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  The dragoons have bound and gagged Hans, they have knocked him to the ground, they are preparing for one of those charges of which the French cavalry have been masters for centuries. Dragoons arrive from all sides, they line up in ranks of six in the space permitted by the forest track before they burst out in a serried column into the clearing occupied by the Germans.

  Riders holding in their mounts, softly uttered commands, the rattle of bared steel, the horses clinking their bits as they try to nibble the young oak leaves at the edge of the copse: a late arrival, medium height, slim, brown hair and large projecting ears, tries to take his place in their ranks, he has a name well suited to the stereotypical Frenchman who tries to travel first class with a second-class ticket, just three syllables, one for his Christian name, two for his surname, the absolute minimum which enables a character to wander about in the wings but is perhaps insufficient to allow him to rise to the front row of what is about to be one of the French cavalry’s most glorious charges.

  The Captain of the dragoons eyes his troops who are now formed up, he has two fears: less than a year ago he was in Berlin, on manoeuvres, and saw the German infantry in action. Even through a telescope it had not been easy to pick out feldgrau uniforms against a background of greenery. He has just warned his men to keep their eyes wide open, but has said nothing of his other fear: the Germans are doubtless well-equipped with machine guns like the ones he saw being fired in Berlin.

  ‘Industrialised death, my dear Jourde,’ the British military attaché, an infantry man, had told him.

  The Captain had replied: ‘Oh, the big guns have been getting us used to that for a long time now.’

  The attaché had responded with silence.

  Later, over a cocktail, with nothing to lead up to it, he said to the Captain:

  ‘The machine gun spells the end of chivalry.’

  And Captain Jourde replied: ‘Not if my dragoons charge with enough ferocity. Don’t forget the new dogma: a shock strike will beat small-arms fire every time.’

  Now the Captain groups his men closer together to give their action the semblance of a decisive blow, of a surprise, for surprise is the queen of tactical ploys. You can’t fight the old battles again, Rivoli, Marengo, and the great charges which unseated the enemy at Austerlitz, Jena and especially Prenzlow:

  ‘Finest charge I ever did see,’ an expert, Prince Murat, would say afterwards.

  Entire battles won with a charge, sabres at the ready, there’s no way you can do that any more. There remains the element of surprise: locate the enemy, take him by storm, annihilate him and move on. The Captain has dismissed the sluggard with the second-class ticket and sticking-out ears, Max Goffard by name, it would be much too much of a coincidence to let him appear here, just for the satisfaction of providing Hans with a mirror-image.

  Max protests, as a matter of fact Hans and he have coincided in many things of late, and they are not the only ones, and it all comes down to this: coincidence.

  If there hadn’t been millions upon millions of coincidences during that summer of 1914, the picturesque scene which is building up would have been replaced by a game of whist in a drawing room hung with tall dark-green curtains or alternatively by the monologue of a man who is about to go to sleep. Max would even agree to get on one of the horses whose backs have been rubbed raw by days and days of chafing and already give off a smell of death, it’s too late now, said the Captain.

  But even if it is too late, it matters for Max because of the friendship which is about to begin between him and Hans and will extend over a large slice of a century of which the year 1914 is the baptism of fire. And this coincidence must of necessity take place so that they may talk about it some day, it is this that will give godspeed and strength to their friendship which will end only in 1969, on the banks of the Rhine, when one of these two men will accompany the other to his last resting place, the funeral procession will perhaps pass by hillside, green with the embossed, fleshy-leaved Riesling vines that grow on the banks of the Rhine, a fine variety, in late spring the sheaths covered in a velvet cloak of innumerable fine hairs burst open and reach towards the light in tiny bouquets, the weather is dry and windy, a superb display of blossom, pollen flies up from the flower clusters, insects are busy, fertilisation in two weeks, a sweet smell, then the grapes start to look like fat, opaque marbles, hard and bluey-green, the heat shines on them, the nights turn cold, the days are grey, the sky clouds over with pale vapour, then one morning the wind from the sea spreads a damp mist which glazes the leaves, at noon the sun blazes down, and since last Monday there has been the honey-coloured translucence of grapes ready for picking.

