Beyond Revanche, page 39
“Immediately after the verdict, he was taken to a safe place by some interesting people. Members of Action française. First proof we have of their direct involvement.” That was a fact. While Mathieu had always suspected their complicity, the Bureau had found no evidence up to that point.
“You must make sure that doesn’t become public knowledge. A full-scale war between Right and Left would be catastrophic.” Mordacq had a tendency to state the obvious.
Clemenceau stared at him with a sense of contempt. He knew that, too.
“There is one thing you could do, Sir.” Mathieu surprised even himself, but the opportunity appeared and he took it.
“There is? What?”
“If you read the letters to newspapers from all kinds of citizens, hear discussions in café-bars and street corners, pick up what is being said in the Bureau canteen—”
“Spit it out, man. Tell me.”
“It’s the obvious injustice of Raoul Villain being found guilty of a crime he admitted, while Louis Cottin is condemned to death. Criminals with political clout are untouchable…those without have no protection. Least of all from the law.”
“You mean, pardon Cottin? Come off it, man. I should definitively have him shot for missing me with so many bullets.” This had become his standard comment, the ice-breaker for his fellow statesmen at the Conference. But it was no longer funny.
“Problem is, the president and half the Assembly want him shot as an example to others,” Mordacq intervened.
“Just as they did with the traumatized front-line soldiers who had taken enough in the trenches by 1917?” Mathieu had no time for hypocrisy. “Hard line politics will break the nation in two. We need to compromise…Sir.”
Mordacq did not disagree. Instead he closed the half open door and turned directly to the prime minister. “President Poincaré is, as we know, an utter asshole”
Mathieu did his best to show no surprise, but from the mouth of the prime minister’s friend and confidant, it was unheard of. Of course the president was an asshole, but it was hardly politic to say so.
“You didn’t hear that, Captain.” Clemenceau’s gaze never left Mordacq’s face.
“He has had his war, won back Alsace and Lorraine, and is politically safe, for the present. But he has no understanding, not a clue about what life is like for our citizens.” Mordacq’s summary took Mathieu aback.
“The General is correct, Sir. If you decide to remove the death sentence from Cottin, people will know that you are listening to them. And they say that you do listen. You will be seen as the man who brought some balance back to French Justice.”
“And it will piss off Poincaré.” Mordacq certainly didn’t like the president.
“But will it calm the streets?” Clemenceau wanted confirmation. He had already made his decision.
“Yes.” Mathieu was adamant.
“I agree. And you can get back to running the Peace Conference. The others will see that you are the man in control.” Mordacq knew how to deliver the coup de grâce. The tone of the prime minister’s voice promised a decision.
“Fetch my secretary, Henri, please.” Georges Clemenceau would reverse the findings of the court-martial. He began to laugh at the response he had concocted inside his head. We cannot shoot him for missing me, he would insist. I won’t allow it. Anyway as an old Republican and outspoken critic of the death penalty all my life I can hardly allow the misguided young man to be executed. He needs to learn to shoot properly. It was a better line anyway.
Next morning, Louis Cottin’s sentence was commuted to ten years of hard labor to the relief of his supporters. A fire was extinguished before it had the chance to burn Paris to a cinder. Peace talks continued unbroken.
Raoul’s Story
A Brief Reunion
I knocked on the door of his nondescript house in Auxerre, half-way down a lane which narrowed into an ancient alleyway at the bottom, a stranger in a friendless land. Glancing around, there was little sign of activity. A few elderly citizens exchanged pleasantries with each other, but no one looked twice in my direction. The door was pulled open with some force and my father’s voice barked the pained inquiry of a man who had been interrupted.
“Yes?” It was half question, half warning that peddlers would not be tolerated. “Yes?” he repeated but this time looked at the person in front of him. His eyes widened in surprise. Tension filled the space between us and burst into angry recognition.
