by Simon Leys
Napoleon was deep in thought, his chin in his hand. His eyes sometimes turned back to the map of Paris, still spread out in front of him.
But he was not the only person awake: seated in the dark corner of the hearth, silent, spellbound, drawing on a dead cigar, the medical officer was watching him.
VI. THE NIGHT EMPIRE
IN SPITE OF all his perspicacity, the turn of events caught the medical officer unawares. Certainly the triumphal day of the melons had confirmed his suspicions: that brilliant, flawless plan of action was completely in line with a strategy which he had known for a long time to be stunningly effective. Once again, its outstanding success came as no surprise. The subsequent recovery of the Ostrich’s business was also predictable, even though it was brought about with staggering vigor and speed. But what really astounded and dismayed the medical officer was the upheaval which he now saw taking place in his own life.
The Other Man had taken charge of everything, with an energy and competence one had to admire. After all, it was normal that he should wish personally to supervise accounts, transport, correspondence, personnel, branch offices, advertising, marketing, stock-taking, legal matters, and public relations, since it was he who had succeeded in reviving, transforming, and developing the business; and besides, the medical officer, who was keen on his leisure time, would not for one moment have thought of disputing the Other’s right to rack his brains over those endless, boring tasks. Therefore, it was natural enough, in a sense, that the Other had become the undisputed master of the household.
The fact that the Ostrich now sat at the conquering hero’s feet was harder to accept for the medical officer; and yet, with considerable effort, he might even have been able to come to terms with this situation: he knew the affectionate nature and spontaneity of that simple, warmhearted woman, and besides, having none too high an opinion of himself, he had never dared to entertain too much hope for his own chances.
His indignation and distress came from a stranger source: what seemed excusable in the Ostrich became a shocking and unforgivable betrayal in the Other. Seeing him accept the widow’s favors and calmly settle into his newfound bourgeois prosperity, the medical officer felt as though he had just witnessed the collapse of everything that justified his own existence. He found himself in a position similar to that of a believer to whom God has just revealed the fact that He intends to retire.
And so, at first, in spite of all the signs, he had refused to believe such an outrage. But, living under the same roof, he could not persist indefinitely in ignoring the weight of evidence to the contrary.
To his great dismay, he found himself free all of a sudden. One morning, taking advantage of the Other’s absence, he announced to the Ostrich that he had decided to leave. The lack of concern, the seeming indifference with which she greeted the news, precipitated his determination; his decision, which until that moment was still uncertain, now became irrevocable. Seeing that the widow was not even going to ask him to delay his departure, he thereupon made up a story about an inheritance that urgently required his presence in the country.
The ever-obliging Ostrich immediately provided him with some string and two cardboard boxes in which to pack his belongings. While he tied a knot around his things—in spite of the anger which made his fingers tremble, it barely took a few minutes—to his own astonishment, he became aware for the first time of the part that hatred had played in the ties that for more than twenty years had bound him body and soul in the service of that Other Man, and this hatred was in fact so deep that, in suddenly choosing to flee its object for good, he had the wrenching feeling of cutting off an essential part of himself.
The Ostrich wanted to get a servant to take him to the coach, but his baggage was light and he declined the offer. Overcome with a resentment that he could no longer keep in check, he even refused the farewell drink that the good woman offered him. Suddenly he could not bear to prolong his stay under that roof for another minute. The Ostrich could not understand this agitation and naïvely showed her surprise, which made the whole scene all the more painful.
His sudden flight did not take the medical officer very far. When he got to the end of the street, he realized that he had nowhere to go: quite naturally he would end up at Les Trois Boules. So Napoleon had no difficulty in laying hands on him again, and it was in this establishment, toward the end of the afternoon, that he came as a matter of course to find the deserter.
Sitting down at the table in front of him, Napoleon did not bother, even as a formality, to question him about the reasons for his abrupt departure or his supposed inheritance. Calmly, and with that superb ability to brush aside unimportant details—an ability which usually characterizes genius and which is akin in its effects to natural catastrophes—he came straight to the point that concerned him. The medical officer, who, in the meantime, had recovered a degree of composure, tried to stand up to the first assault without flinching.
“You know who I am,” said Napoleon. And without leaving him the time to deal with his first statement—for the medical officer would have taken advantage of it to reply, “You are a prosperous melon merchant”—he went on, “And I need you.”
The medical officer, avoiding his master’s eyes, lit a cigar. “It’s too late,” he mumbled into his mustache, staring at the bottom of his glass.
“This is the situation,” continued Napoleon, pretending not to have heard the last remark —or perhaps it had really escaped his attention, as the pursuit of a brilliant idea usually made him deaf to any comment that did not accord with his own views.
“It’s too late,” repeated the medical officer in a louder voice. He summoned all his energy, but still did not dare to raise his eyes to the person he was speaking to. While the latter, disconcerted by this obstinate reaction, tapped the table rather impatiently with his plump white hand, the medical officer, like an old cart horse balking for the first time at the touch of the shafts and kicking out blindly in all directions, went on almost in a shout, “It’s too late! I tell you, it’s too late!”
