“Don’t pay me any mind. I’m a silly girl.”
All it had taken for me to feel as happy as I had a month before was a good bath, twenty hours of sleep, the news that Robert was alone in the city, and the conviction that I had followed my man to war. Thinking about the calendar, it occurred to me that my birthday might have already passed.
“What’s today’s date?” I asked Maryse (it’s become impossible for me to go on calling her Madame Polidor).
“The fourth of Vendémiaire,” she replied, flicking water on the iron to see if it was sufficiently hot.
“Yesterday was my birthday. Aunt Margot had promised me a grand ball at her château. Who would have thought that I’d spend it asleep?”
“We shall celebrate it today. The entire city’s a party.”
“You’re forgetting that I’m in mourning,” I said, indicating my tattered black dress.
“And what of it? I’m not going to take you to a dance, but I’d wager that it would make your aunt happy to see you enjoying yourself after being cooped up in that carriage for four weeks. You know,” she said, gesturing in irritation, “it leaves a bad taste in my mouth to have left Claudette behind. But someone had to drive the carriage. Poor girl. By the way,” she added, “how old are you now? Seventeen, eighteen?”
“Do I really look that old,” I said, flattered that she’d thought me nearly a woman. “I turned fifteen.”
Maryse lifted the iron and stared at me. The corners of her lips, slightly downturned, descended even further, and her face became that mask usually used to depict Tragedy. Her eyes filled with tears and a drop rolled down her cheek.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing, nothing. I burned my finger,” she said, her voice breaking, and raising her index finger to her mouth. “Hand me your dress,” she added. “I’ll iron it while you do your hair. We should hurry.”
While I got ready, I asked myself what painful memory had clouded her mood. But the time had not yet come for me to know the reason for her tears that afternoon.
In any event, I’ll never forget the expression on Robert’s face when, an hour later, we ran into each other in front of a café along the canal. Serious and indecisive, he looked at me over the rim of his mug of beer as if he couldn’t quite place the girl dressed in the too shabby black dress—the journey had robbed me of the better part of my hips as well—smiling stupidly in the doorway. It was only when he saw Maryse that he was able to react, which he did so clumsily that, in standing up, he toppled his chair and soaked his uniform in beer.
It was a perfect evening. The dinner in the packed hotel dining room. Maryse and Uncle Charles, arm in arm, walking ahead of us along the brightly lit streets. The cathedral’s spire, laden with torches, reaching up to the heavens like a pointed flame. And Robert, ever didactic, pointing out the place where, it was said, Rouget de Lisle had composed La Marseillaise. Later, while we strolled along the canal, we began to share some of the details of our lives. I told him about my grandfather, about the fire that killed my parents, and about being adopted by Aunt Margot. I spoke of Foix, of the beauty of the Garonne River and the valleys of Ariège, of the majesty of the Pyrenees. Robert, obviously, said nothing to me of Corinne. He focused entirely on recounting the motivating forces behind a duel he had fought, six months prior, with a certain Captain Varga. “He accused me, publically, of cheating at cards. What else could I have done, Henriette, but rebuff him? A man must guard his honor as a gentleman, don’t you think? And it’s not that I’m a great fan of duels, or of cards, for that matter. They are things that happen, things one simply falls into, despite oneself.” In any case, Varga had been obliged to withdraw from the fight due to a wounded shoulder, and the matter had been satisfactorily resolved between the respective seconds. Did I approve of his behavior?
“Of course, monsieur. You behavior was . . . Homeric,” I said, smitten, imagining him brandishing a sword, the walls of Troy in the background. Then he charmed me with a description of his fur collection, of how he carried them, rolled into bundles, everywhere he went.
“One day we’ll invade Russia, Henriette. If you’ll allow me, I’ll bring you a souvenir. What would you prefer, a cap made of ermine or of sable? And if one day we were to make it all the way to the jungles of Africa! Just imagine it! Panthers, leopards, tigers, lions . . . all at your feet, Henriette. Even rhinoceros horns and elephant tusks,” he added, laughing at his own mania for exotic animals. Hearing our laughter, Uncle Charles and Maryse turned around. I could see by their smiles that they approved of our budding relationship, and I was filled with joy.
At the strike of ten, Napoleon appeared in one of the windows of the city’s palace. It was the first time I’d ever seen him. He wore a sash across his chest. It was difficult to make out his facial features in the light from the candelabra held aloft by one of his attendants, but, by the way he gestured with his hat, he seemed in good spirits. I was amazed at his popularity; the moment the crowds of soldiers and civilians walking by the palace recognized him, a collective cry of “Vive l’Empereur” went up. “Vive l’Empereur!” shouted Robert, with the most sincere enthusiasm. “Vive l’Empereur!” I cried, caught up in the moment, though more out of imitation than conviction. The crowd began to envelop us and we were suddenly pushed toward the palace gates. The cries were deafening, and continued on long after the darling of France had withdrawn from the window. Separated from Uncle Charles and Maryse, we stayed right where we were, not speaking, surrounded by the clamor and the multitudes. At that moment, I felt his hand against my derrière. But when I saw his arms reaching to encircle my waist, I realized that it wasn’t his hand pressing against me. Faint with pleasure, I half-turned my head and allowed myself to be kissed luxuriously.
Thinking back on that night, I realize that it wasn’t only to Robert that I opened my body. In truth, my virginity—like that of so many thousands of French, Austrian, and Russian women—was one of the first casualties of that campaign; mild casualties, I must admit, and even desirable, in many cases, but casualties nonetheless, as recorded in the private registers of virgins who, across the villages and cities of my era, carried the voices of priests and nuns, fathers and mothers about in their consciences. And in the same way that nature regulates the times of estrus in animals, the survival instinct that drives the human species generates carnal desire during wartime. A deficit of so many thousands of deaths, countered by a credit of so many thousands of births. These are God’s calculations, and I was but a number in that simple equation.
I should explain myself better. The last thing I want is to diminish Robert’s importance in these pages. I am not saying that it was the war that made me love him. I think I would have fallen in love with him in times of peace or under any other circumstance. Nonetheless, I will say that if we had met before the war, I would not, that night in Strasbourg, have followed him docilely to the door of his barracks, nor would I have sat astride his horse, high in the saddle, nor allowed myself to be thrown, like a sack of potatoes, on a pile of foul-smelling hay, nor would I have allowed him to deflower me, dressed in mourning, in the open air, in the middle of the night on the outskirts of the city. And it’s not that I regret having done it. Quite the contrary. It was the culminating moment of an unforgettable day, my first day as a fifteen-year-old, my first taste of love. I only mean that, because I’d already begun to live a bit like a soldier during that journey to Strasbourg, I had felt the imminence of battle. Truth be told, I made love not only with Robert that night, but also with the war.
When we returned to the clockmaker’s house, Uncle Charles and Maryse were still out looking for us. Our moment of passion had occurred so quickly that the streets were still full of people and ablaze with light, and even dear old Simon Lévi was still up, leaning in the doorway of his workshop, talking with a neighbor, a woman holding a sleeping gray cat in her arms. After the requisite introductions, Robert took my arm and led me a few steps away from them.
“I am very sorry about what happened, Henriette. I must have lost my head,” he said in a low voice, arranging his face into an expression appropriate