Song of the Legions (27 page)

The black officer grinned, his white teeth gleaming against his dark skin.

“But what is this – here you are in church! Have you converted, my dear Birnbaum?”

Birnbaum grinned back and shook his head vehemently. “No, Sir, I have not, but your Christian God has given me a great gift this day!”

When they mentioned Praga, my addled mind began to work at last. This unfortunate officer had been in command of Praga when it fell to Suvarov and his Cossacks, and given up for dead. This was Jablonowski. Everyone knew who Jablonowski was. For there was only one black officer in the Polish army, after all. Jablonowski was a rare bird – as rare as a white raven, but black, of course. He was known to all as the Little Negro.

Then the bells rang, and the singing began, and the priest walked in, swinging his censer over the huddled bodies of his congregation. After Mass was ended, we picked our way through the dark, some limping with wounds, others with drink, back to the tavern called Rome. Birnbaum lent his shoulder to the Little Negro, who had been shot to ribbons by the Russians, and was slowly healing his wounds. As we walked back to the tavern, we heard the wolves howling in the hills. So after they had serenaded us, we sang our cavalryman’s song back to them –

“O sacred love of the beloved country,

For thee, ‘twere nothing to live poor,

‘Twere nothing to die!”

This had been the anthem of our Corps of Cadets, and a great favourite of the army. Now our corps was gone. I thought many times of the dear old academy, ruined. Standing empty, the roof caved in, the doors barred, the armoury looted, spiders spinning webs in the halls. Worse, I thought of the classrooms full of Russians and their lackeys – a weapon of war to be turned against us, a school for murderers and torturers.

“
Sto lat!”
we cried. We shut the door on the dark and drank the first of many toasts.

“Damn it all,” Jablonowski said, throwing himself into a chair, “these wounds give a man a thirst,” and he filled his wineglass. At a draught he drained it, and drew another. This next he threw down his throat without it touching the sides. We were all heavy drinkers, but Jablonowski was prodigious. He drank like a priest.

There were no girls to be seen now. Our friends Tanski and Sierawski, who were in fine fettle, and full of beans, were dancing in the back room with them. Birnbaum’s comrades, like so many Jews, were apt musicians. In no time they were playing a storm of mazurkas and polonaises, and from time to time, their own mournful songs.

But we four sat apart – Cyprian, Birnbaum, the black colonel, and myself. For we had deadly serious business. Ostensibly, we were standing guard at the doorway, but our affair was far more important than that. As the wolves of the forest scent each other out, men of our stamp know each other instantly, without a word, merely by glance. We were card players.

“The game is whist, as always,” I said, pulling out a pack of cards. The deck was greasy, cracked, blacked with dirt and campfire-soot.

“I’m not playing with your lucky deck!” Godebski sneered, producing a fresh pack from behind the bar, and tossing it onto the table, together with another bottle of vodka.

“My dear Captain,” I said, in tones of mock horror, “are you implying that my deck is marked?”

For an accusation of cheating, even in jest, is not to be borne by a gentleman.

“Certainly not,” Cyprian said quickly, holding up his hands, “I meant merely that this particular deck of yours is especially favoured by the gods of chance.”

“Good,” I said, “now shut up and deal!” Then I let out a thunderous sneeze. Everyone called “
Na zdrowie!
Bless You!”

From time to time we heard Sierawski croaking out a Krakowiak, his dreadful voice keening like a crow. This was greeted with a gale of derisory laughter, and not the storm of acclaim that he expected. I did not see it that night, but I had seen it a hundred times before, in every village or tavern where Sierawski inflicted his atrocious singing. But otherwise our game was not interrupted. It was blissful.

“Here, Blumer,” said Godebski, cutting the cards, “the Beardling and I shall play together, and you shall play with the Little Negro.”

