Illumination

by Matthew Plampin

  Hannah stood on the edge of this group, dressed in a uniform similar to Laure’s. This was worrying; Clem recalled an intention to call on her, smothered by recent distractions. It was clear, anyway, what Elizabeth expected of him now. He assessed his wine-drenched trousers: nothing could be done about it. Laure was still staring after the Neptune, a hand over her eyes, squinting as she tried to keep the minuscule sphere in sight. He touched her shoulder.

  ‘Ma soeur,’ he said.

  His lover turned neatly on her heel. She glanced at Hannah with magnificent disdain before plucking the champagne bottle from his grasp, firing out a half-dozen words as she lifted it to her lips. Clem didn’t understand them, but her meaning was plain enough: Off you go then.

  II

  Hannah sat in a corner of the Club Rue Rébeval, a gas jet hissing at her ear, sketching the left-hand section of the stage with a piece of charcoal. She worked fast, the brittle black stick scratching into the paper, attempting to cast off her intellect, her artistic training – to make the act of drawing as instinctive and unthinking as she possibly could. The effect of the hall was what she sought: the effect of being in the hall at that precise moment, rather than a mere record of its appearance. A rapid touch was vital. She drew an elbow, the back of a hat and the hair poking beneath it, hatching in shadows, not labouring the lines or dwelling on details. All of it would pass – the knot of kepis and cheap bonnets by the stage, the fall of the light – shifting about then breaking apart for ever. She had to be quick.

  The Club Rue Rébeval was in the north-east of Paris, amongst the serried tenements of Belleville. The hall had been used for dancing before the war – decorative tin stars were still nailed around the gas fittings – but like hundreds across the city it was now given over to political debate. It was full, the air close with the heat and stink of several hundred clustered, unwashed bodies. Most were red National Guard or their wives, many of whom had infants on their hips and children clinging to their skirts. These women participated in the evening’s discussions with even more energy than their husbands, cheering riotously when the government or the clergy were denounced – which was often.

  Hannah grinned with every shriek. She wore the uniform of the 197th – Jean-Jacques’s battalion, and as red as ripe tomatoes. They’d taken her almost without question, not even commenting on her nationality. She’d told her recruiting officer that she’d lived in Paris for a decade, considered France her mother country and would willingly die for the cause of French honour; he’d murmured bravo, made an entry on her form and waved her through to collect her uniform. She hadn’t expected to be so affected by the sensation of belonging. Strangers who might have sneered a week earlier now smiled and saluted as they hailed her as a brave citizen – a sister-in-arms.

  The day after she joined had been the 22nd September: New Year’s Day by the Republican calendar of ’93 and a sacred date for any French revolutionary. It had been marked by a demonstration before the Hôtel de Ville, attended by ten thousand red guardsmen and as many civilians. Their initial demand had been a seat for an ultra in Trochu’s cabinet, in the hope that such a representative might be able to challenge the hesitancy that was already coming to define his administration. When they arrived before that great palace of a building, however, with its statues and grand gates, it soon became plain that this wouldn’t be enough. Chants against the Prussians became chants for the resignation of the entire provisional government – and then, for the first time, for a people’s commune like that established during the first revolution. The commune was a hallowed idea for Jean-Jacques and his comrades: a society turned on its head, arranged from the bottom up, with administrative power shared between large numbers of citizens drawn from all stations in life. Hannah had added her voice to the chorus. It seemed like a clear improvement to her.

  Guardsmen from the Marais battalions, local to the Hôtel de Ville, had appeared along the rue de Rivoli. Their uniforms were different, a little lighter, and all of them were armed – unlike the red units, who had at best one ageing rifle for every four or five fighting men. Hannah had taunted them along with the rest of her company, telling these petit-bourgeois soldiers to put on their aprons and return to their shop-counters and stock-rooms. As the insults had sailed across the square she’d felt a crazy flutter of joy. This was progress; this, at last, was action.

  The protest had come to a disappointing end, guttering before it had a chance to flare. Someone had lost their nerve when a few stones were thrown, issuing the order to disperse. Nothing had been accomplished; no real statements had been made or concessions won. They were left simply to begin planning the next demonstration, endlessly formulating and debating their demands.

