Radiant Days (22 page)

“Yes.” I grabbed it and stuffed it into my pocket. Arthur looked annoyed, but when he saw my panicked face, he grinned.

“Better move quick, or you’ll miss everything. Whatever it is,” he added, and ducked past a lumbering man in the ragged remains of a military cap and jacket.

I stuck with him, but seeing anything was hopeless. There were just too many people, a stinking, fast-moving river that bore us along like insects. I saw nothing but bedraggled women’s hats and the bright red caps of men who looked like laborers, with chapped, sunburned faces and raw red hands.

But after a short while, the crowd began to fan out and Arthur
slowed to a trot. We’d reached an open area, a broad plaza with a tall monument in its center. A freezing wind tossed up flurries of dead leaves and tattered broadsheets. Beneath the monument, a ragtag crew of uniformed soldiers marched back and forth, many of them limping and some covered with soiled bandages.

“Who are they?” I asked, fighting to catch my breath.

“National Guard,” said Arthur. He shaded his eyes and squinted. “Citizens’ militia, guys who were soldiers and ordinary people. The government’s not protecting us, so we’ve taken it into our own hands.”

Four men led this beggars’ parade. Two played battered horns, the others a drum and tin whistle. Filthy children ran alongside them, shouting and cheering and sometimes throwing rocks. Occasionally a soldier broke rank to chase them off. The men carried rifles and wore crimson sashes around their waists. The drummer was missing an arm. As they marched, boys and old men and even some women joined their ranks, arms linked as they chanted.

“Bread or blood!”

“Property is theft!”

“Long live the Commune!”

More and more people thronged the plaza, streaming in from alleys and the main boulevard. The impromptu parade threatened to become a riot. It was difficult now to see the soldiers through their mass of supporters. The chanting chorus grew louder and more angry.

“Bread or blood!”

“Blood!”

Arthur turned to me, face flushed and eyes shining. “Let’s try to get closer to the river—I think we can see better there.”

We fought our way through the crowd, the hot stench of sweat and sour wine at last giving way to a blast of cold air that smelled sweet in comparison, despite the muddy stink of the river. We dodged a man hobbling on homemade crutches, and were free.

We stood at the far end of the plaza. To one side, the canal ran toward the river. Before us, the ground rose toward an embankment that overlooked river and canal alike, and afforded an open view of the crowd. The wind carried snatches of chatter.

“. . . all damned…”

“Couldn’t see her for the blood.”

“. . . lost him, I couldn’t stop…”

I thought we’d at least stand still long enough to catch our breath, but Arthur immediately headed toward the embankment and began to stride up the grassy slope. A solitary old man with a fishing pole stood at the top, his line dangling into the murky Seine. My heart leaped.

“Ted!” I shouted. The man didn’t move. I started to call out again, but Arthur silenced me roughly.

“Leave him alone. He’s just some tramp.”

As though the man had heard, he glanced over his shoulder. He was younger than Ted, and shorter, and one eye was covered with a white patch of cloth.

I turned and trudged after Arthur, hunching against the wind. He stood at the other end of the embankment, silhouetted against
the wintry blue sky. Fifteen feet below us, an ancient stone culvert spewed foul-smelling water into the canal, which a few yards farther on joined the river. A crumbling pier jutted above the culvert. Arthur pulled himself atop it, leaned down to help me up beside him. We turned and looked back at the plaza.

The soldiers continued to march—I could pick them out from the encroaching mob by the glint of sunlight on their rifles. All around them, the mass of onlookers fought and shoved. I watched as a pickpocket stole a man’s watch. Another man lifted a woman’s skirts; she whirled to punch him, and he crumpled to the muddy ground.

No one looked up at us. Arthur turned to me, his face exultant.

“We’ve climbed the highest tower!” he shouted above the wind.

I laughed, my exhaustion and terror and bewilderment burned away. I felt invisible, invincible; godlike. I stooped to strike my palm against the concrete pier and said, “I wish I could tag this.”

Arthur grinned. “I know. It’s amazing, isn’t it?”

