An Officer And A Spy Part 5

"Yes, Colonel."

"In the meantime, Monsieur Guenee, you should continue the surveillance of the family. As long as their agitation is confined to the level of clairvoyance, there is nothing to concern us. However, if it starts to go beyond that, we may have to think again. And at all times be on the lookout for something that might suggest an additional motive for Dreyfus's treason."

"Yes, Colonel."

And with that, the briefing ends.

At the end of the afternoon, I put the file of correspondence into my briefcase and take it home.

It is a still, warm, golden time of day. My apartment is high enough above the street to m.u.f.fle most of the city's noise; the rest is deadened by the book-lined walls. The floor s.p.a.ce is dominated by a grand piano-an Erard-miraculously salvaged from the rubble of Strasbourg and given to me by my mother. I sit in my armchair and tug off my boots. Then I light a cigarette and gaze across at the briefcase sitting on the piano stool. I am supposed to change and go straight out again. I should leave it until I return. But my curiosity is too strong.

I sit at the tiny escritoire between the two windows and take out the file. The first item is a letter sent from the military prison of Cherche-Midi dated 5 December 1894, more than seven weeks after Dreyfus's arrest. It has been neatly copied out by the censor on lined paper: My dear Lucie, At last I am able to write you a word. I have just been informed that my trial takes place on the 19th of this month. I am not allowed to see you.

I will not describe to you all that I have suffered; there are no terms in the world strong enough in which to do so.

Do you remember when I used to say to you how happy we were? All life smiled upon us. Then suddenly came a terrible thunderclap, from which my brain is still reeling. I, accused of the most monstrous crime that a soldier could commit! Even now I think I am the victim of a terrible nightmare ...

I turn the page and scan the lines rapidly to the end: I embrace you a thousand times, for I love you, I adore you. A thousand kisses to the children. I dare not speak more to you of them. Alfred.

The next letter, again a copy, is written from his cell a fortnight later, the day after his conviction: My bitterness is so great, my heart so envenomed, that I should already have rid myself of this sad life if the thought of you had not stayed me, if the fear of increasing your grief still more had not withheld my hand.

And then a copy of the reply from Lucie on Christmas Day: Live for me, I entreat you my dear friend; gather up your strength, and strive-we will strive together until the guilty man is found. What will become of me without you? I shall have nothing to link me with the world ...

I feel grubby reading all this. It is like hearing a couple making love in the next-door room. But at the same time I cannot stop myself reading on. I leaf through the file until I come to Dreyfus's description of the degradation ceremony. When he writes of the glances of scorn cast upon me by his former comrades, I wonder if he has me in mind: It is easy to understand their feelings; in their place, I could not have restrained my contempt for an officer who, I was a.s.sured, was a traitor. But alas! that is the pity of it; there is a traitor, but I am not the man ...

I stop and light another cigarette. Do I believe these protestations of innocence? Not for an instant. I have never met a scoundrel in my life who hasn't insisted, with exactly this degree of sincerity, that he is the victim of a miscarriage of justice. It seems to be a necessary part of the criminal mentality: to survive captivity, one must somehow convince oneself one is not guilty. Madame Dreyfus, on the other hand, I do feel sorry for. It is obvious she trusts in him entirely-no, more than that, she venerates him, as if he is some kind of holy martyr: The dignity of your demeanour made a deep impression upon many hearts; and when the hour of rehabilitation comes, as it will come, the remembrance of the sufferings that you endured on that terrible day will be graven in the memory of mankind ...

-- With some reluctance I have to break off here. I lock the file inside the escritoire, shave, change into a clean dress uniform, and set off to the home of my friends the comte and comtesse de Comminges.

I have known Aimery de Comminges, baron de Saint-Lary, since we were stationed in Tonkin together more than a decade ago. I was a young junior staff officer; he an even younger and more junior lieutenant. For two years we fought the Vietnamese in the Red River delta and knocked around Saigon and Hanoi, and when we returned to France our friends.h.i.+p prospered. He introduced me to his parents and to his younger sisters, Daisy, Blanche and Isabelle. All three women were musical, single, high-spirited, and gradually a salon arose, consisting of them and their friends and those army comrades of Aimery's who took-or, for the sake of meeting the sisters, pretended to take-an interest in music.

