The Thief of Time

by John Boyne

  She blinked and considered the question for only a moment. ‘Why, certainly I do,’ she said. ‘Don’t you?’ I shrugged my shoulders, unsure whether I did or not, and she took advantage of the moment to explain herself further. ‘Here, in this city,’ she said, pausing dramatically between each clause, ‘at this time, how could I not?’

  ‘Meaning ...?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, look around you, Matthieu. Look at the streets today. Look at Paris. Don’t you think that those things which have gone around are, in a manner of speaking, coming around again?’ Again, my silence betrayed my confusion and she sat forward, turning away from Tom and looking me directly in the eyes. ‘The deaths,’ she explained. ‘The guillotine. The aristocrats. My God, the head of the king himself has fallen into the basket. There is some justice beginning in France, Matthieu. You cannot be oblivious to it.’

  ‘We haven’t yet seen any beheadings,’ said Tom. ‘My uncle feels it is barbaric and won’t allow us to go.’

  ‘Do you feel that, Monsieur Zéla?’ she asked, looking at me in surprise and reverting to my formal name as if to dissociate herself from me. ‘Do you feel it is barbaric?’

  ‘The method itself is quick and clean,’ I said. ‘But do you really need the method in the first place? Do these people need to die?’

  ‘Of course they do,’ said Tom, picking up on Therese’s attitudes and pandering to them. ‘Filthy aristos.’ I shot him a withering glance and Therese had the manners to ignore him and continued to look at me.

  ‘They have led bountiful lives,’ she explained. ‘And they have exploited us. All of us. You are a Frenchman, are you not? You must see what their behaviour has been responsible for.’ I nodded. ‘Their time has come,’ she said simply.

  ‘Have you seen the guillotine in action yourself?’ asked Tom, his bloodlust returning now as she talked of death. I could feel the growing tension between the pair as she spoke and knew that if they were not a couple already it would not be long before they were.

  ‘I have seen many,’ she said with pride. T saw the king himself die and he was a coward at the end of course. As are they all.’ Tom raised his eyebrows as his tongue licked quickly across his lips and he encouraged her to tell us of that day.

  ‘He was found guilty of treason by the National Committee,’ began Therese, as if to justify what was to follow. ‘It seemed like half the city wanted to be at the Place de la Concorde for the fateful moment. I arrived early, of course, but stood near the sides. I wanted to see him die, Monsieur Zéla, but I do not like the baying of the crowds. But there were thousands there and it was difficult to get a good view. Eventually, the tumbrel entered the square.’

  Tom raised an eyebrow and looked at her, unfamiliar with the word.

  ‘The wooden cart,’ she explained. ‘It is the feeling of the citizens that the simplicity of the cart makes it clear that the traitors are to die like citizens of France, and not in the manner of rich layabouts. I remember them distinctly: a young woman, with long, dirty hair. She didn’t know what was happening and didn’t seem to care; perhaps she was already dead inside. Behind her, a teenage boy who was crying in convulsions, afraid to look up to see the instrument of his demise even as the middle aged man behind him screamed and screamed and screamed in fear, pointing towards the guillotine with the most abject horror as his jailers held him tightly to prevent him from jumping out into the crowd and making his escape, although he probably would have been torn limb from limb if we had thought we were going to lose the biggest traitor of them all. That’s when I saw him, dressed in dark trousers and a white shirt open at the neck. The king of France, the convicted traitor, Louis XVI.

  I looked at Tom, who had eyes only for Therese, and the look on his face, the absolute thrill he was getting from her storytelling, the almost erotic excitement he was feeling, bothered me. And yet I must admit that it was difficult not to want her to continue, for there was a certain addictiveness to the drama of death which held us both. We weren’t to be disappointed as she continued.