  This night in the Club Rue Rébeval was no different from a half-dozen others Hannah had been to since the march on the Hôtel de Ville. Five speakers sat up on the stage, behind a table that had been put there solely to be struck by determined fists. It was a rogue’s gallery of Parisian radicals. In the chair was Auguste Blanqui, wizened and white-bearded, an elder statesman of the ultras known for his uncompromising views; he was said to advocate the shooting of some forty thousand men who’d been involved in the running of the Second Empire, for the good of the French state. To his right was Raoul Rigault, a little out of his league, blustering and boasting to compensate for his inexperience; and beside Rigault was the veteran journalist Félix Pyat, staring into the club as if searching for someone who’d done him a great wrong. This was the man who’d made Jean-Jacques search the rue Royale for Mrs Pardy on the opening day of the siege. He hardly seemed like Elizabeth’s typical reader, but Hannah had avoided him nonetheless. She had no desire to hear his laudation of her mother first hand.

  On Blanqui’s left were the military men. Gustave Flourens, self-appointed battle chief of the reds, cut a splendid figure in the most embellished version of the militia uniform that Hannah had ever seen; his commitment to socialist principles clearly did not preclude lavish displays of rank. Willowy, well-groomed and effeminate, with a faintly ironical expression fixed to his face, he looked like a highly improbable warrior. Jean-Jacques sat at the end of the table. He was out of uniform, his black jacket melting into the shadows, his hat in his hands as if he was about to make for the door. The tendency of Parisian radicals to plot and pontificate irritated him. He’d told Hannah that he came from a different tradition: he would argue his point when necessary, but like her he always favoured decisive deeds over this endless talk. Their eyes met for a second; they shared an unsmiling smile. The discord of the Port Saint-Nicholas hadn’t lasted. They’d been reconciled, in fact, by the time they’d returned to Montmartre, and Jean-Jacques hadn’t mentioned Elizabeth since. Why am I not just drawing him? Hannah asked herself. Why do I ever draw anything else?

  Under discussion was the provisional government’s failed attempt to negotiate peace with the Prussians. Pyat was recounting in his nasal voice how Chancellor Bismarck had reduced Vice-President Favre to tears with the harshness of his terms. The Prussian had demanded the ceding of Alsace and Lorraine, the immediate surrender of holy Strasbourg and a host of other painful concessions. Hearing this, the crowd looked across to Jean-Jacques: his home province, the land of his forefathers, was under threat. He made no reaction.

  ‘A brave soul,’ the people agreed. ‘A truly brave soul.’

  ‘The demon Bismarck wants to ruin France!’ somebody shouted.

  Rigault jumped at the chance to air his favourite theory. ‘But citizens,’ he cried, ‘surely France should be ruined! What is she to us, as she stands? Look at this government of ours, these so-called republicans! What are they doing now, I ask you?’

  ‘Nothing!’ replied the hall obligingly. ‘Nothing at all!’

  Blanqui raised a hoary hand. ‘They are waiting, my friends,’ he said portentously. ‘Trochu and Favre paste up their defiant declarations across the city, but they want to surrender. This is certain. They know, however, that if they do so now we will no
t stand for it – that they will have a revolt to deal with. So they are waiting. Our food is running low. Prices, already, are starting to rise. Little thought has been given to how the supplies we have will be shared out. You can be sure that it is us, the poor, who will go hungry if the siege drags on.’

  ‘True,’ said the crowd. ‘It’s always this way.’

  ‘This is what Trochu wants,’ Blanqui continued. ‘He wants us weakened. My friends, he is counting on it. He wants us half-starved – too wretched and frail to prevent the complete re-establishment of bourgeois rule. He will set up a society much the same as the last: all power in the hands of a corrupted elite, all wealth in the pockets of the bourgeoisie. They will turn on the workers. They always do, in every revolution this country has ever seen. The bourgeoisie use us to rid themselves of the undesired leader, and then they turn us back into their slaves. We are promised liberty – and are rewarded with further tyranny!’

