“You were lucky,” I said, stepping back.
“And Junot?” I asked Fauvelet, trying to sound offhand. “Did he not return with Bonaparte?” A number had yet to return, including Tallien (much to Thérèse’s relief).*
“Andoche Junot, I regret to say, had to be left behind in the desert”—a sly smile—“with Othello,” he whispered, “the child he had by an Abyssinian slave.”
With liquor the men begin to talk—uneasily at first—of the killing heat, the flies, the dysentery. Stories of an ocean of sand, and of thirst. Stories of soldiers blinded by fever. Stories of the Black Plague.
It is the whispered stories that I listen for, and hear—stories of a sea of white turbans, barbaric tortures, French soldiers left in the desert to die of thirst, murdering one another for a cup of water.
“How horrifying!”
“It was different there, Maman,” Eugène said, his cheek quivering.
Close to midnight, a cold evening.
“So, the domestic spat is resolved? All is well?” Barras greeted me with a bone-crushing embrace. “You’ll not join me for a cup of chocolate? My cook has made the most glorious Brussels biscuits. I must say, Eugène looks like a strapping young man. But a bit uneasy? I don’t know how to put it, but I see it sometimes in young soldiers.” He made a face. “Has he said anything to you? The conventional wisdom is that it’s best not to dwell on their experiences, but I’m not so sure. Sometimes it helps to talk. Call me an old woman! But tell me, how is my protégé? I hardly ever see Bonaparte.”
“He’s working on a paper for the Institut National.”
“Ah, yes, something about a stone, I’ve been told.* How charming. The military man returneth and taketh up the mantle of an academic hermit. A wise posture. One I myself would have recommended, had I been consulted.”
“It’s not a posture.” Although Bonaparte had indeed decided that he should remain out of the public eye to weaken rumours of ambition. And to consider his next move. At the beginning of a campaign, to advance or not to advance must be carefully considered. “Won’t you come see us?” I asked. Something in Barras’s voice suggested that he’d been offended. As well, I was concerned. The Directors had been treating Bonaparte with a conspicuous lack of respect. Jealousy, I suspected. And perhaps fear.
“Is that an invitation from you, or from the General?”
“From us both, of course.”
“Of course,” Barras said, lowering himself into a chair, his hand on the small of his back. Toto leapt onto his lap. “Have you heard what Director Sieyès said, when he learned that Bonaparte was back?”
“Sieyès was dining with Lucien Bonaparte, was he not?”
“Yes, those two are cosy, I’ve noticed. When Sieyès was given the news of Bonaparte’s return, he is said to have exclaimed, ‘The Republic is saved.’ Curious, don’t you think? I’ve been wondering about that, wondering what exactly he meant.”
“Sieyès said that? Are you sure?” Director Sieyès is said to detest Bonaparte—and the feeling is mutual, certainly. I leaned forward in my chair, my eye on the door. “Do you think there is any truth to the rumour that Director Sieyès is plotting?”
“A conspiracy? Every man of politics in Paris is plotting something.” Barras carefully lifted Toto back down onto the carpet and tugged the dog’s tail playfully. “Rousseau warned that if one were foolish enough to found a Republic, one must be careful not to fill it with malcontents. Malcontents! The French Republic is a nation of malcontents. I’ve been telling you for years—we’re doomed.”
October 24.
“Bonaparte, there is something I have to ask you.” I’d been reading to him from Carthon, his favourite poem by Ossian. Who comes from the land of strangers, with his thousands around him? His face is settled from war. “It’s about Eugène.”
Bonaparte looked at me, his eyes glazed, as if in a reverie.
“What happened in Egypt? I mean, what happened to Eugène. I’ve asked him, but he won’t talk.” It was more than that. At any inquiry, my openhearted son closed down, his voice became guarded, he looked away, his cheek muscle quivering.
“He fought in battles, he killed men, he was injured.” Bonaparte shrugged. “He returned victorious. What more is there?”
