The Great Swindle

by Pierre Lemaitre

  “No oil painting, apparently. So badly scarred he never goes out, I heard from his friend who takes care of him.”

  Such a comment could hardly fail to rouse the curiosity of an eleven-year-old girl. She’ll get bored soon enough, Albert had thought, but no . . . Seeing her every day, sitting on the top step by the door, anticipating any opportunity to get a glimpse inside, he had thrown open the door. The girl stood frozen on the threshold, her lips set in a perfect “O,” her eyes wide, unable to utter a sound. Admittedly, with the gaping hole in the middle and those upper teeth that looked twice their actual size, Édouard’s face was a spectacle, it was like nothing in this world. In fact, Albert had told him so in no uncertain terms: “With a face like that you could scare the crows out of the trees, old man, you could at least spare a thought for others.” He had said it to encourage Édouard to have the graft, but it made no difference. Albert gestured to the door where the terrified girl had fled as soon as she saw him. Édouard sat, impassive, and puffed on his cigarette with one nostril while holding the other closed. He exhaled the smoke through his nose too, because through his throat . . . “You can’t, Édouard,” Albert had told him, “I can’t stand it. It scares me if you want the truth, it looks like a volcano erupting, I swear, look at yourself in the mirror sometime, you’ll see . . .” Albert had only been living with his friend since mid-June, and already they were like an old married couple. The day-to-day was difficult, they were always short of money, but as often happens, the problems had brought the two men closer, binding them together. Albert was truly touched by his friend’s tragedy and could not seem to get past the idea that had Édouard not saved him, and only a few days before the end of the war . . . Édouard, for his part, being keenly aware that Albert was single-handedly responsible for both their lives, did his best to lighten the burden, doing small chores around the house—an old married couple, as I said.

  A few days after running away, little Louise reappeared. Albert assumed that the sight of Édouard exerted a sort of fascination over her. She stood in the doorway of the living room for a moment, then without warning, she walked over to Édouard and brought her forefinger to his face. Édouard knelt down—Albert had seen him do some strange things—to allow the girl to trace the edge of the yawning chasm. She seemed engrossed, attentive, as though this were a piece of homework, like the maps of France she carefully traced in pencil.

  It was at this moment that the two struck up a curious friendship. As soon as she came home from school, she would come up to see Édouard. She managed to find old newspapers for him to read, issues that were days or even weeks out of date. This was Édouard’s sole occupation, reading newspapers, clipping out articles. Albert had glanced at the file in which he kept the cuttings, articles about those who had died in the war, about commemorations, lists of those missing in action; it was rather sad. Édouard did not read the Paris dailies, only the provincial papers. Louise always managed to find copies, no one knew how. Almost every day, she would bring Édouard a cache of old issues of L’Ouest-Éclair, the Journal de Rouen or L’Est républicain. She would sit at the kitchen table doing her homework while Édouard smoked his Caporals and cut out articles. Louise’s mother made no comment.

  One evening in mid-September, Albert had come home after a tiring shift as a sandwich man, having spent the afternoon trudging the Grands Boulevards between Bastille and République carrying a board (on one side extolling the virtues of “Pink” pills, A jiffy is all it takes to cure all manner of ills, on the other, those of Juvénil corsets, Two hundred retailers in France!). As he came in, he found Édouard lying on an ancient, battered couch Albert had found some weeks earlier and brought home using a handcart borrowed from an old comrade he had met during the Somme and whose only means of survival now was to drag a cart with what little strength he had left and his one remaining arm.

  Édouard was smoking, as usual, and wearing a dark blue mask that extended from just below his nose, covering the lower part of his face, and jutted over his neck like the beard of an actor in a Greek tragedy. The dark, shimmering blue was speckled with gold, as though the paint had been sprinkled with sequins before it dried.

  Albert signaled his surprise. Édouard gave a theatrical wave as if to say, “Well, how do I look?” It was odd. For the first time since they had met, Édouard’s expression seemed genuinely human. In fact, Albert had to admit it was very handsome.

  There came a sudden, muffled sound from his left and, turning his head, Albert just caught sight of Louise scampering down the stairs. He had yet to hear her laugh.

