Prince Eugène was right. This distinction immediately earned Margont the esteem of numerous soldiers, which opened many a door.
‘I’m pleased to meet you,’ the colonel went on. ‘I have almost twelve thousand men under my command – since I assist General Huard,’ he added somewhat reluctantly. ‘But I am anxious to get to know personally all the promising officers serving in my brigade. It’s a crime not to exploit everyone’s potential.’
These last words were uttered with an energy bordering on anger.
‘My friend Colonel Pégot says that you are tenacious and resourceful but that you think too much.’
‘Is it possible, Colonel, to think too much?’
‘Let’s say that when a superior accuses you of thinking too much it’s because he resents the fact that you think differently from him.’
‘What about you, Colonel? Do you never happen to think too much?’
‘Every day.’
Delarse took a bottle and filled two glasses.
‘I come from the Charentes. This cognac is a bit of my native land that follows me in my campaigns. I’ve got another bottle for Moscow. I’m longing to open that one.’
The colonel cupped his glass in both hands to warm the alcohol.
‘What is the reason for your visit?’
‘Typhus.’ Margont handed over Brémond’s letter.
The colonel read it carefully and responded immediately: ‘Typhus is only in an endemic state in the brigade. As soon as there is a suspected case, the soldier is isolated and put in a special field hospital. His kit and his tent – if he has one – are burnt. Those who have been sleeping alongside him are put into quarantine but are given double rations because malnutrition is a breeding ground for typhus.’
‘That seems ideal to me.’
‘To discover the exact number of people put into quarantine, you’ll need to speak to the physicians attached to each regiment. May I enquire why you have decided to concern yourself with typhus?’
‘I find inactivity a burden.’
‘Personally, I find it deadly. But before long the Russians are bound to stop falling back. They’ll fight to save Smolensk. It’ll be a slaughter. We’ll suffer too but their army will be blown to bits.’
The colonel was becoming more and more excited.
‘The Tsar will be on his knees but the Emperor will be able to spare his dignity by throwing him a few crumbs. He’ll agree not to deprive Russia of the provinces she stole from the Poles; he won’t restore Greater Poland; he will be magnanimous. In exchange, he’ll force Alexander to implement the continental system. And where will the English ships go if Europe welcomes them with round shot? Without ports you lose control of the seas and oceans, and without control of the water, an island is lost. So – at last! – the English will also sign the peace treaty, one laden with punitive clauses that will weaken them. Thus we shall be able to expand our colonies and acquire new ones, and people in India, Africa, Asia or America will henceforth say “Bonjour, monsieur” instead of “Good morning, sir”.’
The colonel raised his glass as if he were already celebrating the capture of Bombay. Margont did not like this vision of the campaign; it was too militaristic and political for his taste. There was no mention of freedom for the muzhiks, the peasant serfs; nothing about reforming Tsarist society, the dashing of the hopes of their Polish allies … Still, the two visions were not totally incompatible. He took a swig of cognac and tried to make the pleasant burning sensation last as long as possible.
‘I can see that you’re a great reader, Colonel.’
‘I’m finishing a book about Joan of Arc. What a fascinating destiny! And to think that she was even frailer than me. Colonel Pégot tells me that you also are a great reader.’
Margont pointed at one of the books lying on the desk. ‘Yes, but not The Gallic War. You read Julius Caesar whereas I read Cicero.’
‘What’s wrong with that? Isn’t a general worth as much as a philosopher?’
‘The only problem is that Caesar had Cicero executed.’
‘You have a sharp tongue, Captain. Too sharp. But that’s often the case with serving soldiers.’
The colonel took a chessboard out of one of the chests. The wooden pieces were delicately carved: infantrymen armed with halberds for the pawns; caparisoned chargers for the knights; elaborate mitres for the bishops; and crenellated towers for the castles. As for the kings and queens, they looked truly regal. Delarse was delighted to have an opponent.
How odd, thought Margont, that no sooner has he begun to respect someone, than he’s in a hurry to challenge them.
‘Let’s see if you’d make a good general. The guest has the first move.’
After a courageous last stand, the white king capitulated on an almost deserted chessboard. Margont had been unsettled by Delarse’s game plan. The colonel had played a particularly aggressive game, never hesitating to exchange pawns, knights, etc. Margont had not even had time to bring his defensive game into play.
‘If only the Russians could attack instead of running away from one chessboard to the next,’ Delarse declared pensively.
‘Please allow me a return game, Colonel. I hate losing.’
‘I do understand.’
Delarse was already enthusiastically setting up the board again. He was the type of officer who, in answer to the standard question, ‘Which regiment do you command?’ dreamt of one day being able to reply in all modesty, ‘All of them.’
The sentry came bursting in.
‘Colonel, sir, the head of bread supplies and the head of meat supplies wish to speak to you.’
The colonel stood up. ‘I’d forgotten about their visit. The return game will have to wait for another time.’
Margont saluted him and, just as he was leaving, declared: ‘I’m very sorry I was not a more worthy opponent, Colonel.’
At chess, only at chess, he added to himself.
The man was not worrying about the investigation into Maria’s murder. He felt perfectly safe, hidden among the unending column of soldiers. In any case, crimes were so seldom solved … No, what bothered him was what was happening to him. As he walked on amongst the infantrymen and the dust, one thing became obvious to him: his fascination with death was not something recent.
As a lieutenant he had often gone into hospitals to view the dying. He attempted to capture that fleeting moment between life and death, the moment when the body becomes immobilised, when breathing itself ceases. He tried to commit to memory the change of expression on those faces at that fateful instant. But even a few years before that, death and suffering had attracted him. He attended autopsies, giving as an excuse his intention to study medicine. At the time he had put it down to a morbid curiosity. He had even read up on different types of coma. He wondered if there was one deep enough to present all the outward signs of death. During the dissections he enjoyed imagining that the man whose muscles had been separated and whose gaping abdomen was being prodded by the doctor’s instrument was still alive and that, although his coma prevented him from moving, his conscious mind enabled him to have a clear idea of what was happening.
In fact his fascination with death seemed to go even further back than that. As a child he had loved graveyards. He’d spent whole days in them. He knew where each tomb was, the names and dates of the dead … He was curious to know what corpses looked like after a day, a week, two weeks … He enjoyed watching apples on which he had drawn features rot away. They were his skulls whose skin withered as the flesh became damp and soft. He watched them shrivel and gradually disintegrate.
Even as a child … he had revelled in the death throes of ducks wounded by his father when out hunting: their fruitless attempts to get off the ground and fly again; their long silky necks twisting in a dance of death; the sharp crack of their vertebrae when he broke their necks to put them out of their misery.