The Mystery of the trunk n°1

the Mystery of the trunk n°1 is the title of a collection of reports written by Pierre Mac Orlan between 1924 and 1934, and compiled by Francis Lacassin for a posthumous edition, published in 1984 in the collection 10/18 “Large reporters”.
This collection contains four series of articles, presented in the following order:

“the Mystery of the trunk n°1” (1934)
“Pirates of the avenue of rum” (1924)
“new Italy” (1925)
“Germany in deferment” (1932)

These series of articles were published, for two older, in the newspaper the Intransigent , while “Germany in deferment” was published in Paris-Evening and “the Mystery of the trunk n°1” in the Newspaper .

Two of them will directly inspire the later romantic creation of Pierre Mac Orlan.

Pierre Mac Orlan international reporter

The literary career of Pierre Mac Orlan very early was related to the press, since it is in the Laughter and the Smile , then in the Newspaper which it publishes, between 1910 and 1913, the humorous tales which mark its true literary beginnings. But it is starting from 1918 that it will start, in an occasional way, a career of international reporter, with a series of articles on the zone occupied by the French Army in Germany.

The contributions of Pierre Mac Orlan in quality international reporter will accelerate at the end of the years 1920 and the years 1930: he writes for the newspaper Détective , repurchased by Gaston Gallimard and directed by Georges Kessel (the brother of Joseph Kessel), like for Paris-Evening , where he was recruited by Pierre Lazareff, which wanted that the great reports published in its newspaper are signed by the most popular writers of the moment. With this last, Dominique the Brown one explains, … the novelists dispatched on mission of report were charged to write on the event concerned, in the style and with the “ingredients” which made their own success in literature, that to really pay of information. The method of Mac Orlan to defer, which especially consists in collecting impressions, anecdotes, is not stripped of a certain ease, in particular in the use which it makes of testimonys that it can collect at the time of its (generally short) voyages: he actually regarded himself more “as a " writer in walk of études" that like a true journalist. ”

Large the reporters according to Mac Orlan

The Mystery of the trunk n°1 (1934)

Facts

At the exit of the station of Brighton, while looking towards the left, one sees a kind of ravine filled with uniform small houses. All the streets go down in this over-populated district and go up, then, towards a hill where the colorless residences, regularly in a hurry the ones against the others, resemble barracks on a floor. This well aligned city extends until in top from the hill which dominates Brighton. It is there, in the parochial cemetery, which puts back, since July 23rd, the indescribable body of that which was miss Violette Kaye. Thus Pierre Mac Orlan starts the description of this burial to which it assists in July 1934, that of a “ woman of low and little coloured adventures ” put out of ground after to be assassinated and cut out of pieces which will have remained several weeks lasting inside a trunk which is not the trunk n°1. The contents of the latter were however quite as macabre: there had been deposited “ the anonymous trunk of an expectant mother ”, whose legs will be found the following day, in a third trunk, in station of King' S Cross, with London.

It is while inquiring into this first murder, which défraie the chronicle, that the detectives of Scotland Yard, continuing their investigations in London and Brighton, come from there to be interested in an equivocal individual, Toni Mancini (known also under the name of Jack Notyre), which has just left this last city in not very clear circumstances. And in its apartment of Brighton, they make a discovery which they did not expect: the corpse of one second young woman, Kaye Violet, dancer, occasional, and main prostitute of Mancini.

Even if nothing makes it possible to affirm that these two businesses would be dependant (the “ crime of the trunk n°1 is not put besides at the file of Notyre ”), the popular opinion, it, “ declares that this second victim was immolée because it knew some too long about the murder of the friend of Jack Notyre . ”

Dramatis personae

Violet Kaye, the “ good bad girl wandering ”, singer, dancer and prostitute, had seems it met Mancini in 1933, at the time of Christmas. She liked it, undoubtedly: “ its forfeiture was not without knowing this small divine gleam of a presence which she thought affectionate . ” And it was generous: it gave its money to that which it called its man “ .” For the remainder, that to say? It was of a kind of “ signet rings of fortune ”, as there remains about it the different one, “ with soho or in the small boxes of Brighton ”, a girl as he remains about it still too much. Mac Orlan had envisaged, initially, “ to make revive old small the girl of the troop of Mrs Kate Carney ”, but the task proves finally depressing, and it does not feel “ the right to write words hardened by the social morals which is not tender for irregular the ”: It is to perhaps better know than one of the victims of two crimes, connected by a rather strange coincidence, was formerly a fair little girl who went to school in New Kent Road, a district of businesses, on the other side of the the Thames, in the south of Charing Cross. Mancini, “ this vulgar Don Juan ” that Mac Orlan renames “Love-of-women” in memory of this hero of a news of the same name of Rudyard Kipling which “ lived women and for the woman ”, Mancini is him also a forgettable character: it is not certainly “ not hardening of a Jack " the ripper" , whose only name still projects unforeseen images in Petticoat Lane . ” Its elegance of coffee boy, his dark glance, its qualities of dancer attracted with him “ the sad streetwalkers who make the " tapin" on King' S Road as of fallen the night ”, as some “ other innocent which is not public . ” All that does not have anything exceptional.

