Napoleon's Roads

by David Brooks

  You long for the enemy, to make sense of things.

  But there is no enemy. Not in living memory anyway. Though now and again someone out there not friendly to it will try to do something to the Wall itself. Paint something on it, say – though given the way it curves there are some parts the guards themselves could never lay eyes on (and who else could the painting be intended for?) – or steal the stones. Most of the time it is stone stealers. A hundred years ago the Wall itself took all of the stones from the fields, for a thousand metres on either side, leaving nothing for the locals to build with. Now they use the wall as a quarry. Coming by night with a horse and cart, prising away at it, getting a load of stones to build their own much smaller wall somewhere, or a stall for the cow, an outhouse. And what’s a guard to do? Fire an arrow down into the dark? Drop stones on them? Once or twice, bold as brass, some shepherd or hermit or leper has actually tried to attach their shelter to the wall itself, though it has never been anything a little bombardment couldn’t get rid of – that, or the guards depositing a few faeces on its roof.

  That is, until this. But what is this? Ruins of a stone hut someone tried to build decades ago. Either that, or a shelter for the original builders of the wall. But ruins, of three walls, with the fourth wall the Wall itself. All fallen in, hardly more than an outline of stones, a bare place where the door must have been. No-one ever saw anyone there, let alone planks. Yet planks there must have been. Thick ones. Very thick ones. Brought in overnight, working fast. Overnight, or maybe over a couple of nights. No-one is admitting to not having looked, not having guarded everything, for any more than two nights at the most. But suddenly there are planks, and no-one can say for certain (to themselves: they’re not giving anything away to anyone else) how long they have been there. And overnight, or over a couple of nights at the most, a roof, or lean-to, made of the planks. That perhaps a stone or two, prised from the battlement, might shift, but they don’t, since the angle of the lean-to’s roof is so steep there’s a chance they’d just bounce off and roll into the trees. And no movement, no sign of anyone coming or going.

  And yet someone is, at night, obviously. Disguising their light, if they are using one, making no sound loud enough to be heard at the top. But there, somehow; working, somehow. For after the fourth night – no-one can explain it; no-one has heard anything – the lean-to is higher, the roof just that fraction further up the wall. And so it happens, and continues to happen, very gradually. At first there is a lot of talk about it and then not much at all. Just nervous watching. Tacit agreement that if there has been no message then it’s as likely to be something organised or approved by the authorities as it is to be something they don’t know about, and so as likely a friendly as an enemy construction, an indication, perhaps, that they’d had their sides wrong all along, that the enemy was in fact on the side they’d thought friendly and vice versa. And there has been no message. In fact, at least while any of these soldiers have been there, there has never been a message. If they requested instructions from Headquarters it would probably be months before they heard, and by then the issue would have resolved itself or gone away. And what would they hear anyway? That they’d had it all wrong and were summoned for court martial? That reinforcements were on the way (when they might have been dead for weeks!)?

  And so they watch. And, when anyone has an idea, engage in cautious, measured resistance. Until they know otherwise, they should treat it as unfriendly, for their own sake if for nothing else. Then, at least, if they are wrong, they might be alive to find out.

  They pour a small vat of boiling oil. Almost half of what they have, and will have to conserve for the rest of the year. But for the time being – the roof rising a little further each week, wooden sides appearing atop the old stone base – it seems a good idea. To pour the boiling oil and then shoot flaming arrows to ignite it, burn the whole thing down. But it rains. They have been so busy with the project that they haven’t noticed the clouds. A few drops at first, with the first of the arrows appearing to catch, and then a steady downpour, the oil seeming to have done nothing but help waterproof the thing (that is part of the problem, what to call it: lean-to? house? tower? thing).

  A mystery. An utter, incomprehensible mystery. Sure that they can solve it, convinced that there must be some explanation, guards on night duty – especially when the moon affords some visibility – spend all night in the shadow of the battlement, watching, listening. And as first light replaces the extinguished moon find the house/lean-to/tower taller, if only by inches. What has happened? Have they fallen asleep? Have their minds wandered? Perhaps the intensity of watching can create its own illusions. When you watch something long enough it can seem to be moving, whether it’s moving or not.

  And then it stops, indisputably, beyond the shadow of doubt. No growth for a few weeks, even months. They watch, forget to watch, remember, watch, each in their own rhythm. Talk about it when they remember, compare notes. Someone thinks that it has grown again and gets the others to look. Sometimes they agree, sometimes not. At other times the growth is clear. How long has it been going on now? A year? A year and a half? And still no message to explain it, still nothing from Headquarters. Indeed it seems, when they think about it, that nothing has ever arrived from Headquarters except orders for replacement followed by the replacements themselves, but the replacements themselves always come from different places and there is no reason to think that someone’s replacement is heralded by anything other than a message, from further down the Wall, that a replacement is on the way. If arrival from Headquarters is the only evidence that Headquarters exists, then there is no real reason to think that Headquarters exists at all, other than that people speak about it, presume that it does.

