Liberty's Fire

by Lydia Syson

  Each time, as Jules and his camera and the darkroom on wheels moved on, leaving the bodies behind for others to stare at, he wondered who would pick them up, and when, and how anyone would ever know where they had gone. Also, how long he could continue this searching, which logic was beginning to tell him must be fruitless.

  Anatole spent two hours lying in dust and darkness, waiting for a beam to give way, for voices or boots on the landing. It seemed implausible that he was still alive. When the house had remained silent for so long he felt his wits might turn, which was also when the ringing hum in his ears became too loud to bear, he backed out of his hiding place, and stood up and stretched, still listening. He wasn’t quite sure what he was looking for. He opened a drawer, and shut it again quickly, flushing. Of course, this was a young girl’s room. Vacant eyes stared at him from beneath carefully painted lashes and disdainful eyebrows: a doll with golden ringlets and pursed lips, fallen on the mantelpiece at a stiff diagonal.

  He set her upright again. ‘Don’t move,’ he told her, and tried the next room.

  He hated prowling around like this, leaving streaks and scuffs as he slid against the wallpaper to keep out of sight. It was horrible, invasive, but absolutely necessary. Before long, he’d realised exactly what he needed and found it too. A rack of slightly musty coats and trousers in a man’s dressing room – an elderly uncle or grandfather, he imagined. The cut of these clothes was a little old-fashioned, but the size wasn’t impossible. He even found a ticket for the opera in the pocket of one, a frock coat with wide velvet lapels and cuffs. He held it against himself, and stood in front of a long oval looking glass, which pivoted in its frame. The glass was cracked in three, the bottom section missing, but Anatole saw at once that he would need to wash and shave before he went out again. To hide in plain sight, he would have to look the part.

  Half an hour later, he thought he had come close enough, and left the building by the front door. He had even borrowed a silver-headed cane and a top hat, so that he could stride disapprovingly along what remained of the pavements, nodding to any passing policeman, if he dared. Luckily, he saw none. It was still pouring with rain, and hardly anybody was about. He tried to get some bearings. He supposed he should head home, that Jules would be waiting, as usual, in the apartment in the rue de Provence. Jules would be angry, very angry, but he would forgive him.

  Then Anatole let himself hope, allowed fantasy free rein. Zéphyrine was always so resourceful. Surely she would be there too, waiting with Jules. Where else could she have taken shelter, after all? Where else would have been safer? Marie would be fine, he was sure. She was a survivor too. When he got back, the three of them would send her a message and then they could all have supper together. It would be … No, of course it wouldn’t, it couldn’t ever be like old times again.

  Behind him, he heard the slow clippety-clop of a single horse’s hooves, carriage wheels sloshing through the flooded road, and a harness jingling ever louder. It was the first vehicle that had approached since he had been walking. He urged himself to keep walking. No flinching, though every atom in his body begged him to turn and run. He continued to stroll, not too quickly, not too slowly, even humming a jaunty tune to complete the act. Oh, he looked like a bourgeois gentleman triumphant through and through, he persuaded himself. The masses were defeated. The madness was over. Order would soon return.

  The vehicle drew up alongside him, and Anatole heard the hooves scuffle and stop, as the horse was reined in. He imagined the driver’s head turning, a staring face. He kept looking straight ahead, kept smiling his stupid rigid smile, barely hitting one note in four as he hummed. His eyes flicked nervously towards the road, his view blocked by the brim of his hat.

  ‘Anatole?’ The voice wavered with disbelief.

  At last Anatole looked up.

  Jules jumped down from the high driver’s seat with a cry like a sob, and splashed through the overflowing gutter. A second later he was crushing Anatole so hard that he struggled for breath. His knocked-off hat rolled back and forth on the pavement, his face lay pressed against a velvet lapel, and he heard Jules whisper, over and over again, ‘My dear, my dear, oh my dear.’

  They tied up the horse in a side street, and crouched in the dim orange light of the darkroom, rocking with relief, trying to work out the next step. In the heat of reunion, Jules kept grasping Anatole’s hands, his dear familiar hands, the hands he thought he would never see again. Anatole returned his hot grip with equal strength.

