“Consider it done.”
The room reeked of rotting flesh. Édouard needed to be transferred quickly. Pradelle’s strategy might just work. Scorched-earth policy. Albert had narrowly escaped being court-martialed, but for Édouard the cemetery was beginning to loom. A few more hours, and he would rot where he lay. Lieutenant Pradelle did not want any witnesses to his heroism.
Albert personally delivered the duplicate to the logistics unit.
Nothing before tomorrow, he was told.
The wait seemed interminable.
The young doctor had finished his stint at the hospital. No one knew who would replace him. There were other surgeons, other doctors who Albert did not know, one of whom popped in to visit and stayed only briefly, as though it were not worth his while.
“When is he being transferred?” he asked.
“It’s being processed. There was a problem with the transfer slip. I mean, he had been registered, but . . .”
“When?” the doctor cut him short, “because the way things are going . . .”
“They said tomorrow . . .”
The doctor rolled his eyes. He had seen it all before. He nodded, he got the picture. “Well, I’ve got work to do . . .” He patted Albert’s shoulder and turned to leave.
“And open a window, for God’s sake,” he said, “this place stinks!”
By dawn the following morning, Albert was camped outside the logistics unit. His chief fear was encountering Lieutenant Pradelle. The man was capable of anything. Albert simply needed to keep his head down. And get Édouard out of here as soon as possible.
“Today?” he said.
The man liked Albert. He thought it was great that he was taking care of his comrade. We see too many here who don’t give a shit, only think about themselves, am I right? But no, he was sorry, not today. Tomorrow definitely.
“Do you know what time?”
The officer scanned his various lists.
“Thing is,” he said without looking up, “the garbage collection—I’m sorry, friend, that’s just what we call them around here—anyway, the ambulance should be here early afternoon.”
“Absolutely, definitely?”
Albert clung to this hope—all right, tomorrow then—but he was angry with himself for being so slow, for not realizing earlier. Édouard would have been transferred by now if he had had a brighter friend.
Tomorrow.
Édouard no longer slept. Propped up on a pile of pillows Albert had filched from every other room, he rocked himself for hours, moaning pitifully.
“Are you in pain, is that it?” Albert would ask.
But Édouard never answered. Obviously.
The window was always half-open. Albert slept in the chair in front of it, his feet propped up on another chair. He smoked a lot, partly to keep himself awake to watch over Édouard, partly because the room stank.
“You’re a lucky bastard, you’ve got no sense of smell anymore . . .”
Shit, what would he do if he wanted to laugh? A guy with his lower jaw missing probably did not have much cause to laugh, but even so the questions nagged at Albert.
“The doc . . . ,” he ventured.
It was about two or three in the morning. The transfer was scheduled for later in the day.
“The doc, he said that when you get there they can fit a prosthesis . . .”
He had no idea what such a thing might look like, a prosthetic lower jaw, and this might not be the time to discuss it.
But at the mention of this, Édouard perked up, he nodded his head and made wet gurgling noises. He made a sign—Albert had never realized he was left-handed. Remembering the sketchpad, he foolishly wondered how Édouard could have done such drawings with his left hand.
This was what he should have suggested earlier: sketching.
“You want your sketchbook?”
Édouard looked at him, yes he wanted his pad, but not so that he could draw.
It is funny, this scene in the middle of the night. Édouard’s eyes, so wide, so alive in that gouged swollen red face, were fiercely intense. Almost frightening. Albert is overawed.
Balancing the pad on the bed, Édouard scrawls in large clumsy letters; he is so weak he seems to have forgotten how to write, the pencil seems to move of its own volition. Albert studies the letters, whose risers and descenders trail off the page. The writing takes a long time, and he is dead on his feet. By a phenomenal effort, Édouard manages to draw one letter, then two. Albert tries to guess the word, concentrating all the energy he can muster. Another letter, and another, and when the word finally comes, the message is still a long way off. He has to decrypt the meaning. It is taking an age, and Édouard, who tires quickly, falls back on the bed. But after less than an hour, he tries again, picks up the notepad, as though something is urging him on. Albert shakes himself, gets up from his chair, lights a cigarette to wake himself up, and goes back to playing hangman. Letter by letter, word by word.
