Marindelle broke in:
“In Algeria we are in a revolutionary era, and times such as these demand quick, brutal, even unjust, solutions, but which at least must be new. De Gaulle is an old man, a general, a northerner, a pupil of the Jesuits and a reactionary. The very words, revolutionary war, make him bristle. . . . But, heavens above, why try to choose a single individual as the representative of Providence at the stage we’ve reached of communal managements? As a result of applying this principle we have just denied the authority of a general who, from the military point of view, was just as good as de Gaulle.
“I personally have nothing left. I’ve lost my wife, and, in leaving the regiment to work in Algiers, I’ve lost touch with my comrades. My one and only concern now is to win this war. Otherwise my four years in captivity, all that I’ve learnt and understood, my broken home and ruined career, will all have been for nothing.”
Pellegrin, who lay stretched out on the bed with his eyes closed, had not moved. All of a sudden he stretched, gave a couple of yawns, seized the bottle of whisky and took a long swig out of it. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then:
“You make me sick, the whole lot of you. You’re like old boy scouts who organize a camp-fire in their Neuilly apartments and tell the same old dreary stories about ‘the days of their youth.’ The self-examination sessions at Camp One! All that’s a lot of balls.
“Why try and find all sorts of motives in history or the evolution of the world? Think of Indo-China, that’s all. Do you remember, Boisfeuras, the rice which our partisans used to cook in huge cauldrons and the moment when one of them stirred it with a bamboo stick? The faint, warm, sweet smell that then arose? What did we do, Boisfeuras, with our partisans whom we swore we would never abandon? After Dien-Bien-Phu, when things were beginning to go badly in the Tonkin delta, that old pirate Wong came to see me. In his skinny hand he carried a faded brown fan. In his clumsy way he was trying to imitate the grand mandarins of Ancient China. I poured him out a big glass of martini. He loved the stuff, but he didn’t touch it. He sat there without moving and went on playing with his fan, opening it and snapping it shut again. A ridiculous and touching sight! We were both great friends. He had brought me thirty thousand men, ten thousand of whom knew how to handle a rifle.
“Finally, in his Chinese grocer’s French, he asked me if it was true that we were preparing to surrender Tonkin to the Vietminh and that no arrangements had been made to withdraw the partisans and their families.
“The Viet divisions were moving down towards the delta. If the Moncay sector failed to hold out our entire defence system would collapse. Even before signing the armistice at Geneva we had evacuated Northern Viet-Nam. Everything, therefore, depended on this old pirate. So I lied and assured him that we would never leave him in the lurch. I don’t know if he believed me or not. His partisans stuck to their guns and held out to the end. In the meantime we were enabled to regroup our forces round Hanoi and Haiphong.
“Needless to say, we never evacuated anyone and my old pirate was captured by the Commies. A people’s court condemned him to death and cut off his head.
“You’re trying to find a motive for blowing everything sky high, in Marxism, in history. All you need do is remember the Catholics in Tonkin who likewise believed we were going to stay! They tried to swim out to our boats as we pulled out. For days afterwards the sea washed up the bodies of those we hadn’t been able to pick up.
“I had a bellyful of Indo-China. A bellyful of defeat and all the other withdrawals it imposed on us in the south. I broke my word, which was also the word of France, twenty times over in the war of the sects. I’m not a ‘new-style’ soldier, I don’t think for myself, I haven’t read Mao Tse-Tung, and I’m not worried by guilty conscience when I find myself up against an enemy. In Algeria, in order to win the war, we’ll have to commit ourselves again, but this time personally with the population, because there’s no longer any power, or because this power’s too weak, too cowardly, to honour its pledges. Afterwards there’ll no longer be any question of leaving; what’s done is done, my lads. It’s no longer France’s word, but ours. We’re caught.
“Get this into your thick skulls, my lads—this time Old Uncle Pellegrin isn’t going to yield an inch. He won’t obey any order to evacuate, he’d rather blow everything sky high, and he’s quite an expert with high explosives!”