  Like Louise, the masks were now a permanent fixture.

  Some days later, Édouard was wearing a white mask on which Louise had drawn a large smiling mouth. Édouard’s twinkling eyes made him look like an Italian actor, a sort of Sganarelle or Pagliaccio. Now when he had finished reading his newspapers, Édouard would turn them into papier-mâché in order to make chalk-white masks that Louise would later paint or decorate. What had started out as a game had become a full-time occupation. Louise was the high priestess and would scour the neighborhood and arrive with paste jewels, beads, fabric, colored felt, ostrich feathers, and imitation snakeskin. Since she also had to find the newspapers, it must have been a lot of work, running around trying to find these baubles and trinkets; Albert would not have known where to look.

  Édouard and Louise spent their time making these masks. Édouard never wore the same one twice; the new one would replace the old, which was hung with the others on the walls of the apartment like hunting trophies or costumes in a fancy-dress shop.

  It was almost 8:00 p.m. when Albert arrived at the foot of the stairs carrying his shoebox.

  His left hand, the one that had been slashed by the Greek, was throbbing viciously despite Docteur Martineau’s bandage, and he was feeling unsettled. The shoebox, the spoils of a valiant struggle, offered him some relief; getting supplies of morphine had been time consuming and took its toll on a sensitive soul like Albert, who was so susceptible to emotions of all kinds . . . And yet he could not help but think that what he was carrying could kill his friend twenty times, a hundred times over.

  He took three steps, lifted the dusty tarpaulin covering the remains of a broken-down cargo tricycle, pushed aside the hodgepodge in the bin, and carefully stowed his precious shoebox.

  On his way home, he had done a quick calculation. If Édouard kept to his current—rather high—dose, they would not have to worry for almost six months.

  14

  Henri d’Aulnay-Pradelle found himself unthinkingly comparing the elegant stork mounted on the radiator cap in front of him and the lumbering corpulence of Dupré sitting next to him. Not that there was anything in common between the two; on the contrary, they could not have been more different, and in fact Henri was not comparing but rather contrasting. With its broad wings whose tapered points touched the hood or the slender, graceful neck that tapered to the willful beak, the stork in full flight looked a little like a wild duck, but it was more sturdy, more (Henri groped for the word) . . . more “ultimate,” though God only knew what he meant by this word. And the grooves of the wings, he thought approvingly, like the folds of a drape . . . even the delicately curved legs . . . The bird seemed to cleave the air without even touching it, opening up a path like an outrider. Pradelle never tired of marveling at his stork.

  Dupré, on the other hand, was a heavyset, bull-necked man. Not an outrider. A foot soldier. With that trait particular to the rank and file that they themselves call loyalty, fidelity, duty, or some such twaddle.

  Henri believed the world was divided into two categories: those beasts of burden, doomed to work tirelessly, thoughtlessly to the end of their days, and the elite to whom everything was due. Because of their “personal coefficient.” Henri was much taken with this phrase, which he had read in a military report and adopted as his own.

  Dupré—Sergent-Chef Dupré—was a perfect example of the former category: hardworking, insignificant,
stubborn, dull witted, biddable.

  The stork chosen by Hispano-Suiza for the H6B (six-cylinder engine, 135 horsepower, 85 mph!) represented the celebrated fighter squadron commanded by Georges Guynemer, an exceptional individual. A man not unlike Henri, but for the fact that Guynemer was dead while Henri was still very much alive, giving him an indisputable advantage over the flying ace.

  On one side, Dupré, his pants cut too short, his dossier in his lap, who had been silently gazing in wonder at the burl walnut dashboard ever since they left Paris, the one exception to Henri’s resolve to invest the bulk of his profits in the restoration of la Sallevière. On the other, Henri d’Aulnay-Pradelle, the son-in-law of Marcel Péricourt, a hero of the Great War, a millionaire at thirty, a man destined for greatness, who was speeding though the Orléanais countryside at sixty-eight miles per hour and had already hit one dog and two chickens. Beasts of burden in their own way. It all came down to this: those who soared and those who succumbed.