Afternoon.
I discovered Mimi in the larder, sitting in the dark on the stone-flagged floor. “Are you all right?” I asked, alarmed.
“I overheard the soldiers talking. I found out what happened to Eugène.”
I slid down on the floor beside her. “Oh?” Pheasants ripe with maggots were hanging above the slate shelves.
She examined the palm of her left hand, tracing the lines with her fingers. “I don’t want to tell you.”
I put my hand on her arm. Her skin was smooth and cool. “Please?”
She took a breath: Eugène and another aide, the two youngest, had captured a town of Turks.
“An entire town?”
The men had surrendered, pleading for their lives. Proudly, my son and his companion returned with their prisoners. But Bonaparte could not feed his own men, much less all these Turks. So the prisoners—thousands of them—were driven into the sea to drown. The next day Eugène’s partner shot himself.
“Oh no,” I whispered.
“There is more,” Mimi cautioned me. Eugène was commanded to cross the desert. “He was to deliver a parcel to the Pasha—a warning.” I leaned my head back against the wall, closed my eyes. Mimi’s voice in the dark closet was low, musical. “A sack of heads.”
Sickened, I imagined the shimmering heat, the stench. I imagined the flies, the ghosts. “But that can’t be!” Bonaparte would not do such a barbaric thing—and he certainly wouldn’t have commanded a boy to do it for him.
Bonaparte was tied up in meetings. I lay down, trying to decide what to do. Finally I got up and went out to the stable, where I found Eugène helping the coachman with a harness. He looked at me expectantly.
“May I talk with you for a moment?” I led us to the bench under the lime tree in the garden. “I’ve learned what happened with your prisoners—and the warning you had to deliver, to the Pasha.” He turned away, biting his cheeks. “I wish you had told me!”
“I couldn’t, Maman.”
“Why?”
“You wouldn’t have understood! You would have wanted to talk to the General about it.” He looked at me directly, as if to challenge me. “You would have held it against him.”
“Oh, Eugène…” But what could I say? He was right.
“Maman, please, promise me,” he said, blinking back tears. “The General did what he had to do; we all did. You must not say a thing to him about it.”
“Maybe Eugène would heal if his head spirits were soothed,” Mimi suggested to me later.
Head spirits? And then I remembered. According to voodoo beliefs, head spirits imparted ancient wisdom—without them, one was at the mercy of life, a boat without a rudder.
“A ritual headwashing—to cleanse him, appease the spirits.”
“Yes,” I said. Anything.
“No,” Eugène said, his cheek muscle twitching.
“But what would be the harm? It’s no different from getting your hair washed.”
“It’s stupid, that’s why.”
“Perhaps, but…I’ll buy you that horse you’ve been wanting.”
“The black thoroughbred?” His mouth fell open. “Really? But it’s four thousand francs.”
I shrugged. Somehow. “Tonight?” A deal.
Gathering the ingredients proved easier than I expected. The stall in the market Mimi knew about had everything we needed.
At two in the afternoon I corralled Eugène. “Quiet,” I commanded whenever he protested. Mimi mixed the ingredients, chanting, the words coming back to her slowly. She worked her strong fingers into his scalp. I poured buckets upon buckets of clear water over my son’s head, murmuring, I baptize thee, I baptize thee, I baptize thee.
“That’
s it?” Eugène asked, rubbing his hair dry.
October 25.
One full day, and still no twitch.
3:00 P.M., a quiet moment.
Hortense, although polite toward Bonaparte, continues to regard him as a stranger. “I am fine, General Bonaparte,” she’ll say, or, “Good morning, General Bonaparte.” Will he ever be Papa to her?
Eugène also calls Bonaparte “General,” but with warmth in his voice. They shared a tent in Egypt, and it is easy to see that they’ve become close. He’s started a new scrapbook, I’ve noticed, this one on Bonaparte’s battles—his victories. Already it is thick. It sits on the shelf next to his childhood books, his scrapbooks on his father and Lazare. “You need room,” I told him. “Perhaps you should store these ones in the basement.”
