An Officer and a Spy

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.
    Early the following morning, Savignaud brings me hot water in my bedroom as usual so that I can shave. Naked above the waist, I bend to my mirror and lather my face. Instead of leaving, he lingers, watching me from behind.
    I look at him in the mirror. ‘Yes, soldier? What is it?’
    ‘I understand you’ve made an appointment to see General Leclerc in Tunis, Colonel.’
    ‘Do I need your permission?’
    ‘I wondered if you wanted me to accompany you.’
    ‘It’s not necessary.’
    ‘Will you be back in time for dinner?’
    ‘Go away, Savignaud.’
    He hesitates, salutes and sidles out of the room. I return to my shaving, but with greater urgency: I have little doubt that he has gone off to telegraph Paris the news of my trip to Tunis.
    An hour later, suitcase in hand, I wait beside the railway line in the central town square. A mining company has recently laid the track from Sousse to Tunis. There is no station: the locomotive simply passes through the streets. The first sign of its approach is a column of black smoke which I see rising in the distance above the flat roofs against the brilliant blue sky. A steam whistle shrieks nearby and a crowd of children erupts around the corner, scattering in all directions, screaming with excitement, pursued by an engine pulling two flatbed trucks and three carriages. It slows to a crawl until its momentum expires altogether in a loud exhalation of steam. I heave my suitcase into the carriage and clamber up the ladder after it, glancing over my shoulder to check if I am followed. But there is no sign of men in uniforms, just Arabs and Jews and a lot of livestock – chickens in crates, a sheep, and a small goat with its hooves tethered which its owner crams beneath his seat.
    We pull away, gathering speed until our escort of excited children is left behind. Dust blows through the open sides of the carriage as we rattle out into the monotonous landscape – olive groves and hazy grey mountains to the left of us, the flat glare of the Mediterranean to the right. Every quarter of an hour or so we stop to pick up figures, always accompanied by animals, who seem to rise out of