The only worthy thing to be noticed in the course of the “ dark gigolo ” is in its apartment of Brighton: it is about the trunk in which he stored the body of his beforehand cut out partner of pieces. This trunk remained six weeks in this apartment, close to the bed of Mancini, which had lost the sleep of it. It is this detail which struck the imagination of an inhabitant of the district which entrusts to Mac Orlan: In my opinion, which exceeded all that one can imagine in the doomanie human infamy, it was the odor, the abominable odor bitter and sweetened that all those which underwent it, even during a minute, will never forget
The police officers themselves, Sir, which by profession are accustomed to feeling the bad one more often than the good, were sick. The idea that something of tending and female, which had been what one could call a pretty girl, was the cause of this dreadful demonstration, left us without nerves, like a boxer groggy.

Conjectures

Mancini is thus imprisoned with the prison of Lewes, in waiting of the lawsuit during which he will play his head. One does not know yet his line of defense, nor what it could possibly reveal. Mac Orlan, which acknowledges that its temperament faierait of him a quite poor detective, turns to “ the picturesque world of the exégètes of the street ” the “ some lies essential ” who will allow him to give “ an about logical appearance ” to these two crimes, dependant between them by a strange coincidence. It will not be disappointed in its research: the meeting in a pub of Brighton of a “ amateur of detective novels ” will enable him to write a plausible scenario in the way in which could have been held the events.

Detective voluntary, whose Mac Orlan reproduces the remarks (or to which it allots them), explains that it is extremely possible that “ the cut woman of pieces whose trunk was discovered in the trunk n°1 was killed because she knew some too long about the murder of miss Violette Kayes . ”

Basing itself on his encyclopedic knowledge as regards police accounts (it read some more than thousand, explains it), the man continues by evoking the figure of a man which would not be Mancini, but “ a solitary man, educated and without faith: one of these invented damnés beings, could one say, by an excess of civilization . ” This man could know individuals of the hardening of Mancini, who would provide him drug and women. Mac Orlan continues: “ during one night particularly dreadful ”, in an isolated villa, Violette Kayes would have been killed. The other woman would have been pilot of this murder, and should have also disappeared. Mancini would have been only one accomplice. When it was necessary to make disappear the bodies, it would have taken care of that of Kayes Violet: “ its goal was to gain the foreigner, to take the sea and to get rid of the corpse . ” For a reason or for another (for lack of money, for example), it could not have put its plan at execution and would have been stopped instead of the principal author of this double crime.

Conclusion

The report of Mac Orlan is closed on these conjectures. It does not remain in England to cover the lawsuit of Mancini which opens in December 1934.

At the conclusion of this lawsuit, Tony Mancini will be recognized not-culprit of the meutre of Violet Kayes, and consequently released. He will acknowledge his culpability in 1976, right before his death.

The mystery of the trunk n°1 will never be elucidated.

Pirates of the avenue of rum (1924)

The rum-row

Inquiring into the mishap to broad of the American coasts to the cargo liner Mulhouse , Mac Orlan evokes a picturesque aspect of the consequences of American prohibition: the massive smuggling of alcohol between the continent of Europe and America (supposedly) abstaining, smuggling practiced on a scale such as the whiskey had come, says from there one, to be cheaper with New York than with London. The cargo liner Mulhouse , therefore, had started from Cherbourg on May 11th 1924 with “ a cargo of 30.000 cases of wines and spirits belonging to French Cod and 5.818 cases transported for the account of Misters Masquelier and Co ”, in all legality of course since no law prohibited to export alcohol towards the United States, on the condition of remaining apart from its Territorial water.

