The Great Swindle

by Pierre Lemaitre

  Albert could not help but smile; he set down his briefcase, took off his coat and hat. Here in their apartment was the only place he felt safe, where he found a little peace . . . Except at night. His restless nights were troubled, and would be for some time to come; he had to sleep with the horse head mask next to him in case of panic.

  Édouard looked at him, one hand on the bundle of catalogs next to him, the other clenched in a victorious salute. Louise, who had said nothing, was now buffing the polish on his toenails with a chamois, so intent it seemed her life depended on it.

  Albert sat next to Édouard and picked up a catalog. It was a slim brochure, sixteen pages, printed on lovely ivory paper, almost twice as tall as it was wide, the elegant text set in an elegant modern typeface of varying sizes. The cover read simply:

  Catalog

  The fine arts foundry

  Patriotic Memory

  Steles, memorials, & statues

  To the glory of our Heroes

  and of France Victorious

  It opened onto a beautifully calligraphed page

  Jules D’épremont ✹✠

  sculptor

  Membre de l’institut

  52 rue du Louvre

  Boîte postale 52

  Paris (Seine)

  “Who exactly is Jules d’Épremont?” Albert had asked when the catalog was being designed.

  Édouard had rolled his eyes, no idea. But he sounded distinguished: Croix de Guerre, Palmes académiques, address on the rue du Louvre.

  “The thing is . . . ,” Albert said, worried by the existence of this character, “it won’t take long for people to realize he doesn’t exist. ‘Membre de l’Institut’—anyone can easily check with the Académie des Beaux-Arts!”

  “But that’s precisely why they won’t check,” Édouard scribbled. “It wouldn’t occur to them to question a Membre de l’Institut.”

  Though still skeptical, Albert had to admit that, seeing the words in print, he felt no urge to question them.

  There was a brief biographical note at the back of the catalog outlining his career as an academic sculptor, which was designed to reassure those unsettled by the notion of an artist.

  The address, 52 rue du Louvre, was simply the post office where they had rented a P.O. box; by sheer chance, they had been assigned box number 52, so the overall effect was one of calm consideration rather than quirk of fate.

  A line of small type at the bottom of the front cover read simply:

  PRICE INCLUDES DELIVERY BY RAIL WITHIN METROPOLITAN FRANCE.

  ENGRAVED INSCRIPTIONS ARE NOT INCLUDED IN THE PRICE.

  The first page outlined the scheme:

  Monsieur le Maire,

  More than a year has passed since the end of the War, and towns and communities throughout France and the Colonies are rightly giving thought to honoring the memory of their children who fell on the field of battle.

  If many of them have not yet done so, it is for want of means, not want of patriotism. This is why I believed it my duty, as an Artist and a War Veteran, to volunteer in such a noble cause. I have accordingly decided to put my talent and my experience at the service of those communities who wish to create a memorial by founding Patriotic Memory.

  In the present, I humbly propose a series of figures and allegories created to perpetuate the memory of your dear departed.

  On November 11 next in Paris, a tomb will be unveiled of the “Unknown Soldier,” intended to represent the sacrifice of all. Such an exceptional event calls for exceptional measures: in order that you may add your own initiative to this great national commemoration, I am offering a concession of 32% on a range of works especially conceived for this momentous occasion, together with free delivery to the railway station closest to your town.

  In order to take account of the time required for creation and transportation, and to ensure the highest quality of craftsmanship, I can only accept those orders that reach me before July 14, which orders will be delivered, at latest, by October 27, 1920, leaving ample time for the memorial to be raised on a preexisting pedestal. In the event that, on July 14, demand exceeds our capacity for production, which is sadly all too likely, we will be able to honor only a limited number of orders strictly according to date received.

  I fondly hope that this never to be repeated offer will afford your patriotism the opportunity to honor your Glorious Dead, so that their heroism may forever be seen by their sons and daughters as the exemplar of all sacrifice.

  I remain, Monsieur le Maire, yours faithfully,

  JULES D’ÉPREMONT

  Sculptor ✹✠

  Membre de l’Institut

  Alumnus of the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts

  “This discount . . . why 32 percent?” Albert said.

