Gossip From the Forest Read online

  The French nanny who had raised him, taught him his French and what his father’s lowland relatives considered effeminate and continental ways, had never behaved so perfervidly.

  Wearing an apron, carrying his hat, the chef was let in.

  The Marshal: Do you read military journals?

  Chef: No, my Marshal. I know the crêpes were a little too dry round the edges.

  The Marshal: Crêpes? I’m not worried about crepes. I want to know, do you read military journals?

  Chef: I went to work at the age of ten. I’m afraid I never was much of a reader.

  The Marshal: For God’s sake, do you read military journals? Do you follow debates on strategy?

  Chef: I know I ought to try. After all, I’m a soldier.

  He was middle-aged, pressed into service from some good restaurant somewhere, maybe Bordeaux or somewhere in the Marshal’s part of the country. He had the same Spanish look and the same hint of excess in the use of his hands.

  The Marshal: You misunderstand me, it isn’t my purpose to criticize your reading habits. Have you lost sons in this war?

  Chef: One. I only had one. Four daughters.

  He began sniggering at the idea of this imbalance in his breeding pattern.

  The Marshal’s voice grew more intimate.

  The Marshal: He was killed?

  Chef: Ages ago. Artois. July 1915, I think.

  His hand made wary scooping movements as if he were actually digging through the strata of more recent corpses to get some memory of his son.

  The Marshal: Do you feel bitter about it?

  Chef: He was missing, thought dead. So we hoped. All his sisters hoped. There’s no bitterness while you’re busy hoping. By the time we got over the hope a lot of other people had lost boys. We had to look to them. It keeps my daughters busy, sir.

  The Marshal put his hands, palms out, concessively, toward his cook.

  The Marshal: There should be better things for girls to do.

  Chef: Better, sir.

  But he looked more at ease, seeing the Marshal’s persona swing to become that of Father of Unhusbanded Daughters.

  The Marshal: It isn’t good for young women to be Sisters of Charity. Unless they feel called.…

  Chef: No. There’s no one for my girls. No one left. To speak of.

  The Marshal: Do you know someone called Mayer?

  Chef: Claude Mayer, sir. Assistant dining-room manager at the Metropole.

  The Marshal: No. Not him.

  By now the inquiry had grown idle. Already the Marshal visibly considered the chef his brother in loss; his face, blazing all evening with idiosyncrasies, went blank, so utterly bereft that for a second Wemyss felt his own breath detained at the bottom of his windpipe. What is it: grief, victimhood, death, lunacy? Wemyss felt he must know if his breath were to travel ever again with ease.

  When the illusion died he understood his honest lungs had not considered seizing, but noticed other men at that table looking obliquely at each other, wanting to verify their fellow diners were not fading.

  The Marshal: When you go, send in your assistant.

  Chef: Yessir.

  The Marshal: I lost my own son, you know. And my daughter is a widow.

  Chef: Of course, sir.

  The Marshal: Sufficient to the day is the pain thereof. Eh?

  The chef went back to his kitchen. You could then see the Marshal settle himself, workmanlike, in his chair for the next interview.

  Wemyss thought, it’s indecent to go on watching. It was like the rigmarole of interrogations and ownings-up in the house-master’s study at some school. The air in 2417D, as in the best of schools at scandaltime, was full of the master’s moist and obscenely sweet paternal rightness.

  Wemyss: I think perhaps, my Marshal, it is a domestic matter. I must repeat that if you want us to withdraw …

  The Marshal: You are disquieted, Lord Admiral?

  Wemyss: No, I wouldn’t put it so strongly.

  The Marshal: And you haven’t finished your cognac.

  His thick finger pointed to the ceiling.

  The Marshal: We are getting through it, don’t you mind.

  And so the others were brought in and questioned. The drink waiter and the assistant chef could claim no personal loss. None of them admitted that they had any knowledge of the halcyon controversy between the School of Offensive-to-the-limit and its opponents.

  All the time Wemyss grew angrier and would not drink more brandy when the young French interpreter brought it around, treading faintly so that the Marshal’s tight questioning of the head waiter should not be distracted.

