The Praetorians

by Jean Larteguy

  “In his pocket the Tojun had a telegram. Before expiring, the Baillard government had granted him full civil and military powers. Through his hooded eyes he scrutinized Massu, wondering what to do with this general who was acclaimed by the crowd somewhat to readily: haul him before the High Court or come in on his side?

  “I was woken very early in the morning by the arrival of Glatigny, triumphant and unshaven.

  “‘Massu,’ he told me, ‘took the plunge last night. Urged on by Bonvillain, he sent de Gaulle an appeal in the name of the Public Safety Committee, “to take in hand the destiny of the country.” He read it out to the crowd, who cheered him. The Tojun couldn’t do anything about it. In Paris the panic-stricken deputies have invested Pflimlin. Telephonic and telegraphic communications have been cut, aircraft departures forbidden, shipping disrupted. The great adventure has begun.’”

  * * * *

  Glatigny then noticed a woman’s body under the sheets. He stammered in embarrassment:

  “Oh! I thought you were alone! I’m so sorry, Madame . . . or Mademoiselle?”

  Glatigny had always been curious about his friends’ amorous adventures. He was careful not to pronounce any judgement on their girl-friends, but he liked to be kept informed.

  Esclavier was silent for a moment.

  “You’re going to be disappointed, Jacques, there’s nothing new: it’s Isabelle.”

  “And with me, Aicha. Everything’s starting all over again, no longer amid the explosion of bombs, terror and conflict, but in joyfulness and reconciliation. Come out on the terrace and see Algiers decked out in flags, with a military band playing on every street corner.”

  A formidable voice made the walls shake.

  “Where do you hide your drink in this place?”

  “Dia has just arrived,” Esclavier explained, “Dia the benign. What about Raspéguy?”

  “In the eyes of the public he’s still the Minister of National Defence’s man. The Tojun has forbidden him to leave Z and Bonvillain, who’s now playing the Soustelle card, has been careful not to come to his defence.

  “I rang him up this morning.”

  “What did he have to say?”

  “I think he’s taking it extremely hard.”

  “We’re the ones who got him into this mess!” Esclavier exclaimed. “And you know as well as I do that he would never have let us down if anything had gone wrong. I’m going out to join him.”

  “You’ve got to stay in Algiers. You’re the one the paratroops all follow, not I. When officers overthrow the Republic it’s difficult to ask simple soldiers to maintain the same discipline. The soldiers choose their leaders from among those whom they admire.”

  Isabelle sat up, hiding her naked breasts with the sheet. She still had the sleepy expression of a happy woman, the expression of the Isabelle of the old days, but her voice soon recovered its assurance. She now knew how to speak to men:

  “Philippe, you rose in revolt to save French Algeria, you’re not going to abandon everything out of friendship for your colonel!”

  Philippe got out of bed, a towel knotted round his waist, and began pacing up and down the room.

  “I no longer believe in anything else but friendship—the friendship of men. Out of our incoherent life, out of all our useless fighting in Indo-China and Algeria, all we have left is friendship.”

  “What about love?”

  “One picks it up as one goes along, like gypsies who stop under a tree laden with autumn fruit. They eat a few plums, a few apples, then set off again, tossing the pips and stones over their shoulders.”

  Isabelle burst into tears:

  “I hate you.”

  “Give Raspéguy a ring first,” Glatigny advised his friend.

  Esclavier went out. Anger made his cheeks go pale, pulled down the corners of his mouth and contracted his eyes.

  “How I hate him!” Isabelle repeated.

  The major ran his hand over his face, which was covered in a greyish stubble:

  “I can understand him; he has chosen certain bonds and doesn’t want any others! Philippe’s a difficult, violent creature, but loyal. . . .”

  “To his friends perhaps, but not to those pips and stones he tosses over his shoulder.”

  Esclavier had a struggle to get through to the colonel. All the lines were engaged.

  When he heard Raspéguy’s rasping voice at last he felt a catch in his throat.

