Napoleon Symphony: A Novel in Four Movements Read online

  “Away all this time fighting your stupid wars and now you sit there with your uniform buttoned up to your chin and not a single word for your little—”

  “Very well.” He sighed and put the newspaper down on a camp stool. She had, he now noticed, tacked some engravings to the walls—fat allegorical nudes by nameless and disregardable artists. She did not have the taste, this one, of that traitorous whore in Paris. And that too, another confrontation, along with those Directory swine. Oh yes, the time had come, and the Egyptian scheme must fall in abeyance since no money was available and, anyway, inflation had filled good French cash full of air. He suddenly shouted in agony:

  “And they sell comfits in the streets and snigger eighteen for a louis.” The fifes were playing outside, a detachment marching in from somewhere:

  Like the wild roar of the waters

  The guns of the soldiers advance

  Who rip the bleeding heart of France

  And will slay our wives and sons and daughters.

  To arms—

  “Yes yes. Come on then.”

  He used the nudes on the wall to prime a distracted appetite and then, fully dressed en général except for the lowered breeches, took her. She had better go back to that husband of hers, no they were divorced, and was he still alive for that matter? Raising his breeches, he worked out who would go with him. Admiral Ganteaume, that pig who had refused sea transport from Acre for the bubonic sick, said the Mediterranean was as good as free of the British, that a few frigates were available. Monge? Berthollet? Berthier? Yes, those for a beginning. He must get some paper and make a list.

  “You’re returning to France, is that not true?”

  “Who said that? Who is saying so? Who spoke of this?”

  “You’re tired of me, of course. Nevertheless, I’m going back with you. Sick of Egypt, why should I have to stay? Cleopatra, indeed. They call me Cleopatra, do you know that? Well, Cleopatra desires to see Paris.”

  “Who puts these rumors about? I return to Paris when I’m ordered to return. Not before. A soldier must follow orders.”

  “It’s you who make the orders, that’s well known. Lack of orders won’t stop you.” She squashed a mosquito against the carious wall. “Anthony.”

  And Lannes and Murat and Duroc and Lavalette and Merlin. And her son, flesh of her flesh, Eugène Beauharnais, good boy, promising aide, he must not be smirched further by her rottenness.

  “Anthony was a great lover. He lost a kingdom for love.”

  Bourrienne, of course. And my servant, a man needs his servant, my genuine Mameluke, all to show Paris for the whole adventure, no no, no call for despondency, work has been done, work is still to do, Turkey and India to take, I will be back when France is reordered. Those villains, those libertines, gluttons, incompetents.

  “In bed he made a woman desirous. Your skill is not there. Not in bed.” She slammed with her whisk at a great booming winged beetle.

  Andréossy, Marmont, Bessières, a couple of centuries of the Guides. Her, no. Very much no. Kléber can look after things, the calm, the republican, the efficient.

  “Not in bed.”

  “Yes yes, I will be back there with you in a moment.”

  General Kléber’s mouth opened and remained open. Hot breath emerged in a gust and discouraged the flies. “But,” he said. “I mean, this is a shock. The lack of preparation. I am not sure whether it’s possible to. This is, to say the least, a.”

  “Surprise, eh, surprise?” He was cheerful and brisk. “Well, peace as well as war can have its surprises. You are more than equal to surprises, Kléber.”

  “I had not realized that orders. I was aware of no courier.”

  “The Turks will not annoy us further, be sure of that. You have an ordered republic here to rule. Be stern in the Divan, parade armed might occasionally. More than equal to it. As for France, must we let these rogues ruin all we have made? I know where my place is, Kléber.”

  “But.” And then he crashed his resentment out. Bonaparte listened patiently, smiling sidewise occasionally at Roustam, his Mameluke, who was impressed by the noise and flying spittle. Thousands of men sick and homesick, a whole fleet sunk, here forever in this land of flies and camel-dung, the treasury seven million francs down, those savants to be responsible for, here till we die, I will write to the Directory, make no mistake about it, flagrant disregard of duty.

