The meadow looks so beautiful, the reflections of red and gold from a sunset are prolonged by the flames, like a Midsummer’s Day. A few shots are still heard, and shouts, bugles sound again, the surviving cavalrymen, barely a third of the company’s strength but all the Tauben have been destroyed, they head as quickly as they can for the corner of the wood from which the jay fled, ‘Lieutenant, what do we do with the prisoner?’
The crack of the ice, Lena lets go of Hans’s hand, detaches herself, gains speed, leans forward, thrusts out her free leg, completes one loop, returns to Hans, skates off, noise of the engine still audible, bumps and jolts, the exasperated chicken bouncing over the tussocky field, the noise fades, the picture fades, then returns, on the ice the mark of the loop is perfect, think of what you love, don’t be afraid, just a few cracks, we’ll go like a train, get up steam, keep your skates in parallel lines.
Don’t be afraid, Hans, you’ve got to know the lake, lift our skates together keeping in step, you understand, it’s like a choo-choo, a train going full pelt, she laughs, detaches herself from Hans, speed, Lena legs apart, toes turned outwards, feet aligned along the same axis, a wide curve, legs and arms spread out, she leans back, the centre of the circle is at her back, she is at the very end of the lake, the ice cracks, she shouts out: it’s called a spreadeagle.
She returns to Hans who’s still moving as if he’s wading through mud, we must get back, this girl takes crazy risks, no, we’re staying, there’s nothing to be afraid of, I know all about this cracking, it happens when the lake continues to freeze, it’s not dangerous, it’s not thawing, it’s all very simple, the ice also goes crack when it continues to freeze hard, like this morning, north wind, we’ll stay, come and see the waterfall, it’s all frozen, it’s wonderful. I was looking at Lena and I was happy. Something stupid, later.
As night fell, they beat Hans senseless with the butts of their rifles. Later his comrades came for him, he was trepanned under chloroform, sent to convalesce, then was returned to the front in early December 1914, they posted him to the infantry this time, without really punishing him for letting himself be taken off guard, but they deprived him of the things he loved, the open air, Mercedes engines and flying at 120 kilometres an hour.
The French dragoons fell back in disorder, pursued by a detachment of cyclists newly brought in as support. Between them and the French lines were von Klück’s three hundred thousand men. Dragoons decimated, fleeing in knots along forest tracks, in the soft damp night, their wounded comrades left at farms, the rest made their way warily, strayed into in marshy bogs, turned back, got lost, starving, night marches, they halt on the edge of a level plain, their horses are lathered, heads drooping between their legs, lungs working like a blacksmith’s bellows, German infantry attack on foot at dawn, they come creeping through the lucerne.
The dragoons rally, to die a more honourable death, one group succeeds in reaching the heart of the forest, half the men ride barebacked, they strike their horses’ flanks with the flat of their swords, they wander, they recross deserted fields, a horse never complains, it goes on until it drops.
Suddenly, there, just in front of me, hardly able to stand, a big mare, it’s heartbreaking, she’s lost her saddle, been abandoned, that speckled-grey coat, it can’t be, it’s Kolana, Kolana out of Esquirol, Thailhac’s horse, he was killed two weeks ago, wonderful Kolana, a big-sized animal, holds herself well, plenty of muscle, good-natured, intelligent, so amenable in training, she won at Auteuil, twice, it was an honour to drill her, she trembles, she’s finished, she was born to do so many things, war was not one of them.
The Monfaubert dragoons were mentioned in regimental dispatches, then were permanently dismounted: unsuited to trench warfare, the cavalry was forced to resign itself to watch while flying took over the role it had played for centuries. The airmen adopted the title of ‘knights of the skies’ and many cavalry officers applied to serve in this new arm, in which they could keep their boots.
Everywhere, from the Vosges to the Channel, battle was joined for points on maps, and Gilberte Swann wrote to Marcel to inform him that both the hillock at Méséglise, with the hawthorn hedge, and the cornfield through which the winds of adolescent love had blown, was now Hill 307 of which the newspapers talked so much.
May 2001, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Ludwig Harig reporting from Saint-Rémy. Monsieur Louis, one of the men who found the grave, showed him lot 357 and the spot where Alain-Fournier and the Frenchmen were shot.
‘That’s right,’ said Monsieur Louis, ‘shot for attacking a dressing-station. The clash of two companies of very young soldiers.’
A week later, a letter to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung from Gerd Krumeich, a historian with an expert knowledge of Joan of Arc: ‘That Fournier was sent to face a firing-squad cannot be stated with absolute certainty.’
And Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, a specialist in the history of cruelty on the battlefield:
‘In the matter of the incident at Saint-Rémy, both the excavation of the site and the archive evidence indicate clearly that something extremely violent happened, but not that it was accompanied by any particular cruelty.’
Further along, another cemetery, at Vaux-les-Palameix, other remains, those of eight German stretcher-bearers, killed the same day as the Frenchmen.
Max Goffard and Hans Kappler, one left with cauliflower ears, the other with the memory of a woman, had marched off to war full of hope. They had very quickly heard the din of a conflict which was to be the last before the great leap forward and it did not strike them as being in any way different from the thunderclaps at Christmas which frighten the children and promise them all presents on the big day.
Chapter 3. 1956, A Remarkable Symmetry
In which Michael Lilstein remembers Hans Kappler and offers you a job as a Paris spy.
In which we learn what Lena owed to an easy-going American named Walker.
In which Lena disappears in the middle of Budapest.
In which Max tells several stories including the one which ends: ‘We already know…’
In which Michael Lilstein unveils his theory of twin souls and introduces you to Linzer Torte.
So it would seem you have a taste for espionage.
Faust to Mephisto, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Faust. A tragedy
Waltenberg/Paris, early December 1956
‘Why so set on going back, Herr Kappler?’
It is with these words that Lilstein will make his approach to Kappler. Destabilise Kappler, force him to doubt, waste no time, make him change his mind.
Lilstein has just arrived at Waltenberg in the heart of the Swiss Alps. He strolls through the village until it is time for his first appointment, he walks across the powdery snow, slowly, each footfall a muffled sigh, walking slowly is such luxury, a layer of powdery snow, ten centimetres, a little less, which has fallen on lying, frozen snow, the air is dry, very sharp, Lilstein likes it.
This village in the Grisons is not his home ground, but he was born here, at Waltenberg, not born exactly but he spent his adolescence in this place: looking at women, having ideas, talking, onward and upward, drinking, smoking, always in a hurry, he loved speed, he completed the five-year plan in four, comrades! he smiles and slows down even more as he walks over the snow, looks at the forest which climbs up the side of the mountain and stops just before the sparkling cap of snow, quite a coup, two appointments today.