He took the dead man under the arms to show Paradis. Sergeant-Major Roussillon's eyes were wide and staring, his blue lips peeled in a smile. Rondelet pricked his finger as he unfastened the Legion d'honneur from the tattered uniform. 'A souvenir,' he started to say.
These were his last words which he wasn't able to finish because a roundshot skimmed the ground and tore off his shoulder. Crouching next to his friend, Vincent Paradis was stupefied by the blast and flung against a gravestone overgrown with nettles and moss. His ears rang. He could only hear muffled sounds. He raised a hand to his face and gasped. All he could feel was a fleshy pulp. It was in his hair and his mouth. He spat out gobs of it: they were soft, lukewarm and tasted of nothing. Was he disfigured? A mirror! Didn't anyone have a mirror? A puddle, even? No? Nothing? Was he nearly dead? Where was he? Still on earth? Asleep? Would he wake up? Where? He felt hands grab hold of him and pick him up like a parcel; the next thing he knew, he was propped against a wooden fence which ran through a field. Voltigeurs were lying on their backs, mumbling incomprehensibly, covered in blood, their wounds dressed with handkerchiefs and rags; one had his arm in a sling, another was hunched over a branch as if on a crutch, his foot bandaged in a piece of fatigue jacket. Young men in long aprons were inspecting the wounded and deciding on the seriousness of their condition: those closest to death would not be transported to the rear. They held up the shattered soldiers to help them squeeze onto the platform of a haycart pulled by two draught horses wearing blinkers. Paradis let himself be examined. He didn't answer the apprentice medical orderlies who were astonished that, with his face in shreds, he hadn't yet lost consciousness.
The makeshift ambulance took a long time to reach the small bridge over to the island of Lobau. They constantly had to zigzag across the broken fields, and tear down fences to avoid detours. The assistant surgeons followed
on foot, studying their cargo and occasionally pointing to a wounded man. 'That one's not worth the trouble any more . . .'
The dying man would be dragged off the platform and laid on the grass, as the ambulance moved on at the draught horses' slow pace. Paradis remained on his feet, in a daze, clinging to the uprights of the haycart as if they were prison bars. In the distance, he recognized the bivouac of the Guard and then they reached the small bridge. It was seven o'clock, night was falling and the reddish glow of the fires lit up a horde of at least four hundred wounded who had been stretched out on bales of straw or on the ground. Paradis was put near a hussar with one leg crushed to a pulp, who dragged himself along like a snake and tore at the dirt with his fingernails, raging against the Emperor and the Archduke. There was no respite for Dr Percy and his assistants: drenched in sweat, they amputated arms and legs in a hut, using carpenter's saws. All that could be heard were screams and curses.
Four
THE FIRST NIGHT
By candlelight, Henri searched through his tin trunk stamped with an eagle and took out a grey notebook, which he put on the table. Across the well-worn cover ran a title in black ink: 'Campaign of 1809. From Strasbourg to Vienna'. He glanced through the last pages. His journal stopped on 14 May and he hadn't made any entries since. The last words in his hand read, 'Enclosed a copy of the proclamation. Superb weather, very hot.' Folded in at that page was a celebrated proclamation which the Emperor had had printed on the day before Vienna's capitulation. Henri unfolded it to read it through again. 'Soldiers! Be good to the unfortunate peasants and the citizens who have so great a claim to your goodwill; we should not be proud of our success, but see in it only a token of that divine justice which punishes the ungrateful and the perjured . . .' He broke off. Not believing a word of this high-sounding declaration, he shook his head and frowned with disgust. A few days before, in a hamlet, he hadn't been able to find so much as an egg and he had noted in his journal, 'Everything the soldiers couldn't take away had been smashed . . .' He turned the ineffectual proclamation over and wrote on the back, in pencil:
May 22, at night. Vienna.
