Wolf Hunt (16 page)

everyone else had forgotten. Margont looked round at the customers. It couldn’t be Napoleon - the walls and ceiling would have been reverberating to the cries of‘Long live the Emperor!’ ‘Maestro Beethoven is here,’ repeated Saber.

Margont leant towards Luise. ‘Who’s Beethoven?’

She shrugged. ‘A composer. He was very successful in the past and his sonatas have earned him some followers. But he hasn’t managed to win the heart of the public and his detractors are legion. He’s no Mozart—’

Saber reacted violently. ‘It’s Mozart who’s no Beethoven and not the other way round!’

He made more sense when he was talking about the war.

‘So who is he, this Beethoven?’ Margont asked impatiently.

Luise pointed out a strange-looking man of about forty. Red hair was escaping here and there from a badly brushed grey wig. Thin and husk-like, he resembled a solitary insect forced by hunger to go out foraging. Absorbed in his thoughts, he lived entirely in another world exclusively woven from music.

‘He hasn’t had the best of luck,’ added Luise. They were on the point of showing 
Fidelio
 here, in Vienna. That was at the beginning of May. But when people learnt that your army was on the way, no one wanted to go to the opera any more. The notices are still up on the walls ... Add to that the fifty million contribution demanded by Napoleon to punish Vienna, which led to a host of exceptional taxes, and the high cost of living thanks to the presence of your soldiers who devour everything ... Beethoven can’t have an easy life, that’s for sure. In times of war, in order to survive, most musicians are forced to eat their scores.’

No one was paying any attention to this regular customer. Beethoven did not have to place an order; since he was a habitue, the waiter knew to bring him coffee and cream. Saber was visibly excited.

‘Have you never heard his Third Symphony? It’s fantastic. He dedicated it to Napoleon!’

At these words, Luise stifled a laugh but said no more. She wore the joyous impatient expression of someone who knew what little catastrophe was about to take place and was keen not to ruin it. Saber would not stop talking about the maestro’s melodies. For his part, Margont, who was incapable of reading a score, understood little of what was going on. Saber had chosen to quench his absolute thirst with the great wins and the disasters of military life, but it seemed his thirst also extended to music. Without wars, would he start to churn out musical scores? Saber grew breathless.

‘It’s the fifth time I’ve seen him. He always just slips in.’

‘Have you spoken to him?’

Saber groaned. ‘No ...’

Margont had seen his friend’s bravery at first hand on the battlefield and here was Saber speechless in front of a man he admired. ‘Herr Beethoven, I am Lieutenant Irenee Saber. Allow me to say that I find your work absolutely sublime.’

Beethoven did not react. He drank his coffee, still wrapped up in his thoughts. His face and his gestures betrayed tension. His dreams were filled with rage.

‘Herr Beethoven?’

A customer came to Saber’s aid.

‘He’s almost deaf,’ he said in hesitant French, covering his ears with his hands to make himself clear.

‘How can a musician be deaf?’

‘Why not? He could hear before/

‘Yet he’s still composing ...’

‘He hears in his head.’

The Austrian tapped his temple as he said that. He burst into the raucous laughter of a pipe-smoker.

‘No one takes him seriously,’ he added.

‘Don’t say that. He’s a genius, you ... hypocrite!’ retorted Saber vehemently.

The customer beat a retreat, glass in hand, disappearing into the crowd. Saber smiled again and leant towards Beethoven’s ear, raising his voice.

‘Herr Beethoven? I’m Lieutenant Saber. I wanted to tell you—’

The maestro swung round suddenly to face him. His face was covered in scars, the result of smallpox, and his glasses magnified his eyes.

‘Don’t talk to me! Damn you French!’

His cheeks had become purple, emphasising the whiteness of his voluminous, old-fashioned cravat.

‘What’s become of your revolution? You launch your wonderful republican ideas on the world and then you found an empire! Napoleon has betrayed us all!’

‘I want to talk to you about your music ...’

‘Let go!’

But Saber had not touched him. Beethoven hurried to the door, knocking into customers.

The owner leant over his counter to shout: ‘Herr Beethoven! You haven’t paid! It’s not free here for musicians and poets.’

‘I’ll pay for him,’ declared Saber, throwing a handful of kreutzers at the owner.

