An Officer and a Spy (52 page)

“No.”

“Then I’ll find someone. Now pack a bag.”

“Why?”

“Because I have my carriage outside and you’re coming home to practise fencing with me. I don’t want to be a witness to your being killed.”

I debate whether or not to tell him about Lemercier-Picard and decide against it: he is anxious enough as it is.

Friday is passed in Edmond’s barn, where he puts me through my paces for hour after hour, relearning the basic principles of compound attack and circular parry, riposte and remise. The next morning, we leave Ville-d’Avray soon after nine to drive back into Paris. Jeanne kisses me fervently all over my face as if she doesn’t expect to see me again. “Goodbye, dearest Georges! I shall never forget you. Farewell!”

“My dear Jeanne, this is not good for my morale …”

An hour later we turn into the avenue de Lowendal to find a crowd of several hundred waiting outside the entrance to the riding school, many of them cadets from the École Militaire—the sort of young men I used to teach but who now jeer me as I emerge from the carriage in my civilian clothes. A line of troopers guards the door. Edmond knocks, a bolt is drawn and we are admitted into that familiar grey-lit chilly space, with its stink of horse shit, ammonia and straw. Trapped birds beat their wings against the skylights. A trestle table has been set up in the middle of the vast manège against
which Arthur Ranc rests his bulky frame. He comes over to me with his hand outstretched. He may be nearer seventy than sixty but his beard is full and black and the eyes behind his pince-nez are bright with interest. “I’ve fought plenty of duels in my time, my dear fellow,” he says, “and the thing to remember is that two hours from now you’ll be sitting down to lunch with the keenest appetite you’ll ever enjoy in your life. It’s worth the fight just for the pleasure of the meal!”

I am introduced to the adjudicator, a retired sergeant major of the Republican Guard, and to my doctor, a hospital surgeon. We wait for fifteen minutes, our conversation becoming increasingly strained, until a burst of cheering from the street signals the arrival of Henry. He enters followed by the two colonels, ignores us and strides directly to the table, pulling off his gloves. Then he removes his cap and sets it down and begins unbuttoning his tunic, as if preparing for a medical procedure he is anxious to get over with as quickly as possible. I take off my own jacket and waistcoat and hand them to Edmond. The adjudicator chalks a thick line in the centre of the stone floor, paces off a position to either side of it and marks each with a cross, then summons us over to him. “Gentlemen,” he says, “if you please, unbutton your shirts,” and we expose our chests briefly to prove we are wearing no protection; Henry’s is pink and hairless, like the belly of a pig. Throughout this procedure he looks at his hands, the floor, the rafters—anywhere except at me.

Our weapons are weighed and measured. The sergeant major explains, “Gentlemen, if one of you is wounded, or a wound is perceived by one of your witnesses, the combat will be stopped unless the wounded man indicates he wishes to continue fighting. After the wound has been inspected, if the injured man desires, the fight may resume.” He gives us our swords. “Prepare yourselves.”

I flex my knees and make a few practice thrusts and parries, then turn to face Henry, who stands about six paces away, and now at last he looks at me, and I see the hatred in his eyes. I know at once he will try to kill me if he can.

“En garde,”
says the sergeant major, and we take up our positions. He checks his watch and raises his cane, then brings it down.
“Allez!”

Henry rushes at me immediately, flashing his sword with such speed and force that mine is almost knocked from my hand. I have no choice but to retreat under the flail of blows, parrying as best I can by instinct rather than method. My feet become entangled, I stumble slightly, and Henry slashes at my neck. Both Ranc and Edmond cry out in protest at such an illegal stroke. I sway backwards and feel the wall behind my shoulders. Already Henry must have driven me twenty paces from my marker and I have to duck and twist away from him, darting to the side and taking up a fresh defensive posture, yet still he comes on.

I hear Ranc complain to the adjudicator, “But this is ridiculous, monsieur!” and the adjudicator calls out, “Colonel Henry, the purpose is to settle a dispute between gentlemen!” but I can see in Henry’s eyes that he hears nothing except the pumping of his own blood. He lunges at me once again and this time I feel his blade on the tendon of my neck, which is as close as I have come to death since the day I was born. Ranc calls out, “Stop!” just as the tip of my sword catches Henry on the forearm. He glances down at it and lowers his weapon, and I do the same as the witnesses and doctors hurry across to us. The sergeant major consults his watch. “The first engagement lasted two minutes.”

