Beyond Revanche, page 25
“Why don’t I board now and save time?”
Bistrot considered the question. Mathieu could hardly overpower him if that was his intent, and, since he couldn’t steer a barge, and probably didn’t know which end of a horse to attach to the holster, he simply said, “Why not.”
#
Raoul’s Story
Lawyer’s Lies
Yet there were good days, too. I began to feel more positive, even though the daily routines were boring beyond belief. Had a visit from two lawyers. Two. At the same time. My lawyers, apparently. They were very apologetic that yet again the case has been judicially delayed. They repeated the story that even the president of the republic thought that I should wait so that true justice could be guaranteed.
“Better safe than sorry,” one of them kept saying. “Better safe than sorry.”
Well, I wasn’t sorry about Jaurès. Never would be.
They told me that the war had gone through another bad phase. That both sides lost hundreds of thousands of men around the city of Verdun, but our army held its position and bled the Germans till they were forced back and all the forts around the city, regained. I’ve been to Verdun, you know. Very pretty, with a middle-ages-feel. Behind the stout walls and turrets, the earthen-works and half-moon defenses made it impenetrable. I remember sitting by the river, watching the working barges streaming north and south, dipping into the canals and inlets which surrounded the city. That’s what surprised me. The large number of canals along which factories and warehouses plied their trade merged into a myriad of waterways. There was a sense of beauty and symmetry, a balance between nature and industry. I was happy there, seeking a spiritual link between my country and my God.
Do you believe in God, my friend? You should, you know. Of course it’s difficult for you, but you should try. He loves you, you know. He loves everyone…except anarchists, socialists, Jews, and agnostics. And probably Protestants.
These lawyers had neither news of my father nor from my father. I asked repeatedly if he could be allowed to visit me. I wanted to explain to him why I killed the worthless Jaurès. He needed to hear it from me. They said Father could apply for a visitor’s permit and they would respond. So far, nothing. They thought I knew that the civil government of Reims had been moved away from the city. No one had told me that. I asked if I could write again to my brother, and they said yes, I could, but they were convinced that he didn’t want to hear from me. Of course that would be his answer to any of my requests. He never wanted to recognize my worth. Well, he would have to when my trial took place and everyone realized that I killed the socialist scum for the greater glory of France. Oh yes he would.
The lawyers said that he was one of those airmen who flew over the German lines and attacked the trenches or dropped bombs. Just like him. Always had to be in the limelight. Always had his circle of friends to fawn over his latest exploit. Well, one day he will be proud to tell everyone about his brother. The man who saved France from the socialist opposition to war against the Boches.
My lawyers, a Maitre Giraud and a Maitre Bourson, treated me like a child. I asked them where they came from. Who had sent them to visit me? When would the trial begin?
“You must be patient, Raoul. It is in your interest to stay here. Times change. Now is not good,” Maitre Giraud snapped. He had what they used to call an aristocratic nose, pinned onto thin high boned cheeks. Colorless skin spread from colorless eyes as if he saw nothing of worth before him.
“You have friends, Raoul, and they will not disappoint you.”
Yes, I knew that. But said nothing lest it was trap.
Bourson was drawn in a softer hue, placid in appearance, always proper in his demeanor, willing you to believe that he cared about you personally. They would have made a fine double-act at the Comedie-Francaise. I can see them dressed as vultures in court robes. Giraud with blood running from his beak; Bourson smiling by his side, head cocked, eyes alert, with a pretense of innocence, watching, prodding, waiting for a sign of weakness before he pounced.
Each time we met, they repeated the same questions.
“You know they will ask if you acted alone.”
“Yes, I know they will. And I will say, Yes.”
“They will ask if you were the only person who fired a gun.”
“Yes, I know they will, and I will answer, you know I was.”
Bourson sought to emphasize the need for eternal vigilance. “You must be careful. There are spies everywhere. You can trust no one.”
