Napoleon Symphony: A Novel in Four Movements (35 page)

“Is there,” M. Laval half-sneered, “nothing you want to be martyrized for? Like your totally forgotten cousin, stupid boy.”

“Oh,” said Stapps in surprise, scratching the other armpit, “he’s not forgotten at all. Nor will ever be forgotten. But, of course, he’ll only be remembered because of you. Your first seedling of doubt or incomprehension or something. A pity, though. He wouldn’t have had to die if you’d known more about history. You see, great generals have to become great despots—they conquer, and when they conquer they have to control what they’ve conquered. Improvisation. It’s too late for them to be able to find time to study history. The Protestant nations didn’t need the Revolution—you should have known that. France and Italy were anachronistically feudal, but in Spain Catholicism is an aspect of nationalism—they think the Pope’s a sort of Spaniard living in Italy, it was stupid of you to start ordering the Pope about, you should have known that—and what’s the other thing, yes, the Teutonic Reformation had got rid of feudalism already. Very simple, you see.”

“To students,” M. Laval wholly sneered, “everything is very simple. But what you students forget is that it was the monarchies that attacked the Revolution. What the hell were we supposed to do—just sit back and let them?”

“You French always go too far,” Stapps said, altogether at his ease and wagging a finger with nail bitten down to the quick at his Emperor. “All right, all right, I know you’re Corsican, but I mean the French before you came along. Cutting off the heads of the monarchy, that was stupid, especially when they had relatives all over Europe. The English managed their Revolution far better. They’re not as clever as you, not so intellectual and logical and concerned with pushing things to the limit like your people are. They have a kind of inspired stupidity. A glorious Revolution without a guillotine, a king and queen on the throne, but the real power with the middle class.
Perfidious
” he said. “I’ve always wanted to know what you meant by that
perfidious
. What do you mean—
perfidious
?”

“Look,” M. Laval said, “I know I’m here incognito, but I am what I am, and I’m not having this insolence.”

“Get out then,” Stapps said. “Drink up whatever it is you’re drinking and throw that sausage to that cat there—cat-cannibalism it would be, probably—and off you go to your gorgeous palace where everybody says yes your supreme omnipotent nihiliscient majesty—”

“That word. What was that word?”

“A neologism.
Nichtswissend
, Nothingknowing. So why not do that and go?”

Before M. Laval could speak or act, or indeed decide how to, one or the other, the government spy said: “Don’t think I’m not listening, because I am.” He addressed, to M. Laval’s annoyance, M. Laval alone. Students were perhaps dangerous meat, apt to prove in the police station that they had been speaking very high patriotism and that the spy had been too stupid to understand. Here was a middle-aged stranger who had not been in here before. “I heard you,” the spy said, “say something about glorious German dawns and the monarchies attacking. You look to me to be a decent sort of man who shouldn’t be in places like this, hot-blooded students who are only boys anyway, so I’m giving you fair warning for the moment, no more.” He then got up, nodded quite pleasantly at Stapps, and went over to the chess-players, who had been long transfixed over a tricky pawn move. “Try blocking his queen,” he said kindly, and then went out with a friendly wave to the company. The local spy, known to all, one of the community, quite harmless.

“Perfidious,” Stapps said. “To whom?”

“To the cause of European unity, to new order and rational laws. They have this treacherous mastery of the seas.”

“What was to stop you building a decent French navy?” Stapps asked. “And here’s another thing. You were very nearly English yourself.”

“
What
?’

“British, anyway. If the British had taken over Corsica when they could have done but weren’t particularly interested. You might have become a British naval officer. A good one too, I should think,” he added ungrudgingly. “And instead you’re the Emperor of the French.” He leaned back, as if visualizing M. Laval in his state regalia, letting his thin right arm swing loosely behind his chairback. “I have to go now,” he said. “Forgive me, can’t wait for the imperial dismissal. Meeting a little midinette in the Place des Vosges.”