  Ever the accountant.

  “To give the impression that it has been painstakingly calculated,” Édouard wrote, “It’s an incentive! This way, all the money will arrive by July 14. The next day we do a bunk.”

  On the following page, elegantly framed, was a brief clarification.

  All of our designs can be supplied

  in chased and patinated bronze or

  in chased, bronzed cast iron.

  These noble raw materials impart a classic, sophisticated character to the memorials,

  one that perfectly epitomizes

  the incomparable French soldier

  or any of the other motifs

  extolling the courage of our fallen heroes.

  The workmanship is guaranteed of impeccable quality

  and will last indefinitely subject to routine

  maintenance every five or six years.

  Only the plinth,

  easily fashioned by a reputable stonemason,

  remains at the expense of the buyer.

  The catalog of designs followed, seen in front elevation, in profile or in perspective, with details in the margins of the dimensions and the various possible heights and widths: “The Leavetaking,” “Charge!,” “The Dead Arise,” “A Poilu Dies in Defense of the Flag,” “Brothers in Arms,” “France Mourns Her Heroes,” “Le Coq Gaulois Trampling a Boche Helmet,” “Victory!,” etc.

  Aside from three pinchbeck pieces for those with very limited budgets (Croix de Guerre, 930 francs, “Funerary Torch,” 840 francs, and “Bust of a Poilu,” 1,500 francs), the memorials ranged in price from 6,000 to 33,000 francs.

  At the end of the catalog, there was a further explanation.

  Patriotic Memory is unable to accept inquiries by telephone, however all written inquires will receive a prompt and timely response.

  In view of the significant discount offered, all orders should be accompanied by a down payment in the amount of 50% of the total, payable to Patriotic Memory.

  Allowing for the discount of32 percent, each order should, in theory, bring in between 3,000 and 11,000 francs. In theory. Unlike Albert, Édouard had no doubts about the matter and was slapping his thighs in glee. The jubilation of the one was proportionate to the apprehension of the other.

  With his injured leg, Édouard had not been able to carry the bundles of catalog upstairs. Assuming the thought had even occurred to him . . . This was the result of his upbringing, he had always had someone to fetch and carry for him. In this regard, the war had merely been a brief parenthesis. He gave an apologetic wave, his eyes twinkling, as though he could not be of help because of his nails, fluttering his hands as if to say, the polish . . . it’s not dry . . .

  “Fine,” Albert said, “I’ll deal with it.”

  He was not really angry, manual work and menial tasks gave him time to think. He made a series of trips up and down the stairs, conscientiously stacking the bundles at the far end of the room.

  Two weeks earlier, he had inserted a newspaper advertisement looking for staff. There were ten thousand envelopes to be addressed, all following the same formula:

  Hôtel de Ville

  name of town

  name of départment

 
They had drawn up the list using the Dictionnaire des communes, careful to exclude Paris and the immediately surrounding areas as being too close to the notional headquarters of the company. Better to target middling sized towns in the provinces. They offered fifteen centimes per address. With so much unemployment, it had not been difficult to recruit five people with elegant handwriting. Five women—Albert had thought this best, he felt they were less likely to ask questions. Or perhaps he was looking for an opportunity to meet women. They believed they were working for a master printer. Everything had to be done within ten days. A week earlier, he had visited them to deliver blank envelopes, ink, and nibpens and the very next day, having finished his shift at the bank, he set about collecting them; he had dug out his duffel bag from the war—it had seen some things, that bag.

  They would spend the evenings stuffing envelopes; Louise would help. The little girl had no idea what was going on but was eager to help. She was delighted by this new venture because it made her friend Édouard happy, that was clear from the increasingly colorful and outrageous masks, in a month or two they would be living in a fantasy world, Louise was enchanted

  Albert had noticed that she looked less and less like her mother, not physically—Albert had a poor eye for faces, he scarcely noticed whether people looked alike—but the sadness etched into Mme Belmont’s face as she gazed out of her window was no longer mirrored in Louise’s. She was like an insect emerging from a chrysalis, growing prettier and prettier. Albert would sometimes secretly watch her, there was a grace about her that almost moved him to tears. Mme Maillard had always said, “If you left him to his own devices, Albert would spend his whole life crying; I might as well have had a daughter for all the difference it makes.”