Six years on the salon persists, and it is to one of these musical soirees that I am bidden tonight. As usual, for purposes of fitness as much as economy, I walk to the party rather than take a cab-and walk briskly at that, for I am in danger of being late. The de Comminges' family htel stands, ancient and ma.s.sive, on the boulevard Saint-Germain. I can tell it from a distance by the carriages and cabs drawn up to drop off guests. Inside I am greeted with a friendly salute and a warm double handshake by Aimery, now a captain on the staff of the Minister of War, and then I kiss his wife, Mathilde, whose family, the Waldner von Freundsteins, is one of the oldest in Alsace. Mathilde is the mistress of this house now, and has been for a year, ever since the old comte died.

"Go on up," she whispers, her hand on my arm. "We'll be starting in a few minutes." Her method of playing the charming hostess-and it is not a bad one-is to make even the most commonplace remark sound like an intimate secret. "And you'll stay to dinner, won't you, my dear Georges?"

"I would love to, thank you." In truth, I had been hoping to get away early, but I submit without demur. Bachelors of forty are society's stray cats. We are taken in by households and fed and made a fuss of; in return we are expected to provide amus.e.m.e.nt, submit with good grace to occasionally intrusive affection ("So when are you going to get married, eh, Georges?"), and always agree to make up the numbers at dinner, however short the notice.

As I move on into the house, Aimery shouts after me, "Blanche is looking for you!" and almost at the same moment I see his sister dodging through the crowded hall towards me. Her gown, with matching headdress, contains a great number of feathers dyed dark green, crimson and gold.

"Blanche," I say, as she kisses me, "you look like a particularly succulent pheasant."

"Now I hope you are going to be a Good G.o.d this evening," she replies chirpily, "and not a Horrid G.o.d, because I have prepared a nice surprise for you," and she takes my arm and leads me towards the garden, in the opposite direction to everyone else.

I offer token resistance. "I think Mathilde wants us all to go upstairs ..."

"Don't be silly! It's barely seven!" She lowers her voice. "Is this a German thing, do you suppose?"

She marches me towards the gla.s.s doors that open onto the tiny strip of garden, separated from its neighbours by a high wall strung with unlit Chinese lanterns. Waiters are collecting discarded gla.s.ses of orangeade and liqueurs. The drinkers have all left to go upstairs. Only one woman stands alone, with her back to me, and when she turns I see it is Pauline. She smiles.

"There," says Blanche, with a strange edge to her voice, "you see? A surprise."

It is always Blanche who arranges the concerts. Tonight she presents her latest discovery, a young Catalan prodigy, Monsieur Casals, only eighteen, whom she found playing second cello in the theatre orchestra of the Folies-Marigny. He begins with the Saint-Sans cello sonata, and from the opening chords it is clear he is a marvel. Normally I would sit rapt, but tonight my attention wanders. I glance around the audience, arranged against the walls of the grand salon, facing the players in the centre. Out of sixty or so spectators, I count a dozen uniforms, mostly cavalrymen like Aimery, half of whom I know for a fact are attached to the General Staff. And after a while it seems to me that I am attracting some sidelong looks myself: the youngest colonel in the army, unmarried, sitting beside the attractive wife of a senior official of the Foreign Ministry, and no sign anywhere of her husband. For a colonel in a position such as mine, to be caught in an adulterous affair would be a scandal that could ruin a career. I try to put it out of my mind and concentrate on the music, but I am uneasy.

In the interval Pauline and I return to the garden, Blanche walking between us, clasping each of us by the arm. A couple of officers, old friends of mine, come over to congratulate me on my promotion, and I introduce them to Pauline. "This is Major Albert Cure-we were in Tonkin together with Aimery. This is Madame Monnier. And this is Captain William Lallemand de Marais-"

"Also known as the DemiG.o.d," interrupts Blanche.

Pauline smiles. "Why?"

"In honour of Loge in Das Rheingold, of course-the demiG.o.d of fire. You must see the resemblance, my dear? Look at that pa.s.sion! Captain Lallemand is the DemiG.o.d, and Georges is the Good G.o.d."

"I don't know very much Wagner, I'm afraid."

Lallemand, the keenest student of music in our circle, affects shocked disbelief. "Don't know very much Wagner! Colonel Picquart, you must take Madame Monnier to Bayreuth!"

Cure asks, a little too pointedly for my liking, "And does Monsieur Monnier enjoy the opera?"

"Unfortunately my husband dislikes all forms of music."

After they have moved off, Pauline says quietly, "Do you want me to leave?"