“I gave it that name,” M. Laval said. “The Vosges people were the first to pay their taxes.
You blasted young seem to forget—
”

“History,” Stapps said, putting out his left arm and opposing a spread dirty palm to M. Laval, as though he might propose denying that it was history. “An ever-moving stream. It’s the time of the Germanic peoples now. Might be a good thing, might be a bad—who knows? But it’s history. Here I am, one of the advance guard, already in the capital, might earn a few useful francs as an interpreter when the time comes. You see how it is, though? Synthesis. You have an Empress chosen from the Germanic peoples. You have a son, the King of Rome, without a milliliter of French blood in his arteries. Corsico-Austrian. Interesting, is it not? You yourself, part of the stream, impotent to change it except in minute particulars—”

“Life,” M. Laval said, “is all minute particulars.”

“That’s good, that’s really good. Yes. Nihiliscient, establishing Germanicity in the capital of the moribund French Empire.
Germanicité
. How the French hate the Germans. It’s love, of course, love. Forgive me, I must go now.” And he got up, nodding at M. Laval amicably, saying, “He wanted to die, you know. A very strong—how shall I put it?—
Todeswunschtraum
? Something like that, forgetting my German.
Vive la France
, and so on.” He went, clutching his Montaigne.

He was no sooner out than an army officer came in, hale, sashed, sworded, probably never fired a shot in anger in his whole damned career, accompanied by an ailing limping sergeant with a limp mustache. “Papers, papers,” the officer called. Papers began to be produced from inner pockets. “Papers. Eligibility for draft. Class of 1815. Any dodgers? Come on, my lad, let’s have a look at it. Deferred, eh? Theological studies, eh? Lot of nonsense, lad, we want soldiers not sky-sailors. You, sir? Doesn’t apply. You’re past soldiering age.” M. Laval took off his hat and let the two military have a good look at him.

“Know me, do you?” he said. “Know me?”

“Don’t think I’ve seen you around,” the officer said, his rank now clearly revealed as lieutenant, ridiculous, should be a colonel by now at that age. The sergeant’s jaw fell and black and brown teeth showed. He said:

“Oh, my God, oh, my dear God, it’s him, oh God.”

“Something more active for you is called for, I think,” M. Laval said, poking the lieutenant in a top button. “Report to your commanding officer tomorrow, request transfer to active service, mention my name. Don’t try and get out of it, I shan’t forget.”

“Oh, my God, oh, my dear dear God.”

“Carry on, sergeant.” And, feeling much better, he left. He heard, left right left righting to the door:

“Oh, my God, do you know who that was? Oh, my dear dear God.”

Not finished yet, not by a long chalk.

M. Laval sat in a gloomy backroom with a fortune-teller. She was a wheezing woman with masses of soiled gray hair, sack-bosomed in food-stained bombazine, breathing cheese, garlic and some undefined beverage with cloves and cinnamon in it but an overall gust of fetidity as she pored over the hills and plains and rivers of both palms and then finally over only the right. “It has been a hard life,” she delivered, “hampered by lack of education. Self-instruction is no substitute for the professional training of a great college or university. Ups and downs by the look of it, but more downs than ups. Don’t throw your money away, eat less. Things may be taking a turn for the better now, and you may look forward to a period of repose. A passionate nature—see the hump of Venus there—but no, if you will forgive me, real understanding of women. At the moment I divine you are living with a woman but not married to her. You have many enemies, rivals in business chiefly. Keep out of their way. Luck is on your side: when they come to Paris you will be somewhere else. Nothing to fear from water that I can see, at least not
big
water. Oh yes, I see a little bridge somewhere, be careful crossing little bridges. Do not be afraid of travel, see more of the great world. You can look forward to a pleasant retirement by the sea and there you will take up gardening. It is not easy to see how many children you have. That, sir, is all.”

