why stay in Moscow?'

‘My toothaches plague me unexpectedly, especially at night, I sleep badly, I have fevers …'

‘But a hearty appetite!' Sebastian answered laughing, hardly knowing whether this laughter applied to his friend Beyle or to the troupe's having reappeared safe and sound.

When they had finished their meal, they got up together. The actors' table was close to the door, but Sebastian assumed a detached expression and pretended not to see them.

‘Monsieur Sebastian!'

Ornella had called him, he couldn't slip away now.

‘Mystery-maker,' his friend whispered in his ear. ‘I'll leave you to bill and coo, but this time I'm the envious one.'

Sebastian held his breath, turned around, pretended to be surprised, went over, took a chair and sat down, smiling. He had to listen to Mme Aurore recount their misadventures, the looting of their chalet, how they'd escaped death by fire, then by thirst and then how, by a pure stroke of luck, the King of Naples had saved them and put them up at his headquarters in the Razunonski mansion. With a feigned air of distraction, Sebastian observed Mlle Ornella. She had let down her curly black hair, which fell to the shoulders of her satin dress. When it was her turn to talk, he noticed that she lisped slightly, just enough for it to be charming.

‘The King of Naples adores the theatre, Monsieur Sebastian. He behaves as if he's always on stage.'

‘He has uniforms slashed with gold,' continued Catherine, the redhead, ‘diamond earrings, a whole wagon for his perfumes and his pomades, another for his wardrobe …'

The Great Vialatoux, who was wearing a Neapolitan uniform, couldn't contain himself anymore; he interrupted his colleagues to give his impersonation of Murat.

‘He told us,' Vialatoux adopted a swagger, ‘"In my palazzo in Naples, I used to have all Talma's parts performed solely for me and I'd declaim them- El Cid, Tancred …”'

‘So why have you come back to the Kremlin?' Sebastian interrupted.

The Emperor wanted life in Moscow to return to normal. He was sending for opera singers, famous musicians, and, since he had actors to hand, he was asking them to perform their repertoire to divert the army.

‘What are you going to play?'

‘The Game of Love and Chance
, Monsieur Sebastian.'

‘I'll be there applauding. I can see you as Silvia, and your friend as the maid.'

‘And then we will put on
The Cid,'
said the juvenile lead,
‘Zaire, The Marriage of Figaro …'

Prefect Bausset had offered them a genuine auditorium, minus its chandeliers, in the Posniakov mansion. They had only three days to organize costumes, but the military administration had gathered together all sorts of fabric, hangings, velvet and gold braid in the Church of Ivan in the Kremlin, which promised to be enough, draped or sewn. So they had come to the palace to choose. Sebastian had to get back to his office; when he left, Ornella and Catherine laughed as they recited some Marivaux which they thought apposite.
‘I have noticed that a handsome man is often vain,'
Ornella said as Silvia.

‘Oh, he is wrong to be vain but right to be handsome
,' Catherine answered as Lisette.

The Great Vialatoux, his nose buried in a plate emblazoned with the Tsar's coat of arms, greedily tucked into his cat fricassée; he went back for second helpings three times.

*

A detachment of dragoons was escorting a line of tumbrils loaded with the bodies of the nuns, who had been sewn into canvas bags. They almost looked like shadows, the cold fog clogging up the early October morning was so dense. Captain d'Herbigny led the way to the cemetery. He hadn't wanted to mix Anissia up with the other sisters; he'd wrapped her in Indian silk and was carrying her in front of him, on his horse's withers. He was as pale as the novice, sadness etching new lines in his weather-beaten face. Where did the poison come from? Who had procured it or used
it? And how? These women's religion forbade suicide, so what then? Cossacks had been sighted in Moscow; they were on the prowl, gathering information, watching, confident of support. But poison wasn't a weapon they used, this didn't seem like them, and they wouldn't have been able to get into the convent either, let alone the former Mother Superior's cell. D'Herbigny couldn't make head or tail of it. No ready explanation? Well, it couldn't be helped. He stuck to the facts. He had so often killed with his own hands, but the brutal death of this Russian girl, who he knew nothing about, had hit him hard. He'd planned to take her to Normandy, since they were bound to leave this filthy city one day or another. He would have taught her French and treated her like a daughter, there, that was it, like a daughter; she would have watched him grow old peacefully.

