Robert Harris - An Officer and a Spy

‘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 classified, 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 one another’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.

1The French detective police force.

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 snowbound countryside to the Atlantic coast. In the station at La Rochelle, 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.

Île de Ré prison

21 January 1895

My darling Lucie,

The other day, when I was insulted at La Rochelle, 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 pass 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.

Paris

January 1895

Fred, my dearest,

Very fortunately I had not read the newspapers yesterday morning; my people had tried to conceal from me the knowledge of the ignoble scene at La Rochelle, otherwise I should have gone mad with despair. .

Next in the file is a letter from Lucie to the minister, requesting permission to visit her husband on the Île de Ré to say goodbye. The request is granted for 13 February, subject to stringent restrictions, which are also listed. The prisoner is to remain standing between two guards at one end of the room; Madame Dreyfus is to remain seated at the other end, accompanied by a third guard; the prison governor will stand between them; they are not to discuss anything connected with the trial; there is to be no physical contact. A letter from Lucie offering to have her hands tied behind her back if she can approach a little closer is stamped ‘refused’.

Fred to Lucie: The few moments I passed with you were full of joy to me, though it was impossible to tell you all that was in my heart (14 February). Lucie to Fred: What emotion, what a fearful shock we both felt at seeing each other again, especially you, my poor beloved husband (16 February). Fred to Lucie: I wanted to tell you all the admiration I feel for your noble character, for your admirable devotion (21 February). Hours later, Dreyfus was on a warship, the Saint-Nazaire, steaming out into the Atlantic.

Up to now, most of the letters in the file have been copies, presumably because the originals were delivered to the addressee. But from this point on the majority of the pages I turn are in Dreyfus’s own hand. His descriptions of the voyage — in an unheated cell on an upper deck, open to the elements, through violent winter storms, watched night and day by warders with revolvers who refuse to speak to him — have been retained by the censors in the Colonial Ministry. On the eighth day the weather began to grow warmer. Still Dreyfus did not know his destination and no one was allowed to tell him; his guess was Cayenne. On the fifteenth day of the voyage he wrote to Lucie that the warship had at last anchored, off three small humps of rock and vegetation in the middle of the ocean’s wastes : Royal Island, St Joseph’s Island and (tiniest of all) Devil’s Island. To his astonishment, he discovered that the latter was intended for him alone.

Dearest Lucie. . My darling Lucie. . Lucie, dearest. . Darling wife. . I love you. . I yearn for you. . I think of you. . I send you the echo of my deep affection. . So much emotion and time and energy expended in the hope of some connection, only for it to end up in the darkness of this file! But maybe it is better, I think, as I skim the increasingly desperate complaints, that Lucie doesn’t read all of this: isn’t aware that after the Saint-Nazaire dropped anchor in the tropics, her husband had to spend four days locked in his steel box under the ferocious sun without once being allowed on deck, or that when eventually he was landed on Royal Island — while the old leper colony on Devil’s Island was demolished and his new quarters prepared — he was locked in a cell with closed shutters and was not allowed out for a month.

My dear,

At last, after thirty days of close confinement, they came to remove me to Devil’s Island. By day I am able to walk about in a space a few hundred metres square, followed at every step by warders with rifles; at nightfall (six o’clock) I am locked in my hut, four metres square, closed by an iron grille, before which relays of warders watch me all night long. My rations are half a loaf of bread a day, one third of a kilo of meat three times a week and on other days tinned bacon. To drink I have water. I must gather wood, light a fire, cook my own food, clean my clothes and try to dry them in this humid climate.

It is impossible for me to sleep. This cage, before which the guard walks up and down like a phantom in my dreams, the torment of the vermin that infest me, and the agony in my heart all conspire to make rest impossible.