  Flourens stirred, spurs and scabbard jangling in a fine impersonation of a noble spirit roused. ‘Then we must act.’ His voice was cultured, soft; not for the first time Hannah wondered at the influence he’d gained with the ouvriers of Belleville. ‘We must make them hear us. Paris must save Paris.’

  ‘Paris must save Paris!’ thundered the Club Rue Rébeval.

  Rigault and Pyat leaped from their chairs, applauding this stock phrase as if it wasn’t repeated at every meeting they attended. Various dramatic steps were proposed and debated. Rigault wanted bloodshed, Trochu’s head on a spike; Pyat wanted rifles, a Chassepot for each red guardsman; Blanqui favoured seizing food stores so that the government could be held to ransom.

  After a few minutes Jean-Jacques stood like a man who’d heard enough. At last, Hannah thought, finishing off her drawing. The Alsatian loomed over the table; Rigault and Pyat sank back into their seats. The hall fell quiet.

  ‘My fellow citizens,’ he began, ‘this is all well and good, but we must act against the Prussians. If we can beat them then Paris would be ours. The government seems to think that our foes are invincible. I tell you that they are not. They are just men. The people need to be reminded of this. They need to be reminded that a sortie,’ – the hall muttered at the word – ‘a sortie would bring us certain victory. We are told that the enemy has encircled our city. I ask you: can this really be so? How many men can Prussia and Bavaria spew forth? Are they not also besieging the cities of Strasbourg and Metz – and occupying several other large territories as well?’

  ‘It is ridiculous,’ interjected Flourens, keen to show something of his own bravery and strategic insight. ‘It can’t be done.’

  ‘A fortnight ago we were saying that cutting off Paris was impossible. Well, my friends, perhaps it is. Perhaps this mighty siege is nothing but an illusion. What do we know – I mean truly know? A single minor victory has been won against the scum of the Imperial army. Some woods have been put to the torch. These events prove nothing. I put it to you that large stretches of the Prussian line are all but unmanned. It would be easy for us to break out and end this siege. The 18th, 19th and 20th arrondissements alone could field a hundred thousand men. We could do it tonight!’

  His audience growled its accord; the other men on the stage pounded the table and stamped their boots.

  ‘This is what the government tries to hide from us. They want the siege – Citizen Blanqui is right. They want to wear us down with hunger. They want to drain the lifeblood from the revolution. And if we are not brave, citizens, if we are not determined, they will surely succeed. We must—’

  A commotion at the side of the hall forced him to stop. ‘Spy, spy!’ the people there yelled. ‘Hold him – don’t let him escape!’

  This was common in the Club Rue Rébeval, a favourite bit of theatre; the reds, mistrustful by nature, were constantly rooting traitors from their midst. Hannah climbed on her stool to get a better look. The interloper was dressed in a grey suit, his arms lifted over his head to fend off the slaps that were coming in from every direction. It was Clem’s new friend – Monsieur Besson, the aérostier from the Elysées-Montmartre who’d run out of the Café Géricault in that unaccountable manner. Since that day, Hannah had begun to notice him in the place Saint-Pierre and the lanes around it; he seemed to be slipping into a shop or café whenever she turned around. She’d actually started to suspect that he was a government agent of some sort, planted among the balloonists to observe red Montmartre. Instead of fleeing or pleading innocence, however, as those accused of spying tended to do, this Monsieur Besson shouted out a rebuttal.

  ‘I am an honest republican,’ he stated in a loud, clear voice, ‘and I say that those up on that stage would be ten times more tyrannical than Louis Napoleon – him there with the scar worst of all! They are your enemies, can’t you see? They would soak Paris in Parisian blood! They would—’

  The aérostier’s words were buried under a landslide of taunts and curses. The Club Rue Rébeval closed in, punching him to the floor. A signal was given from the stage; a few of Gustave Flourens’s personal guard, a crack militia detachment known as the Tirailleurs, were tasked with ejecting Monsieur Besson from the building. Hannah watched them haul him to the street, afraid that she might see her brother. She did not – but there was a chance that he’d been standing further back and was already outside. She put the drawing in her knapsack, got down from her stool and started to push her way to the exit. She had to be sure.

