The Great Swindle Read online

  THE GREAT SWINDLE

  MacLehose Press

  An imprint of Quercus

  New York • London

  © 2013 by Pierre Lemaitre

  First published in the United States by Quercus in 2015

  English translation © 2015 by Frank Wynne

  First published in French as Au revoir là-haut by Editions Albin Michel, Paris, in 2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by reviewers, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of the same without the permission of the publisher is prohibited.

  Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use or anthology should send inquiries to [email protected].

  e-ISBN: 978-1-62365-907-3

  Cover design and illustration by Miles Hyman

  Distributed in the United States and Canada by

  Hachette Book Group

  1290 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10104

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, institutions, places, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons—living or dead—events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  www.quercus.com

  Let us make a date to meet in heaven

  where I hope God will reunite us.

  Good-bye till there, my darling wife . . .

  Last words written by Jean Blanchard,

  December 4, 1914

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Epigraph

  November 1918

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  November 1919

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  March 1920

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Epilogue

  In conclusion . . .

  Notes

  NOVEMBER 1918

  1

  Those who thought the war would soon be over were all long dead. Killed by the war. And so, in October, Albert treated reports of an impending armistice with a healthy dose of skepticism. He gave these rumors no more credit than he had the propaganda at the beginning of the war that claimed that the bullets of the Boches were so soft they burst against French uniforms like overripe pears, leaving soldiers roaring with laughter. In four years, Albert had seen his fair share of guys who died laughing from a German bullet.

  He knew all too well that his refusal to believe in this armistice was a sort of conjuration: in order to ward off ill fortune, the more a man hopes for peace, the less inclined he is to believe the news that it is imminent. Yet day after day, the news came in ever-increasing waves, and everywhere people were beginning to say that the war truly was coming to an end. He even read speeches he could scarcely believe about the need to demobilize the older soldiers who had been on the front lines for years. When, finally, the armistice seemed a credible prospect, even the most pessimistic souls began to nurture the hope they might get out alive. Consequently, no one was particularly keen to mount an offensive. There was talk of the 163rd Infantry Division attempting to mount an attack and cross the Meuse. A few officers still talked about fighting to the death, but seen from the ranks, from the position of Albert and his comrades, since the Allied victory in Flanders, the liberation of Lille, the rout of the Austrian army, and the capitulation of the Turks, the ordinary soldiers felt rather less frenzied than the officers. The successes of the Italian offensive, the British at Tournai, the Americans at Châtillon . . . it seemed clear the worst was behind them. Most men in the unit began to play for time, and there was a clear distinction between those, like Albert, who were prepared to wait out the war holed up in their trenches, smoking cigarettes and writing letters home, and those eager to make the most of the last few days to gut a few more Krauts.

  This demarcation line exactly corresponded to the one separating officers from ordinary soldiers. Nothing new there, thought Albert. The commanders want to take control of as much terrain as they can to be in a stronger position at the negotiating table. They will insist that gaining another hundred feet could decide the outcome of the war, that it would be even more worthwhile to die today than yesterday.

  This latter position was the one espoused by Lieutenant d’Aulnay-Pradelle. When talking of him, everyone dropped the first name, the nobiliary particle, the “Aulnay,” and the hyphen, referring to him simply as “Pradelle” since they knew very well how much this riled him. They could afford to do so, since Pradelle made it a point of honor never to express personal animus. An aristocratic reflex. Albert did not like the man. Perhaps because he was handsome. Tall, thin, elegant, with a cascade of dark brown curls, a straight nose, thin, perfectly shaped lips. And eyes of deepest blue. A face that Albert considered typical of an upper-class twat. Moreover, he seemed to be permanently angry. He was impetuous, he had no cruising speed: he was either accelerating or braking; there was no middle ground. He walked quickly, one shoulder forward as though to push obstacles aside; he bore down on you at speed and even sat down briskly: this was his normal rhythm. It made for a curious combination: with his aristocratic bearing, he seemed at once terribly civilized and utterly brutish. A little like this war. Which was perhaps why he felt so at ease here. To top it all, he had an athlete’s build—rowing, probably, or tennis.

  The other thing Albert did not like was the hair. Pradelle had thick dark hair all over, even on his fingers; great tufts sprouted from his shirt collar just below his Adam’s apple. In peacetime, he probably had to shave several times a day so as not to look disreputable. There were certainly some women who were attracted by that wild, hirsute, faintly Spanish look. Even Cécile . . . But even without thinking of Cécile, Albert could not abide Lieutenant Pradelle. And most of all he feared the man. Because Pradelle liked to charge. He genuinely enjoyed going over the top, storming, attacking.