  The First Sea Lord telegraphed his discontent to his staff by various movements of the mouth and by socketing and unsocketing his monocle. The Anglo-Saxon grimace and mouth gape that went with the bunching of face muscles around a monocle were useful to him now. This isn’t our sort of game. But stick it out for the sake of the naval clauses.

  Once one was reconciled, the whole act had its interest and was at least quick. Within ten minutes the Marshal had the combined dining-room staff back in again. He held the clever Mayer’s opinion between his index and second finger, as if it were about to receive its last mention of all time.

  The Marshal: If anything like this appears in my presence again I shall have you all, every one, charged and interned in a military prison. You know I have the power. Without trial, mind you. My displeasure is your trial.

  The men looked secretively at each other’s faces. Christ, we’ve got a clever bastard amongst us! A socialist! A reader! He to whom I pass the dishes has betrayed me. But which one?

  The Marshal: Go back now. To your work.

  When they filed out the Marshal sat again with an apology and flicked Captain Mayer’s statement away down the table. It nosed into the fruit bowl.

  The Marshal said aloud what he always thought and said of his percipient enemies, of Pétain and Mayer.

  The Marshal: If Mayer was right it was out of a flaw of character. A flaw of character doesn’t show up in a military journal but, my God, it shows up in battle.

  And Weygand sang the antiphon.

  Weygand: In battle, the moral stature of the commander is the deciding consideration. No one denies that.

  Wemyss thought, these men are as remote from me as Cistercians. Thank Christ I served with men who thought that the range of the enemy’s armament, the diameter of the shell he could send seeking you, were questions to be considered above all others.

  After coffee, served a little tremulously by the assistant waiter, the Marshal begged permission from Wemyss to go to bed.

  The Marshal: You might remain. More coffee, cognac. And you must forgive the unpleasantness.

  Weygand stayed a little while to say, it’s raining. George Hope agreed and they all cocked their ears in the strained way of people with nothing more to say, and heard rain crashing on the roof with a sound like static electricity.

  Hope: I hadn’t noticed it was so heavy.

  de Mierry: The sentries will be cursing.

  Weygand: No. It’s better than the trenches.

  de Mierry: There’s that.

  Weygand: They can shelter beneath the trees.

  Wemyss thought, with an A.B.’s pithiness, they can put their heads in the mud and whistle “Annie Laurie” through their assholes for all you care.

  He picked up the sheet of paper quoting clever Jew Mayer from amongst the North African oranges. He was aware as he glanced at it of a submerged pulse of disquiet in General Weygand. He inspected the handwriting—a fast, professional hand, more likely a staff officer’s than a waiter’s. He would have liked to take it away and set Bagot to finding whose hand it was. Yet the paper remained still, in some way, the Marshal’s special property.

  He returned it to its bed amidst the fruit.

  THE MARSHAL’S FRIENDLY RELATIONSHIP WITH SLEEP

  In his compartment the Marshal exercised his friendly relationship with sleep. Chin up, arms out, hand
s flat, he floated on it. Ears full of it, he did not hear any more the rain or understand that as in last night’s dream he was encircled by the ivy and elms.

  In this state he prayed for the perfidious Mayer, yet again for Captain Bécourt and Lieutenant Germain Foch, and for all the lost sons of his staff. Behind his ears yet again the spirit flexed its wings. Without you I am nothing, the Marshal signaled to it. Gave one kick of his left foot and went under.

  ERZBERGER AT THE RAILHEAD

  Still sharing the back seat with Bourbon-Busset, Matthias suffered heartburn from a fast meal they had eaten in Homblières. He now felt like a bored tourist, somehow committed, by the food he had gulped, not to complain any more about the itinerary, yet wearied by the continuing view of the ruins.

  He needed to sleep off the disastrous meal.

  He put his hatted head back against the upholstery and adopted the secret childlike face you needed for sound sleep. Three inches from his nose the passionate and alien rain broke and ran in a film down the pane.

  It was nearly an hour before the major woke him.

  Bourbon-Busset: Tergnier, Herr Minister.

  Erzberger: Where are we?

