Napoleon Symphony: A Novel in Four Movements (14 page)

A
fter her performance at La Scala, he took La Grassini to bed. A superbly fleshed woman, though perhaps a little more than four years ago when he, ardent bridegroom, had admired more or less or only, hard to remember now, ocularly, aurally. She said: “
Ipocrita.
’ultima
volta
che
eri
a
Milano
combinavi
l’ateismo
con
una
riverenza
superstiziosa
per
il
sacramento
del
matrimonio.
” She repeated the last word in an improvised cadenza. She liked to try out odd words in song, even during a discussion about the price of meat. He felt the vibration possess the flesh under his arm. “
Adesso
fai
il
pio,
predichi
ai
preti
e
ti
abbandoni
agli
adulteri
del
soldato.
Ipocrita.
”

“
No, amore mio.
”

“
Ipocriiiiiiiiiiiita!
” Portamento up to high mi-flat, then down again.

“
No
,” he said. “
Imparo a essere
,” smiling, “
politeista. A Parigi ho la mia dea ufficiale e qui qui qui
—” The
qui
meant first Milan, then the bed, then her person, a prodding forefinger for each. “—
l’oggetto vero della mia venerazione amorosa
.”

She pouted and snuggled into his armpit. “
Perché perdo il
mio tempo con te? Con teeeeeeeee? A letto non vali molto.
” No whit abashed, he smiled onto her hair. “
Nessuna tenerezza, non un
briciolo di pazienza. Sarà che raccolgo la sfida. Devo insegnarti
a amare. Venere ha insegnato a Marte
.” A pleasant idea, though somewhat operatic. Or something for a painting, for that man David. “
Ma tu sei troppo instabile. Vattene pure a Stradella a
sconfiggere gli austriaci, e subito dopo tornatene pure in Francia
.”

The cuckold always had a reward. A great man always had a mistress. Oh, many. He kissed her nape and said:

“
Tornarmene in Francia, sì, ma non senza di te
.” He would get Bourrienne to arrange everything, first thing in the morning. “
Non ti tenterebbe di andare a Parigi?
” She turned her face to his, great eyes searching great eyes. “
Un appartamentino in rue de la Victoire?
” For, after all, they weren’t living there anymore: it was
made
for a mistress.

“
Accetto
” she smiled and kissed him.

The act that followed took rather less time than sixteen bars of an aria in moderate tempo.

“E
at more,” General Ott said in French. “Goulash. Fried chicken. Baked potatoes.”

Massena said: “I cannot. The stomach shrinks. The stomach revolts. A little at a time. Some sugared water perhaps.”

“You did well, I want you to know that. We know how to appreciate a brave enemy. You will find us generous.”

“You’re being generous now.” And he surveyed again the loaded table, a dream to the starving man he still was. Also an old man now. Age, then, was like a revolution: it jumped on one. He had gone to bed with the hair of youth and awoken gray. But the men were worse, many of them now grotesque figures for a
Totentanz
, to use the enemy’s word, crying with rage as the food they leapt on revolted in contact with very teeth and saliva and leapt out as if still alive. And then there were the true cadavers with vast stuffed bellies. The entering Austrians had been kindly cruel wheeling in their sides of beef and sacks of potatoes. One recovered but slowly from starvation. It was more needful to send in soothing orderlies bearing bouillon and weak syrup. He sipped some weak syrup. It stayed down without grumbling.

“
Zurückbeförderung in die Heimat
,” Ott mumbled, reading from a dispatch. “
Repatriierung
. We place your force beyond the River Var.”

“It will take some little time before my men are capable of—Such as are left.” And he was thinking, weak as he was, that this was some help to that reserve army, wherever it should be, since Ott’s forces would be held down here during the complex negotiations.

“You will think it ironic,” Ott said, “that we permit you to resume combatant status when you are returned to the homeland. You have no combatants. You are weak as if you were prisoners.”

“We’re both soldiers,” Massena said. “Tell me as a soldier what you think your chances are.”

“You will have heard of this Reserve,” Ott said, “as some great new force of salvation. Believe me, it is a disaster. Generals without talent—”

That would be poor Berthier.

