The French Art of War

by Alexis Jenni

  ‘You can’t get it any more,’ he said. ‘No one in France can lay hands on it. The English used to drink it before the war. These days the Germans confiscate it. I managed to palm them off with a few bottles of something else; they know nothing about wine. And I kept back a few bottles, including this one.’

  He poured a generous glass for the uncle, one for himself, and a more modest measure for Victorien and his mother. His uncle, a man of few words, ate thoughtlessly while his parents bustled around his uncompromising bulk. They babbled, keeping the conversation alive with feigned enthusiasm, taking turns recounting jokes and stories that elicited a wan smile from his uncle. They gradually came adrift, balloons propelled aimlessly around the room by the hot air escaping from their mouths. His uncle’s sheer size inevitably shifted the centre of gravity. It was impossible to know what he was thinking or even whether he was thinking; he was content merely to be present and his presence distorted space. Being around him you felt the Earth list; it was impossible to stay upright; you stumbled, flailing your arms ridiculously so as not to fall. Victorien was fascinated by his uncle. He longed to understand the mystery of his presence. How to explain the atmospheric disturbance caused by his uncle to anyone who had not met him? More than once he had made the attempt: his uncle, he had said, was physically impressive; but since he was neither large, nor fat, nor strong, nor anything in particular, such a description inevitably trailed off. He did not know what else to say, so he said nothing. He would have had to sketch, not his uncle, but everything around him. Art has that power; it is a shortcut that shows, to the great relief of the written word.

  Tirelessly, his father held forth on the intricacies of wartime commerce, unthinkingly punctuating the high points where the interlopers were swindled by the occupied with an elbow jab, a wink. The fact that the Boche did not notice anything amiss triggered his loudest laughs. Victorien joined in the conversation; since he could not mention his rooftop adventure, he recounted the Gallic wars in minute detail. He became impassioned, inventing little details, the clash of swords, the charge of the cavalry, the chink of steel on steel; he expounded on the discipline of the Romans, the strength of the Gauls, the parity of arms and disparity of spirit, the role of authority and the efficacy of terror. His uncle listened with a fond smile. At length he placed a hand on his nephew’s arm. This shut him up.

  ‘That was all two thousand years ago, Victorien.’

  ‘It’s full of timeless lessons.’

  ‘In 1943 we don’t tell war stories.’

  Victorien blushed and his hands, which had added verve to his tale, fell on to the table.

  ‘You’re brave, Victorien, and you’re full of spirit. But oil and water inevitably separate. When your courage has separated from childish things, and if it is courage that rises to the surface, then you can come and find me and we’ll talk.’

  ‘Find you where? To talk about what?’

  ‘When the time comes, you’ll know. But remember: wait until oil and water have separated.’

  His mother nodded; she glanced from one to the other as though counselling her son to pay attention and do as his uncle said. His father gave a hoarse laugh and topped up the glasses.

  A knock at the door; everyone started. His father froze, the bottle aslant over his glass, no wine flowed. The knock came again. ‘Well, go on! Open it!’ Still his father hesitated, not knowing what to do with his bottle, his napkin, his chair, uncertain which to deal with first and so rooted to the spot. The knocking grew louder, swift raps that were clearly an order, an intimation of mistrust. He opened the door a crack and in slipped the local police officer with a little pointed face. His flickering eyes took in the room and he smiled, baring teeth too big for his mouth.

  ‘Took your time, didn’t you? I’ve just been down in the shelter. Came by to make sure everything’s all right after the alert. Doing my rounds. All present and accounted for. Lucky we didn’t take a hit tonight, because some didn’t make it to the shelter.’

  While he talked he greeted Madame with a nod, lingered on Victorien with his toothy smile, and when he had finished he turned to the uncle. He had noticed him immediately, but he had bided his time. He stared at him, letting a faint unease creep in.

  ‘And you are, monsieur?’

  ‘My brother,’ said Victorien’s mother with guilty haste. ‘My brother, he’s just passing through.’

  ‘Is he sleeping here?’

  ‘Yes. We’ve made up a bed with a couple of armchairs.’

  He hushed her with a wave: he recognized the self-justification in her voice. A pleading tone that gave him his power. He wanted something more: he wanted this man he did not know to look away, to babble breathlessly when addressing him.

