Le Temps des Cerises (36 page)

An omnibus rolled up, full of grinning National Guardsmen, and stopped to offer him a ride but Laurie declined politely, a little repelled by the fanatical look on the men's faces. One was wearing his gun tied about his neck like a giant crucifix and Laurie's eyes kept going back to it again and again as they chattered excitedly.‘Your best bet's Rivoli,' they advised him, finishing off each other's sentences in their eagerness.

‘Quite a little firework display there...'

‘… already. We're heading for Haxo. Might get a little...'

‘… hot!'

Laurie nodded. He knew that one. It had been in the papers. Built by Gaillard, Director of Barricades, it was eighteen feet high and fifteen feet deep with parapets and loopholes for the machine guns and cannon. ‘That should hold out a while,' he commented, shading his eyes with his hand against the sun so he could see into the omnibus. ‘How far have they got anyway?'

One of the soldiers scratched his head. ‘Passy, Auteuil, all the bourgeois districts. Those buggers...'

‘…they wanted to be rescued. Welcomed 'em with open arms probably.
Ooh, save us, ooh deliver us!'

They all laughed at the imitation of a bourgeoisie housewife and a little bottle of brandy was passed round to warm the guts up. For a moment Laurie missed the camaraderie of his old company – of Joubet, Bidulph, Tessier and the like – he'd been on his own so much lately; and he wondered suddenly if he mightn't join up with the little band after all.

‘Hop on! Hop on!' they urged him when he said that on reflection he might go as far as Rivoli with them; and willing hands helped him aboard.

His clothes started to steam in the fug of the omnibus and the man with the gun necklace joked that it was a little early in the season for bathing. Laurie related his ordeal in the fountain on the Rue du Temple and one or two of them listened half heartedly though most were intent on the ever-approaching sound of gunfire.

‘The Rue du Temple, you say?' a man called Bibi asked when he'd finished and Laurie nodded his head. Yes. Yes, it was the Rue du Temple.

‘I've a friend lives there. Number 32. An old man you say?'

Laurie nodded his head again. Yes, he was quite old. Definitely old.

‘It wasn't him then.' Bibi scratched his head. ‘It can't have been him then.'

‘I shouldn't think so,' Laurie offered up reassuringly. ‘He was a grey-haired gentleman.'

Someone put in at that point that looks were no bearer of age. In his experience looks were no bearer of chronological age. He'd known virgins that looked like grandmothers and grandmothers that looked like virgins. Indeed his only living relative was approaching eighty and still had the apple cheeks of a twenty-year-old tart!

‘A twenty-year-old apple tart?' someone heckled. ‘She must be flaking!'

‘You haven't banged her have you, Nimbus? Your only living relative?'

‘Course he has. Look at him. It's written all over his face. He'd bang anything that still moved, that one.'

Laurie smiled at the jibes that flew between the men – it was just like old times – and he settled back in his seat as the omnibus rumbled on. He half expected to see Coupeau dancing a salacious little jig at the back of the vehicle or Joubet leaping out in front of him with a pack of cards, a doleful smile on his face. He'd been on his own so much lately that it was pleasant to relax in the company of soldiers with their banter, their bottles of brandy, their rough bravado (what he had taken for fanaticism, he now realised, was simply a rough bravado). He took a tot himself when the bottle was passed round, pronouncing it very good indeed, much better than the mouth warmer he'd suffered at the ramparts.

‘To victory!' someone toasted all of a sudden and the sun-filled vehicle echoed with cries of ‘To victory! To victory! Over the forces of tyranny!'

‘Every barricade we hold,
mes enfants
,' Bibi began solemnly and heads nodded vigorously in response, the men understanding implicitly what he meant. Every barricade that held was a chance. A chance for victory.