Thus my partner for the first hand of whist was the Little Negro. This epithet was the name by which Jablonowski was universally known. He seemed heedless of this usage by Godebski, but for myself I was very careful to defer to him as ‘Colonel’ at all times. For Jablonowski was an exceedingly dangerous man, quick to temper, and a fast blade. He had fought any number of duels and killed or wounded any number of men. Scarcely less dangerous in peace than in war, one should know better than to cross him.

At length, the Little Negro said to me, “Blumer – I have never heard this name. Have you foreign blood, by any chance?”

“That I do, Colonel,” I said, piqued, “although I’d wager I’m not the only one at this table that does.” Then I cursed myself for my impudence, but to my relief Jablonowski fell about laughing.

“
Touché,
my boy! Tell me, where are you from?”

“From the provinces, Sir,” I replied, “Podolia. Not so far from here.”

“Aha!” said Jablonowski, stealing a point, “then thou must be used to Turks, Tartars, and blackamoors, then, for they abound in these parts, as we are so near to the Ottoman lands. How fortunate for you that your mother did not have one serving in the house, like mine, or we might be blood brothers!”

We were all very drunk, and we roared with laughter. For this was how the Little Negro had been conceived, outside of wedlock. Everyone in the army knew it. For Jablonowski, his mother a Stuart princess, and her husband the inspector of the Royal Mint at Krakow, was the bastard son of a Negro footman. Black footmen were very much in vogue in Paris, and Polish ladies were wont to follow French fashions, as always. When his wife returned from a visit to Paris, pregnant, the cuckolded inspector found that his own marital treasury had been raided, and his coins clipped, and his stamp defamed! No man in Poland wore such huge horns as poor Prince Konstanty Jablonowski. For the boy wore his mother’s treachery on every inch of his skin.

The Prince, casting his eyes on the newborn baby for the first time, saw it black as a lump of Wielice coal. In consternation, he demanded to know where on earth the ‘Little Negro’ had come from. The lady coolly replied that in Paris, she had stopped in front of a tobacconist’s shop, to examine the wax effigy of a Negro holding a pipe in his mouth.

‘That’s fine, my lady,’ thundered the cuckolded Prince, ‘but where is the pipe? I don’t see anything in the infant’s mouth!’ This was the story.With such royals as we had, it was hardly a surprise that Poland was fallen! Catamites, cuckolds, cowards, and card sharps, all of them!

“Trump!” Godebski called, and Jablonowski the Little Negro, cursed, and slammed his purse on the table, and counted out the wager.

“Damn it all, my wallet sags like a widow’s tits. Lend a hand, my dear Blumer,” he said, blithely appropriating the last of my coins. I watched it go with sad heart, knowing I should not see it again, for without my lucky deck, Godebski was routing us all. The poet was a bold player, and that cautious cad Birnbaum complemented him perfectly, like musket and bayonet. The Little Negro, by contrast, played a wild and reckless hand, and the fates were against him that night. My heart was in it, but my head was swimming with a fugue of drink and sickness, and I could not keep up.

“Trump! Bad luck, there, fellows!” Cyprian crowed again. “I fear that you have no stomach for another hand!”

“Nor any gold, neither,” Birnbaum snorted.

“I’ll write you a promissory note against my arrears of pay,” I said solemnly. This was a remark that always brought a hoot. Our arrears were as dead as our state. It was said that the Prussians had even melted down the crown jewels.

So we played on, for paper. That night Godebski and Birnbaum won enough fortunes from the Little Negro and I to ransom the Pope. The sums were scrupulously written down, to the last zloty. Like a national debt, they were obviously never repaid.

“Tell me, Colonel,” I asked the Little Negro, feeling entitled to it, having paid so dear in my purse, and now being saddled with debts that would have made even the Bullock blush, “how goes Dabrowski with this Frenchman Bonaparte?”

For Bonaparte was the coming man. At this, the game was forgot, and the players clamoured for precious news. The Little Negro shrugged and drained his glass. He had been on many courtier’s missions to Paris. He knew the names of all the great ones, all the generals and officers of both the Polish and the French armies, and all their gossips and intrigues. The Poles and the French were alone in Europe – outcasts. Thrown together, we were unequal allies and uneasy bedfellows. We fought the same enemies – the Satanic Trinity of Prussia, Austria, and Russia. Or so we were led to believe.