  In fact, recently he had been less high spirited than usual. The prospect of an armistice depressed him; it undermined his patriotic zeal. The idea that the war might be over was killing Lieutenant Pradelle. He was showing disturbing signs of impatience. He found the lack of team spirit worrying. As he strode through the trenches and spoke to the men, his passionate zeal and his talk of crushing the enemy, of a final surge that would be the coup
de grâce, was met with vague mutterings; the soldiers would nod, staring down at their boots. It was not just the fear of dying, but the fear of dying now. Dying last was like dying first, Albert thought to himself; it was rank stupidity.

  But this was exactly what was about to happen.

  Whereas until now they had been able to while away the uneventful days waiting for the armistice, now, suddenly, things were gearing up again. Orders had been received from on high, demanding that they approach enemy lines to find out what the Germans were up to. Despite the fact that it did not take a général to know that they, like the French, were waiting for the end. Even so, they had to go and see. From this point, no one was able to piece together the sequence of events.

  It was difficult to know why Lieutenant Pradelle assigned the reconnaissance mission to Gaston Grisonnier and Louis Thérieux, an old man and a kid. Perhaps he hoped to combine youthful vigor with mature experience. Neither quality proved useful, since the two men were dead within half an hour of being allocated the task. In theory, they did not have to advance very far. They only needed to follow a line about six hundred and fifty feet to the northeast, cut through the wires, crawl to the second line of barbed wire, have a quick look, and then hightail it back to say everything was fine, because everyone knew there was nothing to see. And in fact, the two soldiers were not worried about approaching the enemy lines. Given the state of affairs in recent days, even if they were spotted, the Huns would let them reconnoiter and go back; it was little more than a distraction. But the moment they started to advance, crouching as low as they could, the two scouts were shot like rabbits. There was the sound of gunshots, three of them, and then silence; as far as the enemy was concerned, the matter was settled. There was a frantic attempt to see where they were, but since they had left from the north side, it was impossible to tell where they had fallen.

  All around Albert everyone stood in stunned silence. Then suddenly there were shouts. Bastards! They’re all the same, the fucking Boches! Savages! To gun down an old man and a kid! Not that this made any difference, but to the men in the trenches the Boches had not simply killed a couple of French soldiers; they had slaughtered two symbols. There was pandemonium.

  In the minutes that followed, with a promptness no one thought them capable of, the rear gunners began pounding the German lines with 75mm shells, leaving the men in the front line wondering how they knew what had happened.

  So began the escalating spiral of violence.

  The Germans returned fire. It did not take long to mobilize everyone in the French trenches. They would show the fucking Boches a thing or two. It was November 2, 1918. Though no one knew it, this was scarcely ten days from the end of the war.

  And to launch an attack on All Souls’ Day, the Day of the Dead . . . Try as one might to ignore the omens . . .

  Here we go again, thought Albert, getting ready to climb the scaffold (this was what they called the stepladders used to scramble out of the trenches—a cheering thought) and charge, head down, toward the enemy. Lined up in Indian file, the men were swallowing hard. Albert was third in line behind Berry and young Péricourt, who turned around as though to check that the men were all present and correct. Their eyes met, and Péricourt gave him a smile like a little boy about to play a prank. Albert tried to return the smile but failed. Péricourt turned away again. The feverishness was almost palpable as they waited for the order to attack. Shocked by the outrageous behavior of the Boches, the French soldiers were now seething. Above them, shells streaked the sky in both directions, causing the very bowels of the earth to shake.

  Albert looked over Berry’s shoulder. Perched on his little outpost, Lieutenant Pradelle was peering through binoculars, surveying the enemy lines. Albert returned to his position in the line. Had it not been for the deafening racket, he would have been able to think about what was worrying him. The shrill whistle of the shells increased, punctuated by booming explosions that shook the men from head to foot. Try concentrating in such conditions.

  Just now, the men are standing, waiting for the signal to advance. It seems an apt moment to study Albert.

  Albert Maillard was a scrawny boy of a somewhat lethargic disposition, reserved. He spoke little, was good with figures. Before the war, he was a teller in a regional branch of the Parisian Banque de l’Union. He did not much enjoy the work but stuck it out because of his mother. Mme Maillard had only one son, and she loved managers. She was ecstatic at the prospect of Albert as a bank manager and convinced that “with his intelligence” he would soon rise to the top. This inflated taste for authority she had inherited from her father, an assistant to the deputy chief clerk at the Ministère des Postes who considered the ministerial hierarchy a metaphor for the universe. Mme Maillard loved all leaders without exception. She was not particular about their virtues or their provenance. She had photographs of Clemenceau, of Maurras, of Jaurès, Joffre, Briand1 . . .

