by Lydia Syson
Marie looked at Zéphyrine. She knew her by her voice as much as anything. Tears, unwiped, had formed pale rivulets on her grimy face, meandering channels in the layer of smoke particles. Dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return, thought Marie. Sackcloth and ashes. Repentance time. But it was too late now for repentance. This was not Ash Wednesday.
‘Is Anatole with you?’ Zéphyrine asked.
‘No, why should he be? What have you brought me?’ She took the brown-paper parcel, wondering how Zéphyrine had even managed to slip up the stairs to this upper landing. And more importantly, who had seen her come. Then, without thinking, Marie reached out a hand to touch Zéphyrine’s cropped and matted hair.
‘Who did this to you?’
The fugitive grabbed at her, clamping hold of Marie’s wrist so that it hurt.
‘Let go!’ said Marie, and Zéphyrine’s brow creased as if she didn’t understand.
‘Are you hiding him?’ she asked, still clutching at Marie. ‘Is he here? You would do that, for him. I know you would.’
Marie shook her head. ‘He’s not here. I don’t know where Anatole is. I’ve no idea.’
‘Oh God,’ said Zéphyrine simply. ‘Oh God.’ She began to shake, and her nails dug into Marie’s white wrist.
‘Stop!’ Marie hissed, pulling back her arm, and Zéphyrine with it. She dropped the parcel and managed to free herself from Zéphyrine’s clawing hands, for long enough to shake her by her skinny shoulders. ‘You’ve got to stop this. Nobody must hear you.’ She slapped her face, not hard, but enough to shock the girl briefly into focus. ‘Just get inside as quickly as you can.’
At Versailles, Thiers made a speech to the National Assembly. ‘Our valiant soldiers conduct themselves in such a manner as to inspire foreign countries with the highest esteem and admiration,’ he said. Everybody cheered. In the heart of Paris, at the Lobau Barracks, behind high walls, out of sight but not out of hearing, the firing squads continued their work. People shuddered as they passed. All their lives they would be haunted by what they heard that week.
Rigault took matters into his own hands. An eye for an eye. No need now to make a show of consultation, and far too late anyway. For months already, Versailles had been executing prisoners. Now it was the Commune’s turn to make good their threat. He gave the first command.
Meanwhile the fédérés made a final appeal to the soldiers of the line, the men who had turned their muskets upside down beside the cannon, up on the Montmartre hillside two months earlier.
‘Unite with the people – you are part of them. Soldiers, children, brothers! Listen, and let your conscience decide. When the order is unspeakable, disobedience is an obligation.’
Babylon was burning. A burnished cloak of smoke smothered the city, its vast billows reddened or yellowed here and there by leaping flames, or briefly spotlit by the flash of artillery. Miniature volcanoes burst repeatedly from gunboats along the Seine. That afternoon, it was reported, the apocalyptic rush of sound reached a crescendo. Explosions rolled out in every direction, unorchestrated, and musketry fire came shrieking through the city like a demonic wind. As for the machine guns, their cartridges cranked out in a snarling rasp, an infernal stuttering. Ears whistled and sang. Bodies ached with waiting, and jerked with terror. Nostrils burned and throats retched. Watchers on rooftops thought of Nero’s Rome, or a bonfire of vanities, and talked of the debauchery of the fallen empire. Paris had become a Gomorrah, they said, a city of lights and splendour and lechery and disgrace. It could never have lasted. It had to come to an end. Paris had sinned for years, they reminded each other: now she had to pay.
Blazing columns and pyramids of fire rose that night along the line of the river, breaking forth in staggered chorus. Walls collapsed like falling scenery. Gigantic furnaces showering sparks on neighbouring streets. There was no quenching this. The waters of the Seine threw back the flames, redoubling their glare so that the river itself seemed to be burning, like a winding path of molten lava. The sky turned from black to red. Unable to compete with so much unexpected light, the stars retreated.
31.
