[a morning, festive and merciless]
[this one's because some ghosts stick around, even centuries later]
[this one's for bastille day on the year 1 of the republic]
[this one's for marat, on the anniversary of his death; and for the shattering brightness of life that persists; and for camille too.]
[this one's for marat, who isn't dead for as long as we still need him; in paraphrase of victor hugo]
Camille rushes out of the house before the coffee is served, before Lucile can walk back in from the kitchen, wrap her arms around him and put her head on his shoulder. He knows he might be hurting her, by denying her this chance at compassion, but if he remains at home for one more moment, he is going to choke, with all the words that had been piled up somewhere in his chest, and none of them rising high enough to reach his throat.
His neighbor gives him a cheery wave, but Camille cannot even return the good morning, and an emphatic, a festive one at that; a morning to be started with wine, if one so wished, a morning to celebrate their Revolution.
A morning to become a martyr on, and Camille wonders whether the history will fudge the dates a little.
A crisp, windy morning, shimmering in peach and mauve at the edge of the horizon, before turning into a clear blue, without a cloud, without even a wisp of fog; somehow even the factories have fallen silent in the city, and the streets might be deserted for all that Camille cares about them. When he sees a flag being hoisted on the pole, he starts running, and the morning turns into a blur around him, sunlit and merciless.
Camille stumbles over a rock and falls, gracelessly, limbs flying around, hitting his elbow on a hard edge; relishing how the pain spreads out. He lifts his head and the blur coalesces into shapes; he has caught the edge of a gravestone, in a cemetery that he can’t quite place. After all, isn’t it fitting, a cemetery?
Only, it won’t be a graveyard so old that you can’t even read the names. It will be the Pantheon for you; and a funeral procession; and probably not for another day or two. Nothing less, nothing less for the Friend of the People and the martyr of the Revolution.
“You’d hate it,” Camille whispers. “You’d demand the entire procession to be dismantled and the proceeds given to the people. You’d tell them to throw you into a sewer, for all you cared; and threaten to haunt them if they disobeyed.”
The wind has been lost among the houses, and there’s no one in sight.
Camille turns away from the grave to look at the entrance; the name must be engraved above the gates, but it’s not visible from inside the cemetery.
“You must be disappointed in me, too, but, well, everyone is,” Camille’s attempt at self-deprecation breaks off in what he valiantly tries to stop it from becoming a sob, “I can’t even write a proper eulogy for you; I don’t – don’t know how -”
I don’t know how to say that you are dead, the sentence is at the tip of Camille’s tongue, bright and sharp and cutting, but his voice refuses to obey.
I am not sure I quite believe it. I am not sure I ever will; whatever they end up doing with your body. We’re all dead men walking, all of us in this Revolution, only some of us have dared to defy this, and you more than all the rest. Even now.
Camille feels a slight breeze at the back of his neck. Like a touch.
Not a single leaf has moved on the tree that grows right outside the gates, and all the birds have fallen silent.
“You’d pour me another cup of coffee,” Camille has found his voice at last, but only the gravestones are listening.
“And tell me to get through the damned proofs, because the printer is waiting, and we’re late already.”
“Because we’re late already,” Camille repeats, and wipes his eyes.
He thinks: if he turned, he could see the smile, brief and sarcastic and unmistakably proud. He smiles in return.
“So if I don’t – don’t – oh, you know what I mean. You don’t get to leave either. We need you still, hell, we’ll probably need you for centuries.”
The dust swirls in the sunlight, as Camille leaves the cemetery, takes the first street out of the square, and begins the long walk home.