My surgeon stands me directly beneath a skylight and turns my head to inspect my neck. He says, “You’re fine: he must have missed you by a hair.”

Henry, though, is bleeding from his forearm—not a serious cut, merely a graze, but enough for the adjudicator to say to him, “Colonel, you may refuse to continue.”

Henry shakes his head. “We’ll carry on.”

While he is rolling back his sleeve and wiping the blood away Edmond says to me quietly, “This fellow is a homicidal lunatic. I’ve never seen such a display.”

“If he tries it again,” adds Ranc, “I shall have the thing stopped.”

“No,” I say, “don’t do that. Let’s fight it to the end.”

The adjudicator calls, “Gentlemen, to your places!”

“Allez!”

Henry tries to start the reengagement where he left it, with the same aggression as before, driving me back towards the wall. But
the lower part of his arm is braided with blood. His grip is slippery. The slashing strokes no longer carry the old conviction—they are slowing, weakening. He needs to finish me quickly or he will lose. He throws everything into one last lunge at my heart. I parry the blow, turn his blade, thrust, and catch the edge of his elbow. He bellows in pain and drops his sword. His seconds shout, “Stop!”

“No!” he shouts, wincing and clutching his elbow. “I can continue!” He stoops and retrieves his sword with his left hand and attempts to fit the hilt into his right, but his bloodied fingers won’t close on it. He tries repeatedly, but each time he attempts to raise it, the sword drops to the floor. I watch him without pity. “Give me a minute,” he mutters, and turns his back to me to hide his weakness.

Eventually the two colonels and his doctor persuade him to go over to the table to allow the wound to be examined. Five minutes later Colonel Parès approaches where I am waiting with Edmond and Ranc and announces, “The cubital nerve is damaged. The fingers will be unable to grip for several days. Colonel Henry must withdraw.” He salutes and walks away.

I put on my waistcoat and my jacket and glance across to where Henry sits slumped on a chair, staring at the floor. Colonel Parès stands behind him and guides his arms into the sleeves of his tunic, then Colonel Boissonnet kneels at his feet and fastens his buttons.

“Look at him,” says Ranc contemptuously, “like a great big baby. He’s completely finished.”

“Yes,” I say. “I believe he is.”

We do not observe the usual custom following a duel and shake hands. Instead, as word filters out into the avenue de Lowendal that their hero has been wounded, I am hurried away through a rear exit to avoid the hostile crowd. According to the front pages the next day, Henry leaves to the cheers of his supporters, his arm in a sling, and is driven in an open landau around the corner to his apartment, where General Boisdeffre waits in person to offer him the best wishes of the army. I go out to lunch with Edmond and Ranc, and discover that the old senator is indeed correct: I have seldom had a better appetite nor more enjoyed a meal.

This buoyant mood persists, and for the next three months I wake each morning with a curious sense of optimism. On the face of it, my situation could hardly be worse. I have nothing to do, no career to go to, an inadequate income, and little capital to draw on. I still cannot see Pauline while her divorce is pending in case we are observed by the press or the police. Blanche has gone away: it was only after much string-pulling by her brother and various subterfuges (including the pretence that she was a fifty-five-year-old spinster with a heart condition) that she managed to avoid being called as a witness at the Zola trial. I am hissed at in public and libelled in various newspapers, which are tipped off by Henry that I have been seen meeting Colonel von Schwartzkoppen in Karlsruhe. Louis is removed as deputy mayor of the seventh arrondissement and sanctioned by the Order of Advocates for “improper conduct.” Reinach and other prominent supporters of Dreyfus lose their seats in the national elections. And while Lemercier-Picard’s death creates a great sensation, it is officially declared a suicide and the case is closed.

Everywhere the forces of darkness are in control.

