The Officer's Prey

CHAPTER 15

THERE were dead and wounded everywhere, as far as the eye could see. Margont, still suffering from concussion, was leaning against a weeping willow – a bittersweet irony. In some places, bodies were lying still locked in a deadly embrace. A magnificent grey horse was lying on its side, scraping the ground with its hoofs, trying to get back on its feet. All that was left of its forelegs was stumps. Everywhere men were groaning, crying, calling for help, pleading with the survivors or insulting them for their indifference. Many of the wounded were clamouring for a drink. Margont began to wander among them, tossing aside an empty gourd here and picking up a full one there from a dead body where it was no longer needed. He wondered about this question of thirst. Was this how the body tried to make up for the loss of blood? Or was it a psychological reaction? People often said, ‘If you’re wounded, drink some wine.’ Did they think the body short-sighted enough to mistake one sort of red liquid for another?

‘Thank yer, officer, sir. Will yer ’ave some wine as well?’ asked a French grenadier, handing his gourd to Margont.

His thick blond moustache glistened with drops of water. He was clenching his stomach to stanch the flow of blood.

‘Sorry, too much wine is bad for the health,’ Margont answered him.

The soldier began to laugh but pain contorted his smile. ‘That’s a good one, Captain!’

Margont only had to stretch out his arm to open the knapsack of a Russian musketeer lying flat on his stomach. He took out a flask, opened it, tasted the contents and handed it to the grenadier.

‘Vodka?’

The man’s moustache twitched with pleasure. ‘Is it Russian wine?’

‘Stronger stuff than that.’

The grenadier downed what was left in the flask in one gulp.

‘I feel like searching all the kitbags on this bloody plain!’

Margont patted him on the shoulder and moved on, motioning to some exhausted stretcher-bearers.

He stopped in front of a young hussar. He had been slashed across the chest with a sabre. Something was poking out of his slit coat. Intrigued, Margont took hold of the object. It was a small Russian icon of a slender Virgin Mary holding the newborn Christ in her arms. Strangely, the look on the mother’s face was uncertain: her joy seemed tinged with sadness, as if she had an intuition that her happiness would end in suffering. Margont replaced the icon on the corpse’s heart. A little further on he came across the body of the musketeer he had struck. The Russian was breathing oddly, breathing in and out in short gasps, as if wanting to taste life a little longer, on the tip of his tongue, before dying. Margont again motioned to the stretcher-bearers and moved on. He was lucky enough to find his sword, then spent the night going from one wounded soldier to the next, giving them a drink, promising to have a letter delivered to a wife or relative …

Just before dawn, he was so exhausted that he could hardly keep his eyes open, so he slowly made his way back to his regiment. Despite all his efforts and those of the numerous volunteers, there seemed to be just as many calls for help. He passed a dozen or so infantrymen of the 92nd attempting to put out a fire by urinating on it in one concerted effort. But the men were so drunk that the spurts of urine merely soaked their trousers, giving rise to screams of laughter or scuffles. This scene encouraged Margont to indulge in his favourite game: watching people.

Many others had also decided to give some meaning to their lives by helping the wounded. Some acted out of high-mindedness; others out of superstition, to thank Heaven or fate for having spared them; others out of a sense of guilt, to justify having survived. Margont called them the ‘saviours’. But a considerable number of soldiers preferred to avoid this harsh reality by drinking themselves into a stupor or deserting. Some even ended up committing suicide. These were the ‘runaways’. There were other categories: the profiteers, who stole from the dead and the wounded who were too weak to defend themselves.