“A
fter that,” N said, “I went to a—Well, a sort of drinking place. A soldier recognized me and came out of his—Look, I did nothing. All I did was to listen. This soldier was naked and started shouting about his Emperor, he had seen his Emperor. Later, going back to the Tuileries, three men attacked me and tried to rob me. There was nothing they could take except a couple of francs. Then I got a carriage and came here.”

“On an impulse,” she said. She yawned but really seemed to be smiling. “It
is
really very late, you know.”

“I saw a funeral,” he said, “an
evening
funeral, somewhat unusual. Plumed horses and weeping followers. Then a ragged old woman threw a stone at the hearse. And I saw a shop where they were selling white caps. Leftover carnival stock, they said, but I know damned well what it was. So,” he said, “all I proved was what I always knew. That people are people. That a burnt beef stew is a bigger tragedy than a retreat from Moscow. It’s different worlds. Look,” he said urgently, “whatever happens, everything will be all right with you.”

“I’m grateful, naturally. Some coffee?”

He laughed loudly, the loudest laughter that had been heard in Malmaison since Talleyrand had nearly choked on a plum-stone. If he had been seated nearer to her he would have given her a couple of excruciating love-tweaks. “Real coffee, you little witch, I’ll be bound. The Continental System doesn’t apply here, the only place in the civilized world where it doesn’t. Yes, I’ll have some.” As in former times she put sugar in it and tasted it before handing it over to him. “Hm, you can’t beat a good cup of real coffee. I shouldn’t have let you have those eight horses,” he said. “We’re short of horses.”

“My eight surely will make little difference.”

“I speak to you frankly,” he said, “though I know you never listen to what I say, never have listened. Your head full of millinery and so on. It’s going to be a hard business.”

She smiled radiantly, meaning yawned, and said, “Oh, yes?”

“Germany and Austria and Russia and Sweden and English gold. And no more loyalty among the marshals. They want to sit unbuttoned in their principalities and dukedoms and so on and be drunk. I made a mistake. Pampered them. I’d be better off with some new men anxious to earn their batons. But it’s too late now.”

“Wouldn’t it be better—” He listened with close attention. “—if you said no war and no battles and arranged treaties and so on? Old borders and everybody leaving everybody else alone.”

“Talleyrand been here lately? Hm, I thought so. Snake of a man, used to be a bishop, you know, it comes out in him. No, that is not it. It’s a question of métier. You remember those days when I was in Italy and kissing your portrait all the time and sending you letters that self-combusted, ha, so it seemed, under my very eye? That was the time. You didn’t love me, you didn’t care, but it didn’t matter. I loved you, that was the point. Spring offensives and you my goddess of battles and the troops bootless and with one rusty rifle between ten. But I beat the humphing old bastards—forgive me, soldier’s language, you’ve been a soldier’s wife, all said and done—and showed them what war was. It’s métier, trade, skill, art. Well, by God, I’m going to do it again. It’s going to be
brilliant
. Have you such a thing as a map of Europe and a pencil around? Oh, never mind. But I tell you that this is going to be the most brilliant exhibition of campaigning that Europe’s seen since the old days of the Directory. It will go into textbooks. Not enough horses and these Marie-Louises, as they call them—”

“The young conscripts? What a sweet idea. How is she, by the way? The little boy is charming.
What
a pity,
such a
shame—”

“She’s all right,” N said. “But one little flick of his little finger and her
pappi
, as she calls him, will have her back there saying
Ja ja er war ein
terrible
Mann, pappi
. Shame, yes. Pity, yes. I hope to God somebody puts a bullet through me if the time ever comes.”

“Oh, no. You keep out of the way, don’t you? Don’t you have the Imperial Guard and the Household Cavalry and so on standing round you all the time?”

“I mean if it all goes the wrong way. Because it might. A good commander knows more than his enemy about the technique of his own defeat. If I have to go into exile—and I wonder where the hell it will be—Sardinia? No, too big. Corsica? I’d have an army raised there in five minutes. The Channel Islands? Never mind, think of that when, if, the time comes. What I’m saying is, who’ll go with me?”