An Officer and a Spy (59 page)

Jouaust begins, “Did you know the accused before the events for which he is charged?”

“Yes, Colonel.”

“How did you know him?”

“I was a professor at the École Supérieure de Guerre when Dreyfus was a pupil.”

“Your relations went no further than that?”

“Correct.”

“You were not his mentor, or his ally?”

“No, Colonel.”

“You were not in his service, nor he in yours?”

“No, Colonel.”

Jouaust makes a note.

Only now do I risk a brief sidelong glance at Dreyfus. He has been so long at the centre of my existence, has changed my destiny so utterly, has grown so large in my imagination, that I suppose it would be impossible for the man to be the equal of all he represents. Even so, it is strange to contemplate this quiet stranger who, if I had to guess, I would say was a retired minor official from the Colonial Service, blinking at me through his pince-nez as if we have just happened to find ourselves in the same railway compartment on a very long journey.

I am recalled to the present by Jouaust’s dry voice saying, “Describe the events as you know them …” and I look away.

My evidence takes up the whole of the day’s session, and most of the next. There is no point in my describing it again—
petit bleu
, Esterhazy,
bordereau …
I deliver it, once more, as if it were a lecture, which in a sense it is. I am the founder of the school of Dreyfus studies: its leading scholar, its star professor—there is nothing I can be asked about my specialist field that I do not know: every letter and telegram, every personality, every forgery, every lie. Occasionally, officers of the General Staff rise like sweaty students to challenge me on specific points; I flatten them with ease. From time to time as I speak, I scan the furrowed faces of the judges in the same way that I used once to survey those of my pupils, and wonder how much of this is sinking in.

When at last Jouaust tells me to stand down and I turn and walk back to my seat, it seems to me—I may be mistaken—that Dreyfus gives me the briefest of nods and a half-smile of thanks.

——

Labori’s recovery continues, and in the middle of the following week, with the bullet still lodged in the muscles of his shoulder, he returns to court. He enters accompanied by Marguerite to loud applause. He acknowledges his reception with a wave and walks to his place, where he has been provided with a large and comfortable armchair. The only obvious sign of his injury, apart from his damp and chalky pallor, is the stiffness of his left arm, which he can hardly move. Dreyfus stands as he passes and warmly shakes his good hand.

Privately, I am not convinced that he is as fit to return to his duties as he insists he is. Gunshot injuries are something I know about. They take longer to get over than one imagines. Labori should have had an operation to have the bullet removed, in my opinion—but that would have taken him out of the trial altogether. He is in a lot of pain and isn’t sleeping. And there is also a mental trauma he is refusing to acknowledge. I can see it when he goes out into the street—the way he slightly recoils every time a stranger approaches with his hand extended, or flinches when he hears hurrying footsteps behind him. Professionally it expresses itself in a certain irritability and shortness of temper, particularly with the president of the court, whom Labori delights in goading:

One day, at a legal strategy meeting I attend together with Mathieu Dreyfus, Demange says in his slightly pompous manner, “We must never forget our central objective, my dear Labori, which is not, with all due respect, to flay the army for its errors but to ensure
our client walks free. As this is an army hearing, in which the outcome will be decided by military officers, we need to be diplomatic.”

“Ah yes,” retorts, Labori, “ ‘diplomatic’! This would be the same diplomacy, I take it, that led to your client spending four years on Devil’s Island?”

Demange, red-faced with fury, gathers together his papers and leaves the room.

Wearily, Mathieu gets up to go after him. At the door he says, “I understand your frustration, Labori, but Edgar has stood by my family loyally for five years. He has earned the right to set the direction of our strategy.”

