Andrew Miller - Pure

He decides that he must go down and see for himself (it is time he went down), and with no announcement he swings himself onto the nearest ladder and begins to descend. He is aware that both below and above him all work has ceased, that they are watching him. His feet feel for the rungs. The sky recedes. The air thickens.

Stepping off the bottom of the ladder, he suffers a momentary loss of balance and has to grip the elbow of the man nearest him. Now that he is down here, he should tell them to continue with their work, but there is so little room. He looks at them, their long faces lit from above by fire and the feeble light of morning. He looks at the black walls, looks at what he is standing on, looks up to where Lecoeur’s head and shoulders are bent over the pit’s edge. He takes a spade from the hands of the man he stumbled against, presses its blade into the earth wall, twists the blade and watches a piece of the wall come away in a damp slab. He tests the opposite wall in the same manner and with the same result. He returns the tool, gets a boot on the bottom rung of the ladder, is swept by a wave of nausea that, thank God, he is able to control, to let pass. He climbs, reaches the top, steadies himself on the grass.

To Lecoeur, who has come up close beside him, he says huskily, ‘We will build frames. Box-cribs to secure the walls. Bring the men out.’

There is no shortage of suitable lumber: Monsieur Dejour must have hoarded half the saleable wood in Paris. They shape posts and struts, improvise puncheons and cleats. It is nice to work with the wood, and when the men go down after the midday meal, they go, it seems, in slightly better heart. By mid-afternoon the plumb line measures a depth of nearly seventeen metres. The cradle carries more earth than bone now. By dark they will have done it! Emptied one of the pits of les Innocents!

The last shift of diggers surfaces at half past six. A winter moon shines in their faces, shines on the bone wall that looks now less what it is, the macabre and pitiful residue of countless lives, and more like a good harvest, hard won. Jean-Baptiste takes off his hat, rubs at his hair, his own hair, which he’s grown to an almost respectable length, just as Charvet suggested. The miners file away from him, some with their spades over their shoulders like muskets. A good day. A little victory for stubborn hard work, for keeping one’s nerve. Quietly, by the side of the pit, he and Lecoeur congratulate each other. They reach out and touch hands.

He is less pleased with the world the next morning. He has slept badly again, waking in some useless quarter of the night, heart racing, and then lying for hours mentally digging pit after pit until he sickened of it and climbed from his bed and dressed in the dark.

At the cemetery, examined by lamplight, Jan Block is obviously worse. There is a sheen on his skin like that on rotten cheese. His breathing is laboured, unprofitable. He may be dying, may conceivably, all too conceivably, be dying of some infection the others could contract, the whole place shut down within the week, the last man living rolling the last man dead into the emptied pit. .

An hour later, he finds one of the doctors, Dr Guillotin, inspecting the bone wall. He sees him prise out some fragment from the wall and slip it into his coat pocket.

‘You don’t object, I hope?’ asks the doctor, seeing the engineer approach. ‘An intriguingly deformed vertebra. Thought I should have it before Thouret beat me to it.’

Jean-Baptiste speaks to him of the sick man, describes the accident and asks if the doctor would be kind enough to examine him. ‘If there is an infection. . something that might. .’

The doctor is agreeable. The man is nearby? He is. They walk together to the tent, duck inside it. There is someone else in there. The miner with the damaged hand. For a moment the newcomers are kept at bay by the miner’s calm regard of them. Then he leaves, silent and unhurried.

‘A curious-looking character,’ says the doctor. ‘Violet eyes. Did you notice? Most unusual.’ He turns to the man on the straw. ‘What is his name?’ he asks.

‘This is Block,’ says Jean-Baptiste.

‘Block? Good morning to you, Block. You have had a fall? You are unwell?’

Jan Block looks startled.

The doctor smiles. ‘You need not be afraid of me.’ To Jean-Baptiste he says, ‘If you would turn him? It is easier to examine a man’s back when he is not lying on it.’

Jean-Baptiste takes hold of the miner’s shoulders, starts to shift him. The sick man makes no protest, though his flesh trembles. It is not easy to turn him. When it is done, the doctor says, ‘Lift up his shirt.’

The skin of Jan Block’s upper back has been pierced either side of his spine, and though the puncture marks are small, they are surrounded by angry haloes of inflammation.

Guillotin steps closer. He looks, but like most of his profession is reluctant to touch. He nods. ‘You may pull down his shirt. Thank you, Monsieur Block. We will find something to help you, yes?’

When they have walked a few steps from the tent, the doctor says, ‘He is poisoned by whatever matter entered him in the fall. The wounds must be cleaned immediately with a solution of brimstone. As for the fever, he should take a dust of Peruvian bark, dispersed in a little brandy. I am not, however, in favour of suppressing fever entirely. Fever is not the enemy. It is the fire in which disease is combusted.’ He stops, then looks closely at Jean-Baptiste. ‘Even in perfect health,’ he says, ‘we are remade continuously in a heat of our own generation. You are familiar with the theory of phlogiston?’

‘I know something of it.’

‘Phlogiston, from the Greek, to set on fire. The combustible element within all things. The latent fire. The potential fire. Passive until roused.’

‘Roused by a spark?’

‘Or by some shock or friction. Or simply the gradual accretion of heat.’

‘Is it possible,’ asks Jean-Baptiste, ‘that Block’s infection is caused by a disease that has continued in the bones? That the bones carry still a residue of the sicknesses that once afflicted them? I mean, afflicted those to whom they once belonged?’

‘How quaintly you put it,’ says Guillotin. ‘You speak as if our bones were mere possessions, like a horse or a watch. But to answer your question, I think it unlikely any disease could so long outlive its victim. I do not suggest, however, that you or your men allow the bones to touch any open sore or wound. I recommend vinegar as a general disinfectant. And purified alcohol. Ethanol. Very effective. Though be careful where you store it. A powerful intoxicant. Also highly inflammable. Even the vapour. Particularly the vapour.’

‘And where would I find it? Ethanol?’

‘Shall I procure you some?’

‘I would be indebted to you. And for the brimstone? The bark?’

‘I will write you a note for the apothecary,’ says Guillotin, patting the younger man’s shoulder. ‘Now, let us go into the house together and see if that nice girl will make us some coffee, eh?’

At the kitchen table, Jeanne, Lisa Saget and both of Lisa’s children are busy paring vegetables. A chair is brought for the doctor but he prefers to stand by the fire. He is vigorous and good-humoured. He says pleasant, admiring things to the women and children. Jean-Baptiste explains that they have been to see the sick miner. That he is certainly worse today but that the doctor has prescribed some remedies.

‘Natalie,’ says Lisa, tilting her head towards the girl, ‘will fetch them. Wipe your hands, Natalie, and put on your coat.’

‘We can make room for him in the house,’ says Jeanne. ‘I can make a bed on the landing upstairs. He will be better here.’