affair, the German attaché, Schwarzkoppen, who carried on a long affair with Madame de Weede, the wife of a Dutch diplomat. Schwarzkoppen was flirtatious, handsome, a lover of men as well as women: in a careless gesture he tore her letters into twenty pieces later collected by a cleaning lady who became known as the Ordinary Track. He and the Italian attaché, Pannizardi, had a mysterious informer whom they called “Jacques Dubois” after the swindler who proposed to sell them “smokeless gunpowder.” The swindler, Dubois, was actually Esterhazy, the real spy, also known as D or Z.
Dubois = D, who was really Esterhazy also known as Z, not Dreyfus, at all, therefore D = Z.
The incriminating letter signed D signaled Esterhazy. Panizzardi wrote to Schwarzkoppen under the name Alexandrine, calling him Maximilienne: My darling all yours and on the mouth . . . Yes, little red dog, I shall come for your pleasure. I would be capable of stuffing a meter of swaddling in you and all the fourteen-year-old commandants if needed. Their letters are now stored in the archive of the French Ministry of War in a file dated February 1896. Were they a pair of comic bunglers, a Laurel and Hardy of the foreign service?
I pass a car with children fighting in the backseat and a rusting Dodge Dart, windows open and the driver tapping her steering wheel to a turned-up recording of “Bitch with an Attitude.” On my radio the host makes a smooth transition from the war in the Persian Gulf to the need to punish countries who support international terrorism. He speaks of them in terms of badly disciplined children who must be kept in line because they don’t know what’s good for them. Metaphors of weakness, femininity, lunacy roll off his tongue without, it would seem, second thoughts, rehearsal, or plan. All of his speech has the impression of being delivered off the cuff. Hello, you’re on . . . Welcome to . . . A caller points out that America had been pouring military assistance into Iraq for many years. Desert Storm, the caller says, seems to her to have been a very bad idea: misguided, all about oil, really. He cuts her off. You’ve always had people like Patty Hearst around. People who are easily duped into believing revolutionary rhetoric. So-called revolutionary. Implying the caller is one of these, a woman easily fooled, he savors his own cynicism. Whatever happened to Stephen Weed? he asks with a fat laugh. His voice has a cunning, know-it-all, yet slightly self-deprecating tone. It smells of old socks and tickets to the game. I imagine he weighs five hundred pounds, a moon face behind the microphone. No one ever sees him. The traffic moves more quickly, and I turn the radio off. Pigeons or gulls fly overhead in patterns of boomerangs and lotuses.
So far Méliès himself has appeared in many of the reels, especially notable as the leader of the Institute for Incoherent Geography. In this role I imagine him sitting in the passenger seat as I drive. He whistles along with the radio, comments on passing scenery, directs me to turn left or right. Let’s get lost, I say.
“Hello, Frances? It’s Jack. Have you gotten to the end of The Dreyfus Affair yet?”
“No, no yet, but I have a theory about the murdered man.” I suggested the German and Italian attachés. “Both Panizzardi and Schwarzkoppen knew that Dreyfus was being framed by the Army General Staff, so it’s true some would have wanted them dead. Perhaps the dead man was one of them.”
I took another swallow of coffee, suddenly aware of Jack’s breathing on the other end. It was slightly wheezy as if Jack had asthma from time to time.
“Do me a favor, Frances, I don’t have much time; try to unspool the rest of the Dreyfus film.”
“Would you like to come in and see the first minute? That’s all I’ve worked on so far.”
There was a pause filled by a little more wheezing.
“I thought that’s what you wanted, to see the film.” I really wanted him to show up but was trying not to say so. It would have been very simple, just ask, but I was afraid he would outright refuse if I did.
“I do, yes, that’s the idea, but I need to be alone with it. I know how to work a Steenbeck.”
“I can’t allow that. Why can’t we meet? Have we already met? Do I know you?” I leaned back in my chair, put my feet on the editing table.
“I’ll call you soon to arrange a time for me to view the film,” he repeated.
“Impossible without me present.” I enjoyed having what I thought was the upper hand and, now intrigued, wanted to goad him into a meeting, but he was also beginning to make me feel nervous.
“Then this is the last time I’ll be able to telephone you.”
The second, much thicker note arrived a few days later. It was leaning against my door.
Dear Frances,
Some notes:
At the beginning of the affair Dreyfus was nearly released for lack of evidence. History hangs by a drying thread. Meeting at the Section of Statistics the generals covered up for the real spy by inventing documents, and they blocked evidence that would have been damaging to them by claiming that national security was at stake. National Security is a phrase one hears echoed over and over. Let me give you some examples. (Note: what was eventually to be located down the street from the Section of Statistics on the rue de Lille? The famous waiting rooms of Jacques Lacan.)
1972 Break-in at the Democratic headquarters at the Watergate Hotel. At first that case, too, looked insignificant: a matter of small potatoes, lack of evidence to prove otherwise. The trail that led to the president began with initials written in the burglars’ address books: HH and WH. It was difficult to get anyone to talk. “There was a pattern in the way people said no.” The bungled felony appeared to be just a case of five flat-footed burglars, and there was no need to investigate further. But as history now knows, secret cash funds whose purpose was to sabotage the candidates and activities of the other party were eventually traced. The expression “dirty tricks” enters the language in a new way. Also the words “double-cross” and “ratfuck.” The trial goes beyond middle-class lawyers and irked FBI agents. Connections revealed through an examination of checking accounts, telephone and hotel bills led to the Committee to Re-Elect the President and from there to Mitchell and Haldeman. Nixon supervised extensive cover-ups, had documents fabricated, lists shredded, and so the unmasking of bigwigs required a great deal of perseverance. Again secrecy was maintained on the basis of the claim that national security would otherwise be at risk. The notion of shredding became linked to the word cover-up. HH stood for Howard Hunt, who besides working for the CIA, wrote spy novels.
1981 El Mozote, El Salvador. American-trained soldiers massacred over seven hundred civilians, mainly women and very young children. The Reagan administration denied the story and tried to discredit the New York Times and Washington Post reporters who visited El Mozote and wrote about the murders. No one in the State Department ever asked to see their photographs, and so with a clear conscience they were able to release a statement that declared that “no evidence of a systematic massacre” had been found. Because it was necessary for American military assistance to continue, every attempt was made to smear the reporters. They were accused of invention, of hallucination, of being dupes of guerrillas who didn’t speak English. Years later forensic anthropologists found the bodies of 131 children under twelve years of age who had been bayoneted, shot, and hung. The anthropologists determined that the children had been lying on the floor while someone stood over them. Few, if any, had been buried.
One can, as in the Dreyfus case, manufacture anything, and create the context, the circumstances necessary for a story to be believed, and in a lake of whitewash submarines will float. So while The Dreyfus Affair languished in its can turning into jagged crumbs, residue, and grit, forgers were at work producing letters, doctoring photographs, smearing Zola, who publicly accused the generals of being “diabolical artisans” who “committed outrages against humanity.” His language may sound overblown and heavy handed (in fact it was said in criticism of his writing: “A naked crime is a hundred times more horrible than a crime clothed in adjectives”) but he got the result he was after: attention. When a judge who had been in the army’s pocket convicted him on charges of libel he fled to