Where I Left My Soul

by Jérôme Ferrari

  (You took him from me, Andreani, you took him from me.)

  How could he ever atone for his naivety, his abysmal stupidity, the utter inanity of his optimistic presumptions? He had failed to take on board that brazen impudence now reigns supreme, and a lie no longer needs to clothe itself in the attire of plausibility, it suffices to proclaim, with a complicit wink of an eye, “Tarik Hadj Nacer has committed suicide in his cell,” in contempt of all the evidence, and with all the more indifference over being believed because the abject fear that has taken hold of men has finally caused them to love untruth, oh yes, they love it and long for it with all the strength of their slavish souls, but if the most shameless and cool cynicism is also added to this, their adoration knows no bounds and Capitaine Degorce has taken nothing on board, seen nothing, understood nothing: all he is left with is the wretched consolation of not having intended this to happen.

  (But that’s the fault, not the excuse. The fault.)

  He would like to telephone the colonel and tell him he is nothing but a base murderer, but he cannot because he, too, is a murderer. He knows one thing for certain: what counts is what he has done, not what he intended and he paces along the corridors, the electric light hurts his eyes, his legs are heavy, and when he finds Moreau he takes his arm and says to him very softly, looking him in the eye: “He’s gone, Moreau. They took him from me.”

  (I handed him over, it was me.)

  “Now then, mon capitaine,” says Moreau, swiftly leading him into the kitchen. “Come in here and sit down. Do you want some water?”

  Capitaine Degorce lets himself sink onto a chair.

  “You know, don’t you? You know what they’ve done?”

  “Yes, mon capitaine. Everyone knows.”

  Capitaine Degorce passes a hand over his face. He calms down.

  “It’s not the way, Moreau,” he says sadly. “No, it’s not the way for us to be fighting a war. Not us.”

  “This war’s a filthy business, mon capitaine,” Moreau replies genially. “You know that as well as me.”

  “Maybe I didn’t know.”

  The adjudant-chef offers him a glass of water. He refuses it with a gesture.

  “Order me a vehicle.”

  *

  The driver sets him down in front of Notre-Dame d’Afrique. Throughout the journey he has been imagining the coolness of the basilica, the smells of incense and the damp wood of the confessional and the attentive presence of the priest, on the other side of the grille, but he remains standing on the cathedral steps, his beret in his hand, he sees the figure of Christ on the cross behind the altar, the votive tablets, old ladies nod to him in greeting and he cannot move another inch forward. He has the feeling that if he takes a step forward an invisible hand will drive him away, that the host will burn his mouth like acid. God wants no truck with him. He puts his beret on again and walks further along the square. A light mist hangs over the sea and he hears the sound of the waves breaking against the rocks at Saint-Eugène lower down. All he has failed to achieve can never come to fruition now and he suffers a terrible grief from this. In the distance, in the fiercely barricaded Casbah the muezzin is giving the call to the great Friday prayers, when vast paradises are opened up to the souls of martyrs, and this is what the good fortune Tahar spoke of amounts to, knowing well that he was to die, Capitaine Degorce understands this only now at this moment, and is distressed to think that, knowing it, Tahar had not turned to smile at him one last time. But why should he have smiled at the man who was handing him over to his executioners?

  (I did not know, Lord, I did not know.)

  “Take me back to El-Biar.”

  The vehicle drives along the sunlit streets and again he pictures himself the night before, sitting close to Tahar, but this time he does not remain unmoving, he gets up without a word, undoes his bonds and takes him by the arm, leads him through the labyrinth of silent corridors to the door open upon a night lit by a slender crescent moon, gently he pushes Tahar towards the brilliance of the moon before closing the door and savouring a new-found peace. He could have done that several hours ago, he could have done it: that is how Pilate, the Procurator of Judaea, must have mused, when the storm of the crucifixion was already rending the Jerusalem sky.

  (And I crave untruth myself, I revel in it. No, oh no, I wouldn’t have done it, even if I’d known. I wouldn’t have done it. I have the power, and power crushes me, I can do nothing. I have no right to demand explanations. I don’t even have a right to regrets.)

  In his office he looks at the photograph of Tahar on the organization chart, he has an impulse to murmur words to excuse himself, but the obscenity of this repels him and his lips remain closed. It is too late. Everything has been said. He picks up his mail. There is only a single letter this morning, from Jeanne-Marie, and he knows he will not be able to open it. He tears it up and tosses the pieces into the waste paper basket. Any word of tenderness would be intolerable. Gilded clouds pass in the sky and he follows them with his eyes through the window. He has the feeling that these are all the happy memories of his life which he has just torn into pieces, as if he had become a man for whom even happy memories are now forbidden and he subsides under the weight of an appalling nostalgia. The rocky pinnacles of Piana tower up in the setting sun and Claudie is playing with Jacques on the terrace of the hotel, but a sickly yellow discolours the sky, even creeping into his memory and he will never again recover its luminous clarity.

  (I am a fog, a sickly sweet rottenness that pervades everything. I am the one corrupting the colours of the creation. I secrete my poison into the world and beauty turns away from me.)

  He used to love beauty so much, with such a fervent love – the sombre beauty of ritual language, the dazzling beauty of mathematics that illuminated his years of study. After two weeks of lessons Charles Lézieux had asked him to take a walk with him after school and told him, while they walked beside the river Doubs, and as if he were almost vexed to have to make this admission, that he was exceptionally talented. And he was. Success cost him no effort, as if he had developed a specific sense, an infallible geometrical intuition which the great majority of his fellow pupils lacked and which enabled him to perceive at once, in a clear light, what the others could only discover after long periods of laborious calculation. For him proofs only confirmed what he had already sensed in advance and he always took the trouble to make them extremely elegant, pure, concise and luminous, for he knew that truth and beauty should be revealed together and that one without the other is worthless. Mathematics opened up an eternal, unchanging, infinite world, without it being necessary to wait for the Day of Judgement. He possessed the key to this world which brought him closer to God and he thought that a life spent exploring it would be perfect. The Grandes Ecoles for engineers did not interest him, to the great satisfaction of Lézieux, who shared his contempt for everything that was basely practical and told him, as they walked side by side, that he was certain he would see him gaining admission to the Ecole Normale Supérieure. But eternity is not sheltered from the world’s suffering. The war continued and André Degorce had an increasingly urgent feeling that his blissfully blind existence was a sin. Something evil had spread abroad and this thing, not content with suppressing life, also had to make it shameful and dirty: soon there would be no pathway leading up towards infinite beauty and the souls of men would wither so utterly that they would no longer even be able to regret this. For weeks he had been talking to Lézieux about his desire to make himself useful, but the latter would invariably deflect the conversation to the works of Cantor or the theory of Hilbert spaces, until the day came when he replied that he could give André an opportunity to be useful. The Allies had landed in Normandy and Lézieux doubtless believed his pupil would soon be safe from reprisals. Less than a month later, just before the door to the flat where they were due to meet was broken down, the rapid clatter of footsteps on the staircase froze André’s heart and, on his return from Buchenwald, a life dedicate
d to mathematics had ceased to be conceivable. He had never felt he had a warlike temperament, discipline did not appeal to him and he had no taste for action, but a military career imposed itself upon him as an absolute necessity. The possibility of beauty must be preserved, that was all that mattered, even though he himself must turn away from it and renounce the enjoyment of it.

  (And that’s what I’ve done with my life.)

  Today he is the one who comes running up the staircase and the sound of his malevolent footsteps perpetuates the terror and death he had intended to fight. He has brought into the world all that he intended to banish from it. None of the goals he once pursued can absolve him of this. It is impossible to understand what has happened. He has lost everything. His only contact with mathematics comes down to the sordid statistical calculations which pepper his confidential reports. He has spoiled everything that was offered to him, exhausted God’s mercy and his soul lies somewhere, very far behind him.

  *

  Robert Clément looks terrible. He cannot have been able to get a wink of sleep all night. His eyes are sunken and gleaming. A little acne spot has appeared at the corner of his mouth, just under his moustache. His breathing is very heavy. Capitaine Degorce is surprised that just one night should have put him in such a state. He knows he will talk soon. He squats beside him.

  “You see, the nights are difficult,” he says and his tone is exactly the same as the previous day, serene and courteous, as if nothing had happened. “Suppose we put an end to all this?”

  “I’ve nothing to say to you,” Clément replies. “How many times do I have to tell you?”

  “I’ve no idea!” says Capitaine Degorce in surprise. “You can tell me as often as you like! I know it’s not true, that’s the only thing that matters.”

  He turns to Moreau and Febvay. “Our friend doesn’t look too good, does he? It’s really stupid to be as stubborn as this, don’t you agree?”

  “Agreed, mon capitaine, it’s bloody stupid.”

  The harkis agree in a similar vein.

  “Do you hear, Monsieur Clément? Your attitude produces unanimity it seems. Don’t you understand that you’re going to get tired before we do?”

  Clément looks down for a moment before signalling to Capitaine Degorce, who leans towards him. Clément spits in his face again.

  “I shan’t get tired. Not as long as I can spit in the face of a fascist bastard like you.”

  Capitaine Degorce was mistaken. What he took for weariness and despair was simply hatred, a terrible hatred further nourished by a night of solitude and sleeplessness. He wipes his face with a handkerchief and goes to fetch a glass of water. His heart is beating fast. The word “fascist” is intolerable. He thinks again of Tahar, he pictures his cold corpse, the terrible rictus from the hanging, while Clément is alive and staring at him arrogantly, Clément, a usurper of sufferings that are not his own, who imagines his treason makes him a hero. Clément’s mind is a monolith, an impregnable citadel protected by walls of certainty. He will not talk.

  (Son of a bitch.)

  The sound of the glass breaking makes the soldiers start. Capitaine Degorce has flung it against the wall without saying a word and moves towards Clément, seizing him by the collar before giving him a headbutt. The capitaine unties him from his chair and throws him across the table, he bangs his head against the solid wood several times, Clément begins groaning, blood flows from his broken nose, the capitaine rips the buttons off his trousers and begins to slide them down his legs. Clément tries to defend himself, he lashes out violently, heaving his back off the table, but the capitaine thrusts his elbow into his stomach, leaning on it with all his weight, and Clément begins to vomit. A harki holds his shoulders down on the table while Capitaine Degorce finishes removing his trousers and rips his underpants. Then he puts his hands under Clément’s legs and bends his legs back onto his chest in the position of a baby being changed.

  “Febvay, your knife. Hold his legs.”

  With one hand Capitaine Degorce grabs Clément’s genitals and presses them back onto his belly. He holds the ice cold point of the knife against his anus. Clément utters a brief piercing cry. The capitaine pushes the blade in half a centimetre until a thin trickle of warm blood runs down between his white buttocks. Clément howls.

  “There’s nothing wrong with you, do you understand?” the capitaine says in a hoarse, rasping voice. “There’s nothing wrong with you, you filthy swine. You just need to relax because if you don’t, you’ll do yourself an injury. Can you relax, do you think? Relax!”

  Somewhere invisible dykes have been swept away by the fury of a fierce torrent, welling up from a bottomless abyss, the torrent is in spate, nothing can stop it, it sweeps away the grief, the tormenting doubts, and Capitaine Degorce surrenders himself to the delights of the power racing through him and setting him free, a veil has fallen from his eyes, he feels his heart beating fit to burst in every part of his awakened body, at the corners of his mouth, in his belly, in his fingertips, in the palm of the hand holding the quivering dagger, and he leans over Clément to inhale the sweet, heady smell of his fear. The hatred has vanished. At one blow Capitaine Degorce has robbed him of the hatred that animated him and caused him to hold up and now he spits back in Clément’s face and with unspeakable pleasure watches him caving in.

  “Relax,” he whispers softly. “Relax.”

  Clément tries to control his breathing and the involuntary contractions of his muscles. He closes his eyes with a groan. His limbs shake.

  Clément is still. Tears flow from his eyelids and he sniffs noisily.

  “I don’t know what state you’ll be in by the end of this interrogation. That depends on you. I’m going to ask you some questions. Not many. If you don’t answer, or if you give me an answer I don’t like, I shall push the knife in a little further, do you understand? I shall push it in like this.”

  He thrusts the blade in an extra half-centimetre. Clément opens his eyes wildly and begins emitting piercing yells, his body contracts and he howls still louder. The harki leans on his shoulders and Febvay is almost stretched out across his legs.

  “There, there, there …”

  A gentle lullaby. Febvay has his eyes half closed. The pink tip of his tongue shows between his lips.

  “I want you to understand that I’m no longer joking,” says Capitaine Degorce when Clément has again gained control of himself. “Begin now.”

  Clément gives names. Two Algerians and two French communist militants, a garage mechanic and a teacher. Capitaine Degorce removes the dagger and holds it close to Clément’s eyes.

  “A centimetre, you see, barely a centimetre. You’re not worth anything, really, are you? Nothing at all. You’d have done better to listen to me. It’s so easy to set things to rights, you see.”

  He turns to Moreau.

  “Go and find those men, Moreau. And make them talk to me. The Frenchmen as well as the others. More than the others, the swine. Understood? I don’t care about the publicity. And don’t forget to let them know who gave us their names.”

  Clément sobs. Capitaine Degorce observes him with disgust. And he recognizes the same disgust in Febvay’s eyes and Moreau’s and those of the harkis, as well as admiration, the shifty gleam of connivance. There is saliva on the table and blood. Clément has turned on his side, his head cradled in his arms. His shrivelled penis dangles idiotically towards the table beneath the tuft of pubic hair. His thin legs, speckled with russet hairs, tremble convulsively. His feet are very white and delicate, the feet of a girl, but the nails are too long, irregular, and one of his little toes is dark, almost black. The storm has passed. All that remains is the ruins of a wasted landscape, and, amid the ruins, Clément’s body, this mysterious and repellent victim’s body. Capitaine Degorce feels nauseous.

  “Show them how to live, Moreau,” he nonetheless remarks.

  *

  He has completed the organization chart, spoken on the telephone to the colon
el and acquiesced respectfully in all his lies. All desire for revolt has left him. He is resigned to his infamy and he only wants one thing now: to be finished as quickly as possible with the mission that keeps him here. He has no idea what awaits him after this, but it is all a matter of indifference. He paces along the corridors, goes from one interrogation room to another, his eyes hardly settle on the faces of the Arabs, and those of the garage mechanic and the teacher, their expressions do not count, they mean nothing. These faces are theatrical masks and pain will cause them to shatter in pieces. A long lament arises somewhere in the building.