  “There, Kléber, I know how you must feel. You never said those hard words, they will go unrecorded. Rest assured I will do all in my power to effect your repatriation. It will take time, undoubtedly, but you shall not be here forever. It has been a great adventure, ah yes. The world will be enriched by a new science, what may be called Egyptology. Doesn’t that awaken pride in you? We shall be kings of the East yet, but the patrie is in danger, it calls me. Look after the little blonde, will you, Cleopatra as they, ha, call her. Keep the men happy, arrange for some productions of Molière and Racine, if they will take Racine. Keep the staff of our little newspaper on their toes. Do your duty. I’m off to do mine.” And, since Kléber would not take his proffered hand, he nodded pleasantly before leaving.

  “Swine,” swore Kléber, watching him mount his glossy Arab. “Traitor. Rat. Oh, you little bugger.”

  And we were at sea full forty-seven days, the key

  To the seas not ours but theirs, fleeing the

  Fleet free of the sea, we, in ennui not glee, greeting

  Each sun’s levee, each evening, thee, O sea,

  Seeing in sea the sheen of evergreen of damascene

  Of fellahin of guillotine of wolverine machine

  Foreseen nectarine Josephine intervene contravene

  Thirteen ravine gabardine and spleen and preen and

  Queen and teen, cheek bleak beak clique oblique

  Mystique pique physique, antipodes, antitheses,

  Hippocrates, parentheses, cleave, achieve, conceive,

  Believe believe believe

  That Bonaparte will kiss the soil of France.

  “The point is,” Gohier said, “that he will now have become aware of the official order of Fructidor. But he did not receive that letter before embarkation. Nevertheless the letter existed, he was authorized to leave Egypt even though he did not know of the authorization. A nice metaphysical point.”

  “To the devil with your metaphysics,” bloated Barras said. “He was ordered to return with his army. His army is still out there. That is guillotinable enough. Desertion of his army in the face of the enemy.”

  “We must be accurate. That enemy has been defeated. Luck always goes with him. Flowers and fruit and wine at Saint-Raphael. The news of the Aboukir victory was a kind of fanfare arranged by fate or something.”

  “Where?”

  “Saint-Raphael. Where he landed. Bernadotte recommends his arrest despite the popular acclaim. Let Bernadotte take over, it’s a War Ministry matter. Court-martial, shot not guillotined. If not for desertion, for evading the quarantine regulations. He may have this bubo thing raging in France in a week or two.”

  “Shot for that?”

  “Well, locked up. Till we decide what to do with him.”

  “We decide? We?”

  O shake yourself awake and take your lance,

  Triad of virtues shamelessly asleep,

  For Bonaparte has kissed the soil of France.

  Long languished in a treasonable trance,

  Directory, in indirection deep,

  O shake yourself awake and take your lance.

  “And,” Barras said, “how about her?”

  “She was calm enough when the telegraph came through, calmer than I was. Nothing to fear, she kept saying, meaning herself. Meaning that she’s been with my wife most of the time. Anyway, she has to get to Lyons before his brothers do.”

  “They’ll mince her alive, those two. Behind her back.”

  Swifter and swifter, smoking wheels, advance!

  Prepare a heart to plead, two eyes to weep,

&nbs
p; For Bonaparte has kissed the soil of France.

  “Look, mother,” Hortense said, as they sped south. “More flowers and arches. Is it for what he’s done or for what they think he’ll do? I mean, what do they think he can do?”

  Repeated and repeated in the clattering wheels: extraordinary man, extraordinary man. Madame de Montesson, was it? Never forget that you are married to an extraordinary man, my dear, an extraordinary man.

  “I fear they will be there first, Hortense, I fear it. They cannot forgive either him or me, any of them. That whaleboned tigress. Well, you may soften him, if not I. He is very fond of you, as of Eugène. I may well have to plead through my children.”

  Corsican brothers, foes of dalliance,

  Make vengeance spring, bid retribution reap:

  O shake yourself awake and take your lance!

  “A point you’ll hear much of,” Lucien said, “is this about the stigma of divorce. You change laws but you don’t get rid of stigmas. They’ll talk of divorce being no help to a public man with his way to make. But you know what we say.” They were already approaching Paris. Flowers and arches, crowds waiting all night with torches. God bless you, General Bonaparte, savior of our suffering country. Give us work, give us bread. Give us money we can spend.