‘To the barricades!' cried Laurie, rising a little unsteadily to his feet as the omnibus rattled over some cobblestones; and the men roared ‘the barricades, the barricades', making as much noise as they could with the butts of their rifles and boot-clad feet. Anything to drown out the boom of cannons, the awkward silences, the drum-rolling hearts…

He was sorry when they dropped him off on the crest of Rivoli and he climbed down amidst a rather forced hilarity and cries of ‘Don't get too warm, Laurie. Don't get too warm.' He shivered and looked about him as the omnibus disappeared out of sight. A pall of grey smoke was drifting over the brow of the hill and if he screwed his eyes up tight he could make out the figures crouched by the barricade at the bottom; now and again popping their heads over the top to fire a volley of shots. The Versaillais looked even smaller in comparison but Laurie knew that to be an optical illusion for the road dipped a little where they were entrenched – many a carriage had come to grief outside Ma Gorot's little tripe and paper shop. It was a good place for a barricade, he decided on reflection, blocking access as it did to three main roads and being halfway up a hill – the encroaching army would have to make a serious dash to overcome it and would be terribly out of puff when they got there. The only danger lay in their making a detour via the Boulevard Sébastopol and coming down upon the barricade from above, as Laurie was doing. He glanced stealthily over his shoulder just in case but there was nothing but a group of men dragging a gun and a few boys armed with sticks.

He walked purposefully on towards the barricade, his right hand gripping his chassepot rifle, his left hand nervously dusting off the lapels of his uniform. The sun gleamed down through the puffs of smoke, onto his fair, bright hair and grimly determined face. He buoyed himself up as he went with sentences in his head such as
he showed great daring and presence of mind… those who saw him remembered his courage…
In a moment he would have to go on all fours. By the cluster of shops at the bottom he would have to go on all fours for by then he would be perfectly visible to the enemy. It would be sheer recklessness to continue on foot. He had it all figured out in his head. By the cluster of shops he would drop to one knee, take stock of the situation, make a dash for the barricade under cover hopefully of a volley of shots.

His heart banged painfully against his ribs and he nearly tripped on a bit of paving that had been ripped up for the barricade. That would be just his luck of course, he thought sourly. To trip and twist an ankle at this particular juncture. To come to grief as the carriages did outside Ma Gorot's, be bandaged up in liniment and horse bandages (it was said she kept a jar of liniment and stack of horse bandages in her window for such an emergency). He stepped a little gingerly after that, almost wishing he'd stayed on the omnibus with the bluff and merry band of soldiers. Why did he always take the most perverse course of action? Why did he do something simply because he said he was going to do it? He had no especial liking for the Rue de Rivoli. If he were going to lay his life down for a part of Paris it would be for the cathedral of Notre Dame, Balzac's tomb in Père Lachaise perhaps, even stretches of the Seine between St Louis and the Cité – for those were the places he cared about, not the Rivoli with its manicured houses and smart-fronted shops.

He must have been fifty yards from the barricade when a burst of gunfire brought a ton of leaves raining down on his head from a nearby tree and he dodged instinctively, feeling a little foolish, dropping to one knee and throwing a hand out for support onto the uneven surface. The men with the gun overtook him at a run and he pretended to fiddle with his boot for a moment, not wanting to meet anybody's eye but a jaunty voice called out ‘
citoyen
' and he had to straighten up and respond with an enthusiastic ‘
vive la Commune
'. He could see the barricade quite clearly now – a sturdy affair of eight feet or more made up of carts and meat slabs, sandbags and paving, a red flag wedged on top to signify allegience, of course, to the revolutionary government. The men were hopping up and down on sandbags or crates and popping their heads over the top to fire because there were no loopholes in the barricade to poke their rifles through. A glaring omission in Laurie's opinion. If he'd been Director of Barricades he'd have ordered all of them have loopholes built into their design for cannon,
mitrailleuse
and the like. You needed to be protected yet able to fire; to be able to see yet not be seen. You needed to be the invisible enemy. Like God perhaps. Like Buzenval.

