Liberty's Fire

by Lydia Syson

  The curve of her cheek was less pronounced from this angle, and the smoky lamplight softened everything. When she was awake, smiling broadly – and her smile was broad indeed – her cheeks turned into hard little apples. Delicate lids and dark eyelashes now shielded her darting eyes, and made her look quite different. Her mouth still curved up a little, her top lip slightly wider and also thinner than her bottom lip, which was plump and full; it seemed to Anatole that her mouth had no choice but to tilt up at the corners, simply to fit her lips together. For the first time he noticed a tiny mole, just to the left of her left nostril. And also that her ears, which stuck out a little, were pierced, but she wore no earrings. He guessed they had gone to Auntie’s during the siege, along with the flower-making tools, and never been reclaimed.

  Her bony shoulder dug into his chest, but it was worth the discomfort to have her settle deeper. He imagined her exhaled breath entering his own nostrils, and breathed her in, light-headed with the surprise of it all. The last few hours had been like tumbling down a grassy slope, turning over and over. Now he had stopped, his thoughts spinning, the world unsteady around him.

  Anatole’s urge to protect Zéphyrine didn’t seem to want to leave him. He’d have to fight it. He imagined confessing his feelings about Zéphyrine to Jules, but he wasn’t sure if he could ever find words that would work. How could he describe the effect she had on him, this girl he hardly knew? She’s real, he wanted to say. He dipped his head towards hers. Woodsmoke and lavender water. Yes, real. All flesh and blood, and nothing else. A voice in his head told him how ridiculous that was. Aren’t all women real? He wasn’t quite sure. It was sometimes hard to tell. He wanted her to wake up, and ask her what she thought, but he also wanted to stay like that forever.

  Would she let him walk her home?

  Someone muttered something about the boudoir of Europe. They were talking about Paris, he supposed.

  A sharp poke in his back made him turn with a start. Zéphyrine was jerked awake too, rolling limbs stiffening in shock. A winking, chest-rattling old lady, barely a tooth in her head, was shoving them both from the pew behind. It was time to vote, she urged them, a dark dusting of snuff dancing on the bristles on her upper lip. In the nave, opposite the pulpit, where the club’s officers sat at a table with papers and notebooks, the chairman had risen.

  ‘So, citoyens, citoyennes, you have heard the arguments. Are you for or against? All those in favour of outlawing prostitution in the Paris Commune – raise your hands now!’

  Zéphyrine’s arm shot up, and Anatole’s followed almost as quickly, and she grinned at him. No prostitutes in Paris? A revolution indeed.

  The motion was carried. Zéphyrine seized Anatole’s hand in both of hers, and unexpectedly kissed the back of it. ‘Let’s go to the Gingerbread Fair on Sunday.’

  15.

  6th April

  Three days later the funerals began and thousands turned out on the boulevards to see the procession go by. Jules held his hat in his hands and stood among the watchers, mourning the fact that, slow-moving as it was, he could never capture this extraordinary cortège on glass. He found himself inexplicably moved by the sight: six men of the Commune, heads bare and bowed, walking in front of three enormous hearses, each one piled high with coffins and draped in black velvet. They were slowly followed by a weeping crowd, its pace measured by a muffled drumbeat. The red cross of Geneva flashed on the nurses’ armbands as they marched alongside. Red-dyed flowers sprouted in buttonholes – immortelles – the flowers that would never die.

  A fierce hissing sound broke out on the pavement ahead. A man had refused to bare his head in tribute, but his hat was soon removed for him. Jules was glad not to have made the same mistake.

  Sobbing came from the spectators, though the widows walking behind the coffins were too shocked for tears. Such sudden slaughter. The news had blown through Paris like a fire catching hold. Versailles had executed prisoners on the battlefield. Corpses were coming back with rope burns on their wrists and crimson holes in their backs. Their backs! It was against the rules of warfare. Even the Prussians had never shown brutality like this.

  At the cemetery of Père Lachaise, the bodies were buried in a common grave. A neighbourhood away, a local battalion dragged the wooden guillotine from the prison house. It was burned at the foot of Voltaire’s statue. ‘Down with the death penalty!’ the people cried.

