Napoleon Symphony

by Anthony Burgess

  “There was no snow then,” M. Laval said. “The battle of Borodino took place in September.”

  “You’re telling us, who was there? The snow starts in Russia very early and the fields was frozen in late August. Wolves howling round the bivouacs in the night, but the job had to be done for the Emperor, and by the little mother of the good God we did it. Right, Jules?”

  “Right, Louis.”

  “And what was it all about?” M. Laval asked. “Forgive my ignorance, but I could never make any sense of the newspaper reports.”

  “Quite right, too. The papers are all a load of shitten lies put out by the Government.” The drinks came. “Look, it was two cognacs we ordered, this gentleman being kind enough to be willing to pay.”

  “Make up your minds, soldiers, run off my feet as you can see.”

  “And how about us, friend, with our feet frozen and bleeding and the toes dropping off in the snows of Borodino? We’ll have these but we’ll have two cognacs as well when you’ve given your lilywhite tootsies a nice little bit of repose, friend. Health.”

  “Health,” M. Laval responded in watered wine. “You were saying?”

  “I was saying don’t believe a word you read, sir. We marched into Russia a million strong to teach the Russes a bit of a lesson. The Emperor wanted to marry the King of Russia’s sister and the King of Russia said: What, my blue-blooded kith and kin marry a Corsican nobody like you? So it had to be revenge, what the Corsicans call the vendetta. So we set fire to Moscow and off home we went, but the treacherous Russ bastards stole all our supplies and killed the cavalry. A great man the Emperor, sir, and we’ll drink to him.” M. Laval joined the others in drinking to him. M. Laval said:

  “And what do you think will happen now?”

  “In what lies ahead?” The nicotined one was content to do all the talking and the hoarse one, perhaps because of hoarseness, content to let him. “In what lies ahead.” He liked the phrase. “What lies ahead is blue and bloody murder. It’s not the Emperor’s fault, it’s these little boys they’re drafting, some of them don’t even have a razor in their kit, the good men being done for in the great Russian battles. The big days being over, sir, and we must take what’s coming, having had our bit of fun. And no horses to pull the gun-limbers. I remember,” he said, “the sad face of the Emperor—Le Tondu we used to call him, to his face sometimes when he was in a good mood, and he’d laugh till he near did peepee in his pantaloons—the sad face of the Emperor, and he spoke to me sadly—he knew my name, knew everybody’s name near. ‘Raybaut,’ he said, that being my name, ‘we’re all getting old now, but by the Lord Jesus Christ and his Blessed Mother we’ve had good times together. Comrades-in-arms, fighting for the glory of France, but the good times can’t last. So I’ll shake hands with you, Raybaut, old comrade, and say God bless you.’” Tears came to his eyes and he wiped a snivel away with the back of his hand. “Loved his men, he did, even while he was sending off hundreds and thousands of them to be castrated by the Cossacks. So there it is, sir, and there’s an old soldier’s story for you. And here come the cognacs, so once again your very good health.”

  M. Laval now did a thing he knew he should not really do, but it was difficult to resist. He removed his wide-brimmed hat and showed his naked Bonaparte face to the veterans. They gazed at him wondering for a space, then the hoarse one said:

  “A very nice and patriotic thing to do, sir. Taking your hat off like that to two old soldiers. Thank you, sir, and any time you’d like us to drink your health in return only too ready to oblige.” Their glasses had become empty, in the manner of the vessels of the lower orders, without their apparently having touched them. M. Laval put his hat back on, threw a few sous on the table, and said:

  “I wish to God I’d really had you at Borodino, scrimshankers and malingering bastards.” He put a swift evil eye on them and went while they were preparing their whines and obscenities. He walked on left right left right. The whores were flaunting, early as it was, and one said: “Time for a short time, my old one?” A blind man led by a child plodded begging, a placard about his neck that said DISABLED AT AUSTERLITZ. He came left right to a café called The Wooden Horse of Troy. There were no tables outside—the customers here felt the mild winter more than those of the Saint Dizier—and, going into darkness and smoke, he saw nesh intellectuals and heard them giggling and bleating. That sort of café then. He ordered water flavored with peppermint essence and sat scowling. Five men at a table with four empty bottles and a full red one that was being glugged out shakily into all glasses went into intellectual screams and chortles at something that a sixth, pale-haired and chinless but otherwise acceptable cannon food, was reading aloud:

  “‘As with all tyrannies, sexual license in high places went hand in hand with the suppression of free speech. When the tyrant met his end during the battle of Paris, occasion was found to ransack his secret drawers and other hiding-places, and a good deal of choice sodomitic fantasy was brought to light, some pictorial, some pseudo-literary. The true pornography, in his evident view, was any kind of writing that spoke the truth. Perverts love the dark, as is well-known—’ “

  “She’s priceless,” someone bleated.

  “Listen—it goes on: ‘The conduct of war was, to him, a highly extravagant mode of self-stimulation. It is conceivable that Austerlitz contrived for him a modest ejaculation, but the massive slaughter and suffering of the Russian campaign must, one hopes, have procured a truly satisfying orgasm—else, what waste.’”

  “What,” M. Laval said, “what,” trying to get the word in through the screams and giggles and I-shall-expires, “What is this about the battle of Paris?” He calmed his breathing, smiled even, a fellow intellectual. “Of Paris?”

  Wet eyes turned to him. The chinless pale-haired said, face broken with laughter: “I don’t think we’ve had the pleasure, sir.” Another, less formal, said: “A little piece of satirical history, set in the future.” M. Laval said: “Mme de Staël?” Oh, most certainly dear Germaine, voice of witty common sense. Where, M. Laval, wondered, were the secret police these days? Why were not the frontiers better watched? Filth like that excreted out of Switzerland. He wondered for a delirious instant if it might be worthwhile to invade in order to capture her and make her, in public naturally, eat her own words, pulped up with the urine of selected members of the Old Guard. He said now, bravely:

  “And what strategical ideas does she have for the defense of Paris?”

  Oh, buy it yourself, sir, read it, banned of course, but there are copies on sale under the counter of the Librairie Clochard. Fools, M. Laval thought. Traitors to their own kind. Inviting a total stranger to call the police in. Intellectuals were always untrustworthy. They would sell their mothers for a witty quip. The intellectuals at the table now, in the stupid manner of intellectuals, turned their backs on M. Laval and began to talk about what he was very interested to know.

  “But, my dear, Schnitzelbank is very good indeed on that particular theory. A civilization has to be raped occasionally for its own good. The forced feeding of new ideas, new modes of sensibility.”

  “I doubt that the Russians would have much to offer. I can foresee gloomy Ivans weeping in our cafes’ crying for muzhiks and samovars, whatever those might be.”

  “Oh, but the ikons, the Byzantine configurations. A new couture—imagine fur and boots on the ladies, ravishing—”

  “Their cuisine is dull—”

  “They have the best caviar in the world. I was given a remarkable recipe the other day for what are called, I think, blinis—”

  “And the Germans?”

  “A lumpish people, but they are starting to break up the lumps and reach friable soil. Have you heard of Jacob Grimm? Court librarian, so I hear, to silly old King Jerome Bonaparte in Westphalia. Tales of the Volk—Fayotte can read German, got a copy out of Berlin. The most incredible bloodthirsty myths—universal soul—exciting—”

  M. Laval left his drink and a couple of so
us and stood up. He had, he thought, perhaps better make a kind of ritual of this hat-doffing. Delayed reactions, eventual nightmares. He doffed his hat, saying:

  “Thank you, gentlemen, for the er brief intellectual stimulation you have kindly given a man much cut-off from the great world. I will most certainly send someone round to the Librairie Clochard to collect all available copies.” They all looked up at him. The pale-haired chinless one gave a giggle like a hiccup and said:

  “You have, sir, but you must have been told this often, the most astonishing resemblance to the Ensanguinated Tyrant.”

  “He means our Senior Citizen,” another said, grinning. “Pray forgive him, sir, he doesn’t really mean to be insulting.”

