Excerpts

How do you tell your baby you have committed murder?         Murder didn't define Alexander Reisden any more. He had got over being guilty of it (got over, he thought, as one might get over a heavy cold); he was well, more or less. But in his work, he saw how murder affects families. It is a disease, claiming victim after victim. And Toby was so little, and Toby's fingers, with the perfect little nails, grasped his father's thumb so trustingly; and Reisden adored his baby boy; and someday, some terrible day, Toby would know. Toby might forgive him, might perfectly understand. But how would it affect him? Reisden had committed his murder at eight years old. He had had excuses; it had been necessary; but no one knows that when he is eight years old. Toby would learn, but Reisden desperately wanted to save him from it until he was much older than eight. This was morbid. Toby was only seven and a half months old. You could have held him up and said into his face "Your papa killed his grandfather," and he would only have giggled and tried to grab your nose. He wanted, really, never to tell Toby anything, never to let anyone tell Toby; he wanted Toby never to hear about mad William Knight or William's grandson or the horrors that can happen to children. He wanted to keep his boy safe. There is a story like this, about loving parents and a curse and all the spindles in a kingdom, but Reisden didn't know it. He only knew a father is supposed to protect his child. So should a mother, Reisden reflected, and Perdita wasn't protect- ing Toby. The first thing she'd said after Toby was born was how glad Gilbert would be. She wrote to Gilbert every week. She sent news of Toby, pictures of Toby, a curl of Toby's baby hair bound with thread. Don't, Reisden thought silently, my G-d, don't curse Toby with Gilbert Knight. Gilbert had the discretion to keep away, but Perdita insisted on writing. Reisden snapped at her about her eyesight, which was not fair. Perdita insisted on going out in the Paris streets with nothing but Toby and her white cane. "Let him go with his nurse." "But I like getting out," she said mildly, "and I must learn the streets." "Not with him." "Don't you believe I would be careful, Alexander?" He did not believe it. She was not careful. She could see only colors and shadows; she could push Toby's pram out into the street, not seeing the bus or the horse that would kill them both. He could feel the impact in his own flesh. He was terrified for his son; sometime, somehow, something terrible would happen to his son. She is risky, he thought once of the intelligent, stubborn, beautiful girl he had loved before she had become his son's mother. It saddened him. He loved her. This was morbidity too; this, he thought, was perhaps murder itself, the slow death that murder leaves in families. "Are you afraid for your children?" he asked other fathers. Yes, they said, of course they were. It was as close as Reisden could come to talking about what was wrong with his family. Financial security, at least, one can give. General Lucien PÈtiot looked like Father Christmas in a sky blue uniform; he had a cloud white beard and twinkling blue eyes and was in charge of procurement (Medical Section) for the French army. General PÈtiot bought miles of bandages, barrels of mercurochrome, trainloads of cough pastilles--and tests for the French army. Intelligence tests, tests of mental competence; every man in France served three years in uniform, and the army needed to identify potential officers and potential problems. They had just decided to centralize. Reisden's company, Jouvet Medical Analyses, did competency testing for the courts and specialized neurological testing for hospitals all over Europe. Jouvet could administer Berthet's intelligence test to large groups. In September 1910, just after Toby was born, Reisden first approached PÈtiot. "We want to supply medical tests and neurological work to the army." "You're an ambitious man." "I have a son." For six months the men ate lunches and dinners together, spent afternoons talking about the state of medicine in France, traded opinions, deplored the government, and tested each other. PÈtiot toured Jouvet's half-completed building, under reconstruction after the Paris floods. "You want the money," PÈtiot said, admiring the expensive new lab. "I want the job," Reisden said. "Let me talk to your staff," PÈtiot said. Through the winter, PÈtiot became as familiar at Jouvet as the concierge's cat, poking his nose into staff meetings, sniffing at a technician's bench, hovering outside the locked door of the famous Jouvet medical archives. On a cold day at the beginning of April, PÈtiot came to Reisden's office at Jouvet and dropped his bomb. "There's only one trouble with Jouvet's proposal, Reisden: it's you. Your background." They were sitting on packed boxes of books in the middle of chaos, the wallpaper half up, the paneling still tacky with varnish, the air damp with the smell of wet plaster. "This is a bad time politically," PÈtiot said. "Germany threatens us, with Spain and Austria-Hungary behind her; the French army is small and underprepared; and at that very moment, the most intelligent of von Loewenstein's Orphans decides he wants to throw in his lot with us. One wonders what you mean by it. Isn't that what Leo von Loewenstein used to say?" "The Orphans are a myth." "A myth, oh dear, yes," said PÈtiot. "But one of the mythical Orphans owns a French company that does medical analysis, of a kind that would give it access to embarrassing information about army men, government officials." PÈtiot frowned. "Certain people are very distressed." Excerpted from A Citizen of the Country by Sarah Smith All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.