  Just a few days later, the weather alone made defeat impossible to imagine. By Sunday morning, blossom had broken out all over Paris, and petals drifted against barricades. The smell of the fair reached Zéphyrine from streets away, for the air was spiced and sweet, and the song of the barrel organ made it sweeter still, putting a dancing spring in her step.

  And despite everything, the Gingerbread Fair didn’t look so very different from the year before. Almost as many booths brightened the square, still with row after row of deliciously scented pig-shaped biscuits, and men in aprons spooling white icing onto their brown backs as fast as they could. Here was the same fat lady Zéphyrine had seen with Gran’mère, and over there a conjurer she didn’t remember was drumming up trade outside his tent. As she passed him, a small round-eyed boy stood transfixed by a speckled hen’s egg that had just appeared from his ear. He didn’t look as if he’d seen an egg in months. His face fell as the magician whisked it away again.

  Zéphyrine spotted Anatole before he saw her. He was standing by the swingboats as they’d arranged, hands clasped behind his back, eyes searching for her. She smiled. Perhaps she could tiptoe up to him from behind and cup her cool hands round his eyes? That would surprise him. Changing her course, she noticed Anatole turn too. He was speaking to someone: a taller man wearing a top hat and a tight slim-waisted frock coat. A bit of a dandy. His moustache was perfectly horizontal and neatly waxed into two fine points, and when he tipped his hat to her, she noticed chestnut hair. So that was Jules.

  ‘But we …’ Zéphyrine was about to protest out loud. Then she shook her head at herself and strode on. They had a rendezvous. She wasn’t turning back now.

  ‘Ah, there you are! Here she is!’ said Anatole. ‘I told you we wouldn’t have to wait long. This is Jules, Monsieur Crowfield, from America. I told you about him, remember?’

  She nodded. Jules bowed low, and she bobbed a kind of curtsey.

  ‘Anatole has not stopped talking about you,’ said Jules. ‘I’m sorry to intrude, but I could not miss this opportunity to meet you.’

  ‘It was my idea,’ Anatole added.

  Zéphyrine took the hand Jules offered. She felt him look her up and down – just a quick glance, but enough to take her in.

  ‘How do you do?’ she said. Then, because she wanted to be sure: ‘So, now you have met me, will you stay?’

  They both laughed, and she blushed. She hadn’t meant to be rude.

  ‘For a while, I think. I love a fair.’

  Anatole’s eyebrows lifted a little. ‘Are you hungry?’ he asked her.

  ‘Always.’

  ‘Then I will buy you a gingerbread pig.’

  ‘The pigs look delicious,’ said Jules.

  ‘I’ll buy you both a pig,’ said Anatole. ‘Which do you think are the best ones?’

  ‘We’ll have to have a look,’ said Jules. ‘Find the fattest.’

  They wandered around the stalls, inspecting the gingerbread livestock. The pigs were fierce little animals, stuck together in layers with sugar – piped curly tails and chevrons of icing on their flanks. Zéphyrine eventually spotted one with a friendly expression.

  ‘Aren’t you going to eat it?’ asked Anatole, snapping a leg off his own fat biscuit.

  ‘I want to save it,’ she said. ‘Gingerbread lasts a good long time.’

  Anatole snapped off another leg and held it out to her. She was about to open her mouth so he could put it straight in. When she noticed Jules was watching, she took it in her own hand, and then let it dissolve on her tongue. ‘Delicious. Thank you.’

  ‘Ha
ve his head too … it’s a bit sweet for me.’

  Another snap, which Zéphyrine felt somewhere behind her collarbone. Steadily, delicately, Jules ate his own pig. Zéphyrine thought he wasn’t much used to eating outside. His chaperoning presence made her feel fizzy, as if she had a million tiny bubbles inside, just waiting to explode. She hoped it didn’t show.

  Anatole was singing along with an organ grinder. ‘‘‘He doesn’t have an umbrella. And that’s all right when it is fine … Il n’a pas de parapluie. Ça va bien quand il fait beau … ”’

  Zéphyrine began to join in.

  ‘But here’s a big umbrella,’ said Jules.