Margont sat down against a birch tree, utterly spent. A few feet away a strange spectacle was unfolding: in front of other lancers and laughing French hussars, a Polish lancer was embracing a Russian hussar. The two men were not fighting but dancing, albeit clumsily. A waltz. The Russian appeared to be dead drunk. Another Pole also wanted to dance with the hussar but he accidentally let go of him and he collapsed. He was not so much dead drunk as dead. The second Pole got him back on his feet, grabbed him around the waist and in turn began to dance, egged on by the audience. These belonged to the category of the ‘exorcists’. They indulged in morbid games and their imagination was boundless. But the rule was always the same: to poke fun at death, to demystify it, to debunk it. By acting like this they were less afraid. However, they sacrificed some of their humanity in the process. Were they really winners in the end? Then there were the ‘dumbstruck’, who wandered about aimlessly, silent, cut off from the world, unable to take the slightest initiative; the ‘desperate’, who wept endlessly and who needed to be watched in case they blew their brains out; the ‘believers’, who prayed, hoping to find a mystical meaning in this chaos … Then, to bring this incomplete catalogue to a temporary conclusion, there was the vast group of those who thanked one another for having provided mutual support, who celebrated the baptism of fire of the younger ones, who boasted of their exploits … These Margont dubbed the ‘reckless but harmless’ or the ‘humane’, because one way or another everyone belonged in part to this group.

Margont slid slowly down the tree trunk and stretched himself out on the ground. The grass stroked his face. Sleep felled him more effectively than the gunfire from a whole Russian battery.

The Russians withdrew the following day. It was not the titanic confrontation between the two armies that the Emperor so greatly longed for. It was ‘only’ the fighting at Ostrovno.

*

Margont felt himself being unceremoniously lifted up. He mumbled something, was dropped and went crashing to the ground. He leapt back up, his hand on the pommel of his sword. Two infantrymen in bloodstained uniforms were staring at him in consternation, open-mouthed and pale-faced with huge purple rings around their eyes.

‘We had no idea, Captain …’

‘Yes, we had no idea …’

‘But we would have realised, Captain …’

‘You had no idea what?’ yelled Margont.

His anger paralysed the two men. Then he noticed a cart on which French corpses were being piled up. There was another for the Russians.

‘You wanted to throw me into that cart, didn’t you?’ he shouted.

‘But the thing is … you were lying there like that …’

‘But we would have realised that you weren’t … that you weren’t you know what,’ the second gravedigger assured him.

Margont looked at his uniform. It was spattered with blood, the blood of those he had wounded or killed, the bodily remains of men blown to pieces by round shot.

‘Check that all those you’ve put in that wretched cart really are dead,’ he ordered, more by way of punishment than in the vain hope of saving anyone.

The soldiers carried out the order, still terrified by what they had superstitiously thought was someone rising from the dead.

Margont ascertained the whereabouts of his regiment. On his way there he looked at his watch, an extravagance that had cost him a fortune but whose mathematical precision was in keeping with his own methodical mind. It was four o’clock. He did not grasp immediately what the two hands were stubbornly telling him. He called out to a cavalryman from the 9th Chasseurs who was wandering about in search of a comrade. The fellow confirmed that it was already late afternoon. Margont also learnt that more fighting had taken place that very morning, near Vitebsk, though it had not lasted long.

Margont bought a handsome horse with a brown coat and a black mane from a crafty mounted chasseur, who swore that he had set off on the campaign with a spare mount. The beast was surprisingly robust and well fed.

‘He’s called Wagram,’ the seller explained.

‘For the price you’re charging me, you could have included its Russian saddle.’

‘Not at all, Captain! It’s my horse! He’s called Wagram!’

‘That horse is more likely to be called Ostrovno than Wagram.’

At that moment Lefine arrived.

‘So you’ve just joined the hussars of the Russian Guard, have you, Captain?’

‘He’s called Wagram!’ the chasseur stubbornly maintained.

Margont shrugged his shoulders. ‘Wagram or Jena, as long as it’s not called Eylau or Spain.’

The chasseur walked away grumbling about his poor old father who’d bled himself dry, struggling to plough a barren field in order to be able to buy Wagram for his son from the meagre proceeds of his hard toil. His poor father must now be turning in his grave, hearing today the insults of ‘certain people’.

Lefine felt the horse’s flanks. ‘I’ve never seen such a fat horse.’

