Desiree

by Annemarie Selinko

He spoke like someone dreaming. And exactly as in days gone by, at first I felt fear and then a childish desire to laugh off the fear.

  He swung round unexpectedly and said in an acid voice: ‘But I am going to Egypt. I leave it to the Directors to wrangle with the political parties, to let themselves be corrupted by Army contractors, to choke the French economy with worthless money. I am going to Egypt and shall plant the flag of the Republic—’

  ‘I am sorry to interrupt you, General,’ I said. ‘I have written down here the name of a lady, and I ask you to give orders that she is to be provided for.’

  He took the chit out of my hand and read it close to the candles. ‘Marie Meunier, who is that?’

  ‘The woman who lived with General Duphot, the mother of his son. I promised him that both should be provided for.’

  He dropped the chit and said with a gentle regret in his voice: ‘I felt sorry for you, very sorry. You were engaged to him, Désirée, weren’t you?’

  I felt like shouting into his face that I had had enough of this miserable comedy. But I only brought out hoarsely:

  ‘You know quite well that I hardly knew Duphot. I don’t understand why you torture me with these things, General.’

  ‘With what things, Désirée?’

  ‘With these marriage proposals. I’ve had enough of them, I want to be left alone.’

  ‘Believe me, only in marriage can a woman find the fulfilment of her life,’ said Napoleon unctuously.

  ‘I – I’d like to throw the candlestick at you!’ I managed to jerk out, and I clenched my fists to prevent myself from really throwing things at him.

  He came up to me and smiled, that fascinating smile of his which once upon a time meant everything to me. ‘We are friends, are we not, Bernadine Eugenie Désirée?’ he asked.

  ‘Will you promise me that Marie Meunier will be paid a pension for herself and her child?’

  ‘Oh, here you are, Désirée! Get ready, we must be off!’ That was Julie, who entered the hall at this moment with Joseph. When they saw Napoleon and me they stopped and looked at us in surprise.

  ‘Will you promise, General?’ I repeated.

  ‘I promise, Mademoiselle Désirée.’ He took my hand and kissed it quickly. Then Joseph stepped between us and with a lot of back-slapping took leave of his brother.

  Paris, four weeks later

  The happiest day of my life started for me in the same way as all the other days. After breakfast I took the small green watering-can and began to water the two dusty palm trees in the living-room which Julie had brought home from Italy. Joseph and Julie, still sitting at the breakfast table, were discussing a letter, and I only listened with half an ear to what they were saying.

  ‘You see, Julie,’ said Joseph, ‘he has accepted my invitation!’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, I haven’t prepared a thing!’ said Julie. ‘And whom else are you going to ask in? Shall I try for some cockerels? And what about trout in mayonnaise as hors d’œuvre? Trout is dreadfully expensive just now, but … You ought to have told me before, Joseph.’

  ‘I couldn’t be sure whether he’d accept my invitation. After all, he’s only been in Paris for a few days and is inundated with invitations. Everybody wants to hear from him in person what really happened in Vienna.’

  At this point I went out to refill the watering-can. When I came back Joseph was just saying:

  ‘– had written to him that my friend Director Barras and my brother Napoleon had told me so many pleasant things about him and I should be happy if I could welcome him to a modest meal in my home.’

  ‘And strawberries with Madeira sauce as a dessert,’ Julie was thinking aloud.

  ‘And so he accepted! Do you know what that means? It means that personal contact with France’s future Minister of War has been established! Napoleon’s most particular desire is being fulfilled. Barras makes no secret of the fact that he wants to hand the War Ministry over to him. Old Schérer was like so much wax in Napoleon’s hand, but we haven’t an inkling of what Bernadotte is going to do. Julie, the food must be really first class, and—’

  ‘Whom else shall we ask?’

  I took the bowl of roses from the centre of the breakfast table and carried it into the kitchen to renew the water. On my return Joseph was just explaining:

  ‘A small dinner in the family circle, that’s it. That’ll give Lucien and myself the opportunity to talk to him as much as we want. So: Josephine, Lucien, Christine, you and myself.’ Seeing me he added: ‘Yes, and of course our little one. Make yourself beautiful, Désirée, to-night you’ll meet France’s future Minister of War.’