Meeting after meeting, like a mantra, until I eventually added, “Yes, I know. That’s why I have my own insurance.”
“What? What do you mean, insurance?”
“My last will and testament. It’s my final protection. Alive, I am a loyal son. Dead, well, there might be a story to tell. But don’t worry, when this is all over…I’ll alter my will. Eventually.”
“But you trust us and those who sent us, surely?” Giraud’s features lit up in animated shock. “You’ve left a will? Where?”
I paused to allow a smirk to pass across my face.
“With someone I truly trust. But have no fear. I don’t expect that it will ever come to light.”
“But…”
They left in flurry of insecurity. They needed instruction from a source they could trust.
But I can trust you, my friend. I do. I do trust you. I have to.
It was like a test in junior school. As if the teacher wanted to make sure that I understood the basic learning blocks. I did. I did. I knew that I must say these words in court. I knew that there could be no other answer or hesitation. I was a clever man. I would make sure that this is my message when the day came. Did they not realize how much I had to lose if I said anything else?
Monsieur Georges must not be compromised in any way. Ever. Or my beloved Action française. This I would never do. Yet I, too, needed insurance in case…
I did think about my father, and despite the beatings, I held no grudge against him. Life must have been difficult, bringing up two boys and running the civil court in Reims at the same time. I always tried to make him happy. My brother didn’t care one way or the other. Father might have abandoned me in the difficult times when I was younger. I know that he was disappointed by my interest in mysticism, even though I stayed true to my faith. More than could be said of my brother.
I used to visit him at home once or twice a year but told him nothing about my involvement with Action française. It would only have enraged him more. He told me how dangerous and extreme these people were. Laughed at their ambitions to restore Alsace and Lorraine. Laughed!
“Where do you live?”
I didn’t want him to know.
“How do you live?”
No, no. I did not want him to interfere. I only wanted him to understand.
But he knew how to hurt me. There was a phrase he kept by his side like a whip to cut me in mid-sentence. To touch the raw sore that could not be healed. To hurt.
“You’re just like your mother, you know.”
Oh, I was “just like my mother” was I? How I wanted to answer, “Yes, and you are just like your own.” But I never did.
Did he beat my brother like he beat me? No. Never in my hearing. Marcel was his favorite, no matter how I tried to impress. He gave him a job in the courthouse. Wanted to groom him for higher things. Me? I was left on my own… just like my mother. Oh yes. We failed her. We all did. But as I grew older I realized that he failed her most of all. If only he had been capable of love. If only he had tried to understand her. But he did not understand love. I can’t forgive him. And yet, I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to explain why I had been motivated by my love for France. So he understood. So he could see me in a new light. My light. As France would. It was hopeless. How could he have understood that without understanding love? Could you?
23
December 1916-January 1917 Bistrot’s Barge
The seasons changed their purpose. Spring threatened fresh initiatives with the deception of firm terrain and untested reservists. Summer added slaughter to the treachery of trench warfare. Autumn drowned hope from the landscape as each new plan sank into the ubiquitous mud and murderous combinations of shell, gas, and bullets. Winter froze despair to the misery of trench-foot and fear of yet another year of conflict. War was free to destroy any and all that it could and choose the time that suited best. Generals on both sides rolled the dice in a game of rampant stupidity to decide who could lose the most men in a single gambit. Strangely, there was no winner.
Silence had fallen upon a countryside blanketed in winter frost. It was not yet the time for a full scale attack on the Western Front, though, without warning, an unplanned skirmish might break any day, anytime, anywhere. Long before daylight, Bistrot had tethered his nag to the barge. Even to an amateur eye it was clear he loved that animal more than himself. His sturdy draft horse stood over six foot high, smooth brown skin, attuned to his master’s voice, impervious to the cold. It had been fed and groomed, stroked affectionately, and privately told the plan for the day.
“All set?” Mathieu shouted but Bistrot spun ‘round in alarm and put his finger to his lips.
