Liberty's Fire

by Lydia Syson

  By midnight the remaining leaders of the Commune had moved for the last time. Holed up in Belleville, they resumed their arguments.

  32.

  26th May

  Friday morning. In the chaos of that night, Anatole’s dishevelled company followed orders, and began its final retreat. Thinking him dead, no doubt, or possibly drunk, they left him behind, knocked out among the rubble. He had lain unconscious while the Versailles troops swept through in the night and on up the hill. In the early hours of Friday morning, rain finally brought him round. A soup of mist was rewriting the city, distorting sight and sound, muffling the cannon’s thunder and playing games with Anatole’s mind. He remembered running through the rain with Zéphyrine in April. He imagined, though not for long, that he was with her again, hearing the storm cloud’s thunder, soaked to the skin. She was urging him to take off his wet clothes, and he was laughing at her and making bargains. And of course, when he lifted his head, he found himself crumpled in the gutter, water rushing towards him, his sodden body damming a drain.

  He raised himself up on his forearms, experimentally, and stared this way and that into unforgiving blackness. Screwing up his eyes, he wiped his forehead uselessly with a drenched cuff, and ran a damp hand round a wool-chafed neck. He had lost his kepi. Anatole pressed gently on his skull. Everything felt dark and dripping and painful, and he could not tell if it was blood or rain on his fingers.

  Shifting any part of his body was an effort. Movement, however small, awakened bruises, and the cold and wet came creeping into corners they hadn’t reached before. But this was no place to stay. The hiatus couldn’t last much longer. More people would be here soon, perhaps in uniforms, clearing away the dead, securing the buildings and searching for runaways like him. Anatole crawled forward on all fours, and his fingers brushed against cloth. With a small leap of hope at the thought of company, he grasped the bulky material firmly in both hands, thinking he might feel out a leg, or an arm, or even just a discarded coat. Any of these possibilities might offer a swig of brandy, and help get him through till daylight.

  It was a leg, but it didn’t move. Anatole shook it almost angrily. ‘Come on,’ he muttered. ‘Don’t let me down. Can’t stay here.’

  Then he realised that he had spent the night huddled close to a corpse, a corpse that presumably had kept him safe. Anatole drew back, and staggered, heaving, to his feet.

  He recognised nothing and nowhere, barely knew which way he was moving. The city was in disguise: trees split as if by lighting, twisted ironwork and decapitated streetlamps confused him, and the onslaught had left buildings exposed and disfigured. Some were almost intact, except for a shutter dangling from a hinge. Others had become unrecognisable carcasses of brickwork and rafters and carpets, fog and smoke wandering into deserted drawing rooms through smashed-up walls, wreathing itself round banisters. Anatole imagined residents stirring in cellars beneath, thanking God they were still alive, not daring to emerge into the wreckage above their heads.

  He didn’t suppose any of them would knowingly take him in. He’d dumped his coat, despite the rain; the scattering of scorch marks on the shoulder of his jacket, tiny gunpowder-sprayed holes made by weapons fired immediately behind him, would betray him as fast as any uniform. Anatole shivered in filthy shirtsleeves, and while he looked for a temporary refuge his thoughts pendulumed from Zéphyrine to Jules and back again. He couldn’t bear to think what might be happening in Montmartre now. He consoled himself with the thought that at least Jules must be safe. Jules was not a fool. He always knew what to do. Perhaps Anatole should have listened to him five days ago. He missed them both terribly.

  The paving stones jolted vertically through the length of his body, heel to hip to head, chiselling his skull with every step he took. At last he found a likely-looking house. A shell must have hit it very recently. One window was smashed in completely, and every pane of glass on every floor had shattered. It was relatively easy for Anatole to climb inside, and there was still no one around to see him.

  He checked the cellar first, which was empty, although some dirty cups, a blanket and mattress and a discarded cap and apron suggested it had been recently occupied, perhaps by a maid left to guard the house. Anatole thought she must have fled after the bombing, but he couldn’t be quite sure. Nobody in the kitchen or scullery. There again were signs of hasty abandonment. Damp curtains flapped in the drawing room and dining room, where the furniture had been covered with dustsheets. Anatole continued his prowl upstairs. When he saw a single, canopied bed piled high with embroidered cushions, and skirted protectively with plenty of frills and lace, he plunged into the dustballs beneath it to hide.