I straightened and stared out across the plaza, at shops and rows of houses along the wide boulevards, bomb craters and warehouses and stables, smoking chimneys and rubble-strewn streets. But no skyscrapers, no electric plants, no power lines. The tallest building was a cathedral. In the distance, where the river curved, I saw a series of arched bridges, the spires of churches, and a shining white dome. I picked out the charred stumps of trees, a formal garden filled with broken statuary.

It all appeared small and eerily unreal—like a diorama, only
moving and alive. Thumbprint clouds moved across the sky. Horses pulled carriages, tiny as if glimpsed through a backward telescope. Minute people in old-fashioned clothes walked side by side, as children played with a hoop. Rats no larger than ants scurried along the riverbank. My skin prickled with fear, and an eerie sense of recognition. It took me a moment to realize what, exactly, this view reminded me of.

But then it was like peeling back a sheet of tracing paper to see the original image beneath: the painting I’d fallen in love with at the National Gallery,
The Temptation of Saint Anthony.

Only of course it wasn’t the same. There had been no cathedral in the painting, no horse-drawn carriage or couples on a promenade, no ragtag soldiers and jeering crowds; just as now there were no men peering from trees, no goblin-like figures or boats rowing across the gray-white clouds.

Yet in some way that I could neither explain nor understand, I knew they were both visions of the same thing.

“Merle, look—”

I started, glanced up to see Arthur pointing at the canal. Its bank was strewn with flotsam—weathered boards, wooden spokes that had once formed a carriage wheel, a slimy mound of rope. A group of boys played with the detritus, making boats from old newspaper and launching them into the water, where they invariably capsized and floated past in sodden gray lumps, until the canal joined the river and they were lost to sight.

“Do you see him?” Arthur said, drawing up beside me and inclining his head. “There—a policeman.”

A few feet from the boys a man stood, back to them as he
surveyed the crowd. He wore a crisp blue uniform with a bright yellow belt and observed the militia’s drill with grave interest, frowning as he smoothed his mustache. Now and then he would remove a small red notebook from his breast pocket and write something, then put it away. Behind his back, the boys looked over their shoulders at him, making faces and sniggering. One made oinking sounds. Another furtively tossed a pebble at his hat.

The policeman started. He patted his hat and peered up into the sky, then turned, scowling, toward the canal bank.

But the boys appeared all innocence, intent upon their makeshift regatta. The policeman turned away again, continuing to observe the demonstration and take notes. Every few minutes, one of the boys threw another pebble at his hat, and the puppet show repeated itself.

“Like teasing a cat.” Arthur shook his head. “You’d think they’d get bored. Or he would. Ah, there he goes—”

The policeman cast a final, affronted glance at the boys. He crossed his arms and stepped toward the crowd, brow furrowed. A few people turned to heckle him.

“Why aren’t
you
marching?” shouted a heavyset woman in a black cap. “Scared?”

The policeman said nothing.

“Too good for us, huh?” Another woman jostled up alongside the first. As though she were a conjuror, she reached into the crowd and yanked an ancient man to her side, stooped and wizened as a stork. “
He
volunteered to join up, but they wouldn’t take him because he’s ninety-three years old.”

The old man gave the police officer a mock salute and grinned, displaying a single tooth. The policeman raised an eyebrow but remained impassive.

“Maybe they wouldn’t take him,” said the first woman. Beside her loomed a giant of a man, wearing a blue smock, a red cap, and heavy hobnailed boots. “Marcel here, he’s in charge of volunteers—maybe you should talk to him, eh?”

A small crowd had broken away from the demonstration to watch, laughing as the old man capered and saluted the policeman again and again. Several men pushed their way forward to stand beside Marcel.

“You know, I don’t recall seeing him at any of the Red Club meetings,” one drawled.

The boys had abandoned their boats to watch. Beside me, Arthur shifted to get a better view.

“We need a few good men.” Marcel stepped toward the policeman, towering above him. “You can join up now if you like, how’s that?”

More raucous laughter as people hurried to see what was happening. The horns and drums grew silent as soldiers broke formation and ran over. The policeman stood, unperturbed, and fingered the end of his mustache, lost in thought. Finally, he reached into his breast pocket and once again withdrew his red notepad and pencil. He opened the notebook, with a few neat strokes wrote something, and raised his head.

“Marcel…” He stared up at the big man. “Your last name, please?”