Thus on the rum-row (“the avenue of rum”) “ the fair with the spirits is held permanently with 14 miles of territorial water of the United States between Providence, Newport and New York. Under the monitoring of the cutters of the American Navy, the cargo liners, in charge of the export of these as well wished goods, wet on the open sea and await events as brokers who act on the dry land, mainly with Boston and New York, undertake to cause. One imports, per annum, 250.000 cases of liquors and various wines ”.

One would even find, on this rum-row , of the boat-dance hall filled of easy but empty alcohol American, who comes to supply itself on the open sea, the consistent challenge , for the passengers, to empty in the night the whiskey and champagne cases bought on this giant maritime market.

In the middle of this agitation, the bootleggers (smugglers) must compete of ingeniousness for, once they charged their cargo prohibited on small motorboats, to regain the dry land without being hailed by the customs officers. As for the captains of the cargo liners, they do not risk anything, as long as they do not enter American water, and that they took enough precautions to keep high-jackers , these pirates of a new kind, “ absolutely ready with all the sacrifices, including that of the life of their next when this one feels rum ”. These, unlike “honest” the smugglers, “ do not concern any control and also make the despair and of the exporters and the bootleggers of all categories”, by authoritatively adapting the invaluable contents of the international cargo liners, with for argument single, but sufficient, the machine-gun which they point on the belly of their victims, among which it is necessary to count the Ferrero captain, of the cargo liner Mulhouse , charged to transport on behalf of the Masquelier house of alcohol bound for the underworld of the east coast, and which enough good sense will have to sacrifice its cargo rather than its life and that of its men.

During this time, in Brest…

Whereas the Mulhouse , reduced of its cargo, returned piteously towards France, Mac Orlan went to Brest to enquérir actions pursuant taken to this business by French justice. This one indeed had been just seized of a certain Max-Jerome Phaff, “ born, according to its interrogation, " some share, in Germany in 1895, or 1897, or if one wants in 1896 " ”, and resident in New York. It is him which had connected Mr Masquelier, of the house Masquelier and Co , with the bootlegers New Yorkean . However, according to Mr. Themistoclès Vatsos, representative from the Masquelier house in New York, Phaff would have “ met certain Walters, at Mr. Rosemberg, of New York ”, in which it would have proposed “ 10.000 dollards to pirate the Mulhouse. Walters, made indignant, would have hastened to refuse ”.

This failure would however not have dissuaded Phaff to seek accomplices for this company which, one saw it, was crowned with a honourable success. Less lucky, and especially too talkative, Phaff made the error to praise its exploits with one of his/her travelling companions (in fact a associate of Mr. Masquelier charged to supervise it), in a train on the way towards London. “ Such naturally are very shortened the reasons which pushed the Masquelier house and Co and French Cod and Drying rooms of Fécamp ship-owners of the '' Mulhouse '' to make stop Phaff. ” This last, of course, had its own version of the history, passblement different, from where it arose that it was actually innocent. Although inquiring into this business, Mac Orlan did not judge in connection with the outward journey to visit in prison, because, explains it, of a mishap arrived at one of his/her comrades of youth: He says to me once, that having had the idea to visit the prison of Melun, which appears it is a very beautiful prison, he was locked up inadvertently in a cell which contained only one wood seat, a lead and a board with straw mattress folded up in the day against the wall. This rotten trick was prolonged three years. When it left Melun, this young man was disgusted humor, prisons in general, and of any curiosity. He appeared to me depressed. And what he told me about his stay in this cellular prison me always prevented from entering there.

The history becomes complicated still a little more with appearance on stage of some “ Marius Meige, known as Bernardi, known as Bernardini, known as O' Briend, sometimes born with Marseilles and sometimes with Buenos Aires ” which spontaneously comes to acknowledge with the police force, which remains dubitative, its culpability in this affaire.
In short, one could put the question legitimately: “is Which the true pirate of the Mulhouse? It seems to have there as many candidates for this reason with the Prix Goncourt. ”

Morals of this history

“ I tried to trace, after a fashion, the diagram of this complicated business and which does not miss with the common rule: to cause the comments most clever ”, explains Mac Orlan. Of return to Brest three weeks later, it notes that called Meige, or Bernardi, or Bernardini, or O' Briend, did not have finally nothing to do with this business: “ this man of an imagination étincelante was interfered a history which did not look at it. ”
Max-Jerome Phaff is for its part in bail, while waiting for the last conclusions of the investigation (which continues also on the other side of the Atlantic.) “ I do not know which fate French justice will hold for this business ”, explains Mac Orlan, which this aspect of this history interests finally only moderately: it is more attracted by the made proof that the technological changes are not likely to prevent the pirates of modern times act in the same way as their predecessors of the pioneering days of the flibuste: “ it is enough to sabotage the T.S.F to remove it and if the speed of the victim is a chance, the speed of the ship pirates in is another ”.