At dusk we returned to the ramparts. The horizon was red and still flickering with the fires of , of which we had no reliable news. A reassuring official bulletin did not reassure me, and Mile K still less. I watch her wilt as time passes and, down there, the danger mounts. How many dead? It's I, the invalid, who must support her. She looks like Juliet before the body of Romeo, who she imagines is dead, 'O happy dagger, this is thy sheath! There rust, and let me die .. .'
Henri scribbled 'check quotation' in the margin. He sighed, as if at the theatre, then started a new paragraph to record the strange behaviour of young M. Staps. Hearing footsteps on the stairs, he thought it was him going up to his garret, but there was a knock at the door. He closed his notebook in exasperation and muttered, 'What does that Illuminato want from me now.'' It wasn't the German. In the corridor, a flat candlestick in her hand, the old governess in a turban was standing in front of a man whom Henri did not recognize at first, so out of the ordinary did his presence seem on the landing. Once in his room, Henri was left in no doubt: it was the man who had been hiring out spyglasses on the ramparts, slightly hunchbacked, wdth a fringe of white hair below a smooth pate and little round glasses perched on the middle of his nose. He spoke a rough, broken French. 'Monzieur, Eyem reeturn your money.'
He walked with a rolling gait over to the table, on which he threw down a worn leather draw-string purse.
'My money?' Henri said, hastily turning out his trouser and waistcoat pockets to discover that his florins had disappeared.
'On ment you haf dropped it.'
'But I . . :
'Az I am honest . . .'
'Wait! How did you know my address?'
'Oh, my good sir, it's not that difficult.'
The interloper suddenly spoke in a low, resonant voice without a trace of a foreign accent. Henri stood open-mouthed. The governess had slipped away and shut the door behind her. The man took off his frock coat, unstrapped his fake hump and tore off his wig, saving, with unmistakable glee, 'I am Karl Schulmeister, Monsieur Beyle.'
Henri studied him carefully by the faint light of his candle. The individual masquerading as a hirer-out of spyglasses was thick-set, of average height and ruddy complexion, with deep scars on his forehead. Schulmeister! The whole world knew him, but how many could actually recognize him.' Through years of spying for the Emperor, he had refined the art of disguise to such a degree that the Austrians had let him escape every time they had run him to earth. Schulmeister! A thousand stories were told about his exploits. Once, he'd inveigled his way into the Archduke's camp dressed as a tobacconist. Another time he'd left a besieged town by taking the place of a dead man in a coffin. And on another occasion, disguised as a German prince, he had reviewed a parade of Austrian battalions and even attended a council of war alongside Francis II. Napoleon had entrusted him with the policing of Vienna, as in 1805, and Henri asked him, in amazement, 'With the task His Majesty has given you, do you still find time for fancy dress?'
'No doubt I have a taste for it, Monsieur Beyle, and then this idiosyncrasy of mine does come in very useful/
'What good does it do you hiring out spyglasses on the bastions?'
listen to rumours, I remember the dishonest things people say, I gather information. Poor morale can wreak havoc in times of war, you know.'
'Are you saying that with reference to me?'
'No, no, Monsieur Beyle.'
'Am I then so important as to deserve a visit from you? Do you wish to recruit me into your services''
'Not exactly. Did you know that the young Mile Krauss' father is a close relative of the Archduke?'
'You are wasting your time.'
'I never do that, Monsieur Beyle.'
k Mlle Anna Krauss thinks only of Colonel Lejeune . . .'
Henri instantly regretted having said too much, but he hurried on, hoping that he could play down his disclosure. 'Lejeune, my friend Lejeune, is Marshal Berthier's aide-decamp.'
'I know. He was born in S
trasbourg, like me. He speaks our adversary's language perfectly.' 'So?'
'Nothing . . .'
Schulmeister had returned to the table and was consulting the grey notebook. He read out one or two sentences in a loud voice. '"Out of prudence, f note nothing but observations upon myself. Nothing political."
