Where I Left My Soul Read online

  “You know,” Capitaine Degorce finally remarks, “I don’t get the impression your arrest has really pleased my superiors.”

  “Of course,” agrees Tahar.

  “Why of course?”

  Tahar finishes the contents of his plate and wipes his mouth.

  “In chess, I believe, there are situations where in the middle of the game one of the players understands that he can no longer win. Any possible move, any move at all, whatever he does, will only make his position more difficult, you understand. Every choice is a bad choice. And the player knows this but has to continue the game. Perhaps, if he is skilled, he can make it last a little longer, but nothing decisive can happen now. This is your situation, even if you yourself are not aware of it. Not arresting me is bad. Arresting me may be worse. There are only bad choices. For us, capitaine, the opposite is true. If we win here, that’s good. If we lose, if you arrest everybody, it’s still good. A martyr is a thousand times more useful than a fighter. That’s why you will never see victory. You will make a good move or two and on account of these good moves …” Tahar shrugs fatalistically: “You will end by losing. If God wills!” he concludes with a smile.

  (So that’s it. A fanatic. Cold and calculating. A fanatic’s calm indifference. That’s all it is.)

  The disappointment is not painful, however. It makes everything easier to bear, starting with himself. Capitaine Degorce does not even feel as if he has been duped. He does not regret the time spent here, nor having naively allowed himself to make regrettable admissions. It makes no difference now. Everything is perfect, inoffensive and smooth.

  “I don’t play chess,” says Capitaine Degorce, getting up. “I’ll leave you now.”

  “I’m very sorry for you,” Tahar murmurs.

  Capitaine Degorce turns abruptly to face him.

  “Pardon?” he says frostily. “I beg your pardon?”

  Tahar is leaning forward, his hands clasped, and looks at him with sad eyes. The capitaine feels the painful burning of his compassion, he would like to be angry, summon up stinging words and walk out without looking back, but is incapable of this. He stands there at a loss, his certainties brusquely reduced to ashes.

  “You need faith, capitaine, it’s a vital need, I believe,” says Tahar, “and you have lost faith … Please, sit down for a moment more …”

  And Capitaine Degorce sits down.

  “… You have lost faith and you cannot recover it because everything you are fighting for no longer exists. And I’m very sorry for you.”

  “What do you know about it?” asks the capitaine in a toneless voice.

  “There are so many things that have to be renounced,” Tahar says sadly, leaning forward even more, “so many things, you think I don’t know? I know and so do you, and there are some men who manage it very well, it’s very easy for them. But someone like you … How could you manage it without a little faith? It’s impossible, quite impossible …”

  Capitaine Degorce gently shakes his head.

  “Faith?” he asks. “Do you think faith can justify what you’ve done? In Philippeville? At the Milk Bar? At El-Halia?”

  He intended his question to be ironic and is amazed that it does not sound it at all. “Or, indeed, what I’m doing, here?” he asks again.

  “Oh no!” replies Tahar. “Faith justifies nothing … That’s not its role, no … Besides, what use are justifications?”

  Capitaine Degorce does not reply.

  “I should like to smoke,” says Tahar and the capitaine lights two cigarettes. Tahar settles back against the wall and smokes with visible pleasure.

  “Have you ever been out into the bled, the interior, capitaine?” he asks after a moment.

  “Yes, I’ve been there,” Capitaine Degorce replies, “and I can see what you’re driving at. I can see very well. I’m not saying everything is as it should be. I know there are things … injustices … But there are other ways. And when peace is restored, you’ll see … We can put things right …”

  He is dismayed to realize how little he believes in what he is saying. Words have become heavy again, indigestible, dirty.

  “It’s true, capitaine,” says Tahar with a smile. “That’s precisely how it will happen. We will put things right. But not you.”

  He suppresses a yawn and carefully stubs out his cigarette.

  “What’s the weather outside?” he asks.

  “It’s a fine day,” Capitaine Degorce says. “And hot.”

  “A fine day,” repeats Tahar.

