The Flood Read online

  When the war began, Julien shrugged. He was going through a phase of worshipping the poets of 1830. He never went anywhere without a Musset or a Hugo in his pocket; he’d be reading them in the lecture hall.3 If you passed him a newspaper, he’d send it on its way, disdainfully, without even so much as a glance, and then get back to his poem. To him it seemed grotesque to get excited about men fighting. But that changed, after a catastrophe that turned his whole life upside down. Louis failed his exam and, one fine day, he enlisted, just like that. He had been mulling it over a long time. One of his uncles was a general; surely, he reckoned, he’d be able to get on without having his qualifications. Anyway, he could try Saint-Cyr again, when the war was over.4 Julien was dumbstruck when he heard. He was no longer the kid who got angry about war, protesting like a girl, but his hatred never wavered. He managed not to cry in front of us; he wanted to show that he was a tough guy. As soon as his brother set off, though, he became one of our most avid newspaper-readers. We walked together to and from the Lycée, talking about nothing else but potential battles. Each day, I remember, he’d bring me to the Jardin du Luxembourg. He would put his books down on a bench and trace a map of northern Italy in the sand. That way he could be with his brother. Deep down, he was frantic, always thinking that Louis would be killed.

  Even now I can’t work out why war frightened Julien so much. He was no coward. He just disliked anything physical, setting it far below the life of the mind. To live like a scholar or a poet, in a shuttered study, seemed to him our true goal on this earth. The mayhem out on the streets, the fistfights and the duelling – the stuff that puts muscle on you – seemed to him evidence of savagery. At the circus, the strongmen and acrobats and lion-tamers all deserved contempt. And he was in no way patriotic, let me tell you this now. We used to give him a lot of stick, finding it shameful; I can still see him smile, shrugging his shoulders.

  One of my most vivid memories of that time is the fine summer’s day when news of the victory at Magenta spread through Paris.5 It was June – a gorgeous June, unlike what we usually get in France. It was a Sunday. We had planned the day before, Julien and I, to go for a walk on the Champs-Elysées. He was very anxious about his brother – he had sent no letters – and I wanted to distract him. I called for him at one o’clock, and we sauntered down to the Seine, with the lazy scuff of pupils who no longer have the warden watching over them. You don’t really know Paris if you haven’t been there on of these incredibly hot summer days. Houses cast sharp black shadows on the white pavement. Between the shuttered façades you saw nothing but a solid stripe of blue sky. When Paris is hot, I don’t know anywhere that’s hotter. It’s a furnace; stifling, suffocating. Some corners of the city are deserted, like the quays, which layabouts abandon for the cooler groves on the outskirts. Yet how pleasant it is to stroll along the wide, quiet quays with their rows of little leafy trees, overlooking the great flowing river, buoyant with its bobbing throng of boats!

  So, we were at the Seine, walking quayside, shaded by trees. Faint sounds could be heard from the river, its water rippling in the sun with sweeping silvery glimmers. There was something in the air that Sunday. Paris was getting ready to hear the big news that everyone – every thing even – seemed to be waiting for. The Italian campaign, which ended so quickly as we all know, had begun successfully; but so far there had been no decisive battle, and Paris had spent two days waiting for just such an encounter. The great city listened, rapt, for the faraway sound of shelling.

  This memory has stayed with me very clearly: I had just told Julien how odd I felt, saying that Paris seemed spooky, when we reached the Quai Voltaire and saw, in the distance, a tiny group of people standing outside the office where they printed Le Moniteur.6 There were seven or eight people, reading a poster. From the other side of the street we could see them talking animatedly, laughing. We crossed eagerly. The poster was a handwritten telegram; it said, in four lines, that Magenta was taken. The wax fixing it to the wall was still wet. That Sunday, we were clearly the first to know, in all of Paris. People came running, so desperate to find out! Complete strangers shook hands, chatting away. A gentleman with a ribbon in his buttonhole explained to a workman how the battle must have unfolded. Women laughed enticingly, and looked as if they were tempted to throw themselves at anyone who passed. The huddle grew. Passers-by were beckoned over; coachmen pulled up and climbed down from their seats. By the time we left, more than a thousand people were there.

