Read Online Eat Him If You Like by Jean Teulé - Free Book Online Page B

playmate’s chest. Alain could still move his left foot. He wanted to escape. Chestnut branches and planks were piled on top of him. Alain still needed to go and buy a heifer for Bertille. He pushed at the heap of wood with his fingers, but Chambort jumped on him.
    ‘Trample on the pyre to make a good fire!’
    Chambort stood on the vine shoots and packed down the wood with his feet. He waddled around, putting on airs. He trampled the wretched Alain underfoot from his makeshift platform.
    ‘Long live the Emperor!’ he called. ‘Long live the Empress and the young imperial Prince!’
    Some cattle farmers and horse traders who had been at the far side of the fair all afternoon were oblivious to what had been happening. They were astounded to see a pyre being erected atop a fellow human being.
    ‘They’ve caught a Prussian and they’re going to burn him! War has reached Hautefaye!’ shouted some in a panic, hurrying along their cattle and getting away from the fair as quickly as possible.
    ‘We must go to Nontron and tell the police!’ said a farmer’s wife, losing her headdress as she raced downhill, prodding her heifer’s rump into a gallop.
    Some visitors, having grasped the situation more clearly, were appalled by the mob’s brutality and cradled their headsin their hands. Many, mesmerised, watched what followed. Chambort descended from the pyre.
    ‘The youngest should light the fire,’ he decided, ‘just like on midsummer’s night. Come closer, children. Hey, you there, what’s your name?’
    ‘Pierre Delage, but people call me ’Poleon,’ replied a young boy of five with bruised bare feet who was clinging to his mother’s threadbare skirt.
    ‘His father gave him that nickname after the Emperor,’ she explained, ‘when he returned from fighting the Russians in the Crimea.’
    ‘Very good. And where is your heroic husband?’
    ‘He died in the Battle of Forbach.’
    ‘Really?’ said Chambort, looking pained. ‘Then come, Napoleon, set this Prussian alight. The Emperor will send you a medal and some shoes.’
    ‘Shoes? Go on,’ said the poor mother to her child.
    ‘Don’t do it, Pierre!’ shouted Dubois and Georges Mathieu.
    ‘If you do, the police will put you in prison!’ added Antony and Bouteaudon.
    ‘Don’t do it!’ yelled Mazerat.
    The villagers turned and chased Alain’s protectors away. The child hesitated, but Jean Campot lit a match and held it out to him.
    ‘Come on, Napoleon, burn the pig …’
    The child knelt to light the paper, but he couldn’t keep the flame alive. The match went out too quickly; he had to start again. Alain could smell the wood. A third match sparked near one of his ears and the Dordogne Echo caught fire, theflames spreading quickly to the straw and the vine shoots. He tossed about beneath the conifer branches. Logs blazed and the smell of resin hung in the air. Alain still appeared to be moving behind the curtains of fire as they sprang up.
    Alain watched the hazy crowd dance through the yellow and orange waves, throwing their hats and sticks up to the sky. A low, regular drone like a beehive filled the air.
    ‘Long live the Emperor!’ coughed the mayor, still sporting his sash, as he inhaled a cloud of smoke.
    The men found killing a human being just as easy as harvesting their crops, and they danced and spun in circles. Alain was still alive and his heavy breathing sounded like air escaping a bellows. The end was nigh. His hair smouldered, his chest caught fire. He was finding it harder and harder to breathe. A woman was yelling wildly. It was the schoolmaster’s wife, her treacherous red lips drawn back in a grimace, revealing her fangs. Near her stood Anna – the girl whose hand Alain would have liked to hold as he watched their child playing in the vineyard. She gazed at him, weeping, and mouthed a sentence he could not hear. It seemed she was promising him something. Her look fuelled the flames round Alain’s heart and it burst from his