  “Would you like to have some air for a while?” Capitaine Degorce asks. “Have a walk in the courtyard? I could, if you like, if you’ll give me your word …”

  “I cannot give you any word.” Tahar cuts him off. “Besides it’s simpler if I stay here. It’s much simpler like this.”

  “As you wish.”

  They remain silent. Tahar closes his eyes. Capitaine Degorce has hardly touched his meal. The congealed food left on his plate rather disgusts him. He ought to summon a soldier to clear away. He ought to smoke less. He would like to continue the discussion, but he says nothing. The war bores him now. He would like to ask Tahar to talk about his family, he would like to talk about his own, tell him how he loved mathematics more than anything and it was only after the war that he decided to embark on a military career. He would like to be able to forget the handcuffs, the walls of the cell, the barricaded city. Tahar opens his eyes and leans towards him once more.

  “Above all, capitaine,” he says, with much warmth and conviction, “whatever you do, don’t believe you’re to be pitied, I urge you. You’re not to be pitied. Do you know that?”

  “I don’t complain about anything.”

  “That’s good. Because you’re not to be pitied. And neither am I.”

  *

  A terrible south wind has arisen from the Sahara, an apocalyptic wind, twisting the tops of the palm trees, whirling along the empty avenues and it has spread a yellow light saturated with dust and sand over the city. All other colours have disappeared. The white of the great Haussmann-style apartment buildings that line the streets, has become ochre and the blue cast iron work seems to be forged in dark amber. Sergent Febvay and one of the soldiers are staring curiously out of the window.

  “Alright, lads, this is not a weather station,” growls Adjudant-chef Moreau.

  “Well, Moreau,” asks Capitaine Degorce, “is he showing sense, that fellow?”

  On hearing his voice Febvay turns round and salutes. He has a bruise on his left cheekbone. Not as large as the capitaine would have liked. But this does nothing for him. He observes Febvay’s contrite face, his look of a child caught out in wrongdoing, and no longer feels any anger towards him. Rather a schoolmaster’s secret sympathy for an unruly dunce.

  “Mon capitaine,” begins Febvay, “I just wanted to say …”

  Capitaine Degorce makes a brief hand gesture.

  “Right, Febvay. Not another word about it. Not another word. Do your job and watch your step. Well?” the capitaine asks again, turning to Moreau.

  “Nothing, mon capitaine,” says Moreau. “Nothing at all. He’s acting high and mighty. He’s as good as telling us to fuck off. He’s spouting a whole rigmarole about freedom of thought and the emancipation of oppressed peoples. A whole lot of bollocks like that. A real variety act.”

  “We’re in no hurry,” says Capitaine Degorce. “I’m sure he won’t hold out.”

  “With your permission, mon capitaine,” remarks Moreau. “He’ll hold out even less if we apply a little current to his goolies, not very much, mind you. This one’s all mouth, nothing more …”

  “Not like the Kabylian,” says Febvay.

  “Oh, the Kabylian,” says one of the soldiers. “Now he had balls, that one!”

  A brief discussion follows concerning the respective merits of various suspects under interrogation in which it is unanimously agreed that the courage and endurance of Abdelkrim Ait Kaci were exceptional and Moreau gives
great admiring nods of his chin with a look in his eyes akin to nostalgia. “A man of courage, yes …” agrees Capitaine Degorce and he is appalled to realize that he, too, is beginning to find conversations of this type irresistibly fascinating.

  (Oh, the poverty of our souls!)