They reached the cemetery. Fires glowed red through the now-thinning fog. Large numbers of poor, homeless Muscovites had taken refuge among the graves, cobbling together shelters and lighting puny fires to cook roots, warm themselves and ward off the wolves and stray dogs that were turning vicious with hunger.

In silence, the riders began digging a large pit in an alley. The captain laid Anissia on a moss-covered gravestone. When the pit was finished, which seemed to take an eternity, they tipped up the tumbrils; then they shovelled back the earth. D'Herbigny had sat down next to Anissia's body. He uncovered her waxy face, undid the gold cross she was wearing round her neck and clenched it in his fist. After a while, he realized he couldn't hear the shovels anymore; his troopers had finished filling in the pit and stood waiting, in silence. The captain contemplated the
muddy ground for a long time, and then looked up. ‘Bonet, and two others, lift that for me.'

He pointed to a white marble tombstone.

‘It's already occupied, Captain.'

‘You don't really expect me to chuck Aniushka in that pit, do you? She'll be better off here. It's horribly cold in winter in this cursed country, nothing's as good as a nice vault.'

Bonet obeyed, thinking his superior officer was cracked in the head. They cleared away the earth, until the iron of their shovels struck coffins.

‘That's enough,' said the captain.

He took Anissia in his arms. Bonet helped him lay her gently in the grave. With his boot, d'Herbigny replaced the earth; he told them to put the slab back.

‘Anyone remember any prayers? No?'

He tightened his saddle girth and mounted up.

*

In the evenings, an usher lit a pair of candles on the Emperor's desk. ‘He never stops working!' the soldiers would exclaim, enraptured, when they looked up at the illuminated window. In fact he spent large parts of his days asleep, or lying on a sofa, browsing through his volumes of Plutarch. He often took up Voltaire's
Charles XII
, a little gilt-edged morocco volume, which he would close, sighing, ‘Charles was determined to brave the seasons …' He shut his eyes, dozed. What did he dream about? The news was unfavourable: a coalition of Russians and Swedes had just forced Gouvion-Saint-Cyr to evacuate the city of Polotsk, their wait was growing longer and longer, the Tsar was holding his tongue. Caulaincourt had refused to go to St
Petersburg to solicit a peace in which he had never believed. Lauriston, more biddable, had managed to contact Kutuzov and extract a verbal armistice from him. Would he keep his word? The Emperor was wavering, giving impossible orders: ‘Buy twenty thousand horses, have two months of forage brought in!' Buy the horses from who? Bring in the forage from where? Another time he told Count Daru, the Intendant General, of his plan to attack Kutuzov.

‘Too late, sire,' said the count. ‘He has had time to reform his army.'

‘We haven't?'

‘No.'

‘Well?'

‘Let us retrench ourselves in Moscow for the winter, there's no other solution.'

‘But the horses?'

‘Those we can't feed, I shall have salted.'

‘The men?'

‘They'll live in the cellars.'

‘And then?'

‘Your reinforcements will arrive as soon as the snow melts.'

‘What will Paris think? What will happen in Europe without me?'

Daru had bowed his head without replying, but the Emperor seemed to take his advice. The investment works were stepped up; labourers demolished mosques to leave the ramparts clear, gunners set up thirty guns on the Kremlin's towers and drained the ponds to recover a hundred thousand cannonballs dumped there by the Russians; surgeons were sent for from Paris. One morning, at around two o'clock, Napoleon was dictating instructions for
Berthier: his mind was clear and he spoke fluently as he strolled back and forth, his hands clasped behind his back, wearing his white flannel dressing gown. He demanded of the major general that the men have three months' supplies of potatoes, six of sauerkraut and six of brandy. Then, as if he had a very detailed map of the city and his forces in front of him, he said, ‘The depots in which these will be stored are, for I Corps, the convent of the 13th Light Brigade; for IV Corps, the jails on the Petersburg road; for III Corps, the convent near the powder magazines; for the artillery and the cavalry of the Guard, the Kremlin … Three convents have to be selected on the roads out of Moscow to make entrenched posts …'

The Emperor knew the country but still he refused to believe that his army was short of provisions. Little matter. Next day the weather was mild, all his go had returned and he took lunch with Duroc and Prince Eugène.

