darkness.
He rises from the chair to see if he can spy the glimmer of the evening’s first candle in the sexton’s house, but there is nothing, not yet. Perhaps they retire like Norman peasants, like the beasts of those peasants, as soon as it is too dark to work.
Was the girl simple-minded? He does not think so. But can he depend on her description of what, under the rough grass, he will find when he starts to dig? He supposes he must, for he has little else to guide him. The memories of an aged sexton, records that have made a dinner for generations of mice . . .
He turns the chair, sits facing the table. He fusses with his tinderbox, lights his own candle and slides it close to the edge of the book in which, in the morning, he made his notes. He studies his sketches, runs a finger by the figures, tries to see it all as a problem of pure engineering such as, at the school, Maître Perronet might have thrown among them as he passed on his way to his office. So many square metres of ground, so many cart loads of . . . of debris. So many men, so many hours. A calculation. An equation. Voilà! He must not forget, of course, to leave a little room for the unexpected. Perronet always insisted on it, some give, some slack in the rope for that quantum of uncertainty that bedevils every project and which the naïve practitioner always ignores until it is too late.
From the back of the notebook he carefully tears out a sheet of plain paper, opens his inkwell, dips his nib and begins to write.
My lord,
I have made an initial examination of both the church and cemetery and see no reason to delay the work that Your Lordship has entrusted to me. It will be necessary to recruit at least thirty able-bodied men for the cemetery and as many more for the church, some of whom should have experience in the art of wrecking. In addition, I shall need horses, wagons, a good supply of timber.
In the matter of the cemetery, beyond the removing of the remains from the crypts, charnels and common graves, I recommend that the entire surface of the cemetery be excavated to a depth of two metres and sent out of the city to some unpopulated place or even taken as far as the coast and cast into the sea.
May I ask if somewhere suitable has been prepared for the reception of the human material? And what in the church other than those objects of a sacred character, relics, etc., is to be preserved? There is, for example, an organ of German origin that might, if Your Lordship wished it, be dismantled in such a way as to preserve it.
I am, my lord, your obedient servant,
J-B Baratte, engineer
He has no sand to sprinkle on the wet ink. He blows on it, cleans the nib of the pen. From below there comes the flat ringing of the supper gong. More dead men’s food. He shrugs off the banyan, reaches for the pistachio coat, then, before going down, halts a moment at the window with the candle in his hand. It is just a piece of fancy, of course, an impulse entirely whimsical and one he should not much like to try and explain to anyone, but he moves the candle, side to side, as if signalling. To whom? Who or what could possibly be down in that dark field, watching? Jeanne? Armand? The priest? Some hollow-eyed watchmen of the million dead? Or some future edition of himself, standing in the time to come and seeing in a window high above him the flickering of a light? What baroques even a mind like his is capable of ! He must not give play to them. It will end with him believing in that creature the minister spoke of, the dog-wolf in the charnels.
Over Paris, the stars are fragments of a glass ball flung at the sky. The temperature is falling. In an hour or two the first frost flowers will bloom on the grass of parade grounds, parks, royal gardens, cemeteries. The streetlamps are guttering. For their last half-hour they burn a smoky orange and illuminate nothing but themselves.
In the faubourgs of the rich, watchmen call the hour. In the rookeries
He rises from the chair to see if he can spy the glimmer of the evening’s first candle in the sexton’s house, but there is nothing, not yet. Perhaps they retire like Norman peasants, like the beasts of those peasants, as soon as it is too dark to work.
Was the girl simple-minded? He does not think so. But can he depend on her description of what, under the rough grass, he will find when he starts to dig? He supposes he must, for he has little else to guide him. The memories of an aged sexton, records that have made a dinner for generations of mice . . .
He turns the chair, sits facing the table. He fusses with his tinderbox, lights his own candle and slides it close to the edge of the book in which, in the morning, he made his notes. He studies his sketches, runs a finger by the figures, tries to see it all as a problem of pure engineering such as, at the school, Maître Perronet might have thrown among them as he passed on his way to his office. So many square metres of ground, so many cart loads of . . . of debris. So many men, so many hours. A calculation. An equation. Voilà! He must not forget, of course, to leave a little room for the unexpected. Perronet always insisted on it, some give, some slack in the rope for that quantum of uncertainty that bedevils every project and which the naïve practitioner always ignores until it is too late.
From the back of the notebook he carefully tears out a sheet of plain paper, opens his inkwell, dips his nib and begins to write.
My lord,
I have made an initial examination of both the church and cemetery and see no reason to delay the work that Your Lordship has entrusted to me. It will be necessary to recruit at least thirty able-bodied men for the cemetery and as many more for the church, some of whom should have experience in the art of wrecking. In addition, I shall need horses, wagons, a good supply of timber.
In the matter of the cemetery, beyond the removing of the remains from the crypts, charnels and common graves, I recommend that the entire surface of the cemetery be excavated to a depth of two metres and sent out of the city to some unpopulated place or even taken as far as the coast and cast into the sea.
May I ask if somewhere suitable has been prepared for the reception of the human material? And what in the church other than those objects of a sacred character, relics, etc., is to be preserved? There is, for example, an organ of German origin that might, if Your Lordship wished it, be dismantled in such a way as to preserve it.
I am, my lord, your obedient servant,
J-B Baratte, engineer
He has no sand to sprinkle on the wet ink. He blows on it, cleans the nib of the pen. From below there comes the flat ringing of the supper gong. More dead men’s food. He shrugs off the banyan, reaches for the pistachio coat, then, before going down, halts a moment at the window with the candle in his hand. It is just a piece of fancy, of course, an impulse entirely whimsical and one he should not much like to try and explain to anyone, but he moves the candle, side to side, as if signalling. To whom? Who or what could possibly be down in that dark field, watching? Jeanne? Armand? The priest? Some hollow-eyed watchmen of the million dead? Or some future edition of himself, standing in the time to come and seeing in a window high above him the flickering of a light? What baroques even a mind like his is capable of ! He must not give play to them. It will end with him believing in that creature the minister spoke of, the dog-wolf in the charnels.
Over Paris, the stars are fragments of a glass ball flung at the sky. The temperature is falling. In an hour or two the first frost flowers will bloom on the grass of parade grounds, parks, royal gardens, cemeteries. The streetlamps are guttering. For their last half-hour they burn a smoky orange and illuminate nothing but themselves.
In the faubourgs of the rich, watchmen call the hour. In the rookeries
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