But then his thoughts cleared. What was he doing sitting, his thoughts drifting? Every minute he sat gathering his strength, the injured British soldier’s life was seeping away.
He didn’t want to take the towpath, but the fields proved too rough going for his bare feet. River craft passed him and soldiers were visible from time to time on both sides of the water, but he soon realized they had no interest in him. Soon he was following the canal through a broken avenue of poplars.
Jean-Baptiste felt simultaneously sick and ravenously hungry; it was hard to remember what he was doing. He thought about the food he might find. The people of Corbie would be short of food, everywhere was the same, but his mother would have something. Her tiny garden abutted a narrow waterway that ran down to the river. Every inch was covered in growing things, mostly leeks; he had teased her about the leeks, always her most successful crop, but he remembered red-flowered climbing beans too, the green pipes of onions, and the ferny carrot tops. Her pear tree bore little fruit, but she always believed in next year’s yield. Her hens pecked among the greenery, and an old chair caught the sun’s rays on spring afternoons. The privy was perched precariously on the bank. It was never a place to linger.
Now that the prospect was becoming more of a reality, he allowed himself to think properly of his mother. He wished he had written, wished he had at least told her he was safe. Had he died, she would have gotten his pension, but he had lived. She must have assumed he was a soldier—what man wasn’t? He thought, uncomfortably, that she had wanted him to be one, but that was when there hadn’t been a war; he doubted any mother would have wished the last two years on any son. But she would have liked a picture of him in uniform. Other men had laughed about how their mothers had cherished the pictures they had left them: of awkward poses and pristine uniforms. But his mother had never had a chance, and all because he was so furious with Vignon and with her for giving herself to him. Even the memory of it stirred uncomfortable feelings, even now that Vignon had saved his life.
The sun was still warm, but he felt clammy in his damp clothes. He walked along the edges of the fields, pressing his ribs with his hand. Eventually the river narrowed and across the canal Robisart’s mill came in sight, just where it should, though its glass was broken and it looked deserted. Had Captain Robisart survived?, he wondered.
The outlying houses of Corbie appeared; in the few small orchards between them, unripe apples hung on the trees, though the grass was thigh-high. The first house was ruined; nettles grew immediately around it. A word had been painted on it, but it was a word he didn’t know. A scrawny pig nuzzled in the earth. He tried to remember who lived here. Was it the widow Morisot? A skinny girl sidled out of the house and stood between Jean-Baptiste and the pig, staring at him as if he might try to steal the animal any second. He called out a greeting, but the girl just went on staring.
To his left the first river gardens appeared, their neglected crops nothing more than a tangled mass. A few lines of cabbages showed that somebody was still trying to nurture his allotment, but it was mostly just yellow columns of decaying sprouts and rusting metal. There was one incongruous sight: Monsieur Petitbon’s rose bower with its seat that nobody had ever seen him sit in. Made out of old planks and wire, it had always looked mad in winter but now, rising out of rotting vegetables, it was covered in red roses. He walked on. The edge of the towpath was deeply rutted, invaded by dark weeds. Rather than go into the center of town and to the lock, which he was sure would now be guarded by soldiers, he turned toward the Remparts des Poissonniers and up the narrow cut of the Rue du Four Perrache. To his far left was the Mairie, its fairytale turrets and spires like a chateau on the Loire, Vignon had said.
As he came out on the corner of the Place de la République, he could see that the place he was returning to was not the one of his two-year-old memories, although its buildings were mostly intact. He leaned against the wall, tired but suddenly apprehensive, gazing at the British trucks drawn up from one side of the square to the other, at the sawn-off stumps of trees that had once brought shade to the town, and at the soldiers and female nurses milling about. But whom could he tell about the soldier? He was still trying to take it all in when there was a loud shout. The tone was of command, but he didn’t understand the meaning.
Two soldiers were coming toward him. They were clearly British soldiers. One gestured to him to put his hands up. He did so, realizing that in his wet clothes, with a cotton jacket over his army breeches, his own identity was hard to discern. As they reached him, one of the soldiers reached out and turned him around quite roughly. He stumbled. One felt his waistband, presumably checking for weapons, and then said something to him that he didn’t understand. He shrugged. The man spoke louder, but he shook his head.