She snuffed out the candles, picked up the lamp and walked down the corridor – looking away as she passed Madame’s bedroom – and hurried to her room at the far end next to the kitchen, where she threw herself on to a small iron bed, hoping to sink into sleep. The light from the lamp cast ghostly shapes on the ceiling. She put it out.
‘Hell and damnation! It’s darker than a tomb! Who blew out the candle?’ Père Moscou roared, shaking his fist at a roving cloud that had eclipsed the crescent moon.
He was worn out from his slog across the eleventh and twelfth arrondissements and along the Seine. He was also hungry and cold. It had stopped raining some time ago, but the wind was blowing from the north now, which meant frost.
He crossed Pont Royal and standing before him, on Quai d’Orsay, were the ruins of a vast building occupying a quadrangle that stretched from Rue de Poitiers to Rue de Bellechasse: the palace that housed the Conseil d’État and the Cour des Comptes,2 and which was burnt down by the communards in 1871 and left to fall into decay.
The ruin, whose windows no longer contained a single pane of glass and whose roof had caved in, was reminiscent of a modern Pompeii reclaimed by nature. Badly lit by the widely spaced street lamps, a jungle had grown up around the charred stones, creating a patch of virgin forest in the heart of the capital.
Père Moscou walked along the side of the building and turned off into Rue de Lille to come round to the front. Behind him, a shadow with no shoulders and a tiny ball for a head stretched out in the light of a street lamp before contracting into a grotesque silhouette and vanishing into the night. Père Moscou did not notice it. Leaving his handcart unattended, he climbed up a flight of steps to the ground floor of the main building, which was slightly set back from the street, and pulled on a cord. There was the sound of shuffling feet and a plump and greying woman, bulging out of a fluffy, purple housecoat, opened the door cautiously.
‘Oh it’s you! About time. I was just off to bed.’
Père Moscou went back down the steps to fetch his cart.
‘I hope your wheels are clean after all that rain. My word you’re puffing like a pair of old bellows. Hold on, I’ll help you. What’ve you got in here? Lead?’
‘Don’t know. The usual. I’ll just put it at the back of the yard and I’ll be right with you.’
A few moments later he opened the door to the small cosy kitchen that smelled pleasantly of cooked vegetables. Madame Valladier, the concierge who reigned over the crumbling building, stood in front of her stove, moodily stirring some soup.
‘That bread soup smells good,’ Père Moscou said, leaning over the pot.
‘Not so fast, you dirty old man. Go and wash your paws at the pump before you sit down to eat. God knows what you’ve been fiddling with in that graveyard of yours!’
When she turned round with a steaming bowl in her hands, the old man was already seated, a greedy look on his face and a bunch of lilies lying beside him on the table.
‘Where’d that come from? You been to a wedding?’
‘Comrade Barnabé told me I could take them. Some toffs buried a newborn. There were flowers everywhere, enough for a regiment.’
‘That’s terrible! You ought to be ashamed!’
‘Bah! You’ve got to look at it this way. The lad’s dead. He has no need of flowers, so why not offer them to a beautiful woman, eh, Maguelonne?’
‘I’ve told you a thousand times that my name’s Louise!’
‘I know, but Maguelonne is more noble,’ the old man replied, cutting himself a large chunk of bread. ‘I found that name on a lovely pink marble tombstone.’
‘Oh, you and your graveyard!’ cried the concierge. ‘Get a move on, will you. I’m worn out. I’ve spent the whole day running from courtyard to courtyard chasing away those rascals who want to kiss the girls. Ah, young people today!’
Père Moscou lapped up his soup noisily.
‘Don’t be such a prude, Maguelonne. Let the boys make their final assault. If they’re victorious it’ll produce little conscripts for the army of the Republic. Empire and kings may be dead but the army is still alive and kicking!’
‘Why don’t you go and get some sleep instead of talking drivel!’
As soon as the old man had left, Madame Valladier’s expression softened. She gathered the lilies and arranged them in an earthenware jug before burying her face in them.
Lighting his way with a lantern tied round his neck, Père Moscou hitched himself to his cart at the foot of a colossal stairway with a rusty, twisted banister. He groaned as he crossed the main courtyard that had once been covered in sand and was now a field of wild grass with a street lamp protruding from it. Amidst the wild oats and sweet clover the old man had planted a little vegetable garden whose harvest he shared with the concierge.
He continued along an arcaded gallery overrun by climbing plants that had broken through the floors and thick walls, until he reached a hallway strewn with rubble that crunched beneath the wheels of his cart. He stopped at the doorway of a square-shaped room, formerly the secretariant for the Conseil d’État, and lifted a moth-eaten curtain that covered the entrance.
He entered what he called his bivouac. The dividing walls of the room were riddled with cracks stuffed with bits of old newspaper. The ceiling was missing and the loose floorboards above let in dust and draughts. The ground was covered with coarse matting and in one corner an acacia tree served as a coat stand. The bivouac also contained a wood-burning stove that he used in mid-winter, a mattress piled high with quilts, a pair of rickety old chairs and a stack of wine crates filled not with bottles but with Père Moscou’s carefully arranged treasures. There was a crate for odd pairs of shoes, another for hats, a third for walking sticks and umbrellas, all destined for re-sale at Carreau du Temple. It was what the old man called his retirement capital. Once a week he went looking for treasure in Père-Lachaise cemetery, where for many years he had been employed as a gravedigger and occasional stone mason, and now and then, during good weather, he would take visitors on a guided tour.
‘I’ll sort this lot out tomorrow,’ he told himself, parking the cart, ‘but these tomcats can go in the cooler.’
He lifted the tarpaulin and seized the two carcasses lying on the frock coat, two black cats he’d found behind Parmentier’s tomb, already dead. Père Moscou was too fond of animals ever to kill them. He stuffed them in a box, which he covered with a piece of sacking.
‘I’ll offer Marcelin the skins on Sunday and then sell the rest to Cabirol as hare’s meat. But first I’ll have to get hold of some rabbit heads at Les Halles. I’ve got a lot on my plate!’
Père Moscou lay down. He was exhausted, but pleased with what he’d achieved. He snuggled under the quilts and smiled at a plaster bust sitting on a chair.
‘Goodnight, my Emperor,’ he mumbled, ‘and death to Grouchy!’
He put out the lamp and was soon snoring.
Although her brother Erwan had been dead for three years, Denise found herself walking with him beside the sea, and was surprised to see him looking so well. A sudden crash woke her from her dream and she curled up in bed, terrified.
What had roused her was only a creaking sound magnified by the silence. She heard it again, and then again. It was too evenly spaced to be the furniture shifting, she decided. It was coming from the corridor, muffled and menacing.
Mastering her emotions, she got out of bed and dragged her washstand against the door after first removing the jug and basin. She listened. Silence. Trembling with fear and cold – her room faced north and was not heated – she curled up on the narrow iron bed. A pale light