by Lydia Syson
He stepped forward and his gun swung towards the concierge’s wife. She dropped to her knees, her fists clasped in appeal, and began to moan. ‘We’ve done nothing.’
‘No, no, please, stop,’ said her husband. ‘They forced their way in here. We couldn’t stop them.’
‘That’s what they all say.’
When nobody spoke, comprehension dawned, and she began to whimper. This strange high-pitched noise penetrated to the cellars below, where her unseen children shifted audibly in alarm. Straight away, the men trained their guns on the floor, and the woman’s whimper turned into a scream. ‘No! Be quiet! Shut your mouths! I told you to be quiet!’
One soldier panicked and fired into the wooden boards. There was more screaming and scuffling, and Jules, without thinking, grabbed two of the three gun muzzles and forced them upwards.
‘They’re children, not Communards. Children. But what are you? Do you now kill children in cold blood?’
A terrible silence, in which a distant thud of cannon could be heard, and a timid voice, calling out, ‘Mama?’
Finally the officer relented, his decision hastened by the fall of shell, and another shower of plaster, as the engineers upstairs broke through the next wall.
‘Get them up here,’ he ordered the sandy-coloured fellow, brushing off his own epaulettes. ‘But we must see them for ourselves. And be careful. Even children can be armed.’
They edged in at gunpoint, all six of them. Their coal-dusted hands were raised, except for the oldest boy’s. He had the youngest on his hip, and was using his own free hand to try to persuade the baby to hold his up too. But the baby squirmed and resisted, and the concierge had to stop his wife from rushing towards them, without making it too obvious that he was holding her back.
The officer stared at the children appraisingly. They looked back discreetly, through lowered lashes, or gazed at their feet, all except for a curly-haired girl of about seven, who was missing her front teeth. Mouth slightly open, she stared back without blinking. When the silence continued, she lowered her arms, and folded them across her scrawny chest. That was enough.
‘Take them away. The whole family. Scum. Red scum.’
There was nothing Jules could do to stop them.
As resistance increased, the invading army slowed its pace. It was steady. It was systematic. The generals took no unnecessary risks. It wasn’t just the wide straight arteries of Second-Empire Paris they had to deal with. There was a secret city below, an underground Paris, its labyrinthine reflection. Beneath Haussmann’s drawing board, a network of cellars and crypts and quarries wound for mile after complicated mile. No general could possibly know what might be happening there. If the Versailles army didn’t take care, they might find the ground opening beneath their feet without the slightest warning.
Hadn’t the Communards mined the sewers and filled the catacombs with gunpowder? They had a chain of electricity, didn’t they, to set it alight? Or something more devious still: something else that could ignite all of Paris at once. This Commune would die on its feet rather than surrender, everyone said. They were animals, weren’t they, after all? Rabid beasts. None more than the women – bitches on heat. You don’t take any chances with wild animals, do you?
Anyway, these makeshift barricades were easy to manage. Once you had possession of the buildings above, it couldn’t be simpler for a sniper to pick off the Communard defenders below. Foolhardy types in trousers or in skirts, the ones who stood upright and sang and shouted and waved their red flags in half-crazed defiance – these were the quickest of all to kill. The Versaillais stalked them like cats in trees, getting rid of fledglings in a nest without even a scratch. They didn’t think twice about taking down the children. Les Enfants Perdus, they were called – the lost kids – ragamuffins who couldn’t lose faith in the Commune now, not after it had put food in their bellies and a pencil between their fingers, when nobody else had cared. The Students of the Commune, another band of fighters called themselves. Les Pupilles de la Commune.
At the Place de la Concorde, Thiers’s army came to an uneasy halt, waiting to be certain it was quite safe to attack. It was hard to believe that the Commune’s Committee of Defence could be quite this unprepared. Surely they had something up their sleeve?
It wasn’t long before Anatole ran into a National Guard battalion that took him in. Its temporary leader looked him up and down, and decided he could be trusted. It hardly mattered that he was a stranger – anyone prepared to take up arms against the invaders was a brother. Anyone who understood the urgency, and hadn’t already slunk away.
