Napoleon Symphony: A Novel in Four Movements by Anthony Burgess Read Free Book Online Page A

which he dredged up enough honor to take, but there will be no more suicides on my staff. I will shoot General Dumas with my own hand.”
    “There’s a lllimit—”
    “I will set an example. At the same time let it be known to all ranks that their troubles are nearly over. Temporarily, of course. We shall soon be in Cairo. Murad and Ibrahim are frightened. Now you can tell Croisier to come in.” He took a draught of Italian wine unmixed with water. Captain Croisier almost tottered in, young, scared, pale, sweating. Bonaparte said:
    “Your military conduct shows you unfit to be an aide-de-camp. You are a trained soldier leading trained soldiers. It was inexcusable of you not to wipe out that band of Bedouins. They penetrated some of the outer tents. They killed, they stole, they got away.”
    “It was a very large band, sir. I had only a handful—”
    “Don’t interrupt. To think that an officer of the French Army, an officer moreover entrusted with so high and intimate an appointment—I am ashamed. A ragged troop of marauding Moors, flea-bitten, disease-ridden—”
    “As I said, sir, we were outnumbered.”
    “Outnumbered? We are always outnumbered. Numbers are nothing, as I showed again and again in Italy. You’re a stain, you’re a blot, a cowardly travesty of a soldier of the Republic. Do you hear me?”
    “I can hardly do otherwise, sir.”
    “Insolence.” And he cracked Croisier on the body with his whip.
    “That, sir, is surely inexcus—”
    “Don’t. You. Tell. Me. What.” This time the blow was on the left cheek. In almost no time the flies were feeding. “I hope, sir, you will know how to make amends.”
    “Have no fear of that, general. If you want a sacrificial victim, you shall have it.”
    “I don’t want a suicide. I don’t want that sort of cowardice again. You’ll have your chance. Now get out. Out .” And the whip swished.
    Nerves, Berthier was thinking, nerves. Is it worth it, any of it? He had forgotten, in his own exhaustion, what precisely they were supposed to be doing here. Doubts crept: his youth, the mess of the disembarkation, the encumbrance of scientific civilians, the worst possible season of the Egyptian year. It was something to do with modernizing this country and something to do with India and Africa and British trade. And saving the Republic, in all this sand, miles from anywhere. Berthier said:
    “On bbbehalf of the savants, Monsieur Monge wishes ttt—”
    “Soft civilians. No time for them now, let them suffer like the troops. Conquer first, civilize after.”
    T hey could hardly believe it, the retreating arses of all that Mameluke or Turkish cavalry, heathen anyway, crying heathen words as they cantered off in gunsmoke and dust-clouds, dropping spears and jewels and good Birmingham pistols. And soon it was water water water, a world of blessed water, the muddy stinking welcoming mother Nile near Rahmaniya. The citizen troops threw themselves into it like crocodiles and soaked and swilled and gorged, champing the water like solid food, inhaling it like air. Trauner and others burst like blown frogs; others, luckier, vomited up gallons like public fountains. Then Barsacq yelled watermelons , and soon they were all gouging and bayoneting and tearing with sore teeth. They lay like babies, sucking succulent pulp. Gabutti got through eight in a single sitting, then the dysenteries started. Mayo and Bonin lay moaning while their entrails pumped out through their anuses. Borderie died wondering what those big pointed things were, staring through the mist, the Holy Trinity perhaps, come to get him.
    D efiling their shadows, infidels, accursed of Allah, with fingernails that are foot-long daggers, with mouths agape like cauldrons full of teeth on the boil, with eyes all fire, shaitans possessed of Iblis, clanking into their wars all linked, like slaves, with iron chains. Murad Bey, the huge, the single-blowed ox-beheader, saw without too much surprise mild-looking