Desiree
Page 13
I interrupted him and asked whether he needed anything. He looked up in confusion and it took him a moment or so before he remembered.
‘A drop of lukewarm water, please. And perhaps a clean cloth.’
He began to wash out the wound. Joseph went up to the window and Julie was leaning against a wall on the verge of being sick. I took her out of the room and told Joseph to look after her, which he did, greatly relieved that he need not stay.
‘A blanket,’ said the doctor, ‘could you get me a blanket? His limbs are quite cold already. He is bleeding to death, you know. Inside him, Mademoiselle, inside him.’
We spread a blanket over Duphot.
‘There is nothing we can do now, Mademoiselle. How terrible! A man of such exalted position!’ he said, and his eyes went over the gold braid on Duphot’s uniform. And so, having done his duty, he quickly made for the door through which Joseph had disappeared. I went with him.
In the adjoining room Joseph, Julie, the Councillor and some secretaries sat together round a big table talking in whispers and sipping port. Joseph rose and offered the doctor a glass, and I could see how the Charm of the Bonapartes enveloped the little Italian in a haze of bliss. He stammered:
‘Oh, Your Excellency, brother of our great Liberator …’
I went back to Duphot. At first I had something to occupy me: with the help of napkins I tried to wipe away the thin trickle of blood down his chin. But I gave it up soon because the blood never stopped trickling. In the end I spread the napkins round his chin over his tunic. All the time I tried in vain to catch his eye, and when I had done what there was to be done I fetched my diary and started to write.
I must have been sitting here for many hours. The candles are almost burned down. But from the next room there still comes the gentle murmur of voices. No one wants to go to bed before …
A moment ago he came to at last.
I heard a movement from the sofa, kneeled down by his side and put my arm under his head. His eyes rested on my face, taking it in, for a long time. Obviously he didn’t know where he was.
‘You are in Rome, General Duphot,’ I told him, ‘in Rome, in Ambassador Bonaparte’s house.’
His lips moved and spilled out blood-flecked foam. I wiped it away with my free hand.
‘Marie,’ he managed at last to say, ‘I want to go to Marie.’
‘Quick,’ I said, ‘quick, tell me, where is Marie?’
His eyes were clear and alive now and they asked a question. I repeated therefore:
‘You are in Rome. There have been riots in the streets. A bullet hit you in the stomach.’
He nodded almost imperceptibly. Yes, he had understood.
I tried to think quickly. I couldn’t help him, but perhaps I could help her, Marie?
‘Marie, what’s Marie’s surname? And where does she live?’ I asked in as urgent a tone as I could muster.
Fear came into his eyes. ‘Don’t,’ he brought out, ‘don’t – tell – Bonaparte.’
‘But if you are going to be ill for a long time we must inform Marie. There’s no need to tell Napoleon Bonaparte.’ I smiled at him with the smile of a friendly accomplice.
‘Must – marry – Eugenie, Bonaparte said, and—’ The rest of the sentence was inaudible. Then the words became clearer once more: ‘Be sensible, little Marie – always look after you – after you – and little George – darling, darling Marie—’
His head fell to one side, he pursed his lips and tried to kiss my arm. He thought I was Marie. He had explained to her exactly why he wanted to leave her and her little son: to marry into Bonaparte’s family, which would mean promotion and undreamed-of possibilities …
His head now felt as heavy as lead on my arm. I lifted it a bit. ‘Give me Marie’s address, I’ll write to her,’ I said, and tried to catch his eye once more. For a second his gaze became clear again: ‘Marie Meunier – 36 – Rue de Lyon – Paris,’ he said.
His features had suddenly sharpened, the eyes lay deep in their sockets and beads of perspiration stood on his forehead.
‘We shall always look after Marie and little George,’ I said. But it didn’t reach him any more. ‘I promise,’ I repeated.
Suddenly his eyes grew wide and his lips twisted convulsively.
I jumped up and ran to the door. At the same time a long moan came after me and then died away.
