Le Temps des Cerises (37 page)

He was sick at heart when he reached his rooms and he raced up the steps and flung himself through the door and onto the floor, curling his knees up into his chest and rolling about from side to side like a wounded animal or a child in distress. He rolled right into his bookcase and he gazed up with sudden hatred at the books that lined the shelves in their serried little ranks. Books about daring and courage, love, duty, passion, friendship – all the fine things a human life was made up of. How they had lied to him, those books. He clawed them down one by one, ripping their pages with his long delicate fingers and breaking their spines until a host of jumbled-up words lay scattered on the threadbare carpet. How they had laughed at him, those words. It was all so easy in words to do the right thing yet so hard in reality
. Dearest Maman
, he began in his head, wondering what on earth he could ever write next. From now on what on earth could he ever write next? And he wept silent tears of shame and despair, wishing he was somewhere other than he was, wishing he was someone other than he was.

Chapter twenty-nine

‘It is like Rome under Tiberius!' finished Monsieur Lafayette, pouring himself a glass of otherworldly nectar with one hand and wiping a handkerchief over his face with the other. ‘The sights I have seen out there would make your hair stand on end. I swear it is like Rome after the barbarians.'

Madame Larousse gave a dreary nod while Mistigris, having made a foolish manoeuvre with one of his pawns, was hoping against hope that his opponent wouldn't notice and answered a little distractedly: ‘Rome under Tiberius, you say? How dreadful. And you saw a body too? Your turn, my dear,' he added hurriedly in an effort to rush Madame Larousse into making a mistake.

‘Oh, hundreds,' Monsieur Lafayette exaggerated. ‘All over the place. There are corpses here, there and everywhere, many of them dismembered. It was hard to tell which wrist went with which ankle, which arm with which body etcetera. It was all most gruesome.' His eyes bulged like a toad's at the memory and Mistigris, sitting back in his chair, regarded him afresh, the game forgotten.

‘Generally speaking,' he offered up, his interest piqued, ‘nature adores symmetry. She has her aberrations of course but generally speaking she is fond of symmetry and proportion. We as artists try to replicate that.'

Monsieur Lafayette cast a doubtful glance in the direction of the statues in the corner but maintained a tactful silence.

‘It would be most uncommon in nature to find a delicate wrist and large ankle on the same body. Or a sturdy shank and a fragile shoulder blade. It is the overuse or misuse of a part that causes it to swell or grow, become misshapen.'

Madame Larousse gave a coy little laugh, her eyebrows twitching ominously beneath her velvet hat. She picked up her knight, gripped it to her chest for a moment, waved it about in the air as if she were going to make a move then put it back down in the same place with a jabbing little thud.

‘Soup for dinner,' she said waspishly. ‘Skate and ginger if you must know. On the boil as we speak.'

Mistigris murmured a faint ‘delicious' while the herbalist gave his most menacing of smiles. ‘Well, my good woman, let us hope that a shell doesn't explode nearby as it did the other day when I dined with my old friend Burty. There we were minding our own business settling down to starters when a shell exploded in the garden. We were shaken on our chairs. The table rocked, the bowls rocked, the guests rocked. Colonel B's moustache was quite bespattered… Lady Wentworth's fan was utterly drenched. Burty kept lapping on quite calmly of course...'

‘Did he now?' Madame Larousse stood abruptly, her hat quivering, her face crimson.

‘... when he'd finished his last mouthful he said, quite matter of factly: “I must have a word with cook about the soup. It seems a little heavy on the salt this morning.” That is the British sense of humour you see. A little dry, a little understated. Lady Wentworth was a sport I must say. I believe she was soaked right through to her undergarments… yes my good woman,' Monsieur Lafayette addressed the still quivering hat and crimson face. ‘Are you going to cut and run with that little word too?
Undergarments
. We all wear them, even you. Stop lowering your eyelashes like a nun who's just seen a statue. Weren't you married to a grime merchant for nearly twenty years? Didn't he get a peek in your little coal hole once or twice poor man? Or was he afraid of the dark? Yes, that's it, my dear, run along to the kitchen with your little red nose in the air, it's most fetching I grant you… How on earth do you suffer her?' he added unkindly to his old friend Mistigris who was looking quite flustered by the whole conversation. ‘You're right under her thumb these days let me tell you. You're a changed man. I barely recognise you in that dapper little waistcoat. And have you really given up the grog for her?'

