The Red Collar (2 page)

 

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The major had opened the file and put it on his knee. He'd perched himself on the bedstead, leaning against the wall. It looked as if he planned on staying quite a while; he had all the time in the world. The prisoner hadn't moved. He still had his back turned, lying there on his hard bed, but it was obvious he wasn't asleep.

“Jacques Pierre Marcel Morlac,” the major intoned monotonously. “Born June 25, 1891.”

He ran his hand through his hair as he made his calculations. “So that makes you twenty-eight years old. Twenty-eight years and two months, as it's August.”

He didn't appear to wait for any reply before continuing with, “Your official domicile is your parents' farm, the place you were born, in fact, in Bigny. Very near here, I believe. Mobilized in November '15. November '15? They must have deemed you were the family breadwinner, and that won you some time.”

These presentations were an old habit of the major's. He trotted out the facts and figures with a sympathetic expression. The differences in dates and places that defined each individual were fundamental: It was thanks to them that soldiers were who they were. And at the same time, they were so trifling, these differences, so minute that they demonstrated better than any system of regimental numbers just how little there was to distinguish between men. Aside from these few jottings (a name, a birth date . . . ), they constituted a compact, anonymous, indistinct mass. And it was this mass that the war had pummeled, wasted, consumed. No one could have lived through that war and still believed an individual had any value. And yet justice, which Lantier now served, required individuals to be brought before him for sentencing. Which was why he had to gather these scraps of information and stow them in a file where they would dry out like flowers pressed between the pages of a heavy book.

“First you were assigned to the supply corps in the Champagne region. That can't have been too tough. Requisitioning fodder from farms, that's something you know about. And it's not dangerous.”

The major paused deliberately to see whether the accused would react. The figure lying before him still didn't move.

“Then you were sent off with your unit to join the Oriental Expeditionary Force. You reached Salonika in July '16. Well, at least this heat won't be bothering you too much! You had time to get used to that over there.”

A truck laboring up the street trundled hoarsely past the basement window and drove off into the distance.

“You'll have to tell me about that campaign, in the Balkans. I never understood it at all. We wanted to give the Turks a hard time in the Dardanelles and they threw us back out to sea, is that right? Then we fell back to Salonika and played cat and mouse with the Greeks who couldn't make up their minds to join the war as our allies. Correct me if I'm wrong. Either way, those of us who were in the Somme always thought the guys in the Oriental Force were a bunch of draft dodgers taking it easy on the beach . . . ”

In adopting these surprisingly colloquial terms and, more particularly, making a genuine insult, Lantier knew what he was doing. His face still looked just as weary. These dramatic flourishes were always part of his interrogation routine. He knew which nerve to niggle in a man, just as a peasant knows the sensitive points on his livestock. The prisoner lying in front of him moved one of his feet. It was a good sign.

“Be that as it may, you distinguished yourself. Well done. August '17, a citation from General Sarrail: ‘Corporal Morlac played a decisive part in an attack against Bulgarian and Austrian forces. He was in the front line for the maneuver and personally accounted for nine enemy infantrymen before sustaining injuries to his head and shoulder, and losing consciousness on the battlefield. He held on until his unit managed to get him back behind French lines during the night. This heroic action marked the beginning of a victorious counteroffensive from our troops in the Tcherna area.' Commendable! My congratulations.”

This passage had certainly had its effect because the prisoner was no longer trying to pretend he was sleeping. Still lying full-length, he shifted position, perhaps hoping to smother what the officer was saying.

“It really must have been an act of exceptional bravery for you to be awarded the Légion d'honneur. The Légion d'honneur! To a lowly corporal! I don't know much about the Oriental Force but I think I've heard of only two or three similar cases in France. That's something to be extremely proud of. Are you extremely proud, Mr. Morlac?”

The prisoner was shuffling around under his blanket. It clearly wouldn't be long before he put in an appearance.

“Let's come to the act for which you were arrested. I can't imagine how a man who's won his Légion d'honneur in such circumstances could knowingly render himself guilty of what you've been charged with. I imagine you were drunk, Mr. Morlac? The war shook us all up. Sometimes the memories catch up with us and, to get away from them, we have a bit of a drink. A bit too much. Which can make people do things they regret. Is that it? In that case, offer up your apology, express your sincere regret and we'll leave it at that.”

Facing the major on the bare boards of his bed, the man had finally sat up. He was swimming with sweat under his blanket, cheeks flushed and hair awry. But his eyes weren't bleary with sleep. He sat on the edge of the bed, his bare legs dangling. He smoothed one hand round the back of his neck with a grimace, and stretched. Then he looked directly at the investigating officer who was still sitting with the file in his lap and smiling wearily.

“No,” the man said. “I wasn't drunk. And I don't regret anything.”

H
e'd spoken these words quite quietly, in a muted voice. He couldn't possibly have been heard from outside. But out on the square, the dog had instantly started howling again.

The major automatically looked over at the door.

“Well, at least there's someone who cares what happens to you. Is there anyone else who cares about you, corporal? Anyone who'd rather you extricated yourself from this regrettable affair and were free?”

“I'll say it again,” Morlac replied. “I'm responsible for my actions and can't think of any reason to apologize.”

The war had left its mark on him too, it would seem. Something about his voice implied he was hopelessly sincere. As if the certainty that he would soon die, which he'd experienced day after day at the front, had melted all the falsity inside him, all the carapaces, the tanned hides of lies that life and its ordeals and contact with other people lay down over the truth in ordinary individuals. The two men had this in common, an exhaustion that robbed all strength and any desire to say or think anything that wasn't true. But also, in among these thought patterns, any thought that related to the future, to happiness and hope, was impossible to formulate because it was immediately destroyed by the sordid realities of war. So all that was left were a few sorry sentences, spoken with the utter blankness of despair.