“You!” He spat the word in my face as if it was a bullet, turned, and walked back into the house in silence, leaving the door behind him open. That was my father at his intimidating best. Personal rejection mixed with an unspoken invitation to follow him. I could never understand the complexity of his impulsive nature. The rage he bore; the blame he allotted; the guilt he never voiced. It seemed to me that everything he endured in life had been my fault…and still was. It wasn’t Karl von Einem’s third army that burned the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Reims; it was me. And in still darker times I wonder whose face he saw at the door? Mine or my mother’s?
What do you think, my friend?
“How could you do this to me? How could you insult your heritage by murdering an unarmed man, by shooting him in the back of the head. You coward,” he screamed in my face. “Me, a guardian of the courts, a representative of our precious legal system. Marcel, risking his life in the skies for France…and you…a murderer…do you know what it’s like to be father to a murderer?”
I refused to kowtow. “Not guilty. They found me not guilty, didn’t they? If your precious legal system is so perfect, then you have to accept its perfect verdict.” I drew breath and spat back in defiance, “Not guilty.”
He sat on an armchair, put his hands on his head, and sobbed in self-pity. Him. He was the broken man. Him. “You murdered Jaurès. You and whomsoever put you up to it.” His look promised a harsh interrogation. I was about to protest, but he raised himself up again and roared, “Don’t lie to me. You’re not capable of taking the decision to go to the toilet without a second opinion. I know you.”
I had prepared myself for such a put down. “I did it myself and I did it for France.” There was no place for half-hearted concessions.
“Stop it. Stop those lies. You prevented the one man who stood out against war from influencing the decision before it was too late.”
“I stopped him weakening France. He was a traitor. A German-loving two-faced apologist for peace who would have ruined everything.”
A woman whom I have never seen appeared from the kitchen and said that she had made a light lunch. “This is my son, Raoul,” Father said without enthusiasm.
“I gathered that,” she answered, “but you both have to eat, and I’ve prepared an omelet. I’m Marise, and I’m pleased to meet you.”
The food smelled wonderful. Must have had cheese and spring onions with some mushrooms added to the basic eggs. We sat down with Marise between us. She talked of Auxerre, and asked about my experience in La Santé. It was not easy for him or for me, but Marise acted as a goodwill broker and blood pressures dropped accordingly.
Within twenty-four hours my suspicions were justified. My father rushed back from court after the morning session and slammed shut the front door.
“They know you’re here. They know you are living with me…us.”
“How?”
He shook his balding pate and confessed that he had not asked how. “One of the local Advocates came back from the Town Hall at about ten o’clock and told me there was a rumor circulating that you had fled Paris and come to Auxerre.”
I knew I had been watched. Carbolic in the Luxembourg Gardens was no chance meeting, but I had not reckoned on being followed.
“The police know? That’s good, isn’t it? That means they can protect us here.”
Marise went to the window, pushed the lace curtain aside, and looked up and down the street.
“I don’t see anyone hanging about. Gendarme or anarchist.”
She was a practical woman with a likeable nature. Forced out of Belgium in the first weeks of the conflict, age had filled her frame with ample sufficiency, and her plump cheeks had a tendency to hide her well lined face. But it was her eyes which promised levity, despite the burdens war had dumped on her. She told me she had been widowed in 1914. Her former husband had refused to leave Louvain once the German attack threatened to overwhelm the city. A librarian by profession, he had been with a group of his colleagues when the ancient repository was burned to the ground, and died with his books. I felt for her. And she did not blame me.
Who told the police? Why would the police be watching me, rather than watching out for me? I went for a walk next day through the medieval city with a clock tower at the heart of its culture, surrounded by old wooden houses in urgent need of restoration and narrowing cobbled streets which were not suited to modern transport. The Cathedral of Saint-Etienne beckoned and I dutifully made my way inside to admire the great renaissance edifice with its sumptuous stained-glass windows. A moment of calm reflection before the high altar restored my waning equilibrium. Closer to my God, I was home. A priest genuflected in the aisle beside me and spoke in quiet tones.
