Napoleon Symphony: A Novel in Four Movements (2 page)

“They paid for it,” Calmelet said, nodding.

“We go on paying for it. Survival is something that lies in the future. Sieves said that to me. He wants his epitaph to be:
He survived
.”

“Oh, this is absurd,” she said. “How much longer—?”

“Ah.” Calmelet’s quick ears heard first. Feet approached in urgent marching. The door was thrust open. Lemarois, aide-de-camp, the fourth witness. And then. “
Lui
” Calmelet said.

He strode in. “Wake up. Get your leg out of the fire.” He gave her two excruciating love-pinches, one on each lobe, and cried:

“Begin!”

I

G
erminal in the Year Four, but in this opening of our own Year One the seed throbs and frets in frustration. Ah, how I should love to believe that what you have already of mine is at work deep within you. Albenga is on the coast halfway between Nice or Nizza and Genoa or Genova, and I am busy with maps and protractor and chief of staff. Looking up that volume on Piedmont and its topography, I swear I caught the scent of your body from it. It is strange and magical that about those dull tomes with which I encumbered our so short honeymoon your glow and odor should hover. Oh, how I slaver at the thought of you, hunger to chew your very toes, to munch your delta of silk in the valley of bliss—now but a delirious memory and a long promise. Oh, to fill you again with myself as I am filled now to overflowing with your sweetness. The bees, I swear, will buzz around me when we reach the honeylands. It is cold here and the troops grumble still. Kiss after kiss after kiss begins to abrade the crystal of your portrait.

Massena took it from Augereau who had taken it from La Harpe and handed it back. “As I said last time, very handsome.”

“Handsome?
Handsome
? Life, ecstasy, the goddess of spring, the inspiration of battles. Come along then, Berthier.” Berthier spluttered over his bread and followed him as he strode out into the morning, kissing before stowing.

“This bread tastes of very stale chestnuts,” Augereau said. “Look at him after his night of wet dreams, ready to come in his breeches. Barras’s stale chestnut, that’s what she was, you know that. That’s good, you see that? Chestnut hair, a bit dyed I should think now. Getting on in years, glad to marry that fucking scarecrow out there.”

“We’re all fucking scarecrows,” Massena said.

“It tastes of very stale chestnuts,” Kilmaine said, “because it contains very stale chestnuts.”

“I saw a rotten potato yesterday,” La Harpe said.

“You know what it is I’m going to tell you?” Kilmaine said. “We have horses there, real ones. Talking about chestnuts, I could cry when I think of—”

“That’s the humanity coming out,” Massena said. “You want to watch that Rousseau stuff. They’re things, that’s all, that have got to be used. You can fatten those that survive when we get down there in the plains. Good rich country. Irish.”

Outside, in the raw morning, they saw Saliceti riding a fat nutmeg. “It’s a funny thing,” Augereau said. “About the Revolution, that is. You see that one there, with his feathers a mile high and those boots cost plenty, I can tell you. Well, that’s the spirit of the Revolution, supposed to be. There’s the old gap coming back, as in the old days. The men in rags and straw wrapped round their toes, and there you have gold and silver and perfume stinking to heaven.”

“It would be crying stinking fish to go to Genoa looking otherwise,” Massena said. “He went to raise this loan, you see. For the army.”

“He didn’t get it,” La Harpe said.

“He got boots.”

“And that fucking chestnut stuff.”

“Look at it another way,” Augereau said. “You and me, we got out of the ranks by election. The democratic way. Right, lads, vote for old Sergeant-major Massena and make him a colonel. Right?”

“I don’t quite see what you—”

“There’s a limit to democracy.
We’re
not running this campaign. It’s Wet Dream doing that. Who elected him? Fat womanizing Barras in Paris. Influence again. Intrigue, womanizing. It’s no accident, I tell you—his chestnut mare in one hand and his roll of maps in the other. He got his kissing mixed up the other day. Smacked his big fat Corse smackers on a map of the Po Valley.”

“He did all right at Toulon,” Massena said. “That new man Murat will tell you all about the Tuileries business. Saved the Directory, not that it’s worth saving, guzzling bastards. Cannon, he got this lot of cannon in. It was Murat brought them, on the double. You’d have had worse than the Directory. King’s men howling round the Tuileries. He saw them off, bang bang bang.”

“King’s men howling in the Alps. Austrian bastards.”

“A lot of them. He’ll have his work cut out.”

“Well, we’ll see. In the old days we weren’t encouraged to ask questions. But now I’d like to know what all this is about. Wet Dream says we’re going to take them fraternity and equality—a right fucking recommendation we are, all rags and tatters. You can see how that Saliceti looks at it—gold and silver and loot for those Paris bastards. What’s it all about? If a man believes in the Revolution is he just a fucking idiot?”

“First things first,” La Harpe said. “The Austrians will have things back as they were if we don’t shoot the balls off them. In Turin where the king goes to sleep all the time—”

“Old Dormouse.”

“He woke up just enough to bring back racks and thumbscrews for the unbeliever. Fat priests gobbling fat pork and giggling when they have some poor bitch who ate meat on a Friday lying there with her tits ready to be cut off in nomine domine. Tossing themselves off under their whatyoucalls.”

“Surplices.”

“They’ll be back,” Augereau said, “if we don’t watch it. Wet Dream was quick off the mark there. Those two, forgotten their names, who shouted God save the king on parade. Court-martial on the double. Bang bang bang, as you said.”

“He’s got no cannon here but he’s got some things,” Massena said. “He’s got these big eyes and they’re good on terrain. I should know. We’ll see how it goes and judge later.”

“He looks bigger with his hat on,” Augereau said. “He doesn’t sit a horse too well. You know, I don’t really like to say this—”

“Look at that troop there,” Kilmaine said. “There’s not one poor nag that’s not sagging in the middle.”

