The Crew

by Joseph Kessel

  Denise walked up to Jean, who looked—his face being so immobile and impassive—as though he hadn’t heard her at all.

  Truth be told, he hadn’t understood any of Denise’s words. Yet despite the fact that their meaning had eluded him, he had felt the straightforwardness of her tone, which had come at him rapidly, brutally hammering home its message. What Jean truly perceived were the emotions that went beyond the words: her willpower, which answered to nothing except her passion, an obstinate insatiable desire, which was so honest it was almost barbaric. He felt lost.

  Up until that moment, and throughout the time this drama had unfolded, he’d believed he and Maury were the only participants. He’d always thought of Denise as a passive bystander, a catastrophic mistake, an irresponsible object of desire. But now there she was: strong, decisive and forceful, with nothing standing in the way of her passion.

  She was taking charge of the situation with a blind, terrible force that was both possessive and destructive. The game was no longer limited to the two officers. A woman had now suddenly intruded upon it to settle it in her own manner and, despite his inexperience, Herbillon confusedly understood that she held a trump card in her hands: a ruthless, primal deity and that was calling out the name of love.

  Denise took hold of Jean’s face and caressed it, bewitched it, and with wet, shining eyes, she pleaded in a doleful, earnest way: “Tell me I still mean something to you Jean… tell me that you still love me a little.”

  “Do I even know any more?… Do you think I can still make sense of anything? I no longer know if I hate you, if I hate Maury. Oh, but I do know that I hate myself!”

  His face and voice betrayed such agony that Denise forgot her own suffering and inexorable passion for a moment. Sweetly, she asked him: “Why torture yourself like this? You had accepted the situation fully… it was so simple. Do you remember our last night together? When you’d discovered the whole truth?”

  “For heaven’s sake, shut up!” Jean groaned. “What we did that night is exactly what I find so unforgivable about all this… before that, it was just a horrible coincidence, but after it… Oh, after it!… It’s enough to make one lose his mind! Flying together, fighting together, drinking together, being awarded a medal together! How could I possibly write to you? And about what? You’ve just seen the others eating and laughing shoulder to shoulder—how they are now is what I never will be again: proud and with a clean conscience, safe in the thought I haven’t betrayed my crew! Now do you understand?”

  “That I don’t mean anything to you any more, yes I understand that!” Denise retorted, instantly sliding back into her rage, abiding only by her own laws. “Do you need any reasons when you’re really in love? None of these things matter to me: Claude, my reputation, social conventions, I would wreck them all for a single, loving word! The crew, yes, that’s all very nice and noble… but isn’t my love for you also nice and noble? If you really cared about Claude so much, then why did you come back to me that evening? Oh, let me speak… Yes, that night, when we were closer than we’ve ever been.”

  Herbillon no longer had any strength or resolve. Deaf and stubborn as she was, Denise would simply contradict everything he said and see his greatest defeat as her greatest victory.

  Since he’d already given in to her once, she now assumed he would always give in to her. He couldn’t stand to be reminded of that shameful, delirious night. He miserably decided to use her own weapon against her. “If you really love me, then shut up, please shut up…”

  “If I love you?” she shouted, having been wounded exactly where Herbillon had aimed. “Look at my eyes, touch my shoulders!”

  “I forbid you,” he ordered her. “I forbid you to come any closer. I’ve thought about you too much, thought about your body…”

  By talking about his desire, Herbillon had triggered a fatal chain reaction and revived her passion. His eyes clouded over, while Denise’s beamed with a lustrous joy. She finally felt he was hers once again.

  Their faces drew closer together. Marbot’s voice boomed behind the door.

  “Open up, cadet!” the big lieutenant yelled.

  Herbillon pushed her away so suddenly, in order to put some distance between them, that Denise staggered.

  “I have to show my face, if only for a minute,” the cadet whispered, “otherwise he might get suspicious… Find somewhere to hide in here.”

  Denise slipped into a closet where Herbillon had set up a washbasin.

  “I thought you’d gone to see Paméla, but she said she hadn’t seen you. So I was worried you might be sick. Are you all right?”

  “I am sick, old chap, I am.”

  “Why did you bunk off lunch like that?”

  “Last night’s booze hadn’t quite worn off.”

  Marbot sat on the bed and lit a cigarette.

  “About last night… there won’t be any follow-up. Maury gave me his word. He’s a decent guy, that Maury. We really misjudged him at the beginning. You were the only one who realized it at the time. What a fine crew you two make!”

  Herbillon pressed a slightly trembling hand against his forehead. He was thinking about how his mistress, Maury’s wife, was hiding behind a flimsy partition.

  “Listen, Marbot… I’ve got a splitting headache…”

  “I understand. I’m going. See you tonight?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Have a wank, it’s the best cure for a hangover.”

  Marbot stopped dead in his tracks. His beady eyes had just noticed a pair of women’s gloves on the windowsill.

  “Tell me then, is that what you call a headache? They all swoon for you, don’t they? Say no more… say no more… I’m leaving. I’ll leave you with this though…”

  A strange sort of seriousness weighed on his podgy, jovial face, and he continued “…there is one woman you should stay away from: Maury’s wife. It wouldn’t be appropriate. He’s one of us: we’re a squadron.”