  ‘Are you registered?’

  ‘No.’

  The cadence of the phrase indicated that he had finished. The word dropped, a steel ball in the sand, and rolled no further. The officer, accustomed to the garrulous torrents usually unleashed by a single glare, all but lost his balance. His eyes flickered restlessly; he did not know what to do next. In this game where he was master, everyone had to play their roles. The uncle was refusing to play.

  Eventually, Monsieur Salagnon broke the awkward silence with a jovial laugh. He grabbed a glass, filled it and proffered it to the officer. Victorien’s mother pushed a chair behind him, knocking against his knees, forcing him to sit. This allowed him to lower his eyes, to save face, to smile broadly. He sipped the wine with a thoughtful expression; they could talk of other things now. He declared the wine excellent. Victorien’s father smiled modestly and once again read the label aloud.

  ‘Of course. Is there anything left of the vintage?’

  ‘Two – including this one. The other is for you, since you’re clearly a connoisseur. You’ve done a lot for the people in this building, you deserve a little reward.’

  He took out an identical bottle and pressed it into the officer’s hands. The man feigned embarrassment.

  ‘Come, come, I want you to have it. You can drink a toast to us. It’ll be a little reminder that Salagnon sells only the best.’

  The officer savoured the wine, rolling his tongue noisily, being careful not to look in the direction of the uncle.

  ‘And what is your role, exactly?’ the uncle asked innocently.

  The officer made an effort to turn to face him, but his eyes were unsteady and he had trouble focusing.

  ‘I uphold law and order, make sure that everyone’s home, that everything’s going as it should. The regular police have too much on their plates. They’d never be able to cope. It’s the duty of responsible citizens to help.’

  ‘It’s a noble task, and a thankless one. Order is important, isn’t it? The Germans realized it before we did, but we’ll get there in the end. In fact, it was a lack of order that did for us. People were not prepared to obey orders, to know their place, do their duty. It was the pursuit of pleasure that ruined this country; especially among the working classes, egged on by permissive, moronic legislation. They preferred the fantasy of an easy life to the hard truth of impending death. Luckily we have men like you to bring us back to reality. I salute you, monsieur.’

  He raised his glass and drank, and the officer felt obliged to clink glasses, though he could not help but feel this convoluted speech contained a trap. But the uncle adopted a demure expression that Victorien had never seen in him. ‘You’re not serious?’ he whispered. The uncle’s affably naive smile cast an awkward pall over the table. The officer got up, hugging the bottle to him.

  ‘I have to finish my rounds. You, you’ll be gone by tomorrow. And I won’t have seen a thing.’

  ‘Don’t you worry. I won’t cause you any trouble.’

  The tone, simply the tone, sent the officer scurrying. Victorien’s father closed the door, pressed his ear to it, mimed listening to the retreating footsteps, then crept back to the table in pantomime fashion.

  ‘Such a shame,’ he laughed. ‘We had two bottles, bu
t thanks to the disasters of war we have only one now.’

  ‘That’s precisely the problem.’

  The uncle could make people uneasy with a few words. He said nothing more. Victorien knew that one day he would follow this man or men like him, wherever they went; as far as they would go. He would follow these men who, through the melodic precision of their words could cause doors to open, winds to cease, mountains to move. He would entrust all his purposeless strength to such men.

  ‘No one forced you to give it to him,’ said his mother. ‘He’d have left anyway.’

  ‘It’s safer like this. This way he’ll feel a little in our debt. You have to know how to compromise.’

  The mother said nothing more. She simply gave a half-mocking, half-defeated smile, her lips, beautifully red that evening, curling slightly. In war, she knew her place, since it had not changed; to her, the enemy remained her husband.

  * * *

  A walled park thick with trees stretched behind La Grande Institution. It was so vast that from the centre it was impossible to see the boundaries, and it seemed as though the paths that disappeared into the thick foliage extended all the way to the blue peaks that floated above the treetops. Crossing the park by following the paths was a long meander between crudely trimmed shrubs, beneath low-hanging branches, through dense thickets of ferns that closed up as you passed, along rutted paths; walking further, you passed dried-up ponds, moss-covered fountains, cabins whose doors were chained shut but their windows gaped wide, before finally reaching the far wall you had quite forgotten in the struggle to dodge branches and avoid sinking into the thick bed of leaves. The wall stretched away, soaring, endless, a number of small locked gates, half-buried, offering the only way out, though the locks, thick with rust, no longer opened. No one ever came this far.

