Desiree

by Annemarie Selinko

  I collected the roses as Jean-Baptiste held up the blanket. The bed was full of them, there seemed to be no end to roses and thorns.

  ‘It’s probably Fernand’s doing,’ I murmured. ‘He wanted to give us a surprise.’

  But Jean-Baptiste would have none of that: ‘Of course it wasn’t Fernand, of course it was Marie! Roses, I ask you, roses in a front-line soldier’s bed!’

  I put the roses on the bedside table, from which they spread their heavy scent. Suddenly I realised that Jean-Baptiste was looking at me and that I had nothing on but a nightdress. Quickly I sat down on the bed and said, ‘I am cold. Let me have the blanket back.’ Immediately he let it drop on me.

  It was unbearably hot under the blanket. Yet I covered myself up to the ears and kept my eyes shut, and so I didn’t notice that he had put out the candle.

  Next morning it came out that Marie and Fernand for the first time had agreed on something. They had agreed to adorn our bridal bed with roses and they had, both of them, forgotten about the thorns.

  Jean-Baptiste had taken two months’ leave to spend the first weeks of our married life with me. But from the moment that the news of the annihilation of our fleet at Aboukir reached Paris he had to go to the Luxembourg Palace almost every morning to attend, with the Minister of War, the council meetings of the Directors.

  He had hired a stable near the house and put two horses in it. Whenever I thought back to my honeymoon weeks I saw myself in the late afternoon standing by the garden gate and waiting for Jean-Baptiste. And as soon as a distant clip-clop of hooves became audible my heart would start beating madly and I would say to myself for the thousandth time that within a second or two Jean-Baptiste would round the corner on one of the horses, that he was my husband really and truly and for ever and that I wasn’t dreaming, wasn’t dreaming at all … Ten minutes later we would sit under the chestnut tree and drink coffee, and Jean-Baptiste would tell me all the things that would be in the Moniteur next morning and also all the things that must not become known on any account. And all the time I would blink contentedly into the setting sun and play with the chestnuts lying about in the grass.

  The defeat at Aboukir electrified our enemies. Russia was getting ready for war again, and the Austrians, who only a short time ago had apologised to our Government for the insult to our flag, yes, the Austrians too were once more on the march and nearing our frontiers from Switzerland and from Austria. The Italian States under French sovereignty which Napoleon had so proudly founded received the Austrians with open arms, and everywhere our armies were in panic-stricken flight.

  On one of these afternoons Jean-Baptiste was particularly late in returning. As he jumped off his horse he told me, ‘They’ve offered me the Supreme Command in Italy. I am to stop the rot and at least attempt to hold Lombardy.’ We drank our coffee, as evening was falling. After that he fetched a candle and many sheets of paper into the garden and started writing.

  ‘Are you going to accept the command?’ I asked once, feeling afraid, much afraid of I don’t know what.

  He looked up. ‘I beg your pardon? Oh, I see. Yes, I’ll accept if they accept my conditions. I am just drafting them.’ And on went his pen over sheet after sheet.

  Afterwards he went into the house, and there he continued writing. I put his supper on his writing desk, but he didn’t notice it and went on writing.

  A few days later I heard by chance from Joseph that Jean-Baptiste had handed in to Director Barras an excellent memorandum concerning the Italian front. In it he had stated exactly the number of troops he needed to hold the front and to garrison the rear areas properly.

  But the Directors could not agree to his conditions. More men were conscripted, but there were no weapons or uniforms to equip them. Under the circumstances Jean-Baptiste refused the responsibility for the Italian front. So Schérer, the Minister of War, took over the command himself.

  One day two weeks later Jean-Baptiste appeared at home suddenly about lunch time. I was just helping Marie to bottle plums when I saw him, and I ran into the garden to meet him.

  ‘Don’t kiss me,’ I warned him, ‘I smell of kitchen, we’re bottling plums, so many that you won’t get anything but plums for the whole of the winter.’

  ‘But I shan’t be here to eat your plums,’ he said, and went into the house. ‘Fernand,’ he shouted, ‘Fernand, get the field uniform ready, pack the saddle bags. We leave at seven to-morrow morning. At nine o’clock you’ll take my luggage—’

  I didn’t hear the rest, he had disappeared into the house, and I was left by the garden gate.