Inter alia meditations which the mishap arrived at the Mulhouse inspires to him, Mac Orlan raises that, because of its prohibition, alcohol comes from there to be regarded as “ one exciting comparable with this extract of Indien hemp which made furious the companions of the Vieux of the Mountain ”, and he wonders until which ends will be able to go the launched fashion to the United States: And what will become the ground, this poor ground, round like honesty even, when a government more distinguished than all the others will prohibit the use of the tobacco?
I do not wish with anybody to look further into this question and to close the eyes, the evening in his bed, while trying to answer it. Discouraging anticipation! We will then see leaving the ground and of the water, from which was born any life, such a collection of intermediaries with hands armed between our pipe empties and the mysterious places where the divine grass will be dissimulated with the eyes of the authority, which one will not dare any more to look at oneself in an ice without raising at once the hands in the air…

New Italy (1925)

See also: Giacomo Matteotti, Benito Mussolini

Country of electricity

To the end of the year 1924, Mac Orlan is sent by the Intransigent in Italy, where in particular he will interview Benito Mussolini. It is also for him, as he will declare it with the latter, the occasion of “ to be able to literarily carry out the strange atmosphere of concern which Europe for some releases ”.

Italy, at least Italy of north, appears with Mac Orlan as “ country where past dictates not with alive wills splendid but dead ”, but where, on the contrary, the engineers achieve a formidable work “ ” to create artificial lakes which make it possible to make this Scandinavian Italy, “ the country of electricity ”. With Turin, “ calm city and thrives”, Mac Orlan notices the relationship between these engineers and the workmen appear cordial, and that, as a whole, “ like all the rich cities and those which are on the way of fortune, she asks peace; at least, those which have in hand the direction of industries and the daily use of the richness ”. But one would not have to hasten to conclude, adds Mac Orlan. Indeed: The true face of the people is hidden. And one can hardly see the true face of the people when a mode, which was not born from a popular movement, but of a middle-class movement, does not disarm its troops, for reasons which undoubtedly are explained, but which does not constitute of it less one atmosphere of exception.

The black Shirts

According to Mac Orlan, the militia Fasciste “ was born the very same day where the representatives of the Communist regime gave the order to the officers not to circulate more in the street in uniform . ” Vêtus of a costume approaching “ that of the famous volunteers of this mervielleuse and unutilised time where one could choose, in Europe, anything at no matter whom ”, “ armed with the regulatory snap hook of the cavalry, revolvers and machine-guns ”, “ framed by energetic and intelligent men ”, “ they obtained a fast and disconcerting victory ” at one time when “ Italian concern was with its roof ”.

The presence of this militia, still explains Mac Orlan, although it guarantees to its chief “ some safety in the hard part which he plays in this moment ”, does not become less problematic about it, even for him, because since the time of the Marche on Rome, with the new elements mixed “ there to make deals, to fish out of turbid water and to enjoy the life in a destiny of luxury . ” It is with these new elements, estimates Mac Orlan, that the fascistic militia must hardly be “ sympathetic nerve in Italy, even with people who are not active fascists, but who return thanks to the fascists to have given them the calm one and the possibility of working .” This is why this force, “ made up of too young and too turbulent elements, to which one gave the taste of violence and a little theatrical attitudes that this taste comprises ” risk to become “ for Fascism its own symptom of mortification ”, and that it appears obvious to him that, if it wants to be maintained with the capacity, “ Mr. B. Mussolini must employ its force to slow down ”, and with “ to purify the party of all the undesirable ones which mixed there. ”

Considerations on the Italian political life and the future of Fascism

The glance which Mac Orlan poses on the Italian political life is not hostile with the fascistic government. Admittedly, it “ represents one of the many forms of violence in the social struggles of the world after the war. But here its exceptional coloring is that of the Italian, romantic and impassioned tradition . ”

The laws restricting freedom of the press are not more presented under one day excessively reprobatory: Mac Orlan explains why, concerning the legal actions pursuant taken to the assassination of the deputy Giacomo Matteotti, the newspapers of the opposition devoted to attacks “ of an amazing insolence ”. Moreover, “ on both sides, one sought, apart from the crucial question, to raise the scandal in the camp of the adversary . ” Is to put an end to these practices which the new law would have been promulgated, with the approval of much of people “ who are not fanatics of Fascism ”, people who would have entrusted to Mac Orlan: Of course, these laws are Draconian, but if you knew what a lies, mollement contradicted the following day, what a calumnies were daily printed against Mussolini! It was difficult to let make. The opposition should have fought honestly, because Mussolini is a noble-hearted man, a man who could make heavy faults, but which has really a large heart.