* * * *
Algiers had become a huge spider’s web in which the threads of countless plots crossed and re-crossed one another, each as fragile as the other and all vibrating at the same false alarms.
The little team grouped round the antenna of the National Defence started to build up, for what it was worth, some semblance of an organization. But everywhere Glatigny, Boisfeuras, Marindelle and Esclavier, no less than Bonvillain, came up against indifference, lack of cohesion and rivalries which set the various civilian and military factions at logger-heads.
To keep the army informed of their projects, to prepare it for the idea of General de Gaulle’s return to power, they created “cadres.”
They had wanted to avoid the phrase “Officer Committees” which was unduly reminiscent of certain Middle Eastern or South American revolutions.
These cadres, which were to consist of fifteen or twenty officers each, had Intelligence as their primary aim. They were to discuss subversive warfare and the methods to be employed in Algeria which were based on the training in the Indo-China campaign.
During the second stage the man behind the cadre would induce his comrades to criticize the present régime, whose weakness and contradictions would be pointed out. He was imperceptibly to lead the group to conclude that only a strong régime of a presidential type could save the country, provided it had at its head a man who was acceptable to the whole of France. The name of Charles de Gaulle at once sprang to everyone’s lips.
Boisfeuras wanted to make these cadres a permanent feature, which, besides the traditional hierarchy, would form a second, parallel and secret one. Glatigny did not agree at all.
“The army,” he said, “may perhaps be capable of winning over the population but not of assuming its responsibilities.”
“Of course,” Boisfeuras replied, “if we confine ourselves to military personnel. But imagine your cadres if they also included all the specialists we lack: technicians, civil servants, policemen, trade-union leaders . . .”
“I’d rather not imagine them,” the major drily replied.
The cadres worked rather badly, except in certain parachute units. Instead of getting together to chat about girls, promotion and cars, they discussed politics and made various speculations, then fell once more to chatting about girls, promotion and cars. With the exception of a handful of former Vietminh camp prisoners and a few others who had taken part in the Resistance and fought with the partisans, the French army was not ripe for political activity.
On April 22nd three companies of the 10th Regiment were moved to Algiers to maintain law and order.
They were placed under the command of Major Jacques de Glatigny, who had taken Captain Esclavier as his second-in-command. The Gaullist conspirators had found staunch colleagues in the Commander-in-Chief’s headquarters, and that was how they had managed to arrange for the only troops on whom they could rely to be posted to the Algerian capital.
On being informed of the extra-military activities of his officers, Raspéguy had declared:
“It seems a lot of tommy-rot to me. You’re having a whale of a time, but poor old Hellion will never recover from it. He didn’t deserve this. Anyway, when you need me for anything definite just let me know. But it’s understood of course that Big Charles is in the game.
“At the moment I’m reading a story that’s rather like yours, not bad at all: the memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, which General Hellion gave me. It’s the first time I’ve ever been given a book by a general, and a leather-bound one
at that!”
* * * *
Esclavier had met some journalists he knew in Algiers. Some of them suspected that on both sides of the Mediterranean there was something afoot.
“Another more or less faint-hearted move, a plot that’s bound to fail!” exclaimed Pasfeuro, who was furious at having to stay on in Algeria to check up on all these rumours. He did not like to leave his wife alone in Paris too long.
But since the directors of the Quotidien were becoming more and more insistent, he suggested doing a story in the course of which he would interview a certain number of more or less strange or disturbing figures who were leading a sort of semi-clandestine existence and whose names were beginning to be whispered abroad.
They congratulated him on this idea and asked him to make haste.
At the request of Major Glatigny and Bonvillain, who wanted to get an over-all picture of the situation, Esclavier accompanied the journalist several times on his investigation.