‘Berthier?'

‘In his apartments, sire,' replied Duroc.

‘Isn't he hungry?'

‘You warmed his ears this morning:
Not only are you a good-for-nothing but you actually do me harm!
'

‘Because he is incapable of finding any bloody sauerkraut in the land of the cabbage. Can't he stand being hauled over the coals anymore, the old girl? Old girl, that's it! It's no coincidence he took the Tsarina's apartments!'

The two guests forced themselves to smile as the Emperor laughed until he cried. He wiped his eyes with the corner of the tablecloth and became serious again; gulping down a mouthful of beans, he abruptly changed the subject. ‘What is the most glorious death?'

‘Charging the Cossacks!' Prince Eugène cried passionately, holding his cutlet by the bone.

‘Which is what awaits us,' added Duroc.

‘I would like to be carried off by a cannonball during battle, but I shall die in my bed like an idiot.'

Then they spoke of the great deaths of Antiquity, those who took poison, who died laughing, who committed suicide by holding their breath, who were stabbed. His Majesty often looked for forebears in Plutarch; he shuddered at the death of Sulla, that general without fortune, rank or land, who, with the army's support, lived to govern Rome and command the world. Like Napoleon, he had to control an immense empire; like Napoleon, he interfered in his citizens' private lives, legislated heavily, struck coins bearing his own likeness. His wife Caecilia belonged to the aristocracy, like the Empress Marie-Louise. The parallels impressed the Emperor, but Sulla's end, no, not at any price: ‘Can you see me rotting like him? Can you see me surrounded by actresses and flute players, drinking and gorging myself as swarms of maggots ooze out of my corrupted flesh until it bursts? Puoah!'

‘Plutarch's account is very exaggerated, sire,' said Prince Eugène.

‘My destiny is so like his …'

‘Or Alexander the Great's,' suggested Duroc, who knew the Emperor's inclinations and dreams.

‘Ah! India …'

Ever since his ill-starred campaign in Egypt, Napoleon had dreamed of reaching the Ganges, like Alexander. He saw resemblances there as well. The Macedonian had launched himself eastwards with several thousand barbarians,
Scythian and Iranian horsemen, Persian infantry, Illyr-ians from the Balkans, Thracians, untrustworthy Greek mercenaries, each with their own dialect just like the Grande Armée. He likened the Agrian javelin-carriers to his Polish lancers, the Bulgarian bandits to the Spanish battalion, the Cretans with goat's horn bows to his regiment from eastern Prussia …

‘We could march on India,' he went on, looking at the ceiling.

‘Are you really considering it, sire?' Duroc asked anxiously. ‘How long will letters from Paris take?'

‘How many months to get there?' wondered Eugène.

‘I've consulted the maps. From Astrakhan you cross the Caspian and reach Astrabad in ten days. From there, a month and half to the Indus …'

*

The auditorium set up in a wing of the Posniakov mansion was like a genuine theatre à l'italienne, with two curving rows of boxes, stalls and an orchestra pit. Chandeliers from the Kremlin hung over the stage without a set; the troupe would play against a backdrop of tapestries, with a few pieces of furniture for props. A row of paper lanterns served as footlights. The bandsmen of the Guard, sitting on chairs, were preparing to improvise pieces of their choice to emphasize theatrical effects or provide links between scenes; admittedly they weren't used to this sort of music, but it passed the time between parades. The officers and civilian staff filled the boxes; the soldiers sat in the stalls or stood, leaning against the pillars. Drums rolled to drown out the hubbub, and the Great Vialatoux stepped forward dressed
as an aristocratic fop, his face powdered with talc; he gestured, silence fell, and he declaimed:

‘Behold the French within your gates

Bow your head, Alexander, capitulate!

This is no children's game that meanders on and on.

You swore us false, you breached our trust