Pure (15 page)

‘It comes as a shock to us,’ said Monsieur Monnard. ‘We had not suspected it.’

‘I am sorry for it, monsieur. But the church and cemetery have been closed these last five years. They could not be left to . . .’

‘It is hard for us to think of it,’ said Madame, a strange shrill voice.

‘I hope it is for the public good, madame,’ said Jean-Baptiste. ‘And this house will no longer overlook a place of public interment. Will no longer have to suffer the consequences of that.’

‘What consequences?’ asked Monsieur Monnard.

Jean-Baptiste glanced down at his plate, where, in the coolness of the room, his food was already starting to congeal. ‘Can it be entirely healthy, monsieur?’

‘Do we seem unhealthy to you?’

‘No. Of course. I did not mean to suggest . . .’

‘Well then?’

And Ziguette began to cry. A thin whining followed by a gulp, then a sob rising out of her bosom, all of it accompanied by a vigorous working of her face so that she looked to Jean-Baptiste like someone he had never seen before. She fled the room. Madame and Monsieur exchanged glances.

‘If I have . . .’ began Jean-Baptiste, half rising from his chair.

‘Poor Ziggi so dislikes any commotion,’ said Madame, and then made certain remarks, incomprehensible at first, but which Jean-Baptiste finally understood to mean that Ziguette had started her monthly bleeding and was, as a result, unusually sensitive.

The sequel to this uneasy scene took place later the same night. Jean-Baptiste was in his room, wrapped in the red damask of his banyan. He was reading a few lines out of Buffon, something about the manner in which certain non-poisonous creatures mimic the markings of their poisonous cousins, when he heard the familiar scratching at the door and, opening it, expected to greet the muscular Ragoût but found instead Ziguette, white as death, and dressed in her nightclothes. That she was uncorseted was apparent each time she sighed.

She wanted to explain, or to apologise or both or neither. After some whispering at the door, he invited her inside, and as there was only one chair, he offered it to her and sat on the bed. She did not seem startled by the banyan, did not comment on it. He put another stick on the fire. He tried to reassure her.

‘When it is done, think how nice it will be. In place of what you have now, a pleasant square. Gardens perhaps.’

She nodded. She seemed to be attempting to follow his reasoning, but her eyes had filled with tears again. ‘It is,’ she said, after a pause, ‘as though you wished to dig up my childhood.’

‘Childhood?’

‘Innocent, girlish days.’

‘I shall be digging only the cemetery. Earth and old bones. Many old bones.’

‘You did not grow up here,’ she said softly. ‘If so, you would feel differently.’

Sitting a little lower than her, his gaze had somehow settled on her lap. He imagined a slow effusion of blood, a blood-rose blooming in the pale stuff of her nightgown, spreading across her thighs then, perhaps, starting audibly to drip onto the floorboards . . .

‘When it is done,’ he said, raising his eyes to hers, ‘when it is over, it will be you who feels differently. The initial discomfort will quickly pass. You will be pleased.’

She did not argue against him. She began, discreetly, to look around his room, the bed, the trunk, the table with its books, the brass ruler. Then she stifled a yawn, apologised for disturbing him, and with a sweet, watery smile, the kind one bestows on a person who, through no fault of his own, is unable to understand what ought to be plain as day, she excused herself.

As she pulled the door shut behind her, he glanced at the ceiling, at the little hole over the bed, for once or twice during their interview he had heard the boards above them creaking.

He got onto the bed, stood on it. From such a perch, the ceiling was comfortably within his reach. He peered into the hole – nothing, no light, nothing at all. Then slowly, tentatively, he inserted the first finger of his left hand, much as the Comte de Buffon might have investigated the nest of some dubious insect, one that may or may not be merely mimicking its venomous nature . . . He could not swear to what he felt then, yet it seemed to him someone had softly blown on his finger, and for a while, balanced on the bed, he examined it.