Mistigris nodded soberly. ‘Indeed I have. More or less. Theodora – for that is her name, what do you think of it –
I adore Theodora!
– is of the opinion that I just needed a little encouragement.'

‘Fancy that.'

‘That's all the old fellow needed, just a little encouragement. Not too much to ask is it? I'm sure I never got any from Jacques or Eveline. In fact I'm inclined to believe now that they conspired in keeping me on it for their own purposes.'

‘I hardly think so.' Monsieur Lafayette quietly demurred, lighting up a cigar and puffing silently over the heads of kings and queens, bishops and knaves. ‘Eveline has always been most solicitous of your health. She's been a good daughter to you, Renan.'

‘Oh, Eveline!' cried Mistigris, throwing his arms out so hard he almost knocked over the chessboard. ‘Where is she now? Who is it stirring the soup at this very minute? Who has cooked it? Who is about to serve it up? Not Eveline, no, but Theodora of course. Eveline has gone off to fight at the barricades, leaving her old father to fend for himself…'

The expression on Monsieur Lafayette's face changed from one of vague boredom to one of intense concentration.

‘Oh yes indeed, left me in the lurch without a second thought. If it wasn't for Theodora, bless her soul, I shouldn't have even been fed and watered. It was she who found the note, didn't want me to read it at first, fearing it would be the final straw, the straw that broke the camel's back.'

‘I didn't want to be the one,' Madame Larousse put in from the kitchen, a sanctimonious expression on her face, ‘to wield that straw.'

‘Oh, Eveline did that. Killed me with her little note. Stone dead. Just as Jacques did. Couldn't bear to tell me face to face I don't suppose, her poor dear ancient old Papa.'

‘May I see it?' Monsieur Lafayette asked gruffly, on his feet now and pacing the room in agitation.

‘See what?'

‘The note, of course. May I see Eveline's note.'

‘Oh, it is ashes now, as it deserves to be. Theodora and I put it on the fire last night.'

‘You bloody fool, Renan!' cried Monsieur Lafayette scornfully and a spasm of anger passed over his face. ‘Sitting here playing chess and drinking soup when your daughter is out at the barricades! Have you heard nothing of what I've been telling you? It is a mass slaughter out there. It is your daughter's corpse you'll be identifying in the morgue,
her
delicate wrist matching
her
delicate ankle... your daughter, Renan,
your
daughter.'

Mistigris shifted uncomfortably in his seat, looking to Madame Larousse for reassurance but she was watching Monsieur Lafayette, her eyes wide as saucers. ‘So that is how the land lies,' she mumbled to herself, a triumphant little smile twitching about her mouth as he blundered off to the fireplace to search for the remains of Eveline's note, even getting down on all fours to fumble about in the grate with the rusted old poker. It was so rare to see him so discomposed and in a sweat that the two of them were at a loss to know what to say.

‘It's no good your doing that, Monsieur Lafayette,' Madame Larousse called out a little unnecessarily in the end for by that time he was on his feet again and dusting off his knees, ‘for we put the note on last night's fire and those are this morning's ashes.'

‘Very well.' He looked up at them in defiance and it was evident that one or two tears must have astonishingly squeezed themselves out of his pin black eyes for his cheeks were streaked and shiny looking. ‘I shall find her on my own with or without a note.' And he was on the point of fetching his hat and coat when a soft and deliberate tapping on the door made them all turn around in surprise.

