A Night in Brussels

A mob attacks Victor Hugo's home in Brussels.

 

by Brett Rutherford
Adapted from Victor Hugo, l’Année Terrible, May 1871.

 

It’s the little things
     that get to you.
Here at my house,
someone came to kill me
     yesterday. Imagine that!
What offended the locals
is that I said I believe
     in offering asylum.
An indiscriminate crowd
(a band of imbeciles, really!)
rushed onto my property at night.
They made so much noise
     the trees in the square
     were shivering with fright,
but not one neighbor
     came to a window to look.
Our climb to the upper floor,
      for one of my age,
was long, and arduous, and horrible.
     And little Jeanne was ill.

Here we concealed ourselves,
four women, my two grand-children,
and, out of breath, yours truly.
I admit I was afraid for the little one.
Just us, to garrison the fortress!
This was a dark fairy-tale: nothing
whatever appeared to help us,
as, by some magic, police
within ear-shot were rendered deaf,
and the records would say,
“They had business elsewhere,”
a rat-scare, or someone’s cat
that tumbled down a garden well.
A hard, sharp stone hit Jeanne. She cried.
In this cab-man’s night attack
they acted like medieval warriors
before some Black Forest stronghold.
They shouted: “You! Bring a ladder!
Go find a beam we can use! Victory!”

 

Amid the fracas, no one heard our cries.
They wanted to get it over by dawn,
so no one would see their faces.
The banging stopped, then started again.
They were screaming breathlessly.
Two men brought back from the Pacheco quarter
a beam some scaffolding surrendered,
but after some clumsy battering,
they knew it had arrived too late.

So, they stood there screaming, “Assassin!”
(Is this what you get for being a poet?)
“We want you dead, you brigand!
Bandit! The noose is too good for you!”
This chanting and shouting went on forever.

We waited in silence.

The little boy took hold of his sister’s hand,
to calm her. Outside, the black tumult
continued. The voices were not even human.
When I moved across the room
     to comfort the women
     who murmured prayers together,
someone made out my shadow
and the window was smashed with stones.
The only thing they didn’t do
     was call out Long live the Emperor!
(Was my old nemesis behind this?)
The sturdy door below seemed made
to mock the beating it took,
and that was what preserved us.

 

There must have been fifty outside,
     courage in numbers,
and from them my name
kept echoing in clamors of rage.
Bring him down to the light!
Take him with torch and lantern!
To his death! To his death!
     Let him perish! We need this!

 

The violation came in waves,
     attack, withdrawal,
a collective in-take of breath,
and then, with a mutual shout,
they were at it again. And then,
in the distance, there sang
a solitary nightingale.

 

Brussels, May 29, 1871