So, if you don’t mind, I’ll keep writing to you. When you return from the depths of Africa, my letters will be waiting for you. And, as always, Clare, my thoughts.
Luc
I should have guessed that the army would be like boarding school all over again. The rows of narrow beds. The tall boys swaggering around the courtyard, looking for someone else to do their dirty work. The uniforms. The pranks. The occasional opportunities to stand in a line, shivering, in only your underwear and socks. The “Yes, sirs” and “No, sirs” and “Thank you for setting me straight, sirs.” It was as though those university years in Paris, pretending to be a grown-up, had never happened.
I had high hopes when I arrived. Watching all of the other conscripts milling around outside the barracks, looking so serious with their jackets and suitcases, I told myself times had changed. We weren’t twelve years old anymore. We were soldiers. Well nearly, anyhow.
Soldiers we may have looked after being given our uniforms—as ill-fitting as the getups might have been—soldiers we may have looked after all lining up along the foot of our beds for evening call—exhausted, bewildered, but upright—yet there was still a touch of twelve-year-old boy there. The second-years, seasoned and nudging, had warned us that in order to make it between the tightly tucked sheets of our beds, we had to do it in one smooth motion of a dive over the headboard. I gamely tried, to find that my bed had been apple-pied. My optimistically impressive dive turned into an ungraceful tumble to the floor with my whole person tangled in my bedclothes. The rest watched me carefully and dismantled their beds before climbing in. Me, I had to remake the bed to army standards, in the dark, and went to sleep in a glower.
The next day wasn’t any better. From six-thirty in the morning until eight at night, we were busy with drills and marches and gymnastic exercises in the courtyard, but mostly with lectures. In rows of desks, like unruly schoolboys, we were treated to what was promised to be the first of many lectures on the history of the French army, from Charles VII onward. We had lectures on “The Moral Duty of a Citizen” and on “The Evils of Disobedience.” Only two hours within all of that to eat—soup at midday; Papa would be pleased—and then two hours between the last drill and “Lights out.” I fell asleep with my boots on, only to be awoken with a crash, upside down, pinned between my bed frame and the center partition of the room. A long rope wrapped around the frame, mattress, and my poor feet, then tossed up over the partition, was to thank for this. “Sending you heavenward, recruit,” they told me between laughs. By the end of the day I didn’t feel any more soldierly, but I did feel more inclined to bayonet someone.
I found solace in the camp canteen, where for a few sous I could get a glass of passable brandy. The canteen was packed shoulder-to-shoulder and reeked of burnt garlic, spilled wine, and cut-rate tobacco, but the drinks were cheap and plentiful. I found a corner to wedge myself in and think about Paris and the countryside. About Clare and the months that had gone by without a letter. About anything but the roomful of men and coarse jokes and whatever it was that I was stepping in on the canteen floor. I already knew the next few years were going to crawl.
The quiet in my little corner, however, was short-lived. Very short-lived. A sip in, a bright-eyed fellow in a too-big tunic squeezed himself onto the bench next to me. His hair was the color of butter and in sore need of a trim. He waved over a glass of brandy for himself and, raising the grimy glass, said, “Merci.”
I looked around, but he was grinning at me. “For what?”
He slipped his kepi off and pushed hair from his eyes. “For buying me a drink.”
He nodded to the waiter, who was waiting with hand outstretched.
“It’s the height of bad manners to drink alone. Faire Suisse, they say. You buy me a drink in punishment.” He took a slurping gulp. “Shall I order another?”
Grumbling, I dug for a few more coins. “Nice to meet you.”
He reached around his glass to extend a hand. “Michel Chaffre. I have the bed next to yours, remember?”
I couldn’t tell him what color my blanket was, much less who slept next to me.
Chaffre took another noisy slurp of the brandy. He wasn’t one to talk about manners. “You look like a fellow who likes to be left to himself.”
“Yes, please.” I pointedly took a book out from where it was tucked in my jacket.
He laughed. “You don’t think anyone will let you read that here. Are you trying to get a pounding?”
“Who said I was reading?” I extracted a square of stationery and smoothed it on top.
“Writing in a café? How very Proust.”
“This is hardly a café.”
Chaffre wrinkled his nose. “Smells like one.”
“What sort of cafés do you eat in?”
“Ones that make this place look like Fouquet’s.”
I fished around my pocket for my gold pen. Chaffre whistled when he saw it.
“Looks like I picked the right chap. With a pen like that, you can afford better cafés. I hear the officers’ canteen has brandy that costs three sous.”
“And yet here I am.”
He hitched up the sleeves of his jacket. “You’re really going to write a letter in this slophole?”
“Some of us like to remind our mothers we’re still alive.”
“ ‘Dear Clare’? What an odd way to address one’s maman.”
I covered the greeting with my thumb. “Don’t you have some brandy that needs your attention?”
A boot came hurtling past, narrowly missing me but taking out both of our glasses.
“Not anymore,” Chaffre said cheerfully. “Listen, if we stick together, maybe no one will notice that we’re really just trying to be alone. No faire Suisse to worry about.”
I couldn’t tell if he was in earnest or hoping to get another drink out of me. He didn’t look nearly old enough to be there.
“We could watch out for each other. For boots and all that. I don’t know a soul here.”
A damp balled sock followed, landing in a heap on our table. “I don’t either.”
A recruit with shoulders like sawhorses stalked over. “That doesn’t belong to you,” he growled, and snatched the sock up from the table, spitting within a centimeter of my foot. “I don’t like thieves.”
Chaffre exhaled as the soldier left in search of his boot. “It would be good to have someone in this place to depend on.” He sat straight and easy, but his hands curled protectively around his now empty glass. “What do you say?”
I gestured for two more brandies. “Deal.”
Chaffre was true to his word. He was as persistent as a burr. With him sitting on my bed, polishing boots and keeping watch, I could read or write letters without fears that my mattress would be tipped or my head doused with water from over the center partition.
Though I hadn’t heard from Clare since that last letter in the spring, the one where she talked about the expedition to Mauritania, I still wrote, as often as I could. Not knowing where else to send them, I addressed them to the general post office in Laghouat, the last address I had. She’d make her way out of wilderness at some point. She’d find my letters waiting.