Robert Harris - An Officer and a Spy

‘Why?’

‘Must you always be so damned contrary?’ He rattles the steel mesh with his long, thick fingers. ‘Come: for once, just do as I ask.’ I place my palm to his and he says quietly, ‘Congratulations, Georges.’

‘On what?’

‘The Supreme Court of Appeal has ordered the army to bring Dreyfus back for a retrial.’

I have waited for this news for so long, and yet when it comes I feel nothing. All I can say is, ‘What reasons did they give?’

‘They cite two, both drawn from your evidence: first, that the “lowlife D” letter doesn’t actually refer to Dreyfus and shouldn’t have been shown to the judges without informing the defence, and second, that — how do they put it? Oh yes, here’s the line: “facts unknown to the original court martial tend to show that the bordereau could not have been written by Dreyfus.”’

‘What language you lawyers talk!’ I savour the legalese on my tongue as if it were a delicacy: ‘“facts unknown to the original court martial tend to show. .” And the army can’t appeal against this?’

‘No. It’s done. A warship is on its way to pick up Dreyfus now and bring him back for a new court martial. And this time it won’t be in secret — this time the whole world will be watching.’

I am released from gaol the following Friday, on the same day that Dreyfus is disembarked from Devil’s Island and begins the long voyage back to France aboard the warship Sfax . In light of the Supreme Court ruling, all charges against me are dropped. Edmond is waiting for me with his latest toy, a motor car, parked outside the prison gates to drive me back to Ville-d’Avray. I refuse to speak to the journalists who surround me on the pavement.

The abrupt change in my fortunes disorientates me. The colours and noises of Paris in the early summer, the sheer aliveness of it, the smiling faces of my friends, the lunches and dinners and receptions that have been organised in my honour — all this after the solitary gloom and stale stink of my cell is overwhelming. It is only when I am with other people that I realise how much I have been affected. I find making conversation with more than one person bewildering; my voice is reedy in my ears; I am breathless. When Edmond takes me up to my room, I am unable to climb the stairs without pausing on every third or fourth step and clinging on to the handrail: the muscles that control my knees and ankles have atrophied. In the mirror I look pale and fat. Shaving, I discover white hairs in my moustache.

Edmond and Jeanne invite Pauline to stay and tactfully give her the room next to mine. She holds my hand under the table during dinner and afterwards, when the household is asleep, she comes into my bed. The softness of her body is both familiar and strange, like the memory of something once lived and lost. She is finally divorced; Philippe has been posted abroad at his request; she has her own apartment; the girls are living with her.

We lie in the candlelight, facing one another.

I stroke the hair from her face. There are lines around her eyes and mouth that weren’t there before. I have known her since she was a girl, I realise. We have grown old together. I am suddenly overwhelmed by tenderness towards her. ‘So you’re a free woman?’

‘I am.’

‘Would you like me to ask you to marry me?’

A pause.

‘Not particularly.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because, my darling, if that is how you choose to pose the question, I don’t think there’s much point, do you?’

‘I’m sorry. I’m not much used to any sort of conversation, let alone this kind. Let me try again. Will you marry me?’

‘No.’

‘Seriously, you’re refusing me?’

She takes her time answering. ‘You’re not the marrying sort, Georges. And now I’m divorced I realise that neither am I.’ She kisses my hand. ‘You see? You’ve taught me how to be alone. Thank you.’

I am not sure how to respond.

‘If that’s what you want. .?’

‘Oh yes, I’m perfectly content as we are.’

And so I am denied a thing I never really wanted. Yet why is it I feel obscurely robbed? We lie in silence, and then she says, ‘What are you going to do now?’

‘Get fit again, I hope. Look at pictures. Listen to music.’

‘And afterwards?’

‘I’d like to force the army to take me back.’

‘Despite the way they’ve behaved?’

‘It’s either that or I let them get away with it. And why should I?’

‘So people must be made to pay?’

‘Absolutely. If Dreyfus is set free, it follows that the whole of the army leadership is rotten. There will be some arrests, I shouldn’t wonder. This is only the beginning of a war which may go on for some time. Why? You think I’m wrong?’

‘No, but I think perhaps you are in danger of becoming an obsessive.’

‘If I weren’t an obsessive, Dreyfus would still be on Devil’s Island.’

She looks at me. Her expression is impossible to interpret. ‘Would you mind blowing out the candle, darling? I’m suddenly very tired.’

We both lie awake in the darkness. I pretend to fall asleep. After a few minutes she gets out of bed. I hear her slip on her peignoir. The door opens and I see her for a moment silhouetted in the faint glow from the landing, and then she vanishes in the darkness. Like me, she has got used to sleeping alone.

Dreyfus is landed in the middle of the night in a running sea on the coast of Brittany. He cannot be brought back to Paris for his retrial; it is considered too dangerous. Instead he is taken under cover of darkness to the Breton town of Rennes, where the government announces that his new court martial will be held, a safe three hundred kilometres to the west of Paris. The opening day of the hearings is fixed for Monday 7 August.

Edmond insists on coming with me to Rennes, in case I need protection, even though I assure him there’s no need: ‘The government has already told me I’ll be provided with a bodyguard.’

‘All the more reason to have someone around who you can trust.’

I don’t argue. There is an ugly, violent atmosphere. The President has been attacked at the races by an anti-Semitic aristocrat wielding a cane. Zola and Dreyfus have been burned in effigy. The Libre Parole is offering discounted fares to its readers to encourage them to travel to Rennes and break a few Dreyfusard heads. When Edmond and I leave for the railway station at Versailles early on Saturday morning, we are both carrying guns and I feel as though I am on a mission into enemy territory.

At Versailles, we are met by a four-man bodyguard: two police inspectors and two gendarmes. The train, which originated in Paris, pulls in soon after nine, packed from end to end with journalists and spectators heading for the trial. The police have reserved us the rear compartment in the first-class section and insist on sitting between me and the door. I feel as though I am back in custody. People come to gawp at me through the glass partition. It is stiflingly hot. There is a flash as someone tries to take a photograph. I stiffen. Edmond puts his hand on mine. ‘Easy, Georges,’ he says quietly.

The journey drags interminably. It is late in the afternoon by the time we pull into Rennes, a town of seventy thousand but without any suburbs as far as I can see. One minute the view is woodland and water meadows and a barge being pulled along a wide river by a horse, and then suddenly it is factory chimneys and stately houses of grey and yellow stone with blue slate roofs, trembling in the haze of heat. The two inspectors jump out ahead of us to check the platform, then Edmond and I clamber down, followed by the gendarmes. We are marched quickly through the station towards a pair of waiting cars. I am vaguely aware of a flurry of recognition in the crowded ticket hall, cries of ‘ Vive Picquart! ’ met by a few countering jeers, and then we are into the cars and driving up a wide, tree-lined avenue filled with hotels and cafés.