Memory of Flames

CHAPTER 36

THE companies of the 2nd Legion were training in the courtyard, sullying the night with the din of their orders and discordant rhythmical steps. The voice of Colonel Saber could be heard at regular intervals bellowing a command, ‘In column formation!’ Then there would be the clatter of running steps, whisperings, the metallic clanking of a bayonet dropping to the ground, confused noises, hesitations, exasperated reprimands from the NCOs. Nothing ever went quite right and Saber would make them start all over again from the beginning. There he was, sitting straight up on his black horse, in full regalia, the Legion d’Honneur on his chest, pointing at wrongdoers with his sabre, for all the world like the god Odin trying to resurrect the Wild Hunt. But the heroic soldiers killed in battle would never get up again to defend Paris ...

Margont was recuperating his strength, stretched out on his bed -a real bed, not a louse-ridden palliasse. He was turning the button in his fingers and it gleamed in the moonlight. The distortions and the patterns caught the light in various ways, creating a changing mosaic of shadows and golden points. He felt as if he were handling a box of secrets that he would only be able to open once he had worked out the subtle mechanism. He applied his usual method of approaching the problem from several different angles, hoping that inspiration would strike, allowing him to see the button in a new way. And it did! To such an extent that he wondered if it was the same button ... Those symbols ... There was a sort of A, or a sort of 'A, or n ... An A with a strange accent, horizontal, and attached to the letter and rolled back on itself... A bizarre A’ surmounted by something ... Margont sat up suddenly. So suddenly that the button dropped from his fingers and fell on the floor. He could not quite take in the implications of what he had realised. His heart was thumping as if he were in danger; his muscles tensed - he was ready to attack; cold sweat trickled down his back ... His body seemed to have understood before his mind ... Margont wondered why he had not leapt up already to retrieve the button and examine it again. He rose and picked it up cautiously, as if it were one of those old hand grenades, which no army ever used any more because of their tendency to explode in the hands of the grenadiers supposed to toss them at the enemy. He held it in front of his eyes, closer and closer, to try to see it more clearly.

The strange consecutive marks he had mistaken for damage to the button were in fact the astonishing outline of symbols. It was not that the letter was very badly worn away, it was actually only a little damaged. What had misled him was that it was represented in a very unusual way. An A’ styled in the Cyrillic way and topped by a cross with triangular arms: the monogram of Tsar Alexander and the cross of the Opolchenie, the Russian militia. The button came from a Russian army uniform. Margont’s mind was immediately filled with unwelcome memories. How vivid they were! An expanse of grass spread itself rapidly across the floor: the immense Moscow plain unfurled in front of him, pushing back the walls of the bedroom as if they were mere straw. Lines and lines of French soldiers advanced elbow to elbow; Margont was marching with them, Lefine at his side. Cannonballs rained on them, mowing men down, dismembering them, throwing up unbelievable sprays of blood. ‘Close ranks! Close ranks!’ yelled Margont. The Russians were converging on them, dark-green multitudes slicing through the vivid green of the hills. They were shouting ‘Hurrah! Hurrah!’ seemingly contemptuous of the missiles raining down on them as well. They were everywhere, on all sides, terrible hordes hurtling down the slopes towards them. Margont was covered in blood, but it wasn’t his, or perhaps it was and he was well and truly injured; he no longer knew ... The lines collided, skewering themselves on the thousands of bayonets. A Russian infantryman charged Margont, his eyes blazing, his mouth stretched wide in a yell of rage, like one of the three Furies. A French soldier intercepted him, brandishing a bayonet, and the Russian, carried away in a trance by his ardour, was impaled on the point. He used his last seconds of life to fire point-blank at his adversary’s stomach. The two soldiers collapsed at Margont’s feet. They seemed to be arm in arm, their lips touching in a bloody parody of a kiss. Margont was wreathed in gun smoke. All around him, figures were massacring each other, making an absurd Chinese shadow theatre. The plain was gradually filling with a reddish light.

Then another memory. It was hot. Something was burning. Everythingwas burning. Moscow was in flames. Margont found himself running through the streets, dressed any old how, and still only half awake. Lefine, Saber and Piquebois were dragging him in their wake. Buildings were falling down, spitting out millions of burning fragments, which filled the night, twirling in the wind like swarms of fireflies, then falling to the ground further away. It was like being caught in the rain, but the drops were incandescent. The very night seemed to be turning red as if it were about to burst into flames itself. Then somewhere on the road back to France, snow began to fall. Flakes swirled in a thick fog. Margont shivered inside his many layers of clothing, walking on a carpet of white, seeing nothing but white, swallowing it, even. White on white. The world seemed to have been erased. During the last hours of the Grande Armée’s retreat from Moscow, Margont felt he was the last person alive. The snowflakes were covering him over little by little, obliterating him too. And then a fissure appeared in the ground, growing wider. No, not a fissure, it was the river whose black waters were carrying along blocks of ice and corpses. The Berezina. Margont went over to the riverbank. He was so tired. The retreat had been going on for weeks. Marching, always marching under attack from the Cossacks, the partisans or the regular army. He was so desperate he thought of submerging himself in the water. Yes, how tempting to sink into an inky sleep ... A point of light appeared in the depths of the current. It was a little gold object apparently rising to the surface. The button ... Its feeble golden glimmer was shining in his palm ...

Margont came back to reality. He was here in his officers room in his barracks. He was in Paris, Moscow was over. He repeated that obvious truth to himself.

He closed his hand around the button, willing it to disappear. But it was too late, he could not now close the Pandora’s box. A second flood of memories washed over him and he sank again into chaotic reminiscences of snowstorms and massacres.