  “She is what she is,” Joseph said, “and will not change. Apart from this adulterous business, she’s been involved in some very shady transactions. Army contracts. Bribes. She’s been running heavily into debt.”

  “I loved her, loved her, no man knows how much.”

  Arches and flowers. Welcoming dirty hands groping at the carriage windows. Clean up our country, restore us to honor, dignity, solvency. Something like that.

  “You’ll never be able to look our mother in the face again unless you. It has to be. Painful, yes. Make a new start.”

  Your sun it is that flames, your waves that dance,

  It is your children there that laugh and leap,

  For Bonaparte has kissed the soil of France.

  When she and Hortense returned, frustrated, throbbing with presentiments, to Paris, they found her trunks and boxes packed and stacked. His study door was locked. Eugène was there, his arms open to his sister. The distraught mother knocked and knocked, to no avail, till she lay prostrate in grief and weariness. The children’s sobs penetrated. The servants listened, as to an enacted drama.

  O GOD TO THINK THAT ONE TO WHOM I ENTRUSTED MY VERY INNERMOST HEART IN KEEPING but I swear it is all long over it was foolish but it is long done I have lived a life of solitary virtue there is evidence talk to Madame Gohier your whole family is against me they will say anything I WOULD HAVE DONE BETTER TO LISTEN TO MY FAMILY A MAN CAN TRUST ONLY HIS KIND O GOD GOD THE TREACHERY LET ME NEVER TRUST ANY WOMAN AGAIN I WHO SPENT SUCH TRUST ON A WORTHLESS WORTHLESS let us speak for our mother let us speak for ourselves let us be a happy and united family she loves you we love you you love her YES Eugène YOU ARE A BRAVE A FINE YOUNG MAN AND YOU HORTENSE ARE O GOD GOD GOD I was foolish God knows I was foolish but I learned my lesson long before these calumnies spread IF ONLY I HAD NOT but you were bound to be KNOWN KNOWN think of us think of lied to since MY ISLAND BREEDS OTHELLOS your family hates me BUT I LACK THE they will do anything to KILLING SPIRIT blacken me in your I AM A MAN eyes as for black they talk of the tarbrush which is more WHO SEEKS BUT calumny PEACE PEACE and out of a mere peccadillo oh you are breaking our AND LOVE they wish to break all our AND A FAMILY OF LOVING hearts hearts HEARTS.

  Marthe, oldest of the servants, nodded and nodded, toothlessly chewing every morsel, knowing that a strife of words meant communication, that no man could fight a woman’s tears or resist a woman’s white arms wreathing in anguish as in harp-playing, and a woman’s white bosom heaving, no better solvent of a man’s wrath than a decolletage, they would get to bed now in the gray dawn, some would get some sleep at last at 6 rue Chantereine, no, it was changed to rue de la Victoire, for him, him, he, he, he, la victoire. It was little Marie-Claire and the groom Antoine who were sent with the messages, that horrible black man he had brought from Africa guzzling in the kitchen and speaking little French. Lucien (head of the Five Hundred, big man now because of his brother there now at a lively peace conference in bed, big family, though only Corsicans) and Joseph (small head of the big family, they say it is his wife wearies and drags him down) arrived together as the day warmed. They were requested to go to the master bedroom.

  “Murdered her in her bed?”

  “Nonsense, he has not the murdering temperament.”

  “He is wearied out then, he has made his decision, where will he have sent her?”

  The Mameluke on his master’s mat growled, but Lucien, president of the Five Hundred, growled back and knocked. The entrez was tired but cheerful. They entered and saw him in bed with a naked woman. Well, he was entitled to seek consolation. They saw who the naked woman was.

  “We have resolved all, fratelli. God knows, there is enough fighting to come without having it here in the family. Let us engage the corrupt state out of a happy fortress.”