To defer note that, the week which followed the application of this new decree, “ the newspapers of the opposition were almost seized each day”, which led them to adopt an original form of protest: majority of them publishing ironically, “ one " The directory of the téléphones" , the other " Bible" and of the receipts of kitchen in article of head ”.

Beside this political antifascism of certain large newspapers (is in particular quoted the Corriere beyond Will be ), of a gasoline very other, and much less dangerous, is the antifascism of the people which are, according to Mac Orlan, a demonstration of “ Latin popular mood, i.e. critical ”: “ for it, Mussolini represents the authority now; it is responsible for the raising of prices of the bread. It created a new police force, etc By the fact even of its rise to the capacity, Benito Mussolini becomes the traditional enemy . ”

This relative benevolence to which Mac Orlan with regard to the fascistic mode testifies is nevertheless related to the feeling which lives it that this last saw its last moments then. Indeed, according to him, the lawsuit related to the Matteotti business will involve the fall of this government and its chief, whose “ the tragic side ” consequently becomes obvious: In a few weeks, Matteotti business, will be born all the forces which will reverse, one says it, a government born in violence, which could be explained, but which did not know, or could not give up, when it were still time, the most aggressive forms and more compromising of its authority.

“It Duce”

It is via Luigi Pirandello, to which it returns visit in its house of Torionia, that Pierre Mac Orlan manages to obtain the authorization to carry out an interview of Mussolini. To defer French, waiting to be received by the chief of the Italian government, is passed by again the “ film ” of the life of this last: “ wire of workman, emigrating Italian, professor, journalist, Mussolini knew misery ”, writes it, before continuing by explaining why he thus knows “ by experiment the hardness of the laws, most alleviating, for those which do not have anything and whose forces badly find to get busy ”. Nevertheless, Mac Orlan wonders whether “He Duce” really remembers these lean years, as well he is true as “ half an hour of beefsteak destroys the twenty-four hours revolts of hunger .”

The chief of the black shirts makes nevertheless good impression on Mac Orlan, which believes to detect, behind the “ facial expressions of a speaker who does not neglect any attitude suitable to allure his public ”, to the turning of a word or a fugitive expression of the features, “ the true face of the " Chef" ”: “the face of the " Duce" , writes it, is that of a very good man, an extremely sentimental man, victim of his sensitivity and a certain nobility of character which could pass for weakness . ”

Undoubtedly, Mussolini is an intelligent man, which can seem being contradictory with its reputation of man of action: I do not think that a deeply intelligent man can be energetic (in the direction political, social, popular and even photogenic of this word) all his life. Actually, one is energetic once and the radiation which is born from " this fois" single can go extremely far before dying. But he already died the day of his creation. Mr. Mussolini was energetic the day when it went on Rome and occupied it.

Paradoxically, Mac Orlan retranscribes few things on the contents of this maintenance, and behalf of the questions which asks him Mussolini (“ you undoubtedly have a notebook and a stylograph ”? “ Which is the goal of your investigation in Italy ”?), about as much place in the retranscription of the interview occupies than answers of Mussolini to the questions of Mac Orlan, of which that which is used to him as introduction had what désarçonner the chief of the Italian government: I would like, Mr. President, to ask you some questions. You were journalist and you know as me how much it is difficult to ask a Head of State details on his policy, than each one, moreover, is not unaware of in addition. Which question do you want that I pose to you? … Mussolini will not answer this question, but will deliver some general considerations on its action in Italy, explaining why its goal “ was to make of fatherland a strong nation, powerful, accuillante, a beautiful production machine tool of which all the parts act in the order necessary to the result. ” “ the Italian fatherland , adds Mussolini, it is the Italian family increased ”, before concluding the interview by this metaphor: “ the Head of State is often a doctor and that which brings a remedy is not always well accommodated. But does the doctor have to be concerned with will of the patient? . ”

At the conclusion of this maintenance, the conviction of Mac Orlan is made with regard to the business which unchains passions in Itlaie: I did not have courage to speak about the Matteotti business, but, now, I know some enough about this business. The man with which I have just caused during more than one half an hour did not give the order to assassinate his adversary.