Disconcerted, he rejoined his friends. When she did not like someone, Luise could be scathing. She looked at him contemptuously.

‘If I may correct you, Beethoven did not dedicate his Third Symphony to Napoleon, but to the revolutionary, Bonaparte. At the time he used to harangue the nobles in the public gardens to tell them that all men are equal, that monarchy was a thing of the past ... As Beethoven is an extraordinarily touchy man, persuaded that all the world is out to get him, he’s always involved in confrontations. He fell dramatically from favour when your Bonaparte became Emperor. He destroyed the title page of his Third Symphony, which is now called the Heroic Symphony, and it is dedicated to one of his patrons, the Prince Lobkowitz. Oh, yes, it’s such a shame that Beethoven ruined your sugary war game.’ 

IT was hard to persuade Relmyer to come to Schonbrunn. The Hofburg Palace was the official home of the Court, but it was decaying and rather impractical because of its dispersed buildings. Emperor Francis I preferred the Chateau de Schonbrunn. So did Napoleon, and he had installed his headquarters there. To show the Viennese that the little setback at Essling had in no way dented his determination, he regularly reviewed his troops at Schonbrunn, that symbol of Austrian power. Today, as frequently happened, an assorted crowd of people hurried into the gardens to watch the spectacle.

An immense park had been decked out in the French style with flowerbeds, shaped hedges, lines of trees ... Symmetry was the golden rule. A fountain of Neptune, statues and fake Roman ruins paid homage to the fashion for antiquities. Right at the end, on a little hill, a pavilion with columns presided in splendour, an invitation to gaze at the view. This park was not of its time.

Schonbrunn was like a little version of Versailles. The ochre facade suggested appeasement. It was governed by subtle mathematical and architectural rules. The result, harmonious, elegant and aesthetic, was a pleasure to behold. In front of the chateau, several regiments waited. Their white gaiters, breeches and tunics shone in the sun, contrasting with the dark blue of their coats. As the Emperor was not yet there, there was complete stillness.

Lefine was overcome with a fit of the giggles.

‘You would think that time had stopped down there.'

The crowd pressed against the sentries charged with keeping it at a distance. Soldiers mingled with the Austrians, some curious and some sympathetic to the republican or imperial cause. Several women had secured places at the front to charm Napoleon. Were they being seductive? Defiant? Greedy? Did they harbour ambitions? Was it love or fascination? Some were so exquisitely beautiful that the Emperor could not fail to notice them if he were to pass close by.

Margont noticed that Relmyer had a sort of tick. His eyes were moving all the time. They ricocheted from face to face, rarely lingering, never finding repose. He had acted the same way in the streets, but here the mass of people accentuated his behaviour, making it more obvious. He’s looking for him, thought Margont. If Relmyer suddenly saw him here - or thought he saw him, because his memory of his gaoler had altered over the years - how would he react?

A clamour arose. There were shouts, and cries of ‘Long live the Emperor!’ A black berlin arrived, escorted by the chasseurs of the Imperial Guard in their green uniforms, their red pelisses thrown over their shoulders, their sabres unsheathed. There followed an interminable, sumptuous procession of officers of the general staff, the gold embroidery on their blue coats sparkling. The cavalry were distinguished by the originality of their uniform. One of them, a dragoon, wore a dark blue coat and a crested copper helmet in the style of Minerva, decorated with a black plume and banded with sealskin; another, the Mameluke Roustan, wore babouches, red baggy trousers, a short blue jacket and a white turban (his ostentatious presence was a reminder that Napoleon, when he was still Bonaparte, had conquered Egypt, albeit briefly). This river of prancing colour and the frenetic excitement of the public contrasted with the immobile, impassive infantry of the line. The crowd tried to draw nearer, but could not get past the sentries barring its way.

Lefine sounded a sour note: ‘That’s right, long live the Emperor! We won’t be saying that when we receive our pay late.’