  Bourbon-Busset: Tergnier. The railhead.

  Erzberger: But there’s nothing here.

  Bourbon-Busset: No. The vehicles can’t go any farther. There’s a walk. A hundred meters.

  Outside, the delegates bunched as prisoners of war are known to do. In the thin rain Erzberger could hear the others swallowing the malaise that had come up their throats during sleep in the ill-aired limousines.

  Bourbon-Busset: This way.

  In front of them went a driver with wire cutters. He snipped a way for them through three barriers of wired rubble.

  Bourbon-Busset: Round here.

  Wreckage of red bricks, foliate ironwork and roofing rose five meters in their path.

  Maiberling: Hell!

  For his trousers had been torn.

  Maiberling: Are those drivers bringing our bags?

  Erzberger: Of course.

  Maiberling: Thank Christ.

  On their right and across two tracks, an old locomotive, at first sight a casualty of war. It was, if one looked more closely, on its rails, and hissed softly. But no engineer stood on its plates, no furnace glowed.

  Erzberger called to the major.

  Erzberger: Is this our train?

  At the loud German syllables arc lights popped on and blinded all of them. Matthias raised his arm against the carbon stench and buried his eyes. Even closed, they went on stinging from the blow of arc filaments. He heard a military order given, a crash of feet and butts. He thought, it’s all right now, I greet the bullet.

  When he looked up he saw even Bourbon-Busset shielding his eyes with an open gloved hand. In the bilious light a company of chasseurs presented arms amongst holed tarmac, sandbags, indefinable wreckage.

  Behind the vacant locomotive three first-class wagons stretched. Bourbon-Busset, Vanselow, von Winterfeldt took the salute. You had to admit: professional military men knew how to recover from shock. Von Winterfeldt accepting the military compliment, being placated by it.

  Whereas Erzberger wanted to attack Bourbon-Busset’s long bones with his fingernails.

  Bourbon-Busset: You are free to board the train, gentlemen. The saloon car is in the center. Excuse me, I wish to reprimand the electrician.

  The first track was broken by a hole, filling with water. Von Winterfeldt delayed Bourbon-Busset by questioning him about it in French. Bourbon-Busset explained the crater. The general nodded. In-talk. Then von Winterfeldt gathered himself and spoke in German so that the other delegates could hear.

  Von Winterfeldt: The Supreme Command never authorized destruction on this scale. It is very regrettable and must be the work of isolated people.

  Bourbon-Busset: A few million of them, perhaps. I must speak to the electrician.

  The Prussian general stood on the cinders groaning and crumpling his gloves. Had there been a Europe once where professional officers had been a race without frontiers? Old von Winterfeldt, influenced that way by his diplomatic career and French wife, thought there had been and felt its codes betrayed by Bourbon-Busset.

  Erzberger wanted actually to begin arguing with the general, to say, look here there is one Europe, but not in that old way.

  The count was already aboard and stood in the entryway rubbing his gloved hands.

  Maiberling: General. Matthias. The heating’s working.

  The general let Erzberger go first.

  Beyond a staid entryway their coach was draped with blue and gold satin.

  Maiberling: There should be a first-rate tart somewhere.

  Indeed it was a style of decoration not unknown in the whorehouses safely visited by Reichstag deputies.

  Where the wall paneling coalesced to form sconces, a flowering N embraced a florid Roman numeral: III. Cuspidors, brocade, plush.

  Erzberger: Napoleon III. Look. This is an imperial carriage.

  Maiberling stiffened; he might renounce it, the warmth, leather, genial lighting. Then a giggle shook him loose and he fell into a superb armchair.

  Maiberling: This is what passes for subtlety, I suppose. This is Gallic wit.

  Matthias let himself down into the plush and Captain Vanselow sat restrainedly on a corner of the sofa.

  Appalled perhaps by this slackness, von Winterfeldt in his high-collared coat tried to firm them up with some special information.

  Von Winterfeldt: The hole in the other track was a delayed-action mine laid by our army in retreat. They say there may be some under our track.