  M. Laval went out, hearing intellectual laughter. Silly old oaf, out of his depth, out of his waters, this is a literary café. Left right left right. And suppose it did come to a matter of defending a city not worth defending? Well, one thought solely in terms of technique, holding one’s reserve line up there, say, in Montmartre, stretching chains across the streets, fixing useful vantage-points for snipers, learning something from the Spaniards. The worth of the citizens was beside the point. He walked on left right and saw, with some satisfaction, the police at their work. In a sidestreet a ragged fanatic had been mounted on a box, now overturned, the man himself squirming in strong arms, crying out his thwarted peroration: “And so I say, citizens, that this is not what the good Lord intended when he gave men and women the gift of life. Is it to be all war, all specious glory, our sons led off like calves to the butchery, and for what for what?” The small squad of police grinned widely, beating him with truncheons, an old woman who screamed “And what’s he said but the truth, are men to be beaten for telling the truth?” being truncheoned playfully on her old fat arse, the street being roughly cleared of the scant audience. M. Laval stood watching, and a policeman came up to him and said, “You, friend, don’t loiter if you know what’s good for you.” He tickled his elbow with his truncheon, and M. Laval said to himself: No point in telling myself if he only knew if he only knew, since the law is the same for all men. “Sorry, constable,” he muttered and went off, left right left right.

  In a café called pretentiously The Fontainebleau, M. Laval sat amid gilt and glass while men of business, not grown noticeably thin on the Continental System, drank cognac and seltzer water and told scurrilous stories. “So old Nap says to this well-hung grenadier: Look, my old, how would you like to help your country get an heir to the throne and earn a thousand louis into the bargain? She’s up there waiting, you go up and I’ll wait down here. So he waits and waits and after three hours and a bit this grenadier staggers downstairs, shagged, and Nap says: Well, did you do it? Oh yes, Sire, says the grenadier, I did it ten times. Excellent excellent, says Nap. And I could have done it more, says the grenadier, if I hadn’t run out of condoms.” Laughter. “Wait, I’ve not done. So old Nap says: But I made it absolutely clear that it’s an heir to the throne we’re after. The grenadier looks a bit sheepish and says: Well, I know, Sire, but at the last minute I thought I’d better be careful. You never know what you’re going to pick up from these foreign bints.” Roars and coughs and backslaps.

  M. Laval sat over his small black coffee-substitute and trembled. If he got up now and said Dirty swine, you’re speaking of the Empress, that would be the best joke of all. Ah, filthy Paris, ingrate of a city, yawning over glory, deserving all the big stick the Allies could give her, palpitating with longing for her punition. Well then, remove the seat of government to, say, Orleans. But it would be the same there, they would be trembling with joy at the prospect of the end. Flighty, capricious, always easily bored, always ready for a change. By God, he had a mind to bring the Terror back, but they’d like that too, not boring anyway, always somebody to be informed on, the thrilling stuff of prospective anecdote. One of the laughing men in the drinking group saw his glumness and cried, “Cheer up, friend, it may never happen.” Then he became immersed in a serious discussion about techniques of illegal importation. M. Laval left money on the table, got up, took off his hat, was lavishly unrecognized. No need for the disguise, he thought. I am your Emperor, gentlemen. Oh yes, and when are you going to stop this farting about with the Con Sys, no good for trade, you know. And how is your good lady the Austrian bint?

  It was dusk when M. Laval left, and the whores were more numerous. A toothless drunk, gray-stubbled, waving an empty bottle, clawed at M. Laval for money, but M. Laval barked at him as if he were one of his marshals. He came to a café called La Jolie Brunette and found it full of students reading newspapers whose spines were wooden poles, the newspapers stacked on a rack like rifles. There were not many newspapers, and they were all government-controlled. M. Laval felt a sudden spasm of resentment at this—why can’t I read what I want to read—but then he remembered that he was the government, c’etait lui. A couple of students played a game of chess of arthritic slowness. That made M. Laval impatient. He liked games to be swift and full of cheating. A middle-aged man sat alone, cleaning his teeth with immense thoroughness—quill and floss—and he eyed M. Laval with what looked like professional suspicion. A government spy, then; good, the work went on. M. Laval ordered from the pretty brown-haired waitress a glass of wine and a glass of water and a piece of bread and a piece of sausage. Then he saw with shock, sitting at the next table, a man who should not be here anyway, should in fact be dead. A boy, rather, dressed in ragged green, earnest and bony. Rapp. No, Stapps. He sat with sugared water and a book. Stapps, the student who had tried to knife him and had refused to be let off. M. Laval said:

  “Stapps. What the hell are you doing here?”