  For the funeral in 1969 there will even be a brass band with banners of red and gold, crowds of people, sunshine. And not only that, a beautiful young woman. People will ask who is the woman in the black hat, pearl-grey scarf and the boots, and a voice will say:

  ‘Many things have passed away, but pretty women are always with us.’

  There will be a large crowd, some men will even wear top hats in the sunshine, a vineyard with terraces of pink sandstone from Alsace or the Rhineland, a hill, the cortege winds along the flank of a hill in the autumn sun, climbs up to the forest, proceeds through the trees and past the low bushes, some eyes linger on the ferns, the leaves, here and there tints of gold and burnt ash, a spider’s web is for a moment caught in a noose of sun. Other eyes look out for unlikely mushrooms, then the cortege descends once more to the Rhine, behind the band, the plumed horses and the antique-style hearse.

  All this is precisely why Max wants to be seen coincidentally by Hans’s side, now, in 1914, among the dragoons at Monfaubert who have just bound and gagged this enemy who shall be his friend. Max has grasped the bridle of a horse which has been rejected as being in no fit state to charge, the horse backs away; you can’t say that it refuses to be mounted, it’s an army horse, it tries to shy away without appearing to be looking for fresh grass, you never know; and at the same time it is already resigned to going into battle with a back that is a layer of pus and a rider he doesn’t know.

  Max strokes the horse’s head.

  Hans and him.

  A coincidence.

  One more, just like these millions of men coinciding in a war which they had opposed not all that long ago. And Max recalls that only a few months back he was fighting this war shoulder-to-shoulder with Jaurès and the socialists, a perfect coincidence with Hans who was doing exactly the same among the Germans. Coincidence was already there, and functioning, with each man trying to defend civilisation and culture by talking for hours on end in smoke-filled cafés, severally drinking schnapps or coffee laced with eau-de-vie, cheering the speakers, joining marches, convinced that the truth was emerging from the tramp of their feet, processing along boulevards gay with slogans and redolent of honest horse manure, buying newspapers which supported their ideas. Later they even left for the front for the same reasons, both wanting to defend civilisation once and for all against barbarism, we were the centre of the world.

  The day war was declared, Hans and Max rushed out to march like everyone else, swept along like everyone else, one in Berlin, the other in Paris, by the same wave of coincidence and pride, each of them swept along by the wave and adding his own puny gravitational pull to the wave which sweeps them all along. Max even shouted:

  ‘Long live Poincaré!’

  Ten days previously, along with millions of men, he had called him a warmonger and a murderer, and in the café he joined in with his friends chanting a demand that all the manure in the barracks be gathered into a heap and that, ‘in it, in the presence of all the troops and to the strains of a military band, the Colonel should plant the regimental flag!’

  Gustave Hervé.

  Then suddenly this great wave of men rushing to join the war to end war. Molecules feel the pull of the moon when tides are equinoctial. Few humans will remain standing on the sidelines like the man who was happy to note in his diary: ‘2 Augus
t 1914, Germany declares war on Russia. – Afternoon, went swimming.’

  All the others are caught up in the swirl of molecules, swelling it and allowing themselves to be swept along behind the banners, waving their straw boaters, a hat for village dances, for pleasure, for summertime, what was it about the nonchalant swagger which a boater gives its wearer (in August, people would even stick them on cab-horses’ heads, with holes cut out for their ears), what was it about the lightness and faintly rustic origin of its texture, about its colour, a light cream set off by the black of the hatband, what exactly was it that prompted the jerky movement of the hand which hurled it in the direction of Berlin, Paris or Vienna, up into the sky which contained the great ideas, the great beliefs and the icons which made a man want to run hatless across fields and with one mighty bound land on the streets of the enemy’s capital? directly on to its streets, don’t laugh.

