The Great Swindle

by Pierre Lemaitre

  He clambered down and went back to the couch, sharpened a pencil, taking care that the shavings fell onto a scrap of paper, which he screwed up and placed inside the bag: a secret is a secret. As always, he began by leafing through the first drawings and felt a certain satisfaction and encouragement in observing how much he had accomplished. Twelve drawings so far, some soldiers, a few women, a child, but mostly soldiers, some wounded, some triumphant, others dying or kneeling or lying on the ground, here was an arm reaching out, he was proud of this outstretched arm, it was well drawn, had he been able to smile . . .

  He set to work.

  A woman this time, standing, one breast bared. Did the breast have to be bared? No. He began the sketch again, covering the breast. He sharpened his pencil again, he could have done with a finer point, paper that was not so coarse, he had to work on his knees because the table was the wrong height, what he really needed was a writing slope, but it was good that these things irritated him because it showed how much he wanted to work. He raised his head, held the page at arm’s length to get an overview. It was a good start, the woman was standing, the folds were quite good, the drape of fabric was the hardest thing, everything depended on it: the drape of the fabric and the eyes, that was the secret. At moments like this, Édouard was almost his old self.

  If he was not mistaken, he would make a fortune. Before the year was out. Albert would be surprised.

  And he would not be the only one.

  17

  “A pathetic little ceremony at les Invalides, that’s all . . . ?”

  “Well, Maréchal Foch will be present . . .”

  Henri whirled around, furious, indignant.

  “Foch? So what?”

  He was in his underpants and struggling with his tie. Madeleine started to laugh. Indignation is difficult for a man in his underpants to carry off . . . though he had fine, muscular legs. He turned back to the mirror to finish knotting his tie, his firm, powerful buttocks visible beneath his underwear. Madeleine wondered whether he was running late. Then decided it did not matter, she had time to spare, she had time enough for two, time was something she had in abundance, like patience and stubbornness. And besides, he spent enough of it on his mistresses . . . She came up behind him, he did not hear her, but he felt her cold hand inside his pants, her aim unerring, cajoling, languorous, insistent; her face pressed into his back as she said in a tender, deliciously sleazy voice:

  “Darling, you don’t really mean it! After all, Maréchal Foch is quite someone . . .”

  Henri finished with his tie so he could think. In fact, he did not need to think, now was not the right time. They had done it last night . . . And now, again, this morning, honestly . . . Not that he did not have the stamina, that was not the issue, but there were times, like just now, when he felt a furious desire, when he had to fuck her at any opportunity. It won him a little respite. In exchange for his conjugal duty, he was free to take his pleasures elsewhere. It was a serviceable arrangement. It was tiresome. He had never been able to get used to her intimate private smell, something that was simply not talked about, though she might have understood, but sometimes she behaved like an empress and he a servant who knew his place. It was not unpleasant, strictly speaking, especially given how much time it took, but . . . he liked to be the one to decide, and with Madeleine it was always she who took the initiative. Over and over, Madeleine murmured “Maréchal Foch,” she knew that Henri was not in the mood but she carried on, her hand became warmer, and she felt him uncoil like a fat, listless, yet powerful snake, he never refused her; he did not refuse her this time, it was over in a flash, he turned, lifted her bodily and laid her on the edge of the bed, he did not trouble to take off his tie or his socks. She clung to him, forcing him to stay inside her for a few seconds more. He stayed, then he got to his feet and it was over.

  “July 14 was a different matter, that was all pomp and ceremony.”

  He had gone back over to the mirror, his tie needed readjusting.

  “Celebrating our victory in the Great War on the revolutionary fourteenth! It’s utterly preposterous . . . And for the anniversary of the armistice, they organize this intimate little ceremony at les Invalides! So intimate it might as well be a commemoration in camera!”

  He was particularly proud of this expression. He had looked for the perfect turn of phrase, savored the words as though tasting a fine wine. A commemoration in camera. Very clever. He wanted to try it out, turned around, and in a bilious tone spat:

  “A commemoration of the Great War in camera!”

