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  The beautiful body of a seated woman, half-naked, memory hand in hand with death, Hans stands behind her, has a three-quarter view of her, he will find Lena again, he curls up more tightly, he is afraid, he is ashamed of being afraid. I have never forgiven them for putting me in this position, I knew what war was, hands tied behind my back, legs roped together, a gag over my mouth, you know your comrades are going to get killed and there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s partly my fault that my comrades are getting killed. I should have shouted a warning, but I couldn’t. It turns out that I go on to have a good war, but I stopped believing in it from the very start.

  The day he left home, Hans’s mother gave him two pieces of advice. She said:

  ‘I’m going to give you two pieces of un-German advice. Both are far older than what nowadays go by the name of Germany or France, and I do not want to have to say one day: I’d give both France and Germany for him not to be dead. You know, as far back as you can go in my family, the women have always given their sons two pieces of advice when they were leaving home.’

  His mother’s voice is very calm, quiet, slow and distinct.

  ‘Never volunteer and always keep thinking about the things you love most. I do not ask you to think about me but about whatever you think you love most at the time, I’d be happy if it was me, but I know men are more than just sons, so think about what you really love, that’s what will see you through, and remember: never volunteer for anything.’

  Hans crouching, feeling ashamed he hadn’t shouted a warning, a French drummer-boy would have shouted a warning, like in those legends of the French Revolution which their nanny used to tell them back home at Rosmar. Hans and his younger brothers used to laugh at them, to upset Mademoiselle Françoise, the French don’t do things like that, they never have time to be heroic, all they do is drink and sleep and when they wake up they run around like rabbits, they don’t have time to sound the alarm.

  Hans and his brothers would laugh, you know, Mademoiselle, at school nobody says the French, they say the rabbits, Mademoiselle Françoise didn’t dare get angry and moved on to other stories, the children said sorry, they really liked that little drummer-boy and when they played games they made him a little Prussian drummer-boy, and they loved Mademoiselle Françoise and the stories she read them, about houses with three attics, mysterious lands with blue hills and wide tree-lined paths, Harlequins, Pierrots, dressing up, pony races and girls with fair hair and painfully sharp profiles.

  Other families had English nannies. It didn’t seem quite as good having Mademoiselle Françoise. She’d been with them for thirteen years. It was Hans who took her to the station, that was barely two months ago, at the start of July. No other member of the family wanted to come.

  Françoise stood very straight and wept:

  ‘Now I shan’t have time to finish the book I was reading from, Master Hans. Please read them the end of Le Grand Meaulnes, they love it, one of the heroes is called Frantz, Frantz, and I saw in the paper that one of your greatest generals is called von François, there won’t be a war, you can begin at the chapter entitled “A Day in the Country”.’

  There hadn’t been time for Hans to continue reading the story.

  The dragoons are now lined up many ranks deep the length of the forest track, three troops are required for the charge, article I of the Provisional Rules issued 14 May 1912 for the conduct of mounted exercises and manoeuvres, the cavalry shall attack by mounting a charge with bared sabres whenever a favourable opportunity presents itself.

  Over a hundred riders, despite the losses of the preceding days, with one troop held in reserve, Captain Jourde has opted for an attack with sabre and lance, Jourde graduated from the military school at Saumur and our tactical answer to all situations was always a charge, otherwise your marks suffered, the lance is the latest model, number three, three metres of steel, it was solemnly delivered on the eve of the war to replace the old lance made from the male royal bamboo imported from Tonkin.

  It was supposed to be used only by the leading rank in each squadron but it proved so popular that it was issued to every man. In normal circumstances, the lance is held vertically, its base secured in a holster fixed to the outside of the right stirrup.

  As to the charge itself, the Colonel said it is ‘the queen of any battle’, especially when riders stay low on mounts measuring one metre sixty at the withers and weighing on average 500 pounds, with four years’ military training behind them, not a contrary bone in their bodies, Anglo-Norman stock but fiery, great character, ready for anything, solid physique and blood pumping from stout hearts, eager for battle, never as strong as when they hear the rumble of the ground under their hooves, feel their rider press with his knees, give the lightest touch of spur, ease the reins, stand up in the stirrups, crouch over their necks to present a smaller target to enemy fire and see less of the danger, and cry as they ride, because the war has stopped meaning only the death of other men.

