Le Temps des Cerises (41 page)

‘Thank you, Maria,' she said quietly before bowing an acknowledgement to the corporal and leading her line back into the courtyard, her silk dress dragging over the dirt and coarse grass. She got a blow for her pains however – an officer struck her full in the face with his riding crop, cutting open her cheek. She didn't cry out or even flinch but when he moved away from her onto another victim, her eyes were brilliant green and full of loathing.

‘She is just like the girl who played
Athalie
!' commented the captain; and the three men watched the herd of prisoners being whipped, bullied and shouted out of the courtyard and onto the wasteland. Threats of ‘stragglers will be shot' kept the bunch moving onwards and Monsieur Lafayette saw the English gentleman smiling encouragingly at his wife who limped painfully behind him, her shoes half off her feet.

‘Where are they taking them?' he asked suddenly, aghast by the whole proceedings and fearfully anxious for Eveline's safety.
What if she were to die at the barricades or worse still be taken prisoner?

‘To the Bois,' replied the captain, ‘to be sifted, then on to Versailles.'

‘To be sifted?' the confectioner echoed wonderingly. ‘You make them sound like sacks of flour! Do you mean some are to be freed in the Bois?'

The captain gave a humourless laugh like a little scratch of air. ‘No, I mean that some are to be shot – depending on how involved they have been in revolutionary warfare. You can usually tell by looking at them.'

Monsieur Lafayette shivered, despite the blazing heat, and as soon as the way was clear he set off again at a lumbering trot, over the mounds of dock weed and clumps of nettle, not bothering this time to dash his hands against them. With black and determined eyes he gestured to the two men behind to keep up with him – he dare not slacken his pace for fear of being too late to save Eveline The corns on his toes pressed painfully against his shoes and his heart drummed like thunder in his chest. He felt as if he were going to have a heart attack but he dare not slacken his pace… he had a soul to save now. A soul in jeopardy at the barricades. He almost wished he hadn't told them he knew where Alphonse Duchamp lived at all. (
The memory of it still was like a knife through the heart.)
He led the way over the last few yards and into the network of alleyways that bordered the wasteland on one side and were bordered on the other by courtyards filled with washing lines and latrines stinking putrid in the humid air. With a trembling head and trembling legs he ushered the two men out into the middle of the Rue D'Enfer.
There
. There it was, the house that had seared itself into his consciousness like a firebrand one raining moonlit winter's night.

‘This isn't the sort of house I expected.' The captain eyed the dilapidated building doubtfully, craning his long stick-insect neck up at it. ‘I thought the iceman would live in a much grander abode. Are you sure this is correct?'

‘Don't forget,' put in the corporal, panting, with his unerring psychological ability, ‘that he is a master of disguise. It would be just like him to hole up in a place like this.'

‘I am sure,' said Monsieur Lafayette with a touch of bitterness for the memory of Eveline and Alphonse together was still like a knife through the heart. And he led the two men up the steps, past the empty cubicle of glass to the very door he'd had the dubious pleasure of peeping through one luminous, heartbreaking, rain-soaked dawn.

Chapter thirty-three

Stumbling out of the Gare du Nord, Bernadine almost wept with despair. There were no trains running, not to Rhône in any case. The Commune had commandeered the railway for its own use and she had been met with blank stares, disapproving looks, laughter, ridicule – everything she'd been so apprehensive of. A nun on her way to Rhône with a baby… How stupid, how foolish, how rash she had been!

There was nowhere to go. She was lost in the wilderness. No refuge, no shelter… She sank down on the nearest available patch of grass in order to gather her thoughts and to let Aggie out of the papoose for she was screaming now fit to burst, her tooth playing her up presumably or some such trivial thing. There was a bench, a grand beech tree, the remains of a respectable old park; and Bernadine sat wearily, with aching limbs, fumbling over the strings of the papoose. Already she missed the cool quiet of the convent garden, her longitude and latitude of Paradise Lost, with its tiger lilies and ox-eyed daisies, yellow-skinned tomatoes and orange-bellied singing toads that each struck a different note at sunset…. Dashing the tears away from her eyes, she stared up at the sky with agitation. It could have been sunset now, though it was barely noon, the sky grown black and heavy with regret, raining giant papery drops like singed butterflies or a swarm of locusts. It was as if somebody had opened a Pandora's box somewhere in the city or the fall of Babylon in the Book of Revelations was coming to pass at this very instant.