  The cadet went so pale in the face that Marbot grabbed him by the shoulders with deep affection.

  “Forgive me, old chap,” he said, “I was just joking!

  I know you too well for that. You’re incapable of being such a cad. Goodbye, old chap!”

  As soon as Denise was able to leave the closet, Jean exclaimed, in the grips of a kind of horror: “Leave, I beg you. Did you hear all that? I don’t know what I would have done if he’d seen you here.”

  “Where will we meet again?” she slowly asked.

  “Later. Give me some time to think… Bacoli’s just a village. I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

  Denise’s inflexible obstinacy, which had already terrorized Jean, reappeared on her forehead. “I can’t wait until tomorrow. I have to see you, even if we have to meet in a public place.”

  “That’s impossible, there’s nowhere to go in this town except for Paméla’s nightclub.”

  “And that’s where I’ll go this evening. I’ll persuade Claude.”

  She left without kissing him, betting that he’d probably consent to her request so long as he didn’t feel the touch of perfidy on his skin right away.

  Herbillon showed up at the cabaret very early. The room, however, was already half full, and after quickly scanning the room, Jean immediately noticed Maury and his wife seated at a prominent table, surrounded by Doc, Marbot and Narbonne. He limited himself to waving at them from afar and called out Paméla’s name, who, having quickly turning around to look at the entrance, had clearly been waiting for him. She unceremoniously left the three artillery officers she’d been talking to and submissively answered his call, beaming as she did so.

  “Come have a drink with me,” the cadet told her.

  He felt bizarrely calm. The scene he’d most feared—seeing Maury sat next to Denise—had had completely the opposite effect he’d imagined when the thought of it had made him tremble. As is the case with all nightmares conjured by one’s imagination, his completely vanished the moment he saw it right before his very eyes, in
all its naked reality. He could see Maury and his bony body, his crooked shoulders, his greying hair. Then he saw Denise, with her smooth skin and little girl’s face. He beheld both of them as though he owned them, by dint of their clearly defined relationships with him, which was doubtlessly cruel, but it was a human sort of cruelty nonetheless.

  As soon as that realization dawned on him, in just the space of a few seconds, everything seemed possible and easy.

  In a weary, imperious tone, he told Paméla: “I need you to do me a big favour. I need a place where I can have a rendezvous tomorrow afternoon.”

  Almost without parting her fleshy lips, the singer asked him: “An amorous rendezvous?”

  Herbillon nodded his head.

  “So you decided to ask me?…” Paméla queried, instantly dropping all formalities in a way she hadn’t dared to do until that moment, as though the act of renunciation Herbillon had just asked of her had given her the right to do so. “Is it so you can meet the little girl who’s sitting with your comrades?”

  Unsurprised by her guesswork, Herbillon replied: “Yes, it’s her… You’re the only one who can help me. My friends must never find out about this.”

  Paméla glanced at Maury, then his wife, and then the cadet. A profound realization dawned on her and her face filled with great pity.

  “Understood, little one,” she sweetly answered. “Come back here tomorrow, but remember that my place has to be empty by six o’clock. Thanks to yesterday’s kerfuffle, the cabaret has been ordered to close starting from midnight tonight.”

  At that precise moment, Maury stood up. He could no longer bear the visible tension on his wife’s face. He headed towards Herbillon. At which Paméla left her chair and, as though randomly wandering through the gaps left between the tables, she went straight for Denise. Pretending to fix a buckle on her shoes, she whispered in her ear: “He’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow at four thirty.”

  Maury returned with the cadet and said: “Herbillon owes Paméla a debt of kindness; after all, it’s his fault that the cabaret is being closed down.”

  Then, turning to his wife, he asked her: “You remember Herbillon, don’t you, Hélène?”

  “But of course I do!”

  The young woman’s answer had been completely unrestrained.

  “Are you enjoying yourself in Bacoli, Madame?” Herbillon asked her.

  A banal, superficial conversation ensued, which Maury analysed with every fibre of his sentient being. He failed to find any fault in it, so he felt ashamed of himself once again.

  CHAPTER VIII

  THE FOLLOWING DAY, Maury returned to the squadron’s office after lunch and Hélène went upstairs to rest. The early July heat was oppressive.

  Having carefully examined all the accounts, and the inventory records for all the rations, Maury set himself to the tedious task of writing his daily report. He’d just completed half of it when his orderly handed over an urgent parcel and a dispatch that an air force motorcycle messenger had just delivered. Claude opened the messages, read them, then reread them, then began staring at them without actually seeing them, as though wanting to divine the unknown events they seemed to foreshadow. Then he commanded his orderly: “Take my car and bring all the officers here. As quickly as possible. Go round to all their houses and look in all the cafés. I want them all here right away!”

  Maury made a great effort to banish from his mind all those new images and thoughts that had suddenly assailed him. Above all, he simply had to finish that report.

  One by one, the pilots and observers entered his office. Some who’d been in the middle of their afternoon nap had hastily put some clothes on and had just barely buttoned up their jackets and tightened their belts. Others bore the traces of booze and card games on their faces. As each of them entered, Maury greeted them briefly and then resumed writing his report.

