Fever (26 page)

Taken the required measures! But that was it. A sergeant just carried out orders. Even if he did everything himself a hundred times over, he remained a subordinate officer carrying out orders. He'd done his duty, that was all. For 600 francs a month – and expenses were checked down to the very last
rappen
. Watch out if you'd put in for too much! Watch out if you could have done it more cheaply and hadn't! It had once happened that Studer had not been paid for his ticket on the Basel–Bern express. “The stopping
train would have done just as well,” he'd been told. There was that nice series of little books called
No Struggle, No Victory
. It was all right for the authors, they only had to struggle at their desks. And now he had to have lunch in the officers' mess. And afterwards . . .

Captain Lartigue introduced the officers present: Lieutenant Mauriot, Lieutenant Verdier. Marie sat between the captain and Father Matthias, and Inspector Joseph Fouché, as he had been introduced, was placed between the two lieutenants.

The mess was a long room in the same hut where Studer had slept. The soup was eaten in silence. Then there was olives and schnapps. A whole lamb, garnished with peppers and tomatoes, was brought in on a huge platter by the captain's batman. Then the Hungarian with the beard like Old Father Time filled the glasses. Captain Lartigue stood up and proposed a toast to the nurse, whose very presence, he said, was a tonic for the men. They all stood up, there was a soft clink of glasses . . . and the clink was drowned by the stamp of approaching footsteps. A curt order. The door was flung open. A corporal entered, followed by four men. The five men approached, the only sound heavy breathing. Suddenly two shots rang out, there was a scuffle, the table was overturned, three men were rolling round on the floor . . .

Father Matthias had scuttled into a corner and stood there, his face hidden in his hands. Then Marie's voice was heard: “Louis . . . Give me a cigarette.”

The three who were thrashing about on the floor stood up. “Take him away,” Lartigue commanded.

And Sergeant Studer, his hands tied behind his back, was hustled out of the door. Lieutenant Mauriot bent down and picked up two revolvers. “A dangerous man,” he said.

“Indeed,” replied Captain Lartigue, flicking his lighter to light Marie's cigarette. “I thought the surprise would work best during lunch, but the man was on his guard. A good thing I chose our best men. No one hurt? You weren't, were you,
mon père
?”

“No! No!” came a voice from the corner.

“You see, I was right, wasn't I, Uncle Matthias?” said Marie when the priest was sitting beside her again. “I always told you you shouldn't trust the man. He's a spy, he's got a forged passport.”

“I . . .” the priest replied, “I . . . noticed when the man was first introduced to me. But I didn't like to say anything. I don't like interfering in other people's affairs.”

“A good thing I warned Louis. But now you'll sort him out once and for all, won't you, Louis? A court-martial, then the firing squad. I'll be a witness. Uncle Matthias too.”

“Yes. Mauriot, you can act as clerk. And we'll have the adjutant, Cattaneo, Sergeant Schützendorf and two corporals . . .”

The trial

The man didn't speak. He sat on the cement block that served as a bed, and shifted over a little towards the rear wall, inviting Studer to sit down with a wave of the hand. Then he had a closer look at the sergeant, pursed his lips, whistled, spat on the floor and said, “A civilian! What are you doing here?”

Studer shrugged his shoulders. The man's French was good, but you could still tell he was a foreigner.

“Where're you from?” Studer asked in Swiss German.

The man raised his eyebrows. His answer was brief: “Bern.”

“Me too.”

“Aha, you too . . .” Silence. There was a gap between the two heavy planks forming the door through which the sun streamed into the cell. The motes of dust danced in the light. The barred window, however, was in the shadow of the projecting corrugated-iron roof.

The man took a pack of cards out of the side pocket of his uniform jacket and began to lay them out on the small strip of cement between himself and the wall.

“What's that you're doing?”

“Laying out the cards. But I keep getting bad cards. I keep getting the jack of spades.”

“Just like in Basel and Bern,” Studer remarked casually.