Germany in deferment (1932)

Berlin Alexanderplatz

The series of articles which sends Pierre Mac Orlan of Germany in March 1932 is very different what had been that he had written seven years before in connection with fascistic Italy: it is not any more question of getting informed initially about the political events which shake the country, either to meet the leaders of them, but “ to penetrate in the most secret field and most significant of people, that of misery ”, people whose despair and aggravation, in this period of major economic crisis, can hardly find of exit than in waiting of a miracle: And it is precisely this waiting in a miracle which is worrying, because the miracles inspired by misery are not beautiful, they always arise in a traditional form, but homicide. It is thus starting from the Alexanderplatz, which are “ the center even of the popular life always a little mysterious ” of Berlin, and under the invocation of Alfred Döblin, whose Mac Orlan had admired the famous novel, that it will urge its peregrinations in order to communicate to the French readers its impressions of Germany.

This place, which resembles so that was the Place of the Republic in Paris twenty-five years before, “ when Belleville, the boulevard Magenta, the Faubourg of the Temple still had a precise significance by their popular coloring ”, is “ the heart of Berlin ”, from which one contacts the street of Berlin, in particular this long and celebrates Friedrichstrasse, “ the most commercial artery of the city, whose majority of the buildings are pavoisés streamers indicating the bankruptcies, the apartments empty and trade in liquidation . ”

In these streets, “ the major misery, that which takes as compare value the hunger, is not revealed by picturesque dreadful forfeiture . ” It is a “ modest shrew ”, which “ is not beautiful and knows it and makes up . ” It ground “ inside, under the cold ornament of houses which the circumstances make pretentious. It is in a part prohibited with the public, where four poor wretches lay down on the same mattress in front of a plate too often empty . ” But, in the street, it is not obvious of knowing “ that this man with the overcoat correct and buttoned to the chin does not have a shirt and of jacket under its clothing ”.

“Bad angels of the hunger”

It is in company, sometimes of two police officers, sometimes of his friend the German draftsman George Grosz that Mac Orlan achieves its “ walk melancholic person in the misery of the streets ” under snow, when it is not with this “ old buddy ”, at one time met in Paris, and found time the one day and one night, one of these men “ which becomes invaluable very of a blow, then which disappears, are based in the night like a piece of sugar in a hot liquid ”, but that one is sometimes glad to meet “ with the corner ofa street of an unknown city, in front of a romantic mystery of which it is advisable to be wary . ”

With one or the others, Mac Orlan leaves to the meeting the various faces misery and the hunger: he visits a Stempelburo (“ this office where one stamps the charts of unemployment ”), where one crosses “ all the classes of the company ”: “ there were fathers who resembled bank managers and others with easy employees ”. It that it crosses a Jewish young woman of Latvian origin , is driven out there ten years before of its country by the Révolution Bolshevik, and that it baptizes “ Miss X28 ”, which him conceited share of the despair of his/her comrades employees to unemployment, which estimate not to have not an other solution only to recover an employment or to commit suicide. Its situation with it, as amenable to a foreign country is even more sinister, as it explains it to deferring French: If Hitler is elected, which I do not know, I can envisage a little what will be my life. I am Latvian because my parents were Latvian. Hitler, you know, promised it to return all the foreigners who work in Germany. Where to go? I do not speak Latvian; it will be thus easy for me to die of hunger in my country. I speak French, but France does not give work the abroads, England either… All the doors are closed for me. Doesn't this situation appear to you comic? But if misery touches all the classes of the company, it is side of the “ bad angels of the hunger ”, and worrying figures which revolve around, that it is necessary to go to see for touching of the finger the gasoline of this misery. These “ miserable girls in leather jacket, out of too short skirt and who wait in a marble resignation one does not know which customer represent misery with all the possibilities that this word comprises . ” They have “ the exact shapes of the signet rings of the Apocalypse ”, which take the hundred step in the streets of districts “ where live characters really dangerous . ” These are the districts which are in addition those of the “ clandestine revolt ”, that which is carried by the Rotfront : Behind the girls and them " lude" , there is the red face, because the red is a color of the hope which, since many years, replaced the liked green of the poets and of all those who still have faith in the boniments spring and nature, this rascal, who gives us so many evidence of her pleasant perversity.