  The whole of the afternoon we spent in the garden. The sun had lost its warmth. Withered leaves covered the lawn. Yes, it had turned into autumn overnight. I had my hands folded in my lap and listened to his words and the sound of his voice. Sometimes he spoke to me as to a grown-up person, and then again softly and tenderly as if I were a child.

  ‘You’ve always known, haven’t you, that I would have to go to the front again. You’ve married a soldier, after all, and you are a sensible woman, you must calm yourself and be brave—’

  ‘I don’t want to be brave,’ I said obstinately.

  ‘Listen, Jourdan has taken over the command of three armies, the Army of the Danube, the so-called Swiss Army and the Observation Army. Masséna is going to try with the Swiss Army to hold back the enemy at the Swiss border. I am in command of the Observation Army and I am moving up to the Rhine, which I am going to cross at two points, near the Fort Louis du Rhin and between Speyer and Mayence. I demanded thirty thousand men for the conquest and occupation of the Rhineland and they’ve been promised. But the Government won’t be able to keep its promise. Désirée, I’m going to cross the Rhine with a make-believe Army, I shall have to beat the enemy with a make-believe Army – are you listening, my little one?’

  ‘There’s nothing you cannot do, Jean-Baptiste,’ I said, and I was almost in tears.

  He sighed. ‘The Government unfortunately seems to be of the same opinion as you and will let me cross the Rhine with a bunch of miserably equipped raw recruits.’

  ‘“We Generals saved the Republic and we Generals keep it alive,”’ I murmured, ‘Napoleon once said to me.’

  ‘Naturally! That’s what the Republic pays its Generals for. There’s nothing peculiar in that.’

  ‘The man from whom I bought the plums this morning abused the Government and the Army for all he was worth. He said, “As long as we had General Bonaparte in Italy we won all the battles and the Austrians begged for peace. As soon as he’s away to carry our glory overseas everything is upside down.” Strange, the impression Napoleon’s campaign has made on simple people.’

  ‘And that Napoleon’s defeat at Aboukir has been the signal for a sudden attack of our enemies seems to have escaped your greengrocer. And that Napoleon won battles in Italy but never fortified the conquered territories sufficiently seems to have escaped him too. Now we shall have to hold the frontier with ridiculously small Army contingents whilst colleague Bonaparte is sunning himself with his excellently equipped Army on the banks of the Nile and everybody thinks him the strong man!’

  ‘“A King’s crown lies in the gutter, and all one need do is to pick it up,”’ I murmured.

  ‘Who said that?’ Jean-Baptiste almost shouted the question.

  ‘Napoleon.’

  ‘To you?’

  ‘No, to himself. He was looking into a mirror at the time. I was only standing next to him by chance.’

  After that we were silent for a long time. Darkness fell, and I could no longer see his face.

  The silence was broken by Marie’s furious yelling from the kitchen. ‘I won’t have pistols cleaned on my kitchen table. Take them away, at once!’

  We heard Fernand answer in a soothing voice, ‘Do let me clean them here. I shall put the bullets in outside.’

  ‘Take them away, I say,’ Marie kept on yelling.

  ‘Do you use your pistols in battle?’ I asked Jean-Bapti
ste.

  ‘Very rarely, since I’ve become a General,’ he answered out of the dark.

  It was a long, long night. For many hours I lay alone in our bed and counted the chimes of the little church of Sceaux, knowing that downstairs in the study Jean-Baptiste was bending over maps and marking them with thin lines and crosses and circles. At last I must have fallen asleep, for suddenly I woke up terrified, feeling that something dreadful had happened. Jean-Baptiste was asleep by my side. My startled movement woke him up.

  ‘What is it?’ he murmured.

  ‘I had a dreadful dream,’ I whispered. ‘I dreamt that you were riding away – riding to a war.’

  ‘I am riding to a war to-morrow,’ he answered, with the front-line soldier’s ability to be wide awake at once as soon as he is woken up. ‘By the way,’ he continued, ‘I want to speak to you about something. Tell me, Désirée, what do you do during the day?’

  ‘Do? What do I do? How do you mean? Yesterday I helped Marie with the plums. And the day before yesterday I went with Julie to her dressmaker, Madame Berthier, the one who fled to England with the aristocrats and has come back now. And last week—’

  ‘Yes, but what do you do, Désirée?’

  ‘Nothing, really,’ I said in confusion.