  “How,” said the boy, peering in myopic surprise, “do you know my.” And then: “Good God, it can’t be.” He started a gesture of standing to attention but M. Laval said:

  “Sit down, sit down, man. My name is Léon Laval, do you get that? Léon Laval. Come over here.” There was one empty chair at M. Laval’s table, and the boy took it, bringing over his water and what M. Laval now saw was a volume of Montaigne’s essays. “You,” M. Laval said, “are supposed to be dead.” The boy stared. “Schünbrunn.” The boy understood. He said:

  “First cousin.” And then: “This, of course, used to be quite common, rulers incognito listening to the vox pop. I approve. Piquant. I have a duty to show no deference. Do you have armed men stamping outside on the pavement? Did that spy over there get instructions to wait in here? Is he armed? He is acting well, look. He is giving you a full ocular load of concentrated suspicion.”

  “I am M. Laval,” M. Laval said. “M. Laval is just a man wandering the cafés. His cousin, eh? Younger, naturally. You have grown up to be almost exactly as he was when he refused to be pardoned and had to be executed. Very regrettable. He wanted to be a martyr. A damned nuisance of a boy.”

  Sausage and bread and wine and water were brought. The girl simpered at Stapps. M. Laval bit hungrily into the garlicky sponge and went ugh. “Horse,” Stapps said. “No, probably donkey. Even cat. The glorious Empire does not eat well these days.” His French was very good, far better than the martyred cousin’s. “Not even the glorious troops of the glorious Empire, so I hear. Ichabod ichabod”

  “You are a student here? What does a German think he can learn in Paris?”

  Stapps shrugged, scratching an armpit, and said: “The French language is a good language for clear thought. German is heavy and so homegrown it smells of stale soup and cow-dung. Philosophy ought to be elegantly profound. Our native brand is profoundly inelegant. Thank you, by the way, for the scholarship.”

  “What scholarship?”

  “Ah, of course, you cannot know everything. The Empire has carelessly cast these coins to the poor on its relentless passage through the Teutonic kingdoms. Thank you, anyway. I like Paris. The language and the women have a unique elegance.”

  “So,” M. Laval said, having sipped watered wine, looking for pellets of licorice to quieten the lapdog of acid tha
t was starting to yap in his stomach, finding none, M. Laval having a different stomach altogether, “you are not quite like your cousin. No nonsense about the fouque or whatever it is—”

  “Der Volk.”

  “The glorious German dawn and the tearful sunsets and the ancient gods in the fucking German forests.”

  “Oh, that’s good too, but limited. The future lies in synthesis.”

  “In what?”

  “Binding things together. Synthetisch zusammenfassen”

  “That sounds terrible, whatever it means.”

  “Yes, it does, doesn’t it? Goethe, for instance. You know Goethe?”

  “I have no time for reading these upstart cleverclever—”

  “Oh, come. Goethe is, let me see, yes, just twenty years older than you are. He has the glorious German sunsets and mountains but he knows Greece and Italy too. I think I believe in a Goethean Europe, but I know I’ll never live to see it.”

  “Is there,” M. Laval half-sneered, “nothing you want to be martyrized for? Like your totally forgotten cousin, stupid boy.”

  “Oh,” said Stapps in surprise, scratching the other armpit, “he’s not forgotten at all. Nor will ever be forgotten. But, of course, he’ll only be remembered because of you. Your first seedling of doubt or incomprehension or something. A pity, though. He wouldn’t have had to die if you’d known more about history. You see, great generals have to become great despots—they conquer, and when they conquer they have to control what they’ve conquered. Improvisation. It’s too late for them to be able to find time to study history. The Protestant nations didn’t need the Revolution—you should have known that. France and Italy were anachronistically feudal, but in Spain Catholicism is an aspect of nationalism—they think the Pope’s a sort of Spaniard living in Italy, it was stupid of you to start ordering the Pope about, you should have known that—and what’s the other thing, yes, the Teutonic Reformation had got rid of feudalism already. Very simple, you see.”