‘Come, doctor, come at once!’ I heard myself call.
‘It’s all over,’ the Italian said after he had bent cursorily over the sofa.
I went to the window and drew back the curtains. The grey and leaden light of dawn crept into the room. Then I put out the candles.
In the other room they were still sitting round the table. The servants had lit fresh candles, and the room with its air of festive illumination seemed like an abode in another world.
‘Joseph, you must cancel the reception,’ I said.
Joseph started up. He seemed to have fallen asleep with his head on his chest: ‘What – what’s that? Oh, it’s you, Désirée.’
‘You must cancel the reception, Joseph,’ I repeated.
‘That’s impossible. I’ve expressly arranged that—’
‘But you’ve got a dead man in your house,’ I explained.
He stared at me with furrowed brows. Then he got up hastily. ‘I’ll think it over,’ he said, and went out. Julie and the others followed him.
When Julie and Joseph reached the door of their bedroom Julie stopped and asked:
‘Désirée, may I lie down in your room? I am afraid of being alone.’
I did not object that, after all, she had Joseph and would not be alone, but simply said:
‘Of course you can sleep in my bed. I want to go on with my diary anyway.’
‘Diary? Do you still write your diary? How strange!’ she said with a tired smile.
‘Why strange?’
‘Because everything is so different now. So quite, quite different!’
She sighed and lay down on my bed without taking off her clothes. She didn’t wake up till lunch time.
Sometime during the morning I heard the sound of hammering. When I went down to find out I saw that they were putting up a stage in the big reception room. In one corner Joseph was directing the work in Italian. At long last he had found an opportunity to speak his mother tongue. When he caught sight of me he came and explained:
‘This is going to be the stage. From here Julie and I are going to watch the dancing.’
‘Stage? For the reception to-night?’ I asked in astonishment. ‘But you can’t go on with it, you can’t!’
‘Not with a dead body in the house, you’re right. That’s why we had the – hm, the remains of the late Duphot taken away. I’ve had him laid in state in a cemetery chapel, in as ceremonious a state as possible because, after all, he was a General in the French Army. And we must go on with the ball as a matter of course. It’s even more important now than ever, because we have to show that law and order reign in Rome. If I cancelled it the whole world would say at once that we are not masters of the situation. Whereas the whole thing was really only a minor incident, however regrettable, you understand?’
I nodded. General Duphot had left his mistress and his son in order to marry me. And in order to make an impression on me he had exposed himself rashly to a raging mob and had been killed. But of course all this was only a minor though regrettable incident.
‘I have to talk to your brother, Joseph,’ I said.
‘Which one? Lucien?’
‘No, the famous one, the General. Napoleon.’
Joseph tried to hide his surprise. All his family knows that up till now I’ve anxiously avoided meeting Napoleon.
‘It concerns General Duphot’s family,’ I explained curtly, and left the room in which the hammering of the workmen made so much noise.
Returning to my room I found Julie awake and in tears. I sat down on the edge of the bed; she put her arms round me and sobbed and sobbed.
/> ‘I want to go home,’ she cried, ‘home! I don’t want to live in these strange mansions. I want a home, like everybody else! What are we doing here, in this strange country where they want to kill us? And in these awful draughty castles? And in these high rooms which make you feel you are in a church, not in a house? We don’t belong here, I want to go home!’
I pressed her to me. It took the death of General Duphot for her to realise how unhappy she was here.
A bit later there came a letter from Mama from Marseilles. We read it crouching side by side on my bed. Mama wrote in her tidy slanting hand that Etienne had decided to move to Genoa with Suzanne in order to open a branch there of the firm of Clary. In these days a French businessman would have particularly attractive opportunities there and, so she wrote, the silk business would always be carried on best from Italy. She, Mama, would of course not stay behind by herself in Marseilles but she would go with Etienne and Suzanne to Genoa, and she hoped that I would soon find a good husband although I should for heaven’s sake not allow myself to be hustled. As to the house in Marseilles, Etienne intended to sell it …
Julie had stopped crying. Deeply shaken we looked at each other.
