Iain Pears - The Dream of Scipio

Julien went back to the poems, those last lines written before Olivier was silenced, and in particular the one that contains the line “and I sink in heart-ache, like a ship in a storm.” Not, says Julien, a reference to his love; this is not a love poem. For Olivier surely had cast off the safety of Ceccani’s patronage, which had given him everything. And having thrown away the security of so great a master, there was nothing to protect him. The poem alludes to his betrayal and his consciousness of it. By implication it also suggests that Olivier was aware that retribution was close when he wrote, and that it was not unjustified. Loyalty has always been one of the highest human attributes. By the standards of his day and age, Olivier’s sin could not have been greater. He may have been a poet of considerable ability; in human terms he could not be judged lightly. The Comte de Fréjus was let loose on him in revenge. He was lucky to escape with his life; had Ceccani demanded more, who could have denied him?

And so Julien judged Olivier de Noyen harshly and without pity. He even referred back to Manlius and the example he set, using the text of The Dream of Scipio as the link; for Olivier knew Manlius’s words, but had utterly failed to comprehend them, it seemed. “No one can possess wisdom if consumed by intemperance,” says Manlius, quoting the Protagoras, yet Olivier’s actions were surely intemperate. Another statement, this time derived from Cicero, also gave him comfort, for the wisest of all Romans stated that “you cannot act rightly by taking up arms against your father or your fatherland.” Was that not what Olivier had done? For in that age without countries, Cardinal Ceccani was both father and fatherland to Olivier, and he had turned against both. Julien’s own position was the more clear, surely?

It is significant, however, that Julien did not ponder the next passage from Manlius’s manuscript until much later, for it might have brought with it further reflection. He had noted it years before in the Vatican library, correctly ascribed its origins to Theophrastus, then filed it away. “An amount of disgrace or infamy can be incurred,” Manlius quoted, “if it is in the cause of virtue.”

Had Julien been less influenced by his own predicament, then he might have looked harder and guessed the poet’s motivations earlier than he did. He might also have considered the possibility that Manlius, in writing these words, was passing a verdict on his own acts, rather than providing a philosophical basis for them.

AFTER JULIA LEFT, Julien had thought about her almost unendingly. He had worried, grown angry, imagined her with others, seeing her always in his mind, bathed in sun, in the open air, painting on a hilltop. Almost every day he went to the post-box in the dark entranceway to his apartment building, hoping to see a letter with a strange stamp.

The concierge stopped saying anything to him after a while. Initially she had said, “Nothing today, Monsieur Barneuve,” when he came down, but now she stopped and merely shook her head when he appeared every morning.

He had given up hoping for news by the time it arrived, quite unexpectedly, about two weeks after the German invasion of the south. He had finished his day’s work, walked out into the ever quieter, dirtier streets, dark already with the streetlights unlit for fear of bombers—although the muttering of the cynical said this was a convenient excuse to cover the fact that there was not enough power to provide lighting anymore. The streets were deserted; the arrival of the German army had extinguished what little life there was left. Although people were getting used to it surprisingly quickly, few went out when darkness fell; only the occasional military truck was on the roads, and few people on foot except for patrols of either soldiers or policemen. There was an air of foreboding that hung over the entire city like a thick fog.

It was raining lightly and he hurried, crossing the road and putting his foot in a deep puddle that had opened up in the pavement the previous winter and had never been repaired. He stopped and looked down at his soaking foot and sodden shoe, his only decent pair of winter shoes, which he had taken out that morning and checked carefully to make sure their soles were still good. With luck they would last. This would not help them, and he cursed the war, the Germans, Marcel, the city, and the weather equally, for bringing their final disintegration that much closer. Then, more slowly and carefully, looking down at the ground, he walked the last couple of hundred meters to his home, standing in the entrance, shaking himself and brushing as much water as possible out of his hair and off his clothes.

He went up the stairs, into his chilly apartment, and even before he switched on the lights he fetched a towel. He stood by the window drying his hair, staring down at the steps of the church of Saint Agricole opposite. It was nearly eight; the doors were open and the last people at evening mass were coming out, each one pausing at the door, looking up at the rain as though they could see where it was all coming from, then hunching down and hurrying away.

Only one person there was not in a rush, standing close by the entrance, faintly illuminated by the light coming out of the open doorway. Julien stiffened. That turn of the head, set of the shoulders, that manner of standing. The patience of the way the woman let the rain run down her body rather than trying to find cover. He could see little, but he would have recognized her in any light or in any weather.

He ran down the stairs, forgetting his soaking shoe, not taking a coat or umbrella, and ran as quickly as he could across the street, bounding up the steps two at a time.

“Julia!” he called out.

She turned and smiled, and held out her arms to him. When he finally let her go he was soaked to the skin once more.

HE USED UP nearly a month’s allowance of coal to get her dry, and rather than talking, spent the first few hours they were together fussing like an old hen over her. Taking off her clothes and arranging them around the fire to dry, making hot water for her bath, sorting out an old dressing gown for her to wear, then running out again to the shops to find something—anything—to buy for her to eat. They ended up having a feast around the fire of boiled rice, tomatoes, a little bread, and some grapes. Not grand, perhaps, but in the circumstances, a triumph.

And eventually, when she was warm and dry and clean, they began to talk. The room was in near darkness, and even though it was no longer cold they huddled close together, touching all the time. He could not bear not to be touching her, constantly reassuring himself that she was truly there.

“Why on earth are you here? Are you mad?”

In the intervening year her hair had become even more flecked with gray; she had lost weight and had acquired the gaunt, furtive look of the persecuted and the hunted. Her fingers fiddled constantly, and he realized that the calm and poise that had once been so much a part of her had gone. The clothes now hissing by the fire were a size or so too big, and threadbare; Julien realized for the first time how artful her previous simplicity had been. Only her eyes remained the same.

She was drinking as well; her third glass of homemade brandy—given to him by a farmer at Roaix, made in the man’s own still—sat in front of her, already empty.

“I remembered how much you shouted at me for not coming to you last time I got into a mess,” she said. “And I didn’t want to risk that again. I hadn’t anticipated that you’d be out so late.” She had a faint, ironic smile on her face—which highlighted the lines growing around her mouth and in her cheeks. “On the other hand, if you mean what am I doing in France, it’s a long story. But basically I discovered that going to America and being let into America are different things.”