Authors: James Palumbo
The scene is set. Four Napoleonic generals, his two imperial brothers, the second Messiah, a prostitute and an alien.
The two parties stare at each other in wonder. Decorum quickly prevails as Duroc advances a step and bows to Tereza. âGood evening, mademoiselle,' he says. His comrades follow. Then they click their heels in unison and nod politely to Tomas and the Alien. âMessieurs,' they say.
âIf you'll forgive me,' asks La Salle, bowing his head again, âto what do we owe this pleasure?'
âWith your permission, I wish to speak to the Emperor,' Tomas replies.
âMonsieur, we are but shades,' La Salle replies. âOur permission is not required. But perhaps we may assist?'
âOf course,' Tomas says.
âIf you will excuse us,' La Salle replies and the six comrades form a speaking circle. The men confer in loud whispers; Tomas and Tereza hear snatches of French, punctuated by loud exclamations of disagreement.
âMademoiselle, messieurs,' Duroc bows again. âIf the Emperor is to awake, etiquette must be observed. We suggest trumpets and drums.'
âAll trumpets and drums,' Gratien interjects.
âIf you'll forgive us,' Duroc continues. âI recommend a band of musicians. General Gratien suggests every trumpet and drum that ever accompanied the Emperor.'
â
C'est l'Empereur
,' Gratien adds.
âGentlemen, please decide,' Tomas replies. âWe're at your service.'
Tomas looks nervously at Tereza as the comrades again join in debate. After a further round of French exclamations they about-face.
âThe vote is for all,' Gratien announces. âIf you would be so kind.'
âOf course, general,' Tomas replies, then under his breath to Tereza, âIs it possible?'
âWhy not?' she says. âI'll just plug them all in.'
Soon the tomb begins to vibrate like the floor of a valley about to flood. Two thousand marching men emerge in formation from the shadows, in every colour and design of Napoleonic uniform, trumpets and drums at the ready.
Duroc takes command. âDrum major,' he orders. âDrummers to the left of the Emperor. Trumpeters to the right. A full drum roll if you please. Then a voluntary. On my order.'
The tomb echoes to an army of musicians taking up position around the Emperor's coffin with effortless speed and discipline.
âDrum major,' Duroc says, and nods his head.
The silence is total: not a shuffle, cough or splutter. The drum major raises his arm. A thousand drummers await his command. The drum roll is unlike any other sound on earth; more powerful than an ocean of crashing waves, more electrifying than the loudest Chinese fireworks. A nod to the trumpeters: a thousand instruments are lifted to moistened lips. He brings down his arm. The voluntary is ear splitting but majestic. It could be announcing the arrival of God himself.
The drum major beats time with stern concentration and not a flicker of emotion. The generals, for all their battle-hardened demeanour, disgrace themselves. They cry.
Rivers of tears stream on to the marble floor of the mausoleum. Keeping a straight back at this moment is more difficult than fighting the fiercest battle.
Eventually the drum major raises his arms high to signal the final crescendo. Trumpets and drums join in a deafening blast of salutation. Just as the last note fades in the air, the tomb is plunged into darkness. A cloud covers the moon's face and two thousand souls stand silent in a black abyss.
Seconds later, the brightest moonbeam ever to shine over Paris streams through one of the dome windows. Like a searchlight, painful to the eyes, it picks out a solitary figure in the surrounding darkness. Standing on top of the sarcophagus, head bowed, legs apart, hands clasped behind his back, is the greatest Frenchman of all time. The Emperor Napoleon.
A nasty surprise in a water glass
â¦
For days after the football party the fifteen-year-old girl is violently sick. But her fever and screams in the night disguise a metamorphosis. The cub has become a lioness.
She makes a plan with the help of her sister, a trainee nurse, and telephones the star player.
âHow about a game of doctors and nurses?' she says. âI'll bring a friend.'
She has chosen wisely. He likes the thought of playing doctor. In the medicine world, the doctor is king. He gives her a time and place.
The girls arrive and knock on his hotel door. His
pulse begins to race as they slip off their coats. Real nurses' uniforms. They're carrying a suitcase packed with medical toys, borrowed from the trainee's hospital, to help his operation. They lower his trousers so treatment can begin. As they slip to the floor he feels a sharp pain in his thigh. His cry lasts a second, then he hits the carpet cold.