At around 4:00 a.m., Albert has come to this point:
“So, you want to go back to Paris? But where will you go?”
They start again. Édouard is feverish now, hacking at the notepad. Letters gush forth onto the page, so large they are unrecognizable.
“Calm down,” Albert says. “Don’t worry, we’ll get there.”
He is not at all certain that they will, because it seems extremely complicated. He perseveres. With the first glimmer of dawn, he has confirmation that Édouard does not want to go back home. Is that what you’re saying? Édouard writes “yes.”
“But that’s normal,” Albert tries to explain. “At first, you don’t want anyone to see you in this state. We all feel a bit ashamed, that’s always the way. I mean even me, I swear, when I took that bullet at the Somme, for a while I was convinced that Cécile would turn her back on me! But your parents love you, they won’t stop loving you because you were wounded in the war, don’t worry.”
Rather than calm him, his little speech succeeds in sending Édouard into a rage, guttural groans bubble from his throat in a torrent, he struggles so hard that Albert is forced to threaten to strap him down again. Édouard manages to control himself, but he is still agitated, even angry. He brutally rips the sketchpad from Albert, as he might a tablecloth during an argument. He goes back to his attempts at writing. Albert lights another cigarette and considers the young man’s demand.
If Édouard does not want his family to see him in this state, it may be because there is a Cécile involved somewhere. To give her up would be more than he could bear. Albert can understand that. Cautiously, he makes the case.
Édouard, focused on the page, jerks his head dismissively. There is no Cécile.
But there is a sister. It takes forever to work out what he is saying about his sister. He cannot make out her name. They give up, after all, it is not that important.
Besides, this is not about his sister, either.
And in fact it hardly matters; whatever Édouard’s reasons, Albert has to attempt to persuade him.
“I understand,” Albert says. “But you’ll see, once you have the prosthesis, things will be different.”
Édouard gets angry again, the pain is coming back, he gives up any attempt at communicating and goes back to howling like a madman. Albert holds out as long as he can; he, too, is at the end of his tether. Eventually, he gives in and gives him another injection of morphine. Édouard starts to doze; he has endured a lot these past days. If he pulls through, it is because he is made of steel.
In the morning, when he is being changed and fed (Albert does as he has been shown, inserting the rubber tube into the gullet, pouring slowly into the funnel so the stomach does not resist), Édouard becomes frantic again, tries to get up, cannot lie still. Albert is at his wits’ end. The young man grabs the pad and starts scrawling letters as illegible as those the night before. He jabs the pencil on the paper. Albert tries but fails to decipher them. He frowns . . . what is this, an E? B? Then suddenly, unable to st
and it any longer, he explodes:
“Listen, there’s nothing I can do, mon vieux! You don’t want to go home, I don’t really understand why, but in the end I don’t get to decide. It’s shitty, but there’s nothing I can do!”
Then Édouard grabs his arm and squeezes incredibly hard.
“Hey,” Albert yells, “you’re hurting me.”
Édouard digs his nails in. The pain is fierce. Then the pressure eases, and Édouard wraps his arms around Albert’s neck, hugs him hard, shaking with sobs and whimpering cries. Albert has heard cries like this before. At a circus, little monkeys in sailor suits riding bicycles, whimpering fit to bring you to tears. Such grief is harrowing. Whether or not he gets a prosthesis, what has happened to Édouard is so final, so irreversible . . .
“You don’t want to go back home,” Albert says, “I get that.”
In the crook of his neck, he feels Édouard’s head shaking, no, he does not want to go back. No, no, he repeats it over and over.
As he hugs the young man, Albert realizes that, like everyone else, Édouard spent the war thinking only of coming out alive, but now it is over and he is still alive, all he wants is to die. If even the survivors have no greater ambition than to die, what a waste . . .