“—Blunderbusses for artillery, bayonets stuck on poles, donkeys for cavalry. I am not now using to you the words of artful demoralization. France is beleaguered—British ships in the Channel, our own forces on the Rhine. You have no resources, you are bankrupt. All this must you know already.”

“General Massena,” Massena said bitterly, “in command of the Army of Italy.
Repatri—
Whatever your word was. It’s the damned waste, we’ve just rolled back to things as they were five years ago.”

“Oh, one never worries about that. We concentrate on operations, not policy. We take and lose the same town fifty times. It’s a trade, no more.”

They’ll never learn, Massena thought, and then felt brighter. Sugar sparking gently through the blood.

A chief of men and not a chief of staff

Is what you need to wage successful battles.

If Bonaparte’s the wheat, this man’s the chaff:

No marble here but only clay and wattles.

A sort of wife, though not a better half,

He flusters fast, his reason rocks and rattles:

That’s Louis Alexandre Berthier,

Who’ll fight a war with paper any day.

To build a bridge upon the River Po,

He pores upon a map that’s out of date,

Whereon each inch is sixteen miles or so—

Quite adequate for 1668.

The loaded sappers take their tools and go

And look upon a kind of Bering Strait.

Their language, uninhibited and horrent,

Is mercifully swallowed by the torrent.

Lannes and Murat moan about the rations

And wonder when the d———d things will arrive.

The lack of rounds arouses Boudet’s passions:

There’s thirty-two per man, not sixty-five.

The troops indulge in groans and dental gnashings

And wonder how in G———s name they’ll survive.

Only the kindly calm of their First Consul

Quietens the stomach and deflames the tonsil.

T
he rain was unseasonable and heavy on Stradella. The First Consul was red-nosed and tearful with a cold, chewing aniseed and licorice comfits to soothe his throat, leaving licorice fingerprints on dispatch after dispatch. His speech was somewhat denasalized as he greeted Desaix, thin, burnt, wearing the dark odor of Egypt as Dante had been said to wear that of Hell. “By dear friedd,” or something like it, he said. “You are cobe id the dick of tibe.” Roustam brought salt in, recognized the Just Sultan and showed him thirty-two teeth in greeting. The First Consul or merely Great Sultan mixed salt with water and snuffed some up, going aaarkh and waaaargh and spluttering. The nasals were shocked into reappearing.

“Egypt. Was it all then a waste of time and men and money and talent?” He had his own answer to give. “No, it was not. If nothing else comes out of Egypt there will be a beautiful book, many volumes, in a sense my child. And the whole of that past lost language recovered.”

“By the British,” Desaix said. “By the British.”

“Well, scholarship knows no boundaries. And history will tell the truth.”

“Whose history, whose? And,” Desaix added, “does anyone want the whole truth? Whom does it ultimately profit?”

The First Consul knew what he was thinking of; he looked at him warily. “We must take our chance,” he said. “For my part, I feel I control history. In a sense. I’ve been thinking of school curricula. In the reign of Charlemagne surely there is enough for any child to study—to gain an image, that is to say, of the true nature and destiny of France. Don’t you agree?”

“Men crucified on a cartouche,” Desaix said irrelevantly. It was a phrase which he now seemed to have been waiting to deal, a good phrase nursed through the blockades and the rocky journey to Stradella. The First Consul said:

“You’ve become a poet. A
bulbul
or whatever their word is. Well, you didn’t become a Muslim. Not,” he smiled, “like poor Menou.”

“Abdullah they were calling him. He married a barber’s daughter.”

“Nothing wrong in that,” the First Consul smiled. “He took everything a little too seriously perhaps—democracy as well as Islam.”

“How seriously,” and Desaix was stern, “is one to take things?”

The First Consul weighed that, his head inclined to a map, his eyes turned up to Desaix. “Generalship,” he said. “One plays to win.”

“Cheats? Lies?”

“
Well, of course!
” The First Consul was astounded. “All our strategy is based on lies. The enemy slumbers through a lie and then wakes up to the truth. The point in war is to say something, truth or lie. The Austrians are saying nothing. They should by now be attacking. I don’t know Melas’s intentions. This worries me.”

“You will have to provoke him.”

