The Retreat (19 page)

‘Keep calm!' the captain shouted, unsure of his authority. ‘It won't be any safer on the other bank!'

The wooden bridge moved under the wheels and hooves. If there hadn't been a parapet, many of them would have fallen in the Dnieper. On the other bank, d'Herbigny noticed that he'd collected some pearl necklaces on his boots while he'd been walking. Getting up looked as if it would be trickier than getting down. The horses' smooth shoes couldn't get a grip on the black ice, only the mules and horses with frost nails could manage it without slipping; even Paulin's donkey heeled over and after a dozen metres of hard going, slid back down to the river with the portmanteau, to the servant's despair.

‘Don't pull that face!' said the captain.

‘I was in charge of your uniforms.'

‘I wouldn't have worn all my coats, would I? When we're in France …'

‘Will we see Rouen again, sir?'

‘Of course!'

Paulin looked over his shoulder. Near the congested bridge, a woman had pushed back her sable hood; on her knees, she was cutting open his donkey's stomach with a knife and plunging her head in to take a bite of its liver while being berated by a burgher in a fur-lined coat who wanted his share. Cannonballs rained down. When he regained level ground, after that cursed slope, d'Herbigny wrapped rags round his battered boots and tied them in
place with the necklaces. Then he resumed command of his squadron, which was now on foot, apart from four troopers who had got on the mules. Sergeant Bonet was giving them a rocket; if rank still commanded any respect, he was entitled to a mule, but discipline was breaking down and Bonet protested in vain.

*

Their eyes were strained by a freezing wind, they were blinded by the glare from the snow, but at noon on a November day, the fugitives still recognized Smolensk's spires rising up in the midst of a range of mountains that blocked off the horizon. There it was, salvation: shelter, a fire, clothes to replace their lice-infested rags. As they drew near the walls, even the most exhausted found new energy. Yet this caravan of tramps found the city gates closed to them, and groups pitched their tents in the bastions and snow-covered ditches.

D'Herbigny urged on his Cossack horse. Sentries in grey capes were barring entry to the city and roughly questioning anyone who claimed to have a right to enter it.

‘Who are you?'

‘D'Herbigny! François Saturnin d'Herbigny, captain in the dragoons of the Guard.'

‘And where is it, your squadron?'

‘Here!'

With a great sweep of his arm, the captain presented the thirty or so dismounted troopers still with him, in their weird get-ups, white with hoarfrost, with long mops of hair, shaggy beards and faces blackened by the smoke of the bivouacs and dirt.

‘That's a squadron?'

‘4th Squadron, Saint-Sulpice's brigade. The missing are under the snow or in a wolf's stomach.'

‘How can you prove it to me?'

The men had formed up in marching order to show a more military aspect and impress these lumbering dullards. At an order from the captain, they stood to attention and identified themselves,

‘Sergeant Bonet!'

‘Trooper Martinet!'

‘Trooper Perron!'

‘Trooper Chantelouve!'

‘Yes, fine, fine, it's fine,' one of the sentries said, a corporal in the chasseurs.

The gates opened a chink and they were able to enter Smolensk in quick time, despite their chilblains and the wadding of rags bound round their feet. Partly burnt by the Russians in August, Smolensk had not been restored by the occupying troops. The dragoons dropped their act. Without witnesses, without sentries to win over, they lost their martial aspect when they saw the streets. The houses had no roofs; all they passed were carcasses of horses, ridden to death and then picked clean, and piles of rotting corpses that stank even in the bitter cold. Lying at the base of a wall, a frozen Spaniard had gnawed his wrists; another wretch was crawling towards them on all fours, too weak to beg. Near the citadel, ambulance men were carrying their patients into a stark building. The sick were drenched in sweat, their dry, black tongues lolling from their mouths; they were being given snow to drink. From one of the ambulance men, d'Herbigny learnt that typhus was raging, that the Emperor had arrived the day before and that the distribution of food had begun, but initially only to the
Guard. ‘Good timing,' he said with delight. ‘We are the Guard. Where are the stores?' The ambulance man pointed out the warehouse and added that the supply officers were asking for a receipt signed and stamped by the military administration before giving out the rations. Which is how the captain found himself in the citadel facing Comptroller Poissonnard, one of the officials in charge of supplies: at least he wouldn't have to prove his rank or his unit. He planted himself in front of the comptroller, who was as plump and hale as ever, swathed in furs and ensconced behind his desk.

