A Man in Uniform (13 page)

“I have some shopping I want to do this morning,” she said as she rose from the table. “Aren’t you going to the office?”

Dubon, who was staring at the newspaper but not reading it, looked up. “Office? Yes, yes, in a minute or two. I’m just thinking.”

She looked at him a little puzzled. He was not normally given to reflection.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

“No, no, nothing wrong. Just thinking about something at work.”

“Surely that would be better done at the office,” she said, her tone growing firmer.

He looked at her again. The details of the law remained largely obscure to her, and she assumed that the suits, contracts, and wills that paid for her servants and her dresses would keep flowing without any need for her to express much interest in them. She used to query him about his affairs, back in their younger days when he was working for Maître Gaillard. Geneviève had rather liked the element of danger about him then. During their courtship, he could impress her with his stories of running messages across the barricades. Her conservative parents would have been appalled if they had ever found out that Dubon had been involved in the Commune, but he suspected that was actually part of the attraction for his fiancée. Still, she had never complained at the time of their marriage when he had taken over his ailing father’s practice, moving easily into a less controversial and more lucrative branch of the profession. She raised an eyebrow at him now, but withdrew without further comment.

When she passed by the dining room half an hour later on her way out of the house, he was still sitting there, now doodling on the newspaper with a pen.

“Still thinking?”

He lifted his head at her voice. “Yes. Listen, Jean-Jean said he was off on maneuvers. What does that entail?”

“They go off in a field and pretend to have battles, I guess, shoot at one another. My father used to spend hours planning things on big sheets of paper before maneuvers.”

“I suppose I have some idea what maneuvers are,” Dubon replied
with uncustomary abruptness. “But will he be gone for long? He’s not likely to come back tomorrow or something?”

“I don’t imagine we will see him before next Sunday,” she replied coolly.

“Fine. Fine. Good. A week tomorrow, then. Right.”

“Why do you care so much these days about the comings and goings of my brothers?”

“I don’t really. Always glad to see them. Glad to give the captain a bed whenever he needs it. You’re off, then?” He had awakened from his reverie and was now trying to get rid of her.

She gave him a long look. “You’re up to something these days,” she said, sounding a warning note. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

After she had gone, Dubon listened to the stillness in the house. Somewhere in the background, down at the end of the long corridor that ran from the dining room to the kitchen, he could hear the muffled sounds of cleaning and cooking. But out here, on the other side of the thick door that divided his world from that of his servants, it was quiet. He walked down to Geneviève’s end of the table and rang the little hand-bell she kept at her place. Luc appeared instantly. He must have been standing just behind the door.

“Monsieur?”

“I will be at home a while longer. I will be busy in my study. I don’t wish to be disturbed.” These were much more curt instructions than the jovial Dubon usually issued, but Luc simply nodded.

Dubon went to his study and shut the door firmly before approaching the large oak armoire that stood in one corner. He opened its double doors with both hands, and stood back a little as a powerful odor of cedar and camphor enveloped him. The armoire contained several of his old suits, a greatcoat he wore only to funerals, and a rack of uniforms. It was to these last that he turned his attention, gingerly separating one from the next. This would be an old one of the general’s, he concluded, examining a large garment that was worn and sagging. Geneviève must have kept it out of sentiment after her mother died and her parents’ house was emptied. These slimmer, newer clothes
were Jean-Jean’s; here was his best parade dress, tailored by Drouet at considerable expense when he had first received his captain’s stripes. It was what he had been wearing at dinner the previous night. But here also was the uniform he wore most days, with its blue tunic, matching pants, and soft cap. It was as Dubon had hoped; Jean-Jean had left most of his clothes behind and gone off on maneuvers wearing the grim, gray battledress he had tried on the previous night.

Dubon eased the uniform off its hanger. This was going to be a bit of a squeeze. He pulled the pants on and found he couldn’t quite do up the top button. No matter, the tunic fit well enough and it covered the gaping waistband. He wasn’t doing so badly, he congratulated himself, if he could fit into Jean-Jean’s clothes. The man was at least ten years younger than he was. To complete the effect, he reached for the cap that sat on the shelf above the clothes. He surveyed himself in the mirror. The distance between the trim and authoritative figure who stood there and the fearful emptiness inside his gut made him feel faint. He drew himself taller and wondered if he could possibly go through with this.

He spent a quiet Sunday reflecting on his scheme, and on Monday slipped out to the office with a canvas suit bag under his arm. It was draped over the comfortable armchair for receiving clients when the widow stuck her head in later that morning. Lebrun had given up announcing her.

