The feldwebel has seen me stuffing pieces of paper into an earthenware retort, but he imagines that I’m putting formulae on them, and that in consequence, they will only have to search that retort to collect the precious documents. He’s a Pomeranian who doesn’t know how to read; he’s enormously stupid and as chatty as a magpie. He has so few opportunities to spout his stupidities that he catches up when he’s alone with me; it’s therefore easy for me to learn many things about this strange world I inhabit.
When I expressed astonishment one day at seeing him at his age—between fifty and fifty-four—still in the army, he made this strange response:
“In the special army that I’m in, age has nothing to do with it; it’s the point of departure that’s everything. Some are in it for five years, some for two, the convicts forever.”
“Do you know why I’m here?” I asked him.
“No, but your case is serious. What did you do? Me, I stole from the regimental treasury.”
Thus, I’ve been led to conclude—and the conclusion has been verified since—that all the creatures living on aerobagne 32 are expiating a sin, some falling under the force of military law, others under the rigors of the penal code.
The convicts are guarded by prisoners who are purging a penance and pursuing their rehabilitation; that is always accorded to them if they fulfill the duties of their functions resolutely.
Lieutenant Eitel has become almost familiar with me; he comes to keep me company frequently. It’s thanks to him that I’ve been able to obtain the sulfuric acid and certain ingredients that I need to attain a goal that I’m secretly pursuing.
The fellow is strange: a bizarre composite of sensibility and egotism. He is indifferent to the misery that surrounds him, but his own, to which he believes he is submitting, appears to him to be the only great and respectable one. He has, however, often deigned to sympathize with mine.
Like the man who traced the bloody inscription, he regrets his homeland—not Germany, but the ground, wherever it might be. For all these exiles in the sky, the earth is their fatherland!
“Oh, to see the ground again,” he said to me this morning, “to smell the good odor of trees and freshly-opened furrows, to hear running water! When I go back down, Monsieur Ménestin, it seems to me that my first concern will be to throw myself face down to embrace and kiss the ground.”
“Like you,” I replied, “I experience that sentiment. I know a corner of my country where the sea murmurs in the sonorous cup of a little inlet; all around, the landscape extends, blond with wheat or brown when the soil is newly plowed, planted with apple trees with heavy fruit…it’s toward that corner that my memory most frequently wanders…”
He quit me with his soul full of melancholy; he’s still a child.
Yesterday, he told me that I was free to go anywhere on the airship, except for the prison, in the strict sense, and offered me his hand. I could do otherwise than take it; he shook mine for a long time, with an insistence that embarrassed me
From Weber I’ve learned that the officers are not without anxiety; the convicts are becoming restive, and two are to be punished tomorrow. They’ve spoken—fifty lashes to punish that sin! Weber also said—the amity that the second lieutenant seems to have for me has loosened his tongue singularly—that the convicts are seized by a kind of contagious folly annually. They start to utter cries, all talking at the same time. Nothing can stop them. It’s necessary then, he added, to have recourse to powerful means. What powerful means does he mean? That frightens me.
My relationship with the commandant has remained the same; however, he comes to the laboratory sometimes, in passing, always to ask me whether I’m working on my liberation. One day he seemed alarmed by the quantity of blank paper that I employ, without him knowing precisely how, and he informed me that, from now on, the sheets will be rationed and I’ll have to justify their usage.
Yesterday evening. I had a conversation with Second Lieutenant Eitel that it’s necessary to report. I was standing on the bridge; the weather was clear and I was contemplating the constellations. Thousands of stars were scintillating; we had the sensation of flying among tremulous gleams. Eitel came to join me.
That evening, his soul was inclined to reverie by the sublime spectacle of the nocturnal sky, and our conversation took a rather intimate tone. I recited a few of the French verses I knew for him, and he started singing, very quietly, Schumann and Schubert. The purr of the propellers sustained that singing, which didn’t surpass the bridge.
