The Earth and Sky of Jacques Dorme

by Andrei Makine

  Jacques Dorme watches what happens through a broad crack between the planks of the wall. In the middle of the courtyard a wooden table and two benches can be seen. The man in black leather sits down, Witold prepares to do the same but the soldiers seize him and force him to stand. The place suddenly begins to look like one of those indeterminate backyards we wander through in our nightmares. There is that table, in bright sunlight, on the trampled snow. Soldiers carry crates, cans of gasoline, cooking pans; they cross the courtyard, paying no attention to the interrogation, and disappear at the other end. The roar of the aircraft sometimes becomes deafening, then stops for a moment, and one can hear the noisy trickle of drops sliding off the roof, still heavy with ice. The man in leather shouts an order and the scurrying of the carriers comes to a halt. All that can be seen now is the interrogation table and an army truck parked under a tree.

  When the aircraft noise fades, Jacques Dorme manages to catch certain words but senses that, more than the words, it is the difference between these two men that tells and will determine the outcome: the pilot, tall, with an open face and a firm voice; the man in black, very neat, despite the springtime mud, staring at the Pole with unconcealed hatred. At one moment their voices are raised. To overcome the droning of the dive-bombers, Jacques Dorme tells himself. But the tone continues to harden even when silence returns. He sees the man in black leather stand up, his two fists leaning on the table. Witold shouts and waves his hands, the soldiers poke him in the ribs with their submachine guns. Jacques Dorme hears the Pole yelling Stalin’s name in a contemptuous outburst. The man in black stands up again, his mouth twists, hisses, “You filthy spy . . .” several times, and he suddenly starts to draw his revolver. The seconds become unbelievably long. Witold and the two soldiers watch him doing it, unmoving. To Jacques Dorme it seems as if this fixity of stares lasts for at least a minute. The man grasps the gun, everyone has time to realize what is happening, Witold has time to lick his lips. And the shot is fired, then another.

  Jacques Dorme knows it is impossible. A man is not killed like this without a trial. It must be a blank cartridge, to inspire fear. You cannot kill a man in front of this table, in this sunlight. . . Witold falls. The man in black leather puts away his pistol, and the solders drag the body in through the open door of one of the barrack huts.

  When he finds himself out there on the bench, Jacques Dorme has the strange sensation of not having left his observation post behind the hangar wall, of continuing to observe the scene, of there being quite simply this other man, himself, who will now talk for several minutes, then die. The one looking through the crack ought to do something: hurl himself at the man in black leather, wrest his pistol from him, shout, alert a commanding officer. The man repeats his question; one of the soldiers thrusts the barrel of his submachine gun into the back of Jacques Dorme’s neck, prompting him to speak. He replies, is amazed at the automatic correctness of what he is saying, realizes he is speaking Russian and that it is the first time this language has been quite as useful as this to him. He also has enough presence of mind to appreciate the strangeness of this first time. To appreciate that his replies will not ward off what awaits him and that this knowledge of Russian is the gravest charge against him, against this “spy,” parachuted in by the Germans, and trying to pass himself off— a likely story! — as a French pilot. In particular, he believes he has identified the man in black leather, not him but the men of this type, whom he came across in Spain. Men in black leather. The Russian airmen, he recalls, used to break off their conversations when one of these men approached, and Jacques Dorme could not for the life of him understand this fear in pilots who confronted death ten times a day. They would stiffen and the only explanation they gave was a combination of letters: GPU — or else NKVD . . .

  The scream of planes going into a nosedive obliterates all words. They face one another in silence, staring into one another’s eyes. Suddenly Jacques Dorme senses that the man in leather is very frightened, that these narrow brown eyes are squinting with fear. An aircraft flies over the hangars, dives down on the infantrymen in the next street who are preparing to pull out. There are shouts, the stampeding of a crowd. Jacques Dorme looks up, notices the notched silhouette of another plane, and in an automatic and instant computation, assesses the angle, the distance, the approach speed . . . He has an impulse to warn the man in leather, but the latter is already running, running slowly, caught up in the stiff panels of his greatcoat, his hand gripping the holster of his revolver. He ought to get down, throw himself behind a wall, beneath this bench under which Jacques Dorme slides, but the dive-bomber is already passing overhead, bursting their eardrums with its roar, firing.