  It was a great day. In a few minutes the news had crossed the entire city. We thought we’d be the ones telling everybody, but it overtook us; we couldn’t turn a corner or walk down the road without seeing happy faces. The news floated in the sunshine; it was carried on the breeze. In half an hour, the atmosphere had changed; tense anticipation had given way to jubilant outpouring. For two hours we ambled among the Champs-Elysées crowds laughing with joy. Women had a glint in their eye. Magenta was on everyone’s lips.

  However, Julien was shattered, looking as pale as ever.

  ‘They’re laughing now,’ he muttered. ‘Maybe tomorrow they’ll be crying.’

  I sympathised with his private torment. He was thinking about his brother. I joked around to try and put him at ease; Louis was sure to come home a captain, I said.

  Julien shook his head. ‘If he comes back at all!’

  Paris lit up as night fell. Lanterns hung in every window. In the poorest homes, they had lighted candles; I even saw some rooms with just a lamp on a table, pushed against the window. It was a warm night, and all Paris came out into the streets. People sat on doorsteps as if ready for a parade. Crowds gathered at junctions; the bars and cafés were rammed. There was a smell of gunpowder in the air; kids were setting off fireworks.

  I’ll say it again, I’ve never seen Paris more beautiful. All the great things came together that day: the sunshine, a Sunday, and a victory. There wasn’t the same sense of euphoria after the news came out about the crucial battle at Solferino,7 even though that brought an end to the fighting; the homecoming was a stately affair, not spontaneous like these popular celebrations.

  We got two days off out of Magenta. We got even more excited about the fighting, and were among those who thought peace had come too quickly. The school year was coming to an end. Holidays were on the way. Restless, we looked forward to our freedom; Italy, the army, and our victories all evaporated in the upheaval that followed the end-of-year prizegiving. That year, I remember, I was supposed to go down south for the summer. I was about to set off – it was early in August – when Julien begged me to stay until the 14th, the day of the homecoming parade. He was ecstatic: Louis was coming back a sergeant, and he wanted me to witness his brother’s moment of glory. I said I’d stay.

  The soldiers camped just outside Paris for several days; lavish arrangements were made to welcome them back. The parade would come in through the Place de la Bastille, follow the Boulevards, go down the Rue de la Paix and cross the Place Vendôme. The boulevards were lined with flags. On the Place Vendôme, large platforms were erected for Government ministers and their guests. The weather was splendid. Applause erupted along the length of the Boulevards at the first glimpse of the troops. The crowds packed in on both sides of the road. Heads piled up at windows. Women waved handkerchiefs, tearing flowers from their dresses to throw down to the soldiers. Throughout all of this the regiments kept marching past at a steady pace, to wild cries of bravo. The bands played; tricolours fluttered in the sunshine. Many of them were riddled with bullet holes; the crowd applauded, showing special appreciation for one flag that was shredded and draped with spoils. An old woman standing at the corner of the Rue du Temple dived into the marching ranks to hug a corporal; her son, I suppose. The good lady was almost carried away on the tide of joy. There were soldiers in tears.

  Place Vendôme was the venue for the official ceremony. Ladies in their frocks, magistrates in their gowns and civil servants in uniform all clapped respectfully. There were speeches and presenta
tions. In the evening, the Emperor hosted a banquet of three hundred at the Louvre, in the Salle des États. He made his celebrated speech over dessert: ‘If France has done so much for a friendly people, what would she not do for her own independence?’ Unwise words, which he must have regretted later.

