Reign of Fear: Story of French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars (Cantiniére Tales) (3 page)

Often, after such a story, we would use rough wooden swords, and fence around the house. As I told you, I was often the victim, but it was fabulously fun, even if the boys were stronger than I. Once, I whacked Gilbert madly across the scalp and he beat me roughly for it, but we were like that, rough, and loud, brash and stalwart and I did not have one doll to play with, which worried mother greatly.

When we were nine,
Adam’s subtle torture on Gilbert changed to more physical abuse, though the sibilant words were still there. He would haunt us in the house, stopping our enjoyable games whenever he could. He would grab his son, threaten him for, as Adam said it, his apparent uselessness, calling him many names, thinking he would never produce offspring. Gilbert would fawn and obey him as he usually did, for he feared Adam. His father saw this, and often, with us watching in silent disapproval, Adam would whisper uncouth threats to him, holding his ear in a vice like grip, and I knew it hurt like hell, for Gilbert tried to hide his tears, unsuccessfully. After such episodes, which increased at this time, Gilbert’s rare good moods would evaporate in a sudden burst of nervous energy and a need to do mischief, though his melancholy moments were also present, his thoughts hard to interrupt.

Since Adam did not like us to play together in the house that left us with the winding streets of Paris, where one should basically stay near home, but we did not, and risked beatings from gangs and small tyrants of their respective neighborhoods.

We loved the fanciful and terrible parts of Paris back then, and especially the beautiful Cordeliers district. Few foreigners visited the winding back alleys and twisted street, but the major attractions were popular and full to the brim with people, of the low and the high, of all the estates. Right near our house, there lay the only true hill in Paris, the crowded Ste-Geneviéve, so named after the fine patron saint of the city, may her yellowed bones be blessed, Marie. The Parisians prayed meekly for her help, when the times were hard, which was often, for fever, strange diseases, and ever-present hunger killed droves of people in the city. The harried officials tried to keep the bursting city under bounds, but the people of Il de France flocked here after mean jobs and scarce food, which was hard to transport here, anyway.

On the hill there resided an assortment of rich monasteries, opulent churches, and most important of all, the famous university, with its dozens of secluded colleges, full of hopeful students, important professors and grasping teachers. The students were an interesting lot, often passing by, carrying strange books, some fetching them from our store, young men aspiring to learn things both mundane and fantastic to carry them comfortably through life. I do not know, Marie, how many there were, the various colleges, but Sorbonne was there, very near our street, as was the wonderful Theater de la Odeon, a few helter-skelter blocks away. We used to love to pussyfoot that way, when our many unfortunate chores allowed. Theater is an amusement a poor can enjoy, but the rich love it also, though actors are, as ever, considered little better than fools or whores.

We were kids, spending much time in the rough streets, and what is sometimes hard to fathom, especially for the better off, is that a innocent child the age of twelve, like I was at the beginning of this story, living in a demanding city like ours, is more mature in thought and deed than many older ones living in the country, and thus, not really innocent at all. Some children marry at that age, Marie, especially if the family is poor, and I hope you are not betrothed and promised away to some powdered fop, for that would upset me, and your grandfather might have to hide the pistols again.

Mother told me she was continually and heavily vexed by the massive amount of problems we caused, especially since I knew how to lie like a man, as she put it crossly. We got into trouble regularly, it was true and for example, there was the time Gilbert
bullied me and Florien to go with him to look and wonder at the dark and dank underground Paris. There were roughly delved tunnels and weird rooms down there, likely hundreds of miles of tunnels, and we got lost for a day, and, which we did not tell our worried parents, we nearly drowned and had to revive Florien from some strange land he travelled to, for awhile. It was the one time I saw Gilbert cry for someone else, and loved him for that, even if he was the constant cause for such episodes, but then, we were willing victims. Henriette, mother, worried herself to death over us, but our fathers just beat us solemnly, in our house and the house next door.