‘Here.’ A dented musket, and a belt of cartridges, almost full. Not every bit of abandoned weaponry had been seized by the enemy yet. Anatole had time to sling them across his shoulder, and then they were in retreat, darting from doorway to doorway, eyes alive to the slightest movement down the street. The houses were so tall and pale. There were so many windows to watch at once. He didn’t want to be alone here. He made sure to keep up with his new companions, though it was hard to run while you were looking over your shoulder. Anatole thought he knew these streets better than any other part of Paris. But they had a way of looking unfamiliar now. You could lose yourself if you didn’t keep up. Once, when his back and skull were pressed against the iron hinges of a double door, as he flattened himself out of sight, Anatole heard breathing that was not his own. The skin on his face and neck crawled with the realisation that there was just a thin panel of wood between him and an unseen stranger. He waited for the head-high hatch to slide open, to expose him. A shot at that range would be the end of everything.
A hissed order saved him. Telltale red trousers were glimpsed in the distance. The zing and ping of bullets fell short. His guts unclamped and the men escaped into a side street, and kept on retreating until they finally reached something they could defend.
That mountainous barricade, built high on the Tuileries terrace, stone and sand and plans and foresight – surely that would be another matter altogether? Anatole collapsed into the ditch behind it, shoulder bruised and aching. No need to keep retreating. His breath moaned out of him, between his knees, and his eyes slowly focused on the flask of brandy a hand had thrust before his face.
‘Your health.’ He pressed the cold metal against his cheek, then swigged until his throat burned. There were more men here, in uniform even, and still plenty of gold braid. Someone must know what to do. Even better, these militiamen seemed happy to ignore the new arrivals until they had recovered themselves.
Anatole put his head back and closed his eyes. He wished he had thought to bring Zéphyrine’s photograph. More than ever he wanted to see her face, to draw inspiration from her fierce pride. He had stared at it so often – every time he took out or put away his violin. He held a perfect memory of the image in his mind. But the image was beginning to feel fragile. He had to keep thinking about every detail, to remember the precise tilt of her chin, the look in her eyes, the crackle of her hair and the faint scratch on the print. If he could just keep holding it, Anatole thought, if he could cradle the image in his head, like an egg nestling in the palm of his hand, it would not crack. And wherever she was, with luck, she would not break either.
29.
23rd May
Tuesday. The sun rose again, bright and implacable, sucking the colour from the streets. A menacing shuttered emptiness hung between the houses. It would be the last time the Commune leaders met at the Hôtel de Ville: there were tears and drama but no useful decisions. A few hours later, west of Montmartre, Batignolles fell. As each neighbourhood collapsed into the hands of the National Government, the house searches started in earnest. The once outlawed military police force was back at work, and primed for revenge.
Before the army could advance, every area had to be cleared. The denunciations began, and also the arrests, and the reprisals.
On the Left Bank, the military school filled up with prisoners. On the right, the accused were herded into public park
s planned ten years earlier so the city could breathe. Behind elaborate iron gates, on dappled lawns, shots rang out over and over again. And still Montmartre waited for the attack.
Jules went out to look for bread, and ducked his head at the sight of police officers banging on doors. He calculated the number of houses that lay between them. He reckoned he had an hour or two, and hurried back.
Until that day, he had always respected Anatole’s privacy, never entering his bedroom without knocking, though God knows he’d longed to. Force of habit made him knock now, and listen before pushing open the door. The shutters were still closed. Staring into shadows, Jules could, for a moment, persuade himself that Anatole was still there, asleep. But as his eyes began to work in the half-light he saw the bed was empty and unmade, a white ocean of sheets. And there it was, flung over a chair at the end of the bed, buttons gently gleaming, the uniform he had to destroy, to save his own skin and Anatole’s too, with luck.
Jules looked at it with venom. He should have imposed his will. Issued ultimatums. But if he’d threatened Anatole, told him to clear off, he might have believed Jules meant it. Anatole would have been just as happy slumming it in Montmartre or with the students in the Latin Quarter as he was in their smart part of town. Jules would have lost him entirely.