  ‘My eyes were focused upon his face, watching for any reaction that might come from him. He was pale, whiter than the shirt that he wore, and he looked exhausted, as if he had spent his entire life battling to prevent this moment from taking place and now that it was upon him he simply had no more energy left to fight it. As the tumbrel stopped before the steps, the six covered men who guarded the great machine stepped forward and took the young woman roughly by the shoulders, pulling her dress sharply so that it ripped at the top, exposing a pale, full breast to the crowd, who screamed in delight at her nakedness. These men ... they are great exhibitionists, performers of a kind. The largest of them nestled his head into the breast for a few moments before turning back to face us with a grin. For her part, she barely moved as she was led to the scaffold, her hair shorn quickly and her head placed within. The wooden semi-circle which held her in place was dropped and at that moment she suddenly came to life, her hands reaching to the sides to try to lift herself up, not realising that she was already caged in. Within a moment it was over, the blade whistling downwards and slicing her head off in a perfect motion but her body gave a quick spastic movement before collapsing backwards on to the platform, where it was quickly taken away.’

  ‘Therese!’ gasped Tom, and there seemed to be no sentence to follow it; he merely wanted to cry out her name, as if engaged within a moment of passion.

  ‘One of the jailers reached forward then and showed the head to the crowd. We screamed, of course. The tricoteuses at the front kept knitting away contentedly. We were waiting for the main attraction,’ she said with a smile. ‘Before that, however, the teenage boy was carried to his death. Before being placed with his head on the block, he stood weakly before the crowd, looking out at us, appealing for help, his tear-stained face unable to cry any more. I could tell that, unlike his predecessor, he knew exactly what was going on and it terrified him. He couldn’t have been aged more than about fifteen and I realised that his thin trousers were growing more and more stained as he pissed on himself one last time, the thin material sticking to his leg with a coward’s indignity. He struggled as he was placed inside the guillotine but he was too weak for these men and, within a minute, his life had ended too.’

  ‘And what was he guilty of?’ I asked in disgust. ‘This boy. Who had he betrayed?’

  Thérèse stared at me and her lips formed a thin smile. She ignored the question. The climax was approaching. Despite myself, I wanted her to continue. ‘For once,’ she said, ‘the crowd went quiet as the king marched up the steps. He looked out, his face a mixture of stoicism and abject fear. He opened his mouth to speak but no words came and so he was led quickly and nervously to the guillotine. I admit that the atmosphere was that of horror, as if no one was exactly sure what might happen the moment his head was severed, whether the very world itself might come to an end. There seemed to be some confusion on the scaffold as none of the men wanted to be the one who actually put the king’s head on the block but eventually one of them stepped forward and the wood was again lowered for the third time. Struggling to look at us, I watched as his head lifted slightly and his eyes caught the sunlight. Then he spoke for the last time.

  ‘ “I die innocent, and I forgive my enemies,” he shouted, no doubt hoping these platitudes could grant him an escape. “I wish that my blood -”’

  ‘The blade fell, the head fell into the basket, the body squirmed, the crowd bayed, the screaming was all around me. He was dead.’

  A silence fell among us. I could see Tom’s face in the firelight glowing with perspiration and even Therese shook slightly as she sat back in her chair and took a drink from her glass. I looked from one to the other, wondering whether there was any suitable response to this story. I could find only one thing to say.

  ‘And you, Therese,’ I asked. ‘How did that make you feel? Seeing those people die. An innocent woman, a young boy, a king. How did you feel at that moment?’

  The wine glass
balanced against her lips and its reflected rouge seemed appropriate to the conversation. In a quiet, deep voice she looked away and answered me with a single word.

  ‘Avenged.’

  We stayed in Paris longer than I had anticipated. Therese’s influence on Tom had become so strong that her own revolutionary ideals were almost eclipsed by the sudden ardour of his own. Although I appreciated the fact that he was not quite the wastrel he had been some months earlier, I was nervous about the direction in which his passions were being focused. I travelled back and forth from the country, preparing to sever ties with my nephew if necessary and return home but finding myself unable to do so when he relied upon my charity so much. I spent a little time in the south of the country – where the atmosphere was almost as highly charged as it was in the capital -before travelling to the Alps for a few weeks, where peace reigned and the sea of white snow provided a welcome relief from the familiar red, white and blue of the city. By the time I returned to Paris in late 1793, Tom was a fully signed up revolutionary.