Under the powerful charm exerted by that splendid hour, I sensed that Eitel and I were united by profound affinities, and I couldn’t help telling him so.
“I’d like to be your friend,” he replied, “and my friendship for you would astonish you, if you knew its extent.”
I was embarrassed by that statement, as I had been by his handshake; he sensed it.
“Perhaps, one day,” he went on, “you’ll understand why I’ve just let you glimpse a little of my soul, Monsieur Ménestin, and then everything will be explained to you; but for now, tell yourself, for you might doubt it by virtue of what you see here, that I do have a heart beneath my soldier’s uniform, and that that heart can suffer, as all hearts suffer.”
“Why do you stay here?”
He kept silent for a minute; then, seemingly making a decision, he said, in a low voice: “The Kommandant is my father...”
Then—I don’t know whether I was obeying some secret and despicable desire to make the man suffer or whether I didn’t have time to reflect—I said: “Your father! But I’ve been told that all the people living here were subjected to a punishment!”
I saw him shudder and go pale; to hide his distress, he turned up the collar of his greatcoat.
“Yes,” he said, after a pause, during which he seemed to be sustaining an internal struggle. “Yes, my father is subject to one, like everyone here. My father committed, as an officer…an unworthy action. He’s expiating it by five years in the bagne, but while conserving his rank. He’s already done two years, the first alone, the second with me. I came voluntarily, to try to prevent him from drinking and degrading himself. Thanks to my presence, he’s mastered his vice somewhat.”
I remained mute with confusion. In spite of the hatred that I had amassed against everything German, the second lieutenant’s conduct was so generous that I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him.
“I didn’t want to hurt you,” I said, “or to make you suffer.”
“I have more to mourn than you think, Monsieur Ménestin. Do you remember that I told you that no one has the right to scorn pity? My pride was already dead, and I no longer ask for anything but commiseration.”
“You have all of mine.”
“Perhaps I’ll need it one day. Promise me that when that day comes, it won’t be in vain that I hold out my hands to you.”
There was only one response I could make. I made him that promise.
X. The Investigation at Neustadt:
A Camouflaged Landscape
Escander and Mathilde, whom we left in mid-air, landed at Neustadt after the expected interval. Instead of setting down at the official landing-ground, the airplane descended very gently in a field on the edge of the city, that being what Alexis had decided to do.
Alexis, the pilot of airplane 21, was not an ordinary man. Born in Paris, the middle of a faubourg, he retained the spirit and something of the mores of that faubourg. Beneath the veneer of education that covered his true nature to some degree, the soul of a street-urchin still showed through. Accomplished in all sports, including English boxing, of which he had a thorough knowledge and practiced for pleasure; he was also a champion swimmer, jumper and foot-racer. In addition, he was endowed with an imperturbable self-composure, fearing nothing and ready for anything, and a facile tongue, which brought delight of the different societies to which he belonged. Twice before, he had accompanied Escander on long-range missions; he took a great deal of pride in that, and had vowed
an unalterable amity to the Monde reporter. Small but well-proportioned, the proprietor of a shock of hair with no definable color but coiffed in an aviator’s helmet, with a perpetual smile: such was Alexis.
“Why are we setting down here?” Escander asked.
“To show what can be done, Boss. These people take us for bumpkins, with their landing-field as big as the Sahara. It makes me dizzy.”
“We’ll get arrested.”
“No fear, Boss—I’ll put them to sleep.”
In fact, a policeman ran forward as soon as the plane touched down, and started jabbering something no one understood.”
Alexis, steady on his feet, only responded with the few German words that he knew. Those words, in fact, he knew in almost all the languages of the world: “Engine trouble…fuel…oil…eat…drink...”
“Halt!” he said to the agent. “And Madame Boche and the little Boches? All well? Go on, too bad. Halt…engine trouble, I tell you. Outside your routine, understand? Be good. Open up, dear chap!”