He closed the notebook and turned to Henri. 'Why out of prudence, Monsieur Beyle?'
'Because I don't want to reveal any military information, even the most minor detail, to anyone who might chance upon my journal.'
'Of course!' said Schulmeister, looking at the last notes
Henri had scribbled on the back of the imperial proclamation. He asked, 'Who is this Staps whose behaviour you call strange?'
'A lodger in this house.'
Henri had to describe how he had caught the young man unawares, his incantations in front of a statuette, the butcher's knife he held like a sword.
'Put your frock coat on, Monsieur Beyle, and show me the way to the room of this fanatic.'
'At this hour?'
'Yes.'
'He's bound to be asleep.' 'Well, then, we'll wake him up/
'You know, what I really think is that he's just not right in the head . . .'
'Bring your candle.'
Henri gave in. He led Schulmeister to the top floor and indicated the young German's door. The policeman entered without announcing himself, took the candle from Henri and saw that the little room was empty.
'He lives at night, does he, your Staps?' he asked Henri.
'He is not my Staps and I'm not spying on him.'
'If he intrigues you, then he intrigues me.'
The statuette was still in its place. The two men observed more closely. It was of Joan of Arc in armour.
'What does it mean?' said Schulmeister. 'J oan of Arc! What sense is there in that?'
The last quarter of the moon was waning and the stars were hidden by the smoke from the fires. Lying on his back in the grass, Cuirassier Fayolle was not asleep. He had
eaten dutifully, without appetite, from the mess tin he shared with Brunei and another two cuirassiers, and then he had lain down, acutely aware of every sound: a horse's neigh, a muffled conversation, the crackling of wood in the bivouac fire, the metallic clang of a cuirass as it was thrown on the ground. Fayolle was asking himself questions: something w r hich hardly came naturally. Action suited him because one flung oneself into it without a thought in one's head, but afterwards, this so-called rest, what a curse! He had experienced most of the sensations of war. He knew how to plunge his blade with a jerk of the wrist into a man s chest — the crack of breaking ribs, the spurt of blood as one wrenched out the sword with a sharp tug; how to avoid an enemy soldier's eyes as one disembowelled him; how to hamstring a horse when one was dismounted; how-to stand the sight of a comrade being blown to a pulp by a white-hot missile; how to protect oneself and parry sword cuts; how to be on one's guard; how to forget one's exhaustion to charge a hundred times into a throng of cavalrymen. And yet, the death of his general tormented him. The ghost of Bayreuth had been right about Espagne, even if the canister shot that tore his heart to shreds had been only too real. Is what will happen written.' Can an unbeliever believe that' And what about him, Fayolle, what would his fate be.' Could he steer it, and in which direction.' Would he still be alive tomorrow night.' And Brunei, next to him, grumbling in his sleep? And Verzieux — where was he at this hour, and in what shape.' Fayolle didn't give a damn about ghosts but he kept a hand on his loaded carbine. He thought of the young Austrian peasant girl he'd killed by accident in the little house in Essling. He'd had his fun with her corpse while it was still supple.
but Trooper Pacotte, his stooge, had had his throat cut by the guerrillas of the Landwehr and there had been no other witnesses to the affair. What bloody nonsense, thought the cuirassier. Murder, that was his trade. He killed - cleanly or messily — as he had been trained to do. He had a talent for it. How many Austrians had he sabred during the day? He hadn't counted. Ten? Thirty? More? Less.^ They didn't stop him sleeping — he couldn't even picture their faces -but the girl haunted him. He'd been wrong to look into her eyes and see the fear there. All the same, it wasn't as if it was the first time he'd come face to face with others' fear! He loved that. The terror that comes before certain death — it excited him. What power! The only power. Fayolle had felt it himself at Nuestra Seriora del Pilar, facing a monk stabbing at him in a frenzy, but he had escaped with a slash across the face. Wounded, he'd managed to strangle the friar and strip him of his sackcloth habit to make into a coat. Afterwards he had thrown the body in the Ebro where Spaniards' corpses in sacks floated by the hundred. The girl from Essling had been left on her mattress. Had someone found her? A skirmisher looking for somewhere to take cover who'd have got a shock at the sight of her? Perhaps no one had. Perhaps a shell had burnt the house to the ground. He ought to have buried her and this thought preyed on his mind. He saw her, she grimaced*, then the look of terror on her face changed into one of menace and he could not get rid of the image.
