Mirror of our Sorrows by Pierre Lemaitre

Author:Pierre Lemaitre [Lemaitre, Pierre]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2023-02-01T16:00:00+00:00

25

The military guardhouse at Cherche-Midi was something halfway between a prison and a barracks. It had the dingy cells and cramped exercise yards of a jail, with food as stodgy as it was dismal. But it was staffed by the obtuse, pig-headed personnel of a military barracks, who insisted on iron discipline and meticulous organisation. This was a lot to deal with even under normal circumstances, and the circumstances were far from normal. The looming prospect of a crushing, irrevocable military defeat weighed heavily on the prisoners who, in the eyes of the warders, represented all the misdeeds that had led to this imminent defeat.

Those incarcerated at Cherche-Midi included a broad swathe of political prisoners and deserters. The former chiefly came from among the anarchists and communists and included saboteurs, alleged spies and supposed traitors. The latter included deserters, draft evaders and conscientious objectors. Between the two were the soldiers convicted of common law crimes, a disparate bunch including looters, thieves and murderers. Having previously had a couple of spells in prison, Raoul Landrade adapted more easily than Gabriel, although conditions here were worse than he had experienced anywhere else. He spent sleepless nights tossing and turning on a straw mattress even a bear would have rejected.

The atmosphere in the guardhouse was nerve-racking. As the enemy advanced, so the antipathy the wardens had initially felt for the prisoners at Cherche-Midi veered towards abject loathing. The pulse of war could be felt in every hallway in the prison. It was an echo chamber for all the grievances of the French army. When French troops were defeated at Sedan, when Calais was captured by the Nazis, blows and punishments rained down on the imprisoned; when the French managed to protect the Allied retreat at Dunkirk, there was a return to normal hours in the exercise yard.

Twice, Landrade and Gabriel had been separated only to be reunited. Each time, Gabriel pestered him to testify to his innocence.

“Don’t worry, things will settle down,” Raoul said. “We’ll be out within a month.”

Nothing seemed less certain. The French army had no qualms about sending whole contingents of soldiers to be slaughtered, but it refused to tolerate that any among them might be criminals. The army felt sullied by the association.

Raoul’s optimism stemmed from the fact that he always managed to wriggle his way out of difficult situations. Always. Sometimes it was with difficulty and he had to make minor sacrifices, but his logic was that, had they suffered what he had since childhood, most people would be long dead, whereas he was still standing.

Within days, he had canteen privileges. People are fascinated by thimblerigging because it is rooted in the evidence of their senses, which they trust implicitly. Though he would have denied it, Gabriel could not help but admire his friend’s ingenuity. Almost as soon as he arrived, Raoul duped a warder into posting a letter without submitting it to censorship. “It’s just a note to my sister,” he said. The warder felt that fair was fair, he had lost at the shell game, so he agreed.

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