On this issue, I agree with Labori. I know the army. It does not react to diplomacy. It responds to force. But even for me, Labori goes too far when he decides to telegraph—without consulting Demange—the Emperor of Germany and the King of Italy, asking them to allow von Schwartzkoppen and Panizzardi (both of whom have withdrawn to their native countries) to come to Rennes to give evidence. The Chancellor of Germany, Count von Bülow, replies as if to a madman:

The bitterness between Labori and Demange afterwards worsens to such an extent that Labori, white with pain, announces he will not deliver a closing speech: “I cannot be a party to a strategy in which I do not believe. If that old fool thinks he can win by being polite to these murdering bastards, let him try it alone.”

As the end of the trial draws near, the Préfecture of Police in Rennes, Dureault, approaches me in the crowded courtyard of the lycée during an adjournment, when everyone is outside stretching their legs. He beckons me to one side and says in a low voice: “We have good intelligence, Monsieur Picquart, that the nationalists are planning to arrive in force at the time of the verdict, and that if Dreyfus is
acquitted there is liable to be serious violence. In the circumstances, I fear we cannot guarantee your safety, and I would urge you to leave the town before then. I hope you understand.”

“Thank you, Monsieur Dureault. I appreciate your candour.”

“One further piece of advice, if I may. I suggest you catch the night train in order to avoid being seen.”

He moves away. I lean against the wall in the sunshine and smoke a cigarette. I shall not be sorry to go. I have been here nearly a month. So has everyone. There are Gonse and Boisdeffre promenading up and down, arm in arm, as if clinging to each other for support. There are Mercier and Billot, sitting on a wall, swinging their legs like schoolboys. There is Madame Henry, the nation’s widow, veiled from head to foot in black, floating across the courtyard like the Angel of Death, on the arm of Major Lauth, whose relationship with her is said to be intimate. There is the stubby, hairy figure of Bertillon, with his suitcase full of diagrams, still insisting that Dreyfus forged his own handwriting in order to produce the
bordereau
. There is Gribelin, who has found a shadow to stand in. Not everyone is here, of course. There are some ghostly absences—Sandherr, Henry, Lemercier-Picard, Guénée—and a few that are not so ghostly: du Paty, who has avoided giving evidence by insisting he is too ill; Scheurer-Kestner, who really is ill, and said to be about to die from cancer; and Esterhazy, who has gone to earth in the English village of Harpenden. But otherwise here we all are, like the inmates of an asylum, or the passengers on some legal
Flying Dutchman
, doomed to circle one another, and the world, for ever.

A bell rings, summoning us back into court.

Edmond and I have a farewell supper at Les Trois Marches on the evening of Thursday, 7 September. Labori and Marguerite are there, but Mathieu and Demange don’t come. We drink a final toast to victory, raising our glasses in the direction of Mercier’s house, and then we take a taxi to the deserted railway station and board the evening train to Paris. No one sees us leave. The town sinks away into the dark behind us.

The verdict is due on Saturday afternoon, and Aline Ménard-Dorian
decides it offers the most wonderful opportunity for a luncheon party. She arranges with her friend the Under-Secretary of State for Posts and Telegraphs to have a telephone line left open from her drawing room to the Bourse de Commerce in Rennes—we will thus have the result almost as soon as it is announced—and invites all her usual salon, plus a few others, to a buffet at one o’clock in the rue de la Faisanderie.

I don’t feel much like going, but her invitation is so insistent—“it would be utterly wonderful to have you with us, my dearest Georges, to share in your moment of glory”—that I feel it would be churlish to refuse; besides, I have nothing else to do.

Back from exile, Zola attends, along with Georges and Albert Clemenceau, Jean Jaurès, and de Blowitz of the London
Times;
there must be fifty or sixty of us, including Blanche de Comminges with a young man named d’Espic de Ginestet, whom she introduces as her fiancé. A liveried footman crouches by the telephone in the corner, checking occasionally with the operator to ensure the line is still working. At three-fifteen, after we have finished eating—or not eating, in my case—he signals to our host, Paul Ménard, Aline’s husband, an industrialist of radical sympathies, and hands him the instrument. Ménard listens gravely for a moment and then announces, “The judges have retired to consider their verdict.” He returns the telephone to the white-gloved hand of the footman.