Pasfeuro was living at the Hôtel Saint-Georges, in a big room overlooking the gardens, from which he had a view of the sea far below shimmering through the palm-trees. When Esclavier came to call for the journalist he almost always arrived just when he was telephoning Jeanine, Marindelle’s former wife, whom he had married:
“Yes, I’m fine. What about you? Not too bored? No, you’re never bored, of course. Yves is very well. What’s he up to? I think he’s starting a revolution, like every other soldier and civilian in Algiers. . . . Villèle has been bothering you? I’m not surprised. He always tries to go to bed with his colleagues’ wives. Then he looks at himself in the mirror and in delight says to his reflection: ‘A dirty cad like you deserves to go down to posterity.’
“Is there anyone with me? Yes, Captain Esclavier. He wants to educate himself and after three years of war he’s trying to find out what’s going on in this country.”
Either through Marindelle or through Boisfeuras, Esclavier had been able to arrange for Pasfeuro to be introduced to all the little activist leaders in the town. To give themselves an air of importance they liked to show off their contacts with the paratroops.
In the blue shade of some café or other, and in the fresh smell of anis, the journalist and the officer met some astonishing people: technical-school teachers, pimps, dock labourers, life-long veterans with their buttonholes stuffed with decoration ribbons, young students with their heads crammed with extreme right-wing ideas.
All of them kept saying that Algeria was France and that every right-minded Moslem was on their side, the others being bastards who would have to be dealt with and the sooner the better. The army, they said, was not doing its job. It was there to protect citizens of French origin and not to hand out lollipops to brats in the Kasbah. Françoise Baguèras occasionally accompanied them. She could talk to these French Algerians in their own language, and since she knew any amount of secrets her presence prevented them from putting on too obvious an act.
On Françoise’s advice Pasfeuro had met Adruguez without Captain Esclavier being present. He was a medical student who was not lacking in common sense and who knew the Moslem petite bourgeoisie extremely well. Françoise would say to him, assuming the accent of the low quarters of the town:
“Now then, pal, you’re not going to tell us that you and your little band of Rue Michelet hotheads are going to seize Algiers single-handed! If a couple of C.R.S.* open fire the whole lot of you take to your heels. With the army, certainly, anyone can seize Algiers, even Arcinade and his gang. Yes, even Paul Pélissier!”
This was hitting below the belt.
Algiers is a town in which politics and love affairs are public property, the only well-kept secrets are financial ones.
For the last three months Adruguez had been the lover of Paul Pélissier’s wife, Isabelle, that lovely, thoughtless, selfish girl who had been transformed by the killing of her father into a sort of Passionaria of French Algeria. She it was who had led the student to take greater and greater risks and to forget some of his ideas in exchange for an outrageous and aggressive form of Nationalism.
“Algeria is France,” he kept saying, although he was far too intelligent to beieve it.
Françoise reminded him:
“A year ago you used to say: ‘Algeria isn’t France, nor is it the Maghreb, it’s something very strange: oil and wine in the same jar. The oil is the Europeans; the wine, the Moslems. It has to be stirred hard before it will mix, and it doesn’t last long: oil bubbles rise to the surface and fuse together again so as to form a sheet, but the oil stops the wine from going sour, and it’s the wine that keeps the oil on the surface.’”
“I was wrong,” said Adruguez, hanging his head. “I’ve learnt a lot since then.”
“No, Algeria isn’t France,” said Monsieur Arcinade a little later in his piping voice, rubbing his plump little hands together, “but it must become so and then our problem will be solved.”
“Our problem, Monsieur Arcinade? But you don’t come from here!”
Françoise stubbed her cigarette out in an ashtray and went on:
“You’re living in the shelter of the army Intelligence services; you’re Colonel Puysanges’s right-hand man, and that’s someone I don’t like at all.”
“My dear Françoise,” Arcinade retorted, raising his little finger, “you’re extremely rash in word as well as in behaviour. You were seen yesterday with Arnis and Cohen, who have contacts, maybe even direct relations, with the F.L.N.”
“So what? I’ve known them both for fifteen years. Cohen’s a Zionist and Arnis’s father had his throat cut by the F.L.N. I prefer a flatfoot to you any day, Monsieur Arcinade, at least he’s got an official card.”