“Ah, yes,” said the Little Negro, “my dear old friend General Bonaparte.”

“You know him, then?” I asked, avidly. The Little Negro chuckled bitterly, “I know him all right. We were at school together, in France. There, as you may imagine, I had to endure the taunts of my schoolmates, among them a short-arsed Corsican named Napoleon Bonaparte.”

“What is he like, this Bonaparte?” I asked.

The Little Negro’s eyes darkened. “A fine officer,” he replied, draining his glass. He was holding something back.

“Excellent! But what kind of a man is he?” I demanded.

“Put it this way,” Jablonowski replied, “better to be a Negro with a white heart than a white man with a black heart!”

Around the time we reached Lwow, in February, Bonaparte was appointed commander of the French Army of Italy. The same day of his appointment, he married Josephine Beauharnais, the future Empress. Then he marched over the Alps to face the Austrians, who occupied Italy. What the hell were the Austrians doing in Italy, you may ask? Well, I would answer, what the hell were those Hapsburg bastards doing in Poland?

We were sitting in a café in Lwow, kicking our heels. It was July. Bonaparte and Dabrowski were kicking the Austrians up and down the boot of Italy. We had nothing better to do than read of their exploits in the censored Austrian newspapers. For that year began Bonaparte’s miraculous string of legendary victories – he routed the Austrians at Montenotte, Dego, Mondovi, and Lodi. News took weeks or months to reach us here in Lwow. Thus, by the time we read in the newspapers of Bonaparte’s latest victory, the dead corpses would be long buried in the ground, and the French had marched on. Onwards with their Revolution! Liberty! Fraternity! Equality! And all of that nonsense.

“Where is Bonaparte now?” we asked Godebski, breathlessly. He sighed and rolled his eyes.

“Bonaparte is besieging Mantua,” Godebski replied, peering through his spectacles, and scouring the newspaper with his face screwed up. We could only read it with the greatest difficulty, for it was in German. As gentlemen, we spoke little German of course, for we were really only fluent in the civilised tongues – Polish, Latin, and the lingua Franca.

“Mantua!” Godebski repeated, “a great city, and the birthplace of Virgil, of course. I should like to go there.”

“So Bonaparte’s odyssey continues!” Sierawski grinned, delighted, and ordered another round of coffees which we laced with vodka.

“Virgil wrote the Aeneid, you buffoon, not the Odyssey,” Godebski snapped. “Besides, Mantua is defended by a strong Austrian garrison. A French victory is far from assured.”

“Bah!” Tanski sniffed at his glass of wine, “the Austrian papers would say that! Let us have another drink to toast the latest victory! To Bonaparte!” he shouted.

“The war will be over by the time we get to Italy,” I said, glumly. We had no victories in Lwow. Here we brooded and plotted in the shadows, conspiring in cellars by candlelight. We followed Bonaparte’s victories avidly, for they fell on us like shafts of light in the dark. In truth, it was merely the rays of the sun falling through prison bars. Cyprian perceived this, for he grew terse and angry.

“Damn it all, we are nothing but armchair generals,” he snarled, “sitting here in a coffee shop, idling away the days, while the Frenchmen trounce our enemies for us! This Bonaparte has shown us how it is done – France will win all the glory.”

It did rankle that we had been defeated, while Napoleon’s barefoot army had marched over the Alps and, in a matter of months, driven the Austrians out of Northern Italy. These same haughty Austrians who now lorded it over us, who made us take our coffee in German, and hoisted a filthy black buzzard where the White Eagle should be flying on the spires across the square.

We glanced up and out of the window, and, sure enough, the carrion crow flapped on the flagpole in the spring breeze. The sun was high overhead, and we had dreamed and drunk much of the day away. Godebski threw down the newspaper, and I took it up. I carefully refolded it in the manner of one who has spent too long folding newspapers.