“Two armies of an equal poverty are ready to clash…”

These two armies which are ready to clash “ with an aim of eating and of living decently ”, they are obviously the Communists and the hitlériens which, the day before still, fought: The knives naturally were in hand. There was a score of seriously wounded combatants. Do the men who miss of all know well the exact force of their misery? Misery does not enrich energies. The parties divide the unemployed: Communists on a side, hitlériens of the other.

Mac Orlan, which speaks only some words about German, attends nevertheless during its stay in Berlin a meeting of Ernst Thälmann, the chief of the Communist party, like with another given by Goebbels. Not seeking to penetrate the political contents of the speeches (“ this does not look at me ”, writes it in connection with the meeting of the Communist party: “ a man more qualified than me had to say to you, yesterday, the value and the import of the words of the communist chief . ”), it attempts to give an account of the environment which reigns in these assemblies, and notes that “ the same religious exaltation ” inspires “ all the German parades, those of Hitler, those of the Front of Steel or those and the sickle and of the hammer . ”

To defer sees in the choruses which accompany the parade hitlérienne “ a remote reminiscence by the sentimental past of Germany, such as we can know it all the same by its books, its traditional books . ” The docility of the crowd, which disperses on order, once the speech of finished Goebbels, the met however badly at ease: “ nothing is more unpleasant , explains it, to be in a crowd regulated too well, which one is unaware of the degree of fever, which one is unaware of the language and the antipathies . ”

It is in company of George Grosz that Mac Orlan goes to the Sport hall of Berlin to assist, in company of a crowd which it estimates at thirty thousand people, with the meeting of the Communist party of Germany. There still, it is the religious metaphor which appears to him most capable to give an account of the emotion of crowd: Which hope, which extraordinary light can thus radiate in the heart of these men? What waits of the man, or the men in general! I imagine that at the origin of all the religions the faith had to produce these faces! But the majority of the religions were not religions of offensive. Resignation lived them as a rodent worm before the policy did not come to establish their authority definitively. Here, I am in the presence of a religious movement which knows that a parabellum is better than the Latin Croix, than the Growing and than the Bouddha inflated of a wisdom which skepticism will make inoffensive.

To defer acknowledges to have been itself, a time, transported by this enthusiasm. But, “ to have followed too much far the military music in 1914 ”, it knows “ strange and powerful the " impersonnalité" brass bands and musics of infantry ”, and when that Thälmann is on the point of speaking, lassitude invades it: “ I felt suddenly, perfectly old man, tired beyond any expression . ”

Last considerations on Germany

March 13rd 1932, after “ one week of religious spectacle and violent one did not lead towards optimism ”, the Germans are called with the ballot boxes. Curiously, “ fifres, bugles, drums, choruses and speeches violent one were to lead to beautiful Sunday, where Berlin voted in the calm one. ” At the conclusion of the poll, the marshal Hindenburg is at the head, but it is in ballotage, “ although it grouped on his name nearly 8 million voice moreover than Hitler .” “ In all that , note to defer it, it does not seem to me that Germany solved an important social question. But that is other thing . ”

Before leaving Germany definitively, Mac Orlan will have been able to assist with the private projection of a very young and very pure film “ ” of communist inspiration ( Kùhle-Wampe ), whose scenario is Co-writing by an young man, “Bert Brecht”, film which is used as support with the meditations on the people which accompany its return in France: The richest images which people can offer are those which are born from the people. they comprise all the mysteries of the unknown or unemployed forces. They are images of the paddle, when they are the work and the images of the night when it is about waste which work gives up. This waste is active besides and crafty ones. These " déchets" who on a side “ support the order which makes them live and the different one tighten the hand to seize the revolt with the passage ”, these “ nourished girls and ruffians neon, of alcohol, humiliations and burglings ” which one meets around Alexanderplatz, do not appear in Mac Orlan as being basically different from those that one crosses “ in the streets of Paris between the Place of the Bastille, the Place Pigalle and Montparnasse . ” Nevertheless, it in conclusion with this series of articles notes on the situation in Germany, it is not by supporting us on the knowledge of the Pègre that we must find the elements of a reciprocal sympathy. The difference between the French and the German is molecular, strictly material. However, common misfortune makes it possible to include/understand many things. The laws of misfortune are perfectly international laws.