An image of
Tessier's macabre dance of death swam into his head and he had to steel himself to inch forward even a few more steps. The noise was deafening now for the high buildings on either side of the street created a tunnel of sound and to Laurie the rifles sounded like cannon fire. He wondered momentarily if the people in their manicured houses had had the sense to put away their books and pictures for safekeeping, their precious objects and artefacts. The smoke was tickling his nose and eyes again and with the sun beating down on his head he felt he might just vomit up the chicken pie he'd eaten for breakfast. (That would be just his luck of course to vomit up the chicken pie he'd eaten for breakfast.) He wanted to run away, to hide, at the very least be sick in private but any moment now he would be visible to the enemy, would have to drop to one knee, take stock of the situation, maybe crawl forward on his stomach to reach the barricade. That was the plan. That was the strategy. It was all figured out in his head. Any moment now he must do it. By the florist's, by the dyer's, the butcher's or the pâtisserie… just act, just act, he told himself sternly but at the very last moment instead of dropping to one knee he ducked into the doorway of the butcher's, his heart beating madly, his hands thick and clammy with sweat.

He pressed his head against the pane to cool himself down and unbuttoned the top of his uniform to give himself some air. It was like a stranglehold upon him, that uniform, and he wrenched off a button in a desperate struggle to be free of it. (What is the point of a uniform, sang a voice in his head, when you have no intention of fighting.) The boys raced past him waving their sticks and skipping the stones that ricocheted from the top of the barricade and he felt a creeping sense of shame for they were fourteen at best and he was twenty-one. And yet, of course, it is a game to them, he told himself, they do not understand that it is truly a matter of life and death. He peered in through the window to give himself time to get the courage up to proceed: the hooks hung empty of carcasses, the cattle market of La Villette having shut some weeks ago; and the butcher's red-and-white-striped apron lay in a crumpled heap on the counter as if he'd left in a hurry. Everybody must have left in a hurry.

He could see the gun being manoeuvred into position out of the corner of his eye and a cheerful shout of ‘that'll hold the buggers off for while' penetrated his weary thoughts. He supposed it would hold out for a while but in the end the barricade would fall, he felt quite sure of that. All over Paris the barricades would fall like a domino set – at the bridges, the railway lines, on the squares and the boulevards. He stared out at the scene from his perfect hiding place and his heart suddenly filled with an enormous sense of pity for himself and the rest of humanity that it should come down to this. That it should all come down to this. Three times he ordered himself to step outside the doorway and three times his foot came back as if pulled by an invisible string – and yet of course even that was dishonest for it was his own will pulling it back, his own fear, his own pathetic lack of courage. He felt his mind receding, drifting away somewhere hard and cold – a land of bright icicles and glittering snow though outside it was hot as hell, his body blazing.

He knew then that he was going to run away. His body would follow his mind as surely as night follows day. However long he stood cowering in the doorway wrestling with his conscience in the end he would run away. It was an instinct for survival. Darwin would have approved of it. With one last glance at the men and boys fighting for their lives and the tiny figures of the enemy outside Ma Gorot's tripe and paper shop, he turned and crept away from the barricade, scuttling from one dark shadow to another until he was at a safe distance from the fighting. He half expected somebody to call out his name (half expected it, half wished it), grab him by the arm and propel him backwards, arrest him on the spot as a traitor to the cause but nobody even noticed his going. In the maelstrom nobody noticed. He could have torn off his clothes and danced naked in the smoke and no one would have batted an eyelid. It was surprisingly easy to run away but then he knew that already. He knew that of old.

He bolted for home, running like a fugitive through the city that he loved and his breath came in great tearing sobs. He ran through streets he had meandered along on solitary walks or with Alphonse and Eveline, streets that bore the imprint of the hundreds and thousands of souls that had been before him and would be after him, past trees that were budding or in bloom, fighting back after the onslaught of the siege; and he ran past white, scared faces reflecting his own and fountains he had laughed beside on hot summer days and dangled his feet in. He had walked these streets in all seasons: in the biting cold of winter when even the Seine came to a standstill, the falling leaves of autumn when the wind whispered of winter and secrets and long-since-forgotten things, hot sultry summer nights when music lilted with the breezes over the boulevards and on a day like today in the giddy momentum of spring. He knew these streets better then any cartographer did – and yet he couldn't bring himself to defend them. It was monstrous to him that he couldn't bring himself to defend them, though a little voice in his head justified his course of action as cleverly as can be. Why should he put himself in harm's way for the sake of an idea? Why should he see his own flesh torn and bleeding for the sake of a principle? A revolution?