  ‘Oh Jules, I thought I’d never see you again,’ said Anatole. He drew back to look at Jules, then reached out a hand to stroke his face and touch his shoulder. ‘I can’t believe you’re here. I simply don’t know how you found me. You’re extraordinary. You cannot understand what this means to me.’

  They were so close. Their lips could meet so easily. But just as Jules leaned forward, ready to declare his love out loud, unequivocally, once and for all, Anatole put a hand on his knee and asked him eagerly what news he had of Zéphyrine.

  ‘Zéphyrine?’ Jules choked and withdrew. He felt cold. His skin seemed to crawl, as if a spiderweb had floated onto his face.

  ‘Yes, Zéphyrine. Of course Zéphyrine. What is it? What’s happened? Haven’t you seen her?’

  ‘No. I’m sorry. I’ve no idea where she is.’

  Anatole let out a groan.

  ‘Shhh … someone will hear. Anyway, we can’t stay. We have to get moving.’

  ‘Wait! No! No idea? Oh Christ.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Jules uneasily, hot with shame. ‘It’s been impossible. I don’t know what you imagined. Montmartre fell so quickly. And I told you, I’ve been looking for you all this time. I had to find you before they did. I told you that.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course. I know. I understand. Thank you. I just thought, if she could, she would have …’

  He didn’t say, and Jules didn’t want to hear.

  ‘We can talk about it later. Right now, you must just stay here, in the back, out of sight, until I’ve sorted something out. Your clothes are absurd. You look like somebody’s grandfather. And you’ve cut yourself shaving – didn’t you notice? The fewer people that see you, the better.’

  Anatole was still staring into nothingness, looking wilder than ever. ‘What am I going to do?’ he said almost inaudibly. ‘I thought … I hoped …’

  ‘Come on – we’ve got to hurry. It may be too late already to get out of Paris. The Prussians are closing their gates.’

  ‘Get out? We can’t leave now!’

  ‘We can’t stay. You can’t. They’re looking for you. They’ve been looking for you for days.’

  Anatole looked bewildered.

  ‘Do you really have no idea?’ said Jules. ‘The Commune can’t last much longer. Hours. Days at the very most, but more likely just a few hours. And there are reprisals happening everywhere already.’

  No reaction, but Anatole seemed a little calmer, so Jules jumped down to untie the horse. They had to get moving. As soon as they were out of danger, he wanted to find Anatole a doctor.

  ‘Jules?’ Anatole called softly.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Do we really have to leave Paris?’

  ‘Yes, we do.’

  ‘When can we come back?’

  ‘I don’t know. Look, you’re going to have to be quiet now. We’ve got to start moving.’

  ‘Yes. Sorry. But, Jules?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My violin,’ said Anatole. ‘I don’t suppose you brought my violin?’

  Jules hesitated. He didn’t want to tell Anatole about the missing photograph.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I did. It’s behind you, right behind the trunk. Don’t worry. And Minou is safe too – no, not here. But I’ve found someone who’ll take care of her, so you don’t need to worry about her. Now, you mustn’t talk any more.’

  In Marie’s doorway, a red-trousered soldier with a neatly trimmed blond moustache stood straight and tall, and very wet. His e
yes were bloodshot and pouchy, his expression vacant. She opened her arms, ready to weep with happiness. When she told him what she had done, he would reassure her, even be proud of her. She could cast off the ghastly shame that dragged at her heart.

  But Emile Le Gall had barely moved. He took a single sluggish step towards his sister and stopped. It hadn’t been quite a year since they last saw each other, yet he seemed twenty years older.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked. He stared right through her. ‘What are you looking at? What can you see? Say something, Emile … please. Tell me you’re not hurt.’

  He seemed to be making a vast effort to retrieve something, from some dark cellar in his mind.

  ‘Why?’ he said. Then he repeated the word, over and over again, until it lost all meaning. ‘Why? Why? Why? Why?’