I go out onto the terrace to be alone, but several other guests follow me. De Blowitz, whose spherical body and bulbous ruddy features give him the look of a character out of Dickens—Bumble, perhaps, or Pickwick—asks me if I can remember how long the judges spent deliberating at the first court-martial.

“Half an hour.”

“And would you say, monsieur, that the longer they take, the more likely the outcome is to be favourable to the accused, or the reverse?”

“I really couldn’t answer that. Excuse me.”

The minutes that follow are a torture. A neighbouring church chimes the half-hour, and then four o’clock. We patrol the patch of lawn. Zola says, “They are obviously weighing the evidence thoroughly,
and if they do that then surely they must come down on our side. It is a good sign.”

“No,” says Georges Clemenceau, “men are being induced to change their minds and that cannot be good for Dreyfus.”

I go back into the drawing room and stand at the window. Outside in the street a crowd has gathered. Someone shouts up to ask if there is any news. I shake my head. At a quarter to five, the footman signals to Ménard, who goes over to the telephone.

Ménard listens and then announces, “The judges are returning to the courtroom.”

So their deliberations lasted for an hour and a half. Is that long or short? Good or bad? I am not sure what to make of it.

Five minutes pass. Ten minutes. Someone makes a joke to alleviate the tension, and people laugh. Suddenly Ménard holds up his hand for silence. Something is happening at the other end of the line. He frowns. Slowly, crushingly, his arm descends. “Guilty,” he says quietly, “by five votes to two. Sentence reduced to ten years’ imprisonment.”

Just over a week later, at the end of the afternoon, Mathieu Dreyfus comes to see me. I am surprised to find him on my doorstep. He has never been to my apartment before. For the first time he looks grey and crumpled; even the flower in his buttonhole is faded. He perches on the edge of my small sofa, nervously turning his bowler hat around and around between his hands. He nods to my escritoire, which is strewn with papers, the desk lamp lit. “I see I am disturbing you at your work. Forgive me.”

“It’s nothing—I thought I might try to write some sort of memoir while it’s all still fresh in my mind. Not for publication, though—at least not in my lifetime. Can I get you a drink?”

“No. Thank you. I won’t stay long. I’m catching the evening train to Rennes.”

“Ah. How is he?”

“Frankly, Picquart, I fear he’s preparing himself for death.”

“Oh, come, come, Dreyfus!” I say, sitting down opposite him. “If
your brother could survive four years on Devil’s Island, he can withstand a few more months in prison! And I’m sure it won’t be much longer than that. The government will have to let him go in time for the Universal Exhibition, otherwise there’ll be a boycott. They can’t possibly allow him to die in gaol.”

“He’s asked to see the children for the first time since his arrest. Can you imagine the effect that will have on them—to see their father in such a state? He wouldn’t subject them to that ordeal unless it was to say goodbye.”

“Are you sure his health is so poor? Has he been examined by a doctor?”

“The government has sent a specialist to Rennes. He says Alfred is suffering from malnutrition and malarial fever, and possible tuberculosis of the spinal marrow. His opinion is that he won’t last long in captivity.” He looks at me miserably. “For that reason—I’ve come to tell you—I’m sorry to say it—we’ve decided to accept the offer of a pardon.”

A pause. I wish I could keep the coldness out of my voice. “I see. There is an offer on the table, then?”

“The Prime Minister is worried about the country becoming permanently divided.”

“I’m sure he is.”

“I know this is a blow to you, Picquart. I can see that it places you in an awkward position …”

“Yes, well how could it not?” I burst out. “To accept a pardon is an admission of guilt!”

“Technically, yes. But Jaurès has drafted a statement for Alfred to issue the moment he emerges from prison.” He pulls a creased sheet of paper from his inside pocket and hands it over.