“Are you at peace, my son? Do you want to make your confession, Monsieur Villain?”
I felt propositioned. Had a price been mentioned, I might have been back in the Pigalle. Not that I frequented the Pigalle, mind you, save for occasional visits when my resolve is breached by temptation, apart. I looked at him, puzzled. Did I know him? Did he know me?
“Have we met, Father?” My politeness was forced upon me by upbringing.
“No, my son…”
“Then why do you presume to know me. Can I not speak to my maker without being harassed?”
He straightened to his full six foot frame, though his sallow appearance lent no threat to his action.
“Oh, forgive me, Monsieur Raoul…”
I whipped round in surprise. “How do you know my name?”
His voice softened as if to encourage some measure of confidentiality between us. “The street speaks of little else, my son.”
“Then the street, and those who follow its frailties, should mind its own business.” I turned back to my prayers, though they were not so much an act of devotion as an act of defiance.
But my presence in Auxerre gathered orchestrated hostility. My father became unnerved. He was unable to work properly, so he claimed. Marise was badgered in town when she went shopping. People began shouting obscenities towards me from outside the house. Each day more and more gathered in pathetic protest. Eventually the gendarmes appeared to move them along. But halfheartedly. Journalists knocked on the front door. Stories appeared in the local papers. Within a fortnight, my privacy became a myth. Though generally assumed to be a market town, Auxerre enjoyed its fair share of trades unionists and socialists and they were determined to hound me out of the city. A labor meeting became a department-wide rally against my presence. They gathered in the old town and marched to my father’s home, chanting and booing. Normal life for all of us was impossible. Marise thought she should visit her sister in Valenciennes, leaving father on his own for the first time in years.
I gave in. It was my problem, not his. Without a by-your-leave, I slipped out of town and returned to Paris. Not pleasant. Not pleasant at all.
39
April-May 1919 – The New Americans
The note had been placed on Mathieu’s desk, as had quite a few since Moutie’s time in the confessional at Saint-Gervais. His scrawl was thin and elongated, as if scratched with a sharp feathered nib. That was the only hint of elegance. If you were obliged to decipher the content, the task was decidedly harder, but Mathieu persisted and taught Moutie to leave readable cryptic messages.
The Tiger’s life quickly returned to a more normal routine. He basked in the outpourings of goodwill after he reprieved Louis Cottin, though his clemency poisoned the already poor relationship he had with his own president. Roux reveled in the bad blood between the two elected leaders.
“Tiger outclasses that, and I use the word privately, gentlemen, pathetic cretin, Poincaré, any day of the week.”
Mathieu pretended concern. “Careful, Chief. I’ve a career to protect.”
“Definitely, Captain. I’ll bear that in mind.”
“The story about Sarah Bernhardt telling the Americans that ‘Clemenceau is France’ has riled our aforementioned president,” Dubois added with relish.
“And every day one or two veterans leave their medals on his doorstep.” Mathieu had had to deal with this growing demonstration of support for the prime minister personally. “If the gendarmes on guard outside find a war veteran laying down his medal, they are instructed to thank them on Tiger’s behalf and take an address so that it can be returned, in due course.”
It was one of those circumstances where friends vied with each other to recall the best story.
“I’ll tell you what has really riled Poincaré.” Roux had already begun to laugh in anticipation of his own contribution. “Pope Benedict sent him a blessing by telegram, so, old Tiger, who, as you know has always been a radical anti-cleric, responded by sending the Pope his blessing back.”