  Julien and I had watched the parade from a window on the Boulevard Poissonnière. The day before, he had visited the army camp and told Louis where we’d be. As his regiment came by, Louis gave us a nod. He had aged tremendously, his face bony and weathered. At first I didn’t recognise him. Compared to us – we were pale and delicate, like women – he looked like a man. Julien watched him for as long as he could keep him in sight, and I heard him murmur, with tears in his eyes, shaking with emotion:

  ‘Beautiful… It is beautiful…’

  That evening I met them in a café in the Latin Quarter. It was a quiet tiny place down a backstreet, where we often met to talk undisturbed. By the time I arrived, Julien was already engrossed in Louis’s tales of Solferino, listening with both elbows on the table. Never was a battle more unexpected, Louis said. The Austrians were supposed to be pulling out. The Allied troops were on the march when suddenly – it was around five o’clock on the morning of the 24th – they heard gunfire. The Austrians had done a U-turn and outflanked us. Skirmishes broke out involving each division in turn. The generals fought all day long – but, isolated from one another, they had no clear idea of the overall pattern that the battle was taking. Louis had taken part in fierce hand-to-hand combat, in a cemetery, in the middle of all the graves; that was about as much as he’d seen. He said that a terrible storm had broken towards the evening. So the sky played a part: it was the thunder and lightning that silenced the cannons. The Austrians had to retreat, utterly drenched. The two sides had been shooting at each other since six in the morning. It was a terrifying night, because the soldiers didn’t know who had won; in the dark, every sound seemed to signal a new phase of battle.

  Not once during this long narrative did Julien’s eyes stray from his brother. Maybe he wasn’t even listening, happy simply to be able to sit in front of him. I’ll never forget that evening, in this empty, out-of-the-way café; while Louis was marching us across the blood-soaked fields of Solferino, we could hear the buzz of Paris out on the lash. When his brother had finished, Julien said quietly, ‘So what? You’re back. Who cares about anything else!’

  3

  In 1870, eleven years later, we were grown-ups. Louis was a captain. Julien, after dabbling in this and that, had slipped into the work-shy yet ever-so-busy lifestyle of the sort led by well-off Parisians who loiter at literary parties and first hangings without ever picking up a pen or a paintbrush. He’d published one decent collection of poems, but that was it – nothing more. I saw him now and again; he talked about his brother, posted to some garrison town out in the sticks.

  The news that we would be at war with Germany was greeted with great enthusiasm. Talk all you like about how Napoleon III plunged France into conflict out of self-interest; you have to admit that the entire nation answered his call.8 I’m only saying what I saw happening around me. There was a lot of hot-headed bluster about taking back our rightful border at the Rhine, and about getting revenge for Waterloo, which was a millstone around all our necks.9 If only the campaign had started with a victory, France would surely have celebrated this war, instead of cursing it. Of course, had there been no fighting, we would have been disappointed, especially after the stormy exchanges in the Corps Législatif.10 Once war was certain, every heart beat faster. I’m not talking about the crowds that were chanting on the boulevards, or the people who, allegedly, were paid to drum up support; I’m talking about the decent, hard-working majority who straight away traced out on maps the progress of our troops all the way into Berlin. We were going to drive back the Prussians with our rifle butts! Our complete confidence in the victory was a legacy of the days when our troops conquered all Europe. No danger of such jingoism these days.

  On the Boulevard des Capucines one evening I saw crowds of men coming out of work and yelling À Berlin! À Berlin! Someone tapped me on the shoulder. It was Julien. He was grimfaced. I laughed, berating him for not getting behind the cause.

  ‘We’ll be beaten,’ he said, quietly.

  I argued, but he shook his head, without giving a reason. He had a feeling, he said. I asked him about his brother, who was already at Metz, and Julien showed me a cheerful letter that he had received the day before. The war would be a relief, wrote Louis; life in the barracks was killing him. He vowed to come home a colonel, wearing a medal.

  With this letter I tried to convince Julien that he was being pessimistic.

  ‘We’ll be beaten.’