“No shouting. No unnecessary sound. This journey is dangerous enough without alerting the enemy.” His half-whisper was a chilling reminder that they were about to travel on the edge of reason.
Bistrot’s mare padded along the towpath, his barge noiselessly swishing through the untroubled waters. Everything was unnatural. Above a parapet of ice in fields fortunate enough to nurture wheat or barley, the hope of the earliest roots of spring had yet to show themselves. With luck these might make it to full term. Further north, in Flanders, the wind waves of summer had not blown over ripening crops for two harsh years, leaving winter to crush the life from rotting seed. As the canal merged into the river Meuse the landscape began to bear signs of recent devastation. The pale late-winter morning sky was shaded in a light-blue tint, washed out, drained of energy before the ninth hour. They came across a village where life had been suspended, forsaken for the moment by those who loved it most. Shards of trees hung beside skeletal roofs but there was no sign of the living. Too early yet for migrant birds, too late for native wildlife caught in the churning wrath of war. There was no movement near them. Eerie silence wrapped itself around the landscape in unnatural terror. Death had passed this way and would return.
Mathieu’s imagination saw doom ‘round every corner. A rustle in the wind took shape as a lone sniper, then bent away to form a thin-branched bush. Isolated vulnerability overwhelmed him and he took refuge in the hold, thankful for its dark protection. Climbing down wooden stairs which had only ever been washed by rain, he was aware that a different scent hung in the permadust. It was the smell of warmth; of woman. Someone else lived here. Unlike the rubbish-strewn deck, its scant debris suggesting better times, the hold concealed a tidy order. A rough worn woolen blanket marked out a well-defined territory bounded by the smell it masked and the stern. Soft light from above moved slowly as the barge progressed but between wooden casks and partly bound boxes he saw the outline of a woman busying herself beside a small stove.
“Sorry, I didn’t realize anyone was down here,” Mathieu apologized in a low voice.
She turned, saw him, smiled and nodded in one movement, and said nothing. Her hair flowed loosely, thick and on the cusp of turning white. It was neither fully brushed nor unkempt and she swept it behind her left ear as if she might hear him better. Her back was strong and muscled, more male than female in form, and she had wrapped a second faded blanket ‘round her waist. Though he had caught a mere glimpse of her face, Mathieu was sure that she was embarrassed to meet him. Yet his appearance was clearly no surprise though he had not been aware of her on the previous night.
“I’m Mathieu.” He offered to shake her hand but she pointed to a stool between the curve of the hold and the stove. A smile again. No words.
Several silent hours passed before Bistrot tied the barge to the riverbank and climbed aboard. He clambered down to the hold and kissed the nape of the woman’s neck with a tenderness which surprised Mathieu. She offered them hot coffee in which yesterday’s baguette had been soaked. It tasted sublime.
“Is she always so quiet, your woman?”
“Dumb, you see, from birth. But so alive in other ways. We’re not married. No need. Been together for longer than I remember. Understands me and I understand her. Got lucky, I say. Margarite has always been my lucky charm.”
She smiled again and Mathieu smiled back. How unexpectedly strange the world is.
“Very lucky.”
“You got a wife?”
“No.” Mathieu changed the subject. “Is it always so quiet on the river?
“No,” Bistrot assured him. “The closer we get to the front, the quieter it becomes. Look on the bright side. If there is a bored sniper out there waiting to loosen off a bullet, you won’t hear it. In fact, if he’s really good, you won’t feel it either, so they say.”
“Are there many refugees still?”
“Not any more. In the first months it was frightening, but worthwhile, too. They’d pay a sharp price for a trip down to Toul.”
“Belgians?”
“At first, yes, but also our own farm workers and their families.”
“What about contraband, that sort of thing? The black market?
“In what? Coal? Stones? Trashed wooden roofs and tiles? Little else comes down the river. Do you Parisians imagine that we live in luxury here?” He shook his head in a way that made Mathieu think that he was the bumpkin. “By the way, you do realize that we can go no further than about a kilometer this side of Saint-Mihiel?”
