The Crew

by Joseph Kessel

  “Why are you so panic-stricken?” Claude asked with as sincere a smile as he could manage. “We won’t be in any more danger there than—”

  “That’s not true,” Hélène interrupted him. “I heard the orderlies and I saw your comrades’ faces, and they’re certainly not cowards.”

  Maury made a gesture of helplessness.

  “Claude,” the young woman cried, swept away in a sort of delirium. “Claude, I don’t want… put a stop to this, you’re in charge here… massacres, men being burned alive… it’s unacceptable, unforgivable!… You, the others… charred remains… I don’t want that… I can’t stand that…”

  She sought his shoulder and pressed herself tightly against him. Although Claude was torn apart by the spectacle of that pain, he also felt strong and safe, because he believed it was all for his sake.

  He lifted the head that was buried in his chest and spoke like a hypnotist: “Listen to me, and listen to me closely. Nothing will happen to us, I promise you. I’ll be careful and vigilant, don’t worry.”

  He carried on in this manner for a while, as long as she kept staring at him incredulously like a lost child.

  The phone rang. Maury picked up the receiver and, after a few moments, replied: “Surely not, Colonel, just think, we’re going back to the front tomorrow.”

  He hung up and, glad for the diversion, shrugged his shoulders and explained: “They’re all crazy over there at headquarters. They want me to send a volunteer to be an instructor at Fontainebleau. On the eve of a major attack!”

  Hélène leaned against the desk, which was stacked full of papers. The room started spinning in front of her eyes.

  “What are you saying?” she stammered. “An instructor for the rear… safety?”

  Maury stopped her with a gesture which he tried to inject with all his tenderness, and his voice quivered with recognition as he told her: “No, that would just be impossible, don’t even think about it, please.”

  He stopped abruptly. He could see the signs of a profound hatred invade his wife’s features.

  “So you’ll never stop playing heroes!” she said as she left, without looking back.

  Claude didn’t try to stop her, or to catch up to her. He barely had enough time to go pick up Thélis. Besides, what could Hélène possibly add to the terror she’d already expressed for his sake?

  CHAPTER IX

  HERBILLON HAD shown up at Paméla’s far earlier than he’d needed to, eager to seek shelter in the only place where he felt safe.

  The singer led him into a place she called a retiring room. With its thick cotton curtains, armchairs upholstered in rep and a Louis Philippe sofa, it had retained the aspect of a sitting room forgotten by time.

  There were still some soldiers playing cards in the main room. Herbillon distractedly listened to the noise as it gradually started to die down. He didn’t want to let his thoughts wander freely.

  When Paméla came to tell him that she’d sent Maury’s orderly away, he hadn’t felt anxious in the slightest. Claude, thorough as ever, had no doubt wanted to discuss some trivial matter with him. Herbillon continued to wait, his mind perfectly at ease, as though it had frozen still.

  Some light footsteps crunched along the garden’s gravel path. Denise burst in panting and exclaimed: “You’re leaving tomorrow! You’re going back to the front!”

  Herbillon felt a wonderful sense of joy flow through his veins. That enchanted, infernal circle had broken up of its own accord! Everything had quickly and easily resolved itself! He was afraid he’d misunderstood her.

  “Are you sure? Are you sure?” he asked her, his face beaming with a restrained elation that was nonetheless ready to burst.

  “Claude told me; it’s dreadful…”

  The officer cadet burst out in a laugh that made Denise shudder.

  “You didn’t really think we were going to spend the rest of the war in Bacoli, did you darling?”

  He drew close to her in order to kiss her, but she violently shoved him away.

  “Listen to me, you’re going to be part of an offensive. You’ll be in danger day and night. Three quarters of your squadron won’t make it back alive.”

  “We’ll see about that… why waste our time thinking about something we can do nothing about? You’re here… I’m happy.”