He ran his fingers over the old scrapbooks, considering. “No, Maman, there is room for them all,” he said, putting them back on the shelf.
This pleased me, I confess.
Early evening.
“The Directors had the nerve to put me on half-pay,” Bonaparte exploded, coming in the door. I was in the drawing room with Hortense, trying to make conversation with Fouché and Bonaparte’s brothers, Joseph and Lucien. “They treat me like a civil servant.”
I suggested to Hortense that she go.
“Did you talk to Director Sieyès?” Lucien demanded.
I took up my embroidery hoop, my needle. Why would Bonaparte want to talk to Sieyès? And why would Lucien want him to?
“Uff. How anyone can stand the man is beyond me,” Bonaparte said, scratching. He’d broken out in boils and was irritated to distraction by a rash.
Joseph noisily sipped his tea. “He would be useful, however.”
“Essential,” Lucien echoed.
Bonaparte scowled. In Egypt he’d been a king. In Paris he was merely a civil servant, a penitent begging favours at the feet of the five Directors—a cabal of old fools, he called them. “Although he is right about the constitution. It is unwieldy,” Bonaparte went on, talking to himself, thinking out loud. “Five directors is too many. A three-man executive would be more efficient, one person in charge, the other two advising.” Bonaparte paced back and forth in front of the fireplace, his hands behind his back. “And the constant change-over is only creating chaos. We’ve been reduced to a parliamentary comedy. There is such a thing as overdoing it—holding elections every year has exhausted the population. But the trick will be to change the constitution within the law.”
“To do that,” Fouché said evenly, “you must have the support of both the Revolutionaries and the Royalists.” He’d powdered his hair in an unsuccessful attempt to disguise its ugly red colour.
The three Bonaparte brothers turned to Fouché, as if surprised to discover that he was in the room.
“And do I have that support, Citoyen Fouché, Minister of Police?” Bonaparte asked.
Fouché took out a battered tin snuffbox, tapped it, then pried it open with his thumbnail, which was long, pointed and yellowed. “Yes, General, I believe that you do,” he said slowly, taking a sniff of snuff without offering any. “Or, to be more precise—I believe that you will.”
October 26.
Bonaparte and I set out at seven this evening to see Diderot’s Le Père de famille. I was looking forward to an evening of entertainment.
Now it is only one hour later and we are already back home, frustrated and dejected—and a little overwhelmed, for as soon as the people recognized Bonaparte they started to cheer and scream, drowning out the voices of the actors. We had to leave in order that the performance could go on. We are prisoners of their adulation.
In which I must make a choice
October 27, 1799.
Lieutenant Lavalette gazed around our drawing room. He looked lost, somehow, one of the world’s innocents. He clasped my hand, his fat cheeks flushed pink from the cold. “Please tell me, how is Émilie? How is my wife? I did not know! Oh, but I would not have been able to live had I lost her.”
“You’ve not seen her yet? You’ve not been out to Saint-Germain?”
“I understand you and the General will be going out tomorrow morning.”
“And Hortense, and Eugène. Do you wish…? Would you like to come with us?”
“Oh, yes,” he exclaimed, clearly terrified to go by himself.
October 28.
We set out for Saint-Germain early, Bonaparte, Lavalette, Hortense and I in the carriage, Eugène riding beside us on Pegasus, his splendid new horse. The road was a bit heavy in spots, so it was noon by the time we pulled into the school courtyard.
“General Bonaparte, we are honoured.” Madame Campan, wrapped in a black cape, dipped her head. We were ushered into her office—all but Hortense, that is, who went running to find Émilie (to warn her). A bell sounded; the ceiling shook with the sound of stampeding girls. “I’m to fetch your wife, Lieutenant Lavalette?” Madame Campan asked.
“Madame Campan, if you don’t mind, I’d like to tell Émilie myself,” I said, moving toward the door.
