The book
“The Great Swindle” by Pierre Lemaitre (MacLehose, 442 pages, $24.99)
Pierre Lemaitre’s 2013 novel “The Great Swindle” was just published in the United States. The book’s original French title translated into English is “Goodbye, Until We Meet in Heaven.” As the story begins World War I is drawing to an end. French soldiers are still out in the field waiting for the brutal conflict to be over.
At that moment in early November 1918 a French officer is plotting to distinguish himself. He orders two soldiers, a youth, and a grizzled veteran to advance upon the German lines. Both soldiers are quickly picked off by snipers. Or so it appears.
The other soldiers were reluctant to move forward for this final attack. They sense that the hostilities will soon be ending and are hoping to have survived the bloodshed. After watching their two comrades fall the lieutenant’s ploy starts to work. His soldiers charge the Germans.
As the French troops advance some pass by the bodies of the two dead men. A soldier notices that the men had been shot from behind. This dramatic realization sets into motion the fateful events that occur next.
Fast-forward. The war is over. The officer who had ordered his men to charge is observing the demobilization of his troops. He’s keeping a close eye on two men in particular; Albert and Edouard. During that last battle scene Edouard had saved Albert’s life. In the tragic moments to follow Edouard suffered a grievous facial wound.
Albert watches over his friend: Edouard could be dying. The commanding officer, Lieutenant d’Aubray-Pradelle is keeping these fellows under surveillance because they know his dirty secret. He had shot those first two men, his own soldiers, from behind. Their knowledge of this vile deed has become the looming threat to his status as a war hero.
Fast forward further. Edouard survived. He is hideously disfigured and addicted to morphine. Albert is taking care of him. Edouard stays home while Albert ekes out a meager existence for them by wearing sandwich board advertisements on the streets of Paris.
During the demobilization Albert helped Edouard assume a new identity. Edouard’s family was told that he has died. He and his father were estranged before the war. Now his father has immersed himself in a deep, bitter sorrow.
Edouard’s sister marries Lieutenant d’Aubray-Pradelle, who is parlaying “national hero” status into lucrative business deals. Lemaitre describes how this war profiteer “had already gained access to extensive markets of liquidated stocks where, for tens of thousands of borrowed francs, he could buy whole lots that, when sold, realized hundreds of thousands worth of profits.” His latest chicanery involves the orchestration of a massive government fraud involving the reburials of those who fell in battle.
“The Great Swindle” etches an acid portrait of a society building monuments to their war dead while shunning those who actually survived. The ambiguous title could allude to d’Aubray-Pradelle’s devious scheme, to a later scam devised by the reclusive Edouard, or to the unpleasant truth of Lemaitre’s searing tale: that wars can be the greatest swindles of all.
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