by Simon Leys
Napoleon was never to see him again. He made some inquiries in the days that followed, but his heart was not in it. Actually, he was no longer so anxious to lay hands on the deserter again. If he had wanted to, he could probably have found a lead from Dr. Quinton, but he found the very idea of meeting this person and revisiting the scene of his recent ordeal unspeakably repugnant.
As for the Ostrich, she was even less enthusiastic about seeing her former boarder again. His departure had brought her a sudden feeling of relief. The goodhearted soul could never have deliberately done anything to get rid of him, but now that he had left, it seemed that nothing could stand in the way of the new life that she saw opening up ahead of her—a calm life, a far cry from the stormy existence through which her heroic husband and his friends had dragged her for so many years—an ordinary life perhaps, but one that could finally bring her something like happiness.
She felt an ever-increasing admiration and affection for the man she always called Eugène. Perhaps she was vaguely worried by a certain aloofness, a certain moodiness that her companion could not manage to suppress—although this mystifying aspect of his character played some part in the very respect and blind faith that she had come to feel toward him.
One deep desire obsessed her—it was the hidden thorn in her side. She dreamed of being able to legalize their union. She tried to reason with herself, and tell herself time and time again that the tranquil intimacy of their life together had no real need to be sanctioned by a mayor, but to no avail. In spite of everything, it seemed to her that without this official ceremony something would always be missing, the one thing perhaps that would have allowed her to know that happiness she secretly longed for. However, she would never have dared confess it to him openly; in spite of everything, he still made her feel a shyness she could not overcome. Perhaps one day he would, of his own accord, make the suggestion she wished so much to hear. Perhaps it was just a question of time; perhaps she just had to wait patiently. Perhaps . . . She cherished this hope, while sensing that there were some secret obstacles the exact nature of which she could not fathom.
At an auction sale she bought a huge Empire-style mahogany bed, with brass mounts in the shape of sphinxes, that had belonged to a bankrupt solicitor. It was a real extravagance—in spite of the upturn in business under Napoleon’s forceful and imaginative direction, their capital was still relatively modest—but failing the ceremony she longed for, this majestic piece of furniture did at least seem to confer some sort of semiofficial ratification on their union.
So, from that day on, they slept together in the big bed. But they dreamed different dreams.
WHILE HE APPRECIATED the Ostrich’s devotion, Napoleon was worried by the new turn his situation seemed to be taking.
His indomitable will, which the worst misfortunes could not have shaken, had imperceptibly been diverted toward domestic joys and small-time prosperity. This unexpected success, trifling though it was, nevertheless brought with it a kind of ease which he could not entirely ignore. It was beginning to transform the ground beneath his feet into a soft, shifting terrain where his resolution could become weak and slowly sink without trace. The more business improved and the Ostrich filled his life with touching new comforts, the less he resembled the real Napoleon.
Every time he went to the barber’s, he stared into the double mirror and was horrified yet fascinated to see how his original features were disappearing little by little and being replaced by those of a stranger he despised and hated, and who inspired in him a growing feeling of disgust. He had put on a lot of weight and was now completely bald. If he had looked like this when he met Bommel (Justin), how could the sergeant ever have recognized him? And—not so long ago—the medical officer himself? When, after finalizing a particularly clever deal, he heard himself being congratulated by some broker in colonial goods who paid tribute to his brilliant business acumen, a burning lust for action ran through him—oh! to start again from scratch, to break free at once from this warm morass that threatened to engulf him!
Yet the medical officer’s prophetic jibe, advising him to be content with making his fortune in watermelons, still rang in his ears, and the memory of that twilight visit to Dr. Quinton’s asylum hung over him like an imminent threat. Besides, this threat was quite real, as he was soon to find out.
He had made a tentative attempt—rather an awkward one, it is true—to get the Ostrich to share in his secret.
The result of this approach was disastrous. At first, she did not understand anything; then, when she finally made out what he seemed to be aiming at, a heartrending look of astonishment and terror spread over her face. Napoleon realized how distressed she was and did his best to beat a retreat, making a laborious effort to change the subject of their conversation. She pretended to follow what he was saying, fighting hard not to burst into tears.
During the days that followed, she was careful not to mention the incident, but she secretly watched him all the time. She tended him with anxious concern, as if he were a convalescent getting over a serious illness; she begged him to look after himself, forbade him to stay up late; she lovingly prepared nourishing broths, and made him swallow potions. She was forever putting her hand on his forehead, pretending it was a caress, so that she could take his temperature.
Napoleon feigned not to notice, but he was perfectly well aware of the panic that his rash move had caused. The Ostrich’s reaction had filled him with utter dismay, and he now realized that a lot of preparatory work would have to be done before she was able to accept the truth.
First he waited until the unfortunate effect of his first approach had somewhat abated.