Escander came to the assistance of the two interlocutors; in bad, but sufficiently comprehensible German, he explained that engine trouble had forced the airplane to land
The policeman contented himself with taking down the international identification number of the apparatus and went away.
Immediately, Alexis, who had started rummaging in his engine for form’s sake, took to the air again, and by means of a savant maneuver, came down on the landing-ground.
Escander and Matilde had themselves taken to a hotel, where they registered as Monsieur Escander, commercial traveler, and his cousin.
The great Monde reporter had explained to the young woman the program he intended to follow. He had read Paul Ménestin’s manuscript in its entirety, and had been able to draw up a plan of attack.
“My intention,” said the reporter, “is first of all to have a look around, to see things that, knowing the avowed objective of our visit, they might have an interest in hiding from us. In that regard, you’ll be very useful to me. Our presence is already known, without a doubt, but that’s of little importance, since no one knows the reason for our arrival. It’s necessary not to let them know that reason until the last moment.
“They’ll monitor us, have us followed, keep us under surveillance. Until the moment when they know what’s going on, let’s give them the impression, so far as we can, of people who are only concerned with one thing: collecting information about the death of someone dear to us.”
“We’ll act as you desire, cousin; I don’t want to hinder you in any way, even by a personal opinion that might trouble yours. I merely count on being useful to you by virtue of my feminine intuition. Women have delicate senses; they notice the little things, and understand them, when they want to.”
Mathilde Régis was no longer the plaintive young woman who, in Paris, had been overwhelmed by chagrin. She had been suddenly transformed by the crack of the whip that had given her hope, and now resolute, she was no longer showing anything but the grace of her smile and the brightness of her gaze.
“Good,” said Escander. “We understand one another, I’m certain. Now, if you have no objection, we’ll take a little walk in the country; perhaps it will tell us something.”
That remark was overheard in part by the waiter that was prowling around the table where the two young people were having a light meal. He immediately presented himself.
“If Monzieur an Matame are making an exurzion in the guntry, zere is a garage nearpy, a ferry cood garage, ferry cood vehigles, ferry cood drivers.”
“If everything is as good as that,” said the reporter, “show us the way.”
The young woman was ready in a minute.
On the threshold of the hotel they found Alexis smoking a cigarette.
“The airplane?” Escander asked.
“In a garage.”
“You’ve left it alone?”
“The door’s locked. There’s only one, and I have the key in my pocket.”
Escander could not help smiling at Alexis, who made himself at home everywhere. The waiter gave them directions to the garage and the reporter gave him a tip.
At the garage the three companions found an obsequious individual; it happened, as if by chance, that he spoke French. The reporter explained to him that they wanted to undertake an excursion, and wanted a car that he would drive himself. The man, without ceasing to execute little bows, told him that he was absolutely heart-broken, but that it was absolutely impossible for him to satisfy that desire, because police regulations did not permit automobiles without chauffeurs to be hired to foreigners.
“But at least,” the reporter asked, a trifle sarcastically, “those chauffeurs take you where you want to go?”
“Why not, Monsieur?”
“Who knows? Perhaps the police regulations impose itineraries on tourists.”
The garage proprietor did not reply.
“Prepare me a vehicle with a docile chauffeur—I’m in a hurry. Here’s the deposit.”
The vehicle was ready in less than five minutes
“Will you permit me to go with you, Boss?” asked Alexis.
“If you’re certain that the airplane isn’t at risk.”
“No more so than the apple of my eye.”
“Come, then.”
“Shove over a little, clumsy,” said Alexis to the chauffeur, and, in spite of the latter’s ill-will, installed himself comfortably in the front seat. The vehicle set off toward the Steelworks, which Escander had designated as the objective of the trip.
The bleak silhouette of the buildings stood out against a gray sky. Soon, they were six feet from the walls devoid of openings, surpassed by tall chimneys slowly pushing a heavy and dense smoke into the atmosphere.