The others took the opportunity to watch the local girls through the window as they promenaded down the street, which always cheered us up. The richer girls rode by in fine carriages. At that moment a particularly lovely pair of doves walked into the cafe. We stood and bowed and doffed our czapkas respectfully. As they retired to a suitable table in the corner, we cast curious glances after them. For in spite of our years in the saddle, and at the wars, and all our many casual liaisons, hurried amours, and brief affairs, women remained a mystery to us all. As strange and mysterious as the surface of the moon. An enigma to us all, except for Cyprian, of course.

“Not all of the men fighting in Italy are French,” I said, at length. “It says here that good old Dabrowski fights alongside Bonaparte, commanding a
‘foreign legion’
of deserters.”

“A foreign legion, indeed!” Godebski grinned, and slammed his fist on the table, scattering cakes, coffee cups, glasses and bottles. “The Austrian press is censored. Our very name is proscribed. That is no foreign legion, comrades – that is the
Polish
Legion! For Austria, Russia and Prussia – the Satanic Trinity – have sworn to suppress the very name of the Republic of Poland, as from the present, and forever. Thus they call our men
‘the Foreign Legion’!
More drinks, there, barman! Let us drink to The Foreign Legion!” Godebski called, gleefully, his eyes gleaming red, and his cheeks flushed a livid scarlet. “By God, we have been shown ways to victory by this Bonaparte!”

It was then that I realised he was entirely inebriated. With that, Godebski swept the bunch of flowers, vase and all, off the table, and presenting them to one of the two very lovely girls, importuned them both to dance. The older girl glared at him angrily, with a stare that could have frighted a horse.

“Who on earth are you, Sir?” she said coldly.

“Why, allow me to present my credentials, my sweet!” he said, “I am the famous outlaw, Captain Cyprian Godebski!” he cried, in a most charming manner. He bowed to the waist, one hand on his sword hilt, the other he extended in a graceful gesture almost brushing the boots of the blushing maidens.

“Won’t you dance with me, ladies?” he asked, “for tomorrow the Austrians may have me dance upon the scaffold!”

“If they did, you’d deserve it,” snorted the older girl, but hiding a smile behind her hand.

“I will dance!” cried the younger, gladly. They set to a merry mazurka among the tables. Protesting that it was against her will, the older sister – who was very stern faced, but much the prettier by far – was conscripted into the dance. Soon she and her sister and the other three lads were lurching and spinning around the place. Tanski vaulted over a table heaving with a full hearty lunch, so low that he knocked the heads off the drinker’s beers, to howls of angry protest.

For me, I took a place with the minstrels – for the place had a string quartet – seized a violin, and we struck up the mazurka, in double-quick time. Our old friend, the mazurka of the Third of May! Someone ought to put words to this melody, I thought to myself.

Sierawski slumped down by my side after a few turns of this wild dance had thoroughly disordered the place. Upturned chairs and tables and broken crockery littered the floor. As Godebski swept by with one of the girls, he almost upturned another table, and I caught a carafe of wine and hugged it safe before it was shattered on the floor.

“He seems to have forgotten Madame,” Sierawski said.

“Plenty more fish in the river,” I grinned, and we agreed this was all for the best, for the further we were from that lethal lady, the less likely our necks were to be stretched.

“A thousand pardons, My Lord Brother!” Godebski was saying to a large gentleman, for he had knocked over his table. It was a Polish nobleman, of great size and girth, wearing a sable cloak and a sabre. The nobleman was sitting at a table with four hatchet-faced jockeys. By the expression on his face – for he had the look of a bull about to charge – he was not pleased. He seemed like a good trencherman, and fond of his food. The spilled cabbage stew on his breeches was, alas, Cyprian’s fault.