25th May
On Thursday ash fell like snow. Round the outskirts of Paris, on its ruined suburbs, and on the Prussian encampments that were closing in ever more firmly to the north and east, it settled in a dull grey coating on every horizontal surface. Everywhere you went, the air was harder to breathe: something seemed to block your lungs. Thousands had gone into hiding inside the city, but thousands more were beginning to venture out. The party of order strutted the streets with tricoloured armbands.
Early in the morning, a chimney sweep stood with his palms out. He was in no position to disobey. He was small and wiry, and the army captain looming in front of him was tall and armed.
‘It’s soot. Only soot,’ he told him, looking up at the soldiers hopefully.
It was only soot, but these men didn’t care.
‘Sweeping chimneys at a time like this?’
‘I do Madame Blanche’s chimneys on the twenty-fifth of every month. Look!’ He turned out his pocket. ‘See … this is what she paid me.’ His voice, barely broken, rose to a squeak, as they took his money.
‘Take him away.’
Jules had never needed to fetch a horse himself before. There had always been someone around to send, but by Thursday the concierge had vanished entirely and he realised he didn’t even know where the nearest livery stable was. For want of a beast, he dragged the small cart himself. His passport was in his pocket, along with a fair bit of money. He had fresh clothes hidden behind his equipment, for himself and for Anatole too, and the cat was shut in a box with a piece of sausage. At the last minute he ran back upstairs and came down with Anatole’s violin, and hid that too.
Jules was an American, wasn’t he? The Prussians would surely let him through if he could find a way to the eastern walls. They had no quarrel with America.
The streets were filling up again. People had come out to marvel at the devastation, and to watch the prisoners pass. Bare-headed and many bare-breasted, their clothes ripped by bayonets to show their sex, hands tied behind backs so they could do nothing to protect their modesty, women were marched with men west through Paris. A few children stumbled beside them. They passed by in their thousands, heading for Versailles, staggering and stupefied, bewildered or defiant. Men were forced to turn their jackets and coats inside out, to mark their shame. They were guarded by mounted hussars who kept them moving faster than most were able to walk, urging them along at the pace of their strutting horses, threatening any who fell behind. The animals looked better fed than most of the prisoners.
Jules kept his head down and his eyes protected by the brim of his top hat as his hesitant gaze raked over the captives. It was pitiful to watch. From time to time, a prisoner would shout out or wildly stare about for someone who might recognise them and prove their innocence before it was too late.
‘It’s a red cross!’ a young man yelled, jabbing at his armband. ‘I said the international Geneva Convention, not the International Workingmen’s Association. I’m a medical student, for pity’s sake. They’ve made a mistake. Can’t anyone …? I was just trying …’ His protests were carried away.
A twisted logic beat circles in Jules’s head. If he were to see Anatole here, alive, he would at least have a hope of rescuing him. But how? And perhaps, if he wasn’t here, it meant he was free and safe. Or already slaughtered, or about to die. So better by far to see his face here, and know. And round again Jules went in his head, scanning the captives as he heaved his awkward load in the opposite direction. Like blowfly on a carcass, the onlookers were too busy spreading their poison to bother with Jules. ‘Look!’ they told their children, showing them what happened if you were bad, shaking heads in ribboned bonnets, and prodding with canes. Dogs yapped at the prisoners’ heels, urged on by their owners.
The bars Jules dragged were made for horses, not human beings, and his strange little curtained vehicle was hard t
o pull alone. It made him too conspicuous, he thought, before he realised that it stood out less than the other wagons and handcarts passing by, with their grotesque freak shows of tangled, angled limbs. He wanted to turn away from them, to gag in privacy, but he had to check every face he could. He forced himself to meet blank open eyes, staring out from jumbles of boots and braids and banners, arms and legs and winding sheets.
All at once there was a string of explosions like firecrackers. It set off a panic-stricken race to escape, but running made matters worse. Fallen cartridges were firing spontaneously underfoot. As you fled, you set off more. Jules stopped, sheltering against his cart. He held his breath and his ground until the agitation was over. Then, more warily, he kept on walking east, towards the theatre, his heart beating a little higher and a little tighter in his chest.
‘Are you hungry?’ Marie whispered.
