‘Probably for the best,’ he said. ‘Mr Inglis, I mean.’
Clem’s own guess was that Han’s art had been involved in the rift between his mother and the journalist. The contents of Madame Lantier’s shed had been brought in its entirety to Elizabeth’s rooms at the Grand. Clem recalled Inglis’s powerful scorn for these paintings on that first night; it was easy to imagine this overcoming his lover’s docility or respect for Elizabeth’s loss and some disparaging comment leaking out. Such a slip would have earned him a prompt excommunication. Han’s works had been made sacred by her death. Elizabeth would talk about them with the faintest justification; she was talking about them right now, in fact.
‘She made several very accomplished en plein studies here, you know. They depict crowds, naturally, rather than beasts in their cages or anything like that. People, ordinary folk, experienced as we truly experience one another in these places. Chance encounters. A glimpse – a passing gesture. Momentary fragments of other lives. No story, Clement, no forced meaning or trite little tale, just what we observe as we move through the world.’
Clem nodded, studying the tip of his musty cigarette; any second now she’d get onto the portrait.
‘Obviously they are not as considered as the large portrait. There we have the chef d’oeuvre. To think that she would not have embarked upon it had Jean-Jacques and I not urged her to! He is before you, Clement – brought directly before you.’
I should bloody hope not, Clem thought; he mumbled something that could have been interpreted as concurrence. Elizabeth had made it plain that she didn’t believe he’d been anywhere near vocal enough in his praise of Han’s productions. He had to admit that he was rather reluctant to admire a portrait of the Leopard – the man who’d brought down the Aphrodite and set his sister, his artist sister, on the route that had led to her death on a battlefield. The thing stood over Elizabeth’s fireplace, in her sitting room. He’d glanced at it once, agreed it was excellent, and not looked its way since.
‘I am sure that when my book is published,’ Elizabeth continued, ‘interest in her work will soar. That such a talent was permitted to flourish without encouragement, unacknowledged, will be seen as a monumental sin – emblematic of all that was rotten about the Second Empire. Monsieur Manet and his set at the Café Guerbois will never forgive themselves.’
Elizabeth was growing agitated. She’d been facing across the pavilion; now she turned sharply towards Clem, the legs of her iron chair scraping on the floor.
‘It was true devotion, Clement. She felt the world so keenly. This was why she could give so much of herself to Jean-Jacques and the ultras. Theirs is the cause of the people – the wider world. She wasn’t interested in the theoretical assertions of Herr Marx or Monsieur Blanc or any of them. For her it was simply a question of justice, of the poor being allowed their rightful freedoms.’
Clem kept his eyes down. ‘Justice, yes,’ he said. ‘Freedom.’
‘You don’t understand, of course,’ Elizabeth pronounced with some contempt. ‘You were always opposite twins, were you not? You are like your father, a glib being at heart, inclined towards whimsy. Hannah was a resolute soul, a dedicated soul. We were so alike, she and I. It is why we could not be together, ultimately – why we squabbled so.’
Clem had heard this many times before. His own view was a little different. There were certain similarities between Han and their mother, but it was their father she really resembled: they’d both been artists to the marrow of their bones. Seeing something of the life she’d built here in Paris had made that abundantly clear. Where this left him and Elizabeth, as distinct from one another as ink and engine oil, he couldn’t begin to say. He accepted, however, that in times of bereavement the dead have their lives and characters remoulded to meet the needs of those still living; so he nodded again, doing his best not to listen to what his mother was saying.
Elizabeth rose from her chair. ‘Come now,’ she said abruptly, as if it had been Clem’s idea to sit in the first place. ‘It is almost time.’
They went outside. The drumming of shell-fire was louder and more insistent here on the Left Bank. The Prussians were finishing off the year with a sustained bombardment of the southern forts. It seemed that they were becoming tired of swatting back these risible sorties, and were preparing to get serious.
Before Elizabeth and Clem was a network of tarmacadamed paths, winding off around clumps of trampled shrubbery. The fingerposts had been removed for firewood, but Elizabeth appeared to know where she was going. Soon they began to see the cages, as fine as miniature exhibition halls. Roofs bulged into exquisite onion domes; slender bars were painted white with red and gold capitals. Some had perches or hutches, or small ponds for swimming, while others opened onto landscaped paddocks. Every one was empty.
