The Human Comedy (13 page)

The two assistant surgeons, twenty years old at most, succumbed to the poetry of their situation with all the enthusiasm of youth. From Strasbourg to Bonn, they had toured the lands of the Electorate and the banks of the Rhine as artists, as philosophers, as observers. People of a scientific bent are at that age truly multifaceted beings. Even when making love, or traveling, a medical intern should be collecting the rudiments of his fortune or of his future renown. So the two youths surrendered to that profound admiration that seizes an educated person at the spectacle of the banks of the Rhine and the Swabian countryside between Mayence and Cologne: powerful, rich, hugely various nature full of feudal traces, lush green but everywhere stamped with the scars of steel and fire. Louis XIV and Marshal Turenne have cauterized that gorgeous land. Here and there ruins attest to the pride, or perhaps the foresight, of the Versailles king, who ordered the destruction of the fine châteaus that once graced this part of Germany. Seeing this marvelous forested terrain abounding in the picturesque quality of the Middle Ages, however ruined, you sense the German spirit, its reveries and its mysticism.

The two friends’ stay at Bonn had served the goals of both science and pleasure. The main hospital of the Gallo-Batavian Army and of Augereau’s division was installed in the actual palace of the elector. The newly qualified surgeons thus went there to see old schoolmates, present their letters of recommendation, and become acquainted with some basic aspects of their profession. But also, there as elsewhere, they were stripped of some of the narrow prejudices we all retain for so long about the superiority of the monuments and beauties of our own homeland. Surprised by the spectacle of the marble columns decorating the electoral palace, they went on to admire the grandeur of German buildings, and at every turn found still more antique or modern treasures. Time and again, the roads the two friends wandered on their way to Andernach would take them onto the peak of some granite mountain higher than the rest. From there, through a gap in the forest, through some crevice in the rock, they would glimpse the Rhine framed in the sandstone or festooned with vigorous plant life. The valleys, the trails, the trees released an autumnal fragrance that transports one toward reverie; the treetops were starting to turn golden, to take on warm, brown tones that signal aging; the leaves were dropping but the sky was still a deep azure, and the dry roads traced yellow lines through the landscape lit now by the slanted beams of the setting sun. Half a league before Andernach, the two friends walked their horses through a deep silence, as if the war were not devastating this lovely land, and they followed a trail cut for goats across the high bluish granite walls with the Rhine roiling past below. Soon they descended a slope of the gorge at whose base lay the little town set charmingly at the river’s edge, offering sailors a pretty port.

“Germany is truly a beautiful country!” exclaimed one of the two youths, the one called Prosper Magnan, as he caught sight of Andernach’s colorful houses, nestled like eggs in a basket and separated by trees, gardens, and flowers. Then he stood for a moment admiring the pointed roofs with their projecting gables, the wooden staircases and galleries of a thousand tranquil houses, and the boats rocking to the waves in the harbor.

When Monsieur Hermann pronounced the name Prosper Magnan, the provisioner seized the carafe, dashed water into his glass, and swallowed it in a single gulp. The movement having drawn my attention, I thought I noticed a slight trembling in the capitalist’s hands and a dampness on his brow.

“What’s the provisioner’s name?” I quietly asked my helpful neighbor.

“Taillefer,” she replied.

“Are you feeling ill?” I asked him, seeing the curious fellow turn pale.

“No, no,” he replied, thanking me with a polite wave. “I am listening,” he added, and nodded toward the other guests, who had all turned at once to look at him.

Monsieur Hermann went on: “I’ve forgotten the name of the second young man, but from Prosper Magnan’s account, I learned that his companion was dark-haired, rather thin, and good-humored. If I may, I’ll call him Wilhelm, to make the storytelling easier to follow.”

And so the good German took up the tale again, having—with no concern for the romantic or for local color—baptized the young French doctor with a Germanic name.