  Since the death of her husband, who had commanded a squadron of uniformed guards at the Louvre, exceptional men had inspired extraordinary sensations in her. Albert was not keen on the bank but allowed himself to be persuaded—with his mother this was always the best policy. But he had begun to make plans. He had longed to escape; he dreamed of running away to Tonkin, though his plans were rather vague. At the very least, he would quit his job as a bank teller and do something else. But Albert was not a man in a hurry; everything took time. Then, shortly afterward, he had met Cécile, had fallen passionately in love with Cécile’s eyes, Cécile’s mouth, Cécile’s and, before long, Cécile’s breasts, Cécile’s ass—how could he be expected to think about anything else?

  Nowadays, at five feet eight, Albert Maillard would not seem especially tall, but in those days it was tall enough. There was a time when he had turned girls’ heads. Cécile’s in particular. Well . . . , it would be more accurate to say that she turned Albert’s head and, after a while, the fact that he stared at her all the time meant that she noticed his existence, and she in turn began to stare at him. He had a face that could melt your heart. A bullet had grazed his temple during the Battle of the Somme. He had been terrified, but he came through with nothing more than a scar shaped like a parenthesis, which tugged his eye slightly to one side and gave him a dashing air. When he was next home on leave, Cécile dreamily, curiously, caressed the scar with her forefinger, which did little for his morale. As a child, Albert had had a pale, round face with drooping eyelids that made him look like a mournful Pierrot. Mme Maillard would go without food so that she could feed him red meat, convinced that his pallor was caused by lack of blood. Though Albert told her a thousand times that there was no connection, his mother rarely changed her mind. She would find examples, new reasons; she could not bear to be in the wrong. Even in her letters she would dredge up events from years gone by; it was exhausting. One might wonder whether this was why Albert enlisted as soon as war was declared. When she found out, Mme Maillard let out a loud wail, but as she was a demonstrative woman it was difficult to distinguish genuine fear from sheer theatrics. She had screamed and torn her hair, but she quickly pulled herself together. Since she had a conventional view of war, she persuaded herself that Albert—“with his intelligence”—would stand out from the crowd and soon be promoted; she could picture him on the front lines leading an assault. In her imagination, he would perform some heroic feat and immediately ascend to the officer class to become capitaine, commandant, or even général—such things happened in war.

  With Cécile, things were very different. War did not frighten her. First, because it was a “patriotic duty” (Albert was surprised . . . he had never heard her utter the words before). Second, there was no real reason to be frightened; the outcome was a formality. Everyone said as much.

  Albert, for his part, had his doubts, but Cécile was rather like Mme Maillard: she had fixed ideas. To hear her talk, the war would not last long. Albert almost believed her; no matter what she said, Cécile, with those hands, those lips, could convince
Albert of anything. It’s impossible to understand if you don’t know her, thought Albert. To us, Cécile would seem like a pretty girl, nothing more. To him, she was different. Every pore in Cécile’s skin was a molecular miracle, her breath had a rare perfume. She had blue eyes, and that might not seem much to you, but to Albert those eyes were a precipice, a yawning chasm. Take her lips, for example, and try to put yourself in Albert’s shoes. From these lips he had known kisses of exquisite warmth and tenderness, kisses that caused his stomach to lurch, his whole being to explode. He had felt Cécile’s saliva flow into him and had drunk it passionately; Cécile was capable of such wondrous feats that she was not merely Cécile . . . She was . . .

  And so, when she insisted the war would be a piece of cake, Albert could only think of those lips and imagine he was that piece of cake . . .

  Now he saw things rather differently. He knew that war was nothing more than a gigantic game of Russian roulette, and that to survive for four years was little short of a miracle.

  To be buried alive when the end of the war was finally in sight would truly be the icing on the cake.

  And yet, that is exactly what is about to happen.

  Little Albert, buried alive.

  “Hap and mishap govern the world,” as his mother would say.

  Lieutenant Pradelle turned back to his troops, his eyes boring into the men to left and right, who gazed back as though he were the Messiah. He nodded slowly and took a deep breath.

  A few minutes later, half-crouching, Albert is running through an apocalyptic landscape as shells rain down and bullets whistle through the air, pressing onward, his head drawn in, clutching his rifle as hard as he can. The ground beneath his heavy boots is muddy because it has been raining now for several days. All around him there are men howling like lunatics, drunk on their own bravado, steeling themselves for battle. Others, like him, are concentrating hard, their stomachs in knots, their throats dry. All of them are converging on the enemy, armed with righteous rage and the thirst for vengeance. In fact, this may be a perverse result of the rumored armistice. They have suffered for so long that to see the war end like this, with so many of their friends dead and so many enemies still alive, they have half a mind to massacre the enemy, to put an end to this war once and for all. They are prepared to slaughter anyone.