She turned to Pasfeuro and Esclavier:
“Algeria is Byzantium. Instead of standing up against the F.L.N. we’re all worrying over the sex of the angels.”
She jumped at once from the general to the particular and asked Pasfeuro:
“What sex is Arcinade? He reminds me of a frog. No, Algiers isn’t Byzantium, it’s a vast swamp, with any amount of frogs kicking up an infernal din. What do they want, all these frogs, Esclavier, my lad?—a king of course. You’re going to bring them this king, it will be de Gaulle, and since de Gaulle doesn’t like the Algerian frogs he’ll gobble them up! Everyone here still sticks to Pétain, because he was a nice old boy with a reassuring face, who had made France into a province with Vichy as its main town. Algiers could then regard itself as a capital city! It cured us of our complexes.”
On another occasion they went to see Puydebois in his little farm in the Mitidja. He received them, with a rifle in his hand, in a semi-military uniform, surrounded by some of his “henchmen,” their pockets stuffed with pistols, grenades and even rosaries.
The henchmen, their foreheads wrinkled with secrets, escorted them to the living-room, which looked more like a strong-point than a salon, with its iron shutters equipped with loopholes.
In the middle was a staircase leading up to a sort of watchtower, where some sandbags, the headlamp of a car connected to a row of batteries, a signalling pistol and a tommy-gun constituted the entire armament of this makeshift observation post.
“I built it with my own hands.”
And Puydebois held out his gnarled fists. It was touching and ridiculous.
Over a glass of cloudy wine, which stained the oilcloth and attracted the flies, he unfolded his plans:
“France has gone to the dogs because she’s no longer a Christian country. It all stems from the revolution, the Jews, freemasons and the rest of them. The army is likewise contaminated—Monsieur Arcinade has given me detailed information on this subject. Look at the Commander-in-Chief: a Socialist and a freemason. A pity that bazooka shell didn’t get him! Yet I’m told the man who missed him made the sign of the cross before firing. We’ve got to save Algeria, but we’ve got to save France as well. When J-day c
omes we’ll march on Algiers. Groups are being formed throughout the Mitidja. The army—part of the army, anyway—will be behind us. But we’re short of weapons. . . .”
Pasfeuro asked a dangerous question:
“They say that quite a few settlers in the Mitidja pay dues to the F.L.N.?”
Puydebois stretched himself to his full height:
“That’s a lie put out by our enemies to discredit us in French eyes. Name a single one and we’ll execute him at once.”
“At once,” echoed the three henchmen, brandishing their pistols.
Whereupon Françoise began reciting a long list of names.
Puydebois hung his head. It was painful to see the distress of this poor fellow who had put on an act in which he believed. He loved his land. He was prepared to die defending it and he had made every settler into a fearless and gallant knight errant. Apart from three or four, the settlers’ armed groups existed only in his imagination.
Françoise put her hand on his shoulder and consoled him.
“Never mind, Puydebois, we’ll get away with it just the same, only don’t pay too much attention to Arcinade. . . . He’s a nasty bit of work!”
Then she dragged them off to another farm five miles or so further on.
“You mustn’t,” she said, “think all the settlers are crackpots like Puydebois. All the same, he’s a brave old crackpot with his rifle which he never puts down, his rosary in his pocket and his scapular round his neck! He’s defending his vineyards . . . that occupies him so much that he hardly cultivates them any longer, and his wine is becoming undrinkable.
“This is Pierre Andériou’s place. His family has owned this estate since the Conquest. The branch which had settled in Algiers is now extinct and in 1954 Pierre, who was peacefully tending his land in the neighbourhood of Auch, who was mayor of his village and a councillor general, came over here to sell this inheritance that had come to him out of the blue. He never went back.”
The settler arrived. He was thick-set and muscular, his eyes were screwed up with contentment, and he rolled his r’s like a torrent of pebbles.
The Praetorians Page 15