‘Then we shan’t have a home any more,’ she murmured.
I felt a lump in my throat. ‘You’d never have gone back to our villa in Marseilles in any case,’ I said.
Julie stared towards the window. ‘I don’t know, I don’t know. No, of course, I wouldn’t. But it was so lovely thinking of the house, the garden and the little summer-house. You know, in all these months that I have been moving about here from palazzo to palazzo and feeling dreadfully wretched I have always kept thinking about it, always. Never of Joseph’s little house in Paris, no, always of Papa’s villa in Marseilles!’
There was a knock on the door. Joseph came in, and Julie at once started weeping again. ‘I want to go home,’ she cried.
He sat down on the bed and took her in his arms. ‘You shall go home,’ he said tenderly. ‘To-night we get the great reception over and to-morrow we leave. For Paris! I’ve had enough of Rome.’
He pressed his lips together and his chin down on his chest. It made it look like a double chin. Perhaps he thought he made a more impressive figure that way.
‘I shall ask the Government to give me another and, maybe, more important position,’ he said. ‘Are you looking forward to our home in the Rue du Rocher, Julie?’
‘Yes, if Désirée goes with us,’ said Julie in a voice half choked with sobs.
‘I’ll go with you,’ I said. ‘Where else should I go?’
She looked up at me through her tears: ‘Oh, we’ll have a lovely time in Paris, you and Joseph and I. You can’t imagine, Désirée, what a marvellous city Paris is! And such a big city, too! Those shop windows! And the thousands of lights which the Seine reflects at night, no, you simply can’t imagine it because you’ve never been there yet!’
Julie and Joseph left the room to make arrangements for our departure, and I fell on my bed. My eyes were burning with lack of sleep.
In my thoughts I imagined the conversation I was going to have with Napoleon, and I tried to remember his face. But all I saw with my mind’s eye was the unreal glossy face which smiles at you now from every coffee cup, flower vase and snuff-box. And then this unreal face disappeared in its turn before the lights that dance on the waters of the Seine at night, those lights which I shall never be able to forget.
Paris, end of Germinal, in the year VI. (Old people abroad would say April 1798)
I’ve seen him again!
We had been invited to a farewell party. He was going to embark with his army within a few days for Egypt, to unite East and West there by the Pyramids and to turn our Republic into a world-wide Empire, as he told his mother. Madame Letitia listened to him calmly and afterwards asked Joseph whether they were trying to conceal from her that Napoleon suffered at times from attacks of malaria. It seemed to her that the poor boy wasn’t all there … But Joseph explained to her, and also to Julie and me, that it was by the Pyramids that Napoleon would smash the English and their Empire to pieces.
Napoleon and Josephine live in a small house on the Rue de la Victoire. It used to be the house of the actor Talma, and Josephine bought it from his widow in the days when she used to glide on Director Barras’ arm through Theresa Tallien’s salon. At that time the street was called the Rue Chatereine; but after Napoleon’s victories in Italy the City Council renamed it Rue de la Victoire in his honour.
To get back to the farewell party: it was incredible how many people forced themselves into the small and undistinguished house, which has only two small rooms besides the dining-room. I am still confused even now when I recall all the faces and voices.
Julie had made me almost ill during the morning by asking me every few seconds with tender concern if I was excited and if I still felt anything for him. I was excited, naturally, but I really couldn’t say whether I still felt anything for him. ‘When he smiles,’ I thought to myself, ‘he has me in the hollow of his hand,’ and therefore I rather hoped that he and Josephine would still be furious with me because of the scene that day in Madame Tallien’s house. Again and again I reflected that he’d probably hate the sight of me now and so certainly would not smile at me. I almost hoped he would hate me.
