CHAPTER 27
FOR four days Moscow burned. More than four-fifths of the city was destroyed. Twenty thousand people perished in the flames.
Margont and his companions had set themselves up in a suburb that was relatively unscathed. Margont decided to go back to his original quarters in the hope of retrieving some belongings. Several times he got lost in this apocalyptic landscape. While some streets were blocked with fallen debris, elsewhere the flames had opened up the thoroughfare by wiping out entire blocks of houses. The residences and bell towers that had previously acted as landmarks had disappeared. Margont was surprised by the capriciousness of the flames: sometimes for no apparent reason a house had survived in the midst of a wasteland of destruction. Soldiers from every regiment were beavering away amidst the foul-smelling wreckage. They unearthed valuables, opened up trapdoors leading into cellars … Many were drunk – drunk on vodka, rum, beer, wine, kvass, punch or a mixture of them all. Margont came across infantrymen dressed up as marquises, strutting about in fur coats and sable hats, cashmere or fox fur jackets … The women they were with, canteen-keepers and sutlers or Muscovites, were laughing as they gazed at their silk dresses woven with gold and silver thread, and their fingers dripping with rings and precious stones. The streets were littered with an assortment of objects: mirrors with elaborate frames, paintings, ivory combs, crockery, statuettes, candelabra, rings and necklaces set with malachite or semi-precious stones, ceremonial pistols, clothes, books, samovars, carvings, pipes … The looters were picking up any item they could find, only to throw it away again twenty paces further on when they laid hands on something more valuable. Margont caught sight of Piquebois, who was also trying to find their former quarters.
‘Hey, comrade, what a sad sight!’ Piquebois exclaimed. ‘Looters and ashes. They’ve gone mad watching the city go up in smoke. It’s impossible to control anyone.’
A smell of rose-tinted tobacco was coming from his silver Russian pipe.
‘The most ridiculous thing,’ he went on, ‘is that they haven’t understood a thing. What’s valuable today is not gold but food. They’ll make a fine sight when they try going back to France with their knapsacks overloaded and their stomachs empty …’
What Margont had just heard seemed obvious to him, yet at the same time he refused to believe it.
‘Going back to France?’
Piquebois’s face, usually so composed, looked worried. ‘If the Russians have deliberately burnt down their capital, there’s little chance that they’re intending to make peace.’
Margont remained silent. Piquebois meanwhile was watching the few remaining inhabitants wandering amidst the wreckage. Most were desperate and in rags, alarmingly thin and starving. Some were tearing strips of flesh off the carcasses of animals to feed themselves. Others were diving into the Moskva to retrieve the wheat that the Russian soldiers had thrown in before evacuating the town. But the fermented grains made them ill.
‘We’ll soon look like them if we don’t get a move on before the winter,’ he prophesied.
The two men carried on walking.
‘Lefine and Saber have managed to collect a considerable amount of food: cucumber, onions, beer, sugar, hams …’
‘Hams?’
‘Yes, hams. As much salted fish as you could wish for, fat and flour. But no bread. Potatoes as well.’
‘All the same, we’d be well advised to start rationing ourselves now.’
Piquebois pointed at Margont with the end of his pipe to show his approval.
‘Fernand is trying to get some horses for us. We’ll need to be on our guard because, if the army really does have to withdraw, soon people will be killing one another for a mount.’
‘And they’ll end up slitting one another’s throats for a potato.’
They stopped in front of a church that had been spared by the blaze. People were congregating there to pray and to find shelter. Margont gazed at the walls, which were painted red and a delicate green.
‘It’s incredible,’ said Piquebois in surprise. ‘There’s no soot on the walls. I’m going to start believing in God.’
Margont pointed at the crowd dressed in rags.
‘They’re the ones who’ve cleaned it.’
They eventually found their former quarters. There was nothing left. However, someone had propped up a charred beam. A message written in French was pinned to the wood:
Frenchmen,
My name is Yuri Lasdov and this house was mine. I was only a shopkeeper, and this building and my two grocery shops constituted all my worldly goods. Just before fleeing the city with my family, I personally threw all my stock into the depths of the Moskva. I left one of my employees behind in Moscow to set fire to my beloved home in case any French dogs should take up quarters in it. I asked him to burn it down during the night in the hope that some of your kind would be roasted alive.
May Russia be the grave of France.
Margont went back to his new quarters. A lieutenant was pacing to and fro at the front entrance, waiting for him. As soon as he caught sight of Margont he looked up to the heavens in gratitude and hurriedly took him inside. Colonel Delarse was dying and wanted to speak to him.
‘Has he been injured?’ Margont enquired.
‘No. An asthma attack. One of the worst he’s ever had. It’s because of the fire: he’s inhaled ash.’
A Baden soldier dressed up as an Orthodox priest was drunkenly babbling away in made-up Latin, blessing the passers-by. The lieutenant angrily pushed him away with all his might as he passed, sending him flying on to the cobbles. The would-be priest called down on him all the curses of Heaven and Hell combined.
‘He’s spoken to the colonels in the division. Then he asked for you as well as several other officers.’
‘I feel flattered to have been sent for. What’s his reason for wanting to see me?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
Colonel Delarse’s quarters were in a mansion whose architecture was modelled on Versailles. Margont reflected yet again on the number of ties there were between Russia and France. This war seemed crueller than ever. Delarse was lying in a four-poster bed draped with veils to filter the air. Before even catching sight of him at the far end of his dark bedroom, you could hear him wheezing. The exhausted colonel was holding a pencil between his fingers.
‘Good day, Captain Margont,’ he scribbled on one of the sheets of paper lying on his blanket.
‘Good day, Colonel.’
‘I think it’s the end. Spare me those “of course nots” and other such nonsense.’
Margont nodded. The air entered Delarse’s lungs easily but then became trapped inside. Breathing out was slow and painful.
‘I’m not afraid. I have two mothers, my own mother and death. Both nurtured me as a child, both cradled me in their arms, both think of me constantly and both occupy my thoughts too much. I write this because my mother was so possessive that sometimes she was more stifling than my asthma. I tried everything to fight death: to deny its existence, to despise it, to plead with it, to taunt it … In combat I ran every possible risk as if to say to it: “Come on, come and get me! Do what you should have done long ago!” Sometimes I would even think that the fact of my still being alive was one of the many small things that were wrong with the world and that I should put it right. Sometimes, contrarily, I would expose myself to enemy fire to prove I was immortal.’
The pencil moved across the sheets of paper with surprising speed and no sooner had Delarse covered one with writing than he let it drop to the floor and started on the next. It was true that time was short …
‘One day I understood that by behaving like this I was merely re-enacting my childhood. Because even when I was well I needed to dice with death by playing silly games: jumping from tall trees, swimming as far as I possibly could … Anyway, the fact is that after every battle, once the danger was over and my concentration wandered, I was always surprised that I was still alive. One step forwards, two steps backwards. What cruel game was death playing with me?’
Delarse had become so emotional in writing these lines that his breathing quickened and became even wheezier, and his writing more untidy.
‘While thousands of soldiers were covering themselves in eternal glory at Austerlitz, I was choking at an inn. That says it all, doesn’t it? As an adolescent I read the biographies of Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. Both suffered from epilepsy and I thought that my asthma would not count against me any more than their fits did