“
Provoke
—that’s the word. Now, as to your place in our scheme. I’m giving you an army corps—Boudet’s and Monnier’s divisions. Victor will take over Gardanne’s division to brigg his corps back to stredgth.” The salt douche was wearing off. “Dabded code.”

And damned rain rain rain as they advanced to the river Scrivia, then crossed it, the light cavalry finding no trace of the enemy, rain rain rain. “Avoiding action,” he said. “Austrian swine.” He had bullied his cold into being better. But the rain was dispiriting. He sent out a flurry of orders—Desaix to move with Boudet’s division towards Rivalta and cut the main road from Genoa to Alessandria: Melas must not be allowed to fall back on Genoa; Monnier to come up into central reserve; Lapoype to be ready for a march on Valenza, join up with Chabran’s force, prevent the enemy from cutting the French line of communication by pushing towards Milan. But no sign of Melas, Melas was avoiding a battle. At Marengo, only a few thousand of the Austrian rearguard quick, when Victor and Gardanne advanced on them, to yelp off towards Alessandria. He shouted, went into a spasm of coughing, shouted again:

“This damned plain is the only damned plain in Italy where he can put his cavalry to work. Why doesn’t he come? Where the hell is he?”

He is here
, said a bright Sunday morning after a night of peering for Austrian camp fires. The men heard guns in their sleep. They awoke: it was no dream. Guns hammered, larks soared. The First Consul, licoricing out a faint benignant indigestion (chicken, oil, crayfish, eggs: last night’s dinner, bizarre multiple trophy of the foragers), was a flame at Torre-di-Garofoli. “Aggression, I asked for his aggression, a statement, a word, but I did not really expect it. The Austrians are not acting like Austrians.” A hundred cannon, the galloping intelligence made it, three columns of some ten thousand each. Narrow bridgehead though on right bank of the Bormida, Melas following false report of French at Cantalupo, detaching cavalry. But five guns only for Gardanne and Chambarlhac of Victor’s corps, shielding Marengo behind the Fontanove. “A bluff,” he shouted, “a cover. Melas is withdrawing to Genoa.”

“Or to the Po.”

“Or to the. Lapoype’s division to march north towards Valenza—”

“That drops us three-and-a-half thousand.”

“I know what I’m doing, blast you. Send a quick message to Desaix. Boudet’s division to make for for for Pozzolo Formigioso. Sounds like the smell of cheese when you say it quickly.” Calmed them down: humor.

With the sun well up he rode to the scene and saw more clearly the peril. Had his intuition then been wrong? Lannes and Murat were now supporting Victor’s corps—fifteen thousand, about half the Austrian force. A division under Watrin, to the right of the village, was being hacked by Melas’s own column. Ott, over from Genoa, was as good as in control of Castel Ceriolo to the northeast. So the only thing to do was to send ADCs after Lapoype and Desaix, calling them back.
For God’s sake come up if you still can
. The Austrians regrouped, flexed, took breath. Watrin’s division was in ribbons. The Consular Guard moved up, all nine hundred of it. The final reserve, a division under Monnier, moved on to Ott and Castel Ceriolo. A matter of time time time. The First Consul lashed his leg again and again with his whip. “Hold on, a matter of time.” Twenty-three thousand Frenchmen were pushed staggering back to San Giuliano, miles east of Marengo. It was three in the afternoon.

“He must,” he divined, “believe they have the victory. Who said he was wounded?”

“Melas, sir? It came through the lines. You know how these things get put about.”

“They’re regrouping. Columns. All this damned smoke.”

“General Desaix, sir.”

The massive breast of the First Consul took in and gave out a whole carboy of air, Desaix, panting, all mud. The relief.

“The river was swollen. I got your message at one o’clock. Three minutes to.”

“Thank God the river was swollen. What do you think of it all?”

“Quiet. Ominously so. You’ve lost a battle.”

“We,” the First Consul said, “
we
have lost a battle.”

“
We
,” Desaix said, “have time to win another.” And his stomach fell within him:
we
were what survived: he foresaw in an instant, and he could neither exactly formulate nor explain it to himself,
you
and
I
being silently removed from a marble field by weeping draped female figures. Was
we
merely the surviving ghost of
I
? Was
I
a brushed-off cell-flake or dead hair of
we
?