‘Perfectly, monsieur. May I speak of what I am to do? My presence here gives rise to suspicions, rumours.’
‘Rumours will not be stopped by explanations.’
‘And the disposal of the remains?’
‘The bones? You will hear on the matter shortly.’
There is a moment of inhospitable quiet between them. Lafosse’s small eyes take in the room and briefly settle on the pianoforte. The contemplation of it seems to afford him some private amusement.
‘You find your new lodgings to your taste?’ he asks.
10
How hard to find thirty men? Not hard, in such times. But thirty good men, men who will be able to bear the work?
He has already decided where he will look for them: the mines at Valenciennes. There, in receipt of their pittances, are men inured to the type of labour that would kill others inside of a month.
He writes to Lecoeur. Lecoeur is — or was — one of the managers at the north seam. When Jean-Baptiste worked at the mines, the two of them, isolated from all society, half hidden in that damp, remote pocket of northern France, their nerves wound tight by the smoke, the noise of the gear, the occasional savagery of the place, made a sort of compact, an intimacy, though one that entirely ceased upon Jean-Baptiste’s departure.
It was their habit, particularly during that first interminable winter, to invent utopias where all that offended them, their ears, eyes, their young hearts, was made good in the imagination. Their favourite creation, the most detailed and satisfactory, was Valenciana. In Valenciana, economics and morality, virtue and industry were threaded together to the benefit and improvement of all. There were squares of small, neat houses for the families, dormitory blocks for the single men, parks where the air was clean and the children could play as others do, play and perhaps grow up less misshapen than their fathers. In Valenciana, no child under twelve would be sent down a shaft. None younger than ten would be employed on the surface as carriage-pushers, gug-winders or the like. There would be schools run by benign and educated men — men like Jean-Baptiste and Lecoeur. There would be no churches in Valenciana (an evening of especially passionate debate), though in the open spaces there would be statues of the relevant classical deities, an Athene, an Apollo, a Prometheus, though no Dionysus, no Aphrodite. Nor, at Lecoeur’s insistence, would there be anywhere men could gather to consume strong liquor. It was more than a game. They even discussed the possibility of presenting Valenciana in the form of a book and, for one night at least, shared a vivid dream of themselves making their way, shy yet assured, through the salons of the capital.
Was Lecoeur still at the mines? Would he be interested in les Innocents? The letter goes off by the midday coach to Lille, 7 November 1785.
When he enquires after horses, he is, by small degrees, directed to a young officer, who meets him in an inn by the Sèvres porcelain works on the road to Versailles. The young officer will, apparently, provide everything. It does not have to stop at horses.
In his blue coat and cream leggings (and what long, long legs he has!), the young man, who goes by the name Louis Horatio Boyer-Duboisson, seems very at home in the world. There is passing mention of a father, an estate in Burgundy. He seems to know more about Jean-Baptiste’s work than Jean-Baptiste can remember telling him. Is he connected to the minister? To Lafosse? Some neat, circular arrangement by which state funds are channelled back to the state, or at least, to its representatives? They agree to meet again in a week’s time for Jean-Baptiste to view a sample of the animals. They bow to each other, and though the engineer does not like or trust the soldier, who reminds him of a young Comte de S—, he cannot keep himself from wishing a little that he was the soldier, that he wore life like a good shirt and might, if the weather picks up, ride down to the woods and rivers of his father’s estate in Burgundy.
The weather does not pick up. Clouds tangle in the Paris chimneys. The wind is from the east. By the middle of most afternoons, it is too dark inside to read comfortably.
Every day Jean-Baptiste forces himself to go into the cemetery, to walk inside the walls, sometimes alone, sometimes in the company of the girl, who speaks of the dead beneath their feet as if of some vast extended family. She even pretends to be able to identify many of the bones that litter the ground — that jawbone belonging to a Madame Charcot, that femur from a Monsieur Mericourt, a farrier who died of a cold.
For his part, Jean-Baptiste prefers not to think of bones as having owners, names. If he has to start treating them as former people, farriers, mothers, former engineers perhaps, how will he ever dare sink a spade into the earth and part for all eternity a foot from a leg, a head from its rightful neck?
On the rue de la Lingerie, his evenings with the Monnards turn out not to be quite as devoid of pleasure as he at first had anticipated. With Monsieur Monnard, he talks a vague, guarded politics. Taxes, shortages, the national finances. Monsieur is, unsurprisingly, no liberal. He speaks slightingly of Voltaire, of Rousseau, of head-in-the-cloud ideas, the salons, the agitating. He is, it seems, in favour of order, firmly imposed if necessary. Of trade too, the busyness and respectability of shopkeepers. In reply, Jean-Baptiste confines himself to general remarks about the desirability of reform, the sort of comments nobody but the most reactionary aristocrat could be troubled by. Things somehow getting better and fairer, though how, practically, it can be done, other than by some form of intellectual radiation, he does not know. Does anyone? He nearly mentions, one evening, his old utopia, Valenciana, but bites it back. A man like Monnard who reads only the newspaper could not be expected to understand, and anyway, the recollection of those nights beside the never-quite-adequate coal fire in Lecoeur’s parlour is not without a certain awkwardness. That younger, more garrulous version of himself, their two heads hung close in the room’s shadows, the strange urgency of it all. .
With Madame, he discusses the intricacies of the weather. Did the wind blow somewhat harder today? Was it colder in the morning or in the afternoon? What is Monsieur Baratte’s opinion of the likelihood of snow? Does he care for snow? All kinds of snow?
And then there is Ziguette. Conversations with Ziguette — sometimes at the table, sometimes on the settle by the fire or sitting by the window overlooking the cemetery — require greater effort. He tries music, but she knows even less of it than he does, has not heard of Clérambault or any of the Couperin family. Theatre is equally hopeless — neither of them knows much — and as for books, it is evident she makes no more use of them than her parents. He asks about her own history; the subject seems to bore her. She asks about his work and he is forced to obfuscate. He wonders if she is in love, not with him, of course, but with someone. He wonders if he desires her. He is not quite sure. His interest in her seems no more marked than his interest in the little hairy-armed servant who brings in the supper plates. As for marriage. . could he? The daughter — the very pretty daughter — of a well-set-up Paris shop owner, most people would think it a fair match, one that offered advantage to both parties. He conducts little thought-experiments, sometimes while speaking to her, in which the two of them are together in a room, a cabriolet, a canopied bed, her breath made sweet by his eradication of the cemetery, a parcel of her father’s money in a locked box underneath the bed. . Such thoughts are not disagreeable and yet the images are thin as tissue. None of it persuades.