  In a short period of time, he had managed to infiltrate the ranks of the Jacobin powers and was working as a secretary with Robespierre, the chief antagonist of the Terror. His relationship with Therese had blossomed and they had left the boarding house together. Now they shared an apartment near the rue de Rivoli and it was there that I met them on a dark Friday night shortly before Christmas.

  Physically, he had changed somewhat since I had last seen him. In six months, it seemed as if he had aged six years; he had cut his hair short, which accentuated the line of his cheekbones and made his face appear more masculine and serious. His body had grown strong and muscular through the physical workouts he put himself through on a daily basis. What in the past had been the traditionally almost feminine beauty of his line had been sculpted into a figure of true revolutionary power and one would not have wanted to cross him easily. Therese had changed too. Having converted her lover to her beliefs, she seemed content to turn away from them a little and allow him to take control of their destinies. She was extremely tactile with him, taking every opportunity to stroke his cheek or rub his leg, her busy hands going almost unnoticed by him, it seemed, as he talked to me.

  ‘What amazes me’, I told him, relaxing after dinner by the fireplace, ‘is how you had never even been to France this time last year, and now you fight continuously for its survival. This new-found passion for an unknown country. Strikes me as a little odd.’

  ‘It must have always been in my blood,’ he told me with a smile -more talk of that word. ‘I am partly French after all. Maybe it was just waiting to get out, citizen.’

  ‘It’s possible, I suppose,’ I acknowledged. ‘You are half French and half English, as you say. A troublesome combination. You’ll find you’re always at war with yourself. Your artistic and mundane sides will tear you in two perhaps.’

  ‘I have only one passion now,’ he said, ignoring my statement, which I meant only in jest. ‘And that is to see the French Republic grow stronger and stronger until it is among the most powerful in the world.’

  ‘And the Terror achieves that?’ I asked. ‘Growth through fear?’

  ‘Tom believes in the cause, citizen,’ said Therese quickly, her pronunciation of her lover’s name throaty and warm, ‘like we all do. Those who have died have contributed just as much as those who live on. It is part of nature’s cycle. An entirely natural process.’

  Nonsense, I thought. Absolute nonsense.

  ‘Let me tell you a story,’ said Tom, settling back in his chair as Therese nestled herself in on his knee, one hand slung carelessly about his groin. ‘A few weeks ago if you had come here and asked me who my best friend in the world was, the man I respected the most, I would have told you it was a fellow named Pierre Houblin, who worked with me until recently in the National Assembly. He’d been there longer than I and was of course in a far more senior position. But Pierre was a young man, about my own age, maybe a little older, and somehow we became friends and he took me under his wing, introduced me to some people who could help my advancement. He was one of those who had been pushing for reforms from right back at the time when Louis XVI was still alive and in power. Pierre had worked closely with both Robespierre and Danton and had taken many chances to ensure that the full power of the Revolution would be realised. I looked up to him with the greatest of respect. He was like a brother to me. A wise, older counsel. We would sit for hours on end, the two of us, in the very chairs that we are sitting in now and talk about everything that interested us. About life and love and politics and history and what we were doing in Paris, for Paris, where the future would take us. No greater man, I thought, existed in France, for he opened up my mind to so many possibilities that I cannot even begin to explain them to you.’

  I nodded, unconvinced. Sudden crushes, whatever form they may take, are almost always transitory. Their victims inevitably return to their senses and wonder what they were thinking of in the first place. ‘So?’ I asked him. ‘And where is he now then, this Monsieur Houblin? Why are you telling me this? Citizen,’ I added sarcastically.

  ‘I’m telling you this’, he answered with some irritation, ‘to highlight to you my commitment to this cause. A few weeks ago, Pierre and I were sitting here in this apartment – Therese, you were here too, weren’t you?’ She nodded but said nothing. ‘And we were talking about the Revolution as ever. Always, always the Revolution. It obsesses us. And Pierre pointed out that over the course of the past month, over four hundred people had been guillotined in the city. I was a little surprised by the number, of course, but acknowledged it as being about correct, and then we sat in silence for a few more minutes. I could tell that Pierre was growing agitated and I asked him whether everything was all right, whether I had said something to upset him. Suddenly, he stood up and started pacing around the room in frustration.