  “Just for a single night! Is that enough for you?” Denise shouted. “So once you’ve got rid of me, you’ll be satisfied and calm? You’ll be with your dear comrades, rejoin your beloved squadron, go flying with your friend Claude…”

  The young woman’s features betrayed such scathing sarcasm that Herbillon didn’t pay much attention to her last words and instead, looking at her attentively, he asked: “Do you really think you’re right, Denise? Do you think I had any say in this departure, which I only just learned from your lips anyway? Haven’t you noticed that I’ve sacrificed everything for you?”

  “So stay!”

  Herbillon wrapped his hands around his mistress’s face and stroked it.

  “Come now, darling, come back to your senses. Would you really rather they shot me as a deserter?”

  Denise freed her face from his hands, stared pointedly at him and said: “When I was in the office, Claude received a phone call from headquarters asking for a volunteer instructor to teach at Fontainebleau.”

  “And?” Herbillon asked, failing to grasp her meaning.

  Denise didn’t answer him, but her gaze grew more intense.

  “Oh! Denise…” Herbillon murmured. “You didn’t really think? Did you?… Could you really… think I’d go hide in some cushy posting? Ask Claude to send me to the school, while Thélis and all the others take part in that offensive? Oh! You’d have to be a woman to come up with something so filthy!”

  The young woman’s face beamed with a magnificent humility.

  “Keep insulting me as much as you like, Jean… but stay. I don’t have a code of honour; you’re the only thing I have in this world. My dear Jean, I don’t want you to be hit by bullets, for the fire to burn you.”

  She was so beautiful and so clearly full of sorrow that Jean forgave her.

  “I can’t just abandon my comrades,” he told her sweetly.

  “I love you,” Denise replied.

  “What would Thélis say?”

  “I love you,” the young woman repeated.

  Herbillon decided to adopt a line of argument that would matter to her as much as it did to him.

  “Maury would be in greater danger without me.”

  Denise didn’t lower her gaze, and kept it fixed on him, raising her voice until it sounded fierce and almost cruel: “I love you,” she repeated.

  Herbillon looked at Denise and felt strange. He didn’t think he had much in common with this maniac, whose entire reasoning and logic were encapsulated in those three words. Jean started to hate those words. Did loving someone give one the absolute right to decide how they should live or die? Was there a more tyrannical law she could invoke?

  “Well, no!” Herbillon viciously declared. “I won’t let Maury fight without me!”

  Denise breathed in some air in a hopeless manner and then stressed each word: “The entire squadron—and not just Claude—is going to learn of our last night together in Paris. You want to leave? You prize their esteem above anything else? At least they’ll know you for who you really are. It’s been far too easy for you to have me as your mistress and then keep flying with Claude and for your comrades to think of you as one of their own as though nothing had happened. I’m ready to pay the price for my love. So you should pay for yours and give up your crew.”

  A series of images flashed through Herbillon’s mind. The squadron’s hostility, Thélis’s disgust… Denise always kept her word. He was sure she would carry out her threat.

  “I’ll ask for the transfer this evening,” he murmured.

  A happy cry sprang from her loins and reached his ears: “Jean, Jean, you’re saved!”

  Denise stammered,
prayed, laughed, cried and praised all at the same time: “I’ll make you forget everything… we’ll be happy… you won’t regret it…”

  Herbillon nodded, forcing a vague shameful smile as she wrapped her loving, maternal arms around him. From this moment on he had accepted everything. There were two accomplices in that dimly lit room, and this was no longer a betrayal, but a crime.

  Denise was still flinging her incoherent words at Jean when Paméla burst into the room: “Get out of here, get out of here, leave through the garden door.”

  If Herbillon had had his usual wits about him, he would have grabbed Denise in time, but they’d both just been through a very intense argument. They lost a few seconds loosening out of their embrace and trying to understand what was going on. But by then it was too late. The unit of policemen dispatched to ascertain whether Paméla had obeyed her instructions to close her nightclub surprised them in the room. It was led by the very officer whom Herbillon had humiliated.

