The Red Collar

by Jean-Christophe Rufin

  “Did you know him, this Morlac, before he stirred up this commotion?”

  “By sight, like anyone else,” Gabarre said and then added knowingly, “strange fellow.”

  “In what way strange?”

  “I couldn’t put it into words, sir. He was someone you never really saw. He had no friends, no family. When he came home from war, the mayor arranged a ceremony for the troops. He came, sat alone in his corner, drinking, and then left without saying anything to anyone. The town clerk was convinced he’d made off with some silver cutlery. They thought about carrying out a search. In the end, bearing in mind his services to the country at the front, they abandoned the idea. But he did it almost openly, as if he already wanted to create a scandal then.”

  “Do you know Valentine, the mother of his child?”

  Gabarre had relaxed slightly. He’d finished his glass of beer, and the major gestured to the waiter to bring another.

  “She’s a whole other story. We have an eye on her.”

  “I thought she never left her house. I went to see her. She lives practically in the middle of the woods.”

  “She doesn’t go out but there are people who pay her visits.”

  “What sort of people?”

  The police officer leaned forward and glanced around warily.

  “Workmen, people on the run,” he slipped the words out in a muffled voice. “She thinks we don’t know. That’s deliberate, to keep them coming. But we’re actually watching them, and when they leave her we pounce on them.”

  He gave a sly smile like a poacher revealing where he’s set his traps.

  “Do you know her family?” he asked Lantier, sure of the effect this would have.

  As he expected, Lantier looked surprised.

  “I thought she had no family left. They all died of disease. She told me so herself.”

  “They may well be dead, but they once lived,” countered Gabarre, proud of his logic.

  “I’m perfectly prepared to believe that. And so?”

  “So she didn’t tell you who her father was.”

  “No.”

  “She doesn’t brag about it. You see, her father was a German Jew, on close terms with that Rosa Luxembourg who was assassinated in Berlin last winter. He was a member of the Workers’ International. He was an agitator and a rabid pacifist. He was arrested and died in prison in Angers. Apparently he had TB.”

  “And her mother?”

  “She was a local girl. Her parents sent her to Paris to train as a seamstress in one of the large stores. That’s where she met the émigré. She fell madly in love with him and they were married. She came from a good family, mind you, livestock merchants who owned land in the area. She inherited a small share of it but most of it went to her brothers. Luckily for her, that was after her husband had died, because he would have made her sell the lot to raise money for the cause.”

  With the second glass of beer, the police sergeant had completely relaxed. Lantier was surprised to find him so sprightly of mind and so well informed. He’d guessed he might be playing his cards close to his chest, but not to this extent.

  “The poor woman never benefited from her inheritance,” Gabarre went on. “She was taken just after by an epidemic, and her older daughter along with her. All that was left was this Valentine who apparently looks exactly like her father, and is just as fanatical as he was.”

  “She doesn’t look it, though.”

  But as he said this, Lantier suddenly remembered the girl’s hard eyes and the way she talked about the war.

  “She’s crafty, that one. She was taken in by an aunt of her mother’s, a half-feral creature who’d set up home in that back of beyond place so she didn’t have to see anyone. She must have taught her her witch’s spells.”

  “Do you know why Morlac didn’t go back to her after the war?”

  The police officer shrugged.

  “Can anyone work out what people like that are thinking? They probably had a fight.”

  “Did she meet someone else?”

  “Like I said, plenty of people go through there. The revolutionaries use her house as a hideout for guys who’re in trouble with the police. As for knowing whether she had something going with one of them, I couldn’t tell you.”

  It was now completely dark. The waiter had lit oil lamps around the tables, and two gas lamps, one on either side of the square, cast a mauve light on the paving stones. Lantier looked at his watch. It was time he went back to the hotel, if he hoped to find some supper there.

  “Would you like to make yourself useful, sergeant?”