Zéphyrine shook her head without looking up. She sat on the floor, arms clutched round her knees, rocking gently without speaking. Sometimes she opened her mouth, but her tongue just paddled the air, and gave up.
‘Are you sure?’
Marie crouched down in front of her, putting a hand on her raised knees and her face right in front of Zéphyrine’s doll-dead eyes. Eventually they unglazed, surprised to see Marie there.
‘What is it?’ she asked, eyebrows twisting.
‘Food. I’m going to get something to eat. I wanted to know what I could bring back for you.’
‘Nothing. I don’t want to put you to any trouble. I’m not hungry.’
Everything about Zéphyrine was dull now. She smelled of stale sweat. Really she needed to be washed as well as fed. At this rate, it wouldn’t be long before someone would literally sniff her out. Marie wondered what Anatole would think if he saw her now, her skin coated, nothing about her shining like it used to.
‘You really don’t want anything at all?’
Zéphyrine just chewed her lip. ‘Have you seen Anatole?’ she said again.
‘No. No, I haven’t. Please, stop asking me that.’
What on earth was Marie to do with her? Zéphyrine was like a different person. Almost like a madwoman, so blank and lifeless. It was inhuman, this endless, mechanical rocking, and Marie didn’t think she could stand much more. She had to get out, just for a short time, to eat, to breathe. She knew she would have to be quick, for Emile could turn up at any moment. Part of her wished he would. Her longing for him was intensifying all the time. Finally he felt so close. Soon she would embrace him, feel his living flesh, hear his voice, and know that all was well. But with Zéphyrine here, she had begun to dread his arrival. There was no knowing how he might react to her presence, or she to his. Marie took a basket from the hook behind the door.
‘Don’t let anyone in,’ she said. ‘Do you hear me?’
Tenderly she cupped the girl’s face in her hand, searching it for understanding. It was cold as marble. She kissed her cheek, left, then right.
‘On no account let anybody in while I’m gone. Understand?’
Zéphyrine’s face contracted briefly in recognition, and she nodded. Then Marie sighed. The blank-eyed staring had returned. Safest to lock her in.
Of course Jules hadn’t really expected to find Anatole at the theatre. But neither had he anticipated this smouldering hollow shell. The fire brigades were still at work, hoses in hand, enlisting anyone who passed to lend a hand with the pumping. Canvas snaked across wet ash, and a penetrating bitter smell of singed silk and fur and burnt horsehair hung in the air. Somebody had gone to the trouble of rescuing costumes: they were laid out on the ground in rows, like bodies awaiting identification. Here and there they sparkled silver and gold, as sunlight broke through and hit hidden spangles.
When he’d found a way round the abandoned broken barricade beside the Tour Saint-Jacques, another smell took over, which sent Jules reeling. It was a rotten stench with a sickly, perfumed undercurrent. The ground was all ploughed up, and at first he thought he was looking at logs, felled trees perhaps. A nearby boot gave the game away, then Jules noticed a triple-braided cuff still sheltering a wrist, and then another limb, protruding with an impossible twist. Though the square had been dug over, the graves were too shallow. Here and there lay smashed-up wicker baskets, filled with soil for barricades by market-women a few days earlier, now abandoned: mocking monuments in a makeshift cemetery. More bodies were arriving and in the distance a couple of army corporals were at work with buckets of lime, white powder clouding the air. Jules moved away, sickened, thinking of pestilence and plague pits, feeling dizzy with the effort to breathe less deeply.
Then he noticed something else that made his bile rise. At his feet crept lines of blood, sliding down the gutters towards the Seine, finding their way along the cracks between paving stones, dividing and reforming wherever they had to. He tried to step clear, but his wheels still left a track of crimson.
At this point, Jules considered abandoning his cart and his cameras, his clothes and his friend, and simply walking into the nearest bar and ordering an absinthe, and then another, and another. He felt almost ready to try oblivion. But if there was a chance of saving Anatole, Jules had to take it. He had to keep going. So he tied his silk handkerchief round his face against the smell, just below his eyes, which seemed to stretch them open. The back of his tongue rose instinctively in the roof of his mouth, barricading his nostrils from within.