‘Sign a receipt for me, you old scoundrel!' said the captain.

‘Are you an officer? Which regiment?'

‘What! You don't recognize me?'

‘I don't think …'

‘D'Herbigny, you thieving swine!'

‘Wait … Ah yes, perhaps …'

‘What do you mean,
perhaps
?'

‘With your beard, you know … But the nose, yes, as long as ever.'

‘Hurry up, so we can get our rations.'

‘How many men in your command?'

‘Twenty-nine.'

‘Whoah! In Moscow you had a hundred.'

‘Get a move on!'

‘Horses?'

‘Just one, mine, and four mules.'

‘The oats are only for horses.'

Poissonnard filled out a form in his careful writing, signed it, dried the ink, stamped it and handed it over.
‘Convoys from Germany have brought fresh supplies of flour and vegetables; there's even beef.'

Imagining himself settling down to a rib of beef, the captain led the remnants of his squadron to the magazine. An equally well-fed and clothed employee produced their rations from several chests: peas, rye flour, three pieces of beef, and flagons of red wine which they immediately shared out amongst themselves. In the street leading to the citadel, already buoyant at the thought of their first real meal for weeks, the dragoons ran into a band of hollow-cheeked, raggedy men, carrying bayonets and clubs studded with nails.

Unmoving, the two groups stared wild-eyed at each other. One wanted to save their rations; the other wanted to eat. The dead horses were frozen so hard that they couldn't cut them up. Once allies in battle, the soldiers were turning savage now over a little bag of flour. The dragoons in the front rank drew their sabres; behind them their comrades loaded their muskets. The two groups observed each other. As the captain cocked his pistol, Paulin suggested, ‘Sir, we have a few ribs of beef, why don't we give one up?'

‘Give up part of our rations? Never! Faith, do you think we have too much of them?'

‘These skeletons have nothing to lose.'

‘We do.'

‘They're dangerous.'

‘If they want to get themselves sabred, there's nothing we can do.'

‘When you're surrounded by wild beasts, sir, it's better to throw them something. That keeps them busy and while they fight over the spoils, you make your run for it.'

The captain searched through his bags, took one of the quarters of beef by the knucklebone, pushed through the ranks and tossed it over the heads of the starving men. Paulin had anticipated correctly. Fists flailing, they started tussling in the snow over the piece of meat, jabbing each other with their bayonets, cudgelling and falling on top of one another. Taking advantage of the fight, the captain and his men slipped off towards the citadel where they would probably find the rest of their brigade, and having stuffed themselves and wet their whistles, then re-form some manner of regiment at the Emperor's side.

*

The code of every man for himself that had prevailed before Smolensk now changed into an enforced fraternity. Self-interest alone united the shipwrecked in some sort of alliance. Little bands had formed at random on the march, on the principle of strength in numbers, to have a better chance of staving off hunger and cold and other people. These tribes brought together disarmed soldiers (who'd preferred brandy to their muskets) and civilians of all classes without a scrap of feeling, capable of stripping a dying man of his boots before he'd taken his last breath. Survival jealously, viciously, went about its work in the heart of these miniature societies outside which people were condemned to a quick death. Ornella, who had caught the eye of the head of such a band, shared the lair of a strange crew in a partly burned house in the suburbs, by the Dnieper. There were seven or eight of them wrapped in blankets, squatting like Indians around a fire of planks. A horse's heart was cooking in a helmet. These men spoke little and barely understood each other when they did; their
leader may have been French, but the others were from Bavaria, Naples or Madrid; they communicated basic information by gestures. A big fellow with a beard like a hedgehog wore a cuirass over women's clothes; he skewered the heart with his dagger and put it on the ground to carve it. His neighbour, in a black silk skullcap, had taken off his shako on which he was lining up scissors, a razor, thread and needles; then, his mouth full, he started darning the shawl which he had wrapped round his chest. All that could be heard was the crackling of the fire and eight jaws chewing innards. Suddenly there was a scratching sound from the palisade which acted as their door.

