by Hugo Wilcken
‘Where is he?’
‘Waiting for you in his study.’
‘I’m just going to wash first. I’ll be down shortly.’
‘I will inform the commandant, monsieur.’
Back to his room, finally. There was his bag on his bed. It contained not much more than a change of clothes. A few books lay beside it. The language manual he’d borrowed from the commandant. The novel he’d started to read on the boat, and would now never finish. He didn’t like the sound of the commandant asking for him. He looked out of the window. His bedroom was on the river side; it wouldn’t be too difficult to snake down the wall, get to the river unseen. There was the problem of Mathilde. If he could be sure she was still in the folly, then that’s what he’d do. Manne opened his door: he wanted to check she wasn’t in her bedroom. The butler was on the landing, just standing there, not even pretending to be there for any other reason than to keep watch. Manne made as if he’d forgotten something, and retreated into his room. He only had a minute to act, before being locked into whatever the commandant had in mind for him.
The moment he’d found Leblanc’s letter, the very moment he’d paid off the butler … that was when he should have left, without further ado. He’d felt it at the time, but hadn’t acted upon the intuition. Even afterwards, even this morning in the folly, he’d been going to suggest to Mathilde that they leave at once, when instead he’d given her his pleading speech. A wave of fatalism washed through him. Manne opened the door again, and made his way past the butler towards the commandant’s study.
‘Hartfeld. Good of you to come. Please sit down.’
The commandant held up his hand as if inviting in an old friend. The faux bonhomie was the flimsiest of façades. He had a wild stare and his face was haggard and grey. Clearly, the commandant was only just holding everything together, the alcoholic shake barely under control.
‘Charles …’ The butler was there. He must have silently followed Manne down the stairs. ‘Please go and fetch Mr Hartfeld’s servant.’
‘Oui, mon commandant.’
The commandant now sat down heavily at his desk, next to the model of the camp.
‘What has my servant got to do with anything?’
The commandant seemed incapable of saying anything for the moment, and merely grinned maniacally. Moments later, Guépard arrived, the butler hovering behind. Manne tried and failed to catch his servant’s eye.
‘Ah, there you are. Now, I’d like you to repeat what you told me just now.’
‘Oui, monsieur.’ He was still avoiding Manne’s eye. ‘This morning, I see Mr Hartfeld. He walks across the garden. He goes to a small house in the jungle. I see him go there before. I follow him, just like you tell me. I see him at the small house. Then I see madame. Now she talks to him. I don’t hear what they say. They go into the small house. I go closer. I try to see them through the window. I try to see what they do. I see them kissing. Then I think they see me. So I go back.’
‘Merci.’
The commandant could hardly get the word out, such was the state he was in. Guépard stood there uncertainly, unsure whether he’d been dismissed or not. There was a bottle on the commandant’s desk. The commandant poured himself a glass of rum and drank it down. It seemed to calm him, but only for a moment.
‘Well then, Hartfeld. Have you anything to say?’
‘Whatever I might have to say, I’d prefer to say it in private. Guépard, could you go upstairs to my room and wait for me, please?’
Guépard didn’t move at first. Manne caught a nod from the commandant to Guépard, who then took off at a run.
‘Charles, I want you to go up to the camp. Find the captain-at-arms. Tell him to accompany you back here with two properly armed guards.’
‘Oui, mon commandant.’
Now the butler disappeared. The commandant opened a drawer in his desk and took out a service revolver. Such was the mad look in his eye that at first Manne thought the commandant was going to blow his brains out in front of Manne. Instead, he put the revolver in his lap.
‘Have you anything to say about what your servant just recounted?’
‘I don’t think so. Not about the uncorroborated testimony of a convict. I certainly don’t intend to say anything while threatened with a gun.’
‘It’s a precaution. I have no intention of doing you any harm. Please stay seated until the guards arrive.’
‘Are you putting me under arrest?’
The commandant fiddled with the revolver. ‘What were you doing with my wife?’
‘I can assure you there was nothing criminal involved. Nothing that might require my arrest. Under the circumstances, I think it would be appropriate if I got my bags now and left this house at once.’
‘Don’t you leave this room!’
The commandant was brandishing the gun and his grey face had flushed a dark purple. There was a long, heavy silence as they stared at each other. A mass of tiny tics and twitches had invaded the commandant’s body. Slowly he put the gun down again, back in his lap. Manne felt calm. He mentally calculated: it was a ten-minute walk up to camp. Ten minutes there, ten back, then probably a further ten minutes for the butler to find the captain-at-arms. It would be another half an hour before the guards arrived.
‘This is penal territory. I need no further authority to detain you. Even if I did, I already have it, since you’re here illegally.’
‘That’s not true. I have the permits from the governor’s office.’
‘You have papers for one Paul Hartfeld. That’s not your name, is it? It’s Jean Capgras. You served as an officer in the 101st regiment, B Company. You were reported as missing in action in 1917.’
Manne started. He wasn’t surprised that the commandant knew about him. The probable sequence of events flickered across his consciousness: Leblanc had remembered who he was, had made some telegram enquiries, and had quickly discovered Manne’s story. In retrospect, it seemed so inevitable that he wondered how he’d ever thought he might safely return to French territory. No, what had shocked him was to hear the name Capgras. To be sure, it was what was on his birth certificate. But he’d never used it, not even when small. He’d always taken his mother’s family name instead. And Capgras felt no more or less real than Hartfeld.
‘I had confirmation of that yesterday. And today I received the order to detain you. But do you know what? I actually had no intention of having you arrested. I was going to tell you about the warrant, and ask you to leave immediately.’
‘You can still do that. I’ll cross the river. You’ll never hear from me again.’
The commandant shook his head. ‘What did you do to my wife? Why? Why?’
He was waving the revolver again. Manne didn’t reply. Despite the revolver, despite the commandant’s building hysteria, Manne wasn’t yet worried for his life. He thought it unlikely that the commandant could hit him in the state he was in. He’d sent the butler away. At the house, there was only the commandant, his wife, Manne, perhaps the maid from the village. It even crossed his mind that the commandant wanted him to get away, and that this was some kind of elaborate suicide theatre. All that remained was to decide what to do, and to do it within the next fifteen minutes.
‘What do you intend to do with your wife?’
‘That’s my business!’ the commandant snapped.
He gulped down more rum. The sweat glistened on his hands, which could hardly hold the glass still enough for him to drink. He started raving again: ‘You think I’m a fool, don’t you? What did she tell you? What did she do for you? Was it the first time? Or were there times before? Is that it? Is that it?’
He let out a high-pitched laugh. Again, the silence, the staring. Something in what the commandant had said – or the way he’d said it – made Manne wonder whether the marriage had ever been consummated.
‘What will you do with me now?’
The commandant shrugged with drunken exaggeration: ‘The guards will take you back to cam
p. You’ll be escorted to Saint-Laurent tomorrow morning.’
‘And then?’
‘You’re a deserter, aren’t you? You’ll be sent to France. Or perhaps you’ll go before a military tribunal here. I don’t know.’
Manne tried one more time. ‘Let me leave now. I’ll disappear into the forest. I’ll be gone for good. But if I get sent back to Saint-Laurent, I’ll tell the authorities what’s happening up here. I’ll tell them you’re keeping your wife here against her will.’
‘Are you trying to blackmail me?’
‘Take it as you wish.’
‘You won’t get far with that.’ The commandant seemed to sober up. ‘What sort of nonsense has she been feeding you? Did she tell you that she spent eighteen months in a psychiatric ward? That she was released into my care? That the provisions were that she remain under my roof? You think I’m a fool. But it’s you she’s taken in with her delusions.’
‘Why did you take her passport from her?’
‘She tried to tear it up once when she was … but it doesn’t matter now. She’s not here against her will. In fact, it was she who insisted I take this post.’ The commandant waved uncertainly towards the cupboard. ‘I’ve told her that her papers are there when she wants them.’
As he gestured towards the cupboard, the commandant took his eye off his prisoner for a second. Manne saw his opportunity in an unthinking instant, leaping from his seat to launch himself blindly at the commandant. There was a blur of confused violence as Manne felt his hands grasping desperately at the commandant’s neck, then a brief image of the commandant’s astonished face before the chair overturned, followed by an ear-splitting noise. Something hit Manne in the head, an almighty knock that left him helpless and befuddled for a few seconds. He’d somersaulted over the commandant and now lay on the ground, face up. From above, tiny objects seemed to be raining down on him, slowly, pricking at him as they fell. It felt as though this continued for minutes on end, although afterwards he realised it obviously couldn’t have. The vision had a hallucinatory intensity to it and it took Manne a moment or two to understand what had happened. The two men had fallen onto the huge model of the camp, which had collapsed under their weight. The tiny objects were the scale buildings and figurines – the miniature convicts and guards – that had peopled the model camp, flung up as the trestle tables flipped over.
Gradually, the rest of the room came into focus. There was a little blood on his shirt, more on the floor. He found he could move his arms, and put his hand to his head, expecting it to be sticky. It wasn’t. The commandant was lying next to him, among the debris of the model, moving like a sick animal and groaning. Manne struggled to his feet, his head a little clearer. Now he realised that the blood on the floor was not his but the commandant’s, from a gently pulsating bullet wound to his wrist. Properly bound, it was unlikely to be fatal. For a second, Manne even considered staying to bandage the commandant’s wrist. But the commandant was probably conscious enough to know what to do; in any case, the guards would be here shortly.
Pity for the commandant flashed through him. Even though on the face of it Manne was in an infinitely worse position, he couldn’t repress the feeling that at least he had a chance. But the commandant? He had no chance. Manne cast a final glance over the room. With the model broken down the middle, the little buildings and figurines scattered over everything, it looked like a comic apocalypse. The commandant was feebly shaking his uninjured hand in Manne’s direction, and whispering something inaudible.
Upstairs, Manne thumped on Mathilde’s door. No answer. He tried the handle but the door was locked. He cried out her name a couple of times, banged at the door again. He was considering breaking it down, but then heard noises downstairs. The commandant getting up. Or perhaps the guards arriving. He crossed over the landing and opened the door to his own room.
‘Guépard!’
The boy was cowering in a corner, shaking violently.
‘Get out. Just get out!’
As he shouted, Manne was still blocking the doorway. A fury had stormed up in him at the sight of Guépard. If he’d had a knife in his hand at that very moment, he’d have used it, brought it across Guépard’s throat. But the fury passed through him as quickly as it had come. He stood away from the door.
‘Go to the commandant’s office. Go and see if he needs help.’
The boy darted out. Manne went to the window and opened it. Across the river, the far bank was quite lost in the midday heat haze. It left him with the impression of being at the edge of a vast ocean. He thought of the ocean crossings he’d made in his life. The countless ports he’d passed through. Always haunting the edge. That was what a port was, wasn’t it? An edge. The point at which civilisation dissolved into water, into nothing. He climbed out of the window, started scaling down the wall. He’d forgotten his bag, left sitting on the bed. It hardly mattered, though.
There was a short dash from the house to the river, the only moment of exposure. A low stretch of greenery separated the riverbank from the house and garden, allowing Manne to crawl slowly along the scrubby beach without being seen. But then about halfway along, his vision blurred. He was seeing double, and he had to sit down. It passed in a few seconds. The bang on the head, which at first he’d thought was a bullet. What actually must have happened was that he’d hit the edge of the model as he’d crashed into it. The second blow to his head in almost as many days. He got up and continued along the riverbank until he arrived at the little path that he knew led up to the folly.
The door was ajar; he pushed at it. No one inside. Only a few hours ago he’d been sitting there on the floor, Mathilde in front of him. Standing, dancing, the music still in his ears. And there was the jar that he’d found under the floorboards, that had contained the photographs. It was lying on its side, empty. Mathilde must have taken the photographs back with her. Manne dropped to his knees, pulled up the loose board and felt around. Nothing. No canvas bag. It wasn’t a shock: somehow he’d expected it. He’d offered it to Mathilde, after all. She was gone, and it was gone. All that was left to him now were the clothes he was wearing, and a few hundred francs in his back pocket. A confusion of emotions passed through him. Anger, relief. Desperation, resignation. Fear for his life. And at the same time, he’d never felt more alive.
He sat there for a while, in a daze. He noticed a damp patch on the floor. A trickle of water had stained the wall: a hole in the roof, no doubt. In this climate, the folly’s demise would be quick enough. Within a year, the roof would be gone; within two, the folly would be a ruin, reclaimed by the forest. Just the stone walls remaining, for someone to discover and wonder at years from now … Eventually Manne heard voices, distant enough but coming from the path that linked the folly with the garden. For an instant he thought he might stay put. But it was as if someone else took him over in these moments of indecision: he found himself creeping out of the door and running across the small clearing, into the nearby forest. He dropped down behind the huge trunk of a dead, fallen tree.
Presently, Manne saw two figures emerging from the path. He had the impression that the smaller one was Guépard, but didn’t dare raise his head any further to check. He saw the two going into the folly, then coming out a minute or two later. All this time they were talking, but Manne couldn’t hear what they were saying. He could just catch the intonation and occasionally the expressive hand movements, which seemed to translate mild uncertainty. After about five minutes of toing and froing, the men left again. Manne listened to them clumping back down the path, focusing on the sound until it finally dissolved into the forest.
For what seemed a long time, Manne simply sat behind the tree trunk. He felt incredibly tired and faint. He tried to stand up, but at first found it impossible. He wondered what Mathilde would do with his journal when she discovered it in the canvas bag. And if she read it, what she’d make of it. He thought of everything that had happened that day, then the day before and the day before, a spiral of cons
equence that could all be traced further and further back, to some vanishing point.
High up above where he was sitting, Manne could hear a tiny rustling sound. It was a bird or some other small animal scrabbling about in the branches. Although barely audible, the noise invaded the stillness of the forest. When the rustling abruptly stopped a minute later, Manne finally managed to get to his feet. The profound silence now surrounded him once again. It was as though it emanated not from the forest at all, but from somewhere inside.
XIII
Through the jungle, down a criss-cross of animal runs. It was slow going, but he knew he didn’t have far to go. As he weaved through the undergrowth, it struck him that he too was now an évadé, like Edouard. A convict story he’d heard in Saint-Laurent came back to him. A guard’s wife had bought a live chicken at the market, and had given it to her convict chef to cook. When he refused to kill it, she’d retorted: ‘What? You’ll happily murder your next-door neighbour, but you won’t wring a chicken’s neck?’ To which the cook had coolly replied: ‘Wringing a chicken’s neck would upset me so much more.’ The story reminded Manne of the mutilated horses on the battlefield in Belgium, and how common it was for men to be more upset about them than their wounded comrades.
Now he was at the edge of the camp, watching the occasional guard or convict pass by from a vantage point just inside the forest. As usual, there seemed to be few people about; no doubt the bulk of the camp was up at the commandant’s new construction site. If he were going to do anything at all, he’d have to be brazen about it and do it now, before word got out about what had happened down at the commandant’s house. He cut around the side of the camp until he reached the path that led to Saint-Laurent, so he could make it look as if that was where he’d come from.
Manne emerged at the bottom of the grand avenue the commandant had built, with its arch at the top. Close by were what he took to be convict barracks, half a dozen of them. He passed by a couple that seemed deserted. Near the entrance of the third one, an old black man sat on a stool under the shade of a tree. On his knee sat a kitten. One end of a dirty piece of string was tied to the kitten’s paw, the other to the man’s wrist – like a manacle locking the two together. The man was idly tapping the kitten on the nose, sometimes quite hard. The kitten would flinch, then retaliate, batting at the man’s outstretched hand, which he’d pull away at the last moment like a bullfighter. There were no guards about.