The young corporal, following close at his captain's polished heels, only hoped that this would turn out to be the right house. He'd lost count of the buildings they'd searched, the sheds and gardens, attics and cellars. The captain had even made him put his hand into a dog kennel lest the criminal be crouching there in the darkness. It had been a humiliating experience and one the corporal wasn't likely to forget. His hand still ached painfully where the mongrel had bitten him and he flexed his fingers worriedly now and again, fearing he may have broken a metacarpal. If only he'd kept on with his medical apprenticeship instead of joining the army – but it was too late for all that now. He had a wife and young son to support in the country and he must just make the best of it. He sniffed miserably as they entered the kitchen and the smell of soup made his throat ache almost as much as his hand.

It didn't look too promising to begin with – three old people about to eat their lunch. It didn't seem the sort of place a hardened revolutionary would hide out. Not that the corporal knew much about hardened revolutionaries. This one, apparently, was as dangerous as they came and orders were to bring him back dead or alive. Alive preferably but dead otherwise. Thiers himself had offered up a large reward for his capture and many a soldier was hoping to supplement his wages by tracking down the ‘iceman'. The problem with the iceman was that he melted in the sunshine, completely disappeared. Nobody seemed to know where he lived, what he ate, who he did or didn't sleep with. Every lead anyone touched went cold. The corporal sometimes wondered if the man really existed, if he wasn't just a figment of the government's imagination, some paranoid fabrication. The whole civil war in his opinion was paranoia from start to finish and he almost wished he hadn't come on this wretched manhunt. But the captain had begged and pleaded with him and you didn't say no to the captain.

He'd wanted someone with psychological skills, someone who could tell when a man was lying, was medically ill, off his head or simply faking it and though the corporal said so himself he fitted the bill perfectly, having studied such things during his medical apprenticeship. The bald-headed man right now for instance was decidedly faking it, smoothing his features into an expression of obsequious alertness, toadying up to the captain with hand outstretched, thankful apparently that the forces of order had arrived in the nick of time. The captain was having none of it of course. The old fellow by the chessboard seemed genuine enough, his face white and scared looking. The woman, the corporal noted, was sly and needed watching. He stationed himself by the door as always while the captain did his usual thing of scouring the room with his gimlet eyes and making the occupants feel like dirt – all in complete silence. The captain did everything in complete silence or so softly you could hardly hear him. He washed softly, walked softly, ate softly, killed softly. He was murmuring now in a very low tone, stating their business and who they were searching for and the three old people were physically straining to hear him, a look of terror on their faces. It was the most terrifying thing in the world, not being able to hear someone. That, the corporal knew, was a psychological fact. It left you in the dark, uncertain, and uncertainty made the pulse rate soar. He stared closely at the three of them, gauging their reaction. The bald-headed man's was the most intriguing. He definitely knew the name – though that was hardly surprising – for everyone more or less had heard of the iceman. But there was more to it than that: the shaking hands, sudden pallor and perspiration indicated the name meant something to him. They were physical manifestations of an inner turbulence. The corporal knew a lot about inner turbulence; he'd once witnessed a man's heart literally bursting through inner turbulence and it wasn't an experience he was likely to forget. The old man by the chessboard had stood suddenly and was asking for the iceman's name to be repeated. The captain obliged, lifting his voice maybe a semitone higher and the old man collapsed back down on his seat with a look of dismay on his face.

‘He's a friend of my daughter's,' he admitted immediately with painful honesty. ‘They have gone off somewhere, they have disappeared together – at his behest no doubt. I did not know…' he looked at the old woman for support. ‘Did you know that he was a
criminal
?'

The captain was cracking his hands with glee – a sound the corporal always associated with the agonising crunch of a snail shell underfoot – at the unexpected good news. It was the best lead they'd had so far and he would stop at nothing now, he would turn over the house until he'd turned up a button, a shoelace, anything belonging to the iceman. The corporal sniffed miserably at the sight of the coffin in the corner – no doubt the captain would make him put his hand in
that,
lest the criminal was hiding there in the darkness. He decided to try and catch the old bird's eye when he got the chance and cadge a bowl of soup off her. That wasn't too much to ask surely. Let the captain run about in damp chilly cellars, stick his hand into coffins and kennels.
He
was having no more of it. He tried valiantly to catch the old woman's eye but she was gazing fixedly at the captain.