The man showed no surprise. He just nodded, as if in a dream.

“Precisely,” he murmured. That was when it had started, he said.

What did the jack of spades signify, then? Death?

The man shook his head wearily. “Death? Rubbish. I'm the jack of spades.”

He picked up the cards and shuffled them again. It made a strange noise in the silence of the cell. Then he asked if his new friend could keep his mouth shut.

“Definitely,” Studer replied. He was sitting on the cement block in his favourite posture, forearms on his thighs, hands clasped, staring at the ground.

The slap of the cards being laid out, then silence, then the slap of the cards. A few words. Silence. The slap of more cards being laid out . . . A few words. Silence. Studer did not look up, even though sitting still like this was agonizing. There was an old man sitting beside him, a man who was in torment. It was immensely difficult to stop himself getting up, putting his hand on the man's shoulder and saying, “You're a poor soul. They've given you a hard time of it, waking you up from your sixteen-year sleep. You'd forgotten, and they forced you to relive the past, just so a big oil company can open up new wells. And now? Will they leave you in peace? No. They'll keep on tormenting you. It's better if I play the dentist and get it over in one go, it'll be less painful.”

“Will you lay out the cards for me?” Studer asked.

“Of course,” the man said. So far he had had his back to the sergeant, now he turned round. A face covered in wrinkles. The priest's description of him, in the little bistro by Les Halles, hadn't been bad at all. The kind of face you sometimes saw on crippled children, sad and old. Stubble round his chin, a few bristles over his upper lip . . . And beneath the care-worn features could be discerned – blurred, like a
photograph where the light has got in – another face: the face, an enlarged likeness of which had hung above the bed of Sophie Hornuss in the apartment in Gerechtigkeitsgasse . . .

And the man shuffled the cards. The sounds of the fort coming through the gap between the two planks that made the door were strangely thin, frayed, so to speak: the clatter of mules' hoofs – Studer's thoughts went to his Fridu, with whom he'd had such profound philosophical conversations on the road from Géryville to Bouk-Toub; the crunch of nailed boots on hard ground – Studer saw the White Father lying on the couch in his apartment in Bern and his open sandals with soles that curved up at the front, and he heard his wife saying, “You can see they've been a few miles, can't you,
Vatti
?” From the distance came the sound of gunfire – the company was probably out on patrol – and Studer thought how it was sometimes much more difficult deliberately to miss a target than to shoot someone . . . The shots in the officers' mess had been intended as a ruse, but it hadn't been easy, when the moment came, to fire in the air, when there was someone he would have loved to shoot . . .

Suddenly Studer was startled out of his dreams. The man had spoken! His Swiss German sounded so strangely outmoded, his manner of speaking so childlike, that the sergeant felt like saying, “There, there. Have a rest. If you did commit a crime thirty years ago, you've paid for it, paid dearly for it.”

“The nine of clubs,” the old man muttered, stroking his stubble with the backs of his fingers. It made an unpleasant rasping noise. “The nine of clubs – money, a lot of money. And the ace of clubs. Money again, even more money. There, the king of diamonds, that's you, and the queen of diamonds is your wife. There's a
letter on its way. The letter will get lost. But you will soon see your wife again. She comes immediately after you – in the pack. Cut. The queen of spades, the queen of clubs and the nine of spades. Two women have died. It concerns you in some way, the deaths of the two old women . . . But look, there's money again, the eight of clubs. Luck, a lot of luck. You've got good cards. But I always get bad cards. The jack of spades always comes for me, and the ten of spades next to it. That means death . . .” The old man's hand passed over the cards and they were gathered up in a pack again. He held the cards in his left hand and flicked across the edges with his thumb and middle finger.