‘But all our horses were like that before the start of the campaign.’

Lefine continued to stroke the animal’s belly. He was envious of this stomach, which was so much fuller than his own.

‘He’s so impressive that next to him our cavalry look as if they’re mounted on dogs. What’s he to be called, then?’

‘Macbeth.’

‘Macbeth. What gibberish is that? I prefer Wagram. I can show you a good shop for a saddle,’ he added, indicating the battlefield with a broad sweep of his arm.

‘Let’s go back to the regiment for news of our friends.’

‘On that very subject I’m pleased to find you still in one piece. Antoine, Irénée and I have been looking for you everywhere.’

‘I was knocked out by a musket butt,’ Margont lied.

‘Before returning to the regiment, I’m going to take you somewhere. But first I want to tell you what Colonel Delarse has been up to. The farce began as soon as the fighting had ended. The colonel wanted an interpreter. While everyone was scurrying around trying to find one for him, he was moving from one prisoner to another trying to make himself understood, because patience isn’t his strong point. Dozens of people were staring at him goggle-eyed, not understanding a word. He was shouting: “Where is Lieutenant Nakalin? Lieutenant Nakalin, you ignorant peasants!” In the end they found a Russian trumpeter who spoke French.’

‘Why didn’t they get a Polish lancer to act as an interpreter?’

Lefine looked up to the heavens. ‘They’d brought the colonel at least fifteen of them but he sent them all packing. He’s no longer on speaking terms with the Poles. He thinks they waited too long before charging to extricate us from the green coats.’

Margont gritted his teeth.

‘Well, yes. It is pretty stupid, of course,’ Lefine concluded.

‘As he can’t blame it on bad luck, he’s blaming it on the Poles. It’s a typical reaction. The Russians, Prussians and Austrians have been doing the same thing for centuries. So then what happened?’

‘In a nutshell, the Russian translated but they were still no better off. Would the colonel give up? No chance. He then did the rounds of the hospitals. He didn’t find out anything about the mysterious Nakalin, so off he went to walk around the battlefield with his musician, questioning the wounded who hadn’t yet been picked up.’

‘Does your story have an ending? I should remind you that you’re not being paid for wasting your breath.’

‘The colonel eventually found his Nakalin. His horse had been disembowelled by a cannonball and had fallen over, trapping his rider’s leg. I’m taking you to them. They’re playing chess.’

The scene was unreal, absurd. Whilst all around them men were limping about or supporting their bleeding companions, Colonel Delarse and his Russian lieutenant were playing chess. Each seated on a box, they were moving their pieces whilst the grass about them was strewn with remains: sabres, shakos, bayonets, cannonballs, knapsacks, muskets.

‘No sooner has he emerged from one slaughter than he’s rushing into the next,’ muttered Margont.

French officers were watching the game, which cannot have helped the concentration of the Russian, a solitary red pawn surrounded by fifteen or so dark blue pawns. Nakalin was barely twenty. His dark curly hair was dishevelled and his uniform speckled with blades of grass. He had a disconcerting way of playing. He almost never looked at the chessboard and when it was his turn, his startled look gave the impression that he was seeing the position of the pieces for the first time. He would immediately seize one of them and move it somewhere else. You could have sworn that his decisions were totally random. He would look away before he had even finished placing his bishop or his knight and would once more immediately lose himself in contemplation of the flood of wounded. Colonel Delarse seemed puzzled. He would think long and hard but when he placed his fingers on a piece, it was to play it. ‘A piece touched is a piece played’: he adhered strictly to the rules. When attacked by the queen, the Russian responded by moving his knight, without even a cursory glance at the chessboard. Margont was fascinated by the fact that this man was capable of memorising the game so well that he could play in his head. Delarse took the knight and smiled. Not for long. The Russian had conceded the centre of the board but, when he unleashed his attack to the side, his moves considerably restricted Delarse’s room for manoeuvre.

‘Mate within six moves,’ Nakalin announced.