When the Ostrich seemed to have almost forgotten the incident, and to a certain extent recovered her former equanimity, he thought he could risk trying again. But this time, in spite of all his caution and tact, the result was even more disastrous: he had scarcely brought up the subject, when she burst into tears, and became so dreadfully agitated that he vowed never to venture into this territory again. But in the meantime, he had to find a way to calm her down—which he did in a rather clumsy fashion. First he tried to pass off the whole story as a bad joke, then he contradicted himself by admitting to whims and fantasies which came, he was sure, from his digestive problems.
However, these confused explanations did no good at all; he could not manage to calm her. She caught him at his own game and begged him to see a doctor. She said she knew an excellent stomach specialist. Napoleon made some vague promises, while firmly resolving to avoid any such consultation. But this time he would not get out of it so easily!
One day when he came home a little earlier than usual, he surprised the Ostrich deep in conversation with an unknown visitor.
When she saw him, the Ostrich jumped to her feet, in a great state of confusion. The stranger, on the other hand—a short man, bent and cold as a cucumber, and tightly buttoned up to his chin in a brown overcoat—remained unruffled and merely stared at Napoleon with a kind of professional detachment. The Ostrich launched into voluble introductions: “. . . an old friend . . . a former comrade of the late Truchaut . . . just passing through . . . came in by chance . . . stayed to lunch . . . pleasure to see each other again . . . to meet . . . what’s more an excellent doctor, in fact a stomach specialist, DR. QUINTON! . . .”
Had the visitor noticed the start that Napoleon had not been able to suppress when he heard his name? The doctor kept looking at him; his eyelids were strangely bereft of lashes, giving his eyes an unpleasantly fixed stare.
Napoleon made a superhuman effort to control the fury that was boiling inside him, and to act naturally as he moved about under the gaze of this disturbing, solemn, frog-like creature. First he tried fulsome politeness, but the exaggerated suavity of his words sounded so false that he himself was immediately alarmed by it. He felt trapped: whatever he did now, everything would be evidence against him; an angry outburst would certainly be the end of him; but on the other hand, hypocritical
urbanity and the calculated weighing of words, far from allaying suspicion, would only tend to justify an even more alarming diagnosis. Finding himself in an extremely perilous situation, he finally chose the tactic that would give least away: burying his hands in his waistcoat to hide their trembling, he lapsed into an apathetic silence.
Quinton, who was no less taciturn, continued observing him with an air of morose satisfaction.
The Ostrich kept moving aimlessly around them, rummaging about among the pots and pans, shifting chairs from one place to another.
The ordeal seemed to last forever; they had to drink an aperitif, eat a meal, have coffee, sip liqueurs, smoke a cigar.
And still the silence continued.
Napoleon felt dizzy, he began seeing things. Instead of the brown overcoat opposite him, he sometimes thought he saw a long dustcoat and a cloth skull cap; and from the food the Ostrich had prepared, delicious though it was, there suddenly rose the stale refectory odor that he had smelled one evening deep inside a walled garden. It made him feel sick. He forced himself to take a copious second helping to overcome the feeling, but it was such a struggle to keep control of himself that, although his eating habits were normally very frugal and discreet, he suddenly began to devour his food in the most repulsive manner, chewing like a hyena. The Ostrich, who was astonished and appalled by this noisy, messy feeding frenzy, was by now close to tears. As for Quinton, he observed his subject shrewdly, nodding his head with the knowing expression of an expert.
AFTER QUINTON LEFT, Napoleon made a dreadful scene. He could almost have beaten the Ostrich. He smashed a china coffeepot and two vases. The Ostrich wept floods of tears. Moans arose here and there from children crouched in corners. Everyone was frightfully unhappy; they seemed to feel that it was the end of an era that would never return.
In the days and weeks that followed, they nonetheless tried to go on with their lives as though nothing had happened. The Ostrich swore to him that she would never, never again take it upon herself to call a doctor. And Napoleon, for his part, resolved once more never to try to include the poor woman in a secret that was obviously too much for her to cope with. No further word about the whole affair was exchanged between them, and on the surface their life went on as before—but only on the surface. Previously, during the long hours they spent alone together in the evenings, silence had wrapped them round in a warm feeling of security, whereas now it became unbearable, loaded with permanent menace.
The Ostrich watched over him incessantly with pathetic tender concern, and whenever he suddenly raised his head and saw the anxious questioning of that gaze which was always upon him, she turned her head away with a start, trying to hold back the tears that were always on the point of overflowing.
Silence frightened her, but she was even more afraid when he did occasionally speak. She always feared the threat of some double meaning behind the most banal expressions, and lived in dread of suddenly discovering in the most harmless remarks that the nightmare was lying in wait and ready to return.
The poor woman zealously did her best to keep up the pretense of a calm, happy life; then suddenly she would have to escape to the kitchen and cry until she could cry no more.
This make-believe was no less trying for Napoleon. In spite of all the pity he felt for her, he was quite lucid in his assessment of the dreadful danger he was in because of that innocent creature. And so, although it would grieve him to have to do it, he now had to consider breaking an attachment that could prove disastrous for him. Obviously, of all the strange ordeals that had crossed the path of his return to power, this separation would be by no means the least painful, but he could certainly draw many lessons from it which would be of benefit to him in the future.