“Has that dog been following you around for long?”

Morlac scratched his arm. He was wearing a sleeveless undershirt which showed off his biceps. He wasn't actually very well muscled. Average height with brown hair, he had a receding hairline and light-colored eyes. He was obviously a country type but there was an inspired look about him, an intensity in his eyes that might be associated with a prophet or a shepherd visited by apparitions.

“Since forever.”

“What do you mean?”

Lantier was starting to write a report of the interrogation. He needed precise details to complete the exercise. But he did it without any enthusiasm.

“He followed me when they came to call me up to war.”

“Tell me about that.”

“If I can smoke.”

The major rummaged in his vest and took out a crumpled pack of cigarettes. Morlac lit one with the tinder lighter the officer handed him. He blew the smoke through his nose like an enraged bull.

“It was late autumn. You know all this; it's in your papers. We still had plowing to do. My father hadn't been well enough to follow the horses for a long time. And I also had to do the neighbors' fields, because their son had been among the first to go. They came in the middle of the day, the police. I saw them coming up the line of linden trees and I just knew. My father and I had talked about what I should do. I was all for hiding. But he knew them and he said they'd get me sooner or later. So I went along with them.”

“Were you the only one they had to get?”

“Of course I wasn't,” he said quietly. “They already had three other conscripts with them. Men I knew by sight. The police got me to climb into their cart and then we went and picked up three more.”

“And the dog?”

“He followed.”

Did the animal hear that? He hadn't stopped barking since his master woke up, but now he was being discussed he was silent.

“He wasn't the only one actually. All the others had dogs that followed them in the early days. The cops laughed. I think they deliberately made them run behind the cart. It made it feel kind of cheerful, like going off for a day's hunting. So the guys we went to fetch let themselves be loaded into the cart without a scene.”

He described all this with laughter in his voice but his eyes were still sad, and sitting facing him, the officer displayed the same superficial brightness.

“Had you had the dog long?”

“Some friends gave him to me.”

The major noted everything down scrupulously. There was something slightly comical about the way he earnestly recorded this business about a dog. But the animal did play an important role in the affair he'd come to investigate.

“What breed is it?”

“The bitch was a Briard Sheepdog, pretty much purebred as I understand it. No one really knows about the dog. Apparently every male in the neighborhood had a shot at her.”

There was nothing lewd about what he was saying, more a sense of disgust. It was strange how the war had made anything carnal like this unbearable. As if this magma surrounding our origins, these mysteries of reproduction, were tragically correlated to the orgy of blood and death, the hideous scramble that the shelling had produced in the trenches.

“Anyway,” the officer interjected, “the dog followed you and then what?”

“Then he carried on. He was craftier than the others, I s'pose. We were rounded up in Nevers, and from there we caught a train for the East. Most of the dogs stayed on the platform, but not this one, he crouched down and as the train set off, he leapt onto the flat car.”

“Didn't the NCOs drive him away?”

“It made them laugh. If there had been thirty of them they'd have chucked them out, but just one, they quite liked it deep down. He became the regimental mascot. At least that's what they called him.”

The two men were now facing each other, each on a board bed, separated by the narrow confines of the cell. It felt a bit like during the war, in the blockhouses. There was plenty of time. Life dawdled by and yet a shell could end it all at any moment.

“And
you
obviously liked it. Were you attached to your dog?”

Morlac delved thoughtfully inside the pack of cigarettes. He drew out one that was half broken, snapped it in two and lit one of the ends.

“You might think this is strange, especially with what I've just done, but I've never felt very strongly about dogs. I don't like hurting animals; I take care of them if need be. But if need be I'll kill them, too, with rabbits and sheep for example. With a dog, I'll take it hunting or into the fields to watch over the cows. But stroking it and all that, that's not really my style.”

“Weren't you happy he followed you?” Lantier asked, looking up.

“To be honest, it was more like I was embarrassed. I didn't want to be noticed, in that whole war thing. Especially at the beginning. I didn't know how things would turn out but I kept thinking that at some point I might need to slip away so, with a dog . . . ”

“You wanted to desert?”

Lantier wasn't asking the question as an investigator, more as an officer, one who thought he knew his men and finds a character trait he wasn't expecting in one of them.

“I think you may have been prepared for what war would be like. I wasn't. In the early days what I mostly saw were the fields left behind to my mother and my sister, who couldn't work them, and the hay that hadn't been brought in. So I thought if I wasn't needed that badly by the army, I'd try to get back to where I was useful. Do you understand?”

The officer was a city dweller. He'd been born in Paris and had always lived there. He'd often noticed amongst his men how differently those from towns and those from the country viewed the home front. To a townie, home meant pleasure and comfort—laziness, basically. To a peasant, home was the land and work, a different battle.

“Were there other dogs in your convoy apart from yours?”

“Not in the train. But in Reims, when we got off, we found quite a few.”

“Didn't your officers say anything?”

“There wasn't anything to say. The dogs looked after themselves. I don't know if they were going through the garbage at night or if people threw them scraps. Both, probably. Anyway, they didn't need looking after.”

“Then did you go to the front?” Lantier moved the interrogation forward.

“I stayed there six months in the supply corps. We weren't on the front line but sometimes we came very close and the shells often took their toll.”

“And was the dog still with you?”

“Still with me.”

“That's pretty remarkable.”

“He's a remarkable dog,” Morlac replied steadily. “Even in the most ravaged landscapes he always managed to find something to eat. The main thing was he knew what to do around the officers. Most of the dogs ended up having problems. There were even some that were unceremoniously eliminated with a rifle shot because they stole from the stores. I don't know where you were but you must have seen that, too.”