Joseph Merlin had never slept well. Unlike some insomniacs who spend their whole lives not knowing the cause of this misfortune, he knew precisely: his life had been a constant hail of disappointments to which he had never grown accustomed. Every night he brooded over the disagreements in which he had not prevailed, replaying them to change the outcome to his advantage; he remembered every professional slight, fretted over problems and setbacks: there were more than enough to keep him awake. There was something profoundly egocentric about the man; the epicenter of Joseph Merlin’s universe was Joseph Merlin. Having no one and nothing in his life—not even a cat—everything was about him, his existence had curled in on itself like a dry leaf around an empty space. For example, in the course of these long, sleepless nights, he had never once thought about the war. For four years, he had thought of it only as a tiresome inconvenience, an assortment of tribulations, chief among them food rationing, that served only to aggravate his crabby temperament. His colleagues at the ministry, especially those who had someone they loved fighting on the front lines, had been shocked to see this embittered man worrying only about the price of public transport and the shortage of chicken.
“For God’s sake” they would say indignantly, “don’t you realize, there’s a war on?”
“A war? Which war?” Merlin would say, “There have always been wars. Why should I take any more interest in this war than in the last one? Or the next?”
He was considered a defeatist, almost a traitor. On the front lines, he would quickly have found himself facing a firing squad; on the home front, such an attitude was less dangerous, though his indifference led to further snubs: people called him “the Boche,” and the name stuck.
At the end of the war, when he was transferred to the war grave inspectorate, “the Boche” became “the Vulture,” “the Carrion Bird,” “the Raptor,” according to the circumstances. Again, he suffered sleepless nights.
The inspection of Chazières-Malmont was his first visit to one of the military cemeteries managed by Pradelle & Cie.
When they read his report, his superiors found the situation alarming. No one was clamoring to take responsibility, and so the document quickly rose to dizzy heights until eventually it landed on the desk of the director general, who, like his colleagues in other ministries, was an expert in hushing up such dossiers.
Meanwhile, Merlin spent every night in bed, honing the words he would say to his superiors when he was summoned to appear, all of which amounted to a simple, brutal fact, one that would have serious consequences: thousands of French soldiers were being buried in coffins that were too small. Regardless of a soldier’s height—whether five foot two or more than five foot nine (from the military records available, Merlin had compiled a detailed list of the heights of the soldiers concerned), he was buried in a coffin measuring four foot three. To make the bodies fit, it was necessary to break the necks, saw off the feet, break the ankles; in short, the bodies of these fallen soldiers were being treated like lumber to be hacked and sawed. The report went into macabre detail about the process, explaining that “having no knowledge of anatomy nor any appropriate tools, laborers are reduced to breaking bones with the blades of their shovels, sometimes with the heels of their boots against flat stones, sometimes with pickaxes; despite such measures, it is often impossible to fit the remains of taller soldiers into such small caskets, forcing workers to pack in as much as possible with any surplus being tossed into a coffin serving as a trash can which, once full, is sealed and marked ‘Unidentified Soldier,’ consequently making it impossible to assure families that the bodies of the loved ones they have come to mourn are intact, something further exacerbated by the scant time allotted for exhumations by the company that secured the contract, leading workers to place only those parts of a corpse that are immediately apparent into coffins with no attempt made to comb the grave for bones, documents, or objects that might help confirm or determine the identity of the deceased as required by regulations, with the inevitable consequence that it is not uncommon to encounter scattered bones that cannot confidently be identified as belonging to any particular corpse; hence, in addition to its serious, its systematic failure to provide instructions concerning the respectful exhumation of bodies, and its use of coffins that fail to meet the stipulated requirements, the aforementioned company . . .” As is apparent, Merlin could compose sentences running to more than two hundred words; in this, he was considered an artist by his colleagues at the ministry.
The report was a bombshell.
It was deeply worrying for Pradelle & Cie, but also for the Péricourt family, who were very much in the public eye, and for the government, which had felt it sufficient to inspect work only after the event, by which time it was too late. If word got out, there would be a scandal. It was decided that, henceforth, all information relating the affair was to be sent directly and without delay to the office of the director general. And, in order to silence Merlin, a message had been sent through the appropriate channels informing him that his report was being studied attentively, that it was much appreciated, and that he would be advised of any further action in the fullness of time. Merlin, with almost forty years’ experience in the civil service, immediately knew that his report had been buried, something that did not particularly surprise him. There were doubtless murky areas in the process by which contacts had been awarded. It was a sensitive subject; anything that might embarrass the government was bound to be brushed aside. Merlin knew that it was not in his interests to be difficult; if he were, he would once again find himself moved around like a pawn. No, thank you. A man of duty, he had done his duty. In his own estimation, he was beyond reproach.
Besides, he was nearing retirement; there was nothing to be done but wait to draw his pension. All that was expected of him was to carry out perfunctory inspections, sign his name, rubber-stamp the registers, and wait until rationing ended and chickens were once more available in markets and on restaurant menus.
Realizing this, he went home and slept soundly for the first time in his life, as though his brain, like sediment in fine wine, required an exceptionally long time to settle.
