An Officer and a Spy

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 . . .
    At midnight, when the vessel seems quiet, I venture up the iron staircase and step cautiously out on to the deck. The momentum of the ship provides a warm northerly breeze of thirteen knots. I walk to the prow and raise my face to it, drinking it in. There is blackness ahead and to either side. The only light is above: a wash of stars and a moon that scuds in and out of cloud and seems to be racing us. A male passenger stands nearby, leaning over the rail, talking quietly to one of the crew. Behind me I hear footsteps and turn to see the glowing red tip of a cigar approaching. I move on quickly, down the other side of the ship to the stern, where I watch our wake for a while, flickering like a comet’s tail. But when I see the cigar again, disembodied in the dark, I go below and make my way along the passageway to my cabin, where I stay for the remainder of the voyage.
    We dock in Marseille in the late afternoon of the following day in a summer downpour. It seems an ominous welcome home. I hurry straight to the gare Saint-Charles and buy a ticket on the first available train to Paris, conscious that this is my moment of maximum vulnerability. I must assume that Savignaud has reported my visit to Tunis, and also by now my subsequent failure to return to Sousse. Therefore it’s possible that Gonse and Henry will have worked out that I am on my way back to Paris. All they need to do is ask Leclerc. If I were Henry, I would have telegraphed the Prefécture of Police in Marseille