The Shadow Of The Mole

Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Captain Réviron, a thin, wiry man with close-cropped wavy hair and rotten teeth, was middle-aged and bone-tired. Nevertheless, his slicked-up hair seemed to have been parted down the middle of his skull with a razor. His face betrayed a heroic tiredness, highlighted by the feeble lanterns in the damp-smelling, propped-up cave that was supposed to be his command-post. He sat before a crude table made from logs scavenged out of the woods, littered with documents and maps. Denis felt his gaze like the eyes of a suspicious dog.

“Lieutenant Denis,” the Captain said. “If this so-called Mole of yours has deserted from the ranks, he’ll get court-martialled. I imagine your Mister No Memory will recall his name, rank and number pretty sharp once he’s looking into a row of black muzzles. But that’s for after the changing of the troops – when we can send you both back behind the lines. Till then, make it your business to find out who he is.”

Denis should have been repatriated ten days ago when he had recovered sufficiently from the amputation of his arm, but the bad weather and the Germans’ relentless offensive had made that impossible.

“With all due respect, Captain, I don’t think the man is faking. His behaviour is so aberrant that…”

Réviron shot Denis another dubious look.

Denis wanted to scratch his ear, remembered that his arm was gone and reached over to rub the lobe with his other arm. “Let’s say peculiar at least, if you don’t like the term aberrant.”

“There are rumours, Denis.”

“I’ve heard them, Captain.”

“I heard the men prattle that he’s some goddamn ghost. The Garibaldiens are fighting on our side but they are a superstitious lot and could turn against us if we don’t quell these rumours. I don’t want any of that fluff in my regiment.”

“I understand, Captain. But there will always be rumours amongst the men. These dismal woods, these gruesome circumstances – it sets off their fantasies: evil spirits, the devil, all manner of chimeras… Mind you, I don’t suffer such affliction and personally I regard The Mole as a patient, not as Satan in person.” A pinch of irony was not absent in the young doctor. “My diagnosis is that the patient is genuinely suffering from shell shock and has really lost his memory, maybe even his mind. Moreover, I think he’s a civilian. He wasn’t wearing any military tag. Since he was on foot, we may assume he’s from this region. I examined his hands. Those are not the hands of a soldier or a farmer.”

“That’s no proof at all. Recently, they’ve drafted everyone who can carry…” Réviron shot a glance at Michel’s stump and waved dismissively, in an almost feminine gesture.

“Yes, but no man can be on the frontline for weeks or months without traces of gunpowder on his hands.”

“Denis, I am truly sorry for what has happened to you and I understand that for a young man, it must be tough to lose an arm. But your theories about ‘front line traumas’ are a threat to discipline in the ranks. A true soldier has no traumas. Bring that man’s memory back – use all means necessary, by Jove – and we’ll see if it’s a trauma or the booze that made him burrow in a deserted mine tunnel.”

Back on the surface, a row of sharpened branches had been driven into the muddy ground, with the cadavers of at least fifty rats strung up by their tails between them. Denis walked along the line, smiling and nodding to the grinning group of soldiers who invited him to a “rat bouillabaise”. After such a brew, he assured them, their breath would be foul enough to take out any German soldier within ten meters.

Soon, we’ll all be like those rats, Denis thought. Bloodless corpses strung up on barbed wire. Denis had been a psychiatrist in training when the war started. He had learned to be attentive to the difference between what his professor had called the ‘projected self’ and the ‘inner self’. When inwardly he was sombre, he tended to c***k jokes.

The distant booming of war began again, like a thunderstorm gathering strength, coming closer, fast.

War’s having fun, Denis thought, with a sudden sense of unreality.