Napoleon stepped out of the berlin. Emaciated at the time of the Consulate, he had now become stout. His neck was so short that his round head seemed to perch directly on his torso. In spite of the heat he wore a long grey greatcoat and his black bicorn. He was strikingly short, but radiated energy and an intimidating authority. This contradiction was unsettling. Many Viennese hated him. They had come to gaze at ‘the monster’. Many times they had imagined how they would sneer at the Emperor, taunting him as a dwarf, a bloody tyrant, a jumped-up nobody, an ogre ... but now they were struck dumb. They had counted on seeing ‘the vanquished man of Essling’ and instead they were faced with a leader bubbling over with self-assurance. It had been said that during the battle everything had gone wrong for him. Yet the Emperor smiled, joking with an aide-de-camp. He was behaving like ... like a conqueror! In reality Napoleon was projecting an image and he imbued it with astonishing realism.

A general shouted an order and the soldiers briskly presented arms. Moving stiffly, Napoleon began to walk along the line, his hands behind his back, accompanied by two officers of his general staff and two colonels. Sometimes he would pause in front of an infantryman long enough to pose a question, or to repeat one of his sayings, which the army took up in an endless echo: ‘Soldiers,

I am pleased with you’ (the evening after Austerlitz), ‘War between Europeans is civil war’, ‘Action and speed!’, ‘That can’t be allowed: that’s not French!’ ... Margont could not understand how Napoleon could appear so serene while his world was at risk of collapsing any day now. Such self-control inspired confidence.

Now I’m falling under his spell, he reproached himself.

Napoleon speeded up, hurrying, hurrying. The crowd groaned, put out. Was he leaving? So soon? Was he not going to approach before he left? The Emperor questioned two other colonels, turned about and hurried off towards his escort. Some soldiers shouted again, ‘Long live the Emperor,’ while the beautiful girls made eyes at the sentries to try to get them to bow. An imperceptible eddy ran through the crowd in response to Napoleon’s slightest gesture. Margont watched the little grey figure go back up the white and blue line of soldiers.

Suddenly two boys escaped from the throng, pursued by a corporal. Other sentries came from behind to bar their route. The two young men had underestimated the speed of reaction of the infantrymen and were taken unawares. They took stones from their pockets and hurled them in the Emperor’s direction, yelling, ‘Long live Austria!’ Their stones landed in the flowerbeds as Napoleon, who had noticed the incident, disappeared into his berlin. A grenadier grabbed the outstretched arm of one of the boys and yanked it upwards, forcing the boy to let his missile go, like a giant disarming a midget.

‘Little beasts! I’ll tan your hide!’

There were protests from the public. How old were these two daring lads? Fourteen? The commander in charge of the cordon let them go, saying, ‘We only hunt the big game.’

‘We’ll get them when they’re big then,’ retorted the grenadier bitterly. ‘And then it won’t be the belt, it’ll be the firing squad.’ Margont caught Relmyer by the arm. He was unaware that he was pinching him.

‘That’s how our man operates! That’s how he was able to drag Wilhelm with him. Wilhelm wanted to join the Austrian army and his murderer led him to believe that he was going to help him cross the border and then to enlist.’

The crowd broke up around them but Margont was not paying attention to that.

‘It’s impossible to cross a river while threatening someone with a pistol. And you can’t pass through enemy lines with someone who wants to be noticed and is trying to escape from you. That doesn’t

make sense. If the murderer had regularly run risks like that he would have been caught long ago. He must have discovered that Wilhelm was hostile to the French.’

‘But how?’ Relmyer immediately asked.

‘He must sometimes go to the area around Vienna. He has already done that at least once, when he was taken by surprise with Wilhelm on the road back.’

These words reinforced Relmyer’s feeling of an invisible threat that he had had now for so many years. A latent, formless, malleable danger, a sort of thickness in the air, which was both variable and oppressive.

‘He looks for boys who are critical of the French,’ went on Mar-gont. ‘He could very well be here now, in the crowd, and have noticed the demonstration made by those two young boys. See how easy it would be. And it would be easy for him to elicit confidences, since he is Austrian. He’s worked on his technique. Now instead of forcing, he convinces. He doesn’t threaten any more, he seduces. That way he can easily lead his victim where he wants him; the victim willingly co-operates. He has adapted to circumstances and uses them to his own advantage. He chooses someone in French territory and takes them over to the Austrian side before taking advantage of them. He does admittedly run risks crossing lines, but with his exceptional knowledge of the woods and marshes of the area, the risks are limited. Moreover, riding between the two zones confuses things and helps him cover his tracks. Anyone who disappears in the French zone will only be looked for in that zone. Our man therefore puts his victims out of reach of anyone who might help them.’