‘I’ve heard that certain beasts have been spared,’ Elizabeth said as she led them on, deeper into the zoo, ‘notably the simians. The directors know their Darwin, I suppose, and judge it to be a shade too close to cannibalism.’
A male crowd, both military and civilian, was gathering up ahead around an outsized stable, twice as tall as normal, on the edge of a straw-strewn enclosure. Elizabeth was recognised as they approached and the men parted, making a passage to a place at the front. They were greeted by a terrible bellow, a screeching blast of distress from a very large animal: the cry of the elephant. Through the stable’s open doors Clem could see two huge forms, shifting in their separate stalls. Manacles and chains were being prepared on a paved section of the enclosure. An address was underway, a grizzled fellow in a broad-brimmed hat holding forth with his hands clasped behind his back. At first, Clem couldn’t catch much of what he was saying and assumed that he was a keeper – the elephants’ custodian, perhaps, paying the unlucky creatures a final tribute. He came to realise, however, that this was actually the man who was to shoot them, describing in some detail the special ammunition he’d selected for the task. Theatrically, this executioner produced a bullet for their inspection: a chrome cone the size of a two-shilling cigar.
The first elephant was led out, surrounded by keepers and park officials.
‘Castor,’ said Elizabeth, her notebook at the ready. ‘His brother Pollux is to follow – they are twins, you see. I hear the butcher Deboos on the boulevard Haussmann has bought them both for eighteen hundred pounds. He plans to have skinned trunk in his window by the end of the day.’
Clem swallowed, digging his chin into the curtain-scarf, suddenly appreciating what he was about to see. He’d never been to Regent’s Park Zoo and certainly never to Africa or anywhere like that. All he’d experienced of elephants were etchings and paintings, and a skeleton, once, in the Oxford museum. He’d never set eyes on a live specimen before; and now he was to watch one be put to death.
Castor was an unlikely-looking jumble of parts – legs awkwardly long, shoulders hunched, bundled together under a loose, colourless skin. He knew that danger was close, but he evidently trusted a couple of the people around him and allowed himself to be manacled without complaint. Clem was struck by the tiny, swivelling eye in the enormous skull; the hairs and pale spots on his crown; the shrunken, wrinkled ears. The elephant’s tusks were mere stubs, all but buried in the folds of his face. He was adolescent, Clem estimated, still a distance from full maturity. The famous trunk was feeling the air with gentle caution, searching for something that plainly was not there. It was positively ghoulish: a genteel crowd of natural scientists, reporters, sportsmen and soldiers congregating to end this gigantic lump of life. Clem ground his teeth, wondering what the devil he was doing. He really hadn’t thought this one through properly.
The shot was startling, a flat, ringing bass note, deeper and more penetrating than a standard discharge. Castor was hit beneath his right shoulder, the bullet leaving a coin-sized hole in his hide; he barely flinched, blinking in the powder-smoke as his executioner lowered his double-barrelled sporting gun. Rooted to the spot, Clem was seized by the mad hope th
at the shot might have been absorbed somehow – that Castor’s immense bulk might render him indestructible, at least to the weapons of man. But then one leg wobbled, giving out; and the stricken creature started making this horrible gargling noise, choking from an internal haemorrhage. Butcher boys rushed forward with buckets to catch the blood that was now pumping from the bullet-hole, spurting to the slowing rhythm of the elephant’s heart. Several among the crowd let out exultant exclamations, those closest to him jumping clear in case he toppled over. Castor dropped to his knees; Pollux let out another plaintive cry from inside the stable. The first bucket was taken away, filled to the brim, the blood-flecks on the butcher boys’ wrists bright and rich as fresh blackberries. The elephant slumped onto his side, head lolling and trunk gesticulating weakly. The second bucket was soon full as well.