  Clem was troubling her. The last time they’d met, at the balloon launch, he’d been wretched to behold: dirty and steaming drunk, slurring his words, his trouser-leg dark with an unmentioned dampness. Introduced to Jean-Jacques, he’d spluttered and rambled, spouting a variety of half-baked notions about socialism and the International, making a thoroughly disastrous impression. It had been obvious, also, that he’d come to an arrangement with their mother. Her twin was the least cunning creature alive; his attempts at leading questions were so clumsy they’d made her wince. Hannah had got rid of him as quickly as she could, revealing nothing, but it had pained her to see him so reduced. She felt that he was losing his way in Paris, surrendering to his basest appetites, taking up with the likes of Laure Fleurot whilst the city around him grew more hazardous by the day. How it might end, though, or what she might do to help him, she really didn’t know.

  Four large guardsmen were beating Monsieur Besson in the gutter, by the grimy yellow light that spilled from the club’s windows. He was lashing out at his attackers whenever he could, but it was futile; he fell to his knees, then onto his side. The militiamen showed no sign of relenting.

  Hannah rushed over. ‘Stop, stop! Christ above, what’s wrong with you?’

  The guardsmen backed away, glancing into the shadows; Rigault stood there, down from the stage, smoking a cigarette. Their victim rolled over, panting as he checked himself for injury. Hannah crouched before him and laid a hand on his forearm. He flinched at her touch.

  ‘Are you all right, Monsieur?’

  The aérostier nodded, keeping his head bowed; he seemed ashamed and would not meet her eye. He pressed the cuff of his grey jacket to his lip, a black blood-spot spreading across the fabric.

  ‘Mademoiselle Pardy, please,’ he whispered, ‘you must get away.’

  Hannah blinked, startled by the feeling in his voice. She recognised it; they’d definitely spoken before, a couple of cordial exchanges as she’d painted around Montmartre. She glared at Rigault, covering her perplexity with anger. ‘What is this?’ she demanded. ‘What were you going to do – kill him?’

  Rigault shrugged.

  ‘The man makes balloons, Rigault! What possible threat does he pose?’

  ‘Those balloons could connect Trochu with the rest of the French army,’ the agitator replied, ‘with the machinery of national government. And anyway, citizen, surely you know that there is more to our Monsieur Besson than that. He is an enemy of the revolution. I hear that he’s been asking about Jean-Jacques all over the city. We can’t permit this.
The revolution requires—’

  ‘You are insane,’ Hannah broke in, rising from the gutter. ‘You are a murderous pig, a—’

  The doors of the hall banged open and Jean-Jacques strode across the street towards them. ‘Damn it, Rigault,’ he said, ‘must I always be on hand to halt your cruelties?’

  Hannah let out an exclamation of relief: reason was restored. Without looking at her, Jean-Jacques ordered the Tirailleurs to set Monsieur Besson free. Rigault protested, but to no avail. The aérostier was pulled to his feet; the hat that had been dislodged during the fight was handed back to him and he was shoved away down the unlit avenue. Despite the punishment he’d suffered, and the further damage that would doubtless have been inflicted had he stayed, Monsieur Besson limped off with distinct reluctance.

  ‘Bravo, Jean-Jacques,’ said Rigault, ‘you’ve just turned loose a government spy. And one, furthermore, with a particular interest in you.’

  Jean-Jacques’s expression was suitably contemptuous. ‘That man is no spy. Would one of Trochu’s men really make such a spectacle of himself in a red club?’ He turned to Hannah. ‘No, there is a different explanation here. I believe that Monsieur Besson is taken with Citizen Pardy.’

  Hannah saw at once that this was true. ‘How can that be so?’ she said. ‘I – I don’t know him at all.’

  The slightest touch of amusement entered Jean-Jacques’s voice. ‘Yet somehow you have won his devotion. This aérostier is an old-fashioned sort, I think. He no doubt imagines that he must rescue you from my clutches. From the clutches of the socialist cause.’

  Rigault chuckled. ‘Tragic.’

  ‘It’s harmless enough,’ Jean-Jacques added, ‘but he must be discouraged. We cannot look vulnerable, not to anyone. Not now.’