He stood up.
At the head of the small valley in which the squadrons were quartered, the first houses of Essling were visible, their roofs standing out against the backdrop of a lurid red
sky. Without a helmet or cuirass, his straight sabre slapping against his leg, Fayolle set off like a sleepwalker in their direction. As he skirted the plain, moving from thicket to thicket, he encountered the sort of vultures who always appeared on the nights of battles: civilian touts whose job was to take the wounded back to the ambulances and whose sideline was to strip the dead for their own profit. Two of them were working up a sweat over the stiff body of a hussar whose boots they were pulling off. Next to him, on top of his pelisse and dolman, they had put a watch, a belt, ten florins and a locket. A third, squatting down, held the locket close to the lantern which he had set on the ground. 'Whooah!' he said. 'She's a pretty one, his intended!'
"And now she's fancy free,' said his crony, busy trying to get a boot off.
'Pity there's no address or name.' 'Maybe on the back of the portrait.' 'Good idea, Fat Louis . . .'
With a knife, the ambulanceman tried to prise the portrait away from the locket. Others walked past with armfuls of clothes. One bright spark had strung his haul of helmets and shakos on a stick, like a ratcatcher in the countryside, and the plumes, horsehair crests and tassels hung down like those animals' tails: Further on, Fayolle ran into a sentry who put the barrel of his rifle against his chest. 'Where are you off to, eh?'
'I need to walk,' Fayolle said.
'Can't get some shut-eye? You're the lucky one! I go to sleep standing up, like a bloody horse!' 'Lucky?'
'Yes, and you'll keep it that way if you steer clear of the
plain. The Austrians are thirty paces away. See that fire over there, on the left of the hedge? Well, that's them.' 'Thanks.'
'Lucky devil,' the sentry muttered again as he watched Fayolle receding into the distance towards the village.
He walked on in the darkness, stumbling several times; thistles scratched at his trousers and his espadrilles were soaked when he trod in a puddle. When he came into Essling, he couldn't distinguish the sleeping from the dead. Boudet's voltigeurs were sprawled, dog-tired, in the streets, against the low walls, one on top of the other, all blurring into one in their state of collapse. Fayolle tripped over the gaiters of a soldier who half-sat up and cursed him. Nothing seemed important any more. He made for the house which he had visited twice before. He had no trouble recognizing it, but the troop had taken up position there and barricaded it with mounds of sacks and broken furniture. The girl hadn't been burnt, then, her house hadn't been shelled. Someone must have found her dead and tied up. What had become of her body? He looked up at the first-floor window. The pane was broken, the shutter hanging off, and a voltigeur was leaning on the windowsill, smoking a pipe. Fayolle felt compelled to enter the house, but instinctively he held back. Standing in the street, he di
dn't dare move a muscle.
No one was sleeping soundly except Lasalle, most probably, who preferred the life of the camps to that of the salons and could take his rest in the worst conditions; he'd wrap himself up in his greatcoat, lie down and instantly start snoring and dreaming of the heroic exploits he was
impatient to perform. The others - officers and other ranks — were on edge, anxious, their faces drawn, their brows furrowed. Some vigilant generals had already made their battalions stand to for next to no reason: skirmishes, isolated outbursts of firing caused by the proximity of the Austrian encampments and the pitch darkness, made it impossible to tell the different uniforms apart. Everyone thought that they would get their rest after , either stretched out on the ground or under it.
The Battle Page 13