  Marie heard a door bang. Anyone could be listening. She took Emile’s arm, and pulled at it, but he just looked at her hand on his sleeve, as if it were unconnected to either of them.

  ‘Come on, come inside,’ she said. ‘Sit down. Lie down, if you want to. You must be exhausted.’

  She pushed him inside, and quickly turned the key in the lock. He swayed almost imperceptibly. Before she led him to the armchair, she reached up and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, but he didn’t return it. Just raised a hand, and cupped it over the place her lips had been, and went on staring. It was exactly the same empty stare she’d seen on Zéphyrine. A stare that took in everything, and nothing at all.

  ‘Shhhh … Shhhhhhh … Give me your coat. You’re soaking.’ Marie started to unbutton it, and then stopped, and put her arms round him anyway, and tried to rock him like a baby. But he was stiff and resistant, more like a rigid corpse. ‘It’s over now. You’ve saved Paris. It’s nearly over. We can celebrate. We’re free.’

  ‘Free?’

  He jerked away from her, and she let out a cry. ‘Emile! Stop it … Don’t you know me? I’m your sister, remember?’

  ‘You’ll wish you weren’t when you hear what I’ve done. You don’t know what I’ve done.’

  He just kept saying the same words.

  ‘What?’ she whispered, and at last he seemed to see her.

  ‘Oh, Marie, I followed orders … I just followed orders. You know I’ve always done what I was told … but such orders … Oh God … How could this have been allowed? Why did I let myself? How did it happen? Why? Why? Why?’

  Stuck on that single word again.

  ‘Stop, stop, Emile.’ She took him by the shoulders and shook him, and then tried to hold him up, to straighten his spine, as if she could physically resist his slouch of despair. The words on the poster came back to her. When the order is unspeakable, disobedience is an obligation. But that wasn’t true. How could it be true? ‘You have done your duty. What more could you ask of yourself? You’re a hero. My brother, the hero of Paris – home at last!’

  He shook his head. ‘No. Oh no.’

  There are always boys hanging around stations looking for errands to run. Jules quickly found a temporary guard for the darkroom. He told him that there were extremely dangerous chemicals in the back, and on no account should he go inside or allow anyone else to do so or he would risk an explosion. The boy looked impressed.

  Jules hated leaving Anatole again, even for the short time he hoped it would take to buy two first-class tickets to Geneva. Better to have some documentation than none at all, he reasoned. Something to keep inspectors happy. At the border, they would improvise. He had the trunk. He would work something out.

  Part of the station had been cordoned off. They were setting up another execution post. Any big space with an open wall would do. A station was ideal. Policemen swaggered about the concourse in twos and threes, eyes everywhere, blue backs always ready to turn. Jules suddenly didn’t know if he could carry this through. He had to hold on to a railing to steady himself. He remembered Marie and the breathing exercises she had given Zéphyrine to keep her still in front of the camera. He counted slowly to himself and walked purposefully towards the ticket office.

  The queue was long and well dressed. He wanted to be calm and jovial, but didn’t quite trust himself to speak. He ran through a few suitable pleasantries in his mind, and imagined himself exchanging them with the pair of middle-aged gentlemen that the snaking line had brought almost opposite him.

  ‘Not the best day for travelling,’ he said at last.

  ‘Business is business. And time stops for no man.’

  ‘Quite so. I hope they’re keeping a good watch on these trains. Can’t have those devils escaping, can we?’

  ‘Certainly not. We’ll need to keep our eyes peeled.’

  ‘Well, at least the rain is easing off.’

  Jules tried to shake off the conviction that they were staring at him oddly. He wished he knew where to get hold of one of those blue-white-and-red armbands. Then he prayed again that Anatole was keeping still and silent, that he wouldn’t do anything stupid.

  The line of passengers made steady progress. When the shooting began, out of sight at the back of the station, eyes blinked and jaws hardened, but nobody said a word.

  Jules reached the glass window. There would be a train at midnight, he discovered. There were three first-class compartments left. He was lucky. He expressed surprise and relief that the trains were still running, and began a complicated story about the family wedding he was due to attend in —

  The ticket seller cut him short. ‘Oh they can afford to keep running the trains. It’s easy to find someone on a train, if you know where to look.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it must be. Thank God for that.’

