The day fades in the window. At seven, the bells of Our Lady of Rouen begin to peal — heavy and sonorous, the noise rolls across the river like a barrage, and when it stops, the sudden silence seems to hang in the air like smoke.
It is dark by the time I rouse myself to go downstairs. Curé is already waiting for me. He suggests I wrap my cape tight around my shoulders to hide the insignia of my rank.
We walk for five or ten minutes through the shuttered back streets, past a couple of quiet bars, until we reach a cul-de-sac filled with the shadows of people, soldiers mostly, and a few young women. They are talking quietly, laughing, hanging around a long, low building with no windows that looks like a converted warehouse. A painted sign proclaims: ‘Folies Bergère’. The hopelessness of this provincial aspiration is almost touching.
Curé says, ‘Wait here. I’ll see if he’s in yet.’
He moves off. A door opens, briefly silhouetting his figure against a purplish oblong gleam; I hear a snatch of noise and music and then he is swallowed up by darkness. A woman baring a large expanse of cleavage, white as gooseflesh in the cold, comes up to me holding an unlit cigarette and asks for a light. Without bothering to think I strike a match. In the yellow flare she is young and pretty. She peers at me short-sightedly. ‘Do I know you, my darling?’
I realise my mistake. ‘I’m sorry. I’m waiting for someone.’ I blow out the flame and walk away.
She calls after me, laughing: ‘Don’t be like that, sweetheart!’
Another woman says: ‘Who is he, anyway?’
And then a man yells drunkenly: ‘He’s just a stuck-up cunt!’
A couple of soldiers turn to stare.
Curé appears in the doorway. He nods and beckons. I walk over to him. ‘I ought to leave,’ I say.
‘One quick look, then go.’ He takes my arm and steers me ahead of him, along a short passage, down a few steps, through a heavy black velvet curtain and into a long room, misty with tobacco smoke, packed with people sitting at small round tables. At the far end a band is playing, while on stage half a dozen girls in corsets and crotchless knickers hoist their skirts and kick their legs listlessly at the clientele. Their feet thump against the bare boards. The place smells of absinthe.
‘That’s him.’
He nods to a table less than twenty paces away, where two couples share a bottle of champagne. One of the women, a redhead, has her back to me; the other, a brunette, is twisted round in her seat looking towards the stage. The men face one another, talking in a desultory way. There is no need for Curé to tell me which it is he has brought me to see. Major Esterhazy reclines with his chair pushed well back from the table, his tunic unbuttoned, his pelvis thrust forward, his arms hanging down either side almost to the floor; in his right hand he holds casually at an angle, as if it is barely worth considering, a glass of champagne. His head in profile is flattish and tapers like a vulture’s to a great beak of a nose. His moustache is large and swept back. He seems to be drunk. His companion notices us standing by the door. He says something, and Esterhazy slowly turns his head in our direction. His eyes are round and protuberant: not natural, but crazy, like glass balls pressed into the skull of a skeleton in a medical school. The overall effect, as Curé warned, is unsettling.
Curé touches my elbow. ‘We should go.’ He pulls aside the curtain and ushers me away.
I arrive back in Paris just before noon the following day, a Saturday, and decide against going into the office. It is therefore not until Monday, four days after my last conversation with Lauth, that I return to the section. Even as I am climbing the stairs I can hear Major Henry’s voice, and when I reach the landing I see him along the corridor, just emerging from Lauth’s room. He is wearing a black armband.
‘Colonel Picquart,’ he says, coming up to me and saluting. ‘I am reporting for duty.’
‘It’s good to have you back, Major,’ I reply, returning his salute, ‘although naturally I am very sorry for the circumstances. I do hope your mother’s passing was as peaceful as possible.’
‘There aren’t many easy ways out of this life, Colonel. To be frank, by the end, I was praying for it to be over. From now on I intend to keep hold of my service revolver. I want a good clean bullet when my own time comes.’
‘That’s my intention, too.’
‘The only problem is whether one will still have the strength to pull the trigger.’
‘Oh, I expect there will be plenty around who will be only too happy to oblige us.’
Henry laughs. ‘You’re not wrong there, Colonel!’
