1
A young man, young but not very young, sits in an anteroom somewhere, some wing or other, in the Palace of Versailles. He is waiting. He has been waiting a long time.
There is no fire in the room, though it is the third week in October and cold as Candlemas. His legs and back are stiffening from it–the cold and three days of travelling through it, first with Cousin André from Bellême to Nogent, then the coach, overfull with raw-faced people in winter coats, baskets on their laps, parcels under their feet, some travelling with dogs, one old man with a cockerel under his coat. Thirty hours to Paris and the rue aux Ours, where they climbed down onto cobbles and horseshit, and shifted about outside the haulier’s office as if unsure of their legs. Then this morning, coming from the lodgings he had taken on the rue–the rue what?–an early start on a hired nag to reach Versailles and this, a day that may be the most important of his life, or may be nothing.
He is not alone in the room. A man of about forty is sitting opposite him in a narrow armchair, his surtout buttoned to his chin, his eyes shut, his hands crossed in his lap, a large and rather antique-looking ring on one finger. Now and then he sighs, but is otherwise perfectly silent.
Behind this sleeper, and to either side of him, there are mirrors rising from the parquet to the cobwebbed mouldings of the ceiling. The palace is full of mirrors. Living here, it must be impossible not to meet yourself a hundred times a day, every corridor a source of vanity and doubt. The mirrors ahead of him, their surfaces hazed with dust (some idle finger has sketched a man’s bulbous cock and next to it a flower that may be a rose), give out a greenish light as if the whole building were sunk, drowned. And there, part of the wreck, his own brown-garbed form, his face in the mottled glass insufficiently carried to be descriptive or particular. A pale oval on a folded body, a body in a brown suit, the suit a gift from his father, its cloth cut by Gontaut, who people like to say is the best tailor in Bellême but who, in truth, is the only tailor, Bellême being the sort of place where a good suit is passed down among a man’s valuables along with the brass bed-warmer, the plough and harrow, the riding tack. It’s a little tight across his shoulders, a little full in the skirts, a little heavy at the cuffs, but all of it honestly done and after its fashion perfectly correct.
He presses his thighs, presses the bones of his knees, then reaches down to rub something off the ankle of his left stocking. He has been careful to keep them as clean as possible, but leaving in the dark, moving through streets he did not know, no lamps burning at such an hour, who can say what he might have stepped in? He scrapes at it with the edge of his thumb. Mud? Hopefully. He does not sniff his thumb to enquire.
A small dog makes its entrance. Its claws skitter on the floor. It looks at him, briefly, through large occluded eyes, then goes to the vase, the tall, gilded amphora displayed or abandoned in one of the room’s mirrored angles. It sniffs, cocks its leg. A voice—elderly, female—coos to it from the corridor. A shadow passes the open door; the sound of silk hems brushing over the floor is like the onset of rain. The dog bustles after her, its water snaking from the vase towards the crossed heels of the sleeping man. The younger man watches it, the way it navigates across the uneven surface of the parquet, the way even a dog’s piss is subject to unalterable physical laws . . .
He is still watching it (on this day that may be the most important of his life, or nothing at all) when the door of the minister’s office opens with a snap like the breaking of those seals they put on the doors of infected houses. A figure, a servant or secretary, angular, yellow-eyed, signals to him with a slight raising of his chin. He gets to his feet. The older man has opened his eyes. They have not spoken, do not know each other’s names, have merely shared three cold hours of an October morning. The older man smiles. It is the most resigned, most elegant expression in the world; a smile that appears like the flower of vast, profitless learning. The younger man nods to him, then slips, quickly, through the half-open door of the office for fear it might shut on him again, suddenly and for ever.
2
St. Augustine,’ says the minister, holding between two fingers a part-devoured macaroon, ‘informs us that the honours due to the dead were intended, principally, to console the living. Only prayer was effective. Where the corpse was buried was irrelevant.’ He returns to the macaroon, dips it in a glass of white wine, sucks at it. Some crumbs fall onto the papers piled on his immense desk. The servant, standing behind his master’s chair, looks at the crumbs with a kind of professional sorrow but makes no attempt to remove them.
‘He was an African,’ says the minister. ‘St. Augustine. He must have seen lions, elephants. Have you seen an elephant?’
‘No, my lord.’