When the two young men arrived at Andernach, night had fallen. Assuming that they would lose a good deal of time seeking out their commanders, establishing their credentials, and arranging for military billets in a city already full of soldiers, they resolved to spend their last night of freedom at an inn situated a short distance outside Andernach, and which from the rocky cliffs above they had admired for its rich coloring, lovelier still in the flames of the setting sun. Painted entirely in red, the building stood out sharply from the rest of the landscape, separated as it was from the general mass of the town itself and setting its broad crimson swath against the greens of the varied foliage, its vivid walls against the grayish tones of the water. The place owed its name to its exterior paintwork, which had probably been laid on eons ago at the whim of its original owner. A marketing superstition quite natural to the successive owners of the inn, renowned as it was among Rhine boatmen, had assiduously preserved the traditional decor. Hearing horses approach, the proprietor of the Red Inn came to the doorway.

“Good lord,” he exclaimed. “Gentlemen, a moment later and you would have had to bed down outdoors under the stars, like most of your countrymen bivouacking at the other end of Andernach. My place is full. If you must have a real bed, all I can offer you is my own room. As for your horses, I’ll have hay put down for them in a corner of the courtyard. Today my stable is full of Christians . . . The gentlemen are arriving from France?” he went on after a slight pause.

“From Bonn,” replied Prosper. “And we’ve had nothing to eat since morning.”

“Oh well, as for food,” said the innkeeper nodding his head, “people come from ten leagues around to feast at the Red Inn! You’ll have a banquet fit for a prince—fish from the Rhine! That says it all.”

Handing over their exhausted mounts to the host, who called rather uselessly for his grooms, the two young surgeons stepped into the inn’s common room. At first a thick whitish cloud exhaled by a crowd of smokers prevented them from seeing much of the people they would be joining, but once they were seated at a table, with the practical patience of philosophical travelers who have come to understand complaints are useless, they made out through the tobacco fumes the obligatory furnishings of a German inn: potbelly stove, clock, tables, beer mugs, long pipes; here and there a face stood out, Jewish, German, the rough mugs of a few river men. The epaulettes of several French officers glittered within the fog, and spurs and sabers clattered constantly against the stone floor. Some men were playing cards, others bickering or silent, eating, drinking, walking about. A short heavy woman wearing a black velvet bonnet, a blue-and-silver stomacher, a pincushion, a bundle of keys, a silver clasp, with her hair in braids—the distinctive markers of all mistresses of German inns, an outfit so regularly pictured in a thousand popular prints that it is too commonplace to bother describing—well then, the innkeeper’s wife did a skillful job of keeping the two youths alternately waiting and grumbling. Gradually the din lessened, the travelers retired, and the cloud of smoke cleared. By the time the doctors’ plates arrived and the classic Rhine carp appeared on the table, it was eleven o’clock and the room was empty. Through the nighttime silence they could hear the horses chomping their fodder and stamping a hoof, the murmur of the Rhine, and those indefinable sounds of a full house when everyone is bedding down. Doors and windows open and close, voices mumble half-heard words, and a few queries echo from the bedchambers. In that moment of quiet bustle, the two Frenchmen and their host—who was busily extolling Andernach, the food, the Rhine wine, the French Republican army, his wife—all pricked up their ears at the hoarse cries of a few sailors and the scrape of a boat against the wharf. The innkeeper, doubtless familiar with the guttural talk of boatmen, abruptly left the room and soon returned. He brought with him a short stout man trailed by two sailors carrying a heavy valise and a few bundles. The sailors set down the packs, and the man picked up his valise himself and kept it close as he unceremoniously sat down at the table facing the two young doctors.

“Go sleep on your boat,” he told the sailors, “as the inn is full. All things considered, that will be better.”

“Monsieur,” said the innkeeper to the new arrival, “this is all the food I have left.” And he pointed to the supper he had served to the two Frenchmen. “I haven’t one bread crust more, not a bone.”

“No sauerkraut?”

“Not even enough to fill my wife’s thimble! And as I had the honor of telling you, there’s not a bed to be had but the chair you’re sitting in, and no room but this one.”

At these words, the short man cast upon the innkeeper, the room, and the two Frenchmen a gaze expressing equal measures of fear and caution.

