Napoleon Symphony Page 10

  “A vvv—”

  And if he was such a good man, why had he left him in Egypt? Berthier remembered that if they had called lui the Great Sultan they had called Desaix the Just Sultan—Sultan El-Adel. Never made much of himself, a conscientious and self-effacing harrier of Turks and Mamelukes, with never enough guns, never more than about three thousand men, brilliant really. Was he too good a man to have out of Egypt? Well, he was out now and was on his way to Italy. Lui was going to use him. A little bemused by the strong wine in this region of rare air, Berthier wondered if there were any difference, in the new language that lui was making, between use and use up.

  “I shall be glad to use him, Berthier.”

  The physician Corvisart walked with her in the garden at Malmaison. “A haven,” he said, “I can see that. Here you must lose your Tuileries headaches.”

  “Oh, they persist. They drive me frantic sometimes. Your pills help a little.” Corvisart nodded to himself: bread, that’s all they are, bread. Hypochondria, melancholy, look for some malady of the mind. It was well-known that guilt could be at the root of twitches, pains in the joints, megrims.

  “The scent of your roses is delicious.”

  “What we have to learn,” she said, with sudden animation, “is how to combine scent and color with longevity.”

  “Yes yes, I see that—creative occupation, a great solvent of melancholy. And charming, yes. Rose is your true name, is it not? You perpetuate yourself, in a manner.” She looked at him. “You can speak freely with me, madame, as you know well. You know, and I know, that there is no Lupercalian magic in the waters of Plombières—”

  “Luper—What is that word?”

  “The feast of Lupercal in Rome. The ritual whipping of the barren. The magical promotion of fertility. Caesar’s wife, as you will know from your reading—”

  It was a sky of most tender blue. She looked up at it, he admired the delicacy of the chin, the slenderness of the neck. A young woman still. A myriad blooms nodded in chorus.

  “I know,” she said, “all Paris knows, that I gave him cause for—”

  “We ought not to use the word ‘infidelity.’ He is a man, a soldier, restless, importuned by the adoring. He loves you most dearly, he says this to all. What you, however, feel is that, with a child, his and yours—though, of course, he adores, as is well-known, his stepchildren—that if he should become a father—”

  “I feel,” she said, ceasing to walk, facing him in woman’s gravity, “that he may be trying to find out if the fault, if the barrenness, is really his. He is in a position, as a poet might put it, to scatter his seed wildly.”

  Corvisart grinned inwardly at the image. The First Consul as fertility god, a wandering Priapus. But it was true: a great man was expected to scatter bastards abroad, very much abroad in this instance—Italy, Egypt. War, some mad philosopher had written, long since guillotined, reading one of his own little books with scholar’s pleasure as he walked toward the impending blade, war might be an instrument of, what was his term?—of exogamia.

  “You have proved, madame, the tangible and delightful proof is in your son and daughter—”

  “I am still of childbearing age, am I not? I have, you say, no symptom of premature, premature—what is the word?”

  “The term we use is ‘menopausis,’ a word of two Greek elements. No, if as you tell me, the menses continue to be regular.” Then he wondered how much more to say. The consequences of an infraction of the marital code could, as if morality resided in nature and not in the imposed and arbitrary decalogues of theocrats, be an unsuspected physical morbidity. Thou shalt not get drunk, said the crapula. Thou shalt not fall into the arms of the dashing hussar whose arms have been too often open, said the—Said the what? Said the lesser disease of love which, mere transitory agony in a man, could in a woman be the cause of an unseasonable sterility. Or so some hypothetized. He had best keep the hypothesis to himself. “The thing to do,” he said, as he gently steered her by the elbow towards a blazing bed of carnations, “is to be cheerful and believe that all will be well. We know that the belief is not always, nor indeed often, fulfilled, but the optimistic stance is our best sustainer. I think, though, there is little point in your continuing your excursions to Plombières.” Ironically, if the tales were true, and they were, of course they were, it was the road to and from Plombières that had brought her to this state.

  “He’s unfaithful to me, and it makes me unhappy. A husband should be faithful, whatever the loftiness of his rank in the state.”

