Le Temps des Cerises (32 page)

‘Madame Modeste Ignatius Napoleon Abëlard Lafayette! It has a certain ring to it does it not?'

A dash of sunshine and she would evaporate completely. A puff of wind and she would skedaddle up to heaven or down to hell maybe. But she had Aggie to think of now. She pulled her cloak tight about the cotton papoose…

‘Shall I send you an invite when the time comes? No don't be alarmed. You could come in the guise of an old family friend – meet the folks so to speak – nobody would ever suspect a thing. Oh, must you go so soon? I feel as if we were only just getting to know each other – in the biblical sense that is. Do you think it is wise to venture out on a night like this in those wet clothes? I fear you will catch your very own death and then what will become of you? Why don't you stay the night – only too happy to oblige – you could take the mattress, I could take the stool… Why you look quite terrified, my pet, like a tiny little rabbit that's just seen a ghost. Is Ernest out there on the doorstep waggling a finger at you. Or something else entirely. Very well then, a nightcap perhaps, to send you on your way and toast your daughter's impending nuptials. Good gracious me I've just had a thought – by the end of the year you will be my new mother-in-law. What a delicious prospect! Better pins than the last one I must say. Quite swollen up at the end poor duck, with the gout. Too much offal apparently. Lungs, heart, kidneys you name it. Treacherous for the legs! Oh you are a spoilsport Sister Bernadine, but if you must you must I suppose. It's been a quite delightful evening for my part I have to say. Come come my dear, there's no need to cry like that, no need for it at all. Your daughter's in the safest of hands and it makes you look rather haggard. Cheerio.

‘By the way,' he added, as Bernadine fled out of the yard and into the night which was greying now with strips of dawn, ‘you forgot to ask her name.' But the wind and rain tore the words from his mouth and the nun, full of anguish, did not hear him.

‘It is Eveline,' he smiled, rubbing his hands with glee. ‘Your daughter's name is Eveline.'

Chapter twenty-five

19
th
May 1871

Dearest Maman,

I received your last letter with great delight. It arrived in the most convoluted of ways as all letters seem to these days. I believe it travelled down the Boulevard du Montparnasse, around the Place de l'Observatoire, over the Seine by the Pont des Arts, past the biscuit factory on the corner and in a semi circle back to me! You are wondering how I know all this. Well, on your next trip to Paris I shall show you – but for now let us just say Detective Claude eat your heart out!

At least it arrived safe and sound and has come to rest on the mantelpiece under the cuckoo clock. I must have read it a hundred times, indeed
do not laugh, maman, I have the strangest feeling that if I do not read it every hour upon the hour some frightful calamity shall befall me. My mind, it seems, is up to its old tricks again. It is late and
You made me quite homesick, maman, with your description of the church bazaar and your dew-laden walks through the mead­ow with Molly. Does she still believe every hollow tree is the abode of some Ariel or wood­land fairy? Sometimes I wish that I still did. Well done on raising such a vast sum at the fête – I told you your knitting would come in useful one day, maybe
not for hats and scarves but for an ancient church spire, well yes I can believe it!

There is a festive air in the city at the moment, almost carnivalesque in fact. I think it is because there is a tacit understanding that we live on borrowed time and must therefore make the most of it. Rumours abound every hour or so that Thiers and his government have re-entered the city and will take possession again by nightfall... So in between our carousing we build barricades as fast as we can go with any material we can lay our hands on. Every quartier has one unique to its inhabitants. The other day I spied one on the Rue du Faubourg (the one where you love the cheesemonger so much) made up of an upturned old omnibus, wardrobe, flower pots, wheelbarrow, and four rounds of cheeses! (The stench alone should stop the Versaillais in their tracks!) My own hands are red raw from filling wine and beer barrels with pebbles and earth (Yes, yes, I know what you think of the area I live in) so do not be alarmed, maman, if you find a drop of blood on these pages. I bandage them up, in any case, every night in my spotless white evening gloves.

