Albert began to shake. This was how he often reacted before the war when he was afraid. He seemed to quiver. He looked up at the clock. Time was slipping away: he wrung his hands, turned the pages of the register.
Dubois, Alfred, born September 24, 1890, died October 25, 1918, married, two children, family lives in Saint-Pourçain.
What the hell could he do? It was not as though he had actually promised Édouard anything. He had said, “I’ll see what I can do.” It was not a firm undertaking. It was . . . Albert groped for the word as he continued to turn the pages.
Évrard, Louis, born June 13, 1892, died October 30, 1918. Next of kin: parents, Toulouse.
That was his problem, he never thought things through, never planned ahead. He just blundered in like a lunatic, full of good intentions, and then . . . His mother was right . . .
Goujou, Constant, born January 11, 1891, died October 26, 1918, married. Place of residence: Mornant.
Albert looked up. Even time was against him, it seemed to have speeded up, how else could it already be one o’clock. Two fat drops of sweat trickled onto the register, he looked for a blotter, then back to the door, no blotting paper, he turned the page. Any moment now the door will open, what will he say?
Then, suddenly, there it is.
Larivière, Eugène. Born November 1, 1893. Died October 30, 1918, on the eve of his birthday. Eugène was twenty-five, or almost. Contact: Public Health Department.
It is a miracle. No parents, just the state: in other words, no one.
Earlier, Albert had spotted the boxes containing military records. They are well organized, and it takes only a minute or two to locate the one marked Larivière. It is 1:05 p.m. Grosjean is tall, big-boned and has a paunch—he obviously likes his food. No need to panic . . . he will probably not leave the mess hall before 1:30 p.m. Even so, better to act fast.
Attached to his military record is one half of Larivière’s name tag; the other half will be buried with the body. Or nailed to the cross. It does not matter. In the photograph, Eugène Larivière looks like a very ordinary young man, with the sort of unremarkable face that would be unrecognizable if the lower jaw was blown away. Albert slips the military record into his jacket. He grabs two more at random and slips them into his other pocket. To mislay one record might pass for an error, to lose several requires chaos, something the army is known for and will therefore be more convincing. He opens the other register, flips the cap off the inkwell, picks up a nib pen, takes a deep breath to stop himself shaking and writes “Édouard Péricourt” (he checks the birthdate and notes it down together with his regimental number) then adds: “Died, November 2, 1918.” He puts Édouard’s military record in the box with the dead. Right on top. With one half of the metal tag on which are stamped his name and number. In a week or two, his family will be informed that a son, a brother, was killed in action. It is a standard-issue letter. It requires only the name of the deceased, making it simple, practical. Even in the chaos of war, sooner or later, bureaucracy manages to catch up.
1:15 p.m.
The rest takes very little time. He has watched Grosjean working and knows where he keeps his counterfoil book. He checks: in the current book, the last entry is the duplicate request for Édouard’s transfer. Albert rummages around and finds a blank book. No one ever checks the numbers. By the time anyone notices a counterfoil book is missing from the bottom of the pile, this war will be over and there will have been time to start another. In a heartbeat, he makes out a transfer request in the name of Eugène Larivière. As he adds the final rubber stamp, he realizes he is bathed in sweat.
He quickly tidies away the registers, looks around to make sure he has left nothing behind, then presses his ear to the door. The only sounds are faint and distant. He steps out, locks the door, puts the key back where he found it and slinks away.
Édouard Péricourt has just died for France.
And Eugène Larivière, resurrected from the dead, has a long life ahead of him.
Édouard was having trouble breathing, he was twisting and turning and, but for the straps at his wrists and ankles, would have been rolling from one side of the bed to the other. Albert gripped his shoulders, his hands, talking quickly. Explaining. Your name’s Eugène. Hope you like it—it was the only one left in the shop. But getting Édouard to see the funny side . . . Albert is still curious as to how he will cope later if he ever feels like laughing.
Then, finally, it arrived.
Albert knew as soon as the truck belching smoke pulled up outside. Albert ran to the door, hurtled down the stairs and, seeing an orderly waving a form and looking around for someone, shouted:
“Is this about the transfer?”
The man seemed relieved. The ambulance driver arrived. They tramped up the stairs carrying the stretcher—the canvas sheet wrapped around the poles—and followed Albert along the corridor.
“I have to warn you,” Albert says, “it stinks in here.”
The taller stretcher bearer shrugs; they are used to it. He opens the door.
“You aren’t kidding . . .”
It is true that even Albert, when he has been away and come back to the room, finds the stench stomach churning.
They laid the stretcher on the floor. The big man, who was obviously in charge, set the form down on the bedside table and went to the other side of the bed. It was quick: they undid the straps, one of them took Édouard’s legs, the other took his head: “on three . . .”
“One,” they steeled themselves.
“Two,” they lifted him.
“Three,” just as they were laying the wounded man on the stretcher, Albert snatched the duplicate from the bedside table and replaced it with the one marked “Larivière.”
“Do you have any morphine you can give him?”