But I am not entirely ostracised. Parisian society is divided, and for each door that is now slammed in my face, another opens. On Sundays I begin regularly to go for lunch at the home of Madame Geneviève Straus, the widow of Bizet, on the rue de Miromesnil, along with such new comrades-in-arms as Zola, Clemenceau, Labori, Proust and Anatole France. On Wednesday evenings it is often dinner for twenty in the salon of Monsieur France’s mistress, Madame Léontine Arman de Caillavet, “Our Lady of the Revision,” in the avenue Hoche—Léontine is an extravagant grande dame with carmine-rouged cheeks and orange-dyed hair on which sits a rimless hat of stuffed pink bullfinches. And on Thursdays I might walk a few streets west, towards the porte Dauphine, for the musical soirées of Madame Aline Ménard-Dorian, in whose scarlet reception rooms decorated with peacock feathers and Japanese prints I turn the pages for Cortot and Casals and the three ravishing young sisters of the trio Chaigneau.

“Ah! You are always so cheerful, my dear Georges,” these grand hostesses say to me. They flutter their fans and their eyelashes at me
in the candlelight, and touch my arm consolingly—for a gaolbird is always a trophy for a smart table—and call across to their fellow guests to take note of my serenity. “You are a wonder, Picquart!” their husbands exclaim. “Either that or you are mad. I am sure I should not retain my good humour in the face of so much trouble.”

I smile. “Well, one must always wear the mask of comedy for society …”

And yet the truth is I am not wearing a mask: I do feel quite confident about the future. I am sure in my bones that sooner or later, although by what means I cannot foresee, this great edifice the army has constructed—this mouldering defensive fortress of worm-eaten timber—will collapse all around them. The lies are too extensive and ramshackle to withstand the pressures of time and scrutiny. Poor Dreyfus, now entering his fourth year on Devil’s Island, may not live to see it, and nor for that matter may I. But vindication will come, I am convinced.

And I am proved right, even sooner than I expected. That summer, two events occur that change everything.

First, in May, I receive a note from Labori summoning me urgently to his apartment in the rue de Bourgogne, just around the corner from the Ministry of War. I arrive within the hour to find a nervous young man of twenty-one, obviously up from the provinces, waiting in the drawing room. Labori introduces him as Christian Esterhazy.

“Ah,” I say, shaking his hand somewhat warily, “now that is an infamous name.”

“You mean my cousin?” he responds. “Yes, he has made it so, and a blacker rogue never drew breath!”

His tone is so vehement I am taken aback. Labori says, “You need to sit down, Picquart, and listen to what Monsieur Esterhazy has to tell us. You won’t be disappointed.”

Marguerite brings in tea and leaves us to it.

“My father died eighteen months ago,” says Christian, “at our home in Bordeaux, very unexpectedly. The week after he passed over, I received a letter of condolence from a man I’d never met
before: my father’s cousin, Major Walsin Esterhazy, expressing his sympathy and asking if he could be of any practical assistance in terms of financial advice.”

I exchange glances with Labori; Christian notices. “Well, Monsieur Picquart, I can see that you know what must be coming! But please bear in mind that I had no experience in these matters and my mother is a most unworldly and religious person—two of my sisters are nuns, in fact. To tell the tale briefly, I wrote back to my chivalrous relative and explained that I had an inheritance of five thousand francs, and my mother would receive one hundred and seventy thousand through the sale of property, and that we would welcome advice in making sure it was safely invested. The major replied, offering to intercede with his intimate friend Edmond de Rothschild, and naturally we thought, ‘What could be safer than that?’ ”

He sips his tea, gathering his thoughts before continuing. “For some months all went well, and we would receive regular letters from the major enclosing cheques which he said were the dividends from the money the Rothschilds had invested on our behalf. And then last November he wrote to me asking me to come to Paris urgently. He said he was in trouble and needed my help. Naturally I came at once. I found him in a terrible state of anxiety. He said he was about to be denounced in public as a traitor, but that I was not to believe any of the stories. It was all a plot by the Jews, to put him in Dreyfus’s place, and that he could prove this because he was being helped by officers from the Ministry of War. He said it had become too dangerous for him to meet his principal contact, and therefore he asked if I would meet him on his behalf and relay messages between them.”

“And who was this contact?” I ask.

“His name was Colonel du Paty de Clam.”

“You met du Paty?”

“Yes, often. Usually at night, in public places—parks, bridges, lavatories.”

“Lavatories?”

“Oh yes, although the colonel would take care to be disguised, in dark glasses or a false beard.”

“And what sort of messages did you relay between du Paty and your cousin?”