  Men’s minds are capable of encompassing so many marvellously diverse things. But from those first days at Buchenwald, Capitaine Degorce remembers, they lose their attraction and quite simply cease to exist, beginning with the most elevated, the most worthy of respect, until, in the end, the simplest abstract thought becomes impossible. If the truth be told there is no thought at all and all that is left in the brutalized and shrunken mind are the typical concerns of an incredibly primitive life form, a blind, patient and obstinate one – a bacterium imprisoned in an ageless glacier, a larva in the darkness. Tirelessly you contemplate, your eyes shining with desire and respect, the voluptuous spectacle of a mouth methodically chewing a piece of bread. Three bodies hang from the gibbet, other condemned men await their turn, and you can think about nothing other than the moment when you will take refuge in the huts from the cold wind of autumn 1944 which sweeps the courtyard, causing the corpses to revolve at the ends of their ropes. The God you stubbornly pray to is now no more than a tyrannical and barbaric idol from which you no longer expect anything further than escaping a little bit more from his boundless and unreasonable anger. All the resources of the brain have become wholly condensed into a kind of instinctive and servile cunning, and all that remains of your former feelings are abrupt surges of irrational emotion, like the arbitrary affection with which Raymond Blumers, a veteran of the Spanish Civil War, suddenly surrounded André Degorce, old Blumers, who derided his crossing himself and his prayers and called him “the little priest”, but who used all his mysterious influence so that André’s name would appear on the list for the Arbeitstatistik squad, snatching him, as if by magic, from the hard labour that was gradually killing him and sending him to do accounting in an office, and now every evening, as he ate his soup, André threw Blumers glances filled with animal gratitude, but he did not shed a tear when he witnessed his hanging in February 1945, once more rooted to the spot, grotesquely standing to attention, on the vast parade ground, any more than he wept when he thought about his parents or about Lézieux, or about what life might hold in store, because in what life has become there is no longer any room for pure sorrow. And this, too, is criminal – but it is how life protects and perpetuates itself, by making itself blind and deaf. It has taken Capitaine Degorce such a long time to understand that he was not guilty of any crime and when the Americans forced the people of Weimar to visit the camp, he was the one who lowered his eyes in shame in front of them. And now something similar has happened once again, just here, on the other side of this sombre mirror, for himself and for all the men under his command, something he cannot pardon, even if he no longer lowers his eyes in front of anyone.

  (My God, what have you made of me?)

  “I’m going to my office.”

  “Very good, mon capitaine.”

  Febvay smiles at him and he smiles back.

  (These are the outer limits of the world. Interrogation rooms. Endless cells and corridors. This appalling yellow sky. Lost bodies. Lost souls. Unbearable nakedness.)

  It is all they have in common: forecasts and assessments of the resistance of bodies, as if their work did not consist in gathering intelligence at all but in arranging a series of tests, designed to throw light on some hidden, essential, primitive factor, the unique source of all value. They are researchers, specialists in a subtle form of analysis, obsessive visionaries, and the mystery it is given to them to contemplate today, as a reward for their zeal and devotion, has burned their eyes. Night has fallen over all they once loved and they have forgotten it, possibly for ever. The image comes back to Capitaine Degorce of the faceless figure leaning over him at the Gestapo post at Besançon, he can hear the panting breath, he catches a shifty glance at his bruised body, the corner of the mouth twitches with greed and disgust and he knows that he understands this man as intimately as if he had become a part of himself. He understands Moreau, he understands Febvay and the humblest of his soldiers without having to exchange a single word with them. They have undergone the same metamorphosis and become brothers. The circumstances of their past lives count for nothing, any more than the nausea which the revelation of this kinship provokes in him. He no longer has any other family and the people who write to him every day are strangers. The ties that bound him to his parents, to Jeanne-Marie and the children, have vanished, leaving behind, like an absurd imprint, only a certain number of habits and automatic thoughts which it is impossible to be rid of, but which no longer signify anything. Perhaps those ties themselves only ever existed in the form of inconsistent notions or conventions, it is impossible to remember and Capitaine Degorce has the feeling that he has been transported so far away he will never return. He ought to have the courage to cease replying to the letters still lying there on the desk, filled with incomprehensible phrases and sentiments.

