Napoleon folded the map in half. The road ahead stood upright. The horses stopped, the carts stopped, and I lunged to catch the roadside before I fell out of Russia and under the table.
It was October 1812. We were leaving Moscow. I had stepped out from backstage intending to ask where the dressing room was. An officer pushed a map into my hands and told me to hold it steady. The map was light. The world inside it was heavy, and Napoleon kept adding orders.
“How much walking does one fold save?” he asked. I did not know and advised him not to try. He had already made a second fold. The distant convoy hung down from the sky, its wheels still turning diligently. A soldier's hat fell in front of us, followed by my own shout from a moment before, arriving half a beat late.
He was pleased. Much closer now, he said. I pointed at the hanging road. Closer to where? He bent to read a place name. His thumb covered a town. I asked him to move it. The town gave a sigh of relief and puffed a little smoke from its chimneys.
I tried smoothing a crease. The muddy road lowered a little. Napoleon held the opposite corner, afraid I would lose the distance he had gained. Pulling at opposite ends, we turned the road into an enormous pocket. People and carts slid towards its bottom. I let go. The pocket sprang up and left both of us hanging from the map's border.
We dangled above the blank reverse of the paper. Napoleon still tried to gesture commands. Hold on first, I said. My army is waiting, he said. So are my hands, I said, and they cannot wait much longer.
At last he gripped the border with both hands. I took out the red ticket stub to write for help, then realised I had nowhere to send a single word. We swung together like two very undignified pendulums. On the third swing, we reached the curling paper corner.
“Put something on it!” I shouted. He searched a pocket and produced a letter: too light. He touched his hat and hesitated. It is more useful than your head now, I said. He pressed it down.
The road slowly opened. Wheels met mud again. Lying flat, I pushed out the final crease, too breathless to speak. But the hat kept growing, swelling into a black mountain at the junction. An officer ran up to ask the mountain's name.
Napoleon looked towards his own bare head and said nothing. Holding the map for him, I dared not fold it again and had to walk with it above my head. In the distance, a bird landed and began building a nest on the hat mountain.