  Gabarre suddenly remembered who he was talking to. He sat up and said a loud, “Yes, sir.”

  “Right, well, try to find out whether Morlac has seen his son since he’s been home.”

  “It won’t be very easy, but . . . ”

  “I’m counting on you. Come and see me when you can, if you find anything.”

  Lantier left a few coins on the table and stood up. The police sergeant wanted to give him a military salute, but the major shook his hand.

  As he walked back to the hotel, he thought he heard the dog’s barking carried on the wind from time to time. But it was weak and very irregular.

  CHAPTER VI

  Valentine didn’t want to go inside. She was standing by the door to the hotel. Although he was of no use to anyone before he’d had his coffee, Lantier had no trouble recognizing her. He wasn’t expecting her to visit, at least not so soon and not so early in the morning. But she must have been thinking all night, not had a moment’s sleep, and now here she was, her face unreadable, her mind made up.

  “Good morning, Valentine,” he said, coming out onto the doorstep. “Come in and have some coffee.”

  She was carrying a basket with both hands, holding it at arm’s length, with an embarrassed expression. Lantier thought of her father, the political agitator, whom Gabarre said she resembled. He was most likely the same sort of character, capable of setting fire to a bourgeois house but intimidated by an invitation to enter one. In the end he persuaded her and she went inside.

  As he followed her along the hotel’s corridors, with their painted wallpaper and pictures on the walls, he grasped what held her back. At home, she was in keeping with her surroundings. Here, her coarse dress and wooden clogs made her look like a slattern.

  He showed her to the back of the building, onto a small terrace where there were some garden chairs. She was less out of place in this outdoor setting than in the lounges with their decorative moldings.

  He ordered a coffee. She didn’t want anything. This refusal seemed to demonstrate a determination not to accept anything from anyone she considered her enemy. Had it been more moderate, this principle might have seemed respectable and even formidable. Pushed to extremes and applied to the most insignificant things, such as a cup of coffee, there was something laughable and puerile about it.

  She’d put her basket on the ground and was pretending to rifle through it, just to have something to do. When the serving girl had brought Lantier’s coffee and they were left alone, she glowered at Lantier and, with no preamble, cut straight to, “Actually, I do want to see him. And I want him to know.”

  “I’ve suggested it to him but . . . ”

  “That’s for sure, he’ll say no. But you mustn’t just ‘suggest’ it.”

  She imitated the fluty way Lantier had said the word. This intonation alone was a gauge of the violent feelings that gripped her at the thought of the army.

  “What exactly would you like me to say to him?”

  “That I have to see him. It has to happen. And I want to.”

  “Leave it with me. I’ll come to your house to bring you the answer myself if he changes his mind.”

  “That won’t be necessary.”

  “Why not?”

 
“I’ll stay in town in the meantime.”

  Lantier showed his surprise with one raised eyebrow.

  “There’s a woman I know who sells vegetables next to me in the market. She’ll put me up for as long as it takes. She lives behind the covered market.”

  “Very well.”

  “Is he allowed letters?”

  “Yes, but the jailer opens them and reads them.”

  “In that case, I’d rather speak,” she hissed.

  She had risen to her feet and picked up her basket, resting it on her hip like a lavender girl.

  “Tell him that when he came back he got things wrong. The man was a comrade.”

  “Do you mean that he . . . ”

  “It’s not you I’m talking to, but him. And him alone.”

  She was clearly distressed and her emotion sat awkwardly with the restraint she imposed on herself. She was better off slipping away. She barely said goodbye to Lantier, and he made no effort to keep her there.

  * * *

  When he arrived at the prison to take Morlac’s final confession, the investigating officer was surprised by the silence in the square. There was no sign of Wilhelm and he couldn’t be heard. Lantier asked Dujeux what had happened to the dog.

  “He was at the end of his tether from all that barking. He eventually stopped during the night. In the moonlight I could make him out lying flat out over there. I thought he’d died. To be absolutely honest, I wouldn’t have minded. But the nursing assistant told me what had happened when she brought our food.”