  This thing, on the other hand, while far less plausible, is here. Its walls, though timber, look very solid, are made of a hardwood that resists the sharpest arrows. Sometimes an arrow sticks for a while, if they’re lucky, but only for a while, always blows off in the wind. No windows; nothing to get an arrow through; and it is built – if it can be said that something is being built when there is no evidence of builders – at such a point on the Wall that no-one can see whether there is a door at the front through which the invisible builders might come, though of course there has to be. And no-one coming or going. At one point the sergeant sits bolt upright in his bed in the middle of the night and shouts out an idea, a realisation: the tower/house/lean-to is being built from the inside. Someone far below them has tunnelled along through the foundations of the Wall itself. The door is on the inside, not the outside. They are being under-mined. For a while the Wall feels different. It is one thing to watch and wait while something encroaches from a place they can keep watch over, even if they never see anything, but an encroachment from below, within, under the very thing they’re standing on, is something different again.

  They renew their efforts, work on a number of plans. Lowering someone down, while the most logical thing to do, has never really been an option, since rope of any appropriate length or thickness is forbidden for fear of escape attempts. Soldiers can be allowed off the Wall one by one as their entitled half-day leave comes due, but a rope might allow all of them off at once, precipitate a group desertion. Now that the house/tower/lean-to is almost two-thirds of the way up the Wall, however, sheets and pieces of clothing might be tied together, a man might be lowered. They draw lots, send down the victor. No outside door as far as he can tell, but it is hard to see. Certainly no path anywhere, no building rubble. And the roof-planks themselves – better to call them beams – are too thick, can’t be budged, even with something to prise at them. Perhaps, if he could hammer thick nails into the lower part of the lean-to roof, give himself something to stand on, make a platform, then he could hack, saw, chip his way in, but where to get the nails, the planks for a platform? Requisition them? Explain? They have left it too long, in all their indecisiveness. Now, surely, all they would get would be court martial for incompetence. Better to
try to handle it themselves, since that’s the way they have started. Instead of hacking their way in they could go back to burning. This time the soldier – another soldier, since they are taking turns – could set a fire, but how to do so on the steep slope of the roof?

  There is a replacement. The departee is sworn to say nothing. The newcomer – always good to have a fresh mind – comes up with another idea. Wax burns, fiercely, if the heat that starts it is strong enough, and they have a good supply of candles. And it is nearly summer, and the long dry period. Let the sun dry out the wood until it is at its most burnable and then lower a man again, fix balls of wax to the sides – not the roof; fire is wasted on the roof – and light them with burning arrows or a hand-held brand. That way the flames will move upwards along the wood, have a better chance of purchase. But the man sent down, after the months of waiting, sets only himself alight, is barely brought up before the sheets burn through, spends a week moaning in the guardhouse, keeping everyone awake, before they can get him taken away.

  The top of the tower/lean-to/house roof is now near the edge of the battlement. They can lean their arms in their usual place and study the grain of the wood. They can roll pebbles down its roof. They can scramble out on it with only the one sheet to hold them, and hammer on its sides. At last, surely, they should be able to see how it has been built, how it has climbed, at last they should be able to hear the builders. But nothing. Even when, not on watch, they stay up all night just to listen. The usual problems with the first morning light. The usual doubts about sleep, dreaming. At one point one of the soldiers thinks he hears a baby cry – the least plausible thing, and sure guarantee that he had been dreaming, that his mind wandered away. Another hears a faint knocking, as if someone were trying to get out, though it might have been a sound coming from much farther away.

  Inch by inch, inexorably, ineluctably, inevitably, it passes the lip of the observation ledge, begins to fill in the space between two of the battlements, then – what, a month later? two? – clears the top. Not wood like the rest of it, but stone on this side, just like the stone of the Wall itself, as if this new wall were a kind of counter-Wall, if only for ten feet of it. Until something else appears, a lintel, and below it the beginnings of a thick shutter, or door. Door. Of wood that might be drilled through, though so thick, when they try, and so hard, that everything that they have breaks or falls short. How long is it now, three, four years? And a month more before the door itself, or rather doors, for they are double-opening, rise clear. Locked, it seems, from the inside; or barred, since there is no key-hole, no sign that they are intended to be opened from without. No hinges visible. But what else can they be but doors? And what else can doors that can only be opened from within be for but to let people out?

  They hammer – at first relentlessly, then every time they think of it, walking past – but receive no answer. They try to employ a battering-ram, but can use only one of the benches from inside the guardhouse and by now, although the lean-to/tower/house seems to be growing no further, the doors are too high for easy reach and they have to erect a platform along which to run with the ram, so that, given the narrowness of the top of the Wall in the first place, the battering is no more use than pounding with the fist. For a time, trepidatiously, having done all this, they do nothing but wait, watch, and, when circumstances allow, sit or lean before the doors, by day or at night, listening. There is a tiny space between the bottom of the doors and the stone threshold, scarcely enough to pass a sheet of parchment, let alone shine a light through. By day, as far as can be told, there is only darkness within, although by night those who have spent a long time watching swear that a glimmer, a thin line of light can sometimes be seen, always as if at the edge of the eye, gone by the time they look back at it. Two of those who have seen it claim also, although with less confidence, that they have heard the shuffling of feet.

