It had been a year since Merlin arrived at the Ministry of Pensions, Bonuses, and War-Related Allowances. He had been moved from one division to another, and then one day the ministry had received troubling news about the condition of the war graves. Things were not going according to plan. A préfet had reported anomalies at Dampierre. He had retracted his statement the following day, but by then the bureaucratic wheels were turning. The ministry must ensure that it was spending the taxpayer’s money appropriately so that those who had died for their country should have a dignified burial in accordance with the provisions set down in the relevant legislation . . .
“Ah, shit!” Merlin said, surveying the desolate scene.
Because he had been the one appointed to the task. He had seemed to be a perfect fit for this job that no one wanted. Managing the war graves.
Adjudant Tournier heard him
“Excuse me?”
Merlin turned, stared at him, sucked at his teeth. Ever since Francine had taken off with her capitaine, he loathed army officers. He turned back and surveyed the cemetery, as though only now realizing where he was and what he was supposed to do. The other members of the delegation were puzzled.
“Might I suggest we begin by . . . ,” Dupré ventured.
But Merlin did not move, he stood rooted like a tree, gazing at this forlorn scene, which dimly echoed his sense of persecution.
He decided to speed things up, to get this chore over and done with.
“Fucking bastards.”
This time, everyone distinctly heard what he said, but no one knew what to make of it.
The registers of births, marriages, and deaths drawn up in accordance with the prescriptions set out in the law of December 29, 1915; the establishment of written records as stipulated in the memorandum of February 16, 1916; the respect due to the deceased parties as laid out in article 106 of the annual budget; yes, yes . . . Merlin muttered, ticking here, signing here, the atmosphere was far from relaxed, but everything seemed to be going to plan. The man smelled like a skunk; standing next to him in the cramped shed that doubled as a civil registry was unbearable. In spite of the icy wind that gusted through the room, they decided to leave the window open.
Merlin had begun his inspection with a tour of the graves. At first, Paul Chabord had bustled after him with an umbrella, but the ministerial envoy’s erratic peregrinations and his sudden changes of direction quickly eroded Chabord’s goodwill, and after a while he simply used it to shelter himself. Merlin did not even notice. Rain coursed down his skull; he sucked on his dentures, he stared into the graves as though he did not know what he was supposed to be inspecting. Tsst Tsst.
They had moved on to inspect the coffins. As the procedure was explained to him, Merlin slipped on a pair of spectacles with lenses so gray and scratched they seemed fashioned from onion skin paper and studied the forms, the inventories, the plaques affixed to the caskets. Right, well, that’s enough of that, he muttered, we’re not going to spend all day. He took out a fat pocket watch and, without a word to anyone, strode off toward the administration hut.
At midday, he was busy filling out his inspection report. Watching him work, it was easy to understand why his jacket was spattered in ink stains.
Now all those present had to sign.
“Every man here does his duty,” Adjudant Tournier said in a smug, military tone.
“I’m sure he does,” Merlin said.
A formality. They were standing in the shed, passing around the pen and inkwell like an aspergillum at a funeral. Merlin jabbed a fat finger at the register.
“Here, whichever of you represents the families . . .”
The Union Nationale des Combattants did enough favors for the government to have a finger in every pie. Merlin grimly watched Roland Schneider sign and initial.
“Schneider,” he said after a pause (he pronounced it “Ssshnay-dah” to emphasize his point), “sounds a little German, don’t you think?”
The other man immediately bridled.
“Never mind,” Merlin interrupted him and gestured again to the report. “Here, the municipal registrar . . .”
His comment had cast a pall over the proceedings. The rest of the signing was conducted in silence.
“Monsieur,” Schneider began, when he had time to collect his thoughts, “your comment . . .”
But Merlin was already on his feet, two heads taller than Schneider, staring at him with his large gray eyes and asking, “Can we have chicken for lunch?”
Chicken was his only joy in life. He ate messily, adding grease marks to the pattern of ink stains; he never removed his jacket.
Over lunch everyone attempted to make conversation, everyone except Schneider, who was still racking his brain to come up with a rejoinder. Merlin, whose head was bent over his plate, responded with only the occasional grunt or a tsst, tsst as he sucked his dentures, thereby rapidly discouraging any fellow feeling. Even so, though the ministerial envoy had been unpleasant, the inspection had been passed, and the tense atmosphere shifted to one of relief verging on gaiety. The early work on the site had been difficult, and they had encountered a number of minor problems. In this sort of project, nothing ever goes exactly as expected, and regulations, however precise, never take account of those harsh realities that immediately become apparent once work begins. However conscientious and scrupulous the work, there are always unforeseen factors, problems to be resolved, decisions to be made, sometimes the best way forward is to go back . . .
