An Officer and a Spy

For months I have been going into the Military Club at lunchtime and scanning the stale newspapers in the hope of finding fresh revelations about the Dreyfus affair. In particular I have counted on the likelihood that sooner or later someone will recognise Esterhazy’s handwriting from the bordereau and approach the Dreyfus family direct. But there has been nothing: the case is not even mentioned any more. As I walk past the fishing boats, my head down and my hands clasped behind me, I reproach myself furiously for my cowardice. I have left it to others to do my duty. And now Henry and Gonse believe I am so broken down by exile, so crushed by their ruthlessness, that they can intimidate me into complete submission.

There is a fish market on the dockside at the southern end of the quay, close to the walls of the old Arab city, and I stop for a minute to watch as a catch is brought in and tipped over the counter: red mullet, sea bream, hake, mackerel. In a nearby pen are half a dozen turtles, their jaws tied shut with string, still alive, but blinded to prevent them escaping. They make a noise like cobbles being cracked together as they clamber over one another, desperate to regain the water they can sense but no longer see.

My quarters are in the military camp on the other side of the medina — a single-storey brick-built hut on the edge of the parade ground, with two rooms, their windows blanked by mosquito mesh, and a veranda with two chairs, a table and a kerosene lamp. In the torpid heat of the late afternoon the parade ground is deserted. Satisfied that I am unobserved, I drag the table to the edge of the veranda, climb up on to it, and reach up to push aside a loose rafter. The great advantage of being watched by an incompetent spy, and the reason I haven’t asked for Savignaud’s removal, is that he misses things, such as this. I move my fingers in the empty space until they encounter metal — an old cigarette tin.

I pull out the tin, replace the rafter, drag the table back to its original place, and go into my quarters. The larger room serves as a sitting-room-cum-office; the curtains are drawn against the sun. I pass through this into my bedroom, sit on the edge of my narrow iron cot and open the tin. It contains a photograph of Pauline taken five years ago and a bundle of letters from her: Darling Georges. . My dearest Georges. . I yearn for you. . I miss you. . I wonder how many hands they have been through; not as many as the Dreyfuses’ correspondence, but doubtless quite a few.

I have visited your apartment several times. All is well. Mme Guerault tells me you are on a secret mission! Sometimes I lie on your bed and your smell is still on the pillow and I imagine where you are and what you are doing. That is when I want you most. In the afternoon light I could scream with wanting you. It is a physical pain. .

I don’t need to read them again; I know them off by heart.

Also in the tin is a photograph of my mother, seven hundred francs in cash and an envelope on which I have written: In case of the death of the undersigned, please deliver this letter to the President of the Republic, who alone should know of its contents. G. PICQUART. Inside is a sixteen-paragraph report of my investigation into Esterhazy, written in April. It goes through all the evidence in detail, relates the attempts of Boisdeffre, Gonse and Billot to block my researches, and comes to three conclusions:

That Esterhazy is an agent for Germany.

That the only tangible facts blamed on Dreyfus are attributable to Esterhazy.

That the trial of Dreyfus was handled in an unprecedentedly superficial manner, with the preconceived idea that Dreyfus was guilty, and with a disregard for due legal forms.

From the minarets of the Arab town comes the wail of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer. It is Asr, the time when a man’s shadow is twice his height. I slip the letter into the inside pocket of my tunic and go back out into the heat.