But all was far from well. By early May the streets of Paris witnessed yet another afternoon of rioting which left two dead and hundreds of demonstrators injured and wounded. The prefecture had a serious problem to contend with given the frustration of workers and de-mobbed soldiers who filled the streets in protest. They wanted jobs. They wanted justice. They wanted to see the Germans pay for the war which the victors insisted was started by them. Anger and rage boiled over the central boulevards like hot tar, untouchable till cool. Lines of gendarmes, cavalry, even troops with fixed bayonets, enraged the crowds in the May Day parade. A fire engine was commandeered by the police to hose down the mob, participants and sight-seekers alike. With symbolic irony, the banner which fronted the union of maimed and disabled workers was washed away and trampled over by the guardians of the state. This was the cost of war. A fractured society mired in injustice. Paris was scared of its own many-shaped shadows.
Mathieu and Jacques witnessed the trouble in the Rue Royale and the Place de La Concorde.
“This is such a bloody awful job sometimes. You see people who’ve already lost it all, trying to make themselves heard, taking it out on the police and national guard who are only doing their job…some too violently, I’ll concede.”
“Jacques, we’re in enough bother as it stands with our own job. The secret service boys say the German delegation to the Peace Conference are playing silly games.”
That was news to them all. “They’ve been put in the Hotel des Reservoirs in Versailles,” Roux explained. “Of course the main rooms have been bugged, but they’ve moved their team meetings to the basement, and play Tannhäuser at maximum volume on a gramophone so we cannot hear a thing during their meetings.”
“Bloody unfair of them, don’t you think?” Jacque’s attempt at irony fell by the wayside.
“I take it we can listen to their phone calls?” Mathieu understood the nature of the diplomatic game in which they found themselves. Clemenceau wanted no more foul ups on his watch. But he didn’t trust the Germans. Who did?
“They won’t even admit that they caused the war!” Jacques the innocent knew only what the public knew. Roux looked for his next Gauloises while Mathieu turned away lest his face betrayed the truth.
“I hear that Tiger has ordered their heating to be turned off.” Dubois laughed in approval. “Lets them know not to expect us to roll over.”
When the peace conference stuttered to a start in January, it was assumed that an agreement would be signed within three weeks. Blind optimism has always been a soft option for a willing audience. Five months later the Allies still disagreed about priorities and President Wilson had fallen from the pinnacle of world savior to a pro-German lackey in the eyes of the press. Clemenceau wanted Germany crushed. That was the sole reason the British were involved, too. Woodrow Wilson wanted to bring eternal peace to the world through a concoction called the League of Nations. Eternal peace, indeed. How soft was he? The only man in the world who would’ve brought a bible to a poker game and expect to win the jackpot.
“Have you heard what’s going on in the Quai d’Orsay? The fucking diplomats think they are dividing the spoils of victory to form a new world order.” Mathieu had taken Clemenceau to a meeting there, and had spent some hours fascinated by the diplomatic caste and their cartographers. “I kid you not. They’ve transformed the Grand Dining Room. Even the Lienard mirrors have diagrams and notes stuck to the surface. It’s like a giant board game where they move borders and boundaries every day on maps that cover the floor, the walls, and five of the doors. Benoit holds unreal conversations as if he is the master designer of this new world order. He gets so excited as if it is his decision, posing and strutting like the peacock he is. ‘If we move that line to the river, the problem is, 50,000 nationals are left behind. Tricky business, I’ll tell you.’ They all want land. Every victorious nation wants a payback. To hell with the people who have lived there for a thousand years.”
“Except the Americans.” Roux spoke with that certainty which no one questioned.
“The Americans want money. Not President Wilson, but they’re undermining him in Washington as we speak. After he sidelined his minder, Mandel House, who represented the money-power in the United States, the bankers are grooming a replacement.”
“Really? That explains a great deal.” Mathieu had not considered the American involvement except to assume that since the Germans signed the armistice in the belief that Wilson’s ideas on fair play was their best option, Wilson would be the key player.
“We don’t know the half of it yet.” Roux rose to the mirror and adjusted his bowtie. The ashtray on his desk looked as if it would burst if one more Gauloises was extinguished in its bowl. “I’ve been watching the American delegates very carefully. Would it surprise you to learn that virtually every one is a banker, financier, or a lawyer associated with Wall Street?”