  Not bad. Madeleine had finally got up from the bed and put on a negligee. She would bathe after he left, there was no hurry. In the meantime, she tidied away the clothes. She put on a pair of slippers. Henri, by now, was in full flow.

  “You have to admit, these commemorations have been taken over by the Bolsheviks.”

  “Please stop, Henri,” Madeleine said as she opened the wardrobe, “you’re beginning to annoy me.”

  “And the cripples are only too happy to go along with it! Well, if you want my opinion, the one day that should be reserved for honoring heroes is November 11! In fact, I’d go further than that . . .”

  “Stop it, Henri,” Madeleine interrupted angrily, “July 14, November 1, Christmas Day, or the twelfth of never, you don’t really give a damn at all.”

  He turned and eyed her scornfully. Still in his underpants. But it did not make her smile now. She glared back at him.

  “I know you need to rehearse these little outbursts before you perform them for your audience at the Veterans’ Association, or your club or wherever,” she said, “but I am not your coach! So you can save your tantrums and outbursts for anyone who cares to listen and leave me in peace!”

  She went back to tidying, her hands were not trembling, her voice had not quavered. She would often say such things in a brusque, offhand manner, then forget about them. Like her father; they were two of a kind. Henri did not take offense. He pulled on his pants. Fundamentally, she was right, November 1 or November 11, what did it matter . . . ? But July 14 was different. He openly professed a visceral loathing for the Quatorze Juillet, the Enlightenment, the Revolution—not because he had given the matter much thought, but because he felt it was only right and fitting, given his standing as an aristocrat.

  And because he lived with the Péricourts, who were nouveaux riches. The old man had married a de Margis, whose ancestors were little more than glorified wool merchants who had bought themselves a title, which—thankfully—could only be passed on to the men in the family; a Péricourt would never be anything more than a Péricourt. It would have taken five centuries before they could rank alongside the Aulnay-Pradelles. And even then . . . in five centuries, their fortune would have long since evaporated, while the Aulnay-Pradelles—Henri planned to revive the dynasty—would still be entertaining guests in the grand salon of the family home in la Sallevière. Speaking of which, he had to hurry, it was already nine o’clock. He would arrive late in the evening, and tomorrow morning would be spent giving the foremen their orders, checking the building work, you had to keep a close eye on these people, query the estimates, negotiate the prices. The restorations to the roof had just been finished, twenty-three hundred square feet of slate, a small fortune, now they were moving on to the ruined west wing, which would have to be rebuilt from the ground up, and that would mean scrambling around for suitable stone in a country that no longer seemed to have any trains or barges—he would have to exhume a lot of heroes to pay for that!

  When he came to kiss her before he left (he planted a kiss on her forehead, he did not like kissing her on the mouth), Madeleine adjusted his tie, for form’s sake. She stepped back to look at him. They were right, all those trollops of his, her husband was a very handsome man; he would make beautiful children.

  18

  The invitation to visit the Péricourts haunted Albert. He had never been entirely happy about Édouard’s change of identity, he dreamed of the p
olice coming to arrest him and throw him in prison. And what most saddened him about that was that there would be no one to take care of Édouard. And at the same time, he felt a surge of relief. Just as Édouard sometimes dimly resented him, so Albert felt bitter that Édouard had usurped his life. Since his comrade had got himself thrown out of hospital, and once they had recovered from the news that Édouard would not be able to draw a pension, Albert had had the impression that their life had settled into an orderly routine, an impression that was brutally contradicted by the arrival of Mlle Péricourt and by this invitation that preoccupied him day and night. After all, it meant sitting down to dinner with Édouard’s father, perpetuating the travesty of his son’s death, looking into the eyes of his sister, who seemed quite kind when she was not pressing money into your hand as though you were a delivery boy.

