The Prussian crowd was silent, the men awed, the women in turmoil. The women endured the grip of an unpatriotic lust. Many succumbed, the energy around them was too intense, impossible to resist. All those lonely soldiers’ wives, the widows, the daughters. And from the most wretched, toothless canonniers, to the eau de cologne colonels, the French reaped desire that day and for a score of days to come, thanks to their short, magnificent leader.

‘Vive l’Empereur!’

Johannes Meyer, too.

Her name was Beatrice Reiss and she’d recognised him instantly; he was tall and looked lost as always, that face, a blush of boyish softness on the cusp of rugged manhood. Dark curly hair, and the dimple in his cheek when he smiled. He often came to the coffee house where she served, arriving with his handsome young friends, laughing and embracing one another, drinking and arguing into the early morning. She’d seen him in the crowd just now and squeezed through the endless shoulders, forced her way over, and then she was standing right beside him, their arms touching, pressed full length. Without a word, without even thinking to do it, she took Johannes Meyer by the hand.

He felt the grip, the moist heat of her palm, and turned to look, his face a question.

Beatrice smiled. The girl from the coffee house.

Her hair was red and plaited down the back, with curling wisps escaping over small ears that stuck out from her head. Pale and freckled, pink-lipped and wide-mouthed, Beatrice wasn’t much older than Johannes but knew far more. This deeper mystery was there in her hazel eyes; the boy saw it and was unable to resist. He’d thought of her often enough, back in his cold attic room, and now here she was.

Beatrice pulled him down towards her, said into his ear, ‘Come with me.’

Johannes followed as she led him out from the crowd. They held hands and turned left and right and then left again, at first against the endless stream of people, soon into less congested streets. Further on, in a clean, wide cobbled lane, Beatrice found a door and opened it with a key, rushed them both in. She called out once and confirmed nobody was there, then fell upon a couch and pulled up her skirts. She motioned to the boy, his face still asking something of her, and embarrassed now, too.

‘Johannes,’ she said.

He hesitated: a childish fear.

She repeated his name, but softer, breathless. She held out her arms.

He went to her on the couch.

Everything happens, all the time. It had just never happened to Johannes Meyer before.

PISTOLS

Nothing much had ever happened to Stendhal either, apart from syphilis.