  If you have money, and good clothes, and if you talk nicely of course, doors will generally open. It’s the way the world works. Jules had found a cheap travellers’ hotel west of the canal and south of the station, paid in advance for his room and hot water, and even persuaded the proprietor to adopt the cat. It was harder for Jules to say goodbye to Minou than it was for Monsieur Valette to agree to take her in: with cats such a rarity in Paris, the mice were getting out of hand.

  The following morning Jules recovered from a sleepless night with a coffee in the breakfast room. The table linen was a little stained, but crisply ironed, and the air carried only a faint hint of the previous night’s food, or possibly the one before. He was not surprised to discover that there were no other guests. In a week with few customers, the hotelier seemed particularly anxious to please. He had carefully brilliantined his thinning hair and seemed quite determined to carry on as normal. So their conversation was studiedly neutral. The temperature of the bath was mentioned, and also the number of sugar lumps some guests required. Monsieur Valette had shut the windows against the rain, and both observed that an abnormal number of flies were now banging on the glass to escape.

  The portable darkroom was safely locked up in the courtyard, and Jules had had quite enough of dragging the vehicle, so he asked Monsieur Valette to summon an ostler to negotiate the price of a horse for the day. Then he tried to prepare himself for whatever he might find outside. He rested his forehead on his fingertips, tilting it this way and that, as if it might channel his growing dread into something more useful.

  He wasn’t in a neighbourhood that he knew very well. When Jules first arrived in Paris, he’d drifted compulsively from boulevard to park to sidestreet, often tempted by the seedier parts of town. His wanderings had become more purposeful since he had discovered photography. He’d come to prefer the unexpected reflections and watery aquarium haze of those glass-covered arcades nearer home, where he’d first run into Anatole. An observer by nature, a watcher of crowds from within, Jules generally had an instinct for finding his way round the city. And he’d had a lifetime of staying out of trouble, of not being noticed when he didn’t want to be. All he could do now, he decided, was simply keep on going. The important thing was to be systematic in his search, to stay as calm as he could – on the outside at least.

  A bell rang, announcing the arrival of the livery boy, and Jules pushed back his chair. When he reached the dining-room door, he glanced behind him, suddenly overwhelmed by unspecified guilt, a feeling that he might have left something behind. The hotelier had cleared his tablecloth, and stood balanced on top of the table. He was reaching up with a rolled-up newspaper to swat at a gathering cloud of flies. Caught in the act, he shrugged apologetically.

  ‘The dead,’ he said. ‘They are beginning to take their revenge.’

  ‘Wait!’ Marie wanted to say. ‘We’re not ready.’ As if she ever could be.

  They came so much earlier, so much more quickly than she’d imagined possible. A few minutes before, she’d woken to whimpering through the wall, and the crash and scrape of furniture violently thrown aside. An elderly schoolmistress had the room next door. Could she really be harbouring a rebel? Perhaps she taught at one of the new secular schools. That would be enough. Marie wondered what sort of person would betray an old woman lik
e that. Then she realised exactly who might do such a thing. Someone with a grudge or a grievance. Someone frightened enough for their own life. Someone who didn’t want to be caught themselves, who had never wanted to go along with any of this. Someone a bit like Marie. Seconds later they were hammering on her own door.

  Zéphyrine had finally fallen asleep, her eyelids flickering against Marie’s pillow, while Marie herself dozed, on and off, in the wickerwork chair. She sprang to her feet with unhinged knees, steadied herself and, remembering an old trick of her mother’s, gently pinched Zéphyrine’s empty earlobes. Her eyes duly opened without a sound. Marie shushed her with a finger on her lip.

  The door handle was rattling. The old lady was weeping.

  ‘Get in the trunk,’ Marie said. She didn’t know why. It was far too late to change her mind. She couldn’t bear for Zéphyrine to see her face when the door opened. ‘Quick.’