  It was indeed a giant one. On the rickety table beneath, a wooden wheel of fortune spun. It whirred and clanked, wooden toys whizzing round while children held their breath. Of course the stallholder feigned surprise at where it came to rest. Anatole, Zéphyrine and Jules moved on, pausing to hear a patent-medicine seller promise half his takings for the war-wounded. Quite a crowd was forming a little further off, just beyond the acrobats’ small stage, drawn by a loud patter that cut through the organ music and the laughter and the food hawkers’ cries.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Zéphyrine. ‘What has he got in there? I can’t hear what he’s saying.’

  Jules hung back. ‘Neither can I. I’m not sure.’

  ‘Let’s go and see.’

  Anatole seemed infected by the excitement, and took both their arms at once.

  They let themselves be swept and pulled along by the other gawpers. At the entrance to the tent a Russian took their money, and pushed them through. They reeled back, hands over noses. It was smelly inside: animal, overpowering. Fur and shit, caught in a canvas prison.

  ‘A bear,’ said Zéphyrine, but couldn’t turn away.

  ‘At least it’s not a freak,’ murmured Jules. ‘I can’t bear to see the people they call monsters.’

  ‘Is it going to dance?’ said Anatole.

  You couldn’t tell, because it was slumped in the corner like a discarded coat. Except coats don’t need chains. From a flap at the back, a man appeared, bare-chested. He wore soft white breeches, almost like underwear, and a pair of torn boxing gloves strung round his neck. At first he ignored the bear: he was more interested in showing off his muscles, flexing his arms and turning from side to side, winking at the ladies. When someone threw him a staff, he poked the animal, pulling at its rattling tether at the same time. The bear growled through its studded muzzle just as it was meant to, staggered to its feet and swayed. The animal was wearing boxing gloves too, tied tightly round its paws, with the cotton padding coming out in places where the leather had been gnawed.

  The Russian rang a bell, and the fight began. For a few seconds, man and bear circled each other, the man making strange grunting noises, which should have been threatening but weren’t. The bear roared. A soft groan more than a roar really. A sudden, brief flurry of blows followed and the bear slumped on the ground again. Dust from its coat clouded in the air like smoke; the sun streamed through the pale canvas.

  Zéphyrine turned away, tugging at Anatole’s sleeve. Jules was already pushing his way out of the tent. Behind them rose the complaints of a crowd that felt cheated.

  ‘No point in hanging around here,’ said Anatole, without looking round. ‘Let’s go on the swingboats. That should be a lot more fun.’

  A few steps in front, Jules’s shoulders twitched.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Anatole, catching up with him. ‘That was a mistake.’

  ‘Why do they do that?’ Jules said quietly. ‘Make an animal what it is not.’

  Zéphyrine couldn’t answer. She ran ahead, overtaking them both. Luckily there wasn’t a queue, and she had enough money to pay, though of course the swingboats seated only two. She waited, rope in hand, while the boat gently rocked.

  ‘Go on,’ said Anatole, gesturing towards the steps. ‘I’ll take the next one that’s free.’

  But he couldn’t persuade Jules to join Zéphyrine. He said he had things to do at home. He’d see Anatole later. He tipped his hat at Zéphyrine, and bowed briefly. She waved, with the gingerbread pig in her lap, lying in state on the pink paisley dress Rose had lent her that morning.

  She caught one last glimpse of Jules, weaving his way westward. And then she forgot to look again, for the swing was moving higher and faster. Eyes locked, she and Anatole smiled at each other fiercely, taking it in turn to pull down on their ropes, as hard as they could, one after the other. The place du Trône tilted, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Zéphyrine heard the air rush in her ears, and felt her forehead prickle with heat. Only their toes were touching. Sky and ground flashed by. The whole structure creaked. She had to stop herself from shrieking. When their time was up, they would get off and then they would kiss. They both knew that.

  16.

  She broke all the rules, this one. Anatole had never kissed a girl before who kept her eyes wide open. He shut his own again, and surrendered briefly to pure sensation. He felt enveloped in warmth, inside and out, the dark cloth of his jacket absorbing the sun’s rays just as his mouth was warmed by hers. With his eyes closed, he felt drunk with the pleasure of the moment. But when he opened them, and met that steady open gaze again, he felt anchored by it. That was better still. He was finding it hard to stand.