  “… a little springtime snowfall, that came from the Jura, which has frozen our bones to the marrow …”

  “… and everyone is so proud of you, André: Jean-Baptiste, although he is enjoying his retirement, is almost sorry he can no longer …”

  “… and you know, dear brother-in-law, how grateful I am to you for taking care of Jacques, for whom you will be the model and the father he deserves, while I am nothing but …”

  It would have been better for Claudie not to have been born and for Jeanne-Marie’s first husband not to have died. Perhaps she still thinks of him with longing when she walks past the photograph on the living-room wall. Capitaine Degorce is resigned to never matching up to this first love, of which he knows nothing. He is well aware that Jeanne-Marie always gave herself to him with more compassion than desire and for the first time he feels a painful bitterness about this.

  (It’s true, everything I’m fighting for no longer exists.)

  But in reality the thoughts oppressing him carry no weight and the lightest breeze disperses them. He is being unjust towards himself and even more unjust towards those who love him. It is not true, he has not distanced himself from them and what he is fighting for is still alive, he is carrying out a mission, an extremely painful and taxing one, but indispensable in order to put a final end to the terrorist attacks. No other method of action is conceivable and he is not called upon to justify himself. Only a coward and a traitor like Général de Bollardière can put his own sentiments before the needs of the common good. He is not a coward. Later on he will explain this to Jeanne-Marie. For the moment he needs to concentrate and not to forget this fact. He needs to clarify his mind once and for all and put an end to these exhausting and pointless mood swings. He reads the letter from his parents attentively and promises to write them a good, long reply.

  *

  He is in the middle of staring at a blank sheet, pen in hand when the ringing of the telephone rescues him. The colonel’s voice is amazingly soft and controlled.

  “We’re handing Hadj Nacer over to the law, Degorce. He’s being sent to Paris. He’ll have to find a way to save his own head. Or else let them cut it off. We’ve done more than play our part, it seems to me.”

  “Very good, sir. Where should I take him? And when?”

  “You, Degorce, will not be taking him anywhere. Your role stops here. And, by the way, I am to pass on to you the heartiest congratulations from …”

  His tone is frank and warm now, but Capitaine Degorce no longer hears him.

  “Sir,” he interrupts. “What does that mean, my role stops here? What arrangements are envisaged?”

  “Lieutenant Andreani will come to collect Hadj Nacer tonight. Just Hadj Nacer, and he will take charge of him until his transfer to metropolitan France tomorrow during the day.”

  “Sir,” says Capitaine Degorce, trying to master an emotion he cannot explain to himself.
“Sir, I don’t understand the purpose of proceeding in this way and I request permission to take care of Hadj Nacer up to the end.”

  “No,” says the colonel.

  “Sir,” insists Capitaine Degorce, “he’s my prisoner. Andreani has nothing to do with this, and I insist …”

  “Not another word, dammit!” explodes the colonel. “Your prisoner! Your prisoner? Who do you think you are, in God’s name? You’re an officer, dammit! An officer in the French Army, not a bandit chieftain. And you have superior officers, remember. Superior officers who make decisions without needing your advice, is that clear?”

  “Sir, I don’t understand the point of involving Lieutenant …”

  “Listen, Degorce,” says the colonel with a sigh. “My God, frankly, I’m being very patient with you. There may well be matters you are not aware of. Who knows, security considerations, for example …”

  “Sir, the prisoner is perfectly secure here and …”

  “That’s enough!” roars the colonel. “Andreani will come tonight and that’s all there is to it! I’m fed up to the back teeth with your idiocies.”

  And he hangs up.

  *

  He cannot understand what it is that distresses him to this extent. Regret at having wasted his time trying to write impossible words instead of spending it with Tahar or the prospect of handing him over to Andreani. He puts away the writing paper and paces round his office, smoking. He would like to be able to do something, but he does not know what to do. He calls Moreau and informs him of the decisions made by the general staff.

  “Fine,” says Moreau.

  “Now this is what we’re going to do,” says Capitaine Degorce. “Pick five men for me and keep them in readiness. And when Andreani arrives and we take Hadj Nacer to him they will pay him the full military compliments.”

  “Military compliments, mon capitaine?”

  “Do you have a problem with that? Does it shock you? Please speak freely.”

  Moreau shrugs.