Do not think however that I while my time away with manual labour and dancing. Oh no, not at all! My work is going full steam ahead I am pleased to report. (My thoughts on Darwin and evolution are coming together nicely; and recently I have been toying with the idea that gravity and consciousness are somehow connected. When we sleep we fall down, for example, do we not? But more of that perhaps in another letter.) I am sure that by the end of the year I shall be entirely self supporting
so you must not send me any more money, maman
You are very naughty, maman, sending me so much money. I am sure you cannot afford it. And in any case, aren't writers meant to teeter on the brink of starvation, fleeing from one bad debt to another? Look at Balzac! Or better still, live and die in abject poverty only to make a posthumous fortune for their dear old maman and sister when a manuscript is unearthed from under the bed… (Look out for one entitled Gods and Monsters if such a thing should ever happen to me!) I hate to think of you scrimping and saving, ekeing things out for little Molly. She must definitely continue with her piano lessons at any rate. Tell her I expect a perfect rendition of ‘Für Elise' on my return now that she has mastered ‘The Moonlight Sonata'. Beethoven composed it while sitting up a chestnut tree apparently!

Laurie paused and looked about him. Mabille's was filling up fast it had got so late or rather so early. He noticed out of the corner of his eye a waitress hovering nearby with a tray and he pushed away his plate, smiling benignly, to signal that she could collect it.

‘Did monsieur enjoy his food?' she asked politely, sweeping up with a dirty napkin.

Monsieur did, Laurie wanted to reply out of sheer impishness but instead he smiled again and nodded his head, though when he came to think about it he suddenly realised that he hadn't. Hadn't enjoyed it one little bit: the peas had been hard as bullets, the gravy thick and greasy tasting and the beer flat and horribly warm. But then again people didn't come to Mabille's for the food.

‘Are you writing a letter?' th e girl asked then in an effort to engage him in smalltalk. ‘I love writing letters though I'm not very good at them. Sometimes I practise in front of the mirror. Is it to your sweetheart?'

‘My mother,' Laurie corrected, a little intrigued by the image of the girl practising her letter writing in front of the mirror.

‘Ah.' She seemed to cogitate for a moment before casually mentioning a sum of money as if she were offering up some sort of dessert.

Laurie, somewhat taken aback, asked her to repeat herself.

‘I shan't go any lower,' she warned with a determined tilt of the chin. ‘Any lower than that and all you'll be able to do is look.'

Laurie shook his head wearily, running a hand through his hair the way Alphonse did. ‘Not tonight I'm afraid,' he muttered awkwardly, not knowing what else to say and wishing he'd never come to Mabille's. He'd only wanted a bite to eat, a breath of fresh air, a break from the monotony of his stuffy little rooms. With an air of exaggerated preoccupation he picked up his pen as the girl flounced off and carried on a little self consciously with his letter.

I expect you heard about the Vendôme column
23
or – as the Commune puts it – that symbol of brute force and false glory. Not so false, I don't believe, for the old fellow standing next to me, his medals displayed across his chest. He was shaking like a leaf when they pulled it down, no doubt remembering his fallen comrades. It was a terrible anti climax in the end actually. After an inordinate amount of heave hoing and see-sawing it fell with the feeblest of clatters like a little piece of stage scenery and it was quite hollow inside (apart from its staircase) as if it had been gnawed out from the middle by a horde of hungry rats, horses, Ariels, woodland fairies – allow Molly to delete as apppropriate! I wish I'd gone up it of course, now that I've lost the chance forever. I met a woman in the crowd who said it was just like going up to heaven. Fifty centimes and a little lantern, she told me. ‘What a view of Paris. It made my blood run cold!'

It was no good. He couldn't concentrate. The waitress whom he'd slighted was giving him the evil eye from behind a majolica plant pot and the place was filling up so fast he could barely hear himself think. He'd wanted to describe the quality of the light when the column fell, the strips of paper pasted over the windows in the square, the looks on people's faces. If he'd been an artist he'd have sketched the column as a dark flat shadow on the ground, criss-crossed with the shadows of women and children, the sun a fiery ball in the corner of the sky to symbolise perhaps the empty glory, the harshness, the cruelty of war. But he wasn't an artist, he was a poet and he couldn't even write a letter in this dreadful din.

He got up, pushed back his chair and struggled through the throng milling out onto the terrace. It was a night for dancing – warm, muggy with a wind that might have come out of Africa. It felt to Laurie as if a storm were brewing and he watched the couples pushing back the tables and chairs with a familiar sense of despair. He had no one to dance with now.