  Fighting? Family? He did not mean the real family, the famiglia. He was being melted into the Beauharnais. Their glands meanwhile played an opposed music. Those shoulders, those breasts she was now covering. Well, there it was, our common manly weakness: lechery will undo us all. Lucien had a confused image of a lot of lechery ahead for everyone, the whole of Europe a big bed.

  Love, linger in this brief cherubic chance trance glance;

  The eagles soar to trumpet from the steep:

  O shake yourself awake and take your lance,

  For Bonaparte has kissed the soil of France.

  “Honored,” he said. “Greatly.” Sieyès’s apartment smelled of bachelorhood, vaguely sour and dusty, with overtones of old apples that might really be the odor of his old books. The works of Voltaire, well aired, were in an alcove apart, under a flat wax effigy of the sage. As Sieyès sat down again he winced faintly. Bonaparte said:

  “Hemorrhoids? I know about hemorrhoids. It is a varicosity that the application of chipped ice will reduce. As common in the field as in the er study.”

  Sieyès had the appearance of a minaret that had been capped with an overlarge onion dome. His voice, to match, had the thinness of an old wailing bilal. “So you saw our head director. And what did Gohier say? That you were too young? Undoubtedly. He is a stickler for the letter, very much a lawyer. No directors under forty. How old are you?”

  “Coming up to thirty. The letter that kills, I told him. From your colleague Paul Barras I caught a whiff of metal polish. How much does he expect to be paid for cleaning up the crown?”

  “Well,” and Sieyès sniffled, “there seem to most to be two ways out only. Consider the condition of the country. Unemployment, thieves—”

  “I was robbed of my baggage on the way north.”

  “There you are then. Religious fanatics in the west, a million francs barely enough to buy a decent dinner. Those who don’t want the Bourbons back want a Reign of Terror, plenty of Jacobins in the two Councils—”

  “And what do you want, Citizen Sieyès?”

  “A new constitution, what else? We have no constitution.”

  “Just what I’ve been saying, ever since I returned. They threatened me with the law because I left Egypt without orders, but I told them they had no law.” The two looked at each other with some warmth, and the grim profile of Voltaire looked out at a world of renewals. “You, sir, made our first constitution. Is not the time coming again?”

  “Hardly the first, though my pamphlet on the Third Estate may be said to have started—What do you feel yourself to be, soldier or civilian? I see you are dressed as a civilian.”

  “I am both.” Sieyès saw, with a sudden dyspeptic jab, what that might mean—general in one sphere its equivalent in the other—but let it pass. He allowed himself to take it to mean that this soldier was free to be politically persuaded. He said:

  “We need a sword, we. I mean those of u
s who are agreed on the mode of action I will now outline. When I say a sword, I mean, shall I say, a show of force which shall be an emblem of order.”

  “I understand thoroughly, I quite understand, I see that very clearly.”

  “You will have had enough bloodshed already in your career. As I see it, the entire Directory must resign. This will mean panic in the two Councils, but I have already paved the way with certain of my friends among the Elders. We must have a meeting of the entire Assembly out of town. Paris is a panicky place, there is a mob, there are the unemployed. The palace at Saint-Cloud, I thought.”

  “I quite understand.” He smiled in total sympathy as Sieyès winced again. “Chipped ice, remember. Leeches too are bloody but good. My brother, of course, will be useful in this conspiracy.”

  “I did not use that word. Erase that word from your mind. That word must not be launched into the public air. It is merely proposed that the Councils ratify the liquidation of the Directory and approve the establishment of a committee of three to make a new constitution.”

  “Establishment? That sounds like a permanent triumvirate.”

  “One cannot yet look ahead to any mode of permanency. First things first. Now my friend Cornet in the Elders is to inflame his colleagues with oratory about danger and, while they twitter in apprehension, to propose that you take over command of the Paris district—for the safety of both Councils, naturally. The proposition will be carried, no doubt about it, nem con.”

  “Good.”

  “I am leaving it to Talleyrand—”

  “Can Talleyrand be trusted? It was proved that I could not trust him, he endangered the entire Egyptian—”

  “—Talleyrand to secure Barras’s resignation with a fair bribe—half-a-million, gold not paper. Gohier dithers, Gohier will give no trouble. That then will be the end of the Directory.”