  Dupré had fought under the command of Capitaine Pradelle, who, when the man was demobilized, hired him for a song, a temporary salary that quickly became permanent. A man of peasant stock, destined to submit to extraordinary individuals, Dupré had welcomed his civilian subservience as a logical extension of the natural order of things.

  They arrived in the late morning.

  As some thirty workers looked on admiringly, Henri parked his magnificent automobile. Right in the middle of the courtyard. Just to show who was boss. The boss is the one who gives orders, otherwise known as the customer. Or the king . . . it amounts to the same thing.

  Lavallée Timber Supplies and Cabinetry had languished for more than three generations until the war arrived, and with it, orders to supply the French army with hundreds of miles of railway sleepers, with beams and supporting braces for building, consolidating, and repairing trenches and passageways, which had led to an increase in the workforce from thirteen lumbermen to more than forty. Gaston Lavallée also owned a splendid automobile, but he brought it out only on special occasions—this was not Paris.

  Henri and Lavallée shook hands in the courtyard; Henri did not introduce Dupré. Later, when he said, “You’ll need to sort that out with Dupré,” Lavallée would turn and give the menial walking behind them a curt nod by way of acknowledgment.

  Before the tour, Lavallée suggested they have a small light meal and gestured to the steps leading to the house on the right of the vast workshops. Henri was raising a hand to dismiss the idea when he noticed the young woman in an apron on the steps, smoothing her hair as she waited for the guests. Lavallée added that his daughter Émilienne had prepared a little meal. In the end, Henri accepted the invitation.

  “But we’ll have to make it quick.”

  It was these workshops that had produced the magnificent sample coffin that had been sent to the War Graves Commission, a superb oak casket worth every centime of its sixty francs. Now that it had served its purpose in persuading the Adjudicating Committee, they could move on to more serious matters, to the coffins that would actually be delivered.

  Pradelle and Lavallée strolled through the main workshop, followed by Dupré and a foreman who had dressed in his best overalls for the occasion. Stiff as dead soldiers, a phalanx of coffins, recognizably of decreasing quality, were lined up side by side.

  “Our Fallen Heroes . . . ,” Lavallée began grandiloquently, laying a hand on a chestnut wood coffin, a midrange model.

  “Spare me the homilies.” Pradelle cut him short. “What have you got for less than thirty francs?”

  In the end the boss’s daughter had proved rather unprepossessing (however much she smoothed her hair, she was dreadfully provincial), the white wine was too sweet and served lukewarm, and the food was inedible. Lavallée had orchestrated the occasion like a visit of a plenipotentiary from the tropics, the workers were forever winking and nudging each other, all of which was getting on Pradelle’s nerves, he wanted to get down to business, and besides he wanted to get back to Paris for dinner, a friend had promised to introduce him to Léonie Flanchet, a vaudeville actress he had seen perform a week earlier, and who, everyone agreed, was a “stunner,” something Henri was eager to confirm for himself.

  “But . . . er . . . thirty francs is not what was agreed . . .”

  “What we agreed and what will happen are two very different things,” said Pradelle. “So let’s start again from the beginning, but make it fast, I don’t have all damn day.”

  “But Monsieur Pradelle . . .”

  “D’Aulnay-Pradelle.”

  “Of course, if you . . .”

  Henri glared at the man.

  “Well, Monsieur d’Aulnay-Pradelle,” Lavallée said in a conciliatory, almost pedantic tone, “we do have coffins in that price range, obviously . . .”

  “Good, I’ll take them.”

  “. . . but I’m afraid it’s impossible.”

  Pradelle gave him a look of profound stupefaction.

  “The problem is transportation, cher monsieur,” explained Lavallée. “If we were simply dealing with the local cemetery, they would be fit for purpose, but the coffins you require need to be able to travel. From here they have to be shipped to Compiègne, to Laon, where they will be unloaded, reloaded, and shipped on to wherever the bodies are being exhumed, then reshipped to the war graves—that’s a lot of transportation involved . . .”

  “I don’t see the problem.”