  Dr. Blauert, military secretary and bookish by nature, sat forward. But Count Maiberling worked his buttocks even more deeply into the imperial leather.

  The general walked to a wall and read the Emperor’s insignia on the cornice.

  Von Winterfeldt: Have you gentlemen ever been in the Kaiser’s train?

  Maiberling: No.

  He sniggered, considering it a preposterous question.

  Von Winterfeldt: In better taste than this. Everyone can laugh at Prussian grossness. But the Kaiser’s train is in better taste.

  So (Erzberger thought) the Prussian general compares the styles of two dead empires and their jettisoned pharaohs. For, give a day or so, the Kaiser would be forced into his tasteful train and, at best, sent over open points to limbo.

  As Bourbon-Busset marched in and wished them comfort they could hear steam being got up.

  Maiberling spoke in creaking French (he had, after all, once been German Minister in Switzerland).

  Maiberling: Très joyeuse. Merde sur la tête de l’empereur.

  Bourbon-Busset: Eh bien. Quel empereur?

  OUR LAST VIEWING OF THE MARSHAL

  Now that the monolith is asleep, we can take our final view of him. From this time onward we shall more accept than examine him: acceptance will be our only recourse, for he will not change or sprout unexpected limbs at the conference table. Knowing that he sleeps deeply as a child, we feel there is time to hunt about the dark cabin for signs of his fallibility and age. What was he reading at bedtime? And where are his teeth stored, and his old handkerchiefs?

  The books are well back on the writing desk. Three only. A novel about Brittany in the 1850s. Meditations on the Humility of Christ by Monsignor Dupanloup. Antoine Jommi’s Summary of the Art of War. The Breton novel stands there in preparation for a return to life in Plonjieu next summer. He knows he will sit in the sun in the kitchen garden with his women about him, wife, two daughters (one spinster, one widow). Vegetables in their laps, beans from the kitchen-garden sleeping in sunny colanders. He still desires his wife for the good reason that she is humorous and he finds a droll woman appealing; and because he wills to love her. Sexual disorder makes inroads on a soldier’s power of decision, his sword of honor and truest gift.

  The book of meditations hasn’t been opened in nights. But if he had time to meditate he could, as effectively as
any monk. He has certain psychic powers. Once in Flanders, for example, he felt—personally—machine-gun bullets entering the bodies of some three or four French soldiers advancing on Méricourt. Sitting in a chair in a villa at Hersin he felt the sideways tearing of the four sets of organs. Pain is the least and he felt no pain. Only the worse things: the last panic of the bowels; encounter with the fastest creature, so quick and ruinous in chest and throat and belly; the May sky winking once and shriveling.

  He has already confessed this experience in writing, but has little talent (would not want to have!) for setting such private knowledge down. He has managed this much in his journal: “I saw with an almost physical clarity the sacrifices my soldiers would be called on to make.…”

  Which is nothing at all like foredying their deaths.

  The Jomini has always been with him, an 1837 edition bought at a high price by the Marshal’s father and given to his son on his commissioning day.

  Even this sparse traveling library testifies to the influences that have made him: the father, the schooling, the religion, the wife. You would think there were thousands of French officers like him, revanchiste, right-wing, Mass-going, wanting to be a marshal under Napoleon. But there is no one like him. No French army or corps commander, no one on the staff or at the War Office. For he is consistent utterly to the factors that bred him. More than any army or corps commander, anyone on the staff or at the War Office. More than Mordacq, Debeney, Mangin, Pétain, Gamelin, Weygand. More than Field Marshal Haig or any of Haig’s people. If consistency were talent then the Marshal is a genius. And his training disposes him to see consistency as the greatest human talent. Therefore the Marshal believes he knows what he is.

  There are no teeth missing except two he lost in a motor accident one springtime. Their substitutes, stuck on a partial false palate, are slung on the washstand, do not inhabit a glass of water. There are no spectacles about. They are not needed.

  The face is so firm in sleep, confesses so little doubt. Already a first-rate brain surgeon has written in the Journal des Études Neurobgiques: “The discipline of Foch ought to be taught to children and applied to the treatment of the mentally ill.”