Clem’s paralysis eased. He tried to breathe. For Christ’s sake, he told himself, it is only a blessed animal, a beast like any other – like all the horses and dogs and God knows what else we’ve killed for their meat. He felt intolerably stifled, though, as if he was drowning in the open air. Turning to go, anxious to escape before the dispatching of Pollux, he noticed that Elizabeth was no longer next to him. This was strange. Why had she dragged them both halfway across Paris only to skip out just before the main event? He scanned the edges of the crowd, catching sight of her blue bonnet as it disappeared behind a screen of laurel bushes. Glad to have a decent reason for getting well away from the dying elephant and its doomed brother, he went after her.
Past the laurels was a broad courtyard. Elizabeth was at its opposite side, entering an austere neo-classical building. Three large cages were attached to its eastern wall, constructed not from bars but a sturdy grille. There wasn’t a soul around; everyone was at the elephant enclosure. Clem hurried across the courtyard and followed his mother through the doors. Beyond was a wide central corridor, running between reinforced panels of the same grille as outside. It was dark and barn-like, the dusty atmosphere soured by the rancid odour of cat urine.
Elizabeth was halfway down this corridor, talking with a tall, clean-shaven man. Clem swore under his breath. It was Jean-Jacques Allix. He was leaning slightly towards her, listening carefully to what she was telling him, an expression of profound concern on his face. The Leopard of Montmartre was not in his signature black for once, but a grey overcoat and a kepi, pulled low over his eyes: the disguise of a wanted man. This was clearly a pre-arranged meeting and the real reason for their visit to the Jardin des Plantes that morning. Allix passed his mother a packet of papers. They embraced, speaking earnestly as if reaffirming a vow; then he gave a shallow bow and started for the doors.
Allix showed no surprise upon seeing Clem. Coming to a halt, the Leopard considered him calmly, his gaze lingering on the patchy beard and the purple curtain-scarf. Clem felt about four feet high.
‘I am pleased to see that you have recovered from your accident,’ he said.
Clem glared back, imagining what Besson would do in his place – the furious accusations he would level. He began to tremble. ‘Yes, well,’ he managed to reply, ‘no bloody thanks to you.’
The Leopard’s smile was pitying; he patted Clem’s shoulder with his crippled hand, the wooden fingers rattling inside the glove. ‘Take care, Mr Pardy,’ he said as he went. ‘There is much still to come.’
Elizabeth was close behind. Clem’s headache was returning, welling around his eyes. He pushed up his hat, mopped his brow on the sleeve of the green wool jacket and attempted to regain his equanimity. It was pointless to try to talk to his mother about Allix. Everything had gone too far. Hannah’s lover, like her paintings, was completely beyond question, as was the radical cause they’d shared. Any allegations against him were seen as a conspiracy; Émile Besson she regarded as a government man through and through, out to damage Jean-Jacques with baseless lies. She looked rather pleased that Clem had witnessed her little tête-à-tête. It served as an effective declaration of her continuing stake in Allix – of her determination that the Pardy connection with him would last beyond Hannah’s death.
Staying quiet was undoubtedly the best course, but Clem couldn’t help himself. ‘I thought these interviews took place in your sitting room at the Grand,’ he said. ‘Tales of bloody mayhem by the fireside, that sort of thing.’
This earned him a warning glance. ‘It is too dangerous. The link between us is too widely known. They tricked Gustave Flourens during the first sortie, Clement – arrested him when he went forward to join his Tirailleurs and threw him in the Mazas. A similar trap could easily be laid for Jean-Jacques.’
‘But he came to you before the sortie, didn’t he?’ Clem insisted. ‘A visit for every article, you said.’
Elizabeth harrumphed and sighed, waving this away; and Clem realised that the time Allix had come to tell her about Han had actually been the Leopard’s sole appearance at the Grand Hotel. These packets were their main means of communication, and the raw material from which the Figaro articles were formed. Growing defensive, his mother now treated him to a dollop of her usual rhetoric, rambling on about how the government was planning to starve the people into submission; how the army was effectively colluding with the Prussians; how Allix and his guardsmen were burning for action; how Paris must save Paris and restore the martial honour of France.
