by Simon Leys
She took a mug out of the cupboard. As the door opened and shut, Napoleon could see that it was pitifully empty. She filled the mug to the brim with rosé.
The wine was cool and lively on the tongue. Her voice, even when she was describing disasters, still had a kind of cheerfulness. In the midst of ruination, this woman radiated a warmth and vitality which could be felt in the old house itself, in spite of its being so bare.
She talked at great length, pouring out her heart. He found himself listening without any impatience as she described the exploits of the late Second Lieutenant Truchaut, his companions, and their barroom conspiracies. Not that he was at all interested in what she said, but he drew an odd feeling of comfort from her cheerful energy, while the rosé, consumed on an empty stomach after a tiring journey, filled him with unusual benevolence. Sitting close to this simple soul, in the big room with its stone floor polished with age, watching it slowly filling with the soft shadows of evening, he had the feeling that, after drifting for so many months, he was for the first time on solid ground again.
IT WAS NOT UNTIL the room was almost dark that a silence fell at last. The visitor had no desire to take his leave. He could not face the prospect of departing from this unexpected haven and continuing his endless wandering in the cold indifference of unfamiliar streets. But how could he induce Widow Truchaut to offer him a bed for the night?
As he was vainly mulling this question over in his mind, a surprising turn of events suddenly came to his rescue.
All at once the sound of children’s voices was heard in the street. The door was flung open and half a dozen scruffy kids rushed into the room in a state of high excitement.
“You rascals!” screamed Widow Truchaut, full of motherly indignation, her hand raised ready to give them a clout. “Can’t you see I have a visitor? You monkeys!”
“Ostrich, Ostrich! Listen, listen!” the children squealed in their shrill voices, but as they were all shouting at once, it was impossible to understand anything.
Then three men, breathing hard, burst into the room. The last of the three shut the door carefully behind him. Silence. The children, who had been their advance guard, were now huddled together against the wall, all aquiver with the special thrill that children feel at the news that some major catastrophe has occurred in the world of adults.
Napoleon’s eyes were now accustomed to the darkness of the room, and he easily guessed who the newcomers were—their bearing alone betrayed their background. The tall beardless one with the horseman’s rolling gait was probably Sergeant Maurice, whom the widow had mentioned earlier; the bald head and the potbelly no doubt belonged to the medical officer, Dr. Latruelle-Something. As to the last of the trio, he had the swollen features of an absinthe drinker. His face, as worn as an old doormat, had the vacuous look so typical of loyal old soldiers who have never risen above the ranks.
“Ostrich . . .” The medical officer began to speak in a hoarse, solemn voice. (A moment ago Napoleon had been shocked to hear the children addressing the widow in this manner. Now, however, from the serious way the newcomer used the nickname, he presumed that the bad joke was of such ancient origin that it had lost any humorous connotation.) The medical officer stopped: he had just noticed the presence of a stranger in the room.
“You can speak freely, Major,” the Ostrich said, “he’s one of us.” She introduced Lieutenant Lenormand. The three men shook hands with him silently and very solemnly, as one does at a funeral.
“Ostrich . . .” the medical officer continued, his voice more husky than ever, “and you, comrade,” he added, turning to Napoleon, “the news that I must . . . that we have just . . . Oh, read it for yourselves . . .” He took from his pocket a sheet of newspaper almost rolled into a ball, which no one could have deciphered in the growing darkness, and collapsed onto a stool, his head bowed, his fingers working the crumpled paper into a rag.
Then, in doleful chorus, the beardless horseman and the nameless drunkard finished for him: “Ladies and gentlemen, alas! The Emperor is dead.”
V. THE CONQUEST OF PARIS
THE NEWS, which had struck Napoleon like a thunderbolt, shocked him even more deeply than his companions—though there were naturally very different reasons for his dismay.
He had no trouble playing the part during the funeral vigil which took place that evening at the Ostrich’s house. The personal fate of his double scarcely affected him (to tell the truth, he felt intense annoyance at this idiot who, entrusted with a unique mission, had carelessly allowed himself to die at a time when he was still needed); but he had only to consider the consequences of that disastrous death to be able with no pretense whatsoever to give an impression of utter consternation to the assembled company. At the same time, he was touched to see the sincere emotion of those who surrounded him. The thought that these humble people could be so overcome by the mere idea that he was dead moved him so much that his tears flowed effortlessly with theirs.
It was a long vigil. They wept, talked, drank. That night, a strange intimacy, forged from their common grief, bound together these old children who found themselves all at once orphans of the same dream. In their helplessness, they clung ever closer together, and when it was finally time to get some rest, they could not reconcile themselves to the idea of sending this brother in arms, whom fate had so recently entrusted to them, off into the profane indifference of the outside world. So it was quite natural that Napoleon should accept the improvised bed which they made for him out of old rags heaped up in a corner of the big room. The medical officer, who boarded with the widow, insisted on giving him his mattress. The lugubrious cavalryman and the nameless drunkard took their leave; they shared a garret somewhere near the cul-de-sac.