Finally Albert understands: Édouard no longer has the strength to kill himself. It is over. If he had managed to throw himself through the window that first day, it would all be over, the misery and the tears, the time, the interminable time to come . . . it would all have ended there in the courtyard of a field hospital, but the opportunity has passed. He will not have the courage to try again; he is condemned to live.
And it is Albert’s fault . . . it is all his fault. It has been from the start. Everything. He, too, feels overwhelmed; he could almost weep. What terrible loneliness. In Édouard’s life, Albert now occupies all the space. He is his one and only recourse. The young man has delegated his existence to Albert, offering it because he cannot carry it alone it nor rid himself of it.
Albert is aghast, devastated.
“Okay,” he mutters, “I’ll see what I can do.”
He says this without thinking, but instantly Édouard’s head jerks upright as from an electric shock. His face is an almost complete blank, no nose, no mouth, no cheeks, just a pair of blazing eyes that pierce you to the quick. Albert is cornered.
“I’ll see . . . ,” he repeats inanely, “I’ll work something out.”
Édouard squeezes his hands and closes his eyes. Then he slowly lies back against the pillows. Calm, though still in pain, he moans weakly, bringing blood-flecked spittle bubbling from his windpipe.
I’ll work something out.
Saying “a little too much” is a constant in Albert’s life. How many times, by dint of excess enthusiasm, has he got himself embroiled in disastrous situations? It’s easy: the number of times he regretted not taking time to think. Albert is often guilty of an impulsive generosity, of yielding to the moment, but until now his rash promises have only ever concerned minor problems. His promise today is very different; a man’s life is at stake.
Albert pats Édouard’s hands, looks at him, tries to soothe him.
It seems terrible that he cannot remember the face of the boy he knew simply as Péricourt, who was always smiling, always laughing, always sketching; he can see him in profile, can picture the back of his head in the moment before the attack was launched on Hill 113, but of the face, he can remember nothing. He remembers Péricourt turning to him at that moment, but he cannot summon the image, the memory has been eaten away by the bloody, gaping void he sees now; it pains him that he cannot remember.
He looks down at the sheets, at the notepad lying there. The word he could not decipher earlier is suddenly obvious.
“Father.”
The word plunges him into an abyss. His own father has long been nothing more than a yellowing portrait that hangs above the sideboard, but if he still nurses a grudge against his father for dying so young, he guesses that having a father who is still alive must make things even more complicated. He would like to know, to understand, but it is too late: he has promised Édouard he will “work something out.” Albert no longer knows what he meant by the phrase. As he watches over his sleeping comrade, he ponders the idea.
Édouard wants to disappear, so be it, but how do you make a living soldier disappear? Albert is not a lieutenant, he knows nothing, he has not the first idea how to do such a thing. Would it mean creating a new identity?
Albert may not be brilliant, but, having been an accountant, he is logical. If Édouard wants to disappear, he realizes, the obvious thing to do is give him the identity of a dead soldier. Make a swap.
And there is only one possible solution.
The Personnel Unit, Caporal Grosjean’s office.
Albert attempts to imagine the consequences of such an act. Having escaped court-martial by the skin of his teeth, he is now planning—always assuming he is capable of it—to tamper with official documents, to sacrifice the living and resurrect the dead.
This time, it would certainly mean the firing squad. Best not to think.
Overcome by exhaustion, Édouard is sleeping soundly. Albert glances at the clock on the wall, gets up, opens the wardrobe door.
He rummages in Édouard’s knapsack and takes out his military record.
It is almost noon; four minutes, three, two . . . Albert sets off, heading along the corridors, hugging the wall, knocks on the door of the office, and goes in without waiting for an answer. Above Grosjean’s overloaded desk: one minute to noon.
“Hello,” Albert says.
