The Red Collar (12 page)

“Did Morlac find you together?”

“He saw Albert come out of the house, because he always got up before me to go and wash by the well.”

“Did the boy know you had a lover away at war?”

“He guessed, given my condition. But the rule, with comrades, is to say as little as possible about yourself, in case anyone's interrogated.”

“Did the two of them talk?”

“When Albert spotted a soldier in the vegetable plot he wanted to know what he was doing there. Morlac asked whether I was at home. Albert said I was still asleep.”

She'd wound her table napkin around her fingers and was pulling it tighter and tighter. The blood couldn't get through. It must have been very painful.

“Albert asked whether there was any message. Jacques stood up to his full height, looked over at the closed door for a moment and said ‘no.' Then he left.”

“And you didn't see him?”

“I was very tired that day. The baby kicked a lot. I hadn't slept well. I got up an hour later. Albert had gone to cut some grass for the rabbits. He told me about Morlac's visit over lunch. It was too late to catch up with him.”

Lantier looked at her. Despite her thinness, the fact she took so little care of herself and the marks left on her face by her ordeals, there was a spark about her that made her beautiful, like a fire that won't go out, a light that shines all the brighter for being in total darkness.

“Did you write to him?”

“Of course. But again, because of censorship, I couldn't explain the situation exactly as it was. And anyway, I wasn't even sure he was receiving my letters.”

“Didn't he send you any?”

“Never again.”

“Did you tell him when your son was born?”

“When Jules was born I wrote to him. And a bit later I even managed to have a photo taken in town. I don't know whether it reached him.”

This time, despite her efforts, she couldn't hold back her tears. They fell silently and rolled like raindrops over dry wood. She let three or four fall before reacting. She rubbed her napkin over her cheeks, then looked Lantier squarely in the face as she said, “I can assure you, sir, that I've never stopped thinking about him. I've only ever loved him. I love only him. I dream about him. Sometimes, on winter nights, I'd go out in the cold, without putting any clothes on, without even feeling the frost, and I'd scream his name, as if he might turn up there, among the vegetables, and come back to me. I closed my eyes and I could feel his breath, I could smell him . . . You think I'm crazy.”

Lantier looked down. The screams of a woman in love always left men feeling that, in this domain, they were much the weaker sex.

“Did you not know he was back when he came home after the war?”

“Not until he created this scandal and was arrested.”

The drunks in the other room were tumbling outside. The waitress hovered in the half-open doorway, to see whether she should bring in the check.

“I'm depending on you,” said Valentine, staring the major in the eye pointedly.

B
efore tackling the final stage of his inquiry, Lantier felt a need to take a long walk through the countryside.

He rose at dawn and set off north, toward the beginnings of the large forest that stretched all the way to Bourges.

The trees were mostly oaks. The first of them had been planted as far back as the reign of Louis XIV. As a walker heads deeper along the forest paths he'll come across areas where the trees are unexpectedly aligned. Here the random arrangement of trunks briefly gives way to rectilinear pockets that seem to reach all the way to the horizon. This sudden mark of human will amid the chaos of nature is not unlike the birth of an idea in the magma of ill-defined thought. All at once, in both cases, a perspective emerges, a corridor of light that brings order to solid things as it does to ideas, and allows for a more far-reaching view. In both instances, these moments of illumination are short-lived. As soon as the walker sets off again, as soon as the mind starts churning again, the vision vanishes, unless it has been committed to memory or written down.

All the same, walking through a forest like this is a powerful stimulant for thought. Lantier needed it. As well as the investigation keeping him here, he was thinking about the life that lay in store for him, the new phase he would step into when he left military life. He thought about this war that was drawing to an end for a second time, with these last few trials. Cemeteries as rectilinear as those pockets in the trees had been built on the battlefields to shelter the remains of dead soldiers. But those particular seeds would never grow.

He found a pond deep in the forest and walked around it. He came across hunting men patrolling through the woods in preparation for the coming season. They were preceded by their dogs, who came and sniffed at Lantier. It occurred to him that a dog was the only company that didn't disturb solitude. He thought about Wilhelm and felt that, through his hardships, Morlac had certainly been lucky to have this animal by his side the whole time. And he resented him for showing so little gratitude.

Next he went down onto a plain sown with barley, and walked along the edge of the fields, which undulated with a swell of blond tufts. He ended up on a dusty track that headed back toward town. He'd barely walked two hundred yards along it before he spotted someone coming toward him on a bicycle. It was Gabarre.

“I was looking for you. They said you were around here.”

The solitude was at an end. The police officer walked up to Lantier, pushing his bicycle. He told him what he had learned.

The fellow was as faithful as Wilhelm, Lantier thought to himself. But even so, going for a walk with a policeman doesn't have quite the same effect . . .

 

* * *

 

Dujeux was cursing the major, who'd asked him to stand guard outside. What sort of idea was that to interrogate the prisoner out of his cell and sit him down in the office! All right, so it was the last day. The man had to sign a written statement and hear the military investigating officer's decision. But all the same, what an idea . . . He'd walked roughshod over the regulations and if things went awry, Dujeux would be sure to make it clear it was nothing to do with him.

Lantier was sitting behind the desk and the defendant sat facing him in a stick-back chair with one armrest missing.

“I've done a lot of thinking, Morlac. Permit me to say that the idea you've formed of humanity is somewhat incomplete.”

“What do you mean?”

“This business of fraternizing, the mutiny you were hoping to organize, the end of the war . . . ”

“Yes?”

“That's what you see as humanity, isn't it? Fraternity to counter hatred and all that.”

“It is.”