  “Well, are you having a good time in Algiers? The great circus show, eh? Those schemes of yours were a bit too much for me. I don’t come from a grand family, I’m a man of the mountains. If the name Raspéguy ever gets into the dictionary it will be because I’ve written it with my blood. I’m only a beast of war which they load with medals and then leave alone in its corner. Waltzing about in Ministers’ drawing-rooms, that’s for the likes of you. . . .”

  “I’m coming back to Z, sir. I’m dropping everything.”

  “I forbid you to. At least there’ll be someone representing me in Algiers, and that’s you. Out here the war is still on. Yesterday we had three men killed in an ambush and young Pinières got a bullet in the arm. Some are needed for waltzing, others for dying. Keep me in the picture anyway. When it turns sour—and Hellion assures me that day isn’t so far off—you may still be in need of Raspéguy and his big line-shooting. That’s all.”

  “When does the Forum begin?” asked Dia, running his pink tongue over his thick lips. “You must take me to see it.”

  “It’s a continuous programme. The clowns make their appearance in the arena one after another without a break.”

  * * * *

  Isabelle and Aicha had run into each other in the bathroom. Aicha had the glinting eyes, litheness and grace of a young leopard about to bite, but also about to let itself be stroked. Isabelle’s eyes were swollen with tears.

  After a moment’s hesitation she held out her hand to the Arab girl.

  “My name’s Isabelle Pélissier.”

  Aicha likewise hesitated before taking her hand.

  “I know. You’re with Captain Esclavier and I love Major de Glatigny.”

  “I also love Philippe Esclavier.”

  “No, you can’t love him; you’re not the same breed, but I am.”

  “What on earth do you mean by that?”

  “Of course, I’m a Moor with a darker skin than yours, but that doesn’t mean anything after today. When your ancestors were dying of hunger in a patch of frozen land in France, mine in the south were reigning on horseback over huge flocks of sheep.”

  “We’ve made vines, wheat and barley grow where there was nothing but couch-grass before. We’ve built schools and universities where you came to study; you, Aicha ben Mahmoudi, because I likewise know you. And then you planted bombs to blow them all up.”

  “I was wrong. Bombs make a noise . . . boom! . . . and nothing more: smoke and dead bodies. But you’ll see what we’re going to do tomorrow, with Glatigny, Esclavier, Boisfeuras, Marindelle, my brother, all the others like them, and also the fellaghas from the mountains who are going to come down to join us.”

  “You’re mad.”

  “Do you think an Algerian revolution is simply people shouting outside the Government General and acclaiming Jacques or Paul, but never Mohammed? The women of my race will tear off their veils and they too will stream into the Forum, but to chase you out of it.”

  “What did I ever do to you? Your father is much richer than mine.”

  “Did you ever think, as you saw me pass by in the street, of coming up to me, taking me by the shoulder and saying: ‘Aicha, come home with me, my house is yours’? Your fine gentlemen-friends from the Balcon Saint-Raphael, did they ever once think of coming over to me and asking: ‘May I have the pleasure of this dance, Mademoiselle Aicha ben Mahmoudi’? I had to win the love of a man of my rank by
letting off bombs.

  “Do you know why my brothers clench their teeth and refuse to talk when they are tortured? In order to be respected by the men hailing blows down on them. You tell me you love Esclavier, but what have you done to deserve him, to be his equal, to give him more in your love than he grants you? I’ve betrayed my cause, I’ve given my brothers away. . . . But today I know that it wasn’t a betrayal: I’m going to reunite them all. Pour some water on your eyes, they’re red and it doesn’t suit you. When I cry I go away and hide. You know, you’re very beautiful; I’d like to look like you. Would you like to have this necklace of blue beads? It would suit you perfectly.”

  “Thank you, Aicha. I don’t want your necklace, but tell me how one should behave with men of this breed.”

  “Take them as you find them. There’s nothing else you can do. If you try and change them they explode in your face . . . boom! Just like a bomb.”