What the girls lack in physical strength, they make up for in determination. They drag him up on to the bed. The suitcase is opened to reveal an array of instruments and drugs, including a saline drip. The girls intend to teach him a lesson, not commit murder, so the patient must be hydrated at all times. A vein is found and the saline tube inserted. The trainee nurse then fills a syringe with a more potent sedative. While she's no expert in anaesthetics, she knows enough to administer the drug in more or less the correct quantities and place.
A plastic sheet is slipped underneath the patient, he is stripped and his genitals are shaved. A haze of disinfectant wafts in the air as they swab him several times. Next the trainee attaches a tourniquet to the top of his scrotum and screws it tight. The blood-deprived area begins to turn puce. Bandages, swabs and cotton balls are at hand. All is ready. The lioness advances on her prey but is held back by her sister. She's the one with the basic expertise, after all. But not much is required. A few flicks of the scalpel deprives the star footballer of the ammunition for his assault weapon.
The blood loss is light and an antibiotic is introduced into the saline drip. The wound is stitched, the patient's
temperature taken; he is given a dose of morphine intravenously. All that remains is for the girls to pack up, which they do in minutes, hooking the saline drip to the bed-head. The whole operation has taken less than an hour.
The star player sleeps deeply but wakes at dawn. His mouth is parched and he thinks of the water on the side table. There's a dull ache between his legs, the cause of which he doesn't understand. It becomes clear when he reaches for the glass beside him.
An audience with the Emperor
â¦
The Emperor raises his head and looks around in the sepulchral gloom. Two thousand boots snap to attention. The stamp of feet echoes through the air. Then silence. The Emperor's eyes adjust to the light and he takes in the situation. With a sudden sweep he removes his hat. âMademoiselle,' he says and bows slightly. Tereza, woman of the street, avenging angel, is paid homage by France's most famous hero.
âGentlemen, good evening,' Napoleon says. âI am overjoyed to see you.' The tension breaks and the Emperor is borne in the air to cries and cheers of âVive l'Empereur!' He embraces his brothers and shakes hands with the generals, fixing each with an eagle's stare. âCome,' he motions to Tomas, and two chairs appear by his coffin's side. Napoleon sits with his army at his back; Tomas with Tereza's hand resting lightly on his shoulder and the Alien twirling to the rear. The same moonbeam still illuminates the scene.
âEmperor,' Tomas begins, âever since my conversion in
your tomb, it has been my greatest ambition to hear you speak about what defined you as a man: the guiding force behind your achievement; the inspiration of your life.'
âNo,' replies the Emperor. Not a man moves, except Tomas, who shifts in his chair uneasily, with creeping embarrassment.
âMight it be possible, Sir,' he continues, âto say a few words on the philosophy that shaped your glory, and the heroic principles from which we can learn?'
âNo,' Napoleon repeats. Tereza's hand tightens on Tomas's shoulder in a comforting squeeze. The Alien squelches forward a step. He too supports Tomas in this, the most excruciating moment in history.
âForgive me ⦠' Tomas continues.
Napoleon raises a hand and cuts him off. âI can tell you in a word.'
A look of relief floods Tomas's face. He may not be offering a speech, but the Emperor is at least engaged. He leans forward eagerly.
The Emperor pauses. âFailure,' Napoleon says.
âExcuse me?' Tomas queries.
âFailure,' the Emperor repeats, âit's the defining word of my success.'
âI don't understand,' Tomas says.
âDo you recall,' Napoleon asks, âthe night before your execution, when you had no need of toothpaste?'
âI do,' Tomas replies.
âWhy was that?' Napoleon asks.
âBecause at last I had a perspective on life. Facing death in the morning, I understood the difference between
the important and the trivial, and I lamented so much time wasted on nonsense.'
âThat's correct,' Napoleon replies. âA worthy sentiment, but felt only hours before your death. You see, I was fortunate to be born with it.'
âBut what of your glories, the victories and riches?' Tomas asks.
âImmaterial and incidental. Why should I care about these things? Are they with me now? Do you suppose I hover above my tomb each day and rejoice in what I no longer have? I'm dead. Because I reached a point of self-realisation early in life, I put aside irrelevances.'