“Don’t worry, we’ve got everything we need,” the shorter man said.
“Here, these are his papers,” Albert said, “I wanted to give them to you personally, you know, in case his stuff gets mislaid.”
“Don’t worry,” said the other man, taking the papers.
They reached the bottom of the stairs and moved out into the courtyard. Édouard’s head lolled as he stared into space. Albert climbed into the back of the ambulance and bent over him.
“Come on, Eugène, buck up, everything will be fine, you’ll see.”
Albert felt like crying. Behind him, the stretcher bearer said:
“Sorry, friend, we’ve got to go . . .”
“Of course, of course . . .”
He took Édouard’s hands. This is what he will always remember, his eyes in that moment, wet, vacant, staring up at him.
Albert kissed his forehead.
“See you soon, all right?”
He clambered down from the truck, and before the door was closed, he shouted.
“I’ll come and see you!”
As he fumbled for a handkerchief, Albert looked up. Framed in an open window on the second floor, Lieutenant Pradelle, reaching for his cigarette case, was watching the scene.
The ambulance moved off.
It pulled out of the hospital grounds and vanished into the clouds of black smoke that hung in the air like smog from a factory. Albert turned back to the building. Pradelle had disappeared. The window on the second floor was closed.
A gust of wind whipped away the smoke. The courtyard was empty now. Albert, too, felt empty, hopeless. He snuffled and patted his pockets looking for a handkerchief.
“Shit!” he said.
He had forgotten to give Édouard back his sketchpad.
In the days that followed, a new anxiety blossomed in Albert’s mind that would not to let him sleep. If he were dead, would he want Cécile to receive an official notification—in other words, a brusque, unconditional form letter informing her he was dead and nothing more? As for his mother, he could not even bear to think about her. Whatever the means by which she learned of his death, she would weep noble tears and then hang his picture in the
living room.
This question of whether or not he should contact Édouard’s family had been nagging him ever since he found at the bottom of his bag one of the other military records he had filched when stealing a new identity for Édouard.
It was in the name Évrard, Louis, born June 13, 1892.
Albert could no longer remember the date this soldier had died: in the final days of the war, obviously, but when? He did, however, remember that the man’s parents lived in Toulouse. He had probably had a thick accent. In a few weeks, a few months, since no one would be able to find any trace of him and his military record was missing, he would be listed as missing in action, and Évrard, Louis, would vanish as though he had never existed. When, in turn, his parents died, what would remain of Évrard, Louis? Were there not already enough dead, enough missing, without Albert muddying the waters? And all those poor parents condemned to shed tears into the void . . .
Take Eugène Larivière on the one hand, Louis Évrard on the other, and put Édouard Péricourt in the mix, give it all to a soldier like Albert Maillard, and you have a recipe for utter heartache.
He knew nothing about Édouard Péricourt’s family. They lived—he had seen it in the files—in a fancy neighborhood. He knew nothing more. But when dealing with the death of a son, where one lived hardly mattered. The first thing the family received was often a letter from a comrade, since the wheels of bureaucracy, though swift in sending men to their deaths, is rather slower when it comes to communicating that same death . . .
Albert could have written such a letter—he knew he could find the words—but he could not get past the fact that it would be a lie.
How could he bring such grief to people, telling them that their son was dead when in fact he was alive? But what else was there? He was faced either with a lie or with regret. The kind of dilemma capable of keeping him brooding for weeks.
It was while leafing through Édouard’s sketchbook that he came to a decision. He kept it on his table and often flicked through it. These sketches had become a part of his life, but the book did not belong to him. He had to give it back. As carefully as possible, he tore out the last pages—those they had so recently used to communicate.
Though he knew he was not expressing himself very well, one morning, he began.
Madame, Monsieur,
My name is Albert Maillard, a friend of your son Édouard, and it is my sad duty to inform you that he died on November 2 last. The administration will officially inform you, but I can tell you that he died a hero, storming the enemy in the defense of his country.
Édouard left me a sketchpad to send to you in case anything should happen to him. I am enclosing it now.
I hope it will be of some comfort to know that he is buried in a little cemetery he shares with other comrades, and let me assure you that every care has been taken so that he is at peace there.
I remain . . .
7
Eugène, dear comrade . . .
He could not be sure whether there was still official censorship, whether letters were still opened, read, redacted. Being uncertain, Albert had taken the precaution of addressing him by his new name. A name Édouard was already accustomed to. In fact, it was a strange twist in the story. Though he did not like to think about such things, memories flooded back in spite of himself.
He had known two boys called Eugène. The first had been in his primary school, a skinny boy with freckles who mumbled unintelligibly, but he was not the one who mattered; that was the other Eugène. They had met at an art class Édouard was taking unbeknownst to his parents and quickly became inseparable. Almost everything Édouard did, he had to do behind his parents’ backs. Luckily, his sister, Madeleine, worked everything out—at least everything that could be worked out. Eugène and Édouard, because they were lovers, had applied to the École des Beaux-Arts together. Eugène was not quite gifted enough and his application was not accepted. After that, they had lost touch; in 1916 Édouard heard that he was dead.