The chief stood up, pushing away Ornella who was curled up against him, opened the bundle that never left his side and picked out a scalpel. His name was Dr Fournereau; a man in his forties with hard brown eyes, he had a fraying beard and hair down to his shoulders. He exercised a natural authority over the youngsters who constituted his pack. Ornella trusted this disillusioned doctor; she had told him her life story, how her mother sold feathers and trimmings from a milliner's stall on the quai de Gesvres. ‘We have all been ground into the dirt,' he had replied. The Empire did not trouble itself much about surgeons; the faculties of medicine had closed their lecture theatres; medical students climbed the railings of cemeteries at night to exhume fresh cadavers, which they dissected in their attics where ten of them lived together; the corpses' fat kept them warm through winter. Fournereau did his work with no money and no authority. He was at the mercy of the commissaries of war, loathsome souls who stole the rations from the hospitals. Fournereau could never act during the fighting, he had to wait for days before
treating a battle's wounded; headquarters took priority, collecting spare arms and munitions.

Holding his scalpel like a weapon, the doctor stopped and listened. Something was softly scratching the wooden palisade, then there was a yap.

‘A dog?'

What a godsend, he thought. Our pittance is jumping into the pot of its own accord. They had already eaten crows baked in the fire and horse's tripe, so why not roast dog? He opened the palisade enough to let the animal in. An icy wind gripped him. The fire threw only a poor light. He couldn't make anything out in that starless night. The snow crunched. He sensed the animal at his feet, touched it, and opened the palisade a little more to let in a huge ball of furs, which, once it was in, shook the snow from its coat. It wasn't a dog. It was a man. Frozen beneath his furs, he was crawling on his knees and elbows, trembling and yapping like a lapdog.

The rest of the band concentrated on chewing their food by the fire, which had been stoked with more planks. The doctor stopped the arrival getting close to the flames, which outraged Ornella. ‘Oh, Doctor, you're not going to deny him a little warmth?'

‘No.'

‘Let him warm himself, please.'

‘Go and fetch a pile of snow.'

She obeyed without asking questions and pushed a heap of fresh snow inside those ruins that protected them from the wind.

‘Do you see his fingers?' the doctor said to her. ‘White, no sensation, they are in the process of freezing. If you expose his hands to the flames, they'll puff up, become
bloated and then gangrene will set in in a flash. Help me get him out of these rags …'

They helped the man out of his cloaks, which were heavy with ice, his cap and his boots and then rubbed him with the snow. As she was massaging his face, Ornella recognized Vialatoux.

‘Do you know who it is?' asked Fournereau.

‘An actor from my troupe.'

‘Keep on scrubbing hard, so that the snow is burning.'

The Great Vialatoux, emaciated, tufts of grey beard on his chin and cheeks, breathed jerkily; he was almost suffocating, but the rubbing did him good; he spluttered and eventually said in a very low monotone,

‘I call no longer Rome that walled enclosure

Which his proscriptions fill with obsequies
.

Those walls whose destiny once seemed so fair

Are but her prison – or rather tomb.'

‘Is he delirious?'

‘I don't think so, Doctor.'

‘Do you understand what he's serenading us with?'

‘He's reciting
Sertorius
by Corneille, a banned play which he used to dream of performing.'

‘Funny time to think about the theatre, but at least his brain's working better than his fingers. Rub, my girl, rub and say something back, get some sort of conversation going.'

Mlle Ornella took some more snow and rubbed the actor's fingers, whispering in his ear,

‘Only fall into hands that know their duty

At least I know my goal and you know yours
…'

The Great Vialatoux opened his eyes, which had been unstuck by the heat from the fire, turned without any
surprise towards his former stage partner and replied, very solemnly,
‘And yet, my lord, you serve like another man …'
Fournereau interrupted the scene to pour a little of the hot red water that they had used to boil the heart between Vialatoux's chapped lips.