  Zéphyrine leapt dizzily from the bed, and fell into the pile of clothes. Something tore as Marie whisked out a gown to make room for her, and Zéphyrine scrabbled for space, paddling like a mole. The trunk lid closed and the world went black. She lay with her face prickled against the twisting wire stems of flowers on a summer bonnet. She couldn’t hear words: just a low rumble that told her these were men’s voices. Then the reverberation of boots on the floorboards, followed by clinking metal. It wasn’t a big room, but it seemed to take them no time at all to work out where she was. As quickly as she had hidden, she was exposed, left blinking at the light. An angry face thrust itself into hers.

  ‘Out!’ The spitting mouth flicked her with tobacco juice. It reeked with the stench of last night’s brandy. She tried to bury herself further but the man simply reached in and dragged her out backwards by the elbows. She was only wearing a petticoat, one of Marie’s, but he didn’t care.

  Horrified, Marie thrust a shawl at her. ‘Take this.’

  Marie wouldn’t meet her eyes, and dropped to her knees on the floor. Zéphyrine felt her cool hands on her ankles, pushing her feet into shoes. She saw Marie’s shoulders were shaking.

  Zéphyrine’s hands were roped behind her back. She was pushed down the stairs, bruising her shoulders as she lurched unevenly from wall to banister, and straight into a puddle outside. Now it was raining hard. The old schoolteacher from the next room and the young man she had been hiding – her nephew – were already soaked to the skin and shivering when they roped them all together, the weight of hemp doubled by wetness. Zéphyrine looked up, blinking, unable to shield her eyes from the falling rain. There were tricolour flags now damply hanging from almost every window in the street. No sign of Marie being pushed down the stairs to join her. Why not? What had they done with her? Would they shoot her on the spot? Zéphyrine came out of her stupor. She hadn’t meant to put Marie’s life in danger like this. She hadn’t wanted this. She wondered how she would ever make amends. She almost wished she could pray for her, but what was the point?

  As soon as they began to move, her shawl slid off her bare shoulders, tangling with the rope at her wrists, then dragging in the mud behind her until another prisoner stepped on it, nearly tripped, and tugged it free. Their little group joined others, and eventually there were twenty men and women all tied together, marching behind another twenty, in front of yet another twenty.

  Blood raged under the skin of Zéphyrine’s cheeks and left her face blazing. If her grandmother could see her now, she’d die again, for shame. She couldn’t stand it. She wouldn’t stand it. To be paraded like a whore, half-dressed, almost naked, hair shorn. It was indecent. Jeers and laughter roared like surf in her ears. The schoolteacher jerked and twisted her ancient neck, in contorted, failing circles, like a crazed pigeon courting, or a turkey begging to be beheaded. Her wet white hair flopped in snakes around her shoulders. Had she been driven mad? No, Zéphyrine realised. Someone had spat at her, right in her face, and she was trying to wipe off the insult on her shoulder.

  Zéphyrine turned to confront the crowds on the pavement. Instantly she saw an expression she knew too well – not a face, but a look. Sneering, triumphant, despising. The look her stepfather had worn the day she had left home. When he knew, but she didn’t, that she was not coming back. After that, Zéphyrine kept staring straight ahead, tilting her chin. It helped keep the tears from overflowing, and she didn’t want to show tears. If it made her look arrogant, defiant, so much the better. It was the best kind of face to show the world.

  She couldn’t tell how much time passed, or how far they stumbled, before they were brought to a halt. The prisoners all knocked into each other, bodies taking too long to catch up with dulled minds. If one fell, all would, so they pushed and strained and jumbled together, trying to stay as one. A murmur passed through, quiet as a sigh. ‘Stay on your feet. Don’t die on your knees.’ She locked her legs. She didn’t want to die in any position.