His voice grew hoarse. His glass was empty; he gulped down the one opposite. He was struggling now, like a desperate man, to preserve this grim new freedom that he had only just won. Hesitantly, he stretched out his arm and gripped Napoleon by the lapel of his frock coat; at last his yellow eyes came to rest, unsteadily meeting the Other’s gaze. “Believe me, just concentrate on making your fortune in watermelons and your future will be a thousand times more enviable than you can imagine. You don’t believe me? Come on, then, come with me, and YOU’LL SEE! . . .” Then he added more quietly, “It’s not far from here,” in a voice soft and sly.
He got up. His legs shook, but his grip stayed firm on Napoleon’s coat. The latter, rather taken aback, was aware that in the medical officer’s present state it was no use starting a discussion. To avoid a scene, he therefore decided to humor this annoying caprice for the moment. There would always be time to speak of serious matters again later, as soon as the absinthe fumes had cleared away.
Without uttering one more word, the medical officer dragged his bemused victim through a series of quiet streets. They crossed a middle-class suburb with detached houses, iron gates, and gardens. Day was ending; the approaching night was lengthening the shadows; soon they would all blend into a single mysterious softness, which would once more endow this petty world with a dreamy depth, redeeming it from banality at last. Somewhere from behind closed shutters came the sound of someone practicing the piano.
Napoleon was becoming more and more impatient, when his guide indicated to him that they had finally arrived. They stood in front of the entrance to a sort of private park whose walls were overhung with the branches of chestnut and linden. The bars of the iron-grille gate were backed by a metal sheet that frustrated prying eyes.
The medical officer must have been a regular visitor, for in spite of the growing darkness, he managed to find without any difficulty a small chain that was hidden under the ivy. A shar
p tug produced a grating metallic sound behind the wall, which in turn was followed by the distant tinkling of a bell.
The two men waited for a moment.
“Will you explain to me now . . .” began Napoleon, who could hardly contain his exasperation—but at that precise instant a small door on well-oiled hinges opened silently in the middle of the iron gate.
Following his guide, Napoleon had to step into this kind of rat trap, whether he wanted to or not, and found himself in the deep shadows of a large unkempt garden with a dense grove of trees.
He could scarcely make out the form of the concierge, who closed the gate again behind them, but it seemed to him that this person was wearing a sort of long, grayish dustcoat and a type of round skull cap that gave him a vaguely ecclesiastical air.
They went into the trees, following a winding sandy path which muffled their footsteps. Under the trees, the dusk had already fallen.
At a bend in the path, the medical officer, whose squat silhouette was now discernible only by the red glow on the end of his cigar, turned to Napoleon and whispered in his ear, “I’ll go on ahead, wait for me here a moment.” And throwing away his cigar, he vanished into the shadows before Napoleon could stop him.
Napoleon was now alone, standing in the middle of the path. All about him, the dense black treetops hid everything from view. High in the branches, flocks of starlings were finally settling down for the night with shrill cries and beating wings.
How long did he wait like that? The medical officer was still not back. The whole thing began to look like a joke in very questionable taste. Napoleon took out his watch, but could not make out the position of the hands against the dim whiteness of the dial. The starlings had ceased their racket. Only the slight murmur of the wind rose intermittently from the dark emptiness of the park, stirring the invisible depths of the foliage.
Napoleon was not a man to allow himself to be led up the garden path for very long. However, he did not want to give up before finding out what the medical officer’s intentions were, and so he decided to carry out a general investigation of the area. Following the pale ribbon of the path through the dark wood, he went on deeper into the park.
After he had gone a short way, he could see a hazy light between the tree trunks. Soon he arrived at a wide clearing where a last pallor of day still lingered. In front of him stretched an overgrown lawn in the shape of an amphitheater on top of which he could see the vague outline of a building, its dark mass dotted with only two or three lights. Taking a shortcut across the lawn, where the dew-laden grass soon soaked his shoes and the bottoms of his trousers, he made his way toward the building.
When he was up close, he saw that it was a pretentious construction, a sort of small château, built very high, with ornate moldings that resembled cake decorations, and with a long, low, ramshackle annex on one side, like a shed. The general effect was one of dilapidation.
The lights were on in the shed, and from one of the open windows came the clink of cutlery, suggesting the presence of a large number of people at dinner. A stale odor of cooking floated in the air; it smelled like a camp kitchen.
Napoleon hesitated to go farther. He stood in the shade of an elm on the edge of the lawn near a bench. He sat down, shivering on contact with the stone, which was wet with dew.
The noise of the cutlery ceased. There was a sound of footsteps and chairs being moved. The door of the shed opened and in the rectangle of light a silhouette appeared, draped in a long, flowing dustcoat like the concierge at the entrance gate and wearing the same type of cloth skull cap. This person breathed in the evening air for a moment and then stood aside, allowing a single file of about twenty people to pass by; they were dressed in a strange assortment of cast-off clothing.