  There is still the same table in the middle of the courtyard, the same sunlight, the ice melting into long, iridescent drops. And now, close to the trucks running board, this body in its black leather, huddled up, the smashed head fallen forward on its chest. “The man who wanted to kill me . . Jacques Dorme says to himself, without yet grasping the sense of his words — “The man I wanted to save . . .”

  He has no time to realize what is happening to him. A cross-country vehicle pulls up in the courtyard, and the officer who escorted them this morning gets out and claps him on the shoulder. “So that’s it. He’s checked you over, our spy catcher?” Jacques Dorme indicates the truck with a jerk of his chin. The officer emits a long whistle, followed by a torrent of oaths. He goes to look at the corpse, stoops, retrieves the pistol and explains with a wink: “He’s killed more Russians than Germans with this. Only don’t tell anyone I said so . . .” Jacques Dorme tells him about Witold. The same whistle, a bit less long-drawn-out, the same oaths: “Poor goddamn Polack! Just his luck . . . No, we haven’t time. The Fritzes will be here before nightfall. Get in quick. We need to see Colonel Krymov.” Jacques Dorme refuses, argues. The officer insists, becomes angry, waves the pistol he has just taken from the dead man. Jacques Dorme smiles: “Go ahead. Shoot. At least that’ll be one who’s not Russian.” In the end they load Witold’s body into the vehicle and drive off, weaving a path between the bomb craters and the skeletons of burning trucks.

  Colonel Krymov is nowhere to be found. At the command post they shrug their shoulders; his aide-de-camp advises them to wait. They decide to inspect all the houses, few in number, where lights are visible. The last one they visit is this izba where the windows sparkle with a flickering radiance. Before knocking they go up to the window and look in. The room is lit by the ruddy glow from the fire in the big stove. A hefty, naked man can be seen heaving about on the bed, apparently alone; he lets himself fall, full length, rears up again, falls back once more. Suddenly his hand plunges into the hollow of the bed, extracts from it a heavy female breast and kneads it between his fingers. The bed is very deep, much sunken by the weight of the lovers, and the woman’s body is buried in the depths of this nest. The man collapses, emerges. This time his hand fishes out a broad thigh, pink from the fire. It is a bed on casters; at each thrust it moves forward, then backward, but not as far. A military greatcoat looks as if it is sitting bolt upright on a chair.

  They see Krymov at the command post an hour later. He shows them the road to take the next day and advises them to set off very early, because “Well be in for a merry time here soon.” The dour melancholy with which he says this surprises Jacques Dorme. Merry . . . He does not understand. “My Russian doesn’t stretch to it,” he says to himself.

  The frost that night is very light and there is soft earth in the corner of an orchard. When the grave is filled in Jacques Dorme sinks a cross into it: two planks of wood fastened together with wire. “At long last,” sighs the officer, “that was well done,” and fires three shots into the air with his pistol.

  The pulsing of this new life, saved as it was in the nick of time, keeps him from sleeping. One thought is uppermost: he will never be able to explain to anyone that the war was part of all this too.

  MORE ECHOES OF THE WAR COULD BE HEARD the next day in t
he tones of his latest escort. (Jacques Dorme was getting the feeling that his successive mentors simply did not know how to get rid of him.) This lieutenant informed him with a little dry laugh: “By the way, Krymov’s regiment . . . Mincemeat. Not a single one got away. And the village. Not a single house left standing. It was a meat grinder.” A gesture emphasized his words.

  The day after, they traveled back through the same village — since then recaptured from the Germans — and came upon a young signalman lying dead on the road, close to the length of wire, severed in an explosion. His arms torn to pieces by shrapnel, he had clamped the two ends of the wire together in his teeth. What seemed to amaze the lieutenant more than anything was the soldiers ingenuity.