‘There is one here. Somewhere. A great, melancholy beast that lives on Burgundy wine. A gift from the king of Siam. When it arrived in the time of His Majesty’s grandfather, every dog in the palace hid for a month. Then they grew used to it, began to bark at it, to bait it. Had it not been hidden away, perhaps they would have killed it. Fifty of them might have managed.’ He glances across the desk at the young man, pauses a moment as though the elephant and the dogs might also be figures in a parable. ‘Where was I?’ he asks.
‘St. Augustine?’ says the young man.
The minister nods. ‘It was the medieval Church that began the practice of burying inside churches, in order, of course, to be near the relics of the saints. When a church was full, they buried them in the ground about. Honorius of Autun calls the cemetery a holy dormitory, the bosom of the Church, the ecclesiae gremium. At what point do you think they started to outnumber us?’
‘Who, my lord?’
‘The dead.’
‘I don’t know, my lord.’
‘Early, I think. Early.’ The minister finishes his macaroon. The servant passes him a cloth. The minister wipes his fingers, puts on a pair of round-rimmed spectacles and reads the sheet of manuscript on the top of the pile in front of him. The room is warmer than the anteroom, but only by a very little. A small fire crackles and occasionally leans a feather of smoke into the room. Other than the desk there is not much in the way of furniture. A small portrait of the king. Another painting that seems to depict the last moments of a boar hunt. A table with a decanter and glasses on it. A heavy porcelain chamber pot by the fireplace. An umbrella of oiled silk propped under the window. Through the window itself, nothing but the ruffled grey belly of the sky.
‘Lestingois,’ says the minister, reading from the paper. ‘You are Jean-Marie Lestingois.’
‘No, my lord.’
‘No?’ The minister looks back at the pile, draws out a second sheet of paper. ‘Baratte, then. Jean-Baptiste Baratte?’
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘An old family?’
‘My father’s family have been in the town, in Bellême, for several generations.’
‘And your father is a glover.’
‘A master glover, my lord. And we have some land. A little over four hectares.’
‘Four?’ The minister allows himself a smile. Some powder from his wig has whitened the silk on his shoulders. His face, thinks Jean-Baptiste, if it were continued outwards a little, would come to an edge, like the blade of an axe. ‘The Comte de S— says you are hard-working, diligent, of clean habits. Also that your mother is a Protestant.’
‘Just my mother, my lord. My father . . .’
The minister waves him to silence. ‘How your parents say their prayers is of no interest. You are not being considered for the post of royal chaplain.’ He looks down at the paper again. ‘Schooled by the brothers of the Oratorian Order in Nogent, after which, thanks to the generosity of the comte, you were able to enter the Ecole Royale des Ponts et Chaussées.’
‘In time, my lord, yes. I had the honour of being instructed there by Maître Perronet.’
‘Who?’
‘The great Perronet, my lord.’
‘You know geometry, algebra. Hydraulics. It says here that you have built a bridge.’
‘A small bridge, my lord, on the comte’s estate.’
‘A decoration?’
‘There was . . . It had some aspect of that, my lord.’
‘And you possess some experience of mining?’
‘I was for almost two years at the mines by Valenciennes. The comte has an interest in the mines.’
‘He has many interests, Baratte. One does not dress one’s wife in diamonds without having interests.’ The minister has perhaps made a joke and something witty though respectful should be said in return, but Jean-Baptiste is not thinking of the comte’s wife and her jewels, nor of his mistress and her jewels, but of the miners at Valenciennes. A special kind of poverty, unrelieved, under those palls of smoke, by any grace of nature.
‘You yourself are one of his interests, are you not?’
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘Your father made gloves for the comte?’
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘I might have him make some for me.’
‘My father is dead, my lord.’
‘Oh?’
‘Some years past.’
‘Dead of what?’
‘An affliction, my lord. A slow affliction.’
‘Then no doubt you wish to honour his memory.’
‘I do, my lord.’
‘You are ready to serve?’
‘I am.’
‘I have something for you, Baratte. An enterprise that handled with the necessary flair, the necessary discretion, will ensure this progress of yours does not falter. It will give you a name.’
‘I am grateful for your lordship’s trust.’
‘Let us not speak of trust just yet. You are familiar with the cemetery of les Innocents?’
‘A cemetery?’
‘By the market of les Halles.’
‘I have heard of it, my lord.’
‘It has been swallowing the corpses of Paris for long...