  And a wife, and a wife, even in retrospect. “It is the animal in us, madame,” he sighed. “It is nature, that Rousseau taught us was all good. He meant, presumably, for himself.”

  Milan again: it seemed an age since those brazen and argent and aureate bells had crashed a welcome to this victor. Fallen like a thunderbolt, he had written to Joseph, and thunderbolts of sound (those humming particles, what was their scientific cause, the acoustic science had perhaps not been given its due in the Institut) fell and fell with a ponderousness mocked by the myriad blossoms thrown, the polychrome rain of petals. Well, a thunderbolt was right. Sixty-six thousand troops in Northern Italy now, having conquered the agonies of the Alpine passes, and the enemy was still incredulous. Melas’s line was overspread, a fragile arc about Turin, and here we were thickening, concentrating, a lively bubbling broth ready to pour and scald. Why Milan, Berthier had wished to know. Why not proceed to the relief of Genoa? Because, dear old friend, the aim in war is not to comfort one’s friends, however dear and old, but to harass one’s enemies. And the Austrians would soon let Genoa free from the clamp when they knew that their line of communications along the Po’s north bank was as good as slashed to ribbons. They had got out of Milan quickly enough, leaving only a small garrison in the citadel that Murat was prompt to start smoking out. And now such a treasury of abandoned guns and supplies. Indeed, everywhere in this sector: Lannes had found between three and four hundred cannon, siege and field, complete with carriages, in Pavia of all places. Four guns captured at Ivrea, those besieging the Fort of Bard ought to be here soon, surely that garrison has at last yielded. The First Consul set himself up in cool baroque splendor and poured the orders out till amanuensal pencils smoked, broke, wore down to a stub.

  “—And Duhesme seizes the Lodi bridge—back to the bridge, it seems an age since—and Murat and Boudet proceed to Piacenza and make a bridgehead over the Po and Lannes marches to Belgiosi to find a suitable crossing-point for the army to move on Stradella, Stradella is the true key, and when Moncey’s corps reaches us here it is to be incorporated in a division we shall newly form under Gardanne.”

  “News that Bard has fallen, sir.”

  “And about time too. Good, that means more artillery. Take a note to General Lannes, say I am convinced that the Austrians will move on Stradella, I will not be satisfied until I learn that there are at least twenty thousand men at Stradella.”

  “It is nearly time, sir, for your conference with the Milanese clergy.”

  And, demure as a bishop’s chaplain, he faced two hundred tough priests in a vaulted hall full of holy statues, saying:

  “Our immediate mission, as you will understand, your reverences, is to protect our own homeland, forestalling an Austrian invasion of France here in this beautiful country whose language I may claim as my own. That you, like your fellow-citizens, have no love of the arrogant Austrian may be regarded as a matter of little relevance to the purpose of this, our informal assembly. As a child of the Revolution I must naturally come under suspicion as a votary of atheism or rationalism or pantisocracy or deism or some other upstart negation or perversion of the faith that I, like you, reverend fathers, sucked in at the maternal breast. Be it known, then, that the France I serve as its unworthy First Consul will soon see fully restored the entire apparatus of an organized Church, for man cannot live without God. Regard me as the friend of your faith, its earnest promoter—”

  Applause applause ap
plause. Encouraged, he continued:

  “We are all the children of the one God. We in France have made many changes—erected a state in which privilege is outlawed, talent rewarded, science set to work for man’s comfort and enlightenment—but we are not a new breed of beneficent monsters. We hold fast, after a period of understandable confusion, to the beliefs that—” A grave-faced aide appeared at the end of the hall, saluted, remained standing. Bad news, urgent. Bring this to a. “Respecting the holy prophet, worshipping Allah—” He caught puzzled looks. Wrong country, wrong religion. “—the pagan Egyptians may yet see the light.” Got over that difficulty. “Think of us as missionaries. The armies of France will bring that light to the benighted. And here, in the country of light, we are all soldiers of Christ.” Applause but also murmurs. He marched out, the aide preceding him to the malodorous Milanese day.

  “General Murat has captured dispatches of General Melas. To the Aulic Council in Vienna. Genoa has fallen.”

  “Nonsense, a mistake. A mistranslation.”

