Robert Harris - An Officer and a Spy

Jouaust begins, ‘Did you know the accused before the events for which he is charged?’

‘Yes, Colonel.’

‘How did you know him?’

‘I was a professor at the École Supérieure de Guerre when Dreyfus was a pupil.’

‘Your relations went no further than that?’

‘Correct.’

‘You were not his mentor, or his ally?’

‘No, Colonel.’

‘You were not in his service, nor he in yours?’

‘No, Colonel.’

Jouaust makes a note.

Only now do I risk a brief sidelong glance at Dreyfus. He has been so long at the centre of my existence, has changed my destiny so utterly, has grown so large in my imagination, that I suppose it would be impossible for the man to be the equal of all he represents. Even so, it is strange to contemplate this quiet stranger who, if I had to guess, I would say was a retired minor official from the Colonial Service, blinking at me through his pince-nez as if we have just happened to find ourselves in the same railway compartment on a very long journey.

I am recalled to the present by Jouaust’s dry voice saying, ‘Describe the events as you know them. .’ and I look away.

My evidence takes up the whole of the day’s session, and most of the next. There is no point in my describing it again — petit bleu , Esterhazy, bordereau . . I deliver it, once more, as if it were a lecture, which in a sense it is. I am the founder of the school of Dreyfus studies: its leading scholar, its star professor — there is nothing I can be asked about my specialist field that I do not know: every letter and telegram, every personality, every forgery, every lie. Occasionally, officers of the General Staff rise like sweaty students to challenge me on specific points; I flatten them with ease. From time to time as I speak, I scan the furrowed faces of the judges in the same way that I used once to survey those of my pupils, and wonder how much of this is sinking in.

When at last Jouaust tells me to stand down and I turn and walk back to my seat, it seems to me — I may be mistaken — that Dreyfus gives me the briefest of nods and a half-smile of thanks.

Labori’s recovery continues, and in the middle of the following week, with the bullet still lodged in the muscles of his shoulder, he returns to court. He enters accompanied by Marguerite to loud applause. He acknowledges his reception with a wave and walks to his place, where he has been provided with a large and comfortable armchair. The only obvious sign of his injury, apart from his damp and chalky pallor, is the stiffness of his left arm, which he can hardly move. Dreyfus stands as he passes and warmly shakes his good hand.

Privately, I am not convinced that he is as fit to return to his duties as he insists he is. Gunshot injuries are something I know about. They take longer to get over than one imagines. Labori should have had an operation to have the bullet removed, in my opinion — but that would have taken him out of the trial altogether. He is in a lot of pain and isn’t sleeping. And there is also a mental trauma he is refusing to acknowledge. I can see it when he goes out into the street — the way he slightly recoils every time a stranger approaches with his hand extended, or flinches when he hears hurrying footsteps behind him. Professionally it expresses itself in a certain irritability and shortness of temper, particularly with the president of the court, whom Labori delights in goading:

JOUAUST: I urge you to speak with moderation.

LABORI: I have not said a single immoderate word.

JOUAUST: But your tone is not moderate.

LABORI: I’m not in control of my tone.

JOUAUST: Well, you should be — every man is in control of his own person.

LABORI: I’m in control of my person, just not of my tone.

JOUAUST: I shall withdraw your permission to speak.

LABORI: Go ahead and withdraw it.

JOUAUST: Sit down!

LABORI: I will sit down — but not on your orders!

One day, at a legal strategy meeting I attend together with Mathieu Dreyfus, Demange says in his slightly pompous manner, ‘We must never forget our central objective, my dear Labori, which is not, with all due respect, to flay the army for its errors but to ensure our client walks free. As this is an army hearing, in which the outcome will be decided by military officers, we need to be diplomatic.’

‘Ah yes,’ retorts, Labori, ‘“diplomatic”! This would be the same diplomacy, I take it, that led to your client spending four years on Devil’s Island?’

Demange, red-faced with fury, gathers together his papers and leaves the room.

Wearily, Mathieu gets up to go after him. At the door he says, ‘I understand your frustration, Labori, but Edgar has stood by my family loyally for five years. He has earned the right to set the direction of our strategy.’

On this issue, I agree with Labori. I know the army. It does not react to diplomacy. It responds to force. But even for me, Labori goes too far when he decides to telegraph — without consulting Demange — the Emperor of Germany and the King of Italy, asking them to allow von Schwartzkoppen and Panizzardi (both of whom have withdrawn to their native countries) to come to Rennes to give evidence. The Chancellor of Germany, Count von Bülow, replies as if to a madman:

His Majesty the Emperor and King, our most gracious master, considers it naturally and totally impossible to accede in any manner to Maître Labori’s strange suggestion.

The bitterness between Labori and Demange afterwards worsens to such an extent that Labori, white with pain, announces he will not deliver a closing speech: ‘I cannot be a party to a strategy in which I do not believe. If that old fool thinks he can win by being polite to these murdering bastards, let him try it alone.’

As the end of the trial draws near, the Préfecture of Police in Rennes, Dureault, approaches me in the crowded courtyard of the lycée during an adjournment, when everyone is outside stretching their legs. He beckons me to one side and says in a low voice: ‘We have good intelligence, Monsieur Picquart, that the nationalists are planning to arrive in force at the time of the verdict, and that if Dreyfus is acquitted there is liable to be serious violence. In the circumstances, I fear we cannot guarantee your safety, and I would urge you to leave the town before then. I hope you understand.’

‘Thank you, Monsieur Dureault. I appreciate your candour.’

‘One further piece of advice, if I may. I suggest you catch the night train in order to avoid being seen.’

He moves away. I lean against the wall in the sunshine and smoke a cigarette. I shall not be sorry to go. I have been here nearly a month. So has everyone. There are Gonse and Boisdeffre promenading up and down, arm in arm, as if clinging to one another for support. There are Mercier and Billot, sitting on a wall, swinging their legs like schoolboys. There is Madame Henry, the nation’s widow, veiled from head to foot in black, floating across the courtyard like the Angel of Death, on the arm of Major Lauth, whose relationship with her is said to be intimate. There is the stubby, hairy figure of Bertillon, with his suitcase full of diagrams, still insisting that Dreyfus forged his own handwriting in order to produce the bordereau . There is Gribelin, who has found a shadow to stand in. Not everyone is here, of course. There are some ghostly absences — Sandherr, Henry, Lemercier-Picard, Guénée — and a few that are not so ghostly: du Paty, who has avoided giving evidence by insisting he is too ill; Scheurer-Kestner, who really is ill, and said to be about to die from cancer; and Esterhazy, who has gone to earth in the English village of Harpenden. But otherwise here we all are, like the inmates of an asylum, or the passengers on some legal Flying Dutchman , doomed to circle one another, and the world, for ever.