The Ostrich prodded the stumbling flock of sleepy children toward the stairs. The medical officer retired to his own room. The Ostrich came down again to provide Napoleon with an extra eiderdown.
When the whole house was finally fast asleep, Napoleon blew out his candle and lay down. Somewhere in the neighborhood the first roosters of the dawn were beginning their fanfare. He shivered: from now on his destiny was posthumous.
IN THE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED, the full horror of his new situation became clearer still.
In a Europe which could not find a single adversary worthy of opposing him, the dismemberment of states, the carving up of empires, the dethronement of kings were hardly challenges to him . . . But now an obscure noncommissioned officer, simply by dying like a fool on a deserted rock at the other end of the world, had managed to confront him with the most formidable and unexpected rival imaginable: himself! Worse still, from now on Napoleon would have to make his way not only against Napoleon, but against a Napoleon who was larger than life—the memory of Napoleon!
As the medical officer, who had been only too happy to find someone to share the dull emptiness of his days, took him on his rounds of the faithful during the following week, he was in a better position to gauge the full extent of the disaster. Those old soldiers, the stoical officers on half-pay, the rank and file, sustained by an unshakable hope, had spent the last six years waiting for the Emperor’s return, and would have risen up in a body at the first call. Now, at one stroke, his passing away had demobilized all those humble foot soldiers of the imperial cause, every one of them.
Now that it had been dissipated, how could all that immense energy be harnessed again? The degree of prostration felt by the faithful was all the greater because they had made such superhuman efforts to survive all those years without wavering in their resolution. And today, perhaps this sudden extinction of all their reasons to hope and believe even brought them a certain grim sense of relief . . . They enjoyed their despair: they sank into it with a kind of relish, as one voluptuously sinks into sleep after a very long vigil. If anyone had tried to wake them at that time, he would have found them not only deaf but hostile as well. Relieved from the rigors of guard duty, released from the double burden of loyalty and hope, free at last, they dri
fted among memories. Now that they had succumbed to the poison of nostalgia, they wallowed in the past; who could ever persuade them to become once again those galley slaves of glory, chained together by a common dream that was perhaps an illusion?
And who would ever recognize him, now that there was no longer anyone to wait for him? The transformation brought about by age and the indignity of his disguise, which a few days earlier had not been sufficient to screen him from the eyes of a true believer, would from now on stand as a barrier between himself and his followers. Should he wear himself out in an effort to convince them and win them back again one by one, and then endlessly try to patch up the cracks in their crumbling support—should he eternally devote himself to propping up the irreparably damaged structure of their faith, when all he had was his presence and his words? He felt his strength fail him at the thought of the enormous task that awaited him.
. . . At the same time, he itched to see action again. His situation as the Ostrich’s temporary boarder became more delicate day by day. To justify it, he would have to reveal his true identity, and that was something he could not do. It was both too early and too late to play his only card. Any premature attempt to impose upon his simple companions a truth that they were no longer equipped to bear, that they were not yet ready to bear, could condemn him to failure and intolerable derision. He was well aware of that. He worried and fretted in his useless refuge: the more urgent the need to act, the clearer it became that action was impossible.
It was then that a fresh delivery of watermelons and cantaloupes from Avignon suddenly changed the course of his fate.
The sweet-smelling freight—there were two cartloads of it—had been spread out on the tiled floor of the big room. For some days, the Ostrich, helped by the gang of children and a few ex-soldiers from Les Trois Boules, had been in a flurry of activity, trying to retail this merchandise along the streets. The little band went out at dawn and returned late at night, exhausted and demoralized. Sales were poor, the pile of cantaloupes that occupied three-quarters of the room didn’t seem to get any smaller. And, like a sinister portent, here and there a cantaloupe was already beginning to go soft.
One afternoon, as Napoleon was gloomily turning over his thoughts while walking up and down the room—or at any rate the narrow space that had remained unencumbered—he accidentally trod on a watermelon, slid, and lurched wildly.
He nearly sprained his ankle. The melon squashed open, spreading its juicy entrails across the tiles and releasing an odor of rotting fruit.
As he stood, staring dumbly at the sticky mess that had spurted out onto this boot, he was suddenly overcome by a surge of fury. The oppressive smell of the melons, the insistent buzzing of the flies, the frantic, well-meaning efforts of the Ostrich and her inept assistants —the reality of everything that he had hitherto registered only passively, suddenly hit him in the face like an insult; he was no longer the cold and detached spectator of this mediocre farce; thrown out of his illusory box seat, he was horrified to discover that the pitiful hero of the piece was none other than himself. For the first time, he began to see himself as he really was, naked and defenseless at the center of a universal debacle, buffeted this way and that by events, threatened on every side by an all-pervasive decay, sinking slowly into the quicksands of failed resolutions, and finally disappearing into the ultimate morass against which no honor could prevail. He suddenly lost his self-control; in an explosion of rage and revolt, he grabbed the burst watermelon and hurled it at the wall. It squashed there and formed a star which slowly began to dribble down . . .
