Andrew Miller - Pure

Now that things are stiller, Jean-Baptiste is aware of the heat of the sun. It’s fierce up here, a heat redoubled by being reflected off the unstripped tiles. He cannot quite see down into the church where the others are, where Slabbart is. The son-in-law and his friend are pressed together like terrified children. He has no more interest in them. On the ground, the distant, shining ground, Héloïse and Jeanne stand, two slight figures, on the grass by the preaching cross. He nods to them, makes a little movement with his arm, a kind of wave, then steps into the gutter.

She is waiting for him near the bottom of the scaffolding and the first thing she does is hit him, a curious female punch with the underside of her fist against his shoulder. She does not say anything. She walks away from him, arms crossed tightly over her breasts. He goes back into the church. Guillotin has arrived. Slabbart has been turned onto his back. The wound — an oozing gash as long as a man’s ring finger — is almost exactly where, on Jean-Baptiste’s head, Ziguette cut him with the ruler, but the wood has gone deeper than the brass, has touched not just the bone but the tenderness below it, pierced it. Guillotin is careful to keep the toes of his shoes out of the blood. He looks at Jean-Baptiste, makes an almost imperceptible movement with his shoulders.

‘Get a blanket,’ says Jean-Baptiste to the miner beside him. ‘Wrap his body. Carry it to the far chapel.’ He gestures to the northwest corner, beyond the organ, then moves forward as if to crouch or kneel again next to the dead man, but hands are stopping him, turning him away, pressing him, ushering him out of the circle. Guillotin comes next, the same respectful strength. After him, Armand. The circle closes.

For a few seconds the expelled men, masters until a moment ago, stand awkwardly, silently, behind the miners’ backs; then together they quit the church, step out into the harsh morning light.

‘They have a faith?’ asks Guillotin.

Jean-Baptiste shakes his head. His mouth is bone-dry, his heart still thudding from his climb. ‘There was a church at the mines, but none of them went near it. Among the managers it was thought they believed in nothing.’

‘There isn’t a man in the world who does not believe in something,’ says Guillotin.

‘I need a drink,’ says Armand.

‘I will join you gladly,’ says Guillotin. ‘And you, my dear engineer, should certainly take a glass. Two or three might be best.’

‘If I tell Lafosse of this,’ says Jean-Baptiste, ‘he’ll order me to bury him here.’

‘Like our old friend,’ says Armand softly.

‘Ah, you refer to Monsieur Lecoeur?’ asks Guillotin, peering at them over the hook of his nose. ‘I had wondered if he was here. Does Jeanne know of it?’

The engineer shakes his head, looks up at the church roof. What are they doing up there? Sitting? Talking? Waiting?

‘The dead man could go to the cemetery at Clamart,’ says Guillotin. ‘It is where most of those who would have come to les Innocents are now sent. A perfectly decent place. Or there’s the Protestant yard at Charenton. If that is more suitable.’

‘I shall ask them,’ says Jean-Baptiste. ‘I will do as they wish.’

‘I wept for my organ,’ says Armand, ‘but my eyes are dry now. I cannot think what sort of man that makes me.’

‘There is no grief in the abstract,’ says the doctor. ‘What was he to you? To any of us? Ah, here come the women.’ He rubs his hands, smiles at the approaching forms of Jeanne, Héloïse and Lisa Saget. ‘They will know what to do,’ he says. ‘They will have insights .’

The women’s insight — Lisa Saget’s at least — is to prepare the food. Stewed oxtails. Twenty loaves of bread stale enough to soak up the gravy. Wine cooled in the charnels.

By one o’clock, when Lisa beats the saucepan, Sagnac has taken his men away, spirited them out quietly by the door to the rue de la Ferronnerie. The miners file from the church tamely enough. Nothing in their demeanours, the voices they use to each other, suggests anything is much amiss. They collect their tins, their utensils, queue up by the kitchen annexe, carry their food to the preaching cross, sit and eat.

‘I am sorry, Jean,’ says Héloïse to Jean-Baptiste, the pair of them standing privately in the shade of the sexton’s house. ‘But you frightened me so. I do not even think Ragoût would run along a wall like that.’

‘Then I am sorry too,’ he says. ‘But to lose a man in such a manner. .’

‘It was an accident?’

‘We shall never prove otherwise.’

‘And what will you do with him?’

‘Slabbart? He can stay in the church tonight, but we must do something tomorrow. In this heat. .’

‘He had family? A wife, perhaps? Children?’

‘I don’t know. I shall find out.’

‘They could be given some money.’

‘Money!’

‘Money would help them, Jean. You have nothing else to give them.’

The long summer’s afternoon. A great stillness over the cemetery, over the whole quarter. The sky high and pale, a few puffs of cloud, then the sun slipping towards the rue de la Lingerie, and as soon as it has dipped behind the ridges of the roofs, a stealthy, rousing coolness. A moon rises, fat and orange. The carts come from the quarry. The men, who have spent the greater part of the afternoon beside the openings of their tents, set to with no resentment, no undercurrent of complaints, though Jean-Baptiste halts the work as soon as he judges there are bones enough for the overseer at the Porte d’Enfer not to make sour remarks about idlers at the cemetery. The priests begin to march; the hems of their soutanes are white with dust. The singing is ragged, unenthused. Left to their own devices, they might tip every bone into the Seine. August in Paris is not a pious month.

It is close on eleven before Héloïse, Armand, Lisa and Jean-Baptiste leave the cemetery. Guillotin is long since gone, and Jeanne and her grandfather have not been invited to join them: it is late, and there can, of course, be no concert now, no jollity. Armand suggests they go to the Palais Royal, find some corner they can settle into, drink like soldiers. Héloïse protests. The Palais, its unrelenting gaiety, will embarrass them. They can drink in the house. The Monnards, in all likelihood, will have retired for the night, and there is brandy in the kitchen, a bottle of eau de vie upstairs. And wine, of course, Monsieur Monnard’s wine. Should that not be enough?

They go to the house. In the hallway, the air is thick as felt, the whole house dark and quiet. The Monnards have indeed retired. Marie too, though she seems to have taken the brandy to bed with her, perhaps for her cold. Héloïse fetches the eau de vie. In the drawing room, Armand pours four glasses half-full of wine, then tops them up with the spirit. ‘It might taste like wine now,’ he says. ‘Here’s to Slabbart.’ They raise their glasses, sip.

‘What was his first name?’ asks Héloïse.

‘Joos,’ says Jean-Baptiste.

‘Joos,’ repeats Héloïse softly.

‘Play for us, Armand,’ says Lisa.

Armand shakes his head. ‘Music will add new emotions. We should stay with those we have.’

‘But play anyway,’ she says, touching his hand, stroking the ginger hairs on his fingers.

He shrugs, sits on the stool, shuffles through the music on the stand — those pieces Signor Bancolari tried to teach to Ziguette Monnard — then drops the music onto the floor and begins something slow from memory.

‘It’s out of tune already,’ he says. ‘Everything’s at least a semi-tone flat.’

‘It’s perfect,’ says Héloïse. ‘Please don’t stop.’

Jean-Baptiste has crossed to the window. He stands there, arms folded, looking out. As they only have a pair of candles in the room, both of them on the piano, he can see out without much difficulty. The moon is high now, almost directly overhead, smaller, no longer orange. Armand plays for several minutes, a piece more beautiful than sad but only just.