Pure, Andrew Miller

The Parisian cemetery of les Innocents is so full of corpses in this year of 1785 that it crumbles down in the neighborhood caves. Its common pits and charnels have been filled up through the centuries and its pestilence is contaminating the city, its air and its very food.

This is when Jean-Baptiste Baratte, a young engineer from Normandy, is hired by the minister to dig them up and send their bones to the quarry where we can still see some of them in the Catacombes.

In the pit, under Lecoeur's direction, the men are already at work. Fire, pulley, ladders. The hollow sound of bones laid on bones. A simple call from the men below warns those above that the canvas cradle is filled and ready for hoisting. They are deep enough now to need lights even in the morning, four torches protruding from the walls and burning fitfully. Jean-Baptiste crouches, tries to see the condition of the walls. Does the earth fray? Is there risk of collapse? Could the men be got out quickly if a side of the pit did collapse?

He decides that he must go down and see for himself (it is time he went down), and with no announcement he swings himself onto the nearest ladder and begins to descend. He is aware that both below and above him all work has ceased, that they are watching him. His feet feel for the rungs. The sky recedes. The air thickens.

The spirit of that period is very well depicted with the decadency of the château of Versailles and the spreading ideas of Voltaire, that need to be modern, to pertain to the party of the future, a very fin de siècle attitude.

The stench of the city is brightly rendered too, from people pissing behind Versailles' curtains to the horses dung in the cobblestone street, and the general lack of hygiene of that time combined with the tailors fashion creations and the itchy wigs.

Pure (Europa editions, 2012, 336 pages), is written by Andrew Miller, British writer born in Bristol in 1960.