We got both whipped and grounded for life when we stole firecrackers for the feast of St. John, and threw them to the outhouse belonging to a nearby fine monastery, only to see the well-fed monks there had fleet feet, no matter if they had had time to wipe their a
sses properly or not. They chased us faithfully all the way to Notre Dame, where a golden religious procession forced them to adopt a calmer posture. Eventually, we got home, having been chased by a vicious gang from Il de la Cite, boys terrorizing the parliament and the prison blocks, but we will never forget the shrieks of the shitting monks as the loud and painful fireworks went off. We were alike in that, at least. We enjoyed a good prank and ever looked for opportunities to make them. We used to hide various items, often firecrackers we stole under the main stairway, for in the bottom floor there was a shadowy wall where some planks were loose, and there was a wide space one could hide many things. We were sneaky bastards, Marie. It was our treasure cave.

Soon, pushing towards our tenth year, Gilbert dropped much of
the remains of his aggressive posturing and his mood sank to brooding, his silent, sullen moments taking over. He started to mumble to himself, nod his head sagely and to our discomfort, he became a dark schemer who disdained games of valor. While that spared Florien and I some unwanted bruises, I trusted Gilbert much less. On the now very rare occasions we took a moment to read, Gilbert admired tricksters over warriors, Achilles over Hercules and always said it is wise to loyal, but it is best to be faithful to many. He loved the deepest secrets, started to keep things hidden from us and used intrigue and knowledge for evil, hurting people, sometimes us. He was no longer interested in bright swords and innocent games, and I felt I did not know him, though he still spoke and confined in Florian. I thought perhaps a demon had crept inside him. Gilbert became strangely arrogant, heeding the whispering of his father, who seemed to approve of this new Gilbert, and apparently thought himself valuable, handsome, and more astute than the rest of us.

So it was that for the first twelve years in my life, I grew under Colbert’s leaking roof. We paid him modest rent, and did not own our own accommodation, but it was home. Imagine; love, in your splendor, that you lived in a room though not alone, but with the whole family blustering around you. You see, by 1789 I had two wonderful siblings. Jean and Julie, beautiful twins, who were sleeping next to us in a small blue bed with tall and rough wooden sides, and the rest of us, shared one large, creaky bed. In the room we live
d in, we had little else but a rickety table, some chairs, fireplace, cookery, cutlery, and a lot of patience. There were no real draperies, only thin curtains, no fancy, gold lined furniture, no wooden, carved, and etched closets, and roomful drawers. A master could afford those things, though never so a journeyman. Sometimes, Marie, judging by how people spoke about masters and their journeymen, I have to wonder they did not all kill each other before the revolution. They certainly did during. They depended on each other, but journeyman, disappointed if he did not make a master, would turn into a vicious beast, a nuisance at best, a danger at worst for the master.

The house looked strangely beautiful, with fine miniature columns on each side of the windows, the plaster of the walls intriguingly arranged to make the house seem richer than the others, but in truth, it was old. The worst was the roof, Marie. It leaked, and queerly enough, it did not always leak from the same place. It leaked from one place in the spring, another in the fall, and a man who had promised to look at it while fixing the badly mortared chimney had fallen four long stories down, and broken his back and lost his sight. We occasionally saw him join the sad, blind beggars who tour the city from their convent St-Honoré, gathering coin and food for their ilk. Many such blind men and women died before they learned the sounds, smells and dangers of the world of the blind Paris because there are thousands of carts and wildly riding nobles around. Especially the brutal wagons, their drivers yelling: ‘gare!’ angrily, warning the hapless in the dirty streets to step out of the way, still kill hundreds of people every year, even those who could see. Beggars, Marie, are with no hope. I hope I never have to endure what the man had to endure, after he fell.

The room we occupied was clean. It had faded blue walls, brick fireplace that fairly well heated the room in the winter, the floors were old oak, creaky but sturdy, used and stained, but in good repair. It was high up the street, so the stink of the below did not inconvenience the family, at least too badly. Below, where the sonneurs ordered the merchants to sweep the trash and shit to the disgusting central gutter, if could get mighty uncomfortable.