Clem remembered what Besson had said, in the place de l’Étoile and elsewhere. ‘Surely, though, these lunatic sorties play straight into the provisional government’s hands? Every red guardsman gunned down by the Prussians is a troublemaker they don’t have to worry about any longer.’
This made Elizabeth angry. ‘Do you propose, then, that we sit here and do nothing?’ she snapped. ‘Many in Paris want revenge, Clement, Jean-Jacques included. The Prussians are a merciless, dishonourable foe. Did you know that they frequently surrender on the battlefield, only to open fire when the French approach them? They have raped and torched and shot their way through huge swathes of this country. Countless innocents have fallen.’ She stepped towards him. ‘Can you forget so easily that they killed your sister?’
This stunned them both into silence; it was harsh, even by Elizabeth’s standards. Clem turned to one of the grille partitions. A shape moved behind it, against the far wall. The size of a large gun dog, the animal kept close to the ground as it passed through a bar of daylight. Clem saw matted fur the colour of old hay, a dozen faded black spots and the ribs standing out beneath them; the starving cat paused, baring its fangs with a feeble hiss before slipping back into the gloom.
‘By Jove,’ he said, struggling to seem unaffected, ‘a leopard. What was Mr Inglis’s term? Pantera pardus. An apt meeting place, I must admit – although this poor puss is rather less alarming than your creation.’
Elizabeth knew she’d gone too far, but was incapable of framing an apology. She would just do nothing, as usual, and let Clem deal with her remark however he chose. ‘It lives,’ she said, ‘as no hunter in Paris will get in the cage.’ She reached for her satchel, fumbling with the buckle. ‘I have to return to the Grand. I have writing to do.’
For a moment Allix’s packet was face down against the satchel’s leather flap. Between the binding ribbon and Elizabeth’s gloved fingers Clem glimpsed part of a paragraph, written in English: ‘ … the sergeant saw me framed in the doorway and attempted to alert his comrades, but my blade found his heart before …’ The hand was scrupulously neat, black ink with a faint leftward slope, laid out evenly across the paper. Clem recognised it immediately.
‘The letter!’ he cried, pointing. ‘The bloody letter!’
Elizabeth was mystified. ‘What in heaven’s name are you talking about?’
‘The letter that brought us here!’ Clem stared at her. She really seemed to have forgotten. ‘The one urging us to rescue Han. I’d convinced myself that it was Besson’s doing, a bit of well-intentioned meddling – but it’s the same writing, Elizabeth! Allix bloody well sent it!’
Elizabeth frowned;
she put the packet away and fastened the buckle. ‘I don’t see why he would. What could he possibly stand to gain from such a move?’
The scheme fell open in Clem’s mind, unfolding like the panels of a map. ‘He knew who you were, and that you were Han’s mother. He knew it from the very beginning. He wanted to draw you over here – get you caught up in the siege. Get the famous Mrs Pardy on his side. He knew what you could do for him, in the press and so forth. He’s – he’s been using us all.’
‘How absurd,’ Elizabeth retorted. ‘Your alcoholic indulgences are taking their toll on your reason, Clement. Jean-Jacques couldn’t have written any letter. His handwriting is next to illegible, on account of his American injuries. He told me that he is forced to dictate his reports to an adjutant.’
Clem became exasperated. ‘It doesn’t matter exactly who wrote them – they came from the same damned place. I’ll show you. I still have the letter, back at the Grand. Hell’s bells, d’you honestly not see it?’
His mother returned the satchel to her shoulder. ‘A good part of your problem, Clement,’ she proclaimed, gliding towards the doors, ‘is that you have never been able to tell what is important and what is not.’
II
The bath, Hannah’s first since her capture, had left her feeling raw, freshly peeled, the chill morning air stinging her skin. She adjusted her kepi, tightened the knot of damp hair at the nape of her neck and surveyed the square. It was another dull, frozen day, but the Prussian-held village of Gagny was turned out in honour of an extremely important guest. The horizontal black, red and white tricolour of the Northern German states had been hung from the eaves of every house. Several infantry companies were arranged in parade order on the frosty green. A small regimental band was parping away before the town hall, playing something that conjured an image of portly couples dancing a waltz.
Illumination Page 29
