Robert Harris: An Officer and a Spy

That evening, in civilian clothes, I travel out to Versailles to see my mother. The draughty train sways through Paris suburbs weirdly etched by snow and gaslight. The journey takes the best part of an hour; I have the carriage to myself. I try to read a novel, The Adolescent by Dostoyevsky, but every time we cross a set of points the lights cut out and I lose my place. In the blue glow of the emergency illumination I stare out of the window and imagine Dreyfus in his cell in La Santé prison. Convicts are transported by rail in converted cattle trucks. I presume he will be sent west, to an Atlantic port, to await deportation. In this weather the journey will be a bitter hell. I close my eyes and try to doze.

My mother has a small apartment in a modern street near the Versailles railway station. She is seventy-seven and lives alone, a widow for almost thirty years. I take it in turns with my sister to spend time with her. Anna is older than I, and has children, which I do not: my watch always falls on a Saturday night, the only time I can be sure of getting away from the ministry.

It is well past dark by the time I arrive; the temperature must be minus ten. My mother shouts from behind the locked door: ‘Who’s there?’

‘It’s Georges, Maman.’

‘Who?’

‘Georges. Your son.’

It takes me a minute to persuade her to let me in. Sometimes she mistakes me for my older brother, Paul, who died five years ago; sometimes — and this is oddly worse — for my father, who died when I was eleven. (Another sister died before I was born, a brother when he was eleven days old; there is one thing to be said for senility — since her mind has gone, she does not lack for company.)

The bread and milk are frozen solid; the pipes are canisters of ice. I spend the first half-hour lighting fires to try to thaw the place out, the second on my back fixing a leak. We eat boeuf bourguignon, which the maid who comes in once a day has bought at the local traiteur . Maman rallies; she even seems to remember who I am. I tell her what I’ve been doing but I don’t mention Dreyfus or the degradation: she would struggle to understand what I am talking about. Later we sit at the piano, which occupies most of her tiny sitting room, and play a duet, the Chopin rondo. Her playing is faultless; the musical part of her brain remains quite intact; it will be the last thing to go. After she has put herself to bed, I sit on the stool and examine the photographs on top of the piano: the solemn family groups in Strasbourg, the garden of the house in Geudertheim, a miniature of my mother as a music student, a picnic in the woods of Neudorf — artefacts from a vanished world, the Atlantis we lost in the war. 1

I was sixteen when the Germans shelled Strasbourg, thus kindly enabling me to witness at first hand an event that we teach at the École Supérieure de Guerre as ‘the first full-scale use of modern long-range artillery specifically to reduce a civilian population’. I watched the city’s art gallery and library burn to the ground, saw neighbourhoods blown to pieces, knelt beside friends as they died, helped dig strangers out of the rubble. After nine weeks the garrison surrendered. We were offered a choice between staying put and becoming German or giving up everything and moving to France. We arrived in Paris destitute and shorn of all illusions about the security of our civilised life.

Before the humiliation of 1870 I might have become a professor of music or a surgeon; after it, any career other than the army seemed frivolous. The Ministry of War paid for my education; the army became my father, and no son ever strove harder to please a demanding papa. I compensated for a somewhat dreamy and artistic nature by ferocious discipline. Out of a class of 304 cadets at the military school at Saint-Cyr, I emerged fifth. I can speak German, Italian, English and Spanish. I have fought in the Aurès mountains in north Africa and won the Colonial Medal, on the Red River in Indochina and won the Star for bravery. I am a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. And today, after twenty-four years in uniform, I have been singled out for commendation by both the Minister of War and the Chief of the General Staff. As I lie in my mother’s spare bedroom in Versailles, and the fifth of January 1895 turns into the sixth, the voice in my head is not that of Alfred Dreyfus proclaiming his innocence, but Auguste Mercier’s hinting at my promotion: I have been impressed by the intelligence you have shown. . It will not be forgotten. .

The following morning, to the sound of bells, I take my mother’s fragile arm and escort her to the top of the icy road and around the corner to the cathedral of Saint-Louis — a particularly bombastic monument to state superstition, I always think; why couldn’t the Germans have blown up this ? The worshippers are a monochrome congregation, black and white, nuns and widows. I withdraw my arm from hers at the door. ‘I’ll meet you here after Mass.’

‘Aren’t you coming in?’

‘I never come in, Maman. We have this conversation every week.’

She peers at me with moist grey eyes. Her voice quivers. ‘But what shall I tell God?’

‘Tell Him I’ll be in the Café du Commerce in the square over there.’

I leave her in the care of a young priest and walk towards the café. On the way I stop to buy a couple of newspapers, Le Figaro and Le Petit Journal . I take a seat at a table in the window, order coffee, light a cigarette. Both papers have the degradation on their front pages — the Journal , indeed, has almost nothing else. Its report is illustrated by a series of crude sketches: of Dreyfus being marched into the parade ground, of the plump little official in his cape reading out the judgment, of the insignia being ripped from Dreyfus’s uniform, and of Dreyfus himself looking like a white-haired old man at thirty-five. The headline is ‘The Expiation’: ‘We demanded for the traitor Dreyfus the supreme penalty. We continue to believe that the only appropriate punishment is death. .’ It is as if all the loathing and recrimination bottled up since the defeat of 1870 has found an outlet in a single individual.

I sip my coffee and my gaze skims over the Journal ’s sensational description of the ceremony until suddenly it hits this: ‘Dreyfus turned towards his escort and said: “If I did hand over documents, it was only to receive others of greater importance. In three years the truth will come out and the minister himself will reopen my case.” This half-confession is the first that the traitor has made since his arrest. .’

Without taking my eyes from the newsprint, I slowly put down my cup and read the passage again. Then I pick up Le Figaro . No mention of any confession, half or otherwise, on the front page: a relief. But on the second is a late news item — ‘Here now is the account of a witness, received in the last hour. .’ — and I find myself reading another version of the same story, only this time Lebrun-Renault is identified as the source by name, and this time there is no mistaking the authentic voice of Dreyfus. I can hear his desperation in every line, frantic to convince anyone, even the officer guarding him:

‘Look, Captain; listen. A letter was discovered in a cupboard in an embassy; it was a covering note for four other documents. This letter was shown to handwriting experts. Three said I had written it; two said I hadn’t. And it’s solely on the basis of this that I’ve been condemned! When I was eighteen, I entered the École Polytechnique. I had a brilliant military career ahead of me, a fortune of five hundred thousand francs and the prospect of an annual income of fifty thousand a year. I’ve never chased girls. I’ve never touched a playing card in my life. Therefore I had no need of money. So why would I commit treason? For money? No. So why?’