  La Grande Institution allowed the local scout troop to use the grounds. It was like a forest, but safer, and no one could care less what they got up to within this enclave of nature and virtuous athleticism, as long as they stayed within its boundaries.

  The scout troop met in the gatekeeper’s lodge, which had been furnished with pews from the church. There was no longer a gatekeeper. The house was ramshackle; year upon year it stored up the cold. The little scouts shivered in their shorts, breathing clouds of mist. They rubbed their hands on their knees, waiting for the signal that started the big game, so that they could finally run around and warm up. But they had to wait and listen to the preamble by a young priest with a sparse beard, the sort who hiked up his cassock in the playground and played football with the pupils.

  He always spoke beforehand and his speeches were too long. He gave them a lecture on the virtues of the gymnasial arts. To the little, bare-kneed scouts this clearly meant ‘gymnastics’, which was a posh word for ‘sports’, and they shivered patiently, knowing exercise would warm them up and eager to get on with it. Only Salagnon remarked on the young priest’s insistence on using the term ‘gymnasial’, a word he was clearly taken with. Every time he uttered it, his voice would hover, suspended, Salagnon would nod, and the young priest’s eyes flashed a brief metallic glint, the way a window being opened shimmers as it catches the sun for a brief instant; it goes unseen, too fleeting to be observed, but you sense the dazzle without knowing whence it comes.

  The bored scouts waited for the end of the speech. In their threadbare uniforms they were as cold as if they had been naked. On this winter afternoon nothing could have kept them warm, nothing except moving, running, physical activity of some sort. Only movement could protect them from the all-pervading cold, and they were forbidden to move.

  As the young priest finished his speech the scouts stood up, as though paying close attention. They listened for the end, for the unmistakable falling cadence that marks the last full stop. Accustomed to the rhythms of these speeches, the scouts, as one, would get to their feet. The young priest was moved by their energy, the purity of that delicate age as childhood passes, one that, alas, like flowers, does not last. He announced a big game of Touch-or-See.

  The rules of the game were simple: two teams were sent into the woods, each to capture the other. One team captured by touch, the other by seeing. For one team being seen is fatal, for the other, being touched.

  The young priest called the teams Minoses and Medusas, being a man of letters, but the scouts called them Touchers and Seers; theirs was a more straightforward language and they had other preoccupations.

  Salagnon was King Minos, leader of the Touchers. He and his group disappeared into the dense thickets. As soon as they entered the woods he had them march in step. He told them to take short strides, to stay in rank; and they obeyed, because at first we always obey. As soon as they reached a clearing, he organized them, splitting them into groups of three, whose members must always stay together. ‘They only have to see us and we lose; but we’ve got to get within arm’s reach. Their weapon has much greater range than ours. But luckily we’ve got the forest. And we’re disciplined. They’re too cocky because they think they’ll win, but it’s their confidence that makes them vulnerable. Our weakness forces us to be cunning. This is your weapon: discipline and obedience. You have to think as one, you have to act as one, very precisely, as soon as you sense a moment of opportunity. You can’t afford to hesitate; those moments will not come again.’

  He had them march in step around the clearing. Then had them all perform the same action: at his signal, they were to silently throw themselves to the ground, then at his signal jump up and all run in the same direction. Then throw themselves on the ground again. At first, the drill amused them, later they protested. Salagnon had been expecting this. One of the taller boys, whose handsome face had a dusting of downy hair and whose hair was slicked back and neatly parted, led the protest.

  ‘What, again?’ he said, as Salagnon whistled for them to throw themselves to the ground.

  ‘Yes. Again.’

  The boy remained standing. The other scouts lying on the ground now raised their heads. Their bare knees against the damp leaves were starting to feel the cold.

  ‘Until when?’

  ‘Perfection.’

  ‘I’m not doing this any more. It’s got nothing to do with the game.’