Yes, dear. We shat in a bowl, all of us, and emptied it down to the street, not unlike an animal in a stall, forgotten by the farmer.

This was before I toured the country, and it was disgusting, but not horrible. Only after visiting the cleaner, pristine villages and equally pristine farmhouses and mansions, I understood the difference. In Paris, we all did it. The city was rife with nasty excrement from all the holes you can imagine, Marie, both man’s and beasts. You had shit of many colors, piss to fill a river, animal dung from one end of the street to another, unknown dung of strange substance, and the stale smell of sweat and vomit lingering around, not to mention the sickly sweet aroma of rotting food. In fact, dear, you could track your whereabouts in the city by the way things smelled and sounded. In the morning, St-Denis Street was a place for the insomniacs; the stream of grain wagons creaked to the city all through the long night. In the Les Halles, you choked on the horror of the stench of the fish market. Imagine the rancid meat fumes, rotten vegetables and fruit, the sweat. Fish smell permeated some of the streets all the time and not only in the market hours. Rue de la Cosonnerie was a place where few ventured due to the smell of gutted innards, same with Rue Montorgueil. Horrible, Marie, just horrible. The rotten vegetables at St-Honoré? My God, Marie. I puke to think about it, now. There are streets like that in Cherbourg, I know. I bet there are no such inconveniences in your home. You even had to ware the pavement in some of the nastier places. St. Denis street, the end that runs to Il de la Cite, the butcher shops there, still cause blood to cake madly in your shoes, and sometimes you think you have grown after venturing there. I will not mention the filth-ridden sewers that pumped the plagued deluge to Seine, especially near Palais Royal gardens. Well, I did, but that is all I will say about it, dear.

Thankfully, the Cordeliers section was devoid of most of these nasty issues. Our streets were filled with busy draperies, secluded goldsmiths, some fine bakeries, and many gorgeous bookstores. People would roast meat in the street to sell it, but there were few horrible stenches caused by the craftsmen. It was all relatively nice but for the ever present gutters. Can you imagine this, Marie? How we lived? I doubt it. You think it all sounds like hell or hades. We were happy, I think.

Yet, there is always something unfortunate that is creeping up to you, silent in the shadows, slithering through the mud, and life will change, and we can only pray and breath as we wait for it.

In 1788, the quarrelsome Parisian parliament had been raising true hell, for the corpulent government, the damned country and the imbecile king were in a crisis. The country was bankrupt as a gluttonous baker, not able to meet its morbid debts, though that did not really mean anything to a small girl, expecting sweet bread and continuous happiness. When the financial minister Brienne told the surprised creditors that there would be a grand meeting of all the estates to solve the dreadful fiscal crisis, he set off the happenings that would make France a different country for such a long time. Basically, he would cause the death of hundreds of thousands
of people; he would kill the monarchs, the calendar and God itself. In some small, foolish way I knew something was happening, but did not truly appreciate the magnitude of the turmoil that was about to push us all to a desperate struggle for our lives.

The monarchs, love, did not help the situation. Stiff backed, stubborn and obstinate in their fat glory, they did not heed the warning signs. Not only were there rumors about the deliciously lustful diamond necklace disgrace and the queen possibly being a whore, there was severe argument on how the nation should be run to avoid such murderous issues in the future. The exclusive offices in the army for the nobility, parliament fighting the king’s decisions, the closure of political clubs?

Personally, I doubt these things really mattered.

Having endured constant hunger in the army, I later decided the whole episode that was to take place in unsuspecting France was hunger, Marie, my dear. People do not care about their divine rights half as much as they do about their growling, empty bellies, or those of their unhappy children, already at peril by the many deadly diseases that can snatch them away to undeserving God. I have seen potato fill the happy bellies of some nations, corn the others, but in France, no potato ever took root because it was not endorsed. I think, Marie, that the foolish revolution would not have taken place, had it not been for the failure of the fucking potato and Frenchman’s love for bread.