  During the first days of the war, Hans’s father wrote him a letter in which he spoke of his own shame at being no more than a shadow safe among shadows while ardent youth, which was how he put it, was entering the furnace, which was another of his expressions. And Hans entered this furnace where he and Max, on opposing sides, for some time behaved like men bent on saving culture and civilisation.

  But neither Max nor Hans was mad or blind, neither had wanted this folly, and when by Christmas Eve 1915 the war will be well and truly dug in, Max, on sick leave, will be amazed by an article in Le Figaro and rush out to the corner of the rue Richepance and the rue Saint-Honoré and stride into the Blue Dwarf, the high-class toy shop in the most fashionable part of Paris, to see for himself if they really were displaying the machine gun for boys which had made Le Figaro write: ‘Today French toys have acquired a soul.’

  Max will tear a strip off the whole shop in the name of Voltaire. He stands in the middle of the shop, next to Father Christmas, surrounded by model sailing boats, dolls from Alsace, miniature beds, tin railway engines, small figures of Jesus and toy machine guns and he shouts:

  ‘Talapoins, that’s what you are – a bunch of monkeys!’

  Max still thinks he is in the land of Voltaire, the fight for right, for truth, we shall win and be worthy, he stands there watched by ladies who find this lieutenant with his arm in a sling rather good-looking, he has big ears but a nice face, a few of them would be only too happy to be admirers and perhaps more, if it were not for the objectionable comments he is making in a loud voice:

  ‘Machine guns for monkeys!’

  An elderly gent tells Max that he is undermining the morale of the nation, children must have something to defend themselves with, the Germans are cutting their hands off in Belgium and northern France, my son is at the front, sir, he has told me what it’s like, and Monsieur Cocteau has published a splendid drawing in the magazine, Le Mot, showing eight large Huns with pointed helmets and knives drawn standing over a little girl who is kneeling with her hands over her eyes, and they are saying:

  ‘Don’t be afraid, little girl, we’ve just come to ask for your hand.’

  Max answers the man saying that’s all monkey propaganda, the Germans themselves believe that the French cut prisoners’ noses off, ears too, this war is already crazy enough, and you really imagine that you can attract customers by dangling lies under their noses? They are perfectly capable of coming without any prompting, you know, it’s never easy. It is due solely to his rank and shiny new medal that Max is not beaten up right there in the middle of the Blue Dwarf by the young mothers and the old gents now all hoarse with fury, Monsieur Poincaré himself, the President of the Republic, the President of us all, has just denounced German barbarism, it is a sacred task, get out, sir!

  While this rumpus is going on, a boy strays from the machine gun counter and wanders over to the clockwork dolls, currently somewhat unpopular, he winds one up, black corselet, long skirt, blue flag, with a white apron, a chain with a large crucifix,
clogs, a round face and pointed nose, she is carrying a pile of plates, suddenly the plates leap into the air then fall down again, and the doll raises her head, rolls her eyes like two marbles up to seek heaven as her witness. She is a Breton peasant and the model is ‘Bécassine Drops The Plates’.

  After the war, Hans will return to Rosmar, peace, the sea, writing, writing ten hours a day, no eight, and two hours of exercise, like an Englishman, or a long walk along the beach behind a coterie of curlews which fly off every time you get anywhere near and resettle thirty metres further on, keeping to the water’s edge, the place where the waves finally disappear in the sand, you can walk without sinking in too much.

  In January 1914, Hans has decided to resign permanently from the shipyard where he works as an engineer, his first book has been successful, he has the feeling that he has only used a small part of what can be done with a novel, after this war he will talk to Lena about the new one he intends to write, he will be passionate, this next book will be a family saga, an all-embracing novel, one in which reality returns to fiction. Where could she have disappeared to?