“Well, it falls a bit short, I think. Humanity also means having an ideal and fighting for it. You were in favor of peace because you didn't believe in this war. You're against the concept of a nation and against bourgeois governments. Am I right?”

Morlac was slightly wrong-footed because he hadn't expected the conversation to start like this, and he was on his guard.

“But it strikes me,” the major continued, “that if it were a question of fighting for ideals in which you did believe, you'd agree to it. When the Russian revolutionaries took power in October, didn't you cheer them on?”

“Yes.”

“And when the Tsar's family were killed, did you appeal for fraternization?”

“It was the price that had to be paid to quash a reaction.”

“Ah, I see! The price that had to be paid . . . ”

Lantier stood up and turned toward the window, with his hands behind his back.

“Let's drop the subject. We could spend a long time talking about it, I'm sure of that,” he said, then spun round around and stared at the prisoner as he added, “I just wanted things to be clear. We don't have the same values, we don't believe in the same ideas. But we're both fighting men.”

“If you like. So?”

“So, in my opinion, what you did, the act for which I must judge you, was a mistake from the point of view of your particular fight.”

Morlac's astonishment was clear to see.

“A mistake and a weakness, if I may say. There's nothing coherent about your action in relation to the fight you're fighting and which, should I need to remind you, is not the same as mine.”

“I don't understand what you're saying.”

“You don't understand. Well, let's look back at the facts.”

Lantier sat down and opened the file on the desk.

“‘On July 14, 1919,'” he read, “‘at 08:30 hours, while the procession was gathering on Danton Avenue, one Jacques Morlac approached the VIP stand where representatives of constitutional bodies had already taken their seats to either side of Mr. Émile Legagneur, the regional prefect. The above named Morlac is a veteran from a farming family and is held in very high regard locally. In consideration of his injuries and the Légion d'honneur he was awarded in combat, the police officer on duty next to the stand saw no need to ask him to step aside.'”

Morlac shrugged, staring blankly into space.

“‘The above named Morlac walked right up to the prefect and stopped less than three paces from the VIP stand. The guests of honor then fell completely silent. The above named Morlac addressed the authorities in a loud voice and stated his identity.'”

Lantier looked up to check the prisoner was listening.

“‘Then, without using notes, he gave the following speech, which he had clearly premeditated and learned by heart:
For his exemplary conduct on the Eastern Front, showing no hesitation in attacking a Bulgarian soldier although the latter was driven only by pacifist intentions, the soldier Wilhelm here present before you has earned his country's highest recognition.
'”

Morlac let slip a sad smile.

“‘The above named Morlac then took the medal and added:
Soldier Wilhelm, in the name of the President of France, I do hereby grant you access to the order of ignominy which rewards blind violence, submission to leaders and the basest of instincts, and I appoint you as a Knight of the Légion d'honneur.
He hung the decoration around the dog's neck, performed a military salute and did an about-turn so that he was in line with the parade. The first of the troops were drawing level with the stand at this point. The above named Morlac marched at the head of the procession, just behind his absurdly decorated dog.'”

As if he'd heard his name, Wilhelm yapped twice feebly from the far end of the square.

“‘The crowd that had gathered on the esplanade suddenly became aware of this provocative act and exploded with laughter and jeering. The words “Down with war” were heard. There were bursts of applause. The events happened very quickly and the policeman on duty did not hear the above named Morlac's speech; it was therefore not possible to bring a timely end to the public disgrace he had decided to inflict on the authorities. Squadron Sergeant-Major Gabarre was posted at some distance from the stand and witnessed the above mentioned Morlac and the dog with its red sash processing grotesquely at the head of the troops, and Gabarre proceeded to arrest him. This action, although legitimate, triggered demonstrations of hostility within the crowd. Stones were thrown at the Squadron Sergeant-Major and he sustained a light injury to the temple. The prefect ordered for the crowd to be dispersed, and had to ask the troops to intervene in the ceremonial uniforms they were wearing for the parade. The ceremony came to an end before this year's solemn homage owed to the nation had been pronounced.'”

Lantier sat up and pushed aside the file.

“Do you want me to sign it?” Morlac asked with the same lax smile.

“Do you know what an action like that could cost you?”

“What does it matter. Have me shot, if you want.”

“We're no longer at war and the law won't be so expeditious. But deportation is the most likely sanction.”

“Well then, send me to the penal colony. I'm ready for it.”

“You're ready for it and you seem to want it, I've seen that. I've known that from the start. You refuse every solution I've suggested to mitigate your actions and secure clemency. Let's talk about that, then, shall we? Why do you want to be condemned? Do you really think that will serve your cause?”

“Anything that fills the people with disgust for war is good for the cause I defend, like you say. If so-called heroes refused the abject honors handed out by the men who organized the butchery, we'd stop celebrating what's claimed to be a victory. The only victory worth having is the one we need to win against the war and against the capitalists who wanted it.”

The major stood up, came around to the front of his desk and went to sit in a chair facing Morlac. Their legs were almost touching.

“Just how convinced are you by what you say?”

Confronted with the officer's smile, Morlac was unsettled.

“I believe it, that's the long and the short of it.”

“Well,
I
say that you don't. You've put together your argument and you're standing by it. But you don't believe in it.”

“Why?”

“Because you're not sufficiently naïve to think your little flash in the pan will change the world.”

“It's a start.”

“No, it's an end. For you, at least. You're going to disappear off to some distant colony to break stones, and you'll never come back.”

“What difference does it make to you?”

“To me, none. But we're talking about you. Your ‘cause' will lose one of its defenders. You'll have fired your only cartridge without touching anyone, and the cause in question won't have moved forward an inch.”

“If you condemn me, the people will revolt.”