An Officer and a Spy

She gasps and struggles beneath me. But she is weaker than she looks, even in her anger, and I restrain her easily. ‘Listen, Pauline,’ I say quietly, ‘I’m not talking about gossip – we’re already common gossip among our circle. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out Philippe actually guessed about us years ago – even a man who works at the Foreign Ministry can’t be as blind to the obvious as all that.’
    ‘Don’t talk about him! You know nothing about him!’ Pinioned, she beats the back of her head against the pillow in helpless frustration.
    I press on. ‘Gossip is one thing – if it’s just gossip, it can be ignored. But I’m talking about exposure and humiliation. I’m talking about the power of the state being used to crush us – to parade us through the newspapers and the courts, to invent things about us and pass them off as true. Nothing is going to withstand that. Do you think I’ve been away from home for the past seven months by choice? And that’s only a tiny foretaste of what they can do to us.’
    I clamber off her and sit on the edge of the bed with my back to her. She doesn’t move. After a while she says, ‘It’s useless, I suppose, to ask what exactly it is that has brought this foulness into our lives?’
    ‘I can’t speak of it to anyone, apart from Louis. And I’ve only talked to him because he’s my lawyer. If anything happens, he’s the one you should go to. He’s wise.’
    ‘And how long is this going to continue – for the rest of our lives?’
    ‘No, a few more weeks – perhaps a couple of months. And then the storm will break, and you will be able at last to see what it has all been about.’
    She is silent for a while, and then she says, ‘Can we still write to one another, at least?’
    ‘Yes, but we need to take precautions.’ I rise from the bed and walk naked into the sitting room to fetch a pencil and paper. It is a relief to be doing something practical. When I return, she is sitting up with her arms wrapped around her knees. ‘I’ve arranged with Louis to set up a poste restante with a friend in the avenue de la Motte-Picquet – here’s the address. I’ll send my letters to you there: have someone else pick them up on your behalf. I won’t put your name on the envelope or use it in the letter itself, and I won’t add a signature. And you shouldn’t sign your letters to me, or put anything in them that would give anyone a clue as to who you are.’
    ‘Are people in the government really going to read our letters?’
    ‘Yes, almost certainly: many people – ministers, army officers, policemen. There’s one precaution you can take, although it may mean the letter doesn’t get through. Use a double envelope; the inner one you should cover entirely with glue, so that when you insert it into the outer envelope it sticks to it. That way it can’t be opened and then resealed. So if they do tamper with it they’ll have to keep it and they may not want to be as blatant as that. I don’t know – it’s worth a try.’
    She tilts her head to one side and looks at me in a kind of puzzled wonder, as if seeing me properly for the first time. ‘How do you come to know all this?’
    I put my arms around her. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘It was my job.’

17
    FOUR MONTHS PASS.
    The Sousse Military Club still looks out from behind its screen of dusty palms across the unpaved square to the sea. The glare off the Mediterranean remains as fiercely metallic as ever. The same boy in long brown robes still passes at the same time in the middle of the afternoon, leading a goat on a length of rope. The only difference these days is that the boy gives me a wave and I wave back, for I have become a familiar sight. As usual when lunch is over I am seated alone beside the window while my brother officers continue to play cards or doze or read the four-day-old French newspapers. Nobody approaches me.
    It is Friday 29 October 1897, and I have checked those stale newspapers every day since my return from Paris, without once coming across the word ‘Dreyfus’. I am beginning to worry that something may have happened to Louis.
    In time-honoured fashion, at about three o’clock, through the high glass-panelled door comes a young orderly carrying the afternoon’s post. It is no longer Savignaud – he has gone, arrested for immoral conduct with a local olive oil trader, sentenced to nine days’ detention and shipped off to God knows where. His