  “General Massena requested negotiations at the very moment that General Melas decided to abandon the siege.”

  “O God, no no no. That fool Massena. He could have hung on. Cannibalism, anything. A traitorous act. O Jesus Christ.” Some emerging priests nodded approval at the piety. “And now that means they’ll use Genoa as an operating center. The fucking British navy out there. Get us at Stradella. God curse the fucking idiot.” Aware of the priests, he kept that low.

  After her performance at La Scala, he took La Grassini to bed. A superbly fleshed woman, though perhaps a little more than four years ago when he, ardent bridegroom, had admired more or less or only, hard to remember now, ocularly, aurally. She said: “Ipocrita. ’ultima volta che eri a Milano combinavi l’ateismo con una riverenza superstiziosa per il sacramento del matrimonio.” She repeated the last word in an improvised cadenza. She liked to try out odd words in song, even during a discussion about the price of meat. He felt the vibration possess the flesh under his arm. “Adesso fai il pio, predichi ai preti e ti abbandoni agli adulteri del soldato. Ipocrita.”

  “No, amore mio.”

  “Ipocriiiiiiiiiiiita!” Portamento up to high mi-flat, then down again.

  “No,” he said. “Imparo a essere” smiling, “politeista. A Parigi ho la mia dea ufficiale e qui qui qui—” The qui meant first Milan, then the bed, then her person, a prodding forefinger for each. “—l’oggetto vero della mia venerazione amorosa”

  She pouted and snuggled into his armpit. “Perché perdo il mio tempo con te? Con teeeeeeeee? A letto non vali molto.” No whit abashed, he smiled onto her hair. “Nessuna tenerezza, non un briciolo di pazienza. Sarà che raccolgo la sfida. Devo insegnarti a amare. Venere ha insegnato a Marte” A pleasant idea, though somewhat operatic. Or something for a painting, for that man David. “Ma tu sei troppo instabile. Vattene pure a Stradella a sconfiggere gli austriaci, e subito dopo tornatene pure in Francia”

  The cuckold always had a reward. A great man always had a mistress. Oh, many. He kissed her nape and said:

  “Tornarmene in Francia, si, ma non senza di te” He would get Bourrienne to arrange everything, first thing in the morning. “Non ti tenterebbe di andare a Parigi?” She turned her face to his, great eyes searching great eyes. “Un appartamentino in rue de la Victoire?” For, after all, they weren’t living there anymore: it was made for a mistress.

  “Accetto” she smiled and kissed him.

  The act that followed took rather less time than sixteen bars of an aria in moderate tempo.

  “Eat more,” General Ott said in French. “Goulash. Fried chicken. Baked potatoes.”

  Massena said: “I cannot. The stomach shrinks. The stomach revolts. A little at a time. Some sugared water perhaps.”

  “You did well, I want you to know that. We know how to appreciate a brave enemy. You will find us generous.”

  “You’re being generous now.” And he surveyed again the loaded table, a dream to the starving man he still was. Also an old man now. Age, then, was like a revolution: it jumped on one. He had gone to bed with the hair of youth and awoken gray. But the men were worse, many of them now grotesque figures for a Totentanz, to use the enemy’s word, crying with rage as the food they leapt on revolted in contact with very teeth and saliva and leapt out as if still alive. And then there were the true cadavers with vast stuffed bellies. The entering Austrians had been kindly cruel wheeling in their sides of beef and sacks of potatoes. One recovered but slowly from starvation. It was more needful to send in soothing orderlies bearing bouillon and weak syrup. He sipped some weak syrup. It stayed down without grumbling.

  “Zurückbeförderung in die Heimat” Ott mumbled, reading from a dispatch. “Repatriierung. We place your force beyond the River Var.”

  “It will take some little time before my men are capable of—Such as are left.” And he was thinking, weak as he was, that this was some help to that reserve army, wherever it should be, since Ott’s forces would be held down here during the complex negotiations.

  “You will think it ironic,” Ott said, “that we permit you to resume combatant status when you are returned to the homeland. You have no combatants. You are weak as if you were prisoners.”

  “We’re both soldiers,” Massena said. “Tell me as a soldier what you think your chances are.”

