A Man in Uniform (45 page)

His guards did not complain when, in the afternoons, he fell asleep without his shackles, his body stretched along the length of the palisade.

Sores soon began to appear on his wrists, where the metal rubbed the skin raw, and his guards kept up a continual campaign of bandages. He wondered at their solicitousness until it occurred to him that, if the wounds became infected and blood poisoning set in, he might die. Not on the lieutenant’s watch, the prisoner concluded: the man had been ordered to guard a living prisoner, and that he did.

There was a sound now at the door. The guard was coming to unlock him and give him his bread. The man stepped into the room with more energy than usual, his bearing more upright. The reason followed on his heels: the lieutenant entered with a second guard who carried a duffel bag.

These latter two stood and watched as the first guard unlocked the shackles. The prisoner drew his hands to his body slowly and then stiffly pushed himself to sitting.

“Take off your pants,” said the lieutenant, pulling some undergarments from the bag and tossing them on the bed. “Put these on.”

The prisoner began to tug at his loose trousers but then stopped and cocked his head toward the corner of the room.

“What is it, man?”

“He wants to pee, Lieutenant.”

“Oh. Go ahead.”

He crossed to the bucket and simply let his trousers drop. One of the guards snickered.

“Silence! Pass him the underwear.”

When he was finished, he stepped out of the trousers at his ankles, took the undergarments from the guard, and put them on.

As he stood there, wearing the new underwear and his old, stained canvas shirt, the lieutenant pulled a tunic and pants from the bag and unfolded them on the cot. The tunic bore no insignia, but the prisoner recognized the clothes instantly for what they were: not the tropical khakis the men here wore, but the blue serge uniform of the army back in France. Slowly, with a kind of wonder, he pulled on the pants and the tunic, his cramped fingers fumbling with the familiar brass buttons. It was an action that once, in some other life, he had repeated unthinkingly thousands of times.

“Boots?” asked the lieutenant, glancing about. “He still has boots?”

“No laces,” said the first guard, picking up a well-worn pair of boots from one corner of the tiny room. The laces had been taken away the day he arrived, which did not matter much since he always went barefoot.

“Give him your laces. You can get more later.”

The guard did not look happy at the order but bent down and began pulling his laces out of his own boots. The second guard threaded them through the prisoner’s boots and passed them to him. The prisoner sat down on the cot and began to pull one on, but quickly drew back his foot. He turned the boot upside down and shook it. A large beetle fell out and scuttled away. The guards laughed.

“Hurry!” barked the lieutenant. “Help him tie the laces.”

Once the prisoner was shod and standing before him, the lieutenant drew a cap out of the bag and handed it to him.

“The boat from the mainland docked last night and the captain wants to sail as soon as possible. You are to return to France.”

The prisoner croaked out one word. “How?”

“You had better start using your voice, man. You’ll need it to plead your case. Your wife has won you an appeal.”

“
Merci, mon Lieutenant.
” Dreyfus drew himself up as best he could and saluted, bringing his bandaged hand up to the brim of his new cap. “
Vive la France!
”

KATE TAYLOR
is an award-winning novelist and journalist. The child of a Canadian diplomat, she was born in France and raised in Ottawa. Her debut novel,
Madame Proust and the Kosher Kitchen
, won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book (Canada/Caribbean Region) and the Toronto Book Award, among others. She also writes about culture for Canada’s national newspaper,
The Globe and Mail
, where she served as theater critic from 1995 to 2003. Kate Taylor lives in Toronto.