  “They’re just friends of mine,” Paméla exclaimed. “You can see that they’re not drinking. Leave us alone.”

  “Your papers,” the policeman asked.

  Shrugging his shoulders, the officer cadet held out his military passbook.

  “And yours, Madame.”

  “I’ll answer for her,” Herbillon said. “Please don’t insist.”

  “Your permit papers, Madame? This is a war zone; our orders are very specific.”

  Denise obeyed, without the slightest embarrassment.

  “Madame Hélène Maury,” the policeman said softly as he wrote her name down next to the cadet’s. “Thank you.”

  Then he turned to Herbillon.

  “I’m giving you two minutes to clear out of here.”

  He went back to his men, who were waiting for him in the larger room. Herbillon made to stop him, but Denise held him back firmly by the arm, saying:

  “What does it matter now?”

  Denise and Herbillon left Bacoli behind and walked for a long time. First the twilight and then the darkness cast their shroud over their joyless, aimless flight through the fields and meadows. Herbillon wanted to go back to Bacoli as late as possible. He already felt as though the squadron had banished him, and he trembled at the thought that he might run into a comrade. Having bent him to her will, Denise went with him to ensure she kept exercising her influence over him.

  By the time they found themselves in front of the house where the squadron’s office and Maury’s rooms were located, like two barely distinguishable shadows, the officer cadet felt nothing except a boundless weariness and a burning desire to leave this shameful stop on his journey behind and head forth towards his new destiny.

  It was very late at night, but there was a light in one of the ground-floor windows.

  “Maury’s still working. All the better. I’ll go speak to him now.”

  Denise pressed herself against the young man, without saying a word, then began climbing the stairs that led to Claude’s room. She stopped halfway up. She looked through the darkness at the bright space engulfing Herbillon.

  When he stepped inside, the officer cadet resolved to stick to the two or three sentences that the situation required. Everything had to take place using the cool, artificial tone that he and Maury had conversed in for some time now, which would allow them to avoid all arguments, making the confession of the ultimate crime he’d committed pass without incident, in so far as it was possible.

  Yet as soon as he’d crossed the office threshold, Herbillon was frightened to see Thélis sitting right next to Maury. They were examining some papers.

  The captain raised his head and his gaze stopped the friendly way in which Herbillon—despite everything—still moved.

  “Here you are, finally…” the captain said, his voice devoid of any of the usually benevolent inflections Herbillon so dearly loved. “We’re leaving tomorrow, you know that, right?”

  “Precisely… I wanted…” the cadet stammered, “to talk to Maury about this… but since you’re back, Captain…”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I would prefer to speak to you privately, Captain.”

  “Is it regarding an order?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So speak to Maury. He’s still in charge of the squadron.”

  Herbillon said, with a lump in his throat: “I would like to formally request to be posted as this squadron’s volunteer instructor at Fontainebleau.”

  Not a single muscle moved on Thélis’s face. Yet his beautiful golden eyes grew wider and hardened, as though he’d just been dealt an unwarranted insult.

  “I never thought any of my men would volunteer,” he said, slowly, “but it’s your right to ask for it.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” Herbillon murmured.

  He took a step towards the door. Claude stopped him.

  “Allow me to ask you how you learned of the existence of this post,” he said. “I didn’t put up an official notice anywhere as I thought it would be pointless. In addition, you’ve been gone all afternoon.”

  “Indeed…” Herbillon desperately replied. “Indeed… I met a comrade from headquarters. He was the one who…”

  Even someone without a reason to suspect him would have realized that Jean’s features and voice betrayed the fact he was was lying. The truth was so atrociously obvious to Claude that he forgot Thélis and Herbillon were still in the room. His wife’s distraught features and her sudden fears and hopes flashed across his mind again… and those marvellous gifts which he’d naively, grotesquely thought had been intended for him, were instead meant for Herbillon. Because only Hélène—and Maury knew this better than anyone else—could have told the officer cadet about the post. A kind of evil pulsed in Maury’s temples; the air felt choked inside his hollow chest. He stood up, albeit with difficulty.