  Albert took the envelopes to the post office on the rue du Louvre to ensure the frank mark corresponded to their official address. It required a number of trips over several days.

  Then the wait began.

  Albert was eager for the first payments to arrive. He sounded almost prepared to grab the first few hundred francs and abscond. Édouard had a rather different opinion on the matter. As far as he was concerned, there would be no absconding before they had a million.

  “A million?” Albert had shrieked, “You’re completely insane!”

  They began to argue over what constituted a sufficient profit, as though neither now doubted that the plan would succeed—something that was far from certain. Édouard believed success was guaranteed. Inevitable, he had written in big letters. Albert, having taken on a cripple outlawed from society, stolen twelve thousand francs from his employer, and set up a scheme that could warrant him a death sentence or life in prison, had no choice but to pretend he believed in success. He was already preparing to leave, he spent whole evenings poring over timetables for trains to Le Havre, Bordeaux, Nantes, or Marseille, depending on whether he was planning to take a boat to Tunis, Algiers, Saigon, or Casablanca.

  Édouard carried on working.

  Having created the Patriotic Memory catalog, he had been wondering what a real Jules d’Épremont would do while waiting for responses to his commercial proposition.

  The answer had come to him out of the blue: he would submit bids.

  Several large towns with the financial means to avoid buying mass-produced monuments were inviting bids from artists for original memorials. The newspapers had published several such invitations for works with budgets ranging from eighty to a hundred and even a hundred and fifty thousand francs, but the juiciest and, to Édouard, the most tempting proposition was from the very arrondissement where he had been born, which was offering the winning artist a budget of some two hundred thousand francs. So he had decided to kill time by working on the proposal that Jules d’Épremont would send to the selection committee, a large triptych entitled Gratitude: on one side, “France Leading Her Troops to War,” on the other “Valliant Soldiers Attacking the Enemy,” these scenes flanking a central panel depicting “Victory Crowning the Children Who Died for their Country,” a vast allegorical frieze in which a woman in long, flowing robes stretched out her right hand to crown a triumphant poilu while looking upon a lifeless soldier with the tragic, inconsolable gaze of a mater dolorosa.

  As he put the finishing touches on the principal design, paying particular attention to the perspective since it would form the cover of his application, Édouard chuckled.

  “A turkey!” Albert laughed as he watched his friend work, “I swear, you cluck like a turkey.”

  Édouard laughed all the more and bent eagerly over his sketch.

  28

  Général Morieux looked two hundred years older. Take from a military man the war that gives him a reason to live and the vigor of a man half his age and you are left with an aging fossil. Physically, all that remained was a paunch and a pair of whiskers, a flabby, unfeeling mass that slept most of the time. The only problem was, he snored. He would flop into the nearest armchair with a sigh that sounded like a death rattle and five minute later his belly was rising and falling like a Graf Zeppelin, his mustache quivering when he inhaled, his jowls shuddering when he exhaled; it could go on for hours. There was something primordial, something daunting, about this listless magma of flesh, and indeed no one dared to wake him. Some were reluctant even to come near.

  Since his demobilization, he had been appointed to countless commissions, subcommittees, committees. He was always first to arrive, panting and perspiring if the meeting was being held upstairs, then he would slump in a chair, responding to greetings with a churlish grunt or a nod, then doze off and begin to snort. Someone would shake him gently when it came time to vote, what do you think, général, m’yess, yes, of course, of course, I agree, rheumy eyes watering, of course, of course, face flushed scarlet, lips trembling, eyes wild, just getting him to sign something was an ordeal. Attempts were made to get rid of him, but the minister insisted on keeping Général Morieux. Sometimes the irritating, ineffectual old fogey had inadvertent flashes of insight. One such time occurred when he heard—it was early April and the général was suffering from hay fever, something that provoked stentorian sneezes, he even managed to sneeze while asleep, like a dormant volcano—when he heard, between two snores, that his grandson Ferdinand Morieux had run into some worrying problems. Général Morieux had no respect for anyone below his rank. Although he considered his grandson, who had failed to pursue a glorious career in the army, an inferior, depraved creature, the young man still bore the name Morieux, something about which the général cared, being greatly concerned with posterity. His fondest wish? His photograph in the Petit Larousse illustré, a dream that would not survive the slightest blot upon the family name.