“A thousand pardons,” Cyprian repeated, merrily, “won’t you take a drink with me, my dear sir? We are celebrating General Bonaparte’s latest victory over the Austrian scoundrels.”

The other fellow almost exploded like a cannon of rage. He dashed his glass to the floor in a fury. “Go to the Devil! Bonaparte is a French Jacobin dog,” he spat, reaching for his sword hilt, and his lackeys formed up in a phalanx behind him. “My son is in the Austrian hussars. The Empress Marie-Therese is our sovereign. You are a traitor, and you talk treason!”

There was a hush.

“A traitor, am I?” Cyprian smiled thinly. “If my honour is to be impugned, with both ladies and gentlemen present, then I think perhaps we should settle this outside?”

“Good! After you!” grunted the great beast.

“Oh no! After you!” Cyprian insisted, bowing. His adversary – a man who was used to being obeyed, and going first, assented. As he walked by, Cyprian grabbed him by the seat of his breeches, hoisted them, set his shoulders, and hurled him bodily. They both did meet in the street, although they did not fight their duel. For although Cyprian later departed through the door, he had thrown his opponent out through the window. Unfortunately for him, we were on the second floor of the café!

At this, the nobleman’s lackeys were in uproar. The whole place was in chaos. Waiters, musicians and patrons ran to and fro, pell mell, cowering under tables, and running out of the doors. Tanski and Sierawski, grinning, grabbed the two screaming ladies and held them tight – for their own protection, no doubt.

“Our Master!” the angry lackeys screamed. “You’ll pay for this, brigands!” They leapt to their feet. Hands went to sabres. I placed my gun under the table, for I had no intention of this becoming a massacre, and waded in to meet them. The first of them made for Cyprian, to exact revenge, and came charging across the room. He was a stout fellow, but short, so I swatted him over the head with my chair. The chair shattered in my hands, and the man uttered a single surprised cry before tumbling to the floor with a crash. Then someone gave me a good swipe across the jaw, which stung somewhat, and I felt blood on my nose.

“Why, you little weasel!” I exclaimed to the second bodyguard, rocking on my feet, but not falling. There was a peach of a look on his scabby little face, a joy to behold, as he realised that he had tweaked a wolf by the tail, for he was no match for me. So he drew his sword, but I did not. I disdained to honour a man such as this with my blade. Stepping inside his clumsy lunge, I caught him a good left-and-right, to pay him back for the slap he had fetched me, cracking the bones in his nose and jaw. This sent him staggering across the room, over the bar, and into a stack of bottles. A dozen bottles broke, showering the room with wine, champagne, and shards of broken glass. Corks popped like gunshots. The little weasel lay amongst the wreckage, insensible, unmoving, covered in blood, and dead for aught I cared.

The other two lackeys held back. They had witnessed this fight with some trepidation. Terror-struck, they fled. I walked over to the bar. Amongst the wreckage was a single unbroken goblet of red wine. Picking it up, I drained it at a draught. “By God, this is thirsty work, comrades!” I bellowed to the others, for my blood was up. Tanski and Sierawski also in their cups, and quite drunk, were in fits of laughter, rolling around in the wreckage of the café.

“That was well done, Blumer,” Godebski declared, making his way unsteadily through the carnage. “Is there any more drink?”

“I think the bar is closed,” I said, staring at my shattered reflection in the broken mirror. Shards of glass fell tinkling from the wall. Bottles rolled across the floor. The rugs and carpets were sodden with spilled wine. A strong wind blew in through the plate glass window that was shattered from top to bottom, with a hole in it the size of a door. Even the chandelier swung crazily from the ceiling, for we had somehow contrived to destroy it in the brawl, I know not how.

We said our goodbyes to the ladies and paid for the bill, and the damages, with a promissory note, to be drawn against our arrears of army pay. I collected my gun from under the table and then gathered up my drunken, rowdy companions. We set off into the breezy afternoon, with a fine sun blazing in the sky. Outside, Godebski stared up at the Austrian flag with hate-filled eyes.