Once out in the open air, this procession broke up. Like monks meditating in a cloister, some stood pensively in the middle of the terrace in front of the house; others, plunged in solitary thought, began to walk up and down the main path, every man alone, some staring at the ground, some gazing at the stars. The strange brotherhood slowly dispersed through the park; two of its members passed in front of Napoleon without seeing him, but in the shadows Napoleon himself began to tremble violently as he recognized their clothing at last. The key to the mystery came to him in a flash—and this normally fearless man felt himself for a moment transfixed with terror. Was it really possible that the medical officer had planned to trap him like this? Was he really capable of such a dreadful scheme?
One of the walkers came and sat on the same bench as Napoleon but did not look at him. Like his companions, he was wearing some sort of shabby fancy dress, improvised from bits and pieces, a patched-up mixture of cheap finery and rags which attempted to reproduce the classical dress of Napoleon in the field, as it was always pictured in the popular imagination: gray frock coat, white waistcoat and trousers, grand cordon around his neck, riding boots; a wooden sword completed the outfit. As for the famous little hat, it was made of thick paper, fairly carefully sewn and stuck together, and daubed with India ink.
Napoleon stared at him, hypnotized: under the grotesque disguise, a frightful thing to behold, the pale face bore the stamp of pensive nobility; the thin lips indicated inflexible resolve; under the paper hat, the staring eyes, accentuated by a drooping lock of hair, probed the depths of the night. It was as if, through the years, the relentless effort of thought—or rather of the single obsession that had taken the place of bygone thoughts—had succeeded in slowly modifying the features of his physical exterior to make it conform to the strict likeness of the Emperor. This miserable wreck presented an image of his model a thousand times more faithful, more worthy, and more convincing than the unlikely bald fruiterer who, seated beside him, was examining him with such amazement.
Other napoleons came and went around him; in the middle of the lawn, where a patch of white mist now hovered, one of them peered into the shadows through a cardboard telescope; another spread an old newspaper on the stone balustrade, as if it were a staff map. There were some who sat astride rusty garden chairs, lost in thought. And despite the forlorn parade of their borrowed garb, despite even the incongruous movements and bizarre postures—there was one of the company who only moved about by hopping, following the complicated layout of an imaginary game of hopscotch, and there was a short fat man who spun around on his heel like a top, with arms outstretched and coattails flying in the wind—all their faces showed a kind of solemn melancholy, a pensive seriousness, which was oddly impressive.
A bell rang. Like schoolboys at the end of recess, they formed ranks and filed back to the house, where one of the ubiquitous guards in a greatcoat was waiting for them under the lamp on the terrace.
Napoleon clenched his teeth and crouched in the shadow of the elm. He waited for a long while without moving.
Now indivisible from the darkness, the garden was once more silent and still.
He got up at last; his legs were stiff, his clothes were now quite damp.
Turning his back to the house, he crept along the lawn under the cover of the tall trees, then took the path in the direction from which he had come.
His eyes were now accustomed to the dark. From time to time he stopped for a moment to listen; but each time, all he could hear was the slight sound of the wind stirring the leaves.
At last the entrance gate came into view. When he saw the patch of light which the streetlamp cast on the high pillars of the gate, he felt like the sailor who, in the depths of the night, suddenly catches sight of the first light on the shore.
Slowly, silently, he drew near to the little door. He felt for the bolt: it had been padlocked!
He looked up. From the inside, the surface of the gate was nothing but smooth, slightly shiny sheet metal, surmounted by iron spikes which pointed at the stars.
To both left and right, the high walls bristling with pieces of broken glass made climbing impossible.
Twenty paces away, there stood a little gatekeeper’s lodge, half s
ubmerged under wistaria; its only window was dimly lit by the glow of a candle.
He made up his mind immediately—and anyway, he had no choice. No longer trying to muffle the sound of his footsteps, and feigning confidence, he walked straight toward the lodge and banged on the window. He had already made up his story, which he would tell quite coolly: he had come to discuss food supplies with the director of the institution, Dr. Quinton. The name of this alienist, in charge of a mental hospital in the suburbs, had just come to his mind in a flash; though he had never met him personally, he had often heard the medical officer mention him as an old schoolmate and frequent partner at billiards. Napoleon’s prodigious memory had registered and stored this bit of information months ago, and now his sudden predicament instantly triggered the connection.
. . . But he did not even have to tell his tale; no doubt, his face and appearance were enough to suggest the healthy vulgarity of a tradesman—or had the concierge received specific instructions?—the fact remains that the latter scarcely glanced at him as he shuffled sleepily out of his lodge and, without showing the least curiosity, unbolted the little door and with complete indifference returned him to the indifference of the world outside.
VII. UBI VICTORIA?
AS THE GATE SHUT behind him, he found himself back in the empty street, under a street-lamp where moths flew round and round in the light.
He had some difficulty working out where he was in this unfamiliar part of town. He tried different streets and got lost. When at last he arrived in the neighborhood of the Impasse-des-Chevaliers-du-Temple, it was nearly midnight.
Before going home, he was stubbornly determined to call in at Les Trois Boules again. Too late! He was told that the medical officer had come back that evening but had left again almost immediately with his belongings, and that he had left no address.