  I am bored by all these ‘small family dinners’ which Joseph has been giving all the time in honour of some Deputy, General or Ambassador. They are always arranged in order to spy out political behind-the-scene secrets and to send them red-hot in endless epistles by special courier across the sea after Napoleon, who is on his way to Egypt.

  Joseph so far has not accepted – or received – a new ambassadorial appointment. He seems intent on staying in Paris to be ‘at the centre of things’, and since the last elections he has even entered the Assembly as Deputy for Corsica, which island, since Napoleon’s victories, has naturally become very proud of its Bonapartes. Lucien too, independently of Joseph, has stood for Corsica and been elected. A few days ago, almost immediately after Napoleon’s departure, he moved to Paris with his wife Christine. Madame Letitia had found a small apartment for them, and there they live precariously on Lucien’s pay as a Deputy.

  Lucien belongs to the extreme Left. When he was told that Napoleon expected him to divorce his wife he nearly split his sides with laughing. ‘My military brother seems to have gone off his head!’ he shouted. ‘What is it he doesn’t like about Christine?’

  ‘Her father’s tavern,’ said Joseph.

  Lucien laughed. ‘Mama’s father only had a farm in Corsica, and a very small one at that!’ Suddenly he became thoughtful, frowned, and said to Joseph: ‘Don’t you think that, for a Republican, Napoleon has very peculiar ideas?’

  Almost every day we read Lucien’s speeches in the papers. That thin, blue-eyed, brown-haired fellow seems to be a great orator. It’s impossible to say whether he really likes these ‘small family dinners’ which are given for the sake of good connections or whether he only comes so as not to offend Joseph and Julie.

  As I was putting on a yellow silk dress Julie slipped into my room. With her usual introductory phrase: ‘If only nothing goes wrong! …’ she threw herself on to my bed. ‘Why don’t you put the brocade ribbon in your hair? It suits you,’ she said.

  ‘Why?’ I said, searching in my drawer among ribbons and combs. ‘Why should I? There won’t be anybody there of any interest to me.’

  Joseph heard that this future Minister of War is supposed to have said Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign was nothing but midsummer madness and the Government should never have allowed it,’ said Julie.

  In a fit of bad temper I decided not to put anything at all in my hair but simply to brush my curls upwards and try to keep them up with two combs. I grumbled at Julie as I was doing my hair: ‘These political dinners bore me to tears.’

  Josephine at first didn’t want to come,’ said Julie. ‘Joseph had to explain to her how important it would be for Napoleon to be on good terms with this rising man. She’s bought a country house, Malmaison, and she was going out there with some friends for a picnic.’

  ‘And she’s right, too, in this beautiful weather,’ I said, looking through the open window into the pale blue evening, which was full of the scent of lime trees. I almost hated the unknown guest of honour who kept me in the house. At that moment we heard the sound of a carriage driving up to the door, and Julie rushed out of the room with a last ‘If only nothing goes wrong!’

  I didn’t feel like going down and welcoming visitors. Not until I heard a babel of voices and got the feeling that they had all arrived and Julie was waiting for me did I overcome my reluctanc
e. When I had reached the door to the dining-room and put my hand on the door-handle it occurred to me that I could have gone to bed and said that I had a headache. But it was too late then. The next moment I would have given anything for it not to have been too late and if I had really gone to bed with a headache.

  A man was standing with his back to the door. But I recognised that back at once, the back of a giant of a man in dark blue uniform with big gold epaulettes and a broad sash in the colours of the Republic. Joseph, Julie, Josephine, Lucien and his wife were standing around him in a semi-circle holding liqueur glasses in their hands.

  I couldn’t help standing by the door like one paralysed and staring in confusion at the broad-shouldered back. But the family circle found my conduct rather strange. Joseph looked at me over the shoulders of his guest, the eyes of the others followed Joseph’s, and at last the giant himself noticed that something strange was going on behind his back, interrupted himself and turned round.

  His eyes grew wide in amazement. My heart beat so wildly that I could hardly breathe.

  ‘Désirée, come on, we’re waiting for you,’ said Julie.