  Outside the station, the boy who’d been minding the horse put out his hand for his coins. The rain had stopped completely. The horse stamped and swished its tail to be rid of the mobbing flies that had immediately returned.

  ‘I’ve got one more job for you,’ said Jules loudly enough for Anatole to hear. ‘See the shop over there?’ Then he shook his head. He didn’t trust the boy with his shopping. ‘No, on second thoughts, you wait here. I’ll just be a few more minutes and then you’ll get your money. If anyone comes, it’s the same as before. If they won’t go away, keep them talking until I get back. I don’t advise you to get too close though.’

  He bought the best pâté he could find and a good Bordeaux; it was a traveller’s meal so irreproachably bourgeois that no revolutionary in flight could possibly consider it. More incongruously, he also bought a large sack of rice, which he asked the shop assistant to carry over to the waiting vehicle. The food was to show what fine, sensible, greedy gentlemen they were. The rice was to go in the trunk, to give it weight and realism when the porter slung it into the train carriage. A trunk heavy with a body would raise suspicion. Once they were on their way, each grain could be disposed of, bit by bit, leaving the hiding place vacant.

  ‘Now will they shoot us?’ The young boy asked the question as soon as the prisoners came to their next halt. There was angry shouting up ahead, and a call to clear the road.

  ‘I hope so,’ someone else said. ‘Then it will be over.’

  ‘One shot. That’s all we need. That will be that,’ said another.

  ‘I don’t know what will happen to us,’ Zéphyrine told the boy. ‘We’ll see.’

  Then she ducked her head, flinching. Something soft had fallen from the sky. She hunched her shoulders against attack, and another small object brushed gently against her face and landed in the mud at her feet. A flower. A rose. Flowers were raining down on them, bunches and loose stems of artificial flowers. Someone was throwing them down like alms from a balcony above, and the prisoners who caught them couldn’t help kissing the dusty petals, and weeping at this sudden sign of sweetness and kindness and respect.

  Anatole resisted the temptation to look out of the window. He kept expecting to see soldiers marching down the platform, ready to haul him off the train. His fingers picked so compulsively at the velvet buttons on the seat cushion that one came off i
n his hand. Every few seconds he glanced at the black silk blind.

  ‘Very well. Pull it down if you insist. Perhaps it would be safer.’

  ‘Nobody wants to walk into a first-class compartment, if they don’t know who is inside,’ argued Anatole.

  ‘But we need to show we’ve got nothing to hide. Especially until the train leaves. They’ll start searching when the train gets moving. Before the border. That’s when you need to hide. Have some more pâté.’

  ‘We could be asleep by now.’

  ‘I said you could pull it down.’

  Anatole pulled down the blind. A few minutes later Jules spoke again. ‘You’re my brother-in-law, remember? Your passport was burned. We couldn’t wait.’

  He was beginning to confuse himself. They had rehearsed and rejected so many different stories.

  ‘I know. I know,’ said Anatole. ‘Our grandfather is on his deathbed, threatening to change his will. It is imperative that we reach Geneva with all speed. I understand. I’ll remember.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Are you married to my sister or am I married to yours?’ Anatole was beginning to panic.

  ‘We said I was married to yours. Does that make sense? No. Make it the other way round. Her name is … Sophie.’

  ‘And what time is it now? I thought we were meant to leave at midnight.’

  Jules looked at his watch again.

  ‘Still another two minutes to go,’ he said.

  ‘Two?’

  Without warning, Anatole stood up, and pitched towards the corridor. He looked drunk. Before he could reach the door, Jules had jammed himself between the seats and luggage racks.

  ‘No,’ he insisted. ‘No. Sit down. Now.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You have to.’

  ‘No, I can’t do this, Jules. I can’t leave Zéphyrine. I’ve got to try to find her. It’s not too late. I know it isn’t.’

  ‘Don’t make a scene,’ hissed Jules. ‘Let’s not do this again. I won’t let you. You can’t help her now.’