by Norman Lewis
The common foe of all the Algerian factions was the Arabs. A tiny percentage of exceedingly tough-minded individuals formed the Arab bourgeois class. There was a doctor (one of two in the whole of Algeria), a few minor officials at the Préfecture, and a handful of sardine merchants who were prosperous by very low Arab standards. The rest of the native population lived in conditions inconceivable to Europeans. Most of the males observed on our arrival wore garments made from sacks, on which in many cases the stencilled mark of whatever produce they had contained was still visible. A woman forced for any reason to leave her village and go into town might only be able to make this journey after several neighbours had clubbed together to provide her with sufficient clothing.
We were assured by the French that the Arabs were pro-German, but what they really were was intensely and bitterly anti-French, after a century of intellectually planned subjugation. The French system was to rule through caïds, once democratically elected but now appointed by the government. They levied taxes, provided recruits for the Army, and labour for the colons’ great farms. In return they were left in peace to pillage the villages as they saw fit. The weapon of the colons was unemployment, and therefore starvation, and a large surplus labour force was always there to see to it that the system worked. Suddenly — and quite by accident — with our arrival, the colons found themselves defenceless. As more and more Allied ships carrying warlike stores docked in the ports of North Africa, an ever larger supply of labour was required to unload them. Where the colons paid 7 ‘old’ francs a day, the Allies offered 50 francs, plus two pounds of bread, several ounces of olive oil, and a little sugar and salt. Within the week there was not an unemployed Arab left in Algeria. Moreover, the Arabs were deserting the farms and flocking down to the coast. It was an inevitable outcome of the war situation that earned us the hatred of the colons, for, Algerians as they were, and subject to the passionate irrationality of this land, they saw in this nothing but an attack on themselves.
The Arabs shared with us this outburst of hatred, and although the colons realized there was little they could do to revenge themselves upon us, they made no secret to Brown, who was able to talk to several of them, that they planned drastic retaliation on their former labour force as soon as we had left the country.
12TH DECEMBER
Michel Fortuna’s dinner for the section turns out to be extraordinary in every way. In the first place, the house of this supposedly rich and powerful man is rather like a barracks; vast, bare, and almost devoid of furniture. Secondly, it is next door to Philippeville’s brothel, doing at the moment of our arrival lively business with the British soldiery, who have formed a long and orderly queue along the street. A woman standing at the door reminds me of a pantomime fairy godmother, and actually holds something remarkably like a wand with which she controls their entrance. The FSO pretends not to know what this is all about and seems amazed when the implications of this un-English sight are explained to him.
Fortuna, too, comes as a surprise. A small, thin man whose collar-bones stick out, dressed showily in a Palm Beach suit and bow tie, with a polka-dotted handkerchief protruding from his breast pocket. The jaunty attire contrasts with his expression, which is one of sorrowful resignation. Sergeant Brown translates for the benefit of our nine non-French speakers. ‘He wants us to regard this as our house. All we have to do is to let him know when we want to move in.’ Next Fortuna puts his arm round the FSO’s neck and kisses him on both cheeks. After that he stands back, shakes his hand, and says, ‘Tu es mon copain.’ Every member of the section, one after the other, gets the same treatment, and they show varying degrees of embarrassment. Next we are presented to Michel’s wife, Madame Renée, an ugly woman with an underslung jaw, tiny eyes, hair like copperwire, and a perpetual suggestive smile.
We go in to eat and find a number of people already seated at a narrow table stretching from one end to the other of a vast, bare room, painted a depressing shade of green. Despite the fact that Christmas is only two weeks away, the weather is warm, and I am amazed to see bats flying in and out of the open windows.
Among those seated at the table I recognize several officials we have already met at the Mairie, including Monsieur Gaudinot, chef de cabinet, all of them accompanied by dowdily respectable-looking women I assume to be their wives. The impression I get is of an unusual mixture of the social classes, which includes an extremely distinguished elderly man with a square-cut grey beard who is identified by Brown as a chevalier of the Legion of Honour, and a member of the