  “What? What? What?” He roused himself with a start.

  It had to repeated loudly so he could hear. Something to do with Pradelle & Cie, a company in which Ferdinand was a shareholder. I’m sure you remember, they explained, the company the government entrusted with transporting the bodies of dead soldiers to the new war graves.

  “What are you . . . ? Bodies? Dead soldiers?”

  He tried desperately to focus his attention on this information for the sake of Ferdinand; with some difficulty his brain managed to create a mental map of the problem into which he slotted the words Ferdinand, dead soldiers, corpses, graves, anomalies, affair; for him, this was a considerable effort. In peacetime, he struggled to understand things. His aide-de-camp, a second lieutenant as frisky as a thoroughbred, looked at him and sighed like an irritated and impatient nurse. Then he took it upon himself to explain. Your grandson Ferdinand is a shareholder in Pradelle & Cie. Granted, all he does is collect his dividends, but if the company were to be caught up in a scandal, your name would be mentioned, your grandson would be vulnerable, your name would be tarnished. The général’s eyes grew wide like a startled bird’s, hell, shit, the prospects of appearing in the Petit Larousse looked grim. The général seethed with indignation; he even decided to get up from his chair.

  He gripped the
arms of the chair and sat up, angry and exasperated. He had won the war, for Christ’s sake; surely he was entitled to a bit of damn peace!

  M. Péricourt woke up exhausted and went to bed exhausted. I’m flagging, he thought. He continued to work, to arrive promptly at his meetings, to give orders, but he was only going through the motions. Before going to join his daughter, he took Édouard’s sketchpad from his pocket and slipped it into his desk drawer. He often carried it with him, though he never opened it in front of others. He knew every page by heart. Carrying it around like this, the book was bound to get damaged; he needed to do something to protect it, perhaps have it properly bound; having never had to deal with practical matters, he felt utterly at a loss. There was Madeleine, of course, but her mind was on other things . . . M. Péricourt felt terribly alone. He closed the drawer, left the study and went to join his daughter. What had he done that his life had come to this? He was a man who had inspired nothing but fear and as a result, he had no friends; he had only acquaintances. And Madeleine. But that was not the same; a man cannot speak candidly to his daughter. Besides, now that she was . . . in a delicate condition. More than once, he had tried to recall the time when he had been an expectant father, but in vain. He was astonished at how few memories he was able to recollect. At work, his memory was legendary, he could quote every word of a board meeting at some company he had taken over fifteen years ago, but about his family he could remember nothing, or almost nothing. Though God knew how much family mattered to him. And not just now that his son was dead. His family was the very reason he worked so hard, took so much trouble. So they would be safe. So they would have . . . all these things. And yet his memories of family occasions were so faint that they all seemed the same. The Christmas dinners, the Easter celebrations, the birthdays seemed like a single event repeated over and over; some minor details changed; there were the Christmases before his wife had died and those after, Sundays before the war and Sundays now. But all things considered, the differences were slight. And so he had no memory of his wife’s confinements. Four, he seemed to remember, though here again they all merged into one, but whether it was one of those that had gone to term or one that had come to nothing, he would have been unable to say. Now and then, by chance coincidence, a random image flickered in his mind. As when Madeleine sat with her hands clasped over her now swollen belly, and he remembered seeing his wife in that selfsame pose. He felt happy, almost proud; it did not occur to him that all pregnant women look a little alike and so he decided to consider this fleeting recollection a victory, proof that he had a heart, that he had family feelings. And because he had a heart, he was loath to burden his daughter with his worries. In her condition. He would have liked to do as he always did, to take it all upon himself, but that was no longer possible; in fact he had already waited too long.