Marcel gaped. “My name?”

“Yes. These demonstrations by the militia…” The policeman gazed blandly at the soldiers, who stared back with open hostility. “They encourage revolutionary thought. It’s a threat to the stability of the government. It is my duty to report all of you.”

“Report us?” someone cried out in disbelief. “To whom?”

“To the proper authorities. One at a time, please.” The policeman pointed his pencil at Marcel. “I must ask you again—your name, sir.”

“I’ll give you my name.” Marcel’s massive arm swung out to strike the policeman and sent him sprawling. “It’s Langois. That’s L—A—”

As he pronounced each letter, he kicked viciously at the fallen man. The policeman grunted, then cried out in pain.

“N—G—”

“Stop, please!”

“—O—”

“I beg you, pl—”
The policeman raised a hand feebly, his face awash with blood. His hat tumbled into the canal and bobbed toward the embankment.

“Shut
up
!” Marcel kicked him again. The policeman shouted in anguish, his cry swallowed by deafening cheers as Marcel pumped his fist. “Solidarity!” he bellowed. “Long live the Commune!”

I lost sight of the writhing figure on the ground as the mob surged around him.

“Here!” A boy dragged a long board from the rubbish, calling to Marcel. “Get that rope!”

I watched in horror as the boys and Marcel tied the doomed
policeman to the plank. He struggled uselessly, his back against the board, his body swathed in gray coils.

My stomach roiled; I tasted blood where I’d bitten the inside of my cheek.

Yet I couldn’t look away. It was as though two Merles stood there, side by side: the one that numbly observed the man’s torment and the one that recorded every detail of it, noting the play of light and shadow across the man’s face, the crosshatch of hemp fibers and blotched flesh. There was me, and somebody else.

That somebody else watched motionless as the crowd lifted the plank with the policeman bound to it, carried it a few steps, and flung it into the canal. There was a report like a cannonshot as the board struck the water’s surface. For an instant it was submerged. Then the plank bobbed back to the surface, and began its descent to the Seine.

“My God,” whispered Arthur.

I glanced at his rapt face and swiftly turned away, repelled and sickened: did I look like that?

Below us the boys darted along the canal path. Whenever the plank floated toward the shore, someone ran to the bank and pushed it off again. A small group began to drunkenly sing, linking arms, when a trumpet fanfare rang out.

The boys halted and looked back. An angry voice shouted a command, followed by another fanfare and more shouting. The soldiers groaned, shouldered their rifles, and trudged back toward the center of the plaza. Drumbeats sounded, and a sergeant’s call
to order. Murmuring, the rest of the crowd turned to follow the militia. The boys ran after them.

Only Arthur and I remained on the embankment, watching as the current bore its human vessel toward the river. The man’s face had collapsed into a ruin of violet flesh. For a fraction of a second his gaze met mine. I stepped away from the edge of the embankment and turned toward Arthur.

He was gone.

“Arthur?” I scanned the embankment and saw no one, glanced down at the plaza and spotted a lanky form, black-clad, running across the cobblestones to where the crowd had gathered to watch the militia’s drill.

“Arthur!” I shouted, but my words were swallowed by the wind. I started to run down the grassy hillside but almost immediately drew up short. Already he had disappeared within a throng that had now swelled to thousands, many of them bearing rifles or lethal-looking farm tools. I scrambled back to the top of the embankment, numb with despair.

I was trapped. Even if I could find Arthur again, he’d shown little interest in me, and had raced off without even a cursory good-bye. The thought of facing people who had tortured and murdered a policeman as calmly as they would have cut down a dead tree made me think that standing on such an exposed spot might be suicidal.

Yet where could I go? If I left the embankment, sooner or later I’d run into someone whose language I didn’t understand, in a world that had existed almost a hundred years before I was born.
I shivered, slowly walked to the other end of the promontory, and stared at the river below. It moved swiftly, tawny water green-flecked in the thin sunlight. I could just make out a small black shape, moving with the current downstream.

I slid a hand into my pocket and fingered the fish-bone key. I thought of Arthur, leaping into a river that had, somehow, brought him here; remembered how I’d stood upon a concrete pier above the Potomac and thought of how easy it would be to jump and drown in that icy water.