  All of them feel a mounting nervousness. On a bleak winter day when the duty guard reports hearing a louder-than-usual sound from within, like the shifting of furniture or movement of a piece of timber, they determine, around the brazier, that they can no longer leave things as they have been, and that, if they cannot get into the house/lean-to/tower structure – ‘structure’, yes, that is what they should call it – they should at least ensure as best they can that who- or whatever is within it cannot get out.

  Outward-opening doors without handles are hard things to bar. Wheedling the staircase guards, claiming to be fixing a large shutter that has blown off its old hinges and onto the enemy side in a high wind, they are able to get several thick planks and the materials to fasten them across the doors, using the remaining planks and one of the heavy guardhouse benches, dismantled, to create a further reinforcement, which they anchor in the battlement itself by a judicious removal of stones. Should there be forces within the structure strong enough to break through such a barrier they will at least issue some kind of warning in their attempt to do so. Such, in any case, is the theory.

  There has been no growth of the structure for several months, as if the intention all along has been to reach the level at which the door is exposed and to reach that level only. A further replacement is made, this time of the sergeant himself. In the short time they have in which to discuss the matter before he has to leave he advises them to say nothing to the man who replaces him. The structure, for all that any of them knows, has been there since the construction of the Wall itself, as has the barricade to its doors. If the new sergeant wants to remove it, the departing sergeant says, or to try to do anything about the doors themselves, let him do what he can. This, he says, is their chance to absolve themselves of any responsibility. They have only to act as if the lean-to/tower/house has always been a part of the landscape, and refer any question about it to Headquarters.

  The new sergeant arrives, a slight, rather sullen man from one of the southernmost provinces. Since it is the only thing, other than the guardhouse itself, to break the long, clean line of the Wall, the construction is one of the first things he asks about. The soldiers answer as they have been instructed. He is most curious but, not being one to question authority or to take any initiative when there is no apparent need for it to be taken, and presuming nonetheless that the doors would not be barred without good reason, he writes to Headquarters – that is, he presumes, or is led to presume, that the staircase guards will forward the document to someone who will forward it to someone who will forward it to Headquarters – detailing the situation as he understands it and requesting instructions.

  No reply is ever received – at least, not while there is anyone still there to remember what the questions might have been in the first place. The personnel changes according to what is presumed to be the established pattern. Now and again, as if in obedience to a ritual nothing but Time itself could ever recognise, a new sergeant orders the barricade removed and the men, sweating, swearing, jarring their hands, prise it off with whatever implements they have or can find some excuse to borrow from the gatehouse. And then, finding the doors will not open outwards or in, look for a battering-ram, only to find that, the doors being too hard for easy reach, etc., given the narrowness of the top of the wall, etc. So that even Time, had it any consciousness at all, might find it hard to determine the ultimate point or fulcrum of the Event: the Wall, the Lean-to/Tower/House itself, the Barricade, the Doors, the Tapping that is sometimes heard from within, that might be human, yes, or ghostly, but is probably no more than a loose board somewhere, or shutter, far below, banging in the wind.

  THE SEVENTH FLOOR

  He hadn’t been there the second time either, the poet. They’d come earlier, at nine-thirty, on their way back from dinner at the restaurant across the road. She’d felt like a cigarette outside – it was a non-smoking hotel – and he’d gone to check the bar, had walked through the cluster of low tables and armchairs, the poet clearly not there, then onto the terrace, and from there had looked across to where she stood by the main entrance, smoking and thinkin
g and staring out onto the night – a moment of quiet grace and secret pleasure for him, to step away and see her from this slight distance. Within a few minutes she had turned, seen him watching, and smiled, and he had clambered through a gap in the railing, pushed through the shrubbery and walked over. No, the poet wasn’t there, but he hadn’t been sure, anyway – it had been so noisy at the reception – whether he’d said nine or ten, or in fact specified any time at all. Let’s go back to the room, have a glass of wine on the balcony, and come back down in half an hour if we still feel like it. The poet is gregarious, he reminded her, you know him; he’s probably got into some rambling conversation over dinner and forgotten the arrangement entirely.

  So they had – gone up to the room, had a glass of wine on the balcony, come back down at ten, found nobody there, and gone back to the lift to go up to the room again. And beside the lift, having already pressed the button, waiting, was a woman, smiling at them warmly as they approached, holding the lift door open for them as they entered – smiling so warmly, indeed, that he wondered if she were someone who knew them, someone he should perhaps recognise, but no, he’d decided quickly, it was just friendliness. A pleasant woman, in her mid- or late-forties, ten years older than his wife, perhaps, and ten or so younger than him. Attractive, with a nice mouth, an aura of summer grass. And something had happened between the ground and the seventh floor. An intimate gesture, it must have been. Not that he had seen it, just known, somehow, that it had occurred. Not even voluntary, most likely, perhaps not even something one could be conscious of. And there had been no time to think, no time to stop what he’d found himself doing, to question the propriety of it, the sanity. A dilemma. He’d had no right to speak and no right not to. Sometimes a thought comes to mind and there is nothing else one can do but to act upon it.