His sleep was troubled by sad dreams in which rotting soldiers sat up in their graves and wept; they tried to cry for help, but no sound came; their only comfort came from lanky Senegalese laborers, naked as the day they were born, chilled to the marrow, throwing shovelfuls of earth over them as one might throw a coat over a drowned man dragged from the water.
When he awoke, Merlin found himself gripped by a profound emotion that, for the first time, did not concern him alone. The war, long since over, had finally intruded upon his life.
What followed was the result of a curious alchemy influenced by the bleak atmosphere of those cemeteries, which reminded Merlin of the bleakness of his own life; the oppressive nature of the bureaucratic obstacles being placed in his path; and his instinctive intransigence: a public servant of his integrity could not turn a blind eye. Though he had nothing in common with them, these young men were victims of an injustice that he alone could set right. Within days, it had become an obsession. The thought of these dead soldiers preyed on his mind, like love, like jealousy, like a cancer. He shifted from grief to indignation. He became angry.
Since he had received no orders telling him to curtail his assignment, he sent a message to his superiors informing them that he intended to inspect the cemetery at Dargonne-le-Grand and immediately took the train heading in the opposite direction to Pontaville-sur-Meuse.
From the station, he walked almost four miles through the driving rain to the military cemetery. He walked in the middle of the road, his oversized shoes tramping through the puddles, refusing to step aside for the cars that sounded their horns as though he did not hear them. To pass him, they had to mount the grass shoulder of the road.
The strange apparition that materialized outside the cemetery gates was a hulking figure with a menacing air, his fists deep in the pockets of a coat that, though the rain had now stopped, was wringing wet. But there was no one there to see; the midday bell had sounded, the site was closed. On the railing was a list of all the objects found on unidentified bodies, which families could inspect at the town hall: the photograph of a young girl, a pipe, a check stub, initials found on underclothes, a leather tobacco pouch, a lighter, a pair of round spectacles, a letter that began “My Darling” but was unsigned—a piteous, tragic litany. Merlin was struck by the humble nature of these relics. So many penniless soldiers. It was unbelievable.
He looked down at the lock and chain, raised a foot and gave the small padlock a kick that would have felled a bullock, strode into the cemetery, and kicked open the wooden door to the administration shed. The only people on site were a dozen Arabs, eating lunch beneath a tarpaulin ballooned by the wind. From a distance, they watched as Merlin kicked open the gates and the office door, but, daunted by the physical prowess and obvious self-assurance of the man, they made no move to get up, to intervene; they went on chewing their bread.
What was known locally as “Pontaville Square” was a field that was anything but square, bordered by woodlands, where an estimated six hundred soldiers had been buried.
Merlin rummaged through the cabinets looking for the registers in which every operation was supposed to be detailed. Now and then, as he scanned the daily reports, he glanced out of the window. The exhumations had begun two months earlier; looking out he could see a field littered with graves, mounds of earth, tarpaulins, planks, wheelbarrows, and makeshift storage sheds.
From an organizational standpoint, everything seemed in order. He would not find here the same sickening carelessness he had witnessed at Chazières-Malmont, the caskets of human detritus like something from a slaughterhouse, which he had discovered hidden behind stacks of new unused coffins.
Generally, having checked that registers were being kept, Merlin began his inspections by making a tour of the site; he trusted to his instincts, lifting a cover here, checking an identity disk there. Only then did the real investigation begin. His work involved going endlessly back and forth between the rows of graves and the archived ledgers, but he had quickly acquired a sixth sense, an unerring ability to sniff out the slightest sign of duplicity, a minor irregularity, a detail indicating some anomaly.
This was certainly the only ministerial assignment that required a civil servant to dig up bodies, but there was no other way to check. However, Merlin’s colossal frame was well suited to the task; his hefty shoes could drive a shovel a foot into the ground, his huge paws could wield a pickax as though it were a fork.
Having completed an initial tour of the site, Merlin began his detailed cross-referencing. It was twelve-thirty.
At 2:00 p.m. he was standing in front of a pile of sealed coffins to the north of the cemetery when the site manager, a certain Sauveur Bénichou—a puce-faced alcoholic of about fifty, scrawny as a weed—showed up with two others, probably foremen. This little group was in a state of high indignation, chins jutting, voices loud and booming, this site was strictly off limits to the public, they could not have people wandering in off the road, he must leave immediately. And since Merlin did not even acknowledge their presence, they raised the tone to the next level: if he refused to comply, they would be forced to contact the gendarmerie because this site was under the auspices of the government . . .
“That’s me,” Merlin interrupted, turning toward the three men.
“I am the government here.”
He plunged his hand into his pocket and took out a crumpled sheet of paper that did not look much like an official pass, but given that he did not look much like a ministerial envoy, the men did not know what to think. Everything about him seemed suspicious: his colossal frame, his stained threadbare clothes, his huge shoes; even so, no one dared challenge him.
Merlin looked the three men up and down: Sauveur, who smelled of plum brandy, and his two acolytes. The first, a hatchet-faced man with an oversized mustache stained yellow with tobacco, patted his breast pocket to hide his lack of composure; the second, an Arab still wearing the cap, pants, and boots of a caporal d’infanterie, stood stiffly to attention as though to prove the importance of his position.