  This nimbleness, too, was war.

  * * *

  As was the hallucinatory reappearance, the following morning, of the man in black leather . . .

  They had reached the end of a field covered in snow, and recognized the airfield they had spent four days searching for. There, beside a heavy three-engined aircraft, the interrogation scene was being repeated, as if in a wounded mans delirious dream. There was this man clad in a long black leather coat, a man taller than and substantially different from the first, but acting out the same role. Pistol in hand, he was pacing up and down in the middle of a group of officers, uttering threats coupled with oaths, pointing at the aircraft and from time to time tapping on the fuselage. He did not seem to notice the arrival of Jacques Dorme and his guide, the flying officer.

  “I know all about your sabotage!” he was yelling. “I’ve caught you red-handed. I know you’re trying to undermine the decisions of the Supreme Commander. . .” Intermingled with oaths as they were, these accusations had a bizarre ring in Jacques Dorme’s ears, with the Supreme Commander, Stalin, finding himself sandwiched between a “shit!” and a “fuck-your-mother!” An officer in a pilot’s flight suit spoke up in the tones of a schoolboy seeking to excuse himself: “But, Comrade Inspector, we can’t load twice its capacity . . .” There was a further procession of “fuck-your-mothers” and “shits,” coupled, this time, with “the Party”: “If the Party decides this aircraft can carry three tons that means it can carry three tons! And anyone who opposes the decisions of the Party is a fascist lackey and will be liquidated!” The barrel of the pistol jabbed at the pilot’s cheek. He swallowed his saliva and whispered: ‘Tm willing to give it one more try, but . . .” The man in leather lowered the pistol: “But it will be your last. The Party will not tolerate the presence of fascist agents in the ranks of our squadrons.”

  The pilot and another officer took their places in the aircraft. Jacques Dorme felt as if he were going in with them, imitating each move they made in the cockpit, studying the instrument panel. . . He had recognized the aircraft as soon as he set eyes on it, despite the state it was in: it was a Junkers 52, the very type he had flown in Spain. The machine gun had been removed and the turret dismantled (perhaps so that it could carry the famous three-ton load decided on by the Party). And the outer surface of the fuselage and the wings had been painted a murky blue.

  The runway was long enough, but the aircraft began to taxi sluggishly, the jolting of the run pulled it down against the ground. A hundred yards before the line of snowdrifts at the edge, the aircraft reared, raised its nose, then clung to the runway, began to veer around, and swerved off toward the virgin snow. The engines fell silent.

  The man in leather drew his pistol and began running toward the plane. Everyone followed him but with hesitant steps, not knowing how to avoid the cowardice of involvement. The pilot had climbed out and was standing close to the plane, his eyes on the running man. His comrade was hiding behind it, pretending to examine a propeller.

  His voice raw with rage and the cold, the man in leather barked out: “Not content with disobeying the orders of the Party, you also attempt to destroy military equipment. For this you will all be court-martialed. You too!” He swung round at a staff sergeant who was standing on the sidelines.

  At this moment the lieutenant intervened, introduced himself, introduced Jacques Dorme. The man in leather stared at them disdainfully, then cried out in shrill tones: “So what’s he waiting for? Let him get in. Let him prove he’s a pilot and not a spy parachuted in during the night!”

  Jacques Dorme walked around the aircraft and asked to see the cargo. The pilot sighed and opened the door, and they climbed into the dark cabin of the Junkers. The interior was taken up with big wooden crates and piled high with scrap metal: thick cast-iron slabs, tank tracks . . . This test flight had no doubt been devised to measure the maximum load. They climbed out. A crowd formed around Jacques Dorme. There was a steely silence. Gusts of wind could be heard hissing against the blades of the propeller. “It can be done,” stated Jacques Dorme, “but there’s one thing I shall need . . .”