  Paris was anxious again. I recognised the city’s expectant silence; I’d heard it in 1859, before the opening battles of the Italian campaign. But this time the silence seemed more fearful. Nobody seemed to doubt victory; and yet there were ominous, unsourced rumours. It was a surprise, people said, that our forces hadn’t taken the initiative and brought the fight behind enemy lines from the start.

  One afternoon some big news broke on the Stock Exchange: we had pulled off a comprehensive victory, bagging a good haul of cannons and capturing a whole division. Homes were being decked out with bunting, and passers-by were hugging in the streets, when we were forced to recognise that this story was made up. There had been no battle. Such victories seemed only natural to me – indeed, predestined – but this hoax chilled me to the bone. The nation fell for it, being too quick to celebrate, and we had to save our glee for another day. I suddenly felt very sad; an unparalleled disaster was looming over all our heads.

  I’ll remember that fateful day forever. Again it was a Sunday, and plenty of people must have thought of that glorious Sunday when Magenta fell. It was early August. No more radiant June sunshine; the air was heavy, and storm clouds lowered over Paris. I had been staying at a small town in Normandy; coming back, the city’s deathly feel took me by surprise. Summer Sundays can be miserable, with their deserted streets and shuttered shops. But on this particular Sunday there was an extraordinary sense of doom. Groups of three or four people were scattered around the boulevards talking quietly. At last, I heard the terrible news: we were crushed at Froeschwiller,11 and they were flooding into France.

  I have never seen such panic. The whole of Paris was struck dumb. We lost! How could it have happened? The defeat seemed unjust, monstrous. It dealt a blow to our sense of patriotism, but it also destroyed our capacity to trust. The scale of the disaster was beyond us, at that time; we still hoped that our soldiers would have revenge. Nonetheless, we were ruined. There was deep shame in the city’s sorry silence.

  It was an awful afternoon, and an awful evening. The triumphant party atmosphere was a thing of the past. No come-hither smiles from passing women; no strangers making friends. A despairing city was shrouded in blackest night. No fireworks in the street, and no lanterns at windows. Early the next morning I saw a regiment marching down the boulevard. People stopped to watch, looking sad, and the soldiers passed with their heads hung low, as if they were responsible for the defeat. Nobody applauded. I had watched the victory parade after the Italian campaign come marching through this very same spot, when the reception had been earth-shaking. Nothing saddened me more.

  The terrible, nervous wait began. Every two or three hours I went to the door of the city hall on the Rue Drouot, in the 9th, where they put up the telegrams. There were always people waiting, sometimes as a many as a hundred odd. They weren’t noisy; they talked in hushed tones, as though keeping vigil in a sickroom. The minute a clerk stuck a telegram on the notice board, we rushed to read it. But for a long time there was only bad news, and the panic deepened. Even today I can’t walk down the Rue Drouot without thinking of those wretched times. There, on that pavement, the people of Paris had to suffer the most painful torture. We heard the gallop of German troops getting closer, hour by hour.

  I saw Julien ofte
n. He didn’t crow about having predicted the defeat. He seemed merely to think that what had happened made perfect sense. Many Parisians were still shrugging their shoulders at the idea that the city could come under siege.12 A siege: was that even possible? Others sought to demon strate, as if by mathematical proof, that there could be no blockade of Paris. With a prescience that struck me only later, Julien declared that we would be surrounded on the 20th of September. He was still the schoolboy who loathed physical exercise. This war business was interrupting his routine; he wasn’t himself. Why in God’s name did people need to kill each other? He raised his hands to the heavens in protest. Yet he read all the dispatches eagerly.

  ‘Were it not for Louis,’ he insisted, ‘I’d be writing poems, waiting for all this to end.’

  He got letters from Louis only very rarely. The news was terrible; the troops were losing heart. The day we heard about Borny,13 I met Julien at the corner of the Rue Drouot. Paris had a glimmer of hope that day. There was talk of victory. But Julien seemed even more despondent than normal. He had read somewhere that his brother’s regiment had, in performing heroically, suffered severe losses.