  * * * *

  The Commander-in-Chief had had the walls of the public buildings plastered with notices—which gave them an official character:

  “General Salan, Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, has assumed full civil and military powers to assure the maintenance of law and order, the protection of property and human life and the conduct of operations. The Public Safety Committee, created under pressure of events to assert the wish of the Franco-Moslem populations to remain French, will act as the connecting link between them and the High Command.”

  As he came out of the Aletti, Boisfeuras went up to the notice and, while a yaouled seized one of his shoes and started polishing it, he read the text over and over again.

  “The problem is quite clear this time,” he said to himself. “The Tojun is going to stake the unity of the army, tradition and the establishment against the revolution. He refuses to have the Public Safety Committees transformed into permanent organizations aimed at serving a population which badly needs being looked after.

  “At the very start the Tojun denies what must be the fundamental principle of every revolutionary war—the army bound up with the civilian population.”

  Boisfeuras forthwith asked to be driven to Divisional Headquarters, where he found Marindelle glued to his telephone.

  “Well?” Boisfeuras enquired.

  Marindelle glared at him feverishly:

  “Soustelle, de Gaulle, Pflimlin, Salan . . . what does it matter? The important thing is the masses, Moslem no less than French. Everyone comes and cajoles them in the Forum, but no one thinks of getting hold of them and leading them according to the methods we were taught by the Viets. If we were masters of the masses, masters of the Forum, we could do whatever we liked.”

  “Have you seen the notice the Tojun has had posted up?”

  “Yes, of course. We received it at seven o’clock this morning, with a written order from Puysanges to display it in all our premises.”

  “Glatigny now finds himself confronted with this problem: to obey his commander—and it can’t be denied that Salan, who wields full civil and military power, represents the establishment—or come in with us and invent a new establishment for himself. It’s tradition he’ll choose in the long run, and therefore Salan. So get going, Marindelle, my lad. You look after your propaganda teams, I’ll deal with the paratroops. Jump to it!”

  * * * *

  At ten o’clock in the morning the Forum was black with people. The shops, which were open earlier in the day, had pulled down their iron shutters—Mozabite and European shops alike. But the regular customers continued to slip in through the passages and back parlours to buy oil and sugar, which were rising in price day by day. It was known that Metropolitan France had decreed the blockade of Algeria.

  In the Public Safety Committee it was anything but plain sailing. The activists distrusted the Gaullists and the military, and all of them distrusted the Tojun. In the manner of ancient diviners everyone was trying to read the future in the entrails of this crowd yelling under the windows.

  Towards eleven o’clock Françoise Baguèras, Pasfeuro and Malistair clambered through the broken window-panes of an office on the first floor of the Government General and perched on a sort of cornice forming a terrace. At their feet the people of Algiers seethed, swelled and writhed, shouting oaths and acclamations.

  “This crowd frightens me,” said Pasfeuro.

  Françoise retorted:

  “Let’s not exaggerate. They come to the Forum in the same way as, in Spain, they go to the bull-fight. I heard a Martinez say to a Hernandez: ‘I say, are you coming to the serenade by and by?’”

  Orator after orator spoke from the microphone on the balcony. Many of them had no gift and brayed the slogans of the day, but the crowd acclaimed these stars.

  Massu made a brief appearance and a round of cheers went up at his scowling face.

  Puysanges slipped into the office in which the Public Safety Committee held its meetings. He took Glatigny by the arm:

  “Would you come over here a moment, old boy. I want to ask you a favour.”

  “Well, sir, what’s the new game?” Staff Sergeant Pieron asked Esclavier. “Our chaps have done every kind of job—policemen during the battle of Algiers, war veterans on April 26th. What part do they play in this show?”

  “You remember, with the Viets, the part played by the can-bos?”

  “Do I not! They’re the ones who organized the meetings, created the committees, made the people shout out slogans which the ngacs would not have thought of by themselves. ‘Ho Chu Tich-Muon Nam’—Long Live Uncle Ho! You’re telling me! Many of them would have watched Uncle Ho dying without raising a finger, with the greatest pleasure in fact!”