  He put his arm under my head and pressed me to his shoulder. ‘Désirée, I shouldn’t like you to have too much time on your hands when I’m away, and so I thought that you should take lessons.’

  ‘Lessons? I haven’t had lessons of any kind since I was ten.’

  ‘That’s why,’ he answered.

  ‘I went to school when I was six, together with Julie. It was a school kept by nuns in a convent and all convents were dissolved when I was ten. Then Mama wanted to teach me and Julie herself, but it never really came to anything. How long did you go to school, Jean-Baptiste?’

  ‘From my eleventh to my thirteenth year. Then they threw me out.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘One of our teachers was unfair to Fernand.’

  ‘And so you told him what you thought of him?’

  ‘No, I hit him.’

  ‘I’m sure that was the only thing to do,’ I said, and snuggled as close up to him as possible. ‘I thought you’d gone to school for years and years because you are so clever. And the many books you are always reading …’

  ‘At first,’ he said, ‘I simply tried to make up for lost time. Then I learnt what they teach you in officers’ training schools. But now I have to get to know a lot of other things as well. For instance, if you have to administer occupied territories, you have to have some idea of commerce, of law, of – but anyway, they aren’t the kind of things that you need to know, little girl. I thought you should take lessons in music and deportment.’

  ‘In deportment? D’you mean dancing? But I can dance. I’ve danced at home in Marseilles every year on Bastille Day in the Town Hall square.’

  ‘No, I didn’t mean dancing. Young girls used to learn quite a few other things besides dancing in their boarding-schools. How to bow, for example, or how to invite your guests with a motion of your hand to move from one room into another—’

  ‘Jean-Baptiste,’ I interrupted him, ‘we’ve only got the dining-room! If ever one of your visitors should want to go from the dining-room to your study what need is there for me to make elaborate gestures with my hand?’

  ‘If I am made Military Governor at some place or other then you’ll be the first lady of the district and you’ll have to receive innumerable dignitaries in your salons.’

  ‘Salons!’ I was full of indignation. ‘Jean-Baptiste, are you talking again about castles and mansions?’ And I bit him in the shoulder.

  ‘Ow, stop!’ he shouted, and I let go.

  ‘You can’t imagine,’ he said, ‘how, at that time in Vienna, all the Viennese aristocrats and the foreign diplomats waited for the moment when the French Ambassador would compromise his Republic. I am sure they prayed to high heaven that I would eat fish with the wrong knife. We owe it to the Republic, Désirée, to conduct ourselves impeccably.’ After a while he added, ‘It would be lovely if you could play the piano, Désirée.’

  ‘I don’t think it would be lovely.’

  ‘But you are musical!’

  ‘I don’t know about that. I like music very much, yes. Julie plays the piano, but it sounds awful. It’s a crime to play the piano badly.’

  ‘I should like you to take piano and also a few singing lessons,’ he said with determination. ‘I told you about my friend Rodolphe Kreutzer, the violin virtuoso, didn’t I? He went with me to Vienna, and he brought a Viennese composer to me in the Embassy. Wait a moment, what was his name? Oh yes, Beethoven. Monsieur Beethoven and Kreutzer played to me many an evening, and I’ve regretted it ever since that, as a child, I was not taught to play an instrument—’ he broke into laughter: ‘But my mother was glad if she could find the money to buy a new Sunday suit for me.’ He became serious again, unfortunately. ‘I do want you to take music lessons. I asked Kreutzer yesterday to give me the address of a music teacher. You’ll find it in the drawer of my writing desk. Start on them and write to me regularly how you’re getting on.’

  A cold hand seemed to claw at my heart. Write to me regularly, he had said, write, write, write. Nothing left but writing …

  A leaden grey morning light came in through the curtains. I stared at them, I could recognise their colour and pattern clearly. But Jean-Baptiste had fallen asleep again.

  Someone hammered at the door. ‘Half-past six, mon Général!’ That was Fernand’s voice.

  Half an hour later we were having breakfast, and for the first time I saw Jean-Baptiste in his field uniform. Neither ribbons nor medals nor sashes relieved its severe dark blue. Hardly, however, had I taken a sip of my coffee when the dreadful business of leave-taking began. Horses whinnied, people knocked at the house door, unfamiliar voices spoke and spurs clanked. Fernand opened the door: ‘The gentlemen have arrived, sir!’