  ‘I feel as if I’m falling …’

  His lips continued to brush hers as he spoke. Their feet zigzagged.

  ‘It’s the swings. It’s the same when you get off a boat,’ she murmured, breath hot and uneven, but still looking straight at him. ‘Your body thinks you’re still moving. It’s confused.’

  ‘Yes … but no,’ he said, holding her more tightly, grounding himself against her, still feeling a plunging sensation. ‘I don’t mean that. That is, I don’t think it’s just that.’

  He began to kiss her again, watching her all the while, seeing the smile in her eye as she kissed him back. He gazed at her pupils, wondering at this circle of darkness. How could it really be a hole, like the shutter of a camera? That’s what Jules had told him. So he was looking right into Zéphyrine now, actually right inside her. He noticed that her eyelashes (he remembered their shadow) were longer than they looked, because they were dark at first and then grew lighter, almost invisible, and he saw a tiny scar in her right eyebrow, which made a little gap among the hairs. He began to smooth it over with one finger. Afraid she would be worried that he had noticed an imperfection, because she must have seen his eyes stop and start again in their looking, he stroked her other eyebrow too.

  She didn’t seem to mind his scrutiny. She was happy to be looked at, and happy to look too, and to keep kissing.

  It was another miracle to discover just how many different colours there could be in a single iris. Like shards of glass, more intricate than a Venetian paperweight, and in among the greens and greys there were chips of brown like a nutshell, and one tiny fleck the colour of a conker. He drew back further, his own eyes like a metronome, swinging from one side to the other.

  ‘They’re not the same colour!’ he said, and looked again. ‘How can that be?’

  She opened them even wider, and nodded, not smiling.

  ‘The left is darker, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘And greyer, I’m sure. Here, turn this way. Let me see in a different light. I’m not imagining it, am I?’

  ‘No. You’re not imagining it.’

  He laughed out loud with delight. ‘I didn’t think it was possible. You’re extraordinary. Quite extraordinary.’

  This time she shook her head. ‘They’ve always been like this. I think it’s a curse. My stepfather thought I was a witch.’

  Anatole’s smile hung on his face. ‘He was joking?’ Clearly not.

  ‘He said it so often he even got my mother thinking that way. He thought I knew things I shouldn’t know. Thought I had some special power, or something.’ She rolled her eyes.

  ‘It’s not true. Is it?’

  ‘Of course it’s not tr
ue. He was just such an oaf. I only said what I saw. And I saw things he didn’t want me to see. But he said he wouldn’t have a witch bastard in the house.’

  She looked at him to see if she had shocked him. She had, but he was quick to reassure her.

  ‘Oh, my darling,’ he said, and kissed the top of her head.

  But she wasn’t going to let it go at that, and jerked her head back to look him straight in the eye as she continued.

  ‘That’s why they left me here in Paris. To get me away from the other children. They said it was to help Gran’mère after Papi was killed. But he didn’t care about her. He just didn’t want me to have anything to do with my little brothers and sisters. He thought I’d turn them against him, with witchcraft. When he saw me writing, he thought I was writing spells.’ Zéphyrine gave a bark of laughter, and then her mouth clamped shut.

  ‘Well, I’m glad. I’d never have met you if they hadn’t,’ said Anatole, his voice cracking slightly, which wasn’t like him at all. He was used to being bright and charming and kind, and making everyone happy. He loved to be loved. But he wasn’t used to letting so much escape. Could she tell how much he meant it? It wasn’t just something to say. She looked very serious. Maybe she could tell.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ he asked straight out, because he couldn’t help himself. He wanted to know everything.

  ‘Oh, just about my mother. With me gone, she could be properly respectable, you see. That must have been what she was thinking, not that she’d tell me. And that maybe my stepfather would shut up with his “telle mère, telle fille” …’

  Like mother, like daughter.

  Anatole thought of his own family, safely in Limoges all this time. Thought about his father setting off each evening to play the cello at the theatre, while his mother sat down with a pile of exercise books and worked her way through the marking. Two of his sisters were training to be teachers too, and the third gave singing lessons. Not a grand family, by any means – nothing like the Crowfields of East Liberty – but ‘respectable’, as Zéphyrine put it, or near enough. And rich enough, by her standards.