  So off they went to war. For a while, Hans almost forgot the woman he so longed to see again, whom he would certainly see again, one day, by working on himself, on his body, on his soul, he would be a vastly better person than he was on the day that stupid business happened, the day they parted.

  Weeks on the march, camps lasting no more than a night or two, a pace which emptied the thoughts out of a man’s head, then in this clearing the long halt, awaiting the crossing of the Marne and the final offensive, and then the woman came back.

  Sometimes she surfaced in Hans’s sleep. The sensation of a body lying on his. He would wake, nobody there, but someone was there in the hollow of his shoulder, on his belly; she was there, the weight of a body on him, afraid of waking too fully, of feeling nothing, close your eyes, go back to dream, the warmth steals back over his chest and belly, something moves.

  But if he really goes back to sleep, it ends. Other times, it would happen in broad daylight, in the bushes a few metres dead ahead of him, in an autumn dress of ochre and dark green, woven of fine wool, he felt her presence less intensely than when he was half asleep but he could see her more clearly, she walked towards him as she used to once, carrying flowers in her arms.

  Then again it could be more conscious, Hans would begin talking to the woman and she would be where he decided she should be. She would reply, she was there just next to him, they stood watching the countryside together, she was holding flowers in her arms. He didn’t like flowers made up that way, people have such silly sentimental notions about bouquets of flowers. Now he could shed tears for them.

  Then again she comes to me laughing, she is playful, she deliberately exaggerates the sway of her hips, when they went for walks it was always fine weather, but at times things turned stormy, the tone changed. Hans blames himself more and more, there’d been several incidents, but all the same those afternoons always turned out nice in the end. And here too, in the clearing, to smoke, to be himself, be alone by himself and sad.

  At the same time, it could be very enjoyable to talk to her ghostly presence, to summon her, even if it turned out badly and she did not come. Then Johann would join him, together they would watch the rabbits’ bacchanalian antics and the constantly changing clouds. And in the lull which preceded the storm, Lena would come back.

  French dragoons, four troops of them, acting on orders from General Maisonneuve, commander of the 3rd Cavalry Division, orders which had been issued to the 2nd Squadron of the 12th Regiment of Dragoons for an operation to reconnoitre and harass.

  A Sherman-style operation, so named after the Union general during the American Civil War who disrupted the Confederate rear with his cavalry. His trademark was rails ripped from the track, heated until white-hot and wrapped around telegraph poles so that they could not be used again, the so-called ‘Sherman neckties’.

  The dragoons headed north, beyond Soissons, a foray of more than 150 kilometres behind German lines. The motto of the 12th is ‘Contending for Glory!’

  On this late afternoon, the tally notched up by Squadron Jourde, so called after its leader, is meagre. Morale is low. Going home without glory, mocked by the song of thrushes, without having disrupted anything at all, riding back through fields littered with French corpses still in heaps or laid out in lines, flesh swollen, uniforms stretched to bursting over bloated, grotesque bodies, black faces, black buzzing entrails, mouths like rolls of purple flesh. They make what use they can of the forest’s torpid shade, exhausted riders, three nights in a row without proper sleep, rocked by the motion of the horses, eyes fixed on the bobbing rumps ahead, sleep comes down on us like a fever, pinch yourself, talk to the man next to you, keep your voice as low as you can, sergeant-major I feel like a dumb animal, make the most of it, it helps you to put up with anything, sleep surges back, men slump forward, their chests touching their saddle-bags, they are ready to slide off their mounts, then they start, and the melancholy returns, as if it had been biding its time.