“I owe you an apology,” she began. “Sometimes, I demand things of others …”

He sprang up nervously. He had spent the last hour at his desk doing nothing in particular, too queasy to act on the plan he had made and feeling miserable about it. Her presence did nothing to quiet him.

“Not at all, not at all. Sit down.” He bolted awkwardly to the chair, trying to sweep the bag out of the way before she reached it.

“What’s in it?” she asked casually.

“A uniform.”

“What kind of uniform?”

“Artillery officer, actually.”

“Oh, a military uniform.”

“Yes, it’s my brother-in-law’s. An extra one—well, he doesn’t need it this week.”

“I see.” She looked at him but did not press the point.

He lowered himself back down behind his desk. The bag now lay between them on the leather surface of the desktop.

“I just thought,” he began hesitantly, “if I were to visit the Statistical Section in uniform, as a military lawyer, a military lawyer preparing in case the prisoner’s family renews its efforts to win a retrial …”

She smiled at him. He felt the queasiness in his stomach ease.

“It doesn’t fit me that well.”

“Perhaps I could help.”

She reached over and pulled the canvas cover off the uniform, took a look at the blue tunic, and ran a hand down it as if assessing its quality. Gently, as though the thing were very precious, she began to undo the top button.

The widow rode to the rue de Lille with him, the two of them sandwiched together on the bench of a cab that Dubon had hailed in the street, anxious to get inside the vehicle’s boxlike carriage and out of view as quickly as possible. What if one of the other tenants in the building saw him in this getup? What if Lebrun, who had been dispatched by speaking tube to send a message to Geneviève warning her that her husband would not be home for lunch, came back before they got away?

If Dubon felt horribly nervous in his new uniform with his cap perched on his head at what felt like the most unnatural angle, the widow seemed to regard the whole thing as a grand adventure. In the office she had turned her back while he changed into the pants but couldn’t restrain herself while he fiddled with the waistband.

“You just need a bit of cord or something to enlarge it,” she had said as she came over to take a look. “Your brother-in-law must be a rather scrawny fellow.”

He tried to laugh at the intended compliment to his stature, but it
sounded more like a croak. She helped him into the tunic and surveyed the effect.

“Spectacular, Maître Petit,” she said, handing him the cap that had been sitting on the desk.

“Captain Petit,” he replied. “The military title always takes precedence.”

When he had finally got into the office on the Saturday morning, he had sent Lebrun to the library to hunt out the address of the Statistical Section in a government directory while he combed the widow’s clipping files for the name of a lawyer he could impersonate. In the end, he decided it was safer to disguise himself as a lowly assistant and keep his fingers crossed that the Statistical Section would let him see the Dreyfus file long enough to take some notes. Its offices were located in the city’s military neighborhood, across the river around the Hôtel des Invalides. The section occupied the third floor of an undistinguished building on the rue de Lille, a narrow street just one in from the river. The rue Saint-Dominique, the street that was a synonym for the military’s high command, was only two blocks away, on the other side of the boulevard Saint-Germain. The spies, Dubon gathered, needed to be near headquarters but not in it. He instructed the cab to stop a few doors beyond number 113.

“I’ll probably get thrown out on my ear and be back in five minutes.”

“I’ll wait here for you.”

“But what if I manage to get a look at the file? It may take me some time.”

He took out his watch, which he had carefully transferred into his new pocket, and looked at it. “It’s almost eleven. If I am not back out by eleven thirty, just take the cab home, and come back to my office, oh, say, at three o’clock.”

“All right, in half an hour, then … or at three o’clock.” She took his hand and squeezed it. “Thank you, Maître. And good luck.” She hesitated and then leaned closer, brushing her lips against his cheek.

He stepped out of the cab.

When he tried the door at number 113, he found it open and slipped inside the building. There was no one in the lobby, nor any sign indicating what business was conducted on the premises. Dubon noticed a small iron elevator tucked in a corner but since he had no idea to which floor he should proceed, he started up the stairs instead. The doors on the first and second floors were unmarked. He kept going, and on the third floor found a sign bearing the army’s crest and the words
ADMINISTRATIVE BUREAU. STATISTICAL SECTION
. Stopping for a moment to catch his breath, he suppressed the panic that was rising inside him. He tentatively tried the handle of the large door in front of him and found that it turned. He swallowed. His saliva tasted foul. There was nothing for it: he had better go in.