  At the same time Joseph came to me, took my arm and said: ‘This, General Bernadotte, is my wife’s little sister: Mademoiselle Désirée Clary.’

  I never looked at him. Like someone in a daze I kept my eyes fixed on one of his gold buttons, felt vaguely that he was politely kissing my hand and heard from a long way away Joseph’s voice saying:

  ‘We were interrupted, General. What was it you were going to say?’

  ‘I – I’m afraid I really don’t remember what it was.’

  I would have known his voice among a thousand others! It was the voice from the bridge across the Seine in the rain, the voice out of the dark corner in the cab, the voice at the door of the house in the Rue du Bac.

  ‘Sit down, please,’ said Julie.

  But General Bernadotte did not move.

  ‘Sit down, please,’ Julie repeated and went up to Bernadotte. At that he offered her his arm. Joseph, Josephine and all the rest of us sat down with them.

  The ‘small family dinner’ given for reasons of political expedience took a course very different from the one Joseph had mapped out for it.

  As arranged, General Bernadotte was sitting between the hostess and Josephine, and Lucien had taken Joseph’s place beside Julie so that Joseph could sit exactly opposite General Bernadotte and direct the conversation. But the General seemed a little absent-minded. Mechanically he began to occupy himself with the hors d’oeuvre, and Joseph had to raise his glass twice to him, before he realised it and responded. I could tell by his face that he was thinking hard, that he was trying to remember what he had been told that day in Madame Tallien’s house: about Napoleon and his fianceé in Marseilles, a young girl with a big dowry who was Joseph Bonaparte’s sister-in-law, and about Napoleon’s desertion of fiancée and dowry … So immersed was he that Joseph had to speak to him three times before the guest realised that we all wanted to drink to him. Hastily he raised his glass.

  He remembered his duties to the lady by his side and turned to her abruptly: ‘How long has your sister been living in Paris?’

  The question came so unexpectedly that Julie at first was taken aback and did not quite understand what he was driving at.

  ‘You are both from Marseilles, aren’t you?’ he asked again. ‘What I mean is, has your sister been living in Paris for a long time now?’

  By now Julie had collected her wits. ‘No,’ she answered, ‘only for a few months. It’s her first stay in Paris. And she likes it here very much, don’t you, Désirée?’

  ‘Paris is a very beautiful town,’ I said awkwardly, like a schoolgirl.

  ‘Yes, as long as it doesn’t rain,’ he said, regarding me intently.

  ‘Oh yes, even when it rains,’ put in Christine, the inn-keeper’s daughter from St Maximin, eagerly, ‘I think Paris is a fairyland town.’

  ‘You are quite right, Madame. Fairy tales happen even when it rains,’ Bernadotte said solemnly.

  Joseph began to fidget. After all, he had not lured the future Minister of War into his house with all the powers of persuasion he could muster simply to discuss the weather and its influence on fairy tales. He took the initiative and said with an important air, ‘I had a letter from my brother Napoleon yesterday.’

  But Bernadotte didn’t seem to be interested at all.

  Joseph continued, ‘He writes that the journey is going according to plan and that the British fleet under Nelson hasn’t even let itself be seen yet.’

  ‘That’s probably due more to your brother’s good luck than to his good management,’ Bernadotte said good-temperedly, and raised his glass. ‘To General Bonaparte’s health! I am very much in his debt!’

  Joseph didn’t know whether to be pleased or offended by this.

  Bernadotte’s whole conduct left no doubt that he felt himself to be the equal of Napoleon in rank. It was true, of course, that Napoleon had been Commander-in-Chief in Italy, but meanwhile Bernadotte had been an Ambassador and he knew as well as the rest of us that he was meant to be Minister of War.