She dug her fingers into Aggie who screamed angrily and wriggled out of her grasp, setting off in a crab-like crawl – head down, bottom upwards – to the grand old beech tree. Bernadine watched her distractedly, her mind racing over and over. If she couldn't get a train, perhaps she could get a boat. There were hundreds of them up and down the Seine, carrying the wounded – she'd seen the river red and bloody under the arches when she'd crossed by the Pont des Arts. If she couldn't get a boat, perhaps she could walk and yet, of course, it was all hopeless. She barely had enough money to get herself a sugared ice. The uniformed guard had told her the four strange coins would barely get her a sugared ice, let alone get her to Rhône. He had told her too, very roughly, to get out of the way and go home, and she had meekly obeyed. It filled her with a sudden belated rage to think how meekly she had obeyed – the habit of a lifetime was hard to break. How cheated she felt! The proprietor had cheated her. Monsieur Lafayette had cheated her. Ernest had cheated her by dying. The Mother Superior by taking her baby away – she could still hear the screams in the distance, an Almighty reprimand… even God had cheated her. And how she had cheated herself.

The fury built up in her as she sat on the park bench, the black paper butterflies falling onto her bare head and cheeks; and she watched Aggie crowing in delight over a half-rotten apple core and dirty sandwich – some outdoor repast left in a hurry. She wanted to strike the child then, that poor helpless infant, for simply existing, for forcing her to question every ounce of her being and she drummed her hands against the hard wooden bench until she drew blood from the knuckles. That quiet hymn of tenderness, the
Ave Maris Stella
evaded her heart though she searched for it. Instead she saw the Mother Superior's eyes so wholly pious, so wholly righteous, so wholly correct, as she swept the little white bundle away. Bernadine had tried to imagine her face – Ernest's grave unmistakable eyes, his tall willowy grace, her own chestnut curls for she had been proud of them once… Clad in sunlight, clothed in stars, under her feet the moon…
How could she leave her daughter to the mercy of Monsieur Lafayette? How could she shed her past like a tired old skin?

The ground trembled – as if God had given it a good shaking. He could unmake the world, quailed Bernadine, as easily as He had made it. Let there be darkness instead of light, night instead of day. Let there be sightless, clueless, creeping creatures, great and small, fat and thin. Let there be wingless, songless birds, mute streams and waterfalls, dry and bone-filled oceans. He could end it all with a blink of an eye if He chose to…
before she had a chance to find her daughter
… She wondered now if she would even have taken a train, had they been running. If she wouldn't have turned back at some point in her journey or continued on and on into blackness and out the other side again.

She called Aggie to her firmly, then shrilly, then angrily, before finally striding over, picking her up and forcing her into the papoose. Aggie protested, kicking and screaming, but all Bernadine heard or felt were the kicks, screams and protests of her own newborn as the Mother Superior whisked her away in a tiny white and bloodstained apron. Heedless of the guns, the shells, the trembling earth, she set her face for the heart of the city – a heart of light that was being engulfed and consumed by fires of darkness and madness. Aggie, still protesting, held her dirty glorious prize aloft, the rotten apple core squashed and mashed in her fat little hand; and Bernadine set her face hard and etched as a tablet of stone. She wasn't going to shed her past like a tired old skin for only snakes did that.
Only snakes did that.