“What? I thought…”
“Look, Monsieur, the front isn’t a straight line neatly drawn across the land to divide the armies. I’ll drop you off shortly. You need to make your way to Souilly. Army headquarters used to be there. Then around Verdun by land. But you are way off track if you think there is some black market running here. We survive. Just.” Bistrot spoke with an authority born of experience.
“And keep your police and war office papers securely hidden. If the Germans catch you they’ll shoot you as a spy. Our boys might shoot you for being a policeman.”
“How’d you know?” Mathieu thought he had been discreet.
“You were asleep earlier. Snoring like a contented horse. Don’t worry, though, I only took the two francs you owe me from your wallet. The rest is no business of mine.” He paused and winked, smiling toothless approval. “Deuxième Bureau, eh?” When he dumped his passenger at a broken pier-head in the middle of what Mathieu took to be no-man’s land, Bistrot said the he would be back in a couple of days, if a return journey was required. Mathieu thanked him, but thought it unlikely.
He braced himself for a long trudge across country lanes and nameless tracks, glad to put distance between the silence of the canal and his new found fear of unseen snipers. Normally the thirty kilometer walk would have taken five or six hours, but Mathieu was aware that he had to tread carefully. Within five minutes a road block stopped his progress. For the next half hour a dubious corporal checked his papers and used a field telephone to contact his sergeant at Headquarters. He was ordered to sit by the roadside and wait. One of them asked him questions about Paris in the hope of finding fault. Quite possibly they were bored and would welcome the summary execution of a spy posing as a Parisian policeman. When the telephone call was answered, Mathieu’s credentials bore fruit. A lorry had been rerouted to pick him up, though it was evident that its occupants remained as suspicious as the first patrol. The countryside hardly changed, but there was less tension in the air and occasional bird-song broke the monotony.
“Where are we headed?” Mathieu was lost.
“Souilly.”
The small town of Souilly, little more than a village with a crossroads, the compulsory church and an overfull cemetery, had witnessed one of the truly great treks of the war.
“They will remember this road, you know.” One of the younger guards drew Mathieu’s attention to the hard packed broad stone highway. “General Pétain brought all the men and ammunition from the railway halts by this road to save Verdun. Almost a year ago, every village had a repair depot along the seventy-five kilometers from Bar-le-Duc. Nothing was allowed to block the lifeline to the battle. Any breakdowns were hauled to the side and left there. Thousands upon thousands of lorries.”
Mathieu was impressed. The journey was flawless. The road admirably smooth. A second soldier, young, perhaps eighteen, broke into the conversation. “There’s the narrow-gauge single track railway.” He pointed to the lines which ran parallel to the roadside, built to move vast supplies every day, including the bulk of the army’s provisions and bring back the wounded that could be moved.
The small town hall had served as General Pétain’s headquarters during the battle for Verdun. Mathieu was ushered inside, but first shook the hands of the young men who had escorted him. No false hope of good luck passed their lips.
Inside he was subjected to more questioning. His papers were in order, but his presence did not make sense. He could hear an officer talking on the phone to the 36. “Monsieur, according to your superiors, you are on leave. You must be lying. Either to us or to them.” He turned to the nearest soldier. “Lock him up.”
“Call them again. Ask for Sous-Lieutenant Bernier. I’m his cousin, Henri.”
This was not what he had expected. There was no black market link from Belgium to Paris here. It was a myth. He had wasted valuable time and now he sat in a makeshift cell, friendless. How long would it take to convince them to contact Jacques-Francois or Bernard Roux? Would they even listen to his protestations? Fuck. Cold though it was, Mathieu sat alone in that sparse room for three valuable hours, sweating. He had rushed into this venture without considering what would happen if he was thwarted. A commotion outside drew him from self-pity. Some senior officer had arrived unexpectedly. Mathieu heard a deep voice resonate from the entrance.