It had been over a year since I’d been in the upper storey of the school. The air was heavy with the smell of pomade and starch. Two girls in the green hats of second-year students were gliding down the hall, arms linked, giggling as they slid on the waxed parquet.
“Hortense is in that room,” the girl with golden ringlets said, pointing across the hall.
The door creaked open. “She refuses to go downstairs,” Hortense whispered, stepping aside. Émilie was huddled on a narrow bed in the corner, her scars inflamed.
I sat down at the foot of the bed. “Are you afraid, Émilie?” Her husband certainly was.
“No!”
“What is it then?”
“I don’t want to be married.” (I thought, If you only knew, poor girl, how lucky you are.) And then, her voice low, “To him.”
Lieutenant Lavalette’s eyes filled with tears when he saw his wife’s scarred face. I’d prepared him as best I could, but even so, the sight could only have been a shock, she is so terribly disfigured.
“Ah, so it is true. You’ve been poxed,” Bonaparte said.
Émilie stood in the doorway, her reddened eyes fixed on the toes of her lace-up boots. “Yes, General Bonaparte. Sir.” She glanced at Eugène, nodded a furtive, shy greeting. Eugène went up to her, pressed his cousin to his heart. I was touched by my son’s tenderness. He’d so comforted Émilie when she was a child of four, and he not much older. “Your husband saved my life,” he told her. “More than once.”
Lavalette flushed modestly, clutching his hat.
And now perhaps this gentle man might save the heart of this girl, I thought—if only she would let him.
October 29, early morning.
“You paid 325,000 for it?” Bonaparte regarded the château of Malmaison, its crumbling façade, the roof in need of repair, the cracked glass on a second-storey window.
“But Bonaparte—” I started to remind him that he himself had offered 300,000, but thought better of it. “It’s less than one hour from Paris and the grounds are superb. Plus, the winery alone brings in an income of eight thousand francs annually.” Well, seven. “The agent felt it was an exceptional value.”
“The chicken coop has more prestige.”
But by the end of the day, after riding the property on horseback, looking over the sheep herd and talking with the estate-steward about the sugar content of this year’s grape harvest, even Bonaparte had begun to succumb to the charm of the place. At nightfall we sat by the roaring fire playing backgammon, while Hortense played a new composition she had written on the piano and Eugène mended fishing gear.
At nine Bonaparte and I retired, taking candles up to our drafty little bedroom ourselves. We slid between the frigid bed sheets, our teeth chattering, our feet seeking the hot brick wrapped in flannel. Then, in our little cocoon of warmth, we talked and loved, talked and loved.
Evening—Paris.
We’re back in the city. This afte
rnoon I’ve meetings with tradesmen. Bonaparte wishes work done on Malmaison—renovations, furnishings, gardens! He loves it there.
October 30.
“What are you thinking?” I nudged Bonaparte with my toe. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, motionless as a statue.
“That I should talk to Director Gohier,” he said finally, as if waking from a trance.
“Concerning…?”
Fauvelet came to the door, a stack of journals under his arm. “The General’s bath awaits,” he said grandly.
Bonaparte stood, took the tiny cup of Turkish coffee his secretary handed him, downed it in one swallow. “Concerning getting elected director.”
3:00 P.M.
“Basta.” Bonaparte pulled at his boots, kicking one free. It went flying across the foyer and hit the door.
“Director Gohier wasn’t helpful?” I followed him, retrieving his boots. They were filthy, in need of a polish.
Bonaparte threw himself down on a chair and glared into the fire. He was wearing the pair of leather breeches that the actor Talma had lent him, so that he would have something presentable to wear to meetings with the Directors. They should have been returned. I tugged at his toe to get his attention.
“I told him I wanted to be a director.”
“And what was his response?” Both in Italy and in Egypt Bonaparte had proved his genius for administration. If he were one of the five Directors, perhaps the Republic would—
The Josephine B. Trilogy Page 68