  “You will have heard of this Reserve,” Ott said, “as some great new force of salvation. Believe me, it is a disaster. Generals without talent—”

  That would be poor Berthier.

  “—Blunderbusses for artillery, bayonets stuck on poles, donkeys for cavalry. I am not now using to you the words of artful demoralization. France is beleaguered—British ships in the Channel, our own forces on the Rhine. You have no resources, you are bankrupt. All this must you know already.”

  “General Massena,” Massena said bitterly, “in command of the Army of Italy. Repatri—Whatever your word was. It’s the damned waste, we’ve just rolled back to things as they were five years ago.”

  “Oh, one never worries about that. We concentrate on operations, not policy. We take and lose the same town fifty times. It’s a trade, no more.”

  They’ll never learn, Massena thought, and then felt brighter. Sugar sparking gently through the blood.

  A chief of men and not a chief of staff

  Is what you need to wage successful battles.

  If Bonaparte’s the wheat, this man’s the chaff:

  No marble here but only clay and wattles.

  A sort of wife, though not a better half,

  He flusters fast, his reason rocks and rattles:

  That’s Louis Alexandre Berthier,

  Who’ll fight a war with paper any day.

  To build a bridge upon the River Po,

  He pores upon a map that’s out of date,

  Whereon each inch is sixteen miles or so—

  Quite adequate for 1668.

  The loaded sappers take their tools and go

  And look upon a kind of Bering Strait.

  Their language, uninhibited and horrent,

  Is mercifully swallowed by the torrent.

  Lannes and Murat moan about the rations

  And wonder when the d———d things will arrive.

  The lack of rounds arouses Boudet’s passions:

  There’s thirty-two per man, not sixty-five.

  The troops indulge in groans and dental gnashings

  And wonder how in G———s name they’ll survive.

  Only the kindly calm of their First Consul

  Quietens the stomach and deflames the tonsil.

  The rain was unseasonable and heavy on Stradella. The First Consul was red-nosed and tearful with a cold, chewing aniseed and licorice comfits to soothe his throat, leaving licorice fingerprints on dispatch after dispatch. His speech was somewhat denasalized as he greeted Desaix, thin, burnt, wearing the dark odor of Egypt as Dante had been said to wear that of Hell. “By dear friedd,” or something like i
t, he said. “You are cobe id the dick of tibe.” Roustam brought salt in, recognized the Just Sultan and showed him thirty-two teeth in greeting. The First Consul or merely Great Sultan mixed salt with water and snuffed some up, going aaarkh and waaaargh and spluttering. The nasals were shocked into reappearing.

  “Egypt. Was it all then a waste of time and men and money and talent?” He had his own answer to give. “No, it was not. If nothing else comes out of Egypt there will be a beautiful book, many volumes, in a sense my child. And the whole of that past lost language recovered.”

  “By the British,” Desaix said. “By the British.”

  “Well, scholarship knows no boundaries. And history will tell the truth.”

  “Whose history, whose? And,” Desaix added, “does anyone want the whole truth? Whom does it ultimately profit?”

  The First Consul knew what he was thinking of; he looked at him warily. “We must take our chance,” he said. “For my part, I feel I control history. In a sense. I’ve been thinking of school curricula. In the reign of Charlemagne surely there is enough for any child to study—to gain an image, that is to say, of the true nature and destiny of France. Don’t you agree?”

  “Men crucified on a cartouche,” Desaix said irrelevantly. It was a phrase which he now seemed to have been waiting to deal, a good phrase nursed through the blockades and the rocky journey to Stradella. The First Consul said:

  “You’ve become a poet. A bulbul or whatever their word is. Well, you didn’t become a Muslim. Not,” he smiled, “like poor Menou.”

  “Abdullah they were calling him. He married a barber’s daughter.”

  “Nothing wrong in that,” the First Consul smiled. “He took everything a little too seriously perhaps—democracy as well as Islam.”

  “How seriously,” and Desaix was stern, “is one to take things?”

  The First Consul weighed that, his head inclined to a map, his eyes turned up to Desaix. “Generalship,” he said. “One plays to win.”