  Things began to happen as the cockerels were served, and Josephine of all women was the prime mover of it all. For some time I had felt her watching General Bernadotte and myself. I don’t believe that there is anybody else in the world who can sense the tensions and the invisible forces working between a man and a woman to such an extent as Josephine. Up till now she had been quiet. When Julie talked about this being my first stay in Paris her thin eyebrows went up and she regarded Bernadotte with great interest. It was certainly possible that she remembered Bernadotte as having been present that afternoon at Madame Tallien’s house …

  At last she found the opening she had wanted to replace Joseph’s conversational topics, which ran on political and military lines, by something more to her liking. Inclining her head with its babyish curls, she winked at Bernadotte and asked:

  ‘It can’t have been very easy for you as Ambassador in Vienna, can it? I mean because of your being a bachelor. Haven’t you often missed the presence of an Ambassadress in the Embassy?’

  Firmly, Bernadotte put down his knife and fork. ‘Indeed I have, indeed! I really can’t tell you, my dear Josephine – I may call you Josephine, may I not, as in those days in your friend Madame Tallien’s house? Well, I really can’t tell you how sorry I was not to be married. But,’ and now he turned to the whole assembled company, ‘but I ask you, ladies and gentlemen, what am I to do?’

  Nobody knew whether he was joking or in earnest. There was an embarrassed silence round the table till at last Julie forced herself to remark with awkward politeness, ‘You haven’t found the right one yet, General.’

  ‘But yes, Madame, I have! Only she disappeared again, and now—’ He shrugged his shoulders as if he were in a kind of humorous dilemma and looked at me laughingly.

  ‘And now you simply go and look for her and propose to her,’ Christine exclaimed. She did not find the conversation at all unusual but was quite at home in it. In her father’s ale-house in St Maximin the young fellows of the village used to talk to her about very much the same kind of difficulty.

  Bernadotte grew serious. ‘You are right, Madame,’ he said. ‘I shall propose to her.’

  With that he got up, pushed his chair back and turned to Joseph: ‘Monsieur Joseph Bonaparte, I have the honour to ask you for the hand of your sister-in-law Mademoiselle Désirée Clary.’ He sat down again without taking his eyes off Joseph.

  There was a deathly silence. A clock could be heard ticking, and perhaps, I thought, my heartbeat too echoed in everybody’s ear. In desperation I stared down at the white tablecloth.

  At last Joseph spoke. ‘I don’t quite understand, General Bernadotte. Do you really mean that?’

  ‘I do.’

  Again the deathly silence fell.

  ‘I – I think you ought to give Désirée time to think over your proposal.’

&nb
sp; ‘I have given her time, Monsieur Bonaparte.’

  ‘But you’ve only just met her,’ Julie said, trembling with excitement.

  I looked up. ‘I should very much like to marry you, General Bernadotte.’

  Was it I who said that? A chair fell over with a great clatter, curious and stupefied faces stared at me intolerably, I don’t know how I escaped from the dining-room. I only know that I found myself sitting on the bed in my room, crying, crying.

  After a while Julie came in and pressed me to her and tried to calm me down. ‘You needn’t marry him, darling. Don’t cry, don’t cry.’

  ‘But I must cry,’ I sobbed, ‘I must. I can’t help it, but I’m so happy, so happy that I simply have to cry.’

  Before I went down again – they were all in the drawing-room now – I washed my face in cold water and powdered it. But Bernadotte said at once, ‘You’ve been crying again, Mademoiselle Désirée.’

  He was sitting next to Josephine on a sofa. But Josephine got up and said, ‘It’s Désirée’s place next to Jean-Baptiste now.’

  I sat down next to him, and then everybody talked at once to overcome their embarrassment. There was some champagne left over from dinner, and as the dessert had been forgotten in the agitation over the course of events we ate it now. The strawberries and Madeira sauce helped me over the first frightful moments.

  Bernadotte was not in the least embarrassed but radiated good temper all round. After we had eaten the dessert he turned to Julie and asked politely, ‘Do you mind, Madame, if I take your sister for a drive?’

  Julie nodded understandingly: ‘Of course not, my dear General! When is it to be? To-morrow afternoon?’

  ‘No, I rather thought, now.’

  ‘But it’s dark now!’ Julie objected in dismay. No, it wasn’t done for a young girl to go for a drive with a gentleman in the dark.

  I got up and said with determination to Julie, ‘It’ll only be a short drive. We’ll be back soon.’ Then I left the room so quickly that Bernadotte didn’t even find time to say good-bye properly to everybody present.