Now, everyone was eager for the graveyard to be empty and the project to be over. The inspection had ended on a positive, reassuring note. In retrospect, all of them had been a little afraid. There was a lot of drinking—lunch was at the taxpayer’s expense. Even Schneider forgot the slight, deciding that he felt nothing but scorn for this slovenly civil servant and poured himself some more Côtes-du-Rhône. Merlin had three helpings of chicken, wolfing his food as though he were starving. His stubby fingers were thick with grease. When he had finished, without a thought for the other guests, he tossed the napkin he had not used onto the table, got to his feet, and left the restaurant. The other men were taken aback, they scrambled to finish their meals, drain their glasses, ask for the bill, check the total, pay, then, knocking chairs over in their rush, they made for the door. When they emerged, they found Merlin pissing against the wheel of the car.
Before heading to the train station, they had to go back to the cemetery to collect Merlin’s briefcase and his registers. His train was due to leave in forty minutes, there could be no question of hanging around any longer, especially since the rain—which had eased off while they were at lunch—was now pouring down. In the car, Merlin said nothing, not a word of thanks for their welcome or for the lunch, the man was a real asshole.
Back at the cemetery, Merlin walked quickly. The planks set over the puddles buckled dangerously under his weight. A scrawny dog trotted past and without warning, without even breaking stride, Merlin lashed out; balancing on his left foot he kicked the animal in the side, sending it howling a yard into the air and landing on its back. Before it could get up, Merlin had jumped down into a puddle that came up to his ankles and, to stop the dog from moving, planted a stout shoe on its chest. The poor animal, terrified of being drowned, barked all the louder, squirming in the muddy water, trying to bite; everyone was aghast.
Merlin bent down and grasped the dog’s lower jaw with his right hand, the muzzle with his left. The dog struggled more fiercely. Merlin, who now had a tight grip, gave the animal another savage kick in the stomach, pulled its jaws apart as though it were a crocodile, then, suddenly, he let go, the dog flailed in the water, scrambled to its feet, and ran off.
The puddle was deep, Merlin’s shoes had disappeared into the mud, but he did not care. He turned to the stupefied delegates who were lined precariously along the timber walkway. Then he held up a bone some eight inches long and waved it in their faces.
“I know a thing or two, messieurs, and le
t me tell you something, this is not a chicken bone!”
Joseph Merlin might be a disheveled and disagreeable civil servant, but he was also diligent, scrupulous and, truth be told, an honest man.
He did not show it, but he found visiting these graveyards heart wrenching. This was the third he had inspected since being appointed to the post no one wanted. For a man who had known nothing about war beyond food rationing and memoranda from the Ministère des Colonies, the first visit had been devastating. His deep-rooted misanthropy, so long fully armored, had been shaken. Not by the scale of the slaughter, that was something he could understand, since the beginning of time, the earth had been ravaged by disasters and epidemics, war being merely the fusion of the two. No, what he had found devastating was the age of the dead. Disasters kill everyone, epidemics decimate the children and the elderly; only wars massacre young men in such number. Merlin had not expected to be upset by this fact. But a certain part of him was still back in the time when he had known Francine, and in this huge, hollow, lumbering frame there was still the sliver of the soul of a young man, a man the age of these dead boys.
Much less stupid than most of his colleagues, from his first visit to a military cemetery, being a scrupulous civil servant, he had noticed irregularities. He had seen countless dubious details in registers, hastily covered-up discrepancies, but what did he expect? When he considered the scale of the task, when he saw those poor Senegalese laborers, soaked to the skin, when he thought about the terrible carnage, calculated the number of bodies that now needed to be exhumed, transported . . . could he really afford to be pernickety, uncompromising? You turned a blind eye, and that was that. Such tragic circumstances required a certain pragmatism and Merlin considered it fair to pass over such irregularities in silence, let it be over, good God, let the war finally be over.
But here in Chazières-Malmont, a terrible foreboding gripped at your chest. Piecing together the clues: the planks from old coffins tossed into pits, where they were buried rather than burned; the disparity between the number of coffins shipped and the number of graves dug; the vague figures entered for certain days . . . All these things left you puzzled. They undermined your sense of what was and was not fair. So, when you see a stray mutt trotting happily along with the ulna of a soldier between its teeth, your heart lurches in your chest. You need to investigate.
Joseph Merlin did not catch his train; instead he spent the day checking figures, demanding explanations. Schneider was sweating as though this were high summer, Paul Chabord blew his nose, only Adjudant Tournier continued to click his heels whenever the ministerial envoy addressed him, the gesture was meaningless, but by now it was instinctive.
Everyone kept staring at Lucien Dupré, who, for his part, could see his meager prospects of a pay raise evaporating.
In dealing with the registers, the reports, the inventories, Merlin needed no help. Several times, he checked the stock of coffins, he visited the warehouses and even the graves.
Then he went back again to check the stock.
From a distance, they watched as he came and went, scratched his head, glanced around him as though looking for the solution to some mathematical problem; it grated on their nerves, this ominous behavior, this man who did not say a single word.
Then, finally, he said it, that single word.
“Dupré!”
Everyone sensed that the moment of truth was at hand. Dupré closed his eyes. Capitaine Pradelle had been very clear: “He can look over the work, do his inspection, make his comments, we don’t give a shit, all right? But I need you to keep him away from the stock . . . I’m counting on you, all right, Dupré?”
