Andrew Miller - Pure

The other letter, on good paper and written in an irreproachable script, comes from someone called de Verteuil at the Academy of Sciences. The matter concerns certain preparations being made at a quarry near the Porte d’Enfer, south of the river, for the reception of the remains removed from the church and cemetery of les Saints-Innocents. A house has been acquired, its cellar steps extended to reach the old workings, and in the garden there is a well with a circumference above three metres that empties into the same workings, which are tolerably dry and quite suitable for the purpose. When everything is made ready, the bishop will consecrate the relevant passages and chambers. Once this is done, Monsieur l’Ingénieur will be free to commence the first transports. Would Monsieur l’Ingénieur like to give his estimate to the number of bones that may be expected?

Jean-Baptiste folds the letter, places it inside his notebook. The number of bones? He has not the faintest idea.

Before he leaves for Valenciennes, he finds Armand and tells him everything. He is not used to carrying secrets, and the undisclosed truth sits in his gut like one of the Monnards’ savoury jellies. It is, he knows, the inescapable influence of his mother’s religion, that deadly emphasis on conscience, on tireless moral book-keeping. It is also the desire to offer something to the one person in Paris he has any reason to think of as a friend, for they have met together three or four times since that first day, have confirmed their interests in each other, their pleasure in the other’s difference. And anyway, all of it must come out soon enough. Better now than when thirty wild-eyed miners troop through the church with picks and hammers.

He finds Armand (the middle of a cold morning) on the rue Saint-Denis, the organist bantering with a shrimp-girl, and now and then — without taking his eyes from the girl’s — reaching up to help himself to one of the little pink bodies on the tray on her head. He greets Jean-Baptiste, takes his arm, walks him up and down the street, listens to his clumsy preface, then interrupts him to point out a pair of mournful dogs copulating in the gutter outside a hatter’s shop and, before Jean-Baptiste can continue his confession, invites him to come and eat that night at his lodgings.

‘Lisa’s brats will be there, but the food is always decent. Certainly it does not taste of cemeteries. And there will be some company later.’

They arrange to meet by the Italian fountain at seven sharp. Jean-Baptiste is there ten minutes before the hour but has to wait another forty before Armand appears. There is no apology, no excuse. They set off together, striding from one little bay of light to the next, while the organist, waving his long, white fingers, delivers a panegyric in rags of Greek and ecclesiastical Latin on the beauty, the sheer scale , of his landlady’s breasts.

The rue des Ecouffes is a twenty-minute march in the direction of the place Royale and the Bastille. On the ground floor of the house is a shop specialising in the manufacture and repair of mirrors, and the two men pause a moment in front of one of these in the window, though it is too dark to see more than the briefly arrested suggestion of themselves. They grope their way up three flights of steep wooden steps to the door of the apartment. Lisa Saget and the children are in the kitchen. Here there is light, a fire, the smell of food. Armand greets his landlady with a loud kiss on her brow, ruffles the children’s hair. There is a chicken roasting on a spit; the girl has the work of turning it. She glances at Jean-Baptiste, smiles at Armand. Other than for the flatness of her chest, she is the perfect miniature of her powerful-looking mother.

‘Monsieur Baratte,’ says Armand, speaking into the cupboard in which he is searching for glasses, a bottle, ‘who has my old billet at the Monnards’.’

It is evident the woman has heard of him. She is sitting at the end of the kitchen table doing something with the consumable part of the chicken’s innards. She looks up and looks him over, this grey-eyed man lost in a green coat. ‘Is he eating with us?’ she asks.

‘Of course,’ says Armand. ‘He hasn’t had a decent meal since coming to Paris.’

Jean-Baptiste takes a stool at the table. He is facing the fire, the little girl. Her brother, scratching his backside, watches her from behind Armand’s shoulder, her envious work by the food.

‘So what of the Monnards?’ asks the woman, busy with her knife.

‘I believe they are quite well,’ says Jean-Baptiste, aware that is not really what he has been asked.

‘We shall need to find him somewhere else,’ says Armand, ‘if he’s planning to stick around.’

‘And is he?’ asks the woman.

‘Who knows,’ says Armand. ‘He doesn’t say much.’

Jean-Baptiste studies his pistachio cuffs, wonders if the table is quite clean, if it would be wise to take off his coat.

‘I shall stay for a time,’ he says. ‘I cannot tell yet how long.’

‘I could not live on a cemetery like that,’ says the woman. ‘I cannot think what kind of people do it, year after year. Bad enough having Armand coming back with the smell of the place on him.’

‘She washes me with lemons,’ says Armand. ‘With a soap made of sage leaves and ashes. Smokes me with rosemary. .’

‘Would it not be good,’ says Jean-Baptiste, ‘if the place was removed?’

‘Removed?’ The woman snorts. ‘And how do you remove a cemetery like les Innocents? You might as easily remove the river.’

‘It could be done,’ says Jean-Baptiste quietly. ‘Either could be done.’

Armand, who has been examining the boy’s scalp, parting the brown curls in search of vermin, pauses and looks across.

‘Is that what you are up to? The cemetery?’

‘It will not be easy, of course,’ says Jean-Baptiste. ‘It will take many months.’

‘He’s like the rest of your friends,’ says Lisa. ‘Tell you the moon’s a bowl of soup if they think anyone could be made to believe it.’

‘Yet to me,’ says Armand slowly, ‘he looks perfectly serious.’

‘It can be done,’ says Jean-Baptiste. ‘It will be done.’

‘The whole cemetery?’ asks Armand.

‘The cemetery. The church.’

‘The church?’

‘It will not be touched for a while yet. Perhaps for as long as a year.’

‘So,’ says Armand softly, ‘the moment has come.’

‘I would have preferred to tell you sooner. I was instructed to keep the matter to myself.’

The woman has stopped her work now. ‘And his position?’ she asks. ‘Is that to be removed?’

‘I have. . spoken of it,’ says Jean-Baptiste.

‘To the minister?’ asks Armand.

‘To one who represents him.’

‘And may I hope for something?’

‘I will speak of it again.’

There is a silence between them, broken at last by a sharp word from Lisa to her daughter, who, caught up in this interesting business between the adults, has stopped rotating the chicken.

‘I think,’ says Armand, ‘I think that I should thank you.’

‘Thank him?’ asks the woman. ‘For what?’

‘The church, my gentle one, has been shut for five years. I cannot continue indefinitely playing Bach to bats.’

‘It’s all wind anyway,’ says the woman, snatching up her knife again. ‘You must have stopped at Djeco’s place on the way here.’

‘If it was not me,’ says Jean-Baptiste, ‘they would have sent another. Though I cannot blame you for. . resenting it.’

‘Who said anything about resenting?’ asks Armand, stretching for the bottle. ‘One does not resent the future. Nor its agents.’ He fills their glasses. ‘Come now, we will drink to that shadowy country we are all travelling towards, some on their feet, some on their backsides, squealing.’