“You look clever,” the man said in his monotonous voice. “I'll tell you a story. You're not the only one who likes to hear me telling them what the cards say. I used to be married, you know. The first time Sophie kept on asking me, ‘Vicki' – she always called me Vicki – ‘lay out the cards for me.' Eventually I did because the woman kept going on at me about it. And that was a mistake. You see, when I lay out the cards, I have to tell the truth, that's the way I am. So I told Sophie the story, the story that happened in Fribourg. You see, the girl from Fribourg kept appearing in the cards . . . I can't really remember now exactly what happened all those years ago . . . I was in love, we met, in Bern, in a hotel. We wanted to get married and I kept telling her, ‘Ulrike,' I said, ‘you'll have to wait. I'm only a student.' ‘I don't want to wait,' she said. She was always getting worked up. I was studying chemistry. She was always asking me about poisons. What strong poisons there were. ‘Potassium cyanide,' I told her. Could I get her some? At first I didn't want to. But then I let her talk me into it . . .”

Three cards taken off the top of the pack, two
discarded, one laid out. Another three cards, two discarded . . . The monotonous slap of the cards on the cement in the tiny cell!

“Look, there she is again, the girl from Fribourg. The queen of spades . . . and the jack of spades next to her. That's me. We can't get away from each other. We always come out of the pack together. Inseparable . . . And I told Sophie all that. I have to tell you, as well . . . When I lay out the cards, I have to tell the truth. What's your name?”

“Jakob,” said Studer succinctly.

“Jakob? Is that so? Strange . . . Like my brother . . . Do you know where my brother is?”

“Yes,” said Studer.

A look of immense astonishment spread over the old man's face.

“You know where Jakob is?”

“Yes,” Studer repeated.

“How do you know?”

“I know.”

The old man shuffled the cards again. There was a smile playing round his lips that presumably no one would have understood. Studer understood it.

Was it really so difficult to understand when one had seen the telegram Captain Lartigue had received from Marie? It had been sent from Bel-Abbès. Why would Marie have needed 5,000 francs in Bel-Abbès? . . . You wouldn't get far with half of the 250-francs pay Despine, alias Jakob Koller, had pocketed. She was a brave girl, was Marie. She'd made proper preparations . . .

“You told Sophie the whole story about Ulrike, didn't you?” Studer said. “And you had to give her money to keep her quiet? Even though you hadn't . . .”

“That's right, Jakob,” the old man said. “Ulrike,
that's what she was called, I remember now. And you're right, I didn't kill her. She was a bit crazy, that Ulrike. Once she had the potassium cyanide she left, by the first train . . . To Fribourg. I was worried. I followed her . . . But I was too late. No one saw me go into the house. She was lying on her bed and there was a glass on the bedside table. I picked it up, smelt it . . . Then I knew . . .”

“Show me your thumb.”

Pity old Herr Rosenzweig wasn't there, he'd have been pleased to make the acquaintance of the thumb that had produced a unique print.

The door opened. A corporal – he had two tiny stripes on his sleeve – bellowed, “You two – the captain wants you.”

The old man stood up. He was small, shorter than the priest. Beside Studer he looked like a dwarf.

The pair were escorted by four men with fixed bayonets, one in front, one behind, one either side. The corporal led the procession. Studer's hands were not bound.

When the old man came out of the cell, he blinked like an owl, dazzled by the harsh afternoon light.

Space had been made in one of the huts. The thin mattresses were piled up outside the door. At the back of the room five men were sitting: Captain Lartigue in the middle, the adjutant on his right, a sergeant on his left; next to the sergeant was a corporal, and little Lieutenant Mauriot was at the end on the right, sitting at a small table with blank sheets of paper in front of him.

It was dark in the room, so that it was some time before Studer noticed Marie, in an armchair next to the captain. And, huddled in a corner, Father Matthias was sitting on a mattress, cross-legged, his hands in the sleeves of his habit.

Studer and the old man had to stand.

The captain opened the proceedings. Turning to the four members of the court-martial, he explained that the man before them had been travelling on a forged passport, posing as a French police inspector. He turned to Studer and demanded the papers from him. Studer made no fuss, but handed over the passport of Inspector Joseph Fouché. It went to each member of the court in turn. There was much shaking of heads.