The Wicked Go To Hell
- Frédéric Dard's short novel published in 1956 captures the dark,
paranoid uneasiness France experienced during the years of the Cold War.
On the opening pages, a police officer by the name of Mèrins
relates how the chief of the French Secret Service calls him into his
office and lays it out: they've caught a spy trying to steal top secret
information, a first step for a terrorist attack. He won't talk; he
won't tell us who he's working for or the details of his organization no
matter how much we torture him (Mèrins can hear the blows and screams
coming from the next room). Therefore, the old chief continues, we take
the next step: we send him to prison and put you in the same cell.
Become pals and escape together – he'll surely lead you to the head of
his gang of terrorists. Once we know who's in charge, we can destroy
them all.
The narrative immediately switches from first-person
to third and we witness Frank and Hal, both badly beaten up, placed in
the same cell with a mute runt who murdered his wife. And here's the
game Dard sets out: Hal and Frank; Frank and Hal - as readers, we don't
know who is the cop and who is the spy.
Hal and Frank snarl at
one another as their suspicion and loathing (both accuse the other of
being a cop) boil over into violence. The fat sadistic chief warder
called Bull warns them another round of fighting and they both spend a week of solitary downstairs in total darkness with loads of
giant rats.
But Frank and Hal's intense hatred and resentment of
each other prove too extreme - they do fight again – and off they go to
solitary. They find out the hard way the Bull wasn't exaggerating about
those gnawing giant rats. Back in their cell, after an excruciating
week each shut up alone in their respective black as midnight tomb-like
dungeon, they're about ready to call a truce.
Then it happens:
there's big news: a guillotining in the jail's courtyard for the
prisoner who killed a cop, scheduled during the town's annual festival.
Now's the time – Hal outlines his plan of escape. The pair share an
uneasy partnership. The fateful day arrives and it's action and more
action making for an exciting pager-turner. Frank and Hal eventually take refuge on a small deserted island.
Surviving on the island for a
time, one of the pair muses, "There are times when whether a man's a cop
or a crook means nothing, times when it ceases to matter which side of
the fence he's on. There aren't any fences any more! We're just a couple
of guys! Two poor saps adrift in the lowest depths of hell!"
They
develop a friendship of a kind. But, but, but...after some days a third
person washes up on the island – Dora, an attractive young blonde who
claims to have lost her husband when their sailboat capsized. Nothing
like a luscious beautiful dame to add drama to their plight.
In his review of the novel for The Spectator,
Jeff Noon wrote: "It’s a game of cat and mouse where cat and mouse are
both wearing masks: claustrophobic, paranoid in the extreme, and very
entertaining. A tough-guy version of Kafka."
Permit me to offer a recommendation: once finished the novel, go back to the first page where Mèrins states: "I
must admit something: we do actually have a conscience. But it is so
deeply buried under our DUTY that we are practically unable to hear its
voice when, as happens with everyone's conscience, it starts to protest.
It's better that way, believe me.” Mèrins' reflections here follow
his time in prison and on the island. Knowing what tribulations Mèrins
has had to endure gives expanded meaning and depth to his words.
French crime novelist Frédéric Dard, 1921-2000
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