  Esclavier gave a curt laugh.

  “We’re going to do the same as the can-bos. We’re going to teach this gang of nitwits that they can’t do without a certain Charles de Gaulle whom actually they have never been able to bear.”

  Glatigny, who had just come out of the Government General, placed his hand on Esclavier’s shoulder.

  “We must first of all teach them to like the Tojun.”

  “What’s that you say? We’ve got nothing to do with him.”

  “I’ve just seen Puysanges. We’re going to have his boss voted in. In exchange, the Tojun is sending an appeal to de Gaulle. He has taken the bit between his teeth ever since poor old Pflimlin back in Paris called him a factionist general. Salan wallows at his ease in false situations, but he doesn’t like them to be revealed in broad daylight. Bonvillain has agreed. It’s an opportunity that mustn’t be missed.”

  Glatigny added with a smile:

  “So now I’m leader of the hired clappers! But we must have Salan acclaimed. It’s only natural, after all. The army has seized power, it must remain united and Salan’s the head of the army.”

  “You’re not frightened, by any chance?”

  “I beg your pardon . . .”

  “Frightened of calling in question all that old system of dead-and-buried hierarchies which you agreed to condemn when you were with us in Camp One?”

  “It’s a question of the unity of the army. If there’s a rift in the army we’re lost. Oran has followed us—half-heartedly—and the mayor, Fouques-Duparc, has formed a Public Safety Committee which looks more like a Radical Socialist general council. But in Kabylia that old satrap Vignon has dug in his heels. And there’s no news from Constantine!

  “If Salan sides with us openly all the generals will follow suit. There’ll be no more danger of our fighting one another.”

  “There’s no danger of that now, as you know perfectly well. But Salan, whom you can’t bear, reassures you because he wears five stars on his cap.”

  “So you refuse?”

  “I told you I’d follow you. We’ll therefore have the Tojun acclaimed, but this sort of thing needs a little preparation! In cold blood, his name will never go down the throats of the Frenc
h Algerians.”

  “Can you and Marindelle fix this show up for tomorrow, with him dealing with the civilian side and you with the paratroops?”

  Boisfeuras appeared and chuckled:

  “Tomorrow’s Ascension Day. According to the new calendar, May 15th is the Ascension of the Tojun!”

  “Well, where do we start?” asked Pieron, who was getting restless.

  Esclavier drew a sheet of paper from his pocket.

  “You kick off with ‘Algeria is French,’ then ‘Long live the Army,’ ‘A Public Safety Government,’ ‘One Single Country from Dunkirk to Tamanrasset’ . . .”

  “At that moment,” said Glatigny, “I’ll have the messages of support coming in from the Sahara read out on the balcony.”

  “We soft-pedal on Soustelle, then turn up the volume and afterwards throw in de Gaulle to see what effect it has. All right, Pieron, action stations, and jump to it!”

  The crowd was roaring and rumbling delightedly in front of them.

  One woman, then another, hemmed in too tightly, fainted. Some paratroops, with their sleeves rolled up, carried them away in their arms.

  “We have to do every kind of job,” Pieron grumbled, “down to wet-nurse and hospital orderly.”

  He started counting off on his fingers.

  “First I start them yelling ‘Algeria is French,’ then ‘A Public Safety Government,’ then ‘Long live the Army’ . . . no, first of all ‘the Army’ and then ‘Public Safety.’”

  Pieron had a worthy north-country head. The effort of memory which he had had inflicted on him made the thick veins in his neck bulge and swell.

  “What’s Mahmoudi doing?” Glatigny asked Boisfeuras.

  “I left him in the villa at Birmandreis struggling with a duplicating machine. He was printing pamphlets for the Kasbah and turning the handle, swearing in Arabic and French alternately. I asked him what he had said in the pamphlets. ‘I’ve played up nationalism,’ he replied, ‘which is right up my street!’”