“It is God’s will,” said Véronique softly, casting her gaze to the ceiling and then crossing herself. “We’ll get him,” she repeated.
“We’ll get who?” asked Angelina.
“Why, Sergeant-Major Sosthène Levadour, naturally!” replied Véronique.
“What do we want with him?” Angelina asked.
“We want you to have a husband,” said Véronique.
“I don’t need a husband,” said Angelina, and she thought about the nightly attacks that she had endured on the small plush red sofa, with the hard bolster pressing into her neck.
“Certainly you need a husband!” replied Véronique. “Above all you need a man to be father to your child.”
“I don’t want a child,” said Angelina. “I don’t need a child or a husband!”
“You need them both!” Véronique insisted quietly.
Angelina shut her eyes in the hopes that it would help her avoid seeing the great terror that now seemed to be sitting on Véronique’s armchair by the bedside. But under her closed eyelids, she saw it in even clearer detail. It took the colossal form of Sergeant-Major Sosthène, who had suddenly changed from a shadow into an actual being again, even though he must have by now been off in some distant garrison and perhaps — hopefully so — determined not to know Angelina anymore. What was the use? She was to have a baby, and it was the Sergeant-Major’s child. The colossus was inside her and stirring within her. She was too weak to rip him from her feeble body. She decided to open her eyes again, for the danger seemed to be getting ever closer and larger. But she had no strength to accomplish even this.
This lasted only a few minutes. Véronique now bore a solemn expression, which brought Angelina even more trepidation. It felt like a dangerous yet extremely serene Sunday. She did not hear all of Véronique’s words, but she was sure that what was being said with the intent to comfort was actually what she feared most. She was very tired; it felt like the events of the day and of the previous weeks were in the distant past and had been played out in another, previous life. Now a new life lay before her, totally unfamiliar and very dangerous. She closed her eyes and waited for her aunt to leave, so that sleep might come over her. But sleep did not come. Instead a great mildness filled her, a great compassion for herself, her aunt, and even for Sergeant-Major Sosthène. She dreamed with wakeful eyes of a vast battlefield, one of the Emperor’s battlefields. Red hot bullets flew through the air; there was a roaring and rumbling, flaring and thundering on all sides. She could not visualize the Emperor himself, but she had a great longing to see him. She called his name: “Napoleon!” she cried. “Napoleon!” But her voice died, meek and toneless in the mighty ruckus. She found herself far away from those who were fighting and yet she was also in their midst. Suddenly she saw Sergeant-Major Sosthène beside her, wobbling on his saddle. Just then, he fell from his horse. He raised both arms to the sky and cried: “Angelina!” But she did not care about him. She felt only that in a moment he would die — and even though she was ashamed of it, she wished with all her might for his death.
She awoke, remembered the dream, and was even more ashamed. But, at the same time, an unfamiliar feeling of elation, at once warm and cool, streamed through her. She was no longer afraid.
VI
Seven months later she bore a son in the house of the Corsican midwife Barbara Pocci, a good friend of Véronique Casimir. Angelina rested safely, happy and without fear, in the broad, well-padded bed in which for years unmarried mothers had been bearing children. From the bed she could see many familiar things that inspired nostalgia and reminded her of Corsica and her childhood. A small, brightly colored wooden statue of Saint Christopher stood smiling and lonely on a fragile, high-legged table in the midwife’s room. The same statue had been in Angelina’s house in Ajaccio. On the neighboring commode shone a fat-bellied bottle, containing a miniature sailing ship carved with much detail during the leisure hours of the midwife’s brother, a worthy sailor; it was one of the customary works of seafaring men. There was a similar commode in Angelina’s house in Ajaccio as well and also such a ship in a bottle. Over the door, instead of a curtain, hung one of the tightly spun nets that fishermen employed to catch small creatures. Although they had probably long since left their native isle, a familiar bittersweet odor still wafted from all these pleasant objects. It was scent of algae and sea air, of mother-of-pearl shells and brownish-black sea urchins. One could practically visualize dark blue storm clouds hovering over the sullen waves of a stormy sea.
One day Véronique Casimir brought paper, quill, and ink to the bed and said: “I have his address.”
Angelina understood that she meant Sergeant-Major Sosthène. She made one last meager attempt to avoid the unavoidable and asked: “Whose address?”
“Sosthène’s address,” answered Véronique. “Now you must write to him.”
“I have nothing to say to him,” Angelina insisted.
“You must! I command you!” Véronique replied. “Here, write!” She laid a sheet of paper on the bedspread, dipped the quill in the inkwell, stepped menacingly close to the bedside, and held the plume so imperiously before her niece’s face that Angelina had to obey. She wrote:
“Dear Sir: My aunt, Mademoiselle Véronique Casimir, begs me to inform you that I gave birth to a child two days ago. It is a boy. I send you greetings, Angelina Pietri.”
Véronique took the paper, read it, shook her head and said: “Good. I will add the rest. He won’t get away from me!”
She knew where to reach him. The Emperor had just won a great battle, and the troops were still in Austria. Véronique knew not only Sergeant-Major Levadour’s address but was also acquainted with the wife of the colonel who led his regiment.
Two weeks later, Sergeant-Major Sosthène Levadour actually showed up. He had been given leave, special leave, and he decided to use it in a special way. The Emperor’s great victory — and the fact that he had not only taken part in a noteworthy battle but also was himself the deciding factor (he assumed) of this Imperial victory — only made him more arrogant, more colorful, and colossal. He was a giant in the low-ceilinged room where Angelina and her child were staying. He greeted her with his usual dashing but severe affection, lifting her into the air with both hands, and in this room she felt she was being dangled at an even higher altitude than on the evenings during the previous summer, that the smell of his mustache was even more potent and that it swept across her cheeks even more intensely and roughly. Then he put her down again before him, took a step back and then two large steps forward, reached the bed where his son lay, and bent over him. The little one whimpered pathetically. Sosthène lifted the wrapped bundle high. It seemed quite insignificant in his arms. He asked: “What’s his name? What’ve you called him?”
“Antoine Pascal,” said Angelina, “after my father.”
“Glad to hear it, glad to hear it!” thundered Sosthène. “He’ll be a soldier, he has a soldier’s blood.” And he laid the white bundle down diagonally on the bed.
He squeezed himself into the narrow red upholstered armchair, jerked it around the room a bit, and realized it would be difficult to free his massive figure again from the chair arms clamping him in. He felt both somewhat unsettled and a little embarrassed about it, and, because just at that moment he had something critical to say, he grew angry and his face turned purple. It looked like a colorful crown for his colorful uniform. For a time he searched for an appropriate start, thought of the amicably threatening letters that Véronique Casimir had written him and the fact that he would now, because of this pitiful little bundle, have to marry a red-haired, freckled girl. For a moment his slow and dull brain was lit by a slight spark of insight into fate, guilt, and sin. The meager stirring of his vacant heart that followed, however, only increased his wrath. At that moment he would have been willing to believe in God if only to be angry with Him and have somewhere to place all the blame. However, he did not believe in the unseen God so he doled out his wrath only upon that which he could see.