Andrei Makine - The Earth And Sky Of Jacques Dorme

There is still the same table in the middle of the courtyard, the same sunlight, the ice melting into long, iridescent drops. And now, close to the truck's running board, this body in its black leather, huddled up, the smashed head fallen forward on its chest. "The man who wanted to kill me…" Jacques Dorme says to himself, without yet grasping the sense of his words – "The man I wanted to save…"

He has no time to realize what is happening to him. A cross-country vehicle pulls up in the courtyard, and the officer who escorted them this morning gets out and claps him on the shoulder. "So that's it. He's checked you over, our spy catcher?" Jacques Dorme indicates the truck with a jerk of his chin. The officer emits a long whistle, followed by a torrent of oaths. He goes to look at the corpse, stoops, retrieves the pistol and explains with a wink: "He's killed more Russians than Germans with this. Only don't tell anyone I said so…" Jacques Dorme tells him about Witold. The same whistle, a bit less long-drawn-out, the same oaths: "Poor goddamn Polack! Just his luck… No, we haven't time. The Fritzes will be here before nightfall. Get in quick. We need to see Colonel Krymov." Jacques Dorme refuses, argues. The officer insists, becomes angry, waves the pistol he has just taken from the dead man. Jacques Dorme smiles: "Go ahead. Shoot. At least that'll be one who's not Russian." In the end they load Witold's body into the vehicle and drive off, weaving a path between the bomb craters and the skeletons of burning trucks.

Colonel Krymov is nowhere to be found. At the command post they shrug their shoulders; his aide-de-camp advises them to wait. They decide to inspect all the houses, few in number, where lights are visible. The last one they visit is this izba where the windows sparkle with a flickering radiance. Before knocking they go up to the window and look in. The room is lit by the ruddy glow from the fire in the big stove. A hefty, naked man can be seen heaving about on the bed, apparently alone; he lets himself fall, full length, rears up again, falls back once more. Suddenly his hand plunges into the hollow of the bed, extracts from it a heavy female breast and kneads it between his fingers. The bed is very deep, much sunken by the weight of the lovers, and the woman's body is buried in the depths of this nest. The man collapses, emerges. This time his hand fishes out a broad thigh, pink from the fire. It is a bed on casters; at each thrust it moves forward, then backward, but not as far. A military greatcoat looks as if it is sitting bolt upright on a chair.

They see Krymov at the command post an hour later. He shows them the road to take the next day and advises them to set off very early, because "We'll be in for a merry time here soon." The dour melancholy with which he says this surprises Jacques Dorme. Merry… He does not understand. "My Russian doesn't stretch to it," he says to himself.

The frost that night is very light and there is soft earth in the corner of an orchard. When the grave is filled in Jacques Dorme sinks a cross into it: two planks of wood fastened together with wire. "At long last," sighs the officer, "that was well done," and fires three shots into the air with his pistol.

The pulsing of this new life, saved as it was in the nick of time, keeps him from sleeping. One thought is uppermost: he will never be able to explain to anyone that the war was part of all this too.

MORE ECHOES OF THE WAR COULD BE HEARD the next day in the tones of his latest escort. (Jacques Dorme was getting the feeling that his successive mentors simply did not know how to get rid of him.) This lieutenant informed him with a little dry laugh: "By the way, Krymov's regiment… Mincemeat. Not a single one got away. And the village. Not a single house left standing. It was a meat grinder." A gesture emphasized his words.

The day after, they traveled back through the same village – since then recaptured from the Germans – and came upon a young signalman lying dead on the road, close to the length of wire, severed in an explosion. His arms torn to pieces by shrapnel, he had clamped the two ends of the wire together in his teeth. What seemed to amaze the lieutenant more than anything was the soldier's ingenuity.

This nimbleness, too, was war.

As was the hallucinatory reappearance, the following morning, of the man in black leather…

They had reached the end of a field covered in snow, and recognized the airfield they had spent four days searching for. There, beside a heavy three-engined aircraft, the interrogation scene was being repeated, as if in a wounded man's delirious dream. There was this man clad in a long black leather coat, a man taller than and substantially different from the first, but acting out the same role. Pistol in hand, he was pacing up and down in the middle of a group of officers, uttering threats coupled with oaths, pointing at the aircraft and from time to time tapping on the fuselage. He did not seem to notice the arrival of Jacques Dorme and his guide, the flying officer.

"I know all about your sabotage!" he was yelling. "I've caught you red-handed. I know you're trying to undermine the decisions of the Supreme Commander…" Intermingled with oaths as they were, these accusations had a bizarre ring in Jacques Dorme's ears, with the Supreme Commander, Stalin, finding himself sandwiched between a "shit!" and a "fuck-your-mother!" An officer in a pilot's flight suit spoke up in the tones of a schoolboy seeking to excuse himself: "But, Comrade Inspector, we can't load twice its capacity…" There was a further procession of "fuck-your-mothers" and "shits," coupled, this time, with "the Party": "If the Party decides this aircraft can carry three tons that means it can carry three tons! And anyone who opposes the decisions of the Party is a fascist lackey and will be liquidated!" The barrel of the pistol jabbed at the pilot's cheek. He swallowed his saliva and whispered: "I'm willing to give it one more try, but…" The man in leather lowered the pistol: "But it will be your last. The Party will not tolerate the presence of fascist agents in the ranks of our squadrons."

The pilot and another officer took their places in the aircraft. Jacques Dorme felt as if he were going in with them, imitating each move they made in the cockpit, studying the instrument panel… He had recognized the aircraft as soon as he set eyes on it, despite the state it was in: it was a Junkers 52, the very type he had flown in Spain. The machine gun had been removed and the turret dismantled (perhaps so that it could carry the famous three-ton load decided on by the Party). And the outer surface of the fuselage and the wings had been painted a murky blue.

The runway was long enough, but the aircraft began to taxi sluggishly, the jolting of the run pulled it down against the ground. A hundred yards before the line of snowdrifts at the edge, the aircraft reared, raised its nose, then clung to the runway, began to veer around, and swerved off toward the virgin snow. The engines fell silent.

The man in leather drew his pistol and began running toward the plane. Everyone followed him but with hesitant steps, not knowing how to avoid the cowardice of involvement. The pilot had climbed out and was standing close to the plane, his eyes on the running man. His comrade was hiding behind it, pretending to examine a propeller.

His voice raw with rage and the cold, the man in leather barked out: "Not content with disobeying the orders of the Party, you also attempt to destroy military equipment. For this you will all be court-martialed. You too!" He swung round at a staff sergeant who was standing on the sidelines.

At this moment the lieutenant intervened, introduced himself, introduced Jacques Dorme. The man in leather stared at them disdainfully, then cried out in shrill tones: "So what's he waiting for? Let him get in. Let him prove he's a pilot and not a spy parachuted in during the night!"