âBut man needs security, achievement and wealth,' Tomas says.
âDoes he? Is this what you're taught at school â to join a bank and only think about money? Do men need these things? Or only herd-followers crave them? There are two sorts of men, my friend: those who seek riches and glory, and the others. The former will, no doubt, find what they seek, in varying degrees. So? They die. What imprint do they leave? Nothing. Only echoes. The others seek a higher purpose: to make a difference to those around them; to change, shape or improve things, if only to a small extent.'
âBut can't the wealth and glory seekers do this as well?' Tomas asks.
âYes,' Napoleon replies, âbut never to achieve greatness. They're constrained by their needs, unable to take the risks that define the life of a great man.'
âBut we all take risks,' Tomas says.
âDo we? Define the risk taker.'
Tomas pauses to think. âStrong and brave,' he replies.
âYou may as well add “foolish”,' Napoleon says. âNo, the risk taker is defined by one idea only, burned into his soul: a willingness to fail. That's why wealth and glory seekers can't qualify. They may take risks but only up to a point. And they would never endanger their spoils or glory.'
âAnd failure?' asks Tomas. âIs that glorious?'
âLike death,' Napoleon replies. âIf you take risks, by definition you'll fail. Of course there'll be successes but also reversals, perhaps many. You may even end in failure. I took so many risks my failure was inevitable. Do you think I didn't know that? I'm surprised at how you perceive failure. It should be celebrated.'
âSo you're saying that in failure you succeed?'
âOf course. Look at me in this glorious tomb, the central point of this city, surrounded by my brothers and comrades in arms. I'm the happiest man dead there is.'
âAnd what did these failures achieve?' Tomas asks.
Napoleon pauses, remembering those days of colour and valour that will never return.
âMy friend,' says Napoleon. âMy defeats, just as much as my victories, gave France a certain idea of herself. Of pride, possibilities; sadnesses and reversals, yes, but also courage, colour and glory. I didn't die old and rich in a comfortable bed, but I gave France a code for living; more than that a life force.'
Napoleon shifts his sword to a more comfortable position and smiles at Tomas.
Tereza has hung in the background and is reluctant to intrude. But there's a practical point to consider, their broken craft. âSir,' she asks, âmay we beg a favour?'
âOf course, mademoiselle.'
âOur craft's broken and ⦠' Napoleon holds up an arm to command silence, then brings both hands together with a resounding crash. He smiles at Tereza. It's clear the machine can travel once more in time and space.
âMy friends,' Napoleon says. âYou must excuse me. Dawn is breaking and we must say farewell. Until we meet again.' With that, the Emperor and his phantom army fade into the shadows.
Kitchen etiquette
â¦
The Alien's excited. Pierre is taking him to a dinner party, his first social contact with these strange creatures who raise emperors from the dead. Pierre has befriended the Alien at the new Messiah's behest and is using his investigative powers to discover some remarkable facts about a planet and species a million galaxies away.
The Alien wasn't out for a walk when he collided with the time machine, as Tereza suggested, but standing on a mountain top. This was where his telekinetic powers were strongest, in a landscape uninterrupted by the civilising works of the Alien tentacle. The Alien's society is entirely based on the telekinetic rotation of any round or spherical object. The species â sixty billion strong â even evolved physically to serve this purpose.
Just as humans breathe, Aliens rotate. But this action,
perfected over the millennia, is driven by more than a basic biological need. Their planet and all its activities â energy, transport, sport â is powered by telekinetic rotation. This particular Alien is one of its practiced masters. At the time of his mountain-top abduction he was rotating the gigantic circular turbines of the planet's power station. He is now eying an impressive rack of plates stacked artfully on the kitchen wall.
âIt's only a kitchen supper,' says the hostess, who shows Pierre and the Alien around her gleaming white culinary operating theatre. âWe've just had it done.' It's now clear why dinner is in the kitchen. The hostess is bursting with pride at this mausoleum of imitation wood and marble. âIce?' she asks the Alien, holding up a drink. The Alien senses she wants him to say yes, so he obliges. She presses the glass against a lever in a gesture that says, âLook, automatic dispenser.'