The Retreat (9 page)

The dragoons left their horses on the avenue with Paulin, who was protesting wildly, and dashed after d'Herbigny into one of the bazaar's porticoed alleys. ‘Watch out!' cried the captain, jumping behind a butcher's stall.
Molten lead was running off the caved-in roofs in boiling streams. ‘This way! This way!' They changed course, clambering over a barricade of lacquered furniture. With a creaking noise, a japanned iron roof collapsed a few metres from them; they took cover under the porticoes where pillagers were breaking down the doors of shops, oblivious to the crackling flames and falling beams, so busy amassing their treasures they didn't even feel the soles of their boots burning, but kept on forcing open crates and levering up cellars' trapdoors.

A young lad with blond hussar's locks poking out from under a tricorne, who was squeezed into the sort of currantred dressing gown the Kalmuks wear, was taking bottles which were being handed up to him from a cellar, and stacking them in a chest on casters. The dragoons surrounded him. ‘We'll help you shift that lot,' said the captain, putting a heavy hand on the chest.

‘If you want some, you can take your pick,' the hussar said. ‘All these cellars are crammed full of wine.'

‘But your bottles are the ones we've taken a fancy to.'

A few paces away, flames were curling out of a grating. Alcohol wasn't the only thing stored in the cellars; they also contained resin, oil and vitriol and d'Herbigny had no intention of dawdling. The hussar was defying them, calling for help from his comrades. A bloated face appeared through the trapdoor in the smoke, a strip of cashmere wound round his head. Martinon caught him full in the face with a spur, knocked him back down the steps and flung himself into the basement after him; there was a sound of breaking glass and shouting voices. Martinon reappeared almost immediately, moving slowly and jerkily, like an automaton. He had been run through with a sword;
the tip was sticking out of his stomach and he was oozing wine and blood; he gave an inane smile before falling over.

The whirlwind of flames drew closer.

*

Surrounded by officers, the Emperor left the Kremlin in the afternoon. Berthier had come up with the decisive argument: ‘If Kutuzov's cavalry are to turn the fire to their advantage, they will attack the army corps on the plain. How will you be able to intervene from here?' Napoleon left by a postern gate, which opened onto the bank of the Moskova, and crossed a bridge that sappers had been dousing with buckets of water since the previous day. The suburb opposite was in flames and red-hot cinders were blowing across the river, falling in a constant rain on the bridge's wooden roadway. Caulaincourt had organized the horses. All the staff had been given the order to evacuate; only a single battalion would remain to guard the citadel and attempt, with the rudimentary means at its disposal, to contain the fire. Sebastian wandered from one courtyard to the next, his bag over his shoulder. Columns of carriages were waiting in a boulevard at the rear of the Kremlin. No one was listening to the contradictory orders any more; they were all wondering how they were going to escape. Most of the coachmen were drunk, and still drinking, and the horses were stamping their feet. Sebastian was trying to find a place in one of the berlines crammed with baggage, plunder and sweating, drawn-faced administrators, but no one would have him.

‘On your way!'

‘There isn't room for a needle in here!'

A postilion refused to let the young man come and sit
on his bench. Vexed, Sebastian asked a groom, ‘What are you waiting for?'

‘For the wind to change.'

‘And then?'

‘We'll drive over the ashes, of course! Isn't that better?'

‘That avenue over there is clear.'

‘But that leads us away.'

‘Away from what? Ye gods!'

Sebastian didn't persevere, disheartened by this drunkard's reasoning. He cursed his fine handwriting, which had brought him to Moscow; he missed the ministry in Paris, so peaceful, where war was waged with a quill. He couldn't envisage any way out of his predicament and hated the whole world. I was born at the worst possible moment, he thought to himself. A plague on it all! Why? Why on earth am I here? I couldn't give a hang about the Russians! I'm so weak and small! A puppet! How many cretins envy me my position with Baron Fain? Well, it's theirs! Why did I accept – but how could I refuse? Do I lack courage? Oh yes, I lack courage, I dream too much, I hide away in my head, I barely exist! Ah, if I was English, I would be walking without a care through the streets of London now, or I'd be setting off on a trader to buy cotton in America! This filthy age! And what about Mlle Ornella, whose image clouds my mind, paralyses me? The devil take her! Idiot that I am! Did she pay me any attention? She doesn't care, actresses don't become attached, everyone knows that, and yet I worry, I eat my heart out with nothing to hope from her – and why, just for the pleasure of adding this misfortune to the store of misfortune I already possess? Why don't I think of saving my own skin? Idiot!'