He began to perceive more clearly that greatness should always be on its guard against the snares of happiness. The most brilliant achievements of his past career had been but a dream from which he was awakening at last. It was only now that his genius was coming to maturity. The epic of his past was no more than a confused and aimless burst of youthful energy compared with what he would be able to achieve, now that there would be no emotions, no attachments to stand between his creative intelligence and his will to act. He was reaching a higher plane of existence, and on these heights he breathed deeply of an air so pure that it would have burned the lungs of ordinary men.
From that moment on, victory seemed assured. It was only a matter of organization. He therefore coldly and methodically once more set about drawing up his plans.
First of all, he had to forge his weapons. He began by compiling a series of dossiers on the leading ministers, high bureaucrats, and military personnel who had served under the Empire and who had succeeded in gaining a position of influence in the present regime. It should be possible, if not by appealing to their loyalty, at least by having recourse to blackmail—and that was an essential part of these dossiers, based on his prodigious memory and on his knowledge of the political, civil, and criminal affairs of the Empire—progressively to persuade a certain number of these authorities to put secretly at his disposal forces that they already partially controlled in ministries, the government services, the Chamber of Deputies, the Senate, and, above all, in the army and the police. In that way, a clandestine power would grow little by little within the official power structure, replicating its functions and sapping its energies, until the day when, sure of its hidden network, with one stroke the former could take over from the latter, which would now be obsolete.
The organization chart of this secret power structure was beginning to take shape on paper, but its theoretical development still needed considerable research. He often had to go to libraries, where he sometimes spent whole afternoons consulting newspapers from the time of the Empire, old collections of the Moniteur, and a variety of other archival material.
However, this meant that he neglected the business, which began to suffer. The Ostrich became more and more alarmed about it, but dared not say anything. Napoleon now went out in the evenings more often than not. As it was impossible to work on his dossiers when the Ostrich was there, he installed himself in some café, and there, sitting next to pensioners playing dominoes, he patiently continued planning the huge insidious process which would soon undermine the whole of France.
He came home very late at night. The Ostrich waited for him, keeping one of the innumerable fortifying foods, of which she alone had the secret, on the corner of the stove: chicken livers marinated in port, braised pigs’ brains with chestnuts, steamed cod roe, etc. This took up several hours of her day, and had become a sort of release for her anxiety.
A whole summer went by in this manner. Autumn came. Napoleon’s work progressed steadily. His business came closer and closer to collapsing. Soon the moment would come for him to fly off again. He was sincerely sorry when he thought of the pain that his departure would cause the Ostrich, and he regretted not being able to leave the business in a healthier state. But what could he do? Sometime in the future a day would come when he could offer her a fair and honorable reward for her devotion.
AT THE BEGINNING of winter, the weather, which had been exceptionally fine up till then, suddenly deteriorated.
One evening, as Napoleon was walking home from a café where he had spent a long study session, he was caught in a sudden downpour. He arrived home soaked to the skin and numb with cold. The Ostrich put him to bed with a toddy and a hot-water bottle.
At about one o’clock in the morning, his tossing and turning woke her up; he was burning with fever and delirious. Panic-stricken, she roused the oldest of the children and sent him to fetch a local doctor.
The doctor finally arrived, just before dawn. He found the disheveled Ostrich running up and down stairs, putting pots and pans on the stove, making hot drinks, trying to control her fear with frantic activity. Napoleon lay with his eyes wide open, mumbling incoherently. The doctor was an old man who, having had a great deal of experience, had long ago lost faith in medicine. He diagnosed
a galloping lung infection. He left complicated instructions for making a poultice, so that the Ostrich would have something to do. He promised to come back regularly in the days that followed.
He kept his promise. At every visit, he merely came into the bedroom for a moment, looked at the patient, who was still delirious, nodded his head thoughtfully without speaking, fumbled about among ironmongery in the bottom of his leather bag, took out one of two small bottles, handed over pills of various colors to the Ostrich, and, to keep her amused for a moment, taught her a new variation on the poultice recipe.
For five days and five nights, Napoleon’s fever continued unabated. His naturally delicate constitution, weakened by what he had already gone through, could not fight this terrible fire.
On the morning of the sixth day, his temperature dropped and he regained consciousness for a moment. The Ostrich’s hopes soared, but the doctor who had arrived on his daily visit immediately disillusioned her. Like the flames of a forest fire that die down only when everything has been reduced to ashes, the illness had wrought its havoc and now had nothing more to feed on.
. . . And so he is lucid again, but only enough to realize the extent of his weakness. He finds himself in the big mahogany bed, placed in the position that the doctor had recommended to the Ostrich, half sitting, propped up against a pile of pillows to prevent his throat being blocked. He is aware of the brightness of daylight through his closed eyelids and the weave of the sheet under his still fingers.
He would like to open his eyes; he has been planning it for quite a while, like someone getting ready for a journey, for it is a huge effort which requires a great work of preparation throughout his pitifully weak body. To this end, he calls on what scattered reserves of energy he can still muster.