  ‘Show them in,’ said Jean-Baptiste, and the next moment the room was full of officers I had never seen before. Jean-Baptiste introduced them casually as ‘The gentlemen of my staff’, told them that I was delighted to meet them, and then jumped to his feet: ‘Ready,’ he said, ‘let’s go!’

  He turned to me: ‘Good-bye, my little girl. Write often. The War Office will send your letters on to me by special courier. Good-bye, Marie! Look after your mistress!’

  With that he went, and all the staff officers disappeared with him. I wanted to kiss him once more, I thought. But the room filled with the grey morning light all at once, started to swirl round me, the yellow flames of the candles on the table flickered strangely, and then all went black.

  When I came to I was lying on my bed. A repulsive smell of vinegar surrounded me, and Marie’s face hung close to mine.

  ‘You’ve fainted, Eugenie,’ said Marie.

  I pushed the compress with its nasty smell of vinegar away from my head. ‘I wanted to kiss him just once more, Marie, just to say good-bye, you know.’

  Sceaux near Paris, New Year’s Eve between the years VI and VII. (The last year of the eighteenth century is just beginning)

  New Year bells have torn me out of my terrible dream, the bells of Sceaux village church and the distant ones from Notre-Dame and the other Paris churches. In my dream I was sitting in the little summer-house in Marseilles and talking to a man who looked exactly like Jean-Baptiste, but I knew he was our son and not Jean-Baptiste. ‘You’ve missed your deportment lesson, Mama, and your dancing lessons with Monsieur Montel,’ my son said in the voice of Jean-Baptiste. I wanted to explain that I had been far too tired for that. Just then the horrible thing happened: my son shrank, he got smaller and smaller and finally was only just a dwarf, not even knee-high. The dwarf, my son, clung to my knee and whispered, ‘Cannon fodder, Mama, I am nothing but cannon fodder and I am ordered to go to the Rhine. I myself rarely use pistols for shooting, but the others do – bang bang!’ He was shaking wi
th laughter all the time. A mad fear seized me, I wanted to grab the dwarf to protect him. But he kept slipping from my grasp and under the white garden table. I bent down, but I was so tired, oh so tired and sad. And suddenly Joseph was standing by my side and held out his glass to me: ‘Long live the Bernadotte dynasty!’ and he laughed bad-temperedly. I caught his eyes, and they were the scintillating ones of Napoleon. At that point the bells struck up and I awoke.

  Now I am sitting in Jean-Baptiste’s study and have only just managed to find an inch of room among the tomes and maps for my diary. From the streets I can hear merry voices, laughter and tipsy singing. Why is everybody in such good humour when a new year begins? I myself am so unspeakably sad, firstly because Jean-Baptiste and I have quarrelled by letter, and secondly because I am so afraid of this new year.

  Well then, let me tell you. The day after Jean-Baptiste’s departure I obediently went to the music teacher whom this Rodolphe Kreutzer had recommended. He is a small, thin man who lives in a very untidy room in the Quartier Latin and has draped very dusty laurel wreaths all over his walls. The first thing this little man, whose breath smells abominably, told me was that it was only because of his gouty fingers that he was forced to give lessons. Otherwise he would devote himself entirely to his concerts. Could I pay for twelve lessons in advance? I paid, and then I had to sit down in front of a piano and learn the names of the different notes and which key belongs to which note. Going home after the first lesson I felt dizzy in the carriage and was afraid I might faint again. But I got home, and since then I have been going to the Quartier Latin twice a week. Also I hired a piano to practise at home. Jean-Baptiste wanted me to buy the instrument, but I thought it a pity to spend all that money.

  Every day I read in the Moniteur that Jean-Baptiste is marching triumphantly through Germany. Yet although he writes almost every day he never mentions the war. On the other hand he never forgets to ask how I am getting on with my lessons.

  I am a very bad correspondent, and therefore my letters are always short and I can’t put in what I really want to tell him so badly, that without him I am very unhappy and that I am longing for him. He now writes like an old uncle! He stresses the importance of continuing my ‘studies’, and when he realised that I didn’t even want to start them he wrote: ‘Although I very much want to see you again I set great store by the completion of your education. Music and dancing are essential things, and I do recommend some lessons with Monsieur Montel. However, I notice that I am giving you too much advice and I finish for to-day by kissing your lips. Your J. – Bernadotte who loves you very much.’