"No, why would I want that?" We are drinking orangeade. The great stink has lifted in the last day or so; the breezes of the faubourg Saint-Germain are warm and blossomy with the scent of a summer evening.

"Only you seem very uncomfortable, my darling."

"No, it's just I wasn't aware that you and Blanche were acquainted, that's all."

"Isabelle took me to tea with Alix Tocnaye a month ago, and she was there."

"And where is Philippe?"

"He's out of Paris tonight. He doesn't get back until tomorrow."

The implication, the offer, hangs unspoken in the air.

"What about the girls?" Pauline's daughters are ten and seven. "Do you have to get back to them?"

"They're staying with Philippe's sister."

"Ah, so now I know what Blanche meant by my 'surprise'!" I am not sure whether to be amused or annoyed. "Why did you decide to confide in her?"

"I didn't. I thought you had."

"Not I!"

"But the way she spoke-she led me to believe you had. That's why I let her arrange this evening." We stare at each other. And then, by a process of intuition or deduction too rapid for me to follow, she says, "Blanche is in love with you."

I laugh in alarm. "She is not!"

"At least you must have had an affair with her?"

I lie. What else should a gentleman do on these occasions? "My darling Pauline, she's fifteen years younger than I am. I'm like an older brother to her."

"But she watches you all the time. She's obsessed with you and now she's guessed about us."

"If Blanche was in love with me," I say quietly, "she'd hardly arrange for me to spend the night with you."

Pauline smiles and shakes her head. "That's exactly what she would do. If she can't have you, she'll have the satisfaction of controlling whoever does."

Instinctively we both check to see we are un.o.bserved. A footman is doing the rounds, whispering to the guests that the concert is about to resume. The garden is beginning to empty. A captain in the dragoons stops on the threshold and turns to look at us.

Pauline says suddenly, "Let's just go now, before the second part. Let's miss the dinner."

"And leave two empty places for everyone to notice? We might as well put an announcement in Le Figaro."

No, there is nothing for it but to endure the evening-the string quartet in the second half, the two encores, the champagne afterwards, the lingering goodbyes of those who have not been invited to dinner but hope for a last-minute reprieve. Throughout all this Pauline and I carefully avoid each other, which is of course the surest sign of a couple who are having an affair.

It is after ten by the time we sit down to eat. We are a table of sixteen. I am between Aimery's widowed mother, the dowager comtesse-all black ruffled silk and dead white skin, like the ghost in Don Giovanni-and Blanche's sister, Isabelle, recently married into an immensely wealthy banking family, proprietors of one of the five great vineyards of Bordeaux. She speaks expertly of appellations and grand crus, but she might as well be talking Polynesian for all I am taking in. I have an odd, almost dizzying sense of disconnection-the sophisticated talk is just a babble of phonemes, the music mere sc.r.a.pes and tw.a.n.gs of gut and wire. I look down to the far end of the table, to where Pauline is listening to Isabelle's banker husband, a young man whose pedigree breeding has given him an appearance so refined that it is almost foetus-like, as if it were an error of taste even to emerge from the womb. I catch Blanche's eye in the candlelight, glittering out at me from within her game-bird plumage, the woman scorned, and I look away. We finally rise at midnight.

I am careful to leave the house before Pauline, to preserve appearances. "You," I say to Blanche at the door, wagging my finger, "are a wicked woman."

"Good night, Georges," she says sadly.

I walk up the boulevard searching for the white light of a cab heading home to its depot at the Arc de Triomphe. Plenty of blues and reds and yellows bob past until eventually a white appears, and by the time I have stepped out into the street to hail it, and it has clattered to a halt, Pauline is already coming along the pavement to join me. I take her arm and help her up. I tell the driver, "Rue Yvon-Villarceau, the corner of the rue Copernic," and then I haul myself in after her. She lets me kiss her briefly then pushes me away.

"No, I need to know what all that was about."

"Surely not? Do you really?"

"Yes."

I sigh and take her hand. "Poor Blanche is simply very unhappy in her love affairs. Whichever man in the room is the most unsuitable or un.o.btainable, you may be sure that he is the one whom Blanche will fall for. There was quite a scandal a couple of years ago, all hushed up, but it caused a lot of embarra.s.sment for the family, especially to Aimery."

"Why especially to Aimery?"

"Because the man involved was an officer on the General Staff-a superior officer, recently widowed, a lot older than Blanche-and it was Aimery who brought him into the house and introduced them."

"What happened?"