  ‘“Don’t you sometimes think”, he asked me, “that things are beginning to grow out of control? That too many people are dying? Too many peasants and not enough aristos for one thing?”

  ‘I was shocked of course that he could feel this way when surely everyone knows that the way to achieve our final goals is to get rid of so many traitors that there will be only true Frenchmen left, equal and free. I protested for some time with Pierre that he was wrong and eventually he let the matter rest, but it concerned me for I worried that he might no longer have the stomach to take part in history in the way that he once had.’

  ‘Perhaps he was simply growing a conscience,’ I suggested, and Tom shook his head.

  ‘That’s not it!’ he shouted. ‘This has nothing to do with conscience! When one is fighting for change, to alter an unfair system that has existed for centuries, one must do everything in one’s power to make sure that right wins through. There is no place within this struggle for half-heartedness.’ He sounded as if he was making a political speech and even Therese had stood up now to allow his gesticulations to gain better freedom.

  ‘But a balance in the Assembly might turn out to be a good thing,’ I said slowly, afraid that he would suddenly leap off his seat and throttle me if I were to disagree with him. ‘To hear both sides of this concept. You might find that Monsieur Houblin has more to contribute now than ever before.’

  Tom laughed bitterly. ‘Hardly,’ he said. ‘A few days later I sent word to Robespierre and told him of our conversation. I said that I believed Pierre was becoming too much of a moderate to be entrusted with any portion of state secrets or important documentation. I simply reported our conversation word for word and allowed Monsieur Robespierre to act as he saw fit.’

  I stared at him and blinked quickly, sure that I knew where this was leading but afraid to see it actually reach there. ‘And he was ... dismissed from his post?’ I asked hopefully.

  ‘He was arrested that afternoon, tried for treason the next day, found guilty by a court of law – a court of law, Uncle Matthieu! And then he was guillotined the following morning. There’s no place for ha
lf-hearts, you see, in a Revolution. It’s all, the full mind, the entire heart’ – he paused for dramatic effect before continuing, slicing his hand through the air quickly, like the very blade itself – ‘or nothing!’

  I sighed and felt myself grow a little ill. I looked towards Therese who was smiling slightly, watching for my own reaction. Her tongue extended slightly and moved around the edges of her lips and I looked back at my nephew and shook my head sadly. I thought they seemed a perfect match.

  ‘You informed on him,’ I said quietly. ‘That is what you’re telling me. You informed on your best friend, the man you claim to have respected the most in the entire world.’

  ‘I committed an act of extreme patriotism,’ he replied. ‘I suffered the death of my best friend, my virtual brother, to help the Republic. What more can I do than that? You should be proud of me, Uncle Matthieu Proud.’

  As I left the apartment that evening, sure that the time was right for me to leave my nephew, Paris, France, Europe entirely, I turned to Tom and asked him one final question. ‘This friend of yours,’ I said, ‘this Pierre. He had a good position within the Assembly, am I right?’

  He shrugged. ‘But of course,’ he said. ‘He was a man of some importance.’

  ‘And when he ... died. After he was guillotined. Who replaced him?’

  There was silence for a moment as Tom stopped smiling and stared through me with something approaching hatred. For a moment I wondered whether my own life might not be in danger, before thinking, no, I am his uncle, he could never betray me, before once again changing my mind and thinking, fool! Of course he could. Therese looked shocked by my question, as she already knew the answer and just wanted to see whether Tom would tell the truth or not.

  ‘Well,’ he said, after what seemed like an eternity, ‘someone has to do the essential jobs of the Republic. Someone whose loyalty is beyond reproach.’

  I nodded slowly and went back out on to the street, wrapping my scarf around my neck tightly as I went, the better to keep my head attached to my body.