Memory of Flames

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AS he advanced along the corridor an image rose before him. It was as if each of his steps was the ratchet of a cog setting in train other movements. He had prepared his plan with the precision of a watchmaker. That night he was finally starting up the complex mechanism. He heard a noise on the stairs. Someone was coming up. He had orientated himself in the dark by feeling along the wall and had already counted four doors. Now he went back, opened the third door and hid in the bedroom that had previously belonged to the colonel’s only daughter. The room had been unoccupied since she had married. The yellowish-orange light of a candle filtered under the door before moving away. A heavy footstep, slow and uneven: Mejun, the oldest of the colonel’s servants, a retired sergeant whose leg had been shattered by an Austrian cannonball at the Battle of Marengo. He was on his way to light the fire in the study as he did every evening; but he was half an hour early. The colonel must have hurried through his supper.

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