. . . Like the sky which is cleansed by a storm, he found himself wonderfully purged by this sudden outburst. He was already beginning to see in a different light the wretched melon that only a moment before had set his morbid train of thought in motion: his mind had just hit on a new inspiration.
That evening, when the Ostrich and her troop came back to the house, they were all struck by the sudden change in him. They were in the presence of another man entirely: in the place of yesterday’s self-effacing boarder, they found a leader.
He addressed them briefly. His words were clear and simple, with a ring of authority that electrified them. He pointed out that the stock of overripe melons was their only capital, perhaps the last card in their hand; that they could not afford to play it haphazardly, as they had been doing up till now, in an effort that was most certainly brave but confused and futile; that, on the contrary, it was imperative to prepare their plan of action thoughtfully, with painstaking attention to detail, so that they could then concentrate all their energy in one decisive move, carried out at the most opportune time and place.
Instinctively he recovered the language of the army leader speaking to his generals on the eve of battle, and those grave but powerful tones immediately struck a chord in his audience. They spontaneously invited him to take command of operations, and asked him to explain his plan in detail.
He asked for a Paris street map and spread it out on the table. The Ostrich lit some extra candles. The whole troop sat in a circle around the table. Only Napoleon remained standing. After a long, hard look at the map, he walked up and down the room for a few minutes, his hands behind his back. No one dared to break the silence. In the candlelight his short silhouette cast shadows to the four corners of the wall, shadows that seemed to leap from a giant spring. Finally, after sending a stray pumpkin sailing into the air with a short sharp kick, he turned around on the spot, and like an eagle diving on its prey, he came back to the table and in front of his troops outlined the following strategy:
1. The time factor
The heat wave which we are now experiencing does not, on the face of it, favor our campaign, since it makes the melons ripen quickly. In reality, it also contains an element that could benefit us, one we should exploit to the full, and that is the thirst it creates in the townspeople. If we act swiftly there is nothing to stop us from turning these weather conditions to our advantage. Indeed, swiftness of action will allow us to make use of the inherent advantages of the situation (i.e., the increased thirst of potential customers), and to avoid the harmful effects (progressive stock loss through spoilage).
2. The terrain factor
I have no need to remind you that Paris covers a wide area and that we have only minimal forces at our disposal to sweep the field. An uncoordinated, haphazard effort would therefore be certain to fail. First, we must determine all the regions where the lie of the land could work against us: long, quiet streets in districts where our column would risk losing precious time and where the ardor of its initial impetus would be dulled without achieving any gain; les Halles, markets, the vicinity of greengrocers’ shops—all areas where the inhabitants show a stronger buyer resistance because there is so much stiff competition—these various points must be totally excluded from our itinerary [as he spoke, he seized a pencil and, with a decisive cross, eliminated les Halles from the map]. We shall therefore concentrate our strength exclusively in those regions that offer the least possibility of resistance and the best chance of gaining a prompt, significant advantage with the greatest economy of effort—i.e., the zones that present both a maximum concentration of population and a minimum supply level of fruit and vegetables. As regards the first aspect (population), from now on, we can concentrate on the central districts and mark the most frequently used access routes [the pencil authoritatively circled a wide area in the middle of the map, from which it drew out four or five main approaches]. As regards the second question (finding out the location of fruit shops), it will be imperative to send out scouts to effect a preliminary reconnaissance of the terrain. This reconnaissance will be carried out at dawn, and will hardly delay the launching of our offensive; it will subsequently even allow us to gain a considerable amount of time, since it will avoid useless counter-marches by immediately enabling us to take up the most favorable positions.
3. The human factor
A. The enemy. The extent of their resistance—a
s I have just pointed out—relies on a chain of redoubts placed at irregular intervals, which we must systematically avoid; concentrating all our forces in a charge on one of the breaks in this line, we can use this gap to head straight for the soft underbelly of the city. Once in that central position, we can deploy our forces more or less widely, depending on the conditions of the terrain, so that the area under our control may be progressively extended.
B. Our forces. First, the scouts: for this reconnaissance mission, a few children should be adequate—their lightness and mobility recommend them for this type of operation. As for the rest, we will form a single column with all the handcarts and even the wheelbarrows at our disposal. Headquarters will be installed in a café in the central zone, its exact location will be decided at the appropriate time. Liaison between headquarters and the various carts engaged in action will also be carried out by the band of children.
This plan of action was adopted to the applause of the assembled company, which, in spite of the rigors of the day just past and the prospect of an even more difficult day to come, felt a thrill of new hope pass through it.
That evening, the half-pay soldiers, instead of going back to their respective garrets, bivouacked at the Ostrich’s house, so that they could form their column at dawn without wasteful delays.
Napoleon’s words had awakened in them a mixture of excitement and confidence. They had the vague impression of being on the eve of an unknown adventure; at the same time, with glad surprise, they fell back again into old habits of obedience and readiness. For this night before combat, some bedded down under the table, some on benches, all wearing their boots and rolled in their overcoats, and soon the large room was filled with the sound of their snoring.