  Albert spent all his time weighing up the possible consequences of this invitation. If he confessed to the Péricourts that Édouard was still alive (and how could he not?), what then? Forcibly drag him back to a family he wanted nothing to do with? That would mean betraying him. And why the hell was Édouard so determined not to go back to them, for Christ’s sake? Albert would have been more than happy. He had never had a sister, so Édouard’s family would have suited him perfectly. It had been a mistake to listen to his friend back in the hospital a year ago, he decided. Édouard had been suffering from profound depression; Albert should not have given in to him . . . but what was done was done.

  On the other hand, if he did admit the truth, what would happen to the unknown soldier who, right now, was probably lying in the Péricourt family vault, an interloper whose presence they would be unlikely to tolerate for long. What would become of him?

  The police would be called, Albert would be blamed. Or, worse, he would be forced to dig up the poor unfortunate soldier the Péricourts wanted to be rid of, and what would he do with the remains? They would trace it all back to the false entries he had made in the army ledgers!

  Besides, the idea of going to visit the Péricourts, of meeting Édouard’s father, his sister, maybe other members of the family, without telling his friend was disloyal. How would he react if he found out?

  But surely telling him was also a kind of betrayal? Édouard would be here, alone, fretting, while his friend was spending the evening with the very people he had repudiated. Because in deciding never to see them again, he was effectively rejecting them, wasn’t he?

  He would write a letter, plead some unexpected emergency. But the Péricourts would only suggest another date. He would have to invent some other pretext. But they might send someone to look for him and find Édouard . . .

  There seemed no way out. Everything was so confused, Albert was plagued by nightmares. In the early hours, Édouard, who scarcely slept, propped himself up on one elbow, gripped his friend’s shoulder, and shook him awake, handed him the conversation pad with a questioning look. Albert shrugged that it was nothing, but still the nightmares continued; they seemed never ending, and he, unlike Édouard, needed sleep.

  After much brooding and countless conflicting thoughts, he finally came to a decision. He would go to the Péricourts’ house (otherwise they would come looking for him here), but he would hide the truth, it was the least dangerous solution. He would give them what they wanted, he would tell them how their son had died, that was what he would do. Then never see them again.

  The problem was he did not really remember what he had written in his letter. He racked his brain. What had he said? A hero’s death, a bullet straight to the heart, like something out of a novel, but in what circumstances? Then there was the fact that Mlle Péricourt had met him through that bastard Pradelle. What had he told her? He would have portrayed himself in a favorable light. What if Albert’s version of events contradicted what Pradelle had told her? Who would she believe? They might think him an imposter.

  The more he agonized, the more muddled his thoughts and memories became, and the nightmares returned, rearing out in the darkness like phantoms.

  Then there was the awkward problem of what he should wear. He could not decently turn up at the Péricourts as he was; even in his best suit, he looked like a tramp.

  Just in case he did finally decide to go to dinner at boulevard des Courcelles, he asked around to find a respectable suit. The only one he could find belonged to someone he worked with, a sandwich man rather shorter than he was who patrolled the Champs-Élysées. Albert had to tug the waist of the pants as low as possible so as not to look like a clown. He almost borrowed one of Édouard’s shirts, since he had two, but changed his mind. What if the family recognized it? He borrowed one from the same colleague, which was too small, so the buttons gaped. There remained the delicate matter of shoes. He could not find any to fit him. He would have to make do with his own, a pair of battered clodhoppers he spent hours buffing in a vain attempt to make them look half-decent. Having mulled over his options, he concluded he would have to buy a new pair, which was now possible because the recent reduction in his morphine budget had given him some breathing space. A fine pair of shoes. Thirty-two francs from Bata. Emerging from the shop with the package tucked under his arm, he realized that, ever since being demobilized, he had longed to buy himself a new pair of shoes, feeling that this, more than anything, determined a man’s elegance. An old suit or an overcoat might be acceptable, but a man could be judged on the quality of his shoes. These were pale-brown leather; wearing them was the only pleasurable thing about this whole sorry affair.