I take out my cigarette case and offer one to Pauline. She refuses. I light up. I feel uncomfortable talking about the whole business, but I guess Pauline has a right to know, and I trust her not to spread the tale.

"She and this officer had an affair. It went on for some time, a year perhaps. Then Blanche met someone else, a young aristocrat her own age and much more suitable. This young man proposed. The family were delighted. Blanche tried to break off her relations.h.i.+p with the officer. But he refused to accept it. Then Aimery's father, the old comte, began receiving messages from a blackmailer, threatening to expose the affair. The comte ended up going to the Prefecture of the Paris police."

"My G.o.d, it's like a story out of Balzac!"

"It gets better than that. At one stage the comte paid five hundred francs for the return of a particularly compromising letter Blanche had written to her widowed lover, which was allegedly in the hands of a mysterious woman. The woman was supposed to have turned up in a park wearing a veil in order to return it. The police investigated the matter and the blackmailer proved to be the widowed officer himself."

"No? I don't believe it! What happened to him?"

"Nothing. He's very well connected. He was allowed to continue with his career. He's still on the General Staff-a colonel, in fact."

"And what did Blanche's fiance make of it?"

"He refused to have anything more to do with her."

Pauline sits back in her seat, considering all this. "Then I feel sorry for her."

"She is silly on occasions. But curiously good-hearted. And gifted in her way."

"What is the name of this colonel, so I can slap his face if I ever meet him?"

"You won't forget his name once you've heard it-Armand du Paty de Clam. He always wears a monocle." I am on the point of adding the curious detail that he was the officer in charge of the investigation into Captain Dreyfus, but in the end I don't. That information is cla.s.sified, and besides, Pauline has started nuzzling her cheek against my shoulder and suddenly I have other things on my mind.

My bed is narrow, a soldier's cot. To prevent ourselves slipping to the floor, we lie entwined in each other's arms, naked to the warm night air. At three in the morning, Pauline's breathing is slow and regular, rising from some deep soft seabed of sleep. I am wide awake. I stare over her shoulder at the open window and try to imagine us married. If we were, would we ever experience a night like this? Isn't an awareness of their transience what gives these moments their exquisite edge? And I have such a horror of constant company.

I extract my arm carefully from beneath hers, feel for the rug with my feet, and pull myself away from the bed.

In the sitting room the night sky sheds enough light for me to find my way around. I pull on a robe and light the gas lamp on the escritoire. I unlock a drawer and take out the file of Dreyfus's correspondence, and while my lover sleeps I resume reading from where I left off.

* The French detective police force.

5.

The story of the four months after the degradation is easy to follow in the file, which has been arranged by some bureaucrat in strict chronological order. It was twelve days later, in the middle of the night, that Dreyfus was taken from his prison cell in Paris, locked in a convict wagon in the gare d'Orleans and dispatched on a ten-hour rail journey through the s...o...b..und countryside to the Atlantic coast. In the station at La Roch.e.l.le, a crowd was waiting. All afternoon they hammered on the sides of the train and shouted threats and insults: "Death to the Jew!" "Judas!" "Death to the traitor!" It wasn't until nightfall that his guards decided to risk moving him. Dreyfus ran the gauntlet.

le de Re prison 21 January 1895 My darling Lucie, The other day, when I was insulted at La Roch.e.l.le, I wanted to escape from my warders, to present my naked breast to those to whom I was a just object of indignation, and say to them: "Do not insult me; my soul, which you cannot know, is free from all stain; but if you think I am guilty, come, take my body, I give it up to you without regret." Then, perhaps, when under the stinging bite of physical pain I had cried "Vive la France!" they might have believed in my innocence!

But what am I asking for night and day? Justice! Justice! Is this the nineteenth century, or have we gone back some hundred years? Is it possible that innocence is not recognised in an age of enlightenment and truth? Let them search. I ask no favour, but I ask the justice that is the right of every human being. Let them continue to search; let those who possess powerful means of investigation use them towards this object; it is for them a sacred duty of humanity and justice ...

I reread the final paragraph. There is something odd about it. I see what he is doing. Ostensibly he is writing to his wife. But knowing his words are bound to pa.s.s through many hands along the way, he is also sending a message to the arbiters of his fate in Paris; to me, in fact, although he would never have guessed that I would be sitting at Sandherr's desk. Let those who possess powerful means of investigation ... It does not alter my belief in his guilt, but it is a clever tactic; it gives me pause for thought: he certainly does not give up, this fellow.