  “Where is he? You know I need that dog for my investigation. He’s a contributory factor in the offense, a sort of accomplice or an exhibit.”

  “He’s over there, in one of the houses. You see the little street that leads off at an angle from the square? It’s there, on the ground floor. The first door.”

  “Have you been in there?”

  “I’m not allowed to leave my post.”

  “True. In that case, I shall go myself.”

  As he cut across the square, Lantier wondered why he’d invented the story about an exhibit. Morlac could easily be judged at a court-martial without producing the dog. It was all in the policemen’s statement, and his own report of his investigation would complement that. The truth was far more stupid. He wanted to see the dog. He took a personal interest in what happened to him. This thought made him smile, but he still didn’t turn back.

  The house Dujeux had pointed out was a one-story cottage shoehorned between two buildings. It was a vestige of what had once been a neighborhood of simple hovels, when the town wasn’t much more than a village made up of a row of little single-story houses. There was a stone frame around the door. Clumsily engraved on the lintel and now nearly worn away was the date 1778.

  Lantier rapped the bronze knocker, which was shaped like a hand. A woman’s voice called from inside straightaway, telling him to come in. He stepped into a dark hallway that opened onto a tiny living room. The mustiness of rotting carpets mingled with a smell of cold cooking fat encrusted in the curtains and the fabric covering the armchairs. In this poky place, the height of summer was merely a digression, soon forgotten. In normal weather, in other words all year round, the stale air would never be replaced. It was doubtful whether the windows still opened.

  There was so much furniture it was only just possible to move. An oval pedestal table stood in the center of the room. Between this and the marble fireplace with its cracked mantelpiece, they’d managed to squeeze an overly large sofa. Wilhelm was lying there on a sheet that had been hastily thrown over it to protect the embroidery.

  Against that pale pink background he really did look in bad shape. In the bright light on the square Lantier hadn’t fully assessed how thin the animal was. His ribs stood out, his stomach was hollow, and he made a whistling sound from deep inside with every breath. His dull, worn coat left his scars plain to see. He blinked slowly, exhausted, and didn’t even move his head when the major came over to pet him.

  “Look at the state he’s got himself into! Poor creature . . . ” said an old woman, holding onto the furniture as she came over. She was wearing a wig which she didn’t bother to secure so it slid over to one side like a beret.

  “I’ve fed him every night. Other neighbors took him water to drink. But with this heat, barking like that nonstop, it’s killed him.”

  Lantier nodded. He sat on the edge of the sofa and stroked the dog’s neck as he had out on the square. Wilhelm closed his eyes, and his breathing slowed.

  “You’re the veterinarian then, are you? Mister Paul must have called you. He said he would.”

  “No. I’m not a veterinarian, unfortunately.”

  He was afraid she would ask what he was doing there but she was heading back to the kitchen, carrying on with her previous train of thought: “Mind you, he doesn’t need a veterinarian. We all know what the poor creature needs. Some shade, some food and some water. That’s all.”

  “Are you going to keep him here?”

  “So long as he wants to stay, yes. But when he’s better I’ll bet he’ll go and howl outside the prison again, if they haven’t freed his master.”

  She was coming back into the room carrying a sort of pitcher in cracked enamel.

  “Those military bastards!” she grumbled.

  Lantier gave a start. Was she speaking to him? How should he reply? When he saw her at closer quarters, though, he understood. She was holding onto the furniture to guide her because she was almost blind. One of her eyes was veiled by a whitish cloud, and the other peered permanently upwards. She definitely wouldn’t have noticed his uniform.

  “Do you know his master?” he asked.

  “Everyone knows him. He’s a local boy.”

  “What’s he done wrong?”

  Lantier was fascinated to find someone who didn’t know who he was, who would speak to him without having to stick to an official version.