This last word he had said out loud, and a coachman had heard. ‘And why am I an idiot, my good sir?'

Sebastian didn't answer, but flew into a passion and walked back along the line of coaches trembling with rage. In this respect, however, he was alone; all around him a crowd of civilians in cockaded hats waited in a state of utter resignation, as if the flames would obligingly recede at an order from the Emperor before so much as licking her shoes. A wagon ventured down a street of which only one side was on fire; it had barely started before they saw it catch alight. The neighbouring streets were choked with furniture.

‘Don't they want none of you?'

Some gendarmes had pitched a bivouac against the ramparts. They were heating punch in a silver bowl.

‘It's Jamaican rum and sugar,' a gendarme said to Sebastian. ‘Before burning to a frazzle on the outside, don't you fancy a bit of the same on the inside? It'll brace you, help you stick it out.'

Sebastian dropped his bag, squatted down on his heels, took the silver-gilt ladle which the jovial gendarme was holding out to him, plunged it in the rum and drank the concoction in little sips. It seared his tongue and throat and seemed to hollow out his whole body. On the second ladle he forgot about the black smoke and the coal dust falling on his hat and shoulders. On the third he took an aesthete's delight in the beauty of the fire. On the fourth, he had trouble getting back to his feet. He thanked the gendarmes who were slumped around the punch; they smiled with blissful expressions, screwing up their bloodshot eyes. He dragged his baggage over the cobbles as if it was an obstinate animal on a leash, taking great strides, in all but a straight line, and swaying, but still managing to keep his
balance. The commissariat's barouches were blocking the whole avenue. A fat man was mopping his forehead with his handkerchief; he was quarrelling with a fellow passenger in a carriage laden with flour, wine and violins. It was Monsieur Beyle, one of the resupply commissaries; they knew each other vaguely from having argued one evening about Rousseau, whom they interpreted with significant differences. Sebastian stopped, unsteady on his legs, his sight blurred.

‘Ah,' said Monsieur Beyle, seeing him. ‘A man who can read! Providence has sent you, Monsieur le secrétaire. I almost had to travel with these chimpanzees in uniform!' He took Sebastian's arm. ‘Take a look at what I've looted from that pretty white house there, you see? A volume of Chesterfield and the
Facéties
by Voltaire. It's spoiled the Complete Works, I grant you, but still, these books are better in my pocket than in the flames. Do you have a carriage?'

‘No …'

‘Me neither. My servants have stuffed it with baggage and I've been forced to invite that tedious fellow Bonnaire along. Do you know who I mean?'

‘No …'

‘Auditor to the State Council and a crashing bore to boot!'

‘I'm not really in a fit state to chat …'

‘I understand, I understand. We're surrounded by boors. This fire is a grand and beautiful spectacle, but one needs to be alone to truly enjoy it. What a pity to have to share it with people who'd belittle the Colosseum and the Bay of Naples! And what's more …'

‘Yes, Monsieur Beyle?'

‘I have an appalling toothache.'

He held his cheek. Sebastian moved off without a word, heading nowhere in particular except further on, his mind clouded by the punch. Administrators were trying to squeeze into packed berlines, arguments were breaking out, tussles, insults; office colleagues were hurling home truths in one another's faces. Nerves were fraying through fear. It was all taking too long. In the glow of the fires devastating Moscow, groups of troopers were riding alongside the column of carriages while others set off on reconnaissance to clear a path for the convoy. Sitting on his bag, his chin in his hands, Sebastian Roque closed his eyes; the punch hadn't affected his memory, words of his dear Seneca came to him:
‘All things must be made light of and borne with good humour; it is more human to laugh at life than bewail it.'
How human I am, he thought to himself, hiccupping. The hiccup became a giggle, then the giggle uncontrollable laughter and the berlines' passengers looked at this young man overcome by mirth. ‘The poor lad has gone mad,' sighed a coachman. ‘Lucky blighter,' like an echo, answered a passenger leaning on his carriage door.