Report with the novel

Francis Lacassin pointed out that, “on several occasions, Orlan diverted with the profit it novelist, this capacity of the journalist to enter, thanks to his mission in certain decorations or atmospheres, as if it were one of the elements. ” It is qinsi which two of the reports collected in the mystery of the Trunk n°1 provided a share of their matter to two novels of Pierre Mac Orlan published thereafter: Dinah Miami (1928), partly inspired of the Pirates of the avenue of rum , and the Killer n°2 (1935), partly inspired of the Mystère of the trunk n°1 , which led Alain Tassel to write that, for the novelist who is Mac Orlan, “the report acts as fish pond. It nourishes the romantic invention. It provides subjects, statistical data, narrative characters and models. ”

Thus, in Dinah Miami , the principal intrigue is related on the alcohol smuggling towards the United States during Prohibition, and to the boarding of a cargo liner filled with alcohol by pirates of a particular kind. One notices there for example that the name of the ship-owner, Kempton, begins again with a vowel close the name of the Kimpton supercargo, evoked in the Pirates of the Avenue of rum . Or that a largely implicit reason in the report (the presence of boat-dance hall on this maritime “avenue”), is included and developed in the novel, where it “is used as support for a purpose of complication of the intrigue. ”

The intrigue of the Tueur n°2 begins again by amplifying it the principal element of the report carried out the previous year: one described there, “of Flemish London and Brighton at the side, drive out-crossed trunks containing of the human remains. ” There still, “at the time of the drafting of fictional account, Mac Orlan reads again and handles its reports which are used to him as preparatory documents”: thus “the description of the room of Mancini is written starting from two sequences of the report brought closer, welded and thus reconfigured. ” In fact, put aside the fact that the Killer n°2 gives an explanation to this news item remained mysterious, the only change of importance between the report and the novel lie in “the addition of new decorations whose need author to pack his intrigue” (part of the action proceeds in Belgium.)
In order to dissociate itself from this news item (all while recalling it for submission to its readers), Mac Orlan had made insert at the head Tueur n°2 the “note of the author” following: In this novel, which is only one work of imagination of police adventures, some elements of picturesque of place and international manners of the underworld can recall certain details that all the newspapers gave on a crime which moved Angleterre.
It is by no means in the thought of the author to tell " the histoire" of this crime or to paint the people who were frays there, more especially as that which was shown of this fixed price was recognized innocent and discharged by the jury of sound pays.
1935.

Its reports finally make it possible Mac Orlan to make “provision of atmosphere, lived and technical details which will enable him to make probable and alive its romantic intrigues. ” They also explain why one has sometimes, “by reading certain novels of Mac Orlan, the feeling to divide into sheets a magazine of which the writer, pressed, account more on exoticism why on its art to allure. ”

Great reports of Pierre Mac Orlan

(This list, which does not contain that the principal reports - series of at least three articles - takes again that established by Francis Lacassin in appendix of the collection the Mystery of the trunk n°1 ).

Impression of Germany ( the Intransigent , November 27th 1918 April -8 1919)
pirates of the avenue of rum ( the Intransigent , October 28th - November 5th 1924)
new Italy ( the Intransigent , 3 February 11th 1925)
Images on the Thames ( the Intransigent , 22 March 31st, 1925)
On the roads of the memories ( the Intransigent , 16 February 21st 1926)
Légionnaires ( the Small newspaper , April 14th - May 30th 1930)
( Germany in deferment ) ( Paris-Evening , 8 March 22nd 1932)
the lawsuit Gorguloff , ( Paris-Evening , 24 July 29th, 1932)
the Battalion of the bad chance (newspaper not identified, 1933)
the lawsuit Falcou ( the Intransigent , 8 March 13rd, 1933)
Pèlerinage in Verdun ( Paris-Evening , 26- August 29th, 1933)
the Lawsuit Sarret ( Détective , October 26th - November 2nd, 1933)
secret streets ( Détective , January 24th -March 1st 1934)
the turn of France cyclist ( Le Figaro , 4 July 30th, 1934)
the mystery of the trunk n°1 ( the Newspaper , July 31st - August 6th, 1934)
( the lawsuit of lieutenant Cabanes in Sousse ) ( Paris-Midday , 26- January 30th 1935)
Navy ( Vendémiaire , February 13rd - March 6th, 1935)
( the Turning of the film Will bandage It in Morocco ) ( Excelsior , June 28th; For you , July 11th; Eve , October 10th, 1935)
Tunisia ( Marianne , 11 July 25th 1937)

Random links: