An Officer and a Spy

‘I have unfinished business there.’

‘Do you, by God!’ He folds his arms and tilts back in his chair and looks me up and down a couple of times. ‘You’re a funny fish, Colonel Picquart. I don’t know what to make of you. I’d heard you were supposed to be the next Chief of the General Staff but four, and instead suddenly you’re out here in our little backwater. Tell me, what did you do? Embezzle funds?’

‘No, General.’

‘Screw the minister’s wife?’

‘Certainly not that.’

‘Then what?’

‘I can’t tell you.’

‘Then I can’t help you.’

He sits back straight in his chair and picks up a sheaf of papers. I feel a sudden desperation. ‘I’m in a kind of imprisonment out here, General. My mail is read. I’m followed. I’m not allowed to leave. It’s really very effective. If I protest, it’s been made clear to me I’ll be disciplined on trumped-up charges. Short of desertion, I’m not sure how I can escape. And of course if I do desert I really would be finished.’

‘Oh no, don’t desert — if you desert I’d have to shoot you.’ He gets up to stretch his legs — a big, lithe man, despite his years. A fighter, I think, not a desk man. He prowls up and down the veranda, frowning, and then stops to look out across the garden. I can’t name all the flowers — jasmine I recognise, and cyclamen, and dianthus. He notices me looking. ‘You like it?’

‘It’s very fine.’

‘I planted it myself. Prefer this country to France now, oddly. Don’t think I’ll go back when I retire.’ He falls silent and then says fiercely, ‘You know what I can’t stand, Colonel? I can’t abide the way the General Staff dump their rubbish out here. No offence to you, but every malcontent and deviant and well-bred cretin in the army gets sent my way, and I can tell you that I’m just about sick of it!’ He taps his foot on the wooden boards, thinking things over. ‘Do you give me your word that you’ve done nothing criminal or immoral — that you’ve simply fallen foul of those desk-generals in the rue Saint-Dominique?’

‘On my honour.’

He sits down at his desk and starts writing. ‘Is a week enough?’

‘A week is all I need.’

‘I don’t want to know what you’re up to,’ he says, still writing, ‘so don’t let’s talk about it. I shan’t inform the ministry that you’ve left Tunisia. If and when they find out, I propose to tell them that I’m a soldier, not a gaoler. But I won’t lie, you understand?’ He finishes his writing, blows on the ink and hands the letter to me. It is official permission for Lieutenant Colonel Picquart of the 4th Tunisian Rifles to leave the country on compassionate leave, signed by the General Officer Commanding, Tunisia. It is the first official help I have been offered. I have tears in my eyes, but Leclerc affects not to notice.

The passenger ferry for Marseille is scheduled to leave Tunis at noon the next day. A clerk at the steamship company’s office tells me (‘with profound regret, my Colonel’) that the list is already full; I have to bribe him twice — first to allot me a tiny two-berth cabin all to myself, and then to keep my name off the passenger manifest. I stay overnight in a pension near the docks and go aboard early, dressed in civilian clothes. Despite the sweltering African midsummer I can’t linger on deck and risk being recognised. I go below and lock my door, strip naked and lie on the lower bunk, dripping sweat. I am reminded of Dreyfus and his description of his warship anchoring off Devil’s Island: I had to wait nearly four days in this tropical heat, shut close in my cell, without once going upon deck. By the time the engines start, my own metal cell is as hot as a Turkish bath. The surfaces vibrate as we slip our moorings. Through the porthole I watch the coast of Africa recede. Only when we are out at sea and I can see nothing except the blue of the Mediterranean do I wrap a towel around my waist, summon the steward and ask him to bring me some food and drink.

I have packed a Russian-French dictionary, and a copy of Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground, which I set to work translating, propped up on my bunk bed, the two books balanced on my knees, my pencil and paper beside me. The work soaks up the time and even the heat. To care only for well-being seems to me positively ill-bred. Whether it’s good or bad, it is sometimes very pleasant, too, to smash things. .