Andrew Miller - Pure

‘And what is Charvet? A writer?’

‘A tailor.’

Vexed, intrigued, tipsy, Jean-Baptiste makes what he hopes is a face expressive of scorn, but the organist has gone back to his study of the other faces in the café. When he has finished, he says, ‘I hope you don’t object to paying for this. And then we must find somewhere to eat. Nothing is more damaging to incipient friendship than brandy on an empty stomach.’

In the galleries, in the courtyard, the shoving, the shouting, the lifting of hats, the cocking of eyebrows, the tireless pursuing of something, anything, goes on with no sign that it will ever lose its momentum. Is this modern? And these people, are they the party of the future or of the past? Does one always know to which party one belongs? Can one be sure? Or is it, thinks the engineer, like his mother’s religion — some destined to be saved, others damned, and no sure sign either way?

They are burrowing through the crowd (occasionally having to advance sideways, occasionally having to stop or even retreat a little) when Armand clutches Jean-Baptiste’s coat again and steers him through the portal of Salon No. 7. In the lobby, a tightly stayed woman is perched on a stool behind a table on which there is nothing but a small tin and a bell.

‘You have to give her four sous,’ says Armand. Jean-Baptiste gives her four sous. She rings the bell. A man in a rose-tinted wig appears, holds back a rose-coloured curtain. Clearly, he is already well acquainted with Armand. They bow to each other like courtiers, though it is all mockery.

‘Just Zulima today,’ says Armand.

‘As you wish,’ says the man.

‘This gentleman,’ says Armand, gesturing to Jean-Baptiste with his thumb, ‘is from somewhere in Normandy. One day he’ll be the greatest engineer in France.’

‘Naturally,’ purrs the man. He leads them along a softly lit corridor. On either side, heavy drapes conceal what are, presumably, the entrances to rooms, but the last drapes have been imperfectly drawn and Jean-Baptiste, pausing, has a glimpse of a man, part of a man, a naked arm and naked leg lashed to a cartwheel, a face, heavily bearded, one large eye wide in a wild stare. Who was it meant to be? Damiens? Damiens who they spent half a day killing in the place de Grève for grazing the king with a penknife? Racked him, cut him, poured lead into his wounds, flogged horses to rip his limbs from their sockets, though the horses could not do it — poor innocent beasts — until the executioner cut through some of the dying man’s muscle. Thousands, it was said, looking on that day from the buildings around the square. .

At the end of the corridor, the guide is waiting for him. He lifts another curtain. Jean-Baptiste stoops, passes under his arm.

‘Zulima,’ begins the man, breaking into speech as if he was some manner of automaton, ‘was a Persian princess who died, like Cleopatra, from the bite of a viper. She was but seventeen years of age and unhappy in love. Her purity —’ another, finer curtain is drawn back — ‘and the arts of the Persian priests have preserved her perfectly for more than two hundred years.’

She is lying on a platform that is half catafalque, half daybed. There are two candles by her feet, two more by her head. Her body is wrapped in a shroud, a winding-sheet of some diaphanous stuff — tulle, organza, who knows. She is nubile. She is perfect. The young men stand either side of her and gaze. The older man waits by her feet, head bowed as though in prayer.

‘Remind you of anyone?’ whispers Armand.

‘No one,’ says Jean-Baptiste, but he knows who the organist has in mind. There is indeed, in the wax face, the ample figure, a marked resemblance to Ziguette Monnard.

From the Palais they go to an inn near the Bourse to eat. They are seated at a common table and fed the ten-sous dinner of bread soup and boiled beef. A brisk fire burns at the back of the room. They are drinking wine, red wine that is neither good nor bad. They are drinking and talking, their cheeks growing red. Armand, with no sense of shame or awkwardness, confesses to having been abandoned in the baby-wheel outside the Hôpital des Enfants-Trouvés. There, his talent brought him to the notice of the intendants who, in turn, brought him to the notice of the commissioners, those charitable men and women who liked to go fishing among the scabby, shaven-headed children who lived and died in those halls, for one worth saving.

‘There are no youthful illusions in such a place. You do not mistake the world’s character. By the age of seven we were all as cynical as abbots.’

Together they agree that the losing of illusions is an indispensable preparation for those who hope to rise in the world. On a third bottle, they confide to each other that they are ambitious, madly ambitious, and that through luck and hard work they intend to die famous men.

‘And wealthy,’ says Armand, picking a shred of beef from between his teeth. ‘I do not intend to die famous only for my poverty.’

Jean-Baptiste speaks of his former patron, the Comte de S—, of his two years at the Ecole des Ponts, of Maître Perronet, of the bridges he dreams of building, structures light as thought spanning the Seine, the Orne, the Loire. .

Wine and unsuspected depths of loneliness have produced in him an effusiveness he would not, sober, trust or like in another. Nearly, very nearly, he tells Armand what he is in Paris to do, for surely Armand would be impressed, would see what he himself (in the ruby light of tavern wine) has come to see — that destroying the cemetery of les Innocents is to sweep away in fact , not in rhetoric, the poisonous influence of the past! And would Armand then not have to admit that he, Jean-Baptiste Baratte, engineer, belonged, beyond any quibbling, to the party of the future, indeed, to its vanguard? Or would he be alarmed? Horrified? Furious? What exactly is Armand Saint-Méard’s relationship with the bishop? What has His Grace been told of the minister’s plans?

Outside, they piss against a wall, button themselves and sail on through what is left of the afternoon. They are still talking, still gabbling about politics, Paris, the irreducible dignity of the peasants ( But I know about the peasants , Jean-Baptiste wants to say, I’m related to dozens of them ), but neither is really listening to the other any more, and anyway, he is being urged inside again — immediately feeling more drunk inside than out — and presented to a man, a kind of exquisite monkey, who is, it transpires, Charvet the tailor.

The shop, if such a space could be called by so modest a name, is fitted out with dainty furniture and oil paintings and is not remotely akin to the pungent atelier where Jean-Baptiste’s father sewed his gloves. No obvious sign of work here at all, other than the table by the window where a pair of young men are dreamily cutting lengths of some material that glitters and shivers like spring water.

Charvet wastes no time. A few words from Armand, a shrug from Jean-Baptiste, are all he needs to begin. He circles the engineer, touching, tugging, stepping back to better assess the length of a leg, the slight roundness of the shoulders, the slender waist. It is not unpleasant to be the focus of such intense professional surveillance. Jean-Baptiste does not even notice when Armand slips away. The whole day has had some strange impetus of its own. He is past trying to wrestle it. He will think about it later.

‘I believe, monsieur,’ says Charvet, ‘I believe that we shall be able to do something very interesting with you. You have, if you will allow me, the figure necessary for the new styles. You are not one of those portly gentlemen I am forced to disguise more than dress. You, monsieur, we may dress. Yes. Something that will flow with the natural movements of the body. Something a little more informal, though, of course, in its way, perfectly correct. . We must tell a story, monsieur. We must tell it clearly and beautifully. I will dress you not for 1785 but for 1795. Cédric! Bring the gentleman a glass of the Lafitte. Bring the bottle. And now, monsieur, if you will do me the honour of following me. .’