In the following days, he discovered that he was right. The nurse was from Paris, she told him, undeterred by his refusal to speak, chatting on as she changed the bandages over the wound below his ribs, removing the tube from what she called his pipi, and applauding his ability to heal as if it were his own willpower that had kept infection at bay. This was a hospital barge, currently moored on the outskirts of Amiens, she told him, away from the reach of the German guns. “For now,” an orderly had grunted.
His injuries would leave him with very little disability, the nurse said. When he urinated now, he could still see traces of blood, but it was not worrying, the duty doctor said. He had a limp where he’d broken his ankle, but he could walk without aid.
“Clever bugger,” the orderly said. “As long as he keeps his mouth clamped shut, they won’t send him back.”
So then he spoke. Not a lot—what was there to say?
“Good news. Good news. Nearly there, I think.” The doctor announced this as if he were bringing him a present. His face was pale and old. “We’ll soon have you back with your companions.”
Then, out of the corner of his eye, Jean-Baptiste saw the so-called Vignon. This time it was him. Not a dream. There was no mistaking it. The senior surgeon was pointing toward the bed and nodding and no doubt telling Vignon how they could soon send Jean-Baptiste back to be blown apart again and what a successful case it had been. Vignon stared at him, looking bleak, but came no nearer, and Jean-Baptiste heard the surgeon say “Talking. At last. Yes.”
And Jean-Baptiste knew he was in danger.
As he lay in bed for weeks, months, his mind had returned all the time to Corbie and his childhood. But now there was Vignon. Flesh and blood. He had seen him again, twice. Once he was at the far end of the narrow ward. He had a feeling that this wasn’t where Vignon normally worked. On the second occasion it was night. He woke from sleep and found Vignon looking at a chart right by his pallet. What had he been about to do? His instinct was to shout out for a nurse. Tell her that Vignon was not what he seemed, not what he said he was. But having been mute for so long, he knew that his mental state would be considered unreliable; and no doubt Vignon had long since destroyed any papers that revealed his true identity.
He knew that it was Vignon who had brought him here from Royaumont, a hospital in the old abbey dealing with acute cases and run by Scottish ladies. It didn’t take much imagination to see why he had done that. Jean-Baptiste knew who he really was. With Jean-Baptiste alive, Vignon was in danger. The doctor knew he had recognized him, knew he had seen Herr Wiener hidden within Dr. Vignon’s French uniform.
Here, at Amiens, Vignon could keep an eye on the invalid. Could make sure he didn’t recover. With Jean-Baptiste dead, Vignon could continue his real work, and what a fine job he had for it: dealing with men straight from the front, from every kind of regiment, hearing where medical supplies were being sent and field hospitals were being established. Under the cover of his work, he would see the pattern of future campaigns, the success or failure of current ones.
The third time he saw Vignon, he was handing the nurse some tablets and nodding his head to indicate Jean-Baptiste’s bed. He wanted to refuse to take them, but the nurse was his favorite, Émilie. The day before, she had whispered admiring comments about his body and his returning vigor as she washed him, lingering with her coarse washcloth, and the effect had been to exclude any doubts he had as to whether he was still a man. So he took the pills and later his fever returned, the ache in his loins made him vomit, and when he urinated the urine was brownish-pink. The next time he was given them, he spat them out the second the nurse had gone.
It was fear that drove him to write the letter. He couldn’t say he had fought to live: he had simply been fortunate to survive; but now that he had survived, he wasn’t going to let himself be murdered by his mother’s seducer, a German spy. He asked for a pencil and paper and after a couple of reminders nurse Émilie brought them, looking a bit sour.
“Writing to your sweetheart?”
He shook his head. “Hardly.”
She looked pleased.
He didn’t yet know who he was writing to, but his words were plain.
The doctor who calls himself Captain Vignon is not what he seems. He is a German born in Berlin.
He looked down at his words; they could be the ravings of a lunatic or an aggrieved underling.
I have seen his documents. His real name is Wiener. He is a spy.
The nurse kept passing, easing her way down the narrow gap between the two rows of bunks. Several men had left to return to their regiments, but Émilie had told him something big was coming now. They were clearing all possible hospital beds.