I put on a new dress, yellow with a red underslip, and I used a bronze chain which I had bought once in an antique shop in Rome, as a belt. The day before yesterday I had my hair cut short. It is the new fashion which Josephine introduced, and now all ladies of fashion copy the way she brushes her babyish curls upwards. I can’t do that with my hair; it’s too heavy and thick for that, and I have no elegant curls. So I put my hair up and held it together with a ribbon. ‘But,’ I thought, ‘whatever I do, by the side of Josephine I shall always look like a little country cousin.’
The new frock was cut very low, but I no longer need handkerchiefs to stuff into my bosom. Just the opposite: I’ve made a resolution to eat fewer sweets, otherwise I’ll get too fat. My nose, however, is still a snub nose, and that, unfortunately, it will remain to the end of my days. Which is particularly sad now, because since the conquest of Italy everybody is in raptures about ‘the classic profile’!
At one o’clock, then, we drove up to the house in the Rue de la Victoire and entered the first of the two small rooms, which was already full of Bonapartes. Madame Letitia and her daughters live in Paris now, and the whole family meets quite often. Yet at every reunion the Bonapartes greet each other with kisses and embraces. I was pressed first to Madame Letitia’s bosom and after that vigorously taken into Madame Leclerc’s arms. Madame Leclerc was that little Polette who before her marriage declared that Leclerc was the only officer of her circle for whom she felt absolutely nothing. As Napoleon, however, thought that her many affaires would injure the reputation of the Bonaparte family, she had to marry him all the same. He is a short-legged, pouchy and very energetic man who never laughs, and looks as if he could be Polette’s father.
Then, with her husband Bacciochi, there was Eliza, horribly painted and boasting all the time of the great position which Napoleon had found for her musical husband in one of the ministries. And Caroline, and Josephine’s daughter, fair, angular Hortense, who had been allowed out of their exclusive boarding-school for the day, were there, huddled together on a fragile little chair and giggling at Madame Letitia’s new dress of heavy brocade which reminded one of the dining-room curtains.
Among the noisy and excitable crowd of Bonapartes I noticed a thin, fair-haired and very young man with the sash of an adjutant round his uniform. His blue eyes stared a trifle helplessly at the beautiful Polette. I asked Caroline who he was and she, almost choking with giggles, managed to tell me at last that he was Josephine’s son!
The young man seemed to have guessed that I was asking about him. He made his way through the groups towards me and introduced himself: ‘Eugene de Beauharnais, personal adjutant to General Bonaparte.’
Joseph followed her out, and Madame Letitia, annoyed, shrugged her shoulders. Everybody started talking again. But suddenly they all fell silent because someone in the next room seemed to be having an attack of hysterics. A fist banged a table or a mantelpiece and one could hear the smashing of glass. At the same time Josephine slipped into the room where we were standing aghast.
‘How nice,’ she said, ‘to find the whole family together,’ and smilingly she went up to Madame Letitia. Her white gown clung tightly to her delicate figure, a dark red velvet scarf hung softly and loosely round the naked shoulders and made her girlish neck appear very white.
‘Madame, you have a son by the name of Lucien, haven’t you?’ Josephine asked Madame Letitia.
‘My third son, yes. What’s the matter with him?’ Madame Letitia answered. Her eyes were full of hatred for this daughter-in-law who didn’t even take the trouble to remember the names of her brothers- and sisters-in-law.
‘He wrote to Napoleon that he had married,’ said Josephine.
‘I know,’ Madame Letitia answered and her eyes grew narrow. ‘Do you mean to say that my second son does not approve of his brother’s choice?’
Josephine shrugged her delicate shoulders and smiled: ‘Sounds like it, doesn’t it? Just listen how he is shouting!’ The attack of hysterics next door seemed to amuse her a lot.
The door was thrown open and Napoleon stood there. His lean face was red with fury. ‘Mother, did you know that Lucien has married the daughter of an inn-keeper?’
Madame Letitia looked him up and down. Her eyes went from the reddish hair which fell untidily to the shoulders, over the deliberately plain uniform which, it was obvious, must have been tailored by the best uniform maker in Paris, down to the points of his highly polished, narrow and very elegant boots.