*

A tingling sensation made Sebastian jump. His sleeve was on fire. He stood up, slapping his arm. How long had he been asleep, his head on his bag? The carriages had gone, no one had bothered about him, he was alone on the boulevard; he had shooting pains in his head and a stiff neck. He heard hammering – no, it was hooves and wooden wheels echoing on the cobbles. He saw riders outlined against the smoke. The light of the fires accentuated the outlandishness of their headgear. The one leading the way,
a strapping great rogue, was wearing an enormous fur hat, the others Tartar hats, Cossack regulars' caps or brass helmets. They rode closer, their getups becoming clearer. Russians were they, with those boots some of them wore that turned up at the toe? A detachment come to put the finishing touches to the disaster? The one at the front had a long nose, a pale, walrus moustache, a green Guard's coat; an abbot in a hitched-up soutane followed, then men in long embroidered coats with scimitars at their belts. They were towing a chest on casters; their little long-maned horses were laden with booty. This motley troupe stopped in front of Sebastian, who stood up, thinking that they were going to kill him. ‘And I don't even care! It must be the punch, or fatigue …' Two of the troopers were whispering in each other's ear, and then their leader said, in French, ‘Don't stay there, Monsieur Roque, you'll brown like a side of beef.'

‘You know my name?'

‘Rouen, the spinning-mills …'

‘You're from Normandy?'

‘Herbigny, does that ring any bells? Herbigny, on the way to Canteleu, just before Croisset.'

‘I know the chateau, yes, with the limes, the meadow slopes down to the Seine …'

‘That's my name, and that's been my house since the death of my father who knew yours.'

‘So you are d'Herbigny, goodness!'

‘Paulin! Put Monsieur Roque's bag with my portmanteau and you, Bonet, give him your nag. You'll walk, that'll teach you to play the parish priest!'

‘I can walk,' said Sebastian.

‘So can he. Shall we get on with it, Bonet?' To Sebastian,
he added, ‘I needed to do something to that good-for-nothing, his soutane is putting me to shame.'

‘What about Martinon's horse?' said Trooper Bonet.

‘You think it hasn't got enough already with our cloth and provisions? Anyway, it's an order, for Heaven's sake!'

They set off at a walk again though passable streets, taking the long way round to skirt the fire and get out into the countryside. The sound of flames and crashing roofs was accompanied by the howling of guard dogs which, as was customary in Moscow, were chained up outside many of the palaces; forgotten, they were burning to death. Sebastian saw some under a peristyle. Driven into a frenzy by the heat, the creatures were scrabbling at their scalding chains but the metal wouldn't give, the fire was surrounding them, holding them prisoner, they were darting in every direction to try to stop the pads of their feet from burning. Beams were crashing to the ground, showering them with sparks, their coats were catching fire, and they were howling themselves hoarse one last time before they roasted alive.

Then the troopers followed the banks of the Moskova, passing charred bridges; the piles were breaking off and smoking and spitting in the water. They took a stone bridge, which had withstood the fire in that suburb; below, the river washed along blackened timbers. The road was lit by the blaze. In the plain, homelier fires marked the bivouacs of Davout's army corps.

They turned their backs on the torrid city and set off towards Petrovsky, which the Emperor had retired to. The road was narrow (it cannot have been more than three metres wide), so they were unable to pass a berline that had stopped in the middle, taking it up completely. The captain
dismounted grouchily, intending to give some postilion in a drunken stupor a good shake, and walked round the berline. An open barouche had overturned on the verge; the occupants of both vehicles were straining to get it back on its wheels with a lot of panting and shouts of ‘Ho!'

‘Excellent timing,' exclaimed one of the passengers, who was brick red and running with sweat, his waistcoat unbuttoned and his sleeves rolled up; he was mopping his forehead with a lace petticoat.

‘Anybody hurt?' asked the captain.

‘Just some bumps and spoiled flour.' He pointed to the torn sacks in the ditch. ‘I know this damned road is difficult, but if the coachman hadn't drunk so much … It is not as if you can complain about the light!'