  Édouard and Louise looked up as Albert stepped out from behind the folding screen. They had just finished making a new mask: ivory colored with a pretty pink mouth set in a slightly condescending sneer, with two faded autumn leaves glued high up on the cheeks that looked like tears. And yet there was nothing sad about the overall effect; it was the contemplative expression of someone detached from the world.

  But the mask was nothing compared to the spectacle of Albert as he emerged from behind the screen. A butcher’s boy on his way to a wedding.

  Édouard, assuming that his friend had an assignation, was touched.

  Love was a subject they joked about, obviously, being young men . . . But it was a sore subject since both were young men without lovers. In the end, Albert had found that fucking Mme Monestier on the sly occasionally did him more harm than good, because it made him realize how much he missed love. He stopped screwing her, she persisted for a little while, then she stopped insisting. He saw pretty young girls here and there, in the shops, on the omnibus, many of them with no beau since so many men had been killed, girls who were waiting, watching, hoping, but Albert was no conquering hero, always glancing about him, skittish as a cat, with his battered shoes and a greatcoat that dribbled dye, he was not what anyone might call a catch.

  And even if he did find himself a young lady who was not too disgusted by his appearance, what sort of future could he offer her? What was he supposed to say? “Come live with me, I share an apartment with a crippled ex-soldier who never leaves the house, shoots himself full of morphine, and wears carnival masks, but never fear, we have three francs a day to live on and a folding screen to protect your modesty”?

  Besides, Albert was cripplingly shy; if things did not come to him . . .

  And so he went back to Mme Monestier, but she had her self-respect, that woman, just because she was married to a cuckold didn’t mean she had no pride. Her pride was in fact rather adaptable, since the actual reason she no longer needed Albert was because she was getting screwed by the new office clerk, a man who—to Albert’s dim recollection—looked strangely like the young man who had been with Cécile in the elevator at La Samaritaine on the day Albert left his job and several days wages . . . If he had to do it over . . .

  One night, he had talked to Édouard about this. He thought it would make him happy to confess that he, too, had decided he would have to give up on any idea of a normal relationship with a woman, but the situation was hardly comparable: Albert could be
gin again, Édouard could not. Albert might find himself a young woman—maybe a young widow, there were a lot of them about—as long as she was not too particular; he might have to search, to keep his eyes open, but what woman would have wanted Édouard, had he been attracted to women? The conversations had been painful for both of them.

  But now, to suddenly see Albert in his Sunday best!

  Louise gave a wolf whistle, walked over to him and waited for Albert to bend down so she could straighten his tie. They teased him, Édouard slapped his thighs and gave an enthusiastic thumbs-up, making a shrill tooting from the back of his throat. Not to be outdone, Louise tittered behind her hand and said, “Oh, Albert, you look so handsome . . . ,” a woman’s words, but how old was she, this child? He was rather wounded by their extravagant flattery; even good-natured mockery can be hurtful, especially in the circumstances.

  Better to leave now, he thought, besides, he needed to think some more, and having done so, with little consideration for the relative merits of the arguments, he would make a spur-of-the-moment decision to go or not to go to dinner with the Péricourts.

  He caught the métro and walked the last stretch of the way. The farther he traveled, the more ill at ease he felt. Emerging from his overcrowded arrondissement filled with Poles and Russians, he encountered tall, majestic buildings lining a boulevard that was three streets wide. As he approached the parc Monceau, he spotted the house—it would have been impossible to miss M. Péricourt’s soaring mansion, outside which stood a gleaming automobile that a chauffeur in immaculate livery was rubbing down as though it were a thoroughbred racehorse. Albert was so awestruck he felt his heart stutter. Pretending to be in a hurry, he walked quickly past the house, tracing a wide circle through the adjoining streets, and came back through the park, where he found a bench from which he could just see the facade, and sat down. He felt flabbergasted. In fact, he found it difficult to believe that Édouard had been born here, had grown up in this house. In another world. And today, Albert had come bearing the most terrible lie imaginable. He was a reprobate.