He is going for joviality. But this close to lunchtime on an empty stomach, bonhomie is unlikely to succeed. Grosjean snorts. What does he want now, especially at this time of day? To say thank you. That appeases Grosjean. He had raised one buttock from his chair, preparing to slam shut the ledger, but “thank you” is something he has not heard since the beginning of the war. He does not know how to react.
“Uh . . . don’t mention it . . .”
Albert ratchets things up, ladles it on.
“Your idea of a duplicate was a stroke of genius. My friend’s being transferred this afternoon.”
Grosjean perks up, he gets to his feet, wipes his hands on his ink-stained pants. Flattered though he is by these compliments, it is lunchtime. Albert moves into the attack:
“I’m trying to trace two other friends . . .”
“Oh . . .”
Grosjean pulls on his jacket.
“I don’t know what’s happened to them. Someone told me they were missing in action. Someone else said they’d been wounded and transferred . . .”
“Well then, how do you expect me to know!”
Grosjean steps past Albert, making for the door.
“Surely it would be in your register . . . ,” Albert says nervously.
Grosjean throws open the door.
“Come back after lunch,” he says. “We’ll see what we can find.”
Albert’s eyes grow wide suddenly, as though he has just had a great idea.
“If you like, I could look while you go to the mess hall?”
“Oh, no, I couldn’t do that. I have my orders.”
He pushes Albert ahead of him, locks the door, and then stands, motionless. Albert knows when he is not wanted. He says thanks, see you later, and sets off down the corridor. Édouard’s transfer is only an hour or two from now. Albert wrings his hands, shit, shit, shit, he mutters over and over, crushed by the weight of his own helplessness.
A few yards on, he turns back halfheartedly. Grosjean is still standing in the hallway, watching him and waiting. Albert turns toward the courtyard, and as he does an idea begins to germinate: Grosjean standing in front of the office door waiting . . . waiting for what? By the time he has worked out the answer, Albert has already turned on his heel and is hurrying back; he will have to be quick. As he comes to the office he sees a soldier in the distance. Albert stands, petrified—it is Li
eutenant Pradelle. Fortunately he walks on without turning and disappears around the corner. Albert breathes a sigh of relief. He hears other sounds, hurrying footsteps, laughter, shouts, voices heading toward the mess hall. Meanwhile Albert reaches up, runs his fingers along the doorframe, feels the key, grabs it, slams it into the lock and twists, opens the door, and quickly closes it behind him. He keeps his back to the door, as in a trench. In front of him, the records. Tons of records stacked from floor to ceiling.
Albert is familiar with ledgers from his work at the bank, the gummed labels, the spidery handwriting in blue ink that fades over time. Even so, it took him twenty-five minutes to locate the files he is looking for. He was flustered, glancing frequently toward the door, expecting it to open at any moment. He had no idea what he might say.
It was 12:30 by the time he had lined up the three record books. In each, the writing was in several different hands, some of it already fading; it is astonishing how quickly a name can die. Almost another ten minutes to find what he is looking for, at which point—it is in his nature—he began to waver. As though the choice made any difference . . . Take the first one, he thought. He looked from the clock to the door as though they had suddenly grown and now took up all available space. He thought about Édouard, alone and strapped to the bed . . .
12:42 p.m.
He was scanning the list of the dead whose next of kin had not yet been informed. The last entry was for October 30.
Boulivet, Victor, born February 12, 1891. Killed in action October 24, 1918. Next of kin, parents, Dijon.
In this moment, it was not so much qualms that made him hesitate, but the precautions he needed to take. Albert knew that he was now responsible for his comrade’s welfare; he could not afford to make a mistake. He had to do things properly, professionally. But if he were to give Édouard the identity of a dead soldier, then the soldier would be alive again. His parents would be waiting. They would ask for news of him. There would be an inquiry; it would not be difficult to trace things back. Albert shook his head as he imagined the consequences, for Édouard and for himself, if they were charged with forgery and the use of forged papers (and who knew how many other infractions).
The Great Swindle Page 7