He gathered up the jacket and trousers, and, catching a faint familiar fragrance, buried his face in the stiff wool. Bergamot and orange blossom. The scent of English tea. It was the eau de cologne he’d bought for Anatole to celebrate the end of the siege. Anatole had looked at him thoughtfully, then put the cut-glass bottle on his shaving stand. Jules said nothing when Anatole finally began to slap it on in the mornings a few days after meeting Zéphyrine.
Stupid to indulge in sentiment now. Bundling the clothing in his arms as best he could, he ran up to the studio two steps at a time, dumped Anatole’s uniform on the floor, and threw back the darkroom curtain. Calm down, he told himself. He shouldn’t have run. He was out of breath and shaky. Or was that how fear worked? Was it simply the thought of being caught in the act?
A few days earlier he’d noticed that he was reaching the end of his supply of collodion, and spent a careful hour making up a new batch, mixing up alcohol, ether, zinc bromide and nitric acid. Then the silver nitrate solution. His hands still bore trace of black.
Jules’ stained fingers reached for the new bottle, neatly labelled, deliberately unmistakable. He unstoppered it and sniffed, just to be quite sure. It smelled of bleach and almost rotten pears.
Opening the window, Jules leaned out and lowered Anatole’s uniform onto the tiles, piling up jacket, trousers and cap, as far away as he could manage. He thought of funeral pyres. He hoped he had not miscalculated. No, this would surely work. He had studied the reports in the photographic journals so many times: devastating accidental explosions, studios blown up in London, Paris, Birmingham, New York. This ought to do the trick, though it was hard to predict the force of such an experiment. To be on the safe side, he moved his cameras and tripods, heaving them down the stairs, one after another. Then he rescued all the unused plates, and wooden baths. As soon as he had finished up here, he would take the lot down to the courtyard, where his mobile darkroom was waiting.
Back on the roof, his calmness deserted him. He had always been so good at calculating time, to the very second, and now he was running out of it. He had to hurry.
A flash of sun on glass as he sloshed the chemicals out onto the heap of clothes. He tossed the bottle aside; it rattled into the gutter without breaking. Jules climbed back through the window, washed his hands with soap and water – rubbing distractedly at the black stains – struck a match and lit a candle. This he chucked on top of the soaked bundle of clothing, throwing himself to the ground on the far side of the studio in almost the same movement. His hands clutched his head. Whiteness streaked red, then black. A bright shriek in his ears. Another four panes of shattered glass fell from their frame.
Proclamations came thick and fast.
‘Let good citizens arise! The enemy is within our walls!’
‘To arms! To arms! Paris is impregnable.’
Zéphyrine squatted beside the trouser legs of a young Montmartre fédéré. His machine gun was trained on the empty street ahead. The thunder of artillery and the repeated crack of rifle fire kept mounting, and it seemed to come from everywhere at once, echoing off stone walls and inside your own head so you couldn’t begin to make out where the enemy was hiding. The air seemed thicker, and when you breathed, it was like inhaling fireworks. At the back of her throat, Zéphyrine tasted gunpowder: gritty, sulphurous. And suddenly, she couldn’t stop swallowing. It was as if her body imagined you could be rid of fear by devouring it. But back it came, sour and sharp. Forehead bowed against the grubby canvas of a split mattress already spilling its woollen guts out, elbows locked round knees, she braced herself. We are rats in a trap, she thought, our tails entangled. Part of her longed to slink off into a sewer, slide between the cracks of life and disappear silently, so she would never have to face what she knew to be coming. But how could she drag herself away from the others?
In one hand she held a cardboard box, in the other a cartridge, ready, waiting. She was aware of a faint rustling, like the movement of a bird or rodent. The box was shaking. The paper cartridges were whispering against each other, as her hand steadily shook.
‘What is it?’ muttered the fédéré. She had nudged his leg by accident.
‘Nothing. Nothing. Can you see anything now?’
‘Nothing.’
Another shell fell somewhere. There was screaming too, anger and terror shrilling out. But here, still, jammed in this street, not a single attacker was yet in sight.