  He will tell her that he’ll come a cropper, that he doesn’t care, it’s worth it, a big story, at one and the same time it will be about what’s going on inside the head of a character and what is happening in the world outside, he’ll have to find the right rhythm to convey the flow of the man’s thoughts, a new kind of monologue, a crazy idea, a little-known Frenchman already tried it, he called the result The Laurels Have Been Cut Down, it can be done a lot better using everyday language.

  But that might never come to anything. It might turn out that in this opening scene of a war whose participants still believe they are the centre of the universe and from which Max is absent, despite his sticking-out ears, despite coincidence, despite the dumb resignation of the horse he was about to mount, it may turn out that Hans, contrary to what Max wished to believe, will also disappear without ever seeing Lena again and get himself idiotically killed by one of these dragoons who are the pride of the French army and who will write a page of history, perform a great martial exploit, that heroic cavalry charge which is the essential element of any strategic breakthrough, according to the last appendix of General Army Regulations for 1913.

  Certainly, in the episode which concerns us, the dragoons have no other role than to act as a column whose function is to disrupt the enemy’s rear, since up to this point it is the enemy who have performed all the strategic breakthroughs, but the dragoons spur their mounts with hopes of achieving glory with the benefit of surprise and the help of Saint George before they fall back to a position south of the Marne.

  Max emerges from the Blue Dwarf, muttering denials as he goes, it’s complicated, got to believe in the war not in fairy tales, remain cool, stay angry enough to shoot some fellow in the eye and cool enough to steer clear of all the bloody stupidity, the return of superstition, the salmagundi of religions, the talapoins, what’s stopping me believing that the Hun chops children’s hands off? I honestly never wanted to do anything like that, what man would, and if that stupid old sod is so keen to believe it that’s because he’d like to do it himself, eye-for-an-eye, ear, hand, vendetta, he’s got a son who might die, die trying to prevent the Hun chopping children’s hands off, he dreams that his son will at least have died doing that, sometimes I almost believe it myself, that’s not what I mean, why is that old man angry with me for not believing the same thing as he does? Max has resumed his soldier’s quick march, he beats time to each group of words with his index finger, that old fool cannot believe what he believes he can make other people believe, if I tell him I don’t believe it, then the game’s up.

  Max stares at his finger.

  He marches on. Ahead of him he sees a woman pushing a pram without a baby; in it she has put a gramophone and she is singing ‘O such a waste, to lose your life when you’re a woman, alas and still young’ to the tune of ‘O sole mio’, which emerges from the horn.

  The woman with the pram isn’t asking for money, she does not stop and ask for money. Max catches up with her. There’s a saucer next to the gramophone. They both walk on under the chestnut trees of the rue Royale. The song is about a woman who was a victim of the Germans, ‘such a waste’ and ‘lose your life’, an English victim, Miss Cavell, Edith Cavell of Norfolk, who served as a nurse in Belgium; the Germans shot her, they shot a nurse whom they accused of helping English and French soldiers to escape; a firing squad for a nurse. Every newspaper reported it, Miss Cavell is proud and strong, hers will be an exemplary death, but, the newspaper says, she falters, her knees buckle, she faints.

  The German officer commanding the firing squad empties his pistol into her head. L’Excelsior, a quality Paris paper, knows everything, sees everything, publishes a full-page artist’s impression. On the page opposite there is another topical ditty, this one to be sung to the tune of ‘The Girl from Paimpol’, the ninth stanza runs:

  Punish the brutes who did this deed!

  Avenge a heroine pure in heart and creed.

  She was a saint, she is divine

  And dwells in heaven above, where heroes shine!

  A thought is also spared for heroes in the first ditty, another stanza set to ‘O sole mio’, which has these manly words: ‘but it’s so fine to have the chance when you’re a man to die for France’, which are intended to avenge Miss Cavell. Max does not believe the stories printed in the papers but he drops a coin in the saucer. The young woman looks up at him:

  ‘Now that he’s dead, I’ve got to earn my living.’

  Max walks faster to warm up, it strikes him as funny, the church of the Madeleine behind him, the song the woman sang, arrant nonsense, truth, talapoins, he walks past the red curtains hanging at the windows of Maxim’s, hundreds of sandbags piled high, directly ahead of him are the Obelisk and the National Assembly, he’s in the rue Royale then the Place de la Concorde, the sandbags, the cold wind blowing from the Seine, ‘O sole mio’.