Tsst, tsst. Merlin sucked at his denture as he stuffed the paper back into his pocket. Then he nodded to the pile of coffins.
“And, as you can imagine, the government has a few minor questions.”
The Arab foreman stiffened a little more. His mustachioed companion took out a cigarette (he did not take out the pack, only a single cigarette, like a man reluctant to share, a man sick and tired of scroungers). Everything marked him out as a mean, tightfisted man.
“For example,” Merlin said, suddenly waving three identity cards, “the government is wondering which coffins correspond to these three men.”
In Merlin’s huge fists, the papers looked no bigger than postage stamps. The question made the three men distinctly uneasy.
When a row of graves was exhumed, the result was a row of coffins on the one hand, a series of identity cards on the other.
Ideally in the same order.
But one ID card misfiled or missing was enough to throw everything into disarray so that the ID cards were unrelated to the contents of the coffins.
And if Merlin was brandishing three cards that did not correspond to any coffin . . . it meant the whole sequence was wrong.
He shook his head and surveyed the area of the cemetery that had already been unearthed. Two hundred and thirty-seven soldiers had been exhumed and transported a distance of fifty miles.
Paul was in Jules’s coffin, Félicien in Isidore’s, and so on.
All the way up to number 237.
And it was now impossible to determine who was who.
“Who do the ID cards belong to?” Sauveur Bénichou stammered, glancing around as though suddenly disoriented, “Let me think . . .”
An idea occurred to him.
“You see,” he said, “we were just about to deal with this.”
He turned to his men, who seemed suddenly much smaller.
“Isn’t that right, boys?”
Neither knew what he was talking about, but they did not have time to think.
“HA!” Merlin roared, “Do you think they’re complete idiots?”
“Who?” Bénichou said.
“The government!”
He seemed like a lunatic; Bénichou considered asking to see his official pass again.
“So, where are they, these three little rascals? And what about the three men you’ll have left over when you’re finished, what are you planning to call them?”
Bénichou launched into a tedious technical explanation about how they had thought it “more reliable” to leave writing up the identity cards until after they have a whole row of coffins, so they could be simultaneously noted in the register because if the ID cards were drafted . . .
“Bullshit!” Merlin cut him short.
Bénichou, who was having trouble believing it himself, lowered his head. His assistant patted his breast pocket.
In the silence that followed, Merlin had a strange, fleeting vision of a vast war grave, dotted here and there with families at prayer, and—as though by some second sight—he alone could peer through the earth itself, see the quivering corpses, hear the harrowing cries as they called out their names . . .
The damage already done was irreparable, those soldiers were lost, anonymous bodies sleeping beneath carefully marked crosses. The only thing to do now was to make the best of what was yet to be done.
Merlin reorganized the work, wrote instructions in large letters, issued orders in a curt, peremptory tone—You, over here! Now listen carefully—threatening formal proceedings, fines, dismissals if the work was badly done; whenever he walked away they could distinctly hear him say “fucking morons.”
As soon as his back was turned, it began again, it was never ending. This fact, far from discouraging him, served only to fuel his rage.
“You, over here, now! Move it!”
He was speaking to the man with the mustache; he was maybe fifty and his face so thin his eyes looked as though they were perched on either side, like a fish’s. Standing about a yard away from Merlin, he resisted the urge to pat his breast pocket again and instead took out a cigarette.
Merlin, who had been just about to speak, paused for a long moment. He looked like someone struggling desperately to remember a word that is on the tip of his tongue.
The mustachioed foreman opened his mouth, but before he had time to utter a sound, Merlin had dealt him a resounding slap. Against his flat cheek it sounded like a bell. The man stepped back. All eyes turned to stare. Bénichou, emerging from the shed where he kept his pick-me-up (a bottle of marc de Bourgogne) gave a hoarse roar, but all the workmen were already moving. The dumbfounded mustached man was clutching his cheek. Merlin quickly found himself surrounded by a baying pack, and had it not been for his age, his colossal build, the authority he had displayed since the start of the inspection, his huge hands and his monstrous feet, he might have worried; instead of which, he calmly pushed past everyone, took a step toward his victim, thrust a hand into the man’s breast pocket and bellowed “Aha!,” when it reemerged as a fist. His other hand held the man by the throat; he looked about to strangle him.
“Oh my God!” Bénichou shouted as he finally staggered up.
Without releasing his grip on the throat of the man who, by now, was starting to change color, Merlin held his closed fist toward the site manager, then opened it.
A solid-gold identity bracelet appeared, turned the wrong way up. Merlin released his prey, who immediately started coughing his lungs out and turned to Bénichou.
“What’s his name, your boy?” Merlin asked, “His first name?”
“Er . . .”
Sauveur Bénichou, beaten and helpless, shot his foreman an apologetic glance.
“Alcide,” he muttered grudgingly.
It was barely audible, but that did not matter.
Merlin turned over the bracelet as though it were a coin and they were playing heads or tails.
There, engraved on the nameplate: Roger.