‘You’ve missed a line, Carrefond! A little mistake can lead to a great catastrophe! Another error and I’ll transfer you to the voltigeurs.’ He tore up the paper and flung it into the overflowing waste-paper basket.
Finally addressing the newcomers, he demanded: ‘What do these officers want?’
Relmyer saluted him and explained what he was after, referring to but not explaining ‘an extremely grave personal matter’. The captain proved to be astonishingly friendly. He confirmed that they had not been able to seize the registers containing all the details of the Austrian army. He announced that, on principle, he was reluctant to let just anyone shuffle through what documents there were without official authorisation. Then he added that the French had taken over Vienna three weeks ago now. The archives that had remained in the capital had therefore already been partly examined. He made it clear that they were beginning to despair of finding anything at all of interest concerning the enemy army. So the Emperor preferred to rely only on his spies and on the reconnaissance carried out by them and their Russian, Polish and
Bavarian allies ... The duty officer concluded his discourse by saying that he did not agree to Relmyer ferreting about in the Kriegsministerium.
The refusal did not tally with the view expressed that the documents were effectively useless. Relmyer realised that there might be a way of changing his mind and laid out some twenty-and forty-franc pieces on the officer’s desk. The gold coins shone in the sun like a constellation in an ebony sky. Lefine was astounded. What a madman, to carry around that amount of money just to bribe an official! Relmyer brandished a second handful that he began to spill noisily onto the desk coin by coin. The captain immediately picked each one up with the alacrity of a hen pecking grains. Now he was turning from red to purple. There in front of him was months’ worth of a soldier’s pay, a large chunk of Relmyer’s life as a soldier.
‘Come whenever you like,’ said the officer obsequiously. ‘I’ll warn you if you ever have to hide yourself because of an unexpected inspection. The archives are stored on this floor and the one above. There are also several in the basement and in the attic, but they are the oldest ones.’
At that moment Relmyer felt a resurgence of hope, a resurgence that crumbled as soon as he had passed through the double doors.
The room, high-ceilinged and deep, was no more than a giant rubbish dump. Trampled papers and heaps of registers were strewn across the parquet. Interminable shelves blanketed the walls from floor to ceiling, some groaning with documents, others empty, having spewed their contents onto the floor. Lefine looked up, certain that the roof must be falling in. It appeared to him as if a deluge of shells had ruined everything in here, when Vienna had been bombarded. But no, the Austrians had pillaged their own archives and the French had exacerbated the disaster; it was chaos added to chaos.
Margont knelt down and picked up a ruined report written in a language he could not even identify.
‘We don’t know exactly what we’re looking for, nor even if it’s here,
and everything is in such a muddle.’
Relmyer stood in front of one of the shelves and started to read the titles of the documents. Ten feet above his head, about halfway to the ceiling, a long wooden walkway was also weighed down with paper. Lefine joined Margont.
‘Let’s go. We’ll come back and fetch him in ten years,’ he proposed amiably.
In spite of everything Margont decided to help Relmyer. He tried to put some order into the madness, by proposing all sorts of ideas. He proposed using chalk to tick off the documents examined, paying more attention to the ravaged shelves and the torn reports as perhaps they had been sabotaged because they were the most important. He also proposed asking one of Relmyer’s friends, who would understand what he was doing, to help. ‘On condition that he doesn’t run us through,’ Lefine had murmured. And finally he proposed trying to find and question the men who had been through the papers before them ...
However, little by little, Margont’s determination wilted under the weight of the tons of written notes. He excused himself and left, accompanied by Lefine, abandoning Relmyer, perched on a ladder, a skiff adrift on an ocean of paper.
CHAPTER 14
TIME seemed to have frozen in an interlude before an inevitable acceleration would re-establish the normal course of things. The days slipped by, all spent in the same way: preparing for battle or relaxing. Nevertheless, a slight excitement gradually took hold of everyone. The whole of Europe was avidly watching this section of the Danube, this little blue ribbon that separated two armies drunk on their own invincibility.
Margont had been immobilised on the Isle of Lobau, fulfilling his military obligations. Today he was finally enjoying a day of liberty. At least he felt he was at liberty, a view that did not quite correspond to what the army felt. He was not supposed to move around without authorisation but he did it all the time. The French army had many soldiers who did not possess the proper disciplined spirit of the professional soldier. During an inspection, Margont had overheard a soldier addressing the Emperor informally. And, what’s more, it was to complain about not having
received the Legion d’honneur! Not only did Napoleon not bat an eyelid at this insolence, he effectively granted the decoration, having had the soldier’s exploits confirmed.
A host of volunteers had enrolled to defend their country against invasion, to protect their newly acquired liberty or because they had been seduced by the glamour of victorious servicemen (and these volunteers received a rude shock when they discovered the true face of war). The conscripts, who were more numerous, had not asked to be soldiers. Having plunged their hands into a bag in front of their mayor and the police, they had drawn the short straw, the one that sent them to the front unless they had the money to pay for a replacement. All these people detested the over-rigid regulations, which they flouted whenever they could. Margont, who had volunteered in order to defend his revolutionary ideals, was in that category too. He often consigned his company to the care of Saber before disappearing. This time Saber was absent, so he left his men in the charge of Piquebois, who was gradually recovering from his wound. For some unknown
reason, Saber was spending his time in a Viennese cafe, the Milano on Kohlmarkt, and only rarely came back, irritated and taciturn.
Margont and Lefine galloped off to Vienna. It was time to live again.
Vienna was crawling with soldiers looking for a good time. When Austrian women went shopping they returned home with their baskets full of eggs, vegetables and half a dozen declarations of eternal love; eternal, that is, until the end of the campaign. It was called going to market.
Margont and Lefine went to Luise’s house where they were impatiently awaited. She flung herself on them while Margont still had one foot in his stirrup. She was overwrought and struggled to get the words out.
Isn’t Lukas with you?’ she finally demanded, having barely responded to Margont’s greeting.
‘We haven’t seen him for three days. He’s wearing himself out with his absurd searches. I think we will have to try to pull him out of the record office.’
Luise agreed. One servant took the reins of the horses while another one came over to join them. The Mitterburgs had left instructions that Luise was never to go out on her own.
While they were walking, Luise kept her fists clenched.
‘Why aren’t you looking after Lukas any more? This business is destroying him! Of course it’s not easy to do anything about it; he’s so stubborn! But you could ... I don’t know ...’