  Second-Lieutenant Dutilleux tries to scribble entries in his notebook, ahead the sky rises like a wall, you see buildings that aren’t there, trees, the shadows of trees, shadows which lengthen, the soporific amble of the spent horses, an officer rides back along the column rapping the men’s helmets or making a point of asking them for their names, and then they go back to sleep. The horses are exhausted, badly shod, saddle galls, forty hours without let-up, the weight of rider plus kit, that means carrying more than 120 kilos, they stink to high heaven, the horses do not have the capacity for mind over matter to help them but they keep on going, with a look of gentle supplication, you could shove your thumb into the eye-sockets sunk deep in their heads, their gummy eyelids droop, on they go, sometimes they get in each other’s way as, as when they see hanging in a tree, three metres above the ground, the corpse of one of their own kind which was blown there by a burst from a 320.

  They halt. A peasant. He has pointed out a German position, three, maybe four kilometres off, in a clearing, a wide open space:

  ‘They destroyed everything that was growing!’

  Captain Jourde cried: ‘Contending for Glory!’

  Bound hand and foot in his ditch, Hans tells himself he should have been a hero and shouted a warning even if the sabre had left him only time enough to say the first syllable, even if his reaction had served no purpose whatsoever, given how far he was from the sentries. He should have. He is about to die anyway, and without heroism.

  Hans is still shaking from having felt the tip of the sabre, from having heard Johann’s bear-like growls change to a gurgle. The wound to Johann’s neck. Hans curls up small. The minute you start looking at rabbits I know what you are going to say, Johann would remark, and then he’d add: it’s a joke, we’re not dumb animals, although if this war goes on a long time…

  Johann growling, waddling, turning his growls into an impression of the call of a bear on heat. Johann is gamesome, playful, lustig.

  Deep down, Hans knows exactly why Lena and he did not stay together, he told his friends then he didn’t understand why she went away, but he knows full well. A stupid thing. He will see her again. What you want is first and foremost to become a better person. She will smile tenderly when she sees the change in him, better developed physically, better read, bolder, wiser: she will take his hand. No, I should take her hand, know what to do, wait until our hands brush against each other accidentally, exploit the accident, no that’s a bit feeble, I’ll just have to shake her hand.

  That’s it, shaking hands. They will both hold out their hands but Hans will take hers and kiss it, the most normal thing in the world. Not a handshake, we’re not cattle merchants. Kiss her hand, lips on her skin and that kiss will contain all the kisses that have gone before.

  Hans can picture the scene now, he doesn’t describe it to Johann but he can see it very clearly. Lena is reserved, taken aback, she hasn’t changed her perfume, L’Heure Bleue, either that or she knew I’d be there and wore the same Guerlain as she always did on our dates, as if time has stopped. But why so reserved? Because now that she’s here again she is already regretting wearing th
at perfume. She wants to make it clear to Hans that he should have no illusions; politeness, she armours herself with politeness. He fluffs the kiss he plants on her hand, makes it the action of a possessive imbecile, and all Lena’s prejudices are confirmed. The imbecile should be throttled, or maybe Lena just wants to leave me feeling unsure; she has chosen to appear reserved, she’s flirting, no, not Lena, in which case it’s politeness, no, perhaps she really is flirting. She is so cold.

  She is not sure, that’s it, Hans makes her feel unsure. He has changed so much, and for the better. Now none of that, stop giving yourself the best lines, you were always useless with women, you always strutted and swaggered for them and they were never impressed. The women who will truly love you appear when you’re least expecting them, it’s true, but Lena’s here now.

  Respond to Lena’s politeness with even deeper reserve, ask her questions, get her to ask you questions, above all don’t talk about yourself, don’t wear that new suit, be at ease; and avoid trousers that are itchy or too tight.

  What interests women? Actually, it’s the fact that you aren’t interested in them. That’s a neat thought, you can try living with it and with those women who come when you’re least expecting them. That said, you never know, the psychology of cheap novelettes may work, but my feelings for Lena aren’t cheap fiction, we’ll see.

  So when Lena’s there in the flesh, you do not ask her too many questions and you let on that you have another consuming passion, not another woman, certainly not, rather you speak passionately of what you will do once peace breaks out again, once the Marne has been crossed, it can only be a matter of days, then armistice, return home, the Baltic, wide beaches, the port, the third largest port in Germany, Rosmar.