  Hot bodies, hot breath, rancid smells. But these strangers, all pressed up against each other, were strangely comforting. She felt a small hand brush against hers. It slid into her palm, and held on tight, too tight, gripping two of her fingers as though for life itself. When Zéphyrine twisted her head to see over her shoulder, her face and neck knotted with the effort, she realised it was just a little boy. When she tried to smile at him, to give him some comfort, her lips curled stiffly and it felt more like a snarl. The boy didn’t speak, but he didn’t let go.

  Orders were shouted. Zéphyrine hardly knew what. Some men were picked out for further inspection. It wasn’t clear how choices were made. They were looking for officers: possession of a watch was enough, it seemed, to mark out a man as a leader in the National Guard and condemn him. The captives stood waiting, surreptitiously rubbing their roped wrists, knowing this temporary release would most likely lead to something worse, but uncertain what that might be. A court martial? Were they to be tried, here and now, in this courtyard? Nobody knew.

  Behind a wall, the machine guns began their dull clatter.

  One National Guardsman’s eyes kept measuring the distance between the gate and the huddle of prisoners. He was a paymaster, weighed down by his responsibility. Before it was too late, he grabbed a little pouch of coins from his breeches’ pocket.

  ‘Listen, comrades!’ he said quickly. ‘This is my unit’s wages. I couldn’t get it to the right people yesterday. God knows where they are now. Here – I want to give it to you – it won’t do anyone any good if they shoot me.’

  He threw the bag into the mass of prisoners, and somehow they passed the coins around. Zéphyrine shook her head. She had nowhere to keep a coin, and she didn’t want to let go of the boy’s fingers.

  ‘Get in line! Closer! Serrez les rangs!’

  Marching orders again, for those who remained. The taunting from the pavements continued, unending. ‘Murderers! Thieves!’ they shouted. ‘Look what you’ve done, you bastard scum, you evil toads! Deport the lot of them, every last Communard. You’re getting what you deserve now.’

  There was still no sign of Marie.

  Jules’s camera hood gave him some protection, a place to hide his face, and somewhere to shelter his shock. Hidden by black velvet, through rain-spattered glass, he could scrutinise the streets almost without being seen, anonymous and invisible. Mid-morning, a company of Versailles soldiers marched by, and his hands quivered on the lens cap, but they just glanced at him and nodded, clearly assuming he was on official business. Recording the crimes of the Commune, he supposed. Collecting evidence. The friends of order men who followed in their wake left him alone too, except for one enthusiastic officer who rushed back to tap him on the shoulder. He pointed out a place of execution Jules might otherwise have missed at the end of a long passage, where buildings rose high on either side: a dead end indeed.

  Three or four times, Jules stopped at scenes so similar they merged in his mind: a wall, splashed and pockmarked with bullet holes, bodies slumped at its foot, or carelessly heaped, drenched in rain, dark with blood. Each time he fought his first imp
ulse to vomit and flee. Each time he forced himself to confront these faces. Every one of these bodies was a person. Any one of them might be Anatole.

  Some lay almost as if dreaming, concealing the secret of their death like a private joke with the ghost of a smile. Half-open milky eyes; lips curling back from tombstone teeth, tobacco-stained. All ages, all degrees of beauty, women alongside men, hair rat-tailed by the endless rain. He saw cheekbones hollow as poets’ – the effect of a jaw, slackening in horror or relief, or the remains of hunger – lying in puddles. Greying temples, ragged beards, broken spectacles and sodden ripped banners. Jules looked at each face with proper care as he framed and focused, trying to commit its particular and specific features to memory, trying to make out detail through the distortions of raindrops and sometimes tears.

  The horse stood and waited with drooping head, nostrils flaring.

  Jules felt a responsibility to preserve each face he saw. These likenesses would be perfect – these eyes could not blink, these faces could not twitch. But he could only capture them in his memory; he had to fake his photography. Packed in sawdust at the back of the darkroom was a single collodion bottle, well-stoppered, containing the dregs of his last but one batch. Just enough, perhaps, to coat a single plate. He had to save it, because if he ever found the one face he was looking for, he needed to be able to keep its likeness. And if he didn’t? If he never found that face again? Jules couldn’t let himself believe this might happen. Surely, if Anatole was dead he would be able to feel it, he would somehow know?