He decided to take a circuitous route home. He would fashion the letter in his head and when he got home he could copy it down direct. Yes, that was the ticket. Kill two birds with one stone: enjoy a stroll through the city and write a letter at the same time. Why hadn't he thought of it before instead of going into that low dive, Mabille's. He marvelled now at the girl's impudence, wondering what sort of impression he must have made, sitting alone at the table writing a letter to his mother. She must have thought him an incredible dandy, approaching him like that, with bags of money to throw around. How ironic. He grinned wryly to himself, vaguely flattered and yet repulsed all at the same time and wishing suddenly that it would rain, pour down so that he could feel the droplets on his hair, his skin, the tips of his fingers. There was nothing he liked better than a violent thunderstorm – the way the lightning illuminated the city, almost setting it afire, the thunder roaring like the voice of Zeus. Sometimes he got so charged with energy in the middle of a storm he threw himself out down onto the street in his nightshirt and stared at the sky just to be a part of that power, that magnitude.

I would have a tranquil revolution,
he went on calmly, fashioning the letter to his mother in his head
. A revolution of the spirit if you like, untramelled by priests and religion of course. Just a stepping forward in consciousness. No more killing or revenge. (How hard not to take revenge when someone has hurt you, not to remain bitter for the rest of your life. It is a courage of discipline and restraint, something perhaps that I can aspire to.) The law of hostages is a monstrous law – to kill three Versaillais for every Communard – it is an unprecedented escalation of violence. This whole thing is a runaway train, maman, and I do not know where it will end. We must just sit tight I suppose and ride it out. The Commune has conscripted all men between the ages of 19 and 55 to march against Versailles. You may imagine what that has done for the city. People are coming up with the wildest excuses: one man said he couldn't possibly fight because he only fired up into the air, another said his shoes were too tight to march anywhere! Many are obtaining passes and heading for the town of Saint Denis. Yes, maman, I know what you are thinking but I cannot leave. I came here for an adventure and my goodness I found one! I intend to see it through to the end. I do not mind admitting however that I am a little
afraid
nervous of the final confrontation.

Eveline is well. She is happier perhaps than she has ever been.
I think I have lost her to a better another man
. I think that she has found herself and for that I am glad.

Laurie's emotions brought him to a standstill in the middle of the Boulevard du Montparnasse. He wished it would just rain down, pour the sweet warm rain down upon him, wash away the grime from his eyes, his lips, the palms of his hands. His mind was so disjointed tonight he couldn't think of anything else to write. He racked his brain for amusing anecdotes he had heard or read or made up even; but he couldn't recall any. A nagg­ing little voice told him he had better get home before another hour struck else surely he would meet with some terrible calamity. Laurie sighed. The circuit­ous route he was taking home in order simply to thwart his obsess­ion wasn't fooling anybody least of all his own head. He stared up at the sky waiting for the storm. Any moment now it would come. Any moment now.

Even as a child he'd tested himself in the most perverse and ridiculous of ways. Tucked up in bed half asleep he'd suddenly decide he must touch the garden gate to ensure the safety of every member of the household including the little dog Posy. Or he'd have to skip all the way to school else meet with a setback in his spelling test. He wondered now if it was an exaggerated reaction to his father's illness and death. Some mad peculiar grief sublimating itself in the demon voices.

He tried to distract himself by counting the steps up to the old soda fact­ory on his left.
One two three four
… He and Alphonse had shared a soda on those very steps, a bottle of cherry soda and a box of almond paste. He could remember the day quite clearly, a sunny day in autumn soon after he'd arrived in Paris. Alphonse had shown him the sights, shown him around, shown him his favourite spots and haunts, got him out of one or two scrapes.
Five six seven eight
… Alphonse the brother he'd never had and always wanted. The audience was closer now, clapping vocifer­ously up there with the gods who flashed their binoculars and little pince-nez at him. If he made a quick dash he might just be in time for –
nine ten eleven twelve
… There were thirteen steps exactly up to that little old soda factory where he and Alphonse had shared a cherryade one fine clear autumnal day. Unlucky for some… Laurie stood white faced and taut as a bow, battling with the elements that raged within his head; and as the cloud burst its sweet warm rain down upon him he suddenly broke into a run.