“What?”

“I can’t understand it, really. I lay in bed last night trying to, you know, work it out.”

“What?”

“There are times when that little bugger scares the shit out of me.”

“Ah. Let’s see if he can—” Massena rubbed his beak, grinning sadly. He looked north towards, say, Cairo.

B
uonaparte turned himself into Bonaparte. When they took Milan he could perhaps juggle with that u, conquering French or fraternal Italian as the occasion dictated. As he dictated the occasion. He finished dictating his letter to the Directory and said to Berthier:

“The days of the minuet are over. These are the days of the waltz. Not, mind you, that I necessarily approve of this frank embracing on the ballroom floor. Still, the speed is too great for lasciviousness.” As Berthier had expected, he took the portrait from his inside pocket and gave it a quiet smiling smack, as to sanctify, by particular application, the beatings of lust. “Speed.” Having restored the portrait to its nest he kept his hand on it. “The application to the art of warfare should be obvious. Let’s have more red pins.”

Berthier handed him the pins one at a time and watched him pierce the enemy positions. The positions seemed, like pricked thumbs, to start to well blood. Better him than me, Berthier thought. Back in Paris they both want and don’t want victorious generals. If they’re dangerous in the field they’re dangerous back home. And it’s a youngster’s game these days. The old, such as have been kindly allowed to live, can’t be trusted. Doubtful loyalty. Old heads trundled off in market-carts like cabbages. As for me, born into what they used to call the officer class, forty-three and looking it, loyalty not really in question. Fought in a revolutionary war before their Bastille fell, a citation at Philipsburg. Let the bloodletting civilians, if their blood hasn’t been let, stuff that into their revolutionary pipes. But keep me out of the victorious general’s role. Better off as I am. Bonaparte said:

“As we expected, no reply from the Genoese.”

“They’ll have told Bbbeaulieu, be sure of that.”

“Now look here.” He fisted the map. “If Italy’s a leg, then we’re midway between the navel of Nice and the genitals of Genoa. Right? Put it to the troops that way, humanize your geography. Beaulieu, dodderer that he is, will think we intend the march through Genoa. He’ll bring his lot down from Alessandria, which is the sort of inner recesses of the genitals, Italy being a woman. Right?”

He’s soaked in it, they should have given him a longer honeymoon.

“Scherer tttook that ffforce to Vvvoltri before you before you—”

“We’ll give Beaulieu something substantial to play with at Voltri. Play on, rather. La Harpe, ha ha.”

“Not a ddd—”

“Not a division, no. But enough to give Beaulieu confidence. He’ll move too far south from his Piedmontese, we can crack his right wing up in the hills there. There—Carcare. The top of the pubic hairs.”

Has the whole thing worked out.

“Close that gap. Massena’s division there, Augereau’s there. Very foul-mouthed, Augereau, by the way. Risen from the ranks, it shows.”

“His dddiscipline’s all right.”

“Sold watches in Constantinople, didn’t he? Must ask him about Constantinople, have to look ahead. Used to give dancing lessons. Let’s see if he can use a watch as well as sell one. I want all divisional commanders to put the hour on their messages as well as the date. Speed. Timing. No more minuets. Augereau knows all about the waltz. We’ll waltz them back to Vienna. But first knock Piedmont off the dance-floor. They’ll welcome a little liberation.”

“Ccc—”

“
The French Army has come to break your chains.
I must work something out. In Italian as well.”

C
itizens Carné, Thiriet, Blondy, Tireux, Hubert, Fossard, Teis-seire, Carrère (Jacques), Carrère (Alexandre), Trauner, Barsacq, Gabutti, Mayo, Bonin, Borderie, Verne, Chaillot, Barrault, Brasseur, Dupont, Salou, sixteen thousand others, went forward in their washed-out blue rags and old revolutionary caps or rotting shakos, but boots boots, mark that, boots most of them, to engage. Easier, lads, if you remember what it’s all about. Those Austrian bastards can’t forgive us because we’re free and they’re in chains and we claimed the right of free men to whiz the head off that bitch of a queen we had that was an Austrian herself, and now they want to bring stinking kings and unholy bishops back and more, wanting their revenge as you can understand. Who we’re attacking is Argenteau, Austrian in spite of his name or says he is, there must be some French traitor’s blood there somewhere, who’s pounding away at our thousand men specially set up for him in the fort over there and we’ll get him in the flank and rear while General La Harpe’s lot goes for him in the front. Any questions? Yes, when do we get some fucking leave, how about our back pay, I’ve got this pain in the balls citizen sergeant.

Drizzle fell coldly on Montenotte, then thickened to proper rain.

Bonaparte watched from a thousand feet up. It is in some way, my own heart’s darling, an emblem of love, this engaging of armies. My ADC Marmont says it is to do with atomies of electricity crackling between the male and female poles, or some such thing, but I feel it is the quality of the beating of the heart, which is the same for both love and war. The priests in Ajaccio used to say that the Song of Solomon in the Bible was a metaphor of the marriage of Christ and his church, but now we know better: it is plain or not so plain love between a king and his chosen handmaiden, and I am struck by the phrase which makes this love terrible as an army with banners. I take out your image and rain weeps on the crystal. I kiss the rain away and look down to see the interlocking of the blue and white ants. Three blue to two white, hand to hand, mostly bayonet-fighting, we have no problem. Your slim white back, I must imagine, is turned against the musket-puffs and the thin noises that rise from below. I lock you again in the warmth of my breast, out of the rain and slaughter. This is our first victory and I must go on to others. I see Austrian banners in French hands and whole blocks of white now as still as snow-patches. Prisoners are always a nuisance.