The Brides of Solomon
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Authors: Geoffrey Household
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The Brides of Solomon
and Other Stories
Geoffrey Household
for
NYUSI and NICKY
THE CASE OF VALENTIN LECORMIER
M.
LE
C
ONSUL
:
I ask you to excuse the paper upon which this is written. Where I am, the necessities of civilisation do not exist. Even the poor devils of police who patrol the frontier do not normally carry
paper. In order to write to you I had to capture an assistant-inspector of customs, and relieve him of his spare account-books.
This is not a begging letter. You cannot help me. Whether I live or die depends entirely on myself, and I do not know which I deserve. In any case one rarely receives what one merits. No, M. le
Consul, I write to you only to establish the nationality of my wife and children.
We were married by the priest of Ferjeyn on April 15th, 1944. The marriage is recorded in the church register; and also the births of my three sons. They are French and, though so young, they
know it. In twelve years they will be ready and willing for their military service. I shall be grateful to you if you will enter their names upon the register of French citizens. As for my wife,
she is a simple Christian Arab. Syria is her country, and without me she would be lost in France.
M. le Consul, my name is Valentin Lecormier, formerly sergeant-major of cavalry. I am a deserter. It is very rare for a warrant officer of the regular army to desert, but I will explain it as
best I can. There may be some record of me in your office files, but it is probably considered that I am dead.
I joined the Army in 1932. For me it was a profession as congenial as any other, and, to tell you the truth, what most attracted me was the pleasant life of our little garrison towns. I was not
such a fool, of course, as to suppose that I should spend all my years of service under the trees of the main square; but we export our civilisation with our soldiers, and I knew that I should
seldom be far from a shaded pavement upon which to spend my hours of leisure.
When that damned Hitler unleashed his war, I had already passed four years in Beirut as a corporal-instructor training Arab levies. I assure you I had no ambition. I merely applied for every
post which suited my taste for small towns, and pretended to have the requisite qualifications. I persuaded my superiors that I spoke Arabic. And if you are young and make a show of accomplishment
which you wish you had, it will not be long before in fact you have it. That’s life.
After the fall of France, when our army and government in Syria declared for Vichy, I rode over into Palestine with my troop to join the Fighting French. It was not a question of choice. I have
never made a choice for myself more than any other man. Choice? There is no such thing. One follows events, and gets out of the mess as best one can. That is, I believe, what they now call
existentialism. A long word for the practical philosophy of every soldier.
No, I did not trouble my head with de Gaulle or Pétain, or faith in France or the lack of it. I considered only my affection for Colonel Collet. A mountebank. One admitted it. Still, a
soldier must feel love like the rest of us, and he cannot be held responsible for where he places it.
After that there was no time for decisions. The campaign against our own countrymen in Syria. A harsh interval while we exchanged our horses for armoured cars. The Western Desert. Bir Hachim.
And believe me, M. le Consul, the world was wrong to make such a fuss of that battle. I was there, and I tell you we could not run away because the Boches were all round us. And then it was hardly
decent to surrender when there had been so much surrendering in France.
And so, better men being dead, I was hoisted up to squadron sergeant-major, and on we went to Tripoli (where one saw a town and a square and a civilised café again) and into Italy and
back to Syria for rest and reorganisation.
In that narrow strip of Syria between Turkey and Iraq, which is called the Duck’s Bill from its shape, there was some fear of a rising of Moslem fanatics. So they sent me out in charge of
a detachment. A captain was in command, of course, but an old soldier was needed to see that he came to no harm. Since I now spoke fluent Arabic, it was an excuse to present myself with a deal of
liberty. I used to pass my days at Ferjeyn, which, being an island of Christians set upon a mountain in the middle of two hundred thousand Moslems, was the right post for a man of tact.
At Ferjeyn, M. le Consul, I fell in love. She was the daughter of the headman, John Douaihy. What else could you expect, given eight years of foreign service and no hope of France? Our regiment
had not been picked for the invasion—for there were not enough of us left to be any use to a higher formation—and so we comforted ourselves with the thought that it could not possibly
succeed. I repeat, we had no hope of France.
I should not like you to think that my love for Helena Douaihy was that of a soldier who marries, in a moment of supreme boredom with interminable male society, the first decent girl he has
seduced. No, as a responsible warrant officer, I used to warn my lads against such unsuitable attachments.
I did not seduce her. I have nothing of which to accuse myself but the strange and bitter chivalry of the French. Since it has persisted in our nation through five centuries of common sense, it
is not surprising that in a poor devil like myself it should outlive those many years when my only choice was between celibacy and army prostitutes.
It was her rags, I believe, that aroused in me an overwhelming desire to cherish her. Her father was by no means badly off. But you know the Arab. He does not waste money on daughters, unless
they must be currycombed and clipped for church or a party. Yes, it was her rags. When Helena was working in the fields or drawing water, she seemed to me like a fifteen-year-old princess of the
romances, dressed in the clouts of the kitchenmaid. She had worn her one frock so long that the stuff had become threadbare over her breasts, worn away by the continual sharp pressure from within.
Well, that is not a phenomenon which repeats itself in later years; but her face has kept its delicacy. I assure you that one would turn round and stare after her even in the streets of Paris. And
she has been a wife without reproach. That is what I wish to impress on you. In her way she is a true bourgeoise, and she has helped me to bring up our sons so that France can be proud of them.
It was not then—on detachment in the Duck’s Bill—that fate made of me a deserter. In the spring of 1944 we were ordered, for God knows what reason, to Cyprus, where we found
ourselves among a lot of damned Englishmen and Greeks. Of the two I preferred the Greeks. They have inherited the culture of the Roman Empire, whereas the English have no idea of what a town should
be.
There we were. More training. For ever training. It seemed to us that we were destined to nothing but camps, year after year of camps, till we were old and grey.
It happened, M. le Consul, that the major wished to buy some wine for the officers’ mess, and I for the sergeants. The wines of Cyprus are fairly drinkable, but merchants are inclined to
sell any filth in their cellars to soldiers, since the English, whose palates are rotted by beer and whisky, do not know good from bad. So we decided to go out in civilian clothes. The major
pretended to be a French diplomat on leave, who had rented a villa in the hills, and I—I dressed myself as any poor and decent Syrian who might be his cook or butler.
We settled down in a cellar by the quay to taste what was offered. The wines were good and, to tell you the truth, we forgot all differences of rank. The patron did not bother us. He slept
behind his counter, and only woke up when we called for another bottle. The major was not a bad little chap, but of the right wing of the de Gaullists. He was a royalist and thought of nothing but
some damned Henry V who was to come to the throne of France. As for me, I am a republican. True, the Third Republic made me vomit. But being what we are it is the best we could do.
Well, at three in the morning we began an argument. It was foolish. A sergeant-major should not talk politics, and least of all with an officer. But he was as bored as I. We were two Frenchmen,
isolated among Englishmen and Greeks, with no hope of home. I cannot remember at this distance what was said. No doubt there were faults on both sides. Our nerves were exasperated. And so I found
that I had hit my commanding officer over the head with a bottle.
I examined him. I had enough experience of wounds. I said to myself that he would not die, but that he would need a comfortable week in hospital. The patron had not woken up. In his trade, if
one is to get any sleep at all, one must not pay attention to a little noise. I bandaged my major and wrapped him in blankets, and walked out on to the quay.
M. le Consul, I had made no plan whatever. Choice, as at every turning in a man’s life, was forced on me. It was that hour, with dark turning to grey, when no one takes a decision, least
of all a soldier. He stands to, and obeys. As for the general who issued the orders the night before, he is fast asleep.