Chapter thirty-four

The young corporal, following close at his captain's polished heels, was surprised to find the iceman at home. He'd expected there to be more waiting around or at the very least more sticking his hand into dreadful little orifices and dismal crevices. But no, there he was sitting on the floor amidst a pile of books and papers, his head in his hands – if it really was the iceman. Could this be the fellow who'd caused such embarrassment to the Versailles government, who'd single-handedly started a revolution, who'd gone on such reckless and dangerous missions? He looked too quiet, too scholarly, the corporal delving deep, might almost have said too spiritual a man with his soft, gentle eyes and nervous half smile. No wonder he'd been so hard to track down. Everyone had been looking for the wrong sort of man! They'd been searching for a bolder fellow, a daredevil, not some chap who looked as if he couldn't even say boo to a goose. That was all part of the disguise, the corporal supposed. That was all part of the clever disguise. And, moreover, still waters ran very deep.

It was a typical bachelor's pad – sparsely furnished with one or two ornaments dusted rarely. Just the right amount of cleanliness for a masculine presence, the dishes washed and stacked (apart from a rather unpleasant-looking saucepan spattered with vermicelli); the pens on the writing desk neatly arranged – betokening an ordered and rational mind; and the inevitable clock on the mantel (unusual choice, a cuckoo clock, but a good make all the same) for very few men could manage without a timepiece. Women functioned fairly well following their own natural rhythms but very few men could cope without a timepiece on their person or in their apartment or both. That, the corporal knew to be a psychological fact.

The captain, having taken the situation in at a glance, was grilling the iceman as to the materials at his feet.

‘Are these revolutionary papers you were hoping to destroy?' He nudged a few printed pages with the tip of a polished toe.

‘These?' The iceman, who'd jumped up when the two men entered, stared at the captain in astonishment, the nervous half smile still hovering about his lips. ‘These are…' he seemed to hesitate for a moment, ‘just words. Only words.'

‘Just words!' hissed the captain, waving his pistol about wildly in the air, a little too wildly for the corporal's liking. It was liable to go off unexpectedly being waved about like that. ‘There is no such thing as just words. They are the most inflammable things in history, in existence. They enter the heart, the brain, the imagination, reminding us of our mortality and immortality, reminding us that we are simply the spaces between the lines and cursors of the universe. They can damage a man more easily than a bullet or a fire bomb. I could kill a man as easily with a word as with a bullet.'

‘Once upon a time,' replied the iceman slowly, ‘I would have agreed with you but not any more.' To the corporal's ears his voice was tinged with melancholy, longing, regret… bitterness perhaps. There were too many layers even for his psychological abilities to fathom. ‘Now I think it is rather our actions that make us men, not our words. What do you want of me in any case? I will not give you any names if that is what you have come for.'

‘Just one,' purred the captain, his spare, angular frame bent intimidatingly at the waist, ‘your own. Are you or are you not Alphonse Duchamp?'

The corporal, standing in his usual position by the door, noted the surprise and hesitation once more. He could deny it of course, but there wasn't much point. In the end the evidence would be found. It was only a question of time before the evidence was found, and he was arrested and sent to jail. The only decent thing to do was to own up to his existence, stand tall in his identity, which he did, after a few more moments hesitation, proudly and firmly, revealing himself in the eyes of the corporal at least to be that sort of man
after all.

‘Yes I am,' he smiled, ‘Alphonse Duchamp. What of it?'

Even the captain was taken aback by the look on the iceman's face. It was a look of serenity, even joy. The sort of look you saw on the face of a corpse who'd passed an easeful death; or the rapture of a religious fanatic in communion with their god; even the transport of a swooning virgin in the arms of her lover. It wasn't the face of a man who was about to be carted off to jail, possibly for years, possibly even condemned to death. Alphonse Duchamp was a chameleon indeed! A master of disguise! And the corporal took his metaphorical hat off to him.

‘You are under arrest,' stated the captain loudly, a little unnerved and waving his pistol about so wildly that it went off unexpectedly, hitting the iceman as easily as a word would have done…

The corporal watched in astonishment as Alphonse Duchamp staggered then fell, raising his fist in a final Communard salute, his fine golden hair flying about his head like a halo.