Here Monsieur Hermann interrupted his tale. “At this point I must note,” he said, “that we never learned either the actual name nor the story of this stranger. His papers showed that he had come from Aix-la-Chapelle; he went by the name Walhenfer, and he owned a rather sizable pin factory outside Neuwied. Like all the manufacturers in that area, he was wearing a plain fabric redingote, trousers, and a waistcoat of deep green velours, boots, and a wide leather belt. His face was quite round, his manner open and cordial, but throughout the evening he had difficulty fully masking some secret worries, or perhaps some racking trouble. The innkeeper has always thought that the German businessman was fleeing his country. I later learned that his factory had been burned down by one of those random events unfortunately so frequent in wartime. Despite his generally anxious look, his face showed a very comradely disposition. He had handsome features, in particular a thick neck whose whiteness was so nicely set off by a black cravat that Wilhelm jokingly remarked on it to Prosper . . .”

Here, Monsieur Taillefer drank down a glass of water.

Prosper politely offered to share their supper, and Walhenfer accepted easily, like a man sure he could return the courtesy. He laid his valise flat on the floor, set his feet upon it, took off his hat, pulled up to the table, and removed his gloves and two pistols that were tucked into his belt. The host quickly laid him a place and the three clients silently set about satisfying their appetites. The atmosphere in the room was so warm and the flies so numerous that Prosper asked the innkeeper to open the casement window onto the entryway to freshen the air. The window was barricaded by an iron bar whose two ends fit into holes carved into the two sides of the recess. For still greater security, a heavy screw fastened into a bolt on each shutter. Prosper idly watched the way the host went about opening the window.

Since I mention these details, I should describe the inn’s interior arrangements; the interest of the story does depend on an exact understanding of its layout. The room where the three clients sat had two exit doors. One opened onto the Andernach road running along the Rhine; across the way in front of the inn, naturally, was a small wharf where the businessman’s hired boat was tied up. The other door opened onto the courtyard of the inn. This courtyard was enclosed by very high walls and was filled, for the moment, with cattle and horses, the stables being full of people. The main gate out of the courtyard had just been so elaborately barred for the night that, to be quicker, the innkeeper had brought the businessman and the sailors indoors through the common-room door from the river road. After opening the window as Prosper Magnan had requested, the innkeeper went back to lock the door, slipping its crossbars into their recesses and turning the bolts. The host’s own bedroom, where the two young surgeons were to sleep, adjoined the common room and was separated by a thin wall from the kitchen, where the innkeeper and his wife would presumably be spending the night. The serving girl had just left for a bunk, the corner of the hayloft, or some other place. It was plain that the common room, the innkeeper’s bedroom, and the kitchen were somewhat isolated from the rest of the inn. In the courtyard were two large dogs, whose deep barking made clear they were vigilant and very irritable guardians.

“What silence, and what a beautiful night!” Wilhelm exclaimed, looking out at the sky while the host locked the door. The slap of the waves was now the only sound to be heard.

“Gentlemen,” said the businessman to the two Frenchmen, “allow me to offer you a few bottles of wine to wash down your carp. We will relieve some of the day’s fatigue by drinking. From your faces and the state of your clothing, I can see that, like me, you have traveled a long way today.”

The two friends accepted, and the innkeeper left through the kitchen door to go down to the cellar. When the five fine old bottles he brought up were on the table, his wife served the rest of the meal. With her proprietor’s eye she surveyed the room and the dishes; then, confident that she had seen to all the travelers’ needs, she returned to the kitchen. The four companions—for the host had been invited to drink with the others—did not hear her retire, but later, during the quiet intervals in their conversation, some very loud snores, made more resonant by the hollow planks of the shed where she had settled, brought a smile to the faces of the friends, and especially to the host’s.

Toward midnight, with nothing left on the table but biscuits, cheese, dried fruits, and good wine, the companions—mainly the two young Frenchmen—grew talkative. They spoke of their home country, of their studies, of the war. With time, the conversation grew livelier. Prosper Magnan brought a few tears to the eyes of the fleeing businessman when, with the openness of a boy from Picardy and the naïve manner of a good, tender nature, he pictured what his mother might be doing at that very moment as he sat here on the banks of the Rhine.