L'appel Du Vide [Call Of The Void]

[7]

Philippe awoke at the crack of dawn to rain that had seeped through their roof.

Cursing loudly, he went to have a bath and don the best coat his father had. His father was still sleeping, and Philippe did not make an effort to wake him up. For all he cared, his father did not have to show up at the funeral.

He bundled up his mother's best black dress so she needn't travel back home just to change and made his way to his dead best friend's house.

Helene and his mother were already up when he reached there. The latter had spoken to a man and had arranged for a cart to carry Maurice's corpse to the burial ground. Maurice's one other friend—an acquaintance of Philippe's from the bar, named Armand Renaudin, had been informed about Maurice's death and was on his way.

As the sun rose that morning, the rain stopped lashing its fury at the Parisians. Oppressive heat took its place instead.

Maurice's sister was too upset to dress her brother in better clothes and cover up his wounds before burying him. So Philippe and his mother had to do it while she went to the market with Renaudin to buy some flowers. They came back with a bouquet of many button-sized flowers which she said were Maurice's favourites.

Renaudin and Philippe then set out to dig the grave, armed with shovels from their respective houses. A fresh mound of bodies had been dumped in the public graveyard after a small uprising near the National Assembly the previous day.

As Philippe dug his best friend's grave that sultry morning, sweating like the river Seine, he wanted to do nothing more than cut his nose off.

Hoping to distract himself from the awful stench, he tried to distract himself by trying to get to know his companion better. However, he discovered that Armand Renaudin didn't like talking. Any attempt by Philippe to start a conversation—whether about Rosseau or the weather—had been shut down quite abruptly.

Maman and Helene arrived with Maurice in the cart when they were almost done with the gravr. They had a mousy priest with them. They'd managed to convince him to perform the service for a fee of three livres and two loaves of bread by appealing to him in the name of the Christian spirit.

The funeral was a shoddy affair. But compared to that of the fallen monarch—whose corpse had been dumped in a corner like any other body—Maurice was buried like a king.

The body was lowered into the grave, sans coffin and grand ceremony. As the priest recited his prayers in a bland monotone, the four people that stood over Maurice Bernard's corpse said their goodbyes.

Helene's was an emotional one full of tears.

Adalene Fitzgerald merely made the gesture of a cross and said her prayers quietly. She hadn't known Maurice very long, but she had an unshakeable respect for the dead and overflowing compassion for the living.

Renaudin shed a few tears, paltry in comparison to Helene Bernard's ocean.

Philippe, unlike the others, was not vocal about his sadness. He stood stock-still, watching the proceedings with a blank expression. Emotionless.

When Philippe confided in her later, Maman said that he was feeling that way because he was so overwhelmed. However, Philippe had found his mind wandering to the moderate Girondin leaders, who would definitely face their downfall at the hands of the extremist Jacobins. He supposed that a new government would be established by the end of the year—most probably with Robespierre at the lead.

He wondered what that meant.

The funeral did not last too long. The priest finished his prayers and went home, after being reassured by Helene about being paid later. Maman, Renaudin and Philippe huddled around Helene, trying to console her as she berated the men who killed her brother, tearing her hair and beating her breasts.