  “You’re tired, Maury,” Thélis told him. “I’ll finish up on my own here. Be at the car park by nine tomorrow.”

  The captain watched Maury leave, then, without looking at Jean, he ordered him: “Write up your transfer request, quickly, I don’t have any time to lose.”

  Herbillon sat down and picked up a sheet of paper. Thélis walked in large strides across the room. As though about to undertake a superhuman task, the officer cadet painfully started to write. The pen’s creaks made the captain’s impassive face twitch. He stopped walking and started staring at Herbillon’s head.

  It was young and strong, just like the rest of the cadet’s body, and was settled atop his strong, loyal shoulders; and yet there it was bowed down by so much weariness and humiliation… a brotherly tenderness lit up the captain’s hardened face. He wasn’t going to give up on his cadet without a fight.

  “Herbillon,” he suddenly said, “I promise to do everything I can to ensure that the comrades think you were appointed to the post against your will.”

  The cadet’s fingers began to tremble so hard that he couldn’t finish the word he’d been shaping. Thélis continued in his sharp, friendly voice: “Maury won’t say a word. I’ll ask him not to.”

  The cadet dropped his pen and half-turned to face the captain but, although he moved his lips, he wasn’t able to make a sound.

  “That way,” Thélis concluded, “everyone in the squadron will miss you.”

  “Captain, Captain… listen…”

  Herbillon was unable to continue. Big, raw, manly sobs choked him up, while a furious inner revolt tore him apart and crumbled the question he’d failed to ask into pieces.

  “Please don’t judge me, Captain,” he moaned. “It’s not that I’m afraid; if only you knew…”

  Thélis ran his hand through the cadet’s hair.

  “I know,” he said, with a kindness his comrades wouldn’t have thought him capable of.

  Herbillon lifted his feverish, bewildered gaze to face the captain.

  “The police report on the events that transpired at Paméla’s today just arrived. I got back just in time.”

 
A very long silence ensued.

  “Go get some sleep,” the captain ordered him.

  *

  Claude walked up the staircase, feeling his breath between each step. During that long climb, he had all the time he needed to recompose himself. Yet he had been dealt such a devastatingly violent blow that his wife on seeing him had exclaimed: “My god Claude, are you ill?” The sincerity of her concern prevented him from speaking. Hélène was showing concern for him, which of course was nothing like that raw horror she’d displayed a few hours earlier, but which was nevertheless tender and attentive. The habit of reassuring her that he’d acquired suddenly kicked in, despite his own suffering and the fact his inner world had completely collapsed in on him.

  “It’s nothing,” he said. “I’ve just been overworked while trying to finalize all the preparations for our departure tomorrow. I would make quite a poor squadron commander.”

  Having already given in to one of his habits, Maury couldn’t help succumbing to yet another, which proved even more urgent than the first: that of understanding, which would inevitably lead to him justifying it too.

  His wife’s attitude helped him in that regard. She’d bent her frail, naked shoulders and fragile innocent neck towards him.

  After all, was it Hélène’s fault if, being so young, she had fallen in love with youth itself? If Herbillon’s charm, courage and kindness—whose allure Claude knew all too well—had had such a powerful influence on Hélène, whom he’d deprived of those qualities simply by marrying her? Wasn’t it also quite natural that Herbillon would have fallen in love with his wife, who knew no equal? Wasn’t it only natural that he was the one who brought them together?

  Claude was old enough and experienced enough not to hate Herbillon for having been so weak, nor did he judge him. Perhaps if Hélène had been able to love him with such fierceness, then he might have done exactly what Jean did…

  Maury had reached such a degree of selflessness and universal compassion that it was like an agonizing sort of bliss. He wanted to travel down that road as far as it would lead him.