  “Nothing. He’s only ever done good. He just told those butchers a few home truths. They obviously didn’t like it and they’re taking their revenge.”

  “The military?”

  “Of course, the whole lot of them. The generals, the politicians they serve and the ones who sell the cannons. All the people who sent our local boys to their deaths.”

  The old woman automatically turned her gaze toward a dresser that stood along one side of the room, between the window and the wall to the hallway. Three framed photographs had been placed there, the faces of three young boys with calm, inane expressions full of hope. The eldest couldn’t have been more than twenty-five. Beside them, in a larger frame, a crinkled photograph featured a man standing full-length, all done up in an engineer’s uniform.

  “My son and my three grandsons,” said the old woman, as if she could tell Lantier had turned to look at the pictures.

  “All . . . ”

  “Yes. And in the same year. 1915.”

  There was a brief silence, then the woman shuddered slightly to brush aside the emotion. She drove a rubber tube into Wilhelm’s mouth and lifted up the pitcher to pour the water. The dog swallowed noisily. He coughed and choked but let her carry on, as if he understood it was all for his own good.

  “And what would you do if they sentenced his master to death? Could you keep the dog here?”

  “Sentenced him to death! Oh, poor miserable soul! I should hope the good Lord won’t let a thing like that happen. For four years they came looking for our boys to kill them, but the war’s over now. What about the prefect and the police and all the big-shot draft dodgers who did well out of it? It’s about time they paid their dues. If they sentenced that boy to death it would be a terrible thing.”

  The dog had a violent bout of coughing, and water spilled from his mouth, spreading over the sheet.

  “Blast! I poured a bit too quickly. Easy, my beauty! Easy!�
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  She lowered the pitcher and withdrew the tube. All of a sudden a thought came to her, and turning her dead eyes to Lantier, she asked, “Anyway, who are you exactly?”

  He felt uncomfortable.

  “A friend.”

  “Of the dog’s?” she sniggered.

  “Of his master’s.”

  Afraid she would pursue this and he would have to lie, which could have regrettable consequences, he swiftly took his leave.

  “I must go, I’m so sorry. I’ll come by again. Take good care of him. And thank you. Thank you again.”

  The major left and as he closed the door he heard the old woman joking with dog:

  “He has some funny friends, that master of yours!”

  * * *

  Lantier hadn’t wasted too much time with this detour to the old woman’s house. When he reached the prison the abbey-church clock was just striking nine.

  He could tell at first glance that Morlac had been waiting for him. A radical change had taken place in the prisoner. He was no longer enduring the major’s interrogation, but looking forward to it.

  One of the charms of the military is that once an order has been given, it takes another order to abolish it. Lantier had said nothing to the contrary to Dujeux the day before, so the jailer led the defendant and his judge directly out to the courtyard at the back of the building, and closed the door to leave them to talk. From time to time he put his nose up to the square window in the door and came away reassured.

  This time Morlac steered the officer toward a stone bench which, happily, was in full sunlight.

  “I warn you, this is going to take quite a long time today.”

  “I’ve plenty of time.”

  The cool of the night stayed trapped in the confined space of that courtyard as it would in the bottom of a well, and the sunlight that reached them was like a warm caress.

  “I’ve told you about 1916,” said Morlac, “the year I arrived on the eastern front. A year of pointless suffering. Failed offensives, and that winter coming in on top of everything else, freezing up in those mountains, and the bickering between all the different people who made up the Oriental Force. We could call them Allies ’til we were blue in the face, it didn’t fool anyone. They each had their own aims. With the English it was about the gateway to India. They did as little as possible in Salonika and, if we’d listened to them, we’d have sent everyone to Egypt. The Italians were only interested in Albania. The Greeks kept changing their minds, some wanted to support the Germans, and some were in favor of the Allies. Basically, it was a shambles at top-brass level. It was even worse for the troops. In winter we froze, and in summer there was malaria and our failing stomachs.”