  “I’ll speak as soon as everyone gets here,” he told the first to arrive.

  In the end, Herbillon was the only one still missing. Having finished his work, Claude lifted his gaze and failed to spot him among the assembled officers. He questioned the orderly, who said he hadn’t been able to find him anywhere. Even Paméla herself had assured him that she had no idea as to his whereabouts.

  “Too bad,” Maury said. “You’ll have to fill him in later, Marbot. I can’t wait any longer and I won’t be here this evening. I’ll be driving to pick the captain up from the station.”

  “Thélis is back already?” Marbot asked.

  “He is; this is the telegram he sent—he had to go to the Ministry to see what the situation was like.”

  Claude paused very briefly, but long enough for him to guess what was going through his comrades’ minds. Although they didn’t know it, they had a hunch about what Maury was going to tell them. Maury continued in his smoothest, calmest tone: “The holiday’s over. Tomorrow we’ll leave Bacoli and head back to Château-Thierry. The Germans are going to attack along the Marne, it’s the last card they’ve got left to play.”

  “They have a right to fight, don’t they?” Marbot ungracefully commented, expressing what everyone else was thinking.

  “I’m more reassured by Thélis’s return than by the dispatch sent by HQ,” Maury said.

  The men who’d assembled in the squadron’s office were all used to danger. However, they presently avoided each others’ gazes. They were all afraid of seeing the mark of a gruesome fate etched on their comrades’ faces since, by dint of their youth and habits, each and every one of them believed himself to be protected by some lucky star.

  “We’re going to come out of this bruised and battered,” Doc said.

  “That’s our job!” Narbonne exclaimed, easily the most carefree of them all.

  “We’ll see,” Marbot opined, being the most fatalistic.

  “Listen up, this is the departure plan: our planes will be waiting for us in Trilport; they’re all ready for us. We’ll start on the road tomorrow at noon, the formations will be—”

  He was interrupted by a knock on the door.

  “Lieutenant,” Maury’s orderly began, “it’s your wife…”

  “No, she can’t come in!” Maury exclaimed.

  He turned to his comrades and apologized:

  “Excuse me for a moment…”

  Hélène was waiting for him in the corridor, looking so glowing, refreshed and full of life that Claude needed every iota of the absolute self-restraint he’d mastered over the course of so many years in order to keep his emotions concealed.

  “So many mysteries today,” the young woman exclaimed. “Are you conspiring?”

  “No, we’re just discussing our duties.”

  “Is it important?”

  “No… what are you doing?”

  “I just wanted to tell you that I’m going for a long walk in the countryside, the heat’s died down a little now… don’t worry if I come back a little late.”

  “That’s no problem at all. I have to go on a long drive and I’m afraid I might even have to miss out on dinner.”

  The pleasure she felt at knowing she had so much free time at her disposal prevented her from asking any more questions.

  “Until this evening then, darling,” she said, more tenderly than usual.

  “See you then! Enjoy your walk.”

  He kissed her in his usual manner, almost furtively so. When it was time to part, he added: “If you happen to cross paths with Herbillon, please send him over to me.”

  Without giving her the time to reply or even looking at her, Maury opened the door to his office.

  Hélène started to move towards him, then stopped and lingered, dumbfounded. Suddenly, the voices of Maury’s orderly and aide-de-camp as they left the officers’ meeting pulled her out of her reverie.

  “Life’s so rotten!” the first said. “It was so nice being here.”

  “We’ve got nothing to moan about old chap; we’ll be on the ground; think of those poor pilots. They’ll go down in flames!�
� the other retorted.

  “Life’s so rotten!” the first repeated.

  Hélène looked at her watch. Her precious time was slipping through her fingers, but she felt she could not leave without knowing. She sat down on a scruffy chair close to the window. She could see a calm little garden through that window. Hélène looked at it anxiously. The humming of conversations could occasionally be heard through the wall. The young woman listened worriedly in vain.

  The officers left the office, greeting Hélène Maury distractedly as they went out into the street in silence. Marbot and Doc were the last people left in the room with Claude. When they finally appeared on the threshold, the young woman almost shoved past them to get in.

  “Why did you choose not to tell me you’d be going back to the front?” she exclaimed.

  Maury didn’t waste any time in asking her how she’d found out.

  “I wanted to tell you,” he sweetly told her, “but first I had to give the others their orders.”

  “So, it’s going to happen soon?”

  “Very…”

  “When?”

  He hesitated.

  “Tomorrow?” the young woman murmured.

  “Yes… at noon.”

  As soon as he’d uttered those words, Claude felt a great sense of peace swell within him. He felt as though the difficult part was already behind him. The front was already taking over his life. The torments he would face alongside the peril of war hadn’t yet entered his consciousness. Herbillon… their painful partnership… all that belonged to the world of men. For now, his only concern was that face ravaged by concern and those intense eyes which he badly wanted to reassure. Up until that moment, Claude had never realized how much he loved Hélène, or how selfless that love really was. He took her hands in his and caressed them. All of a sudden, he felt her cold, stiff hands clench his.