Robert Harris - An Officer and a Spy

I inspect my mail: a letter from my sister and another from my cousin Edmond; both have been opened by the Statistical Section and then resealed with telltale over-firmness using glue. Like my fellow exile Dreyfus, I suffer the intrusion of having my correspondence monitored — although not, as in his case, actually censored. There are a couple of agents’ reports of the type that continue to be forwarded to me as part of the fiction that I am only temporarily seconded from my job; these too have been opened. And then there is a letter from Henry: his schoolroom handwriting is familiar — we have exchanged messages often since I left Paris more than half a year ago.

Until recently the tone of our correspondence has been friendly ( Here, the sky is blue and the heat is sometimes too much in the afternoons; it is certainly nothing like Paris ). But then in May I was ordered by the High Command in Tunis to take the regiment to Sidi El Hani for three weeks and instruct them in target practice. This entailed a day’s march south-west to pitch camp in the desert. The native troops were difficult to teach, and the heat and the boredom of the featureless stony landscape stretching in every direction, and above all the constant presence of Savignaud, combined to wring from me at last a cry of protest: My dear Henry, Let it be publicly admitted once and for all that I have been relieved of my duties. I have no reason to be embarrassed by that fact; what embarrasses me are all the lies and mysteries that have been spread about me in the course of the last six months.

I assume Savignaud has brought me Henry’s reply. I open it quite casually, expecting the usual soothing reassurances that I shall be returning to Paris very soon. Instead, the tone could not be colder. He has the honour to inform me that ‘an inquiry’ within the Statistical Section has concluded that the only ‘mysteries’ I can be referring to in my letter are the three I perpetrated, to wit: (1) running an illicit operation ‘unconnected to the service’; (2) suborning false testimony from serving officers ‘that a classified document had been seized at the post office and came from a known individual’; and (3) ‘the opening of a secret dossier and examination of its contents, leading to certain indiscretions taking place’. Henry ends with sarcasm: As for the word ‘lies’, the investigation was unable to determine where, how and to whom this word should be applied. Yours respectfully, J. Henry.

And this man is supposed to be my subordinate! The letter is dated a week ago, Monday 31 May. I check the envelope for the postmark: Thursday 3 June. I guess at once what will have happened: Henry will have written this letter and then sent it over the road to Gonse for his approval before dispatching it. So his clumsy threat almost certainly carries behind it the force of the General Staff. I feel a momentary chill on my skin, despite the African heat. I read the letter again. But then my anxiety slowly vanishes and in its place a tremendous feeling of anger begins to build within me ( Yours respectfully ?), reaching such a level of intensity that it is all I can do not to cry out loud and kick the furniture. I stuff my mail into my trouser pocket, jam my cap back on my head, and stride towards the door with such fury that I am aware of a sudden silence and of heads turning to follow my progress.

I clump across the wooden veranda, almost knocking aside two majors who are smoking cigars, down the club steps, past the flaccid tricolour, across the wide boulevard and into the Marine Garden where every Sunday afternoon the regimental band play familiar melodies to the French expatriate community in a tuneless parody of home. Here I pause to gather myself. The two majors are staring after me from the veranda in open bewilderment. I turn and walk on through the little park towards the sea, past the bandstand and the broken fountain, and along the harbour front.

For months I have been going into the Military Club at lunchtime and scanning the stale newspapers in the hope of finding fresh revelations about the Dreyfus affair. In particular I have counted on the likelihood that sooner or later someone will recognise Esterhazy’s handwriting from the bordereau and approach the Dreyfus family direct. But there has been nothing: the case is not even mentioned any more. As I walk past the fishing boats, my head down and my hands clasped behind me, I reproach myself furiously for my cowardice. I have left it to others to do my duty. And now Henry and Gonse believe I am so broken down by exile, so crushed by their ruthlessness, that they can intimidate me into complete submission.

There is a fish market on the dockside at the southern end of the quay, close to the walls of the old Arab city, and I stop for a minute to watch as a catch is brought in and tipped over the counter: red mullet, sea bream, hake, mackerel. In a nearby pen are half a dozen turtles, their jaws tied shut with string, still alive, but blinded to prevent them escaping. They make a noise like cobbles being cracked together as they clamber over one another, desperate to regain the water they can sense but no longer see.

My quarters are in the military camp on the other side of the medina — a single-storey brick-built hut on the edge of the parade ground, with two rooms, their windows blanked by mosquito mesh, and a veranda with two chairs, a table and a kerosene lamp. In the torpid heat of the late afternoon the parade ground is deserted. Satisfied that I am unobserved, I drag the table to the edge of the veranda, climb up on to it, and reach up to push aside a loose rafter. The great advantage of being watched by an incompetent spy, and the reason I haven’t asked for Savignaud’s removal, is that he misses things, such as this. I move my fingers in the empty space until they encounter metal — an old cigarette tin.

I pull out the tin, replace the rafter, drag the table back to its original place, and go into my quarters. The larger room serves as a sitting-room-cum-office; the curtains are drawn against the sun. I pass through this into my bedroom, sit on the edge of my narrow iron cot and open the tin. It contains a photograph of Pauline taken five years ago and a bundle of letters from her: Darling Georges. . My dearest Georges. . I yearn for you. . I miss you. . I wonder how many hands they have been through; not as many as the Dreyfuses’ correspondence, but doubtless quite a few.

I have visited your apartment several times. All is well. Mme Guerault tells me you are on a secret mission! Sometimes I lie on your bed and your smell is still on the pillow and I imagine where you are and what you are doing. That is when I want you most. In the afternoon light I could scream with wanting you. It is a physical pain. .

I don’t need to read them again; I know them off by heart.

Also in the tin is a photograph of my mother, seven hundred francs in cash and an envelope on which I have written: In case of the death of the undersigned, please deliver this letter to the President of the Republic, who alone should know of its contents. G. PICQUART. Inside is a sixteen-paragraph report of my investigation into Esterhazy, written in April. It goes through all the evidence in detail, relates the attempts of Boisdeffre, Gonse and Billot to block my researches, and comes to three conclusions:

That Esterhazy is an agent for Germany.

That the only tangible facts blamed on Dreyfus are attributable to Esterhazy.

That the trial of Dreyfus was handled in an unprecedentedly superficial manner, with the preconceived idea that Dreyfus was guilty, and with a disregard for due legal forms.

From the minarets of the Arab town comes the wail of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer. It is Asr , the time when a man’s shadow is twice his height. I slip the letter into the inside pocket of my tunic and go back out into the heat.