  The man in leather grimaced mistrustfully. “What more do you want? An auxiliary engine, perhaps?” Jacques Dorme shook his head: “No, not an engine. Two bars of soap . . .” There was such a violent explosion of laughter that a flock of rooks clattered up from the roof of a hangar and wheeled off over the fields, as if borne away by a storm. The lieutenant was laughing, bent double, the pilot with his face resting against the fuselage of the Junkers, the staff sergeant with his fists pressed to his eyes, the others spinning around, their legs shaking, as if drunk. A cap rolled in the snow, their eyes wept tears. The man in leather danced around among them, thumping them on the back and shoulders with the butt of his pistol. . . In vain — their laughter sprang from being too close to death. When the spasms finally calmed down, when the officers had stopped pretending to soap their necks and chests, the laughter took hold of the man in leather. He could not help himself, he forced his voice to seem threatening, froze the muscles on his face, but the eruption burst forth from his clenched lips, twisted his waxen mask, he was squealing. The others looked at him in silence, with preoccupied, almost distressed expressions. It was probably in order to save face that, between two of his squeals, he shouted: “Get him what he wants!”

  The aircraft gathered speed, taxied back to the start of the runway, and braked. Jacques Dorme jumped to the ground and went around to join the man in the flying suit, who had remained with the crates. At the other end of the field the inspector could be seen running toward them, waving his pistol. . . They lifted up one end of a long crate that loomed large there, right in the middle of the cabin. Jacques Dorme slid the two pieces of soap under its wooden base, one at each side. “If you can manage to push it forward,” he said to the man, who was beginning to understand, “we’re saved . . .” And he explained the precise moment when the center of gravity should be manipulated.

  The aircraft began its takeoff run, passing a few yards away from the man in leather, and lifted clear of the earth, just grazing the rim of ice. And began to lose height.

  From the ground they could see that the left wing was tilting down; it was losing speed, grinding to a halt, it seemed to them. “It’s a goner!” murmured the staff sergeant. Suddenly, with an abrupt roll, the plane tilted the other way, the right wing now plunging downward, but less dangerously and losing less momentum. And once more it limped to the left, then once again to the right. . . Thus it gained height, now swaying less and looking more and more like an ordinary aircraft. “He tossed it!” exclaimed one of the pilots in the group on the runway. And several voices took up the cry, admiringly: “He tossed the pancake!” The maneuver was known to them as a way of getting overloaded aircraft off the ground, but only real aces could bring it off.

  In the cargo area sat the man in the flying suit, leaning his back against a long crate arranged at an angle. His eyes were reddened and he was panting jerkily. When he recovered his breath, he got up and crawled over to a window. Down below lay the winding course of a river, gray beneath the ice, the airfield no longer visible. He opened the door and began throwing out pieces of scrap metal, then, shoving it along the soapy floor, a whole crate. “That way we’ve a
better chance of landing, with that madman . . .” He pricked up his ears. The pilot was singing. In a language unknown to him.

  * * *

  At the end of April Jacques Dorme learned that he was going to be posted to a completely new squadron, a special unit that would fly American planes from Alaska across Siberia. He was disappointed. He had hoped to be taken on as a fighter pilot, to go and fight at the front. One detail consoled him: flying this route, over three thousand miles long, was considered to be much more dangerous than operating over enemy lines.

  During those weeks of waiting he often found himself thinking again about the impossibility of explaining the war: telling himself that after the event everyone would talk about it, publish commentaries, accusations, justifications. Everyone, and, above all, those who had not fought in it. Everything would be crystal clear at last: enemies, allies, the righteous and the monsters. The years of fighting would be recorded, day after day, in terms of troop movements and glorious battles. The essential truth would be forgotten: that the whole of wartime was made up of myriad moments of war, and that sometimes behind the vast turmoil of the fronts there lurked a sunlit courtyard, a March day, with a man in black leather killing another man because he felt like killing. And that on the very same day there would be a certain Colonel Krymov, a naked man, quickly satisfying his lust for the flesh of a woman before being cut to pieces by machine-gun fire. And also that young man, his jaws clenched around the telegraphic cable . . . He soon lost his way among his recollections, and this led him to conclude that the vital thing was to keep all these fragments of war in one’s memory, all these tiny wars fought by soldiers now forgotten.