  “The coffins we sell for thirty francs are made of poplar. Not very resilient. They’ll warp, they’ll crack, they may even fall apart, because they’re not designed to be manhandled. At a bare minimum, you might get away with beech. Forty francs apiece. And that’s only because of the quantity involved, otherwise they go for forty-five . . .”

  Henri turned to his left.

  “What’s that one?”

  They walked toward it. Lavallée laughed, a deep, forced, laugh.

  “That’s silver birch!”

  “How much?”

  “Thirty-six.”

  “And that one . . . ?” Henri pointed to the last one in the row, just before the coffins made from offcuts.

  “That one’s pine . . .”

  “How much?”

  “Er . . . thirty-three . . .”

  Perfect. Henri laid a hand on the coffin, patting it almost admiringly as he might a racehorse, though it was impossible to tell whether he was admiring the quality of the workmanship, the modest price, or his own brilliance.

  Lavallée felt he had to show some modicum of professionalism.

  “If you’ll allow me, this model is not really suited to your needs. You see . . .”

  “My needs?” Henri interrupted. “What needs?”

  “Transportation, cher monsieur! Once again the problem is the transportation . . .”

  “You ship them flat, so there’s no problem there . . .”

  “Not at the start, no . . .”

  “You assemble them when they arrive, so there’s no problem there . . .”

  “No, of course not. The problem, and forgive me for insisting on this point, is once they are handled: they have to be unloaded from the trucks, set down, moved, then the body is placed in the coffin . . .”

  “I understand, but at that point, it is no longer your problem. All you need do is deliver them. Is that not so, Dupré?”

  Henri had good reason to turn to his manager, since it would become his problem. He did not, however, wait for a response. Lavallée would have liked to set out his arguments, to talk about his company’s reputation, to emphasize . . . Henri cut him dead.

  “Thirty-three francs, you said?”

  Lavallée quickly took out his notepad.

  “Given the size of the order I’m making, let’s say thirty francs.”

  In the time Lavallée took fumbling for a pencil, he had just lost three francs per unit.

  “No, no, no,” he protested. “It’s thirty-three taking into account the quantity!”

  On this occas
ion, on this particular point, Lavallée would stand firm. It was clear from his posture.

  “I cannot accept thirty francs, it’s out of the question!”

  He seemed to have suddenly grown four inches, face flushed, pencil quivering, he was unyielding, as though prepared to die for the sake of three francs.

  Henri nodded slowly and deliberately, I see, I see, I see . . .

  “Very well,” he said at length, “thirty-three francs it is.”

  Lavallée could not believe this sudden capitulation. He quickly scribbled the figure on his pad, this unexpected victory had left him trembling, exhausted, fearful.

  “Remind me, Dupré . . . ,” Henri said, sounding concerned.

  Lavallée, Dupré, and the foreman all stiffened again.

  “The coffins for Compiègne and Laon need to be five foot six, is that right?”

  The Adjudicating Committee had set varying sizes for the coffins ranging from a handful measuring six foot two, a few hundred at five foot nine, with most measuring five foot six. There were a number of orders for even smaller coffins—five foot two and even four foot nine.

  Dupré nodded.

  “Thirty-three francs we agreed for five foot six,” Pradelle turned back to Lavallée. “How much for four foot nine?”

  Surprised by this change of tack, no one actually imagined what it meant in practice: shorter coffins. Lavallée had not considered the possibility, he needed to work out the figures; he reopened his pad and launched into calculations that took an age. Everyone waited. Henri was still standing next to the pine coffin; he had stopped stroking its hindquarters and now simply gazed at it longingly as though contemplating a night of pleasure with a new girl.

  Finally, Lavallée looked up, and said in a dull voice, “Thirty francs . . .”

  “Hmm, hmm,” Pradelle murmured.

  Everyone began to consider the practical implications of placing a five foot six soldier in a four-foot-nine coffin. The foreman imagined the soldier’s head bowed, the chin pressed against the chest. Dupré saw the body laid on its side, the legs bent slightly. Gaston Lavallée could not picture anything, he had lost two nephews in a single day at the Somme, the family had claimed the bodies, he had personally made coffins of solid oak each with a large gilt cross and gilded handles, and he refused to imagine how one fitted a large body into a small coffin.