3

He meets with Lafosse. January is burning low; nothing has started; not a bone has been shifted. He explains himself, endeavours to show himself a victim of circumstances which, in truth, he believes himself to be. He cannot begin without the miners and the miners have not arrived. They are coming, coming very soon, but they have not yet arrived. Halfway through his explanation, his somewhat hot-faced justification of himself, he realises that Lafosse does not really care about a few weeks here or there, will not remove him from his post or even threaten it. Who else, at short notice, would take on work like this? He presents his accounts. He is not unhappy to see that Lafosse is suffering with a cold.

What he can do alone, he does. From Louis Horatio Boyer-Duboisson he obtains canvas, wooden poles, rope, ship’s chain. He arranges with a toothless man called Dejour the supply of firewood, and works beside him and his sons when the first consignment is delivered. He cannot set foot in the market without tradesmen approaching him with offers and promises, sometimes with whispered warnings about a fellow tradesman who is nothing but a thief. Straw for bedding comes from the stables behind the coaching office on the rue aux Ours. It is dry and tolerably clean. Thirty spades, thirty picks arrive, also from Louis Horatio Boyer-Duboisson. At Valenciennes, the miners are not permitted to own their own tools. A man with his own spade may start to think of himself as independent.

On the fifth day of February, he receives a message from Lecoeur informing him that all is at last ready, that he is on the point of proceeding to Paris with the men and that he hopes to be there within a week. As the letter has taken two days to reach him, Jean-Baptiste starts his vigil two days later, standing hour after hour by the junction of the rue Saint-Denis and the rue aux Fers, though not so close to the Italian fountain as to make himself a target for the ribaldry of the laundry women.

The weather is cold but bright, thick frosts in the morning but then in the middle of the day almost warm. He sees the same faces again and again, sees how the streets have their currents, their little tides. He has a glimpse of Héloïse walking away from him towards the faubourg Saint-Denis. He sees Père Colbert – it can be no one else – the blue glasses, the greeny-black of his soutane stretched across the big, hunched back. He sees Armand, who tells him to hire a boy, but Jean-Baptiste does not wish to rely on a boy, a boy’s powers of concentration, nor does he want to sit idly in the Monnards’ house, waiting for something he sometimes thinks will never happen.

And then, at about two in the afternoon, precisely a week from the day the letter from Valenciennes was dated, Lecoeur is suddenly, improbably there, riding a wagon from the direction of the river and lifting his hat in elegant salute as he catches sight of Jean-Baptiste.

There are three vehicles in all, uncovered, and with large, mud-encrusted wheels. When the wagons stop, knots of locals, including the laundry women, gather to look up at the strangers, who look back, some of them with the wide and frightened eyes of driven cattle, others simply wonderstruck, their faces, perhaps, like those of Hernán Cortés’s men entering the golden city of Tenochtitlan. All traffic on the rue Saint-Denis comes to a halt. The horses droop their heads. One voids itself, noisily and greenly, onto the cobbles. Lecoeur clambers down from his bench at the front of the first wagon and strides over to Jean-Baptiste. In a flood of mutual relief, they clasp each other’s hands, firmly.

‘We have had several adventures on our way,’ says Lecoeur. ‘Not quite Circe or the Cyclops but enough to contend with. Yet here we are, ready to do your bidding.’

For a man who has been on the road in the company of thirty miners through all the inclemencies of deep winter, Lecoeur appears marvellously neat and fresh. A little brown wig on his head, his face decently shaved, a handsome red cloth round his throat, and on his breath just a whiff of the strong drink any man travelling in the cold might take, prophylactically.

‘You have them all?’ asks Jean-Baptiste, nodding to the wagons.

‘Thirty men and hand-picked. I believe you will find no fault with them.’

‘I am grateful to you,’ says Jean-Baptiste, ‘most grateful, but we must move the wagons into the street here.’ He points into the rue aux Fers. ‘We shall be shouted at otherwise. People here are not slow to make their feelings known.’

It is done in four minutes, the wagons and horses lined up along the north wall of the church. The men get down, stand in clumps, looking from Lecoeur to Jean-Baptiste as if silently weighing the authority of each, silently reaching their conclusions.

Jean-Baptiste unlocks the door into the cemetery. Here, then, is the first test. The men must be got into the cemetery, a place disturbing even to a mind as well-lit as his own. Will they baulk? And what then? Force them in? How? With the point of a sword? He does not have a sword.

‘If you would lead them,’ he says quietly to Lecoeur. ‘They are used to you.’

‘Very well,’ says Lecoeur. He goes through the door without hesitation. The miners shuffle in behind him. When the last is inside, Jean-Baptiste follows them, pulls the doors shut, joins Lecoeur.

‘It is as you promised,’ says Lecoeur, ‘a somewhat powerful impression.’

‘You become used to it,’ says Jean-Baptiste. ‘At least a little.’

‘It will inspire us to do our work more swiftly,’ says Lecoeur, attempting a smile.

Wood for a large fire has for days been piled in readiness between the church and the preaching cross. Now, with embers from the sexton’s kitchen, they light it. Smoke spirals into the still air; there is a sound of snapping in the fire’s heart; the smoke thickens; a dozen flames leap out from between the timbers. The miners make a circle round it, holding their hands to its warmth.

Jeanne comes out. Jean-Baptiste introduces her to Lecoeur. Are the men hungry? she asks. Oh, undoubtedly, yes. Very hungry. Then she will go to the market and fetch soup and bread for them. There is a stall that sells wholesome soup by the pail. It will not take her long.

Her offer – the good, practical sense of it – is quickly accepted. Lecoeur picks out three men from the circle to assist her. Jean-Baptiste counts money into her hand.

‘They are quite tame,’ says Lecoeur, indicating her helpers. ‘Tell them what you want of them and they will do it.’

They watch her go, the men plodding behind her.

‘She will be a great asset,’ says Lecoeur. ‘I foresee she will become their little virgin mother.’

‘When the men have eaten,’ says Jean-Baptiste, ‘they must put up their tents. Here, I think, in two rows of five. You, if you have no objection, will have your billet in the sexton’s house. It is only the old man and Jeanne there. I think you will be quite comfortable.’

‘I am here as a tool,’ says Lecoeur. ‘It matters very little where I am laid down at night.’

Jean-Baptiste nods. He is listening to the low voices of the men and remembering what, unaccountably, he had forgotten. At least half of the miners at Valenciennes speak only Flemish. When he worked at the mines, he learnt two dozen words of it but has long since lost them all.

‘You have their tongue?’ he asks Lecoeur.

‘I do not think I could court a lady with it,’ says Lecoeur, ‘but for our needs I believe I have what is necessary.’

After half an hour, Jeanne returns with the miners. Two of them carry steaming pails of soup. Jeanne and the third miner have their arms loaded with bread. Behind this party comes Armand, who strides towards Jean-Baptiste and Lecoeur and, while still some way off, calls, ‘I saw your smoke. I had begun to believe that you were merely an amiable dreamer. I shall always take you at your word now.’

‘Allow me to present,’ says Jean-Baptiste, ‘Monsieur Saint-Méard.’

‘Are you of our number, monsieur?’ asks Lecoeur.

‘I think I may be called so,’ says Armand, looking at Jean-Baptiste.

‘Monsieur Saint-Méard is the organist at the church,’ says Jean-Baptiste.

‘Former organist,’ says Armand, ‘once these gentlemen have started their work. But I intend to participate in my own destruction. Is that not the right of us all?’

‘The ancients believed that, monsieur,’ says Lecoeur.

‘And we are the new ancients, are we not?’

‘We are the men,’ says Lecoeur, ‘who will purify Paris. I said as much to my friend here when last we met. It will be a type of example.’

‘We will dispose of the past,’ says Armand, a voice pitched between earnestness and comedy. ‘History has been choking us long enough.’

‘I much approve of these sentiments,’ says Lecoeur, lowering his voice.

‘Then let’s approve of them over a bottle,’ says Armand.

‘It will be dark in two hours,’ says Jean-Baptiste. ‘The bottle must wait.’

‘Already he has turned tyrant on us,’ says Armand.

Lecoeur looks uncomfortable. ‘But he is right, monsieur. Quite right. There is much to attend to here. We will need our wits about us. Later, perhaps?’