“It’s frightful,” said Mathilde. “It’s more like a prison than a factory.”
“Perhaps it’s both,” said the reporter.”
“You’re visiting?” asked the chauffeur, turning round.
“On the way back,” said Escander. “Drive on.”
“Where?” asked the chauffeur. “There’s no more road.”
“What’s that?” demanded Alexis, indignantly.
“A path that ends in the fields.”
“Into paths full of drunkenness,/Let’s go together at a slow pace...!” sang Alexis, pretending to seize the chauffeur around the waist.100
“What?” said Escander.
A heavy silence fell in the vehicle; the two young people looked at one another anxiously.
“But there are trees and hills over there,” said the reporter. “Can’t one go as far as that?”
“It’s of no interest,” said the chauffeur, leaning on is steering-wheel.”
“I’d like to go there, though.”
“What if I damage the car?”
“I’ll pay.”
“But...”
“Come on,” said Alexis, pushing the chauffeur away. “I’ll drive the old banger like a demoiselle. Where do you want to go, Boss?”
The chauffeur, seeing that he was not going to have the last word, gave in. “At your orders,” he said.
He started his vehicle moving again, but carefully steered it toward the deepest potholes and the most chaotic places that appeared in front of him.
Escander leaned toward he young woman, and spoke to her in a whisper.
“I’m singularly troubled,” he said. “We’ve passed the Steelworks, undoubtedly. Now, according to your fiancé’s manuscript, the railway goes along the northern edge of the buildings, and then heads into the country, toward a ravine. That railway no longer exists, if it ever did.”
“However…,” said the young woman, unable to admit that Paul had not told he exact truth.
“I understand your doubt,” the reporter continued. “You wouldn’t be a woman, or a woman in love, if you didn’t have an absolute confidence in what your fiancé wrote, but...”
The chauffeur braked abruptly. “Impossible to go any furth
er,” he said.
“Perhaps we’re mistaken,” Escander murmured in the young woman’s ear. Aloud, he said to the chauffeur: “Let’s go back.”
Mathilde’s hand descended on Escander’s sleeve, and in a rapid voice, quietly enough for the chauffeur not to overhear: “No, not yet, I beg you. Let’s go as far as the trees; if the vehicle can’t go any further, let’s go on foot.”
Escander hesitated, but the young woman’s tone was so imperious and imploring, at the same time, that he said abruptly. “As you wish. Chauffeur, wait for us. Alexis, come!”
Then, helping the young woman down, he took her by the arm and drew her away swiftly.
Alexis followed, without understanding—which caused him to grumble a little.
The trio went past the first curtain of trees. It was a plantation of pines, not very dense; then there was another stand, much thicker. Between the two plantations the terrain dipped slightly.
Escander stopped; he rummaged in his pocket and took out a piece of paper. “This is an approximate map I drew up according to the data in the manuscript,” he said. These are the buildings that we’ve passed, over there. The track ought to bend here, and the ravine should be here or here...
“According to the estimates I’ve made of the car’s speed, we’re five or six kilometers from the Steelworks, and thus at the very location of the ravine, but look—there are no ventilation shafts, any more than a railway or a ravine.”
Alexis had listed to the reporter’s explanations without saying anything.
“It’s frightful,” said the young woman. “Perhaps we’ve made an error—perhaps there are other steelworks in the vicinity?”
“In any case,” said Escander, “let’s not leave the place without making a thorough examination. Let’s search, auscultate the ground, interrogate the stones. You’ve heard and understood, Alexis? We’re looking for a ravine. You go that way, Mademoiselle; I’ll go this way, and you go on ahead, Alexis. Can that damned chauffeur see us?”
“No, Boss—there’s a bend in the road. No danger from that direction.”
“Ah!” said Mathilde. “We’re here!” Her voice took on a joyful tone. “Haven’t you told me that Paul was watched when he came here to rest?”
The Mirror of Present Events Page 30