Delarse was shocked. He lost within four.

‘Checkmate. There was a better combination,’ the Russian declared soberly.

‘Let’s have another game!’ exclaimed Delarse, who was already lining up his troops again.

‘I’m tired. I’ve been wounded.’

‘Are you conceding the return match?’

‘“Concede” and “surrender” are words that have no equivalent in the Russian language when the motherland is at war.’

Delarse began a new game but the lieutenant did not move a single piece. After a few minutes Delarse stood up in annoyance.

‘Very well. You’ve won the game with the little wooden soldiers. But I’m the one who won the game out there on the plain! The battlefield is strewn with green pawns and red knights.’

At last the Russian came to life. His cheeks reddened and his expression became more animated.

‘Yes, but that particular game is not over yet …’

Delarse turned towards one of his captains. ‘I want him to be well treated! See that he has a tent, blankets and proper food. Because when I defeat him I don’t want him to be able to say he was in a weakened state. Let him have a chess set as well! I don’t want him claiming that he was prevented from practising.’

The colonel then strode quickly towards Margont.

‘So, Captain! You are dishevelled and badly shaven. Why do you look like a beaten man?’

‘I apologise, Colonel. But thanks to us the Russian army had a close shave.’

‘When one has wit, one should put it to better use than trying to be clever.’

‘By playing chess, for example?’

Delarse turned round to watch Nakalin, who was being led away by two soldiers. The Russian was walking with his arms folded, as if out for a stroll.

‘What an odd character! I might as well have been playing on my own.’

‘True indeed. It seemed as if everything around him was more interesting than the game: the singing of the birds, the cloud formations, the weather …’

‘He’ll escape.’

‘Worse than that, it’s as if we haven’t even captured him. Colonel, may I enquire how you met him?’

‘He’s a well-known chess player. He was born into the Ukrainian nobility and leads a dilettante life. He does nothing, has no interests, forgets to attend dinners he’s been invited to … He lives only for chess. But what a player he is! He has beaten Tsar Alexander himself, the Emperor of Austria, General Bagration, General Kutuzov … Here’s an amusing anecdote about the latter. That crafty old fox Kutuzov was being given a hard time when he ‘accidentally’ knocked the chessboard on to the floor. He apologised, explaining that the loss of an eye in the war had affected his sense of distance. But to Kutuzov’s chagrin, Nakalin declared that it didn’t matter, picked up all the pieces and put them back exactly as they were. Kutuzov was then beaten soundly by his opponent. How I would have liked to see his face that day! I know all this because I’m a member of several chess clubs. Nakalin has acquired such a reputation that he spends his whole life being invited to various European courts and by keen chess players. His travels are paid for and he goes from palace to stately home – a very nice life. He’s the only person in the world to have defeated as many generals as the Emperor. But in his own field. Unfortunately, his successes are more of a curse than a blessing because it is increasingly difficult to rouse him from the apathy he’s helplessly sinking into. One match is not enough to stimulate him. He needs to play against ten opponents at a time and be literally surrounded by chessboards. Or else play blindfolded, with a friend whispering the other player’s moves in his ear. He cannot do anything except play chess. Not even be a real soldier because he was accepted into the Guard and given a commission only because he beat Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovitch.’

Colonel Delarse’s face clouded over with regret. If only he had managed to beat Nakalin! Then, indirectly, he would have demonstrated his superiority over all the others: the Tsar, Kutuzov, Bagration, Emperor Francis I …

The man was wandering amongst the bodies, the air pungent with gunpowder, burning and blood. Everywhere there were bodies lying on the grass. And yet he felt at ease. It was as if this charnel house had become his true home. He told himself that he was going mad but it was a madness he revelled in.

He thought again about all those years it had taken him to discover his liking for death. One part of him had had to fight night and day against these desires before finally giving in, utterly exhausted. Or perhaps it was because of the war. He had witnessed so much killing … Differences and limits seemed more and more blurred. He felt nothing but confusion.