Eugène, dear comrade . . .
I truly appreciate the fact that you have kept in touch, but in the past four months, you’ve sent nothing but drawings, not a word, not a line . . . I’m sure it is because you don’t like to write, and I can understand that. But . . .
Drawing was easier because the words simply would not come. Had it been down to him, he would not have written at all, but this boy, Albert, was enthusiastic, and he had done everything he could. Édouard did not blame him for anything. Well, maybe a little . . . After all, it was in saving Albert’s life that he had ended up this way. He had done it willingly, but—how to put it?—try as he might, he could not find words to express what he felt, the unfairness of it . . . No one was to blame and everyone was to blame. But facts are facts and had it not been for Soldat Maillard contriving to bury himself alive, he would be at home now, in one piece. When he thought about this, he cried, he could not help himself; yet it hardly mattered, there was a lot of crying where he was, it was a literal vale of tears.
Whenever the pain, the anguish and the grief subsided for a moment, they gave way to thoughts in which the figure of Albert Maillard melted away and was replaced by that of Lieutenant Pradelle. Édouard did not understand the whole story about being summoned to appear before a général and narrowly escaping a court-martial . . . This episode had taken place the day before his transfer, when he had been doped up on painkillers so what little he could remember was vague and full of gaps. What was crystal clear, on the other hand, was the image of Lieutenant Pradelle, standing motionless amid the hail of shells and shrapnel, staring at his feet, then moving away, and then a wave of earth rising up and breaking . . . Even if he did not understand why, Édouard had no doubt that Pradelle was somehow involved in what had happened. Anyone else would be seething with rage. But, although on the battlefield he had mustered all his strength so he could go to the aid of a comrade, now he had no strength left. His thoughts now were frozen images, distant and yet tenuously connected to him. There was no place for anger or for hope.
Édouard was profoundly depressed.
. . . and I have to say it’s not always easy to know what is going on in your life. I don’t even know whether you are eating properly, whether the doctors talk to you sometimes and whether, as I hope, there is now the possibility of the graft I was told about, the one I mentioned . . .
The graft . . . That was ancient history now. Albert had been wide of the mark; his understanding of the situation had been purely theoretical. All these weeks in the hospital had served only to contain the infection and to do a little “replastering,” to use the words of Professeur Maudret, chief surgeon at the Hôpital Rollin on the avenue Trudaine, a lanky, red-headed man with boundless energy. Six times he had operated on Édouard.
“You might say we’re intimate, you and me . . .”
Each time he explained in detail the reasons for the procedure and its limitations, had “put it into the context of the overall strategy.” Not for nothing was he a military doctor. He was a man blessed with unshakeable confidence, the result of hundreds of amputations and resections performed day and night in field hospitals, sometimes even in the trenches.
Only recently had they finally allowed Édouard to look at himself in a mirror. Obviously to the nurses and the doctors, having taken in a man whose lower face was little more than a bleeding wound where nothing remained but the uvula, the windpipe, and a miraculously undamaged set of upper teeth, the sight of Édouard gave them a certain satisfaction. They spoke about it optimistically, but their satisfaction was usually swept aside by the abject despair such men feel when, for the first time, they are faced with what they have become.
Hence the little homily about the future. Essential to the morale of victims. Several weeks before Édouard was allowed to look in a mirror, Maudret had recited his maxim:
“I need you to remember that who you are today is nothing like who you will be tomorrow.”
He emphasized nothing; it was an imme
nse nothing.
He expended all the more energy because he could feel that he was not getting through to Édouard. Of course the war had been unimaginably brutal, but on the positive side it had made possible significant advances in maxillofacial surgery.
“Extraordinary advances, I would say.”
They showed Édouard dental devices for mechanotherapy, plaster heads equipped with steel shafts, a wide range of gadgets that looked like medieval torture implements but which represented the most modern advances in orthopedics. Bait is what they actually were: Maudret, being a skilled tactician, adopted a strategy of encirclement where Édouard was concerned, gradually leading him toward the grand finale of his therapeutic plans.
“The Dufourmentel graft!”
Strips of skin were harvested from the scalp and grafted onto the lower part of the face.
Maudret showed him photographs of wounded men who had been “replastered.” There you go, thought Édouard, give a military surgeon a soldier whose face has been completely mangled by a bunch of other soldiers, and he’ll give you a perfectly presentable gnome.
Édouard’s response was understated.
“No,” he wrote in large letters on his notepad.
And so, against his better judgment—curiously, he hated such devices—Maudret talked about prostheses. Vulcanite, lightweight metal, aluminum, they had everything they needed to make a new jaw for him. As for his cheeks . . . Édouard did hear him out before grabbing his books and once again writing:
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?” the surgeon asked. “No to what?”
“No to everything. I stay as I am.”
Maudret closed his eyes with a knowing air; he understood: in the early months refusal was a common reaction, a result of post-traumatic depression. It was something that would pass in time. Even the disfigured sooner or later become realistic again. That is how life is.
The Great Swindle Page 8