And this Dupré had done: he had had the stock moved to the municipal warehouse; it had taken two days’ work, but the ministerial envoy, though he might not look up to much, knew how to count. He counted and recounted, he pieced together the information; it did not take long.
“There are coffins missing here,” Merlin said, “and a lot of coffins at that, so I’d like to know what the hell you’ve done with them.”
All this because the fucking stray dog that sometimes came looking for food had decided to show up today. For weeks, they had been throwing stones at it; they should have killed the wretched animal. This was what you got for being humane.
By the end of the day, when the workers began to file out of the already silent, tense graveyard, Merlin came back from the municipal warehouse and said simply that he still had work to do, that he was happy to bunk down in the administration shed. Then he strode off toward the rows of graves with the determination of a shambling, stubborn old man.
Before he hurried to telephone Capitaine Pradelle, Dupré looked around one last time.
There, in the distance, register in hand, Merlin had just come to a halt in front of a mound of earth to the north of the cemetery. For the first time, he took off his jacket, snapped shut his record book, wrapped it in the jacket, set it on the ground and grabbed a shovel, which, under the weight of his big muddy shoe, sank up to the hilt into the ground.
25
Where had he gone? Had he friends who would take him in, friends he had never mentioned? How would he survive without his morphine? Would he know how to get it? Perhaps he had decided at last to go back to his family, the most reasonable solution . . . But there was nothing about Édouard that was reasonable . . . Albert wondered what he had been like before the war. What sort of man had he been? And why had Albert not asked M. Péricourt more questions at the deplorable dinner? He had had as much right as they to ask questions, to find out what his comrade-in-arms had been like before they met.
But most important, where had he gone?
This was what had been troubling Albert’s thoughts from morning to night since Édouard left four days earlier. He went over memories of their time together, brooding like a maudlin old man.
It was not exactly that he missed Édouard. In fact, his departure had brought a sense of relief; suddenly he was free of the host of responsibilities imposed on him by his friend’s presence, he could breathe easily, he felt liberated. But he was worried. It’s not like he’s a child, Albert thought, though given his dependence, his immaturity, his tantrums, the comparison was perhaps appropriate. Why had he been so obsessed with this idiotic idea of designing war memorials? Albert thought the idea morbid. That he had come up with the idea in the first place was understandable in a way; like everyone, Édouard had dreams of revenge. But it was baffling how he had stubbornly refused to listen to Albert’s perfectly sensible arguments. That he could not distinguish between a dream and a plan. In the end, the boy was simply a dreamer; it was probably common among the rich, who don’t think that reality applies to them.
Paris was gripped by a damp, bitter cold. Albert had asked for new sandwich boards—the ones he had were heavy and buckled from the rain—but to no avail.
Sandwich boards were picked up every morning near the métro station and exchanged for new ones at lunchtime. There were about a dozen sandwich men working in the arrondissement—mostly demobilized soldiers who had not been able to find a proper job—and an inspector who lurked around corners and, the minute you took off the board to massage your shoulders, would leap out and threaten to have you dismissed if you did not get back to work right away.
It was Tuesday, the day he traipsed up and down the boulevard Haussmann between La Fayette and Saint-Augustin (on one side: Raviba—fabric dye to revive your stockings; on the other: Lip, Lip . . . Hooray—the wristwatch of victory). The rain, which had eased during the night, had started again at ten o’clock. Albert had just arrived at the corner of the rue Pasquier. To stop, even to get his cap out of his pocket, was forbidden; he had to carry on.
“That’s what this job is about: walking,” the inspector would say, “You used to be a foot soldier, well, this is just the same. Now, march!”
But in the lashing, freezing rain Albert did not care, he glanced around swiftly, then, sheltering next to a building, he be
nt his knees, resting the weight of the boards on the ground and was just about to unbuckle the leather straps when the whole building seemed to crumble and fall on top of him.
A vicious blow snapped his head back, sending his body sprawling. The back of his skull slammed against the stone wall, the sandwich boards fell, the straps snarled around his throat, choking him. He gasped for breath, flailing like a drowning man, unable to move with the heavy boards on top of him; and every time he tried to push them off, the straps around his neck tightened.
Suddenly, the thought hit him: this was like the shell crater. Trapped, paralyzed, suffocating; this was how he was fated to die.
Panic stricken, he thrashed wildly, he wanted to scream, but no sound came, everything was moving fast, too fast, he felt someone grab his ankles and drag him from beneath the debris, the straps tightened, he clawed at them with his fingers, desperate to ease the pressure so he could breathe, he felt a heavy blow land on one of the wooden boards and reverberate through his skull, then suddenly the daylight reappeared, the straps were untangled, Albert greedily gulped lungfuls of air, too much air, he started to cough and almost vomited. He tried to shield himself—but from what?—tried to struggle. He looked like a blind cat being attacked. Eventually, he opened his eyes and he understood: the building that had collapsed on top of him took on a human form, a furious face that loomed over his, the eyes starting from their sockets.
The Great Swindle Page 26