In the café, Marie forced down a helping of mutton stew and pushed back her empty plate. She had chosen a place a few streets away, not one of her regular spots. Somewhere she wasn’t known. Her pockets were stuffed with bread to take back for Zéphyrine, filled under the cover of her napkin. Marie wasn’t going to risk carrying wine or milk back. As she had left her own building, the concierge had told her to abandon her basket. Women were being shot on the street for being caught with any kind of container. Things were worse even than she realised.
The proprietor came over with her bill. Standing at her elbow as she looked in her purse for the right coins, he kept his eyes on the window, watching the pavements, which were increasingly empty. People were beginning to walk in the middle of the road to advertise their safety. An idea came to her. It was obvious, in a way.
‘Monsieur, do you have some paper? And a pen? I need to write something. I’m in a hurry.’
She wanted him to be quick because she didn’t want to change her mind. Everything inside her started to thud at once, all her organs shifting. Her breath was forced out of her nostrils in such short quick bursts that she imagined the whole café must be alert to her fear. She was on the verge of doing a truly terrible thing. The worst she had done in her entire life. She would have to spend the rest of her life on her knees praying for forgiveness.
‘Certainly, mademoiselle. Right away.’
Marie stared at his retreating back. She could still change her mind. No, she couldn’t. This suddenly seemed the only answer.
An image was in her head and she couldn’t dislodge it: Emile arriving, exhausted and armed, Zéphyrine in a huddle, rocking and rocking. How had Marie imagined there could possibly be time to explain, or a chance to intervene? What would she say? Emile was a soldier. He was trained to kill and the Commune was his enemy. It was obvious what he would have to do. At least Marie tried to persuade herself that this was the reason for her decision. She couldn’t bear to witness, with her own eyes, whatever might happen next. The truth she pushed away was worse than that. The reason she was writing was that she wanted to be sure of her own safety.
‘Here you are, mademoiselle. Thank you, mademoiselle. Very generous.’ Sweeping the coins into the palm of his hand, he dropped them into the deep pocket of his white apron. A few moments later he had produced paper, pen and ink.
In a steady, looping hand, she began to write. ‘To whom it may concern …’
Was disobedience really an obligation now? Anatole had no time to think. All too clearly, all too quickly, the enemy was advancing, and he was at the ver
y centre of the storm. Every deafening crash and explosion seemed his last. But somehow it was still followed by yet another. He felt caught in the machinery of a giant boiler house, rolling and whistling and cracking and crushing, and he longed for the engine to spit him out. When the cry came for more ammunition, Anatole saw only screaming mouths and panic. All noise was one and nothing.
Running back to the temporary stores, dodging behind sandbags, a final blast made him turn his head. He fell headlong against a mess of stones that had once been the kerb of a pavement.
That evening, at about seven thirty, a man gave up hope. He was an old man, a brave man, a ravaged man. He had kept his nerve and his optimism all through the failed revolutions of 1830 and 1848, even surviving Devil’s Island, the South American penal colony, though the consumption he contracted in Cayenne was slowly killing him. Military commander since April, Charles Delescluze had led the Commune with courage these last few weeks, but by Thursday he knew he could not save it.
Once again, he gave orders to evacuate. The wounded were to be sent on ahead: they couldn’t be left to the vengeance of Versailles. The only safety left was the heights to the east, where Belleville and Père Lachaise still held firm. Delescluze wrote a letter to his sister, then pulled his broad red sash of office over his head, the only marker of his status. Black coat, grey trousers, silk hat, patent leather boots. He carried his habitual cane, but took no weapon.
It wasn’t a long walk from the neighbourhood’s town hall to the barricades on the place du Château d’Eau – perhaps twenty minutes – but the enemy fire never let up. As he walked, Delescluze greeted the men of the National Guard who had held firm all through this terrible week, and pressed their hands, foot soldiers as well as officers. He ignored their repeated warnings of the danger he was walking into, the screech of falling shells. When he reached the barricade, he turned, and looked at his comrades for the last time. The sun was setting. With difficulty – his joints resisted his command – he climbed to the top. Then he vanished, shot dead.