More time passed. The young man’s leg was trembling too, she realised, the cloth of his trousers quivering like the loose flap of a sail before a boat turns back into the wind. His knees. His knees must be the problem. How could you fire straight if your knees won’t serve you? She imagined Anatole standing behind another barricade, somewhere in Paris, waiting for the onslaught, and quickly put the cartridge back in the box. She placed a firm hand on the thick dark wool, just above the fédéré’s calf, warm where the cloth had soaked up the sun. She straightened his crooked leg for him, giving it strength. He said nothing, but she could feel the muscles harden and grow steady. So she picked up the cartridges again, to be ready once more. That was her task. She had to concentrate, always prepared. She couldn’t make a mistake. As soon as he needed her, she’d be there. He would have to reload so fast. She would be ready for him. She swallowed again, and again. They were all prepared, ready for anything.
The next moment he was falling, not backwards, but against her, so that she toppled sideways too. The sound of the sea was in her ears, gusting wind, a popping gale. His body was slumped over hers, such a dead weight that she couldn’t escape. Cherry red and shining, blood soaked into her dress. She couldn’t feel any pain though. It must be his blood. She looked up and saw a rifle muzzle coming from an upstairs window, behind the barricade. But it was aiming at her. How could that be? It was aiming straight at her. Her legs scrabbled and kicked. She unpinned herself and edged backwards.
The cartridges! The cartridges! Scattered on bare earth, brown paper, string-ringed, like cigars or dismembered thumbs. Zéphyrine groped for them on hands and knees, fingers like fins or flippers, refusing to cooperate. Another hand. Rose’s hand. Rose’s voice through the waves and roaring. So much braver than Zéphyrine, always.
‘Get up. Get up. We must keep fighting.’
Rose had seized the dead boy’s gun and she was reloading. A clunk, and then a second, as she pulled back the bolts. Flash and deafness and clouds of grey. Ostrich feathers. Gossamer.
A cry.
‘Vive la Commune! Long live the Commune!’
Zéphyrine’s fingers closed on a cartridge. This one was smeared with mud, half-crushed by a staggering boot. She found another, gave it to Rose, and refilled her box as best s
he could, looking wildly around for more. A red flag lay crumpled on the ground. Three more fédérés had fallen, and most of the others in their group – a few men, but mostly women – had disappeared. Zéphyrine crawled towards the cannon, their only hope. But she had no idea how to fire it, and by that time, it was pointing in the wrong direction. Their citadel, Montmartre, had left its back door open. Red trousers blazing, polished buttons sparkling, the soldiers from Versailles attacked from behind, from the side, from every angle but the one they’d been prepared for. A moving wall of bayonets came clashing towards them. Fear made it hard for eyes to focus. There was a sound like silk endlessly ripping.
‘Rose, Rose!’ screamed Zéphyrine. ‘I can’t … What shall I do?’
‘Defend the —’
Then Rose fell too, frozen like a photograph, eyes like glass.
Zéphyrine ran.
Jules was shaving when they came. He stood at the washstand, blade at his cheek, and saw his own eyes shift in the circular mirror. Wood against wood he heard, not the gentle rap of knuckles. They were banging at the door with rifle butts or batons. The noise reverberated through the building, and the scum on the surface of the water trembled mildly. Jules removed a final strip of shadow from his jaw, laid the razor – a cut-throat – on the dove-grey marble stand, but decided not to snap it shut. He wiped his fingertips on the white linen towel, and then his face, and checked the cloth for the mark of cuts. None. His hand had been steady. He was determined it would remain steady.
A fresh shirt hung on the towel rail: it cooled his cheeks as it rustled over his ears. Tucking it in carefully, Jules pulled up his braces with a snap. He had already brushed his sack coat free of ash. He fed an arm into each silk-lined sleeve. The banging threatened to splinter the panels at any moment. It was so impatient that Jules decided to forgo his cravat.
He was quick to step aside in the hallway, ready for the soldiers to push past as soon as he let them in. Again, there were three of them. Did they always move in threes? Not men of the line this time, but the other militiamen of Paris, men from the party of order, who had sided with the National Government against the Commune. Now they were ready to deliver retribution.