  That’s what a cavalry charge is, just a murmur of horses’ hooves, a steady trot to begin with, then three hundred paces a minute, but not for long, to allow the riders in the rear to form up as and when they emerge into the clearing, with the enemy at six hundred metres.

  The dragoons are much more than the sum of their history, according to Regulations they are a modern weapon, a group moulded into a weapon by force of discipline. They have the training, months and months of training, on ranges and in barracks, mounted drills daily, sessions of dressage, sessions of ground work, endless jumps, plus all the different exercises involving targets, rings, butts, dummies and, worst of all, the wooden quintain which spins vertically and has a weight which whips round and catches you in the back if you don’t duck fast enough after hitting it, splendid sight.

  And at least three times a year, they go through their paces in public, for a public thrilled to see its army, the riders are proud to be on show, keen to get the better of the spinning wooden effigy they call the Hun, the subalterns looking round, eyes hidden under the visors of their helmets, some for what might be on offer for that evening, others for a future wife, she would have to be pretty, of course, and come with a dowry of at least 1,200 francs in non-transferable government bonds, the Republic has made that the compulsory threshold: no wife for an officer if she comes with less than 1,200 francs. In 1885 permission was given for bonds to be replaced by an equivalent investment income from publicly quoted companies.

  A young girl of good family glimpsed in the stands might be checked out the following day in church, or promenading on the mall, by a young officer in uniform, sheathed sabre held in the left hand, metal tip of the scabbard fore and sword-knot aft, all as discreet as you like, but the thrust of the scabbard and the swing of the sword-knot are unambiguous.

  Add the special passes granted to those ‘whose duty is to maintain the good name of the dragoons with the town’s fair sex’, fair sex, note, not those marriageable girls who keep their shifts on when they take their
weekly all-over wash, because it’s not done to undress completely, girls who shut their eyes when they change their underwear and cross themselves, never look at their navels, mammals with braided hair who wear corsets, contrivances designed to confine the bosom, clamp the buttocks, brace the stomach and keep the flesh safe from unmentionable pleasures and enervating joys, when you wear such scaffolding you might as well forget you’ve got a body at all.

  As for the town’s fair sex, Captain Jourde would say when addressing the regiment’s new lieutenants, those middle-class ladies in their sleepy provincial backwaters have no equal, especially once they’re married, Seyne, a brother officer, could put us right on that score but as it happens he’s not here this afternoon, the lady wife of a notary, yes, a notary’s wife, don’t laugh, the message hasn’t got through to you junior officers, if you set your sights on actresses, dancers, horsy girls, women who want you as trophies, on the flighty side, you’re obviously doing it all wrong. Who can say how earthbound the flightiest girl can get when she decides she wants to be respected? I know what I’m talking about, one wrong move on your part and it’s ‘what you do take me for?’, then again actresses will cost you a pretty penny, and if they pay their way then get out quick because they’ve fallen for you, they’ll write to your parents. The notary’s wife knows very well that what she’s doing is wrong, but she’s doing what she dreamed of doing the moment she saw you, which was long before you saw her.

  The wife of the man of law makes a first-rate look-out, she can see everything coming a mile off, yes, I grant you, a fast woman will do anything, that’s the truth, but she goes about it in a cool sort of way and more often than not – even after you’ve lived together for a couple of years – she isn’t really very enterprising and will refuse to do what you think she is ready to do precisely because she knows you think she’s ready to do it. But your notary’s wife is all blushes, boldness, keenness, enterprise, and an inescapable mouth, Dutilleux! Don’t you laugh when an old hand serves you up truth as naked as Eve, nobody ever told your lawyer’s wife that where love is concerned nothing is off limits but she already knows, forbidden fruit is exactly what she wants, she’s always known it, so make hay. One day these lawyers’ wives will want to give lesbianism a try and when they do they’ll drop you like hot bricks. So here’s to notaries’ wives, gentlemen, and to those who service them between the lotus hours of five and seven o’clock and have a damned good time doing it.