  Salagnon betrayed no emotion. He stared at the boy, who forced himself to hold his gaze. The scouts on their bellies hesitated. Salagnon nodded to two of the taller lads, almost as tall as the boy defying him.

  ‘Vuillermoz and Gilet, grab him.’

  They scrabbled to their feet and grabbed his arms, tentatively at first, then, when he started to struggle, more firmly. As he resisted, they held him solidly with triumphant smiles.

  Some brambles were growing in a hollow. Salagnon strode over to the prisoner, undid his belt and tugged down his shorts.

  ‘Toss him in there!’

  ‘You’ve got no right!’

  The boy tried to run, but was thrown, trouserless, into the brambles. The thorny tendrils held him fast, beads of blood appeared on his skin. He burst into tears. No one came to his rescue. One of the scouts picked up his shorts and threw them into the brambles, and the more he struggled the more entangled they became. There were giggles.

  ‘If we want to win, our team has to be a machine. You have to perform like cogs in a machine. And if you want go round saying you’re not machines, that you’ve got feelings, that’s too bad. You lose. And we have to win.’

  He organized each group to act as a single soldier: one was designated the ‘head’, he listened for his orders and, using finger signals, passed them on; the other two were the ‘legs’, they followed, they ran; when necessary they became ‘arms’, in order to catch. These sets of three he divided into two groups under the command of the two boys who had become his henchmen, prepared to follow his every command. ‘And you,’ he said to his victim, who had emerged from the brambles and was pulling on his shorts, sniffling, ‘get back in rank and don’t let me hear another peep from you.’

  The drilling continued
and cohesion was achieved. The ‘heads’ vied with each other in their zeal. When everyone was ready, Salagnon put them into position. He hid them in the bushes and behind the big trees that lined the path that led from the gatekeeper’s lodge deep into the woods. They waited.

  In silence they waited, blending in with the leaves, crouching under ferns, eyes fixed on the clearing where the other team would appear. They waited. The damp from the ground seeped into their clothes to their skin, which drew in the cold as a lamp’s wick draws in paraffin. Dry branches pierced their bivouacs, prodding them in the stomach, the thigh; at first they shifted noiselessly to avoid them, then learned to endure the prodding. Their faces were screened by ferns with velvet fronds, their tightly curled crosiers ready to burst open at the first sign of spring. They could smell the intense, green perfume that cut through the whitish odour of damp mushrooms. Their breathing became so calm that they could now hear what resonated inside them; their thick arteries boomed, each channelling the pounding drum of their heart. Trees gently collided, creaking restlessly; raindrops fell here and there with a noise of rustling paper; some fell on them and they had to steel themselves and make a slow, silent gesture to wipe them away.

  The others were coming.

  There came the booming thwack of wood, clear and sharp, of branch against tree trunk: the Seers were passing the first group. They had struck the trunk of a hollow tree.

  The Seers baulked, but continued on their way. There are forest noises that can be ignored and others one should listen for, but who is to know which is which? There were four of them, moving shoulder to shoulder with measured steps, each watching the edge of the path. The Touchers could not get close without being seen. Step by step, they moved forwards, nostrils flaring; it is not of much use, but when your senses are heightened all the organs are stirred. They passed Salagnon, who did not flinch. No one moved; the four boys passed. Then Salagnon shouted: ‘Two!’ and the nearest second group bounded to their feet and dashed towards the Seers, who turned towards the noise of snapping twigs and triumphantly cried: ‘Seen! Seen!’ Obedient to the rules, the Touchers froze and raised their hands. The Seers, forgetting all caution, went over to seize their prisoners. They were laughing at this easy victory, but their weapon was so much the stronger. They were about to name the prisoners, as the rules required, but they were laughing too hard to be able to speak. They missed a beat. ‘Three!’ roared Salagnon, and Group Three leapt up from the ferns and, in a single bound, crossed the few paces separating them from the Seers and grabbed them from behind before they could turn. All but one, who took off without a word, running as fast as his legs could carry him down the first path he found. ‘Four!’ shouted Salagnon, cupping his hands into a loud-hailer. The runner, breathless, stopped at the first sheltered spot on the path and leaned against a tree to marshal his wits, only to be seized by the group hiding behind the very tree where he had sought refuge.