refused. Margont wanted to go to their aid but had to give up because the horse kept kicking out and whirling round on itself.
Lefine led his companions down a side street and they found themselves in a square. On two sides the buildings were on fire and the wind was blowing great quantities of white-hot ash about. It was like watching a gigantic swarm of fireflies landing all around. A volley of shots rang out and Margont realised that it was a firing squad shooting for all it was worth. The infantrymen were reloading as fast as they could. Some of them were walking among the bodies and finishing off the wounded by shooting them in the head. There were so many prisoners that they didn’t even bother to clear the dead bodies.
‘Who are you shooting?’ Margont enquired of an adjutant, who was trying to speed up the executions while keeping an anxious eye on the spread of the fire.
‘Fire-raisers. They’re convicts and fanatics … Look at them. They’re as drunk as lords!’
Faced with the muskets, some punched their chests to urge the French to open fire. The flurry of shots made Margont jump. A ragged individual, toothless and shaven-headed, approached him with a smile. Margont didn’t recognise him. Was he a soldier he had fought? Someone he had met in Smolensk? The man spoke to him in Russian.
A corporal put a friendly hand on his shoulder and, responding to his smile, said to him: ‘Come on, leave the captain alone and go back to your comrades. We’re going to shoot you. You’ll like that, won’t you, getting pumped full of lead?’
The condemned man nodded his head several times. The corporal burst out laughing, proud to have made his point.
‘The Russians have even emptied their asylums, Captain. They’ve put torches in the hands of lunatics and let them loose on the streets.’
Margont wanted to plead the man’s case.
An adjutant, anticipating his protests, decreed: ‘We are shooting all fire-raisers and I’ll have anyone who tries to interfere arrested.’
Margont and his companions moved away while the simpleton leapt about with joy: it was his turn at last to stand in front of the wall where the men were giving a fireworks display with their muskets.
The men of the 84th decided to stay in this square until the blaze died down. But a shower of ash came and buried their hopes. The light-coloured confetti soon changed into thick flakes, which became so numerous as to make it difficult to see. It was like being in the middle of a burning blizzard. Each intake of breath was agony because the heat made the lungs hurt and the debris caused endless coughing. Even drinking did not help. Worse still, the ash contained burning remnants.
A prisoner screamed as his mop of hair caught fire. The firing squad was not fast enough and had to complete its dirty task by rushing at the last captives with their bayonets. They didn’t want to finish them off because they thought the fire would do it for them. The adjutant bawled out his orders. They would put the wounded out of their misery, then they would form a column and finally they would evacuate the square. But his men had already disbanded. Undeterred, the adjutant grabbed two saddle pistols and began shooting at those writhing in pain on the ground.
To their great regret Margont and his friends had to abandon their horses for fear of ending up disembowelled or having a hand severed if they kicked out. They dived into a narrow street but they could hardly see a thing because the ash was so thick. They covered their mouths and noses with bits of their shirts to filter the air. So as not to lose anyone on the way, they advanced in single file, holding on to one another by the belt. At the sight of so many riches going up in smoke, soldiers were rushing into houses in an attempt to rescue food and treasures from the flames. As he passed, Margont heard dozens of them screaming as a blazing roof fell in or sections of a wall collapsed on top of them.
At last they reached a neighbourhood that had been spared by the fires. The houses, built of stone, and the gardens, had acted as fire breaks. The considerable number of soldiers gathered here had formed a human chain right down to the Moskva. All sorts of containers were being passed from hand to hand to douse new pockets of fire. But more and more were starting up as blazing debris flew through the air in all directions.
‘I told you it was this way,’ Saber reminded them.
He was woken by an explosion nearby. As he dressed hurriedly he thought that the Russian army was attacking Moscow to dislodge the French, though he knew this supposition was absurd. Distraught soldiers came to inform him that the city was in flames and, at first, as he rushed out into the inferno with a few men, he feared for his life. Then, gradually, he became mesmerised. He took advantage of the confusion caused by the collapse of several buildings to disappear into the maze of streets.
While other people were running for their lives amidst this labyrinth of stone, wood and fire, he just strolled about. He gazed in delight at the houses devastated by flames. Near a crossroads he heard calls for help coming from a dwelling with a burning roof. He rushed up to the door. He could hear voices nearby. He seized his scabbard and placed it so as to block the handle. A moment later it turned several times but as its movement was impeded it could not loosen the bolt. There was frantic banging on the door while the handle continued to be jiggled to no effect. The bars on the windows prevented any other way of escape. People were shouting and pleading in Italian. There was a dreadful noise as the roofing collapsed, followed immediately by screaming, terrible screaming that was like music to his ears. The man imagined their bodies. He could see the flames licking their skin, turning it red and covering it with blisters. He pictured their hair and their clothes catching fire in one burst and their mouths and throats filling with fire at their last intakes of breath. He could hear the screams of pain of those transformed into human torches and, finally, the dull thud of the bodies falling. He breathed in the smell of burnt flesh. It intoxicated him like strong alcohol. He thought of the charred bodies, shrivelled by the burning of the tissues and the evaporation of their fluids. He would have liked to open the door to gaze upon these hunched-up corpses as black as lumps of coal, but he was afraid of being struck full in the face by a wave of flame set off by the draught. He put on one of his gloves to retrieve his burning scabbard and continued on his way.
His footsteps were guided by screams of agony. He noticed a man leaving a house that was reduced to a whirlwind of flames. He was one of the few inhabitants to have stayed behind. He was frantically beating his shirtsleeves to extinguish the white-hot debris scattered all over it. He smiled, thinking that the man was coming to his aid. A look of amazement spread across his face when he saw the pistol and the barrel of the weapon pointing in the direction of the house. He was being told to … go back inside. He put his hands up as a sign of surrender and moved slowly to the side to show that he would slip away without causing any trouble. The bullet struck him full in the chest. Two sentries, who had been present at the scene, ran up, muskets in hand.
‘He was a fire-raiser. He was the one who set fire to the house,’ the officer told them immediately.
The soldiers saluted and went off again. The man continued on his way, looking out for every opportunity to revel in the slaughter. After a time, even the fire of Moscow was not enough to slake his thirst for blood. Then he wanted to believe in God again in order to believe in the devil.
He imagined himself in Hell. The rustling and the crackling were caused by gigantic creatures devouring the damned. He conjured up the most loathsome monsters imaginable that would do justice to the sermons of the sternest of preachers: Cyclopean ring-shaped worms intertwined, their jaws swarming with tentacles that seized those trying to escape; flies’ eyes whose myriad facets reflected screaming faces; mouths filled with rows of fangs that tore their victims to pieces … He could see immense shadows sprawling amongst the fiercest fires, crushing whole areas beneath their weight. More worms, covered in protuberances, laboriously hauling themselves out of a gigantic pit that went deep down into the infernal abyss, where everything was immeasurably worse than here. What existed within the secret of this chasm was beyond mere human understanding. The man took a few steps towards the abyss. He wanted to throw himself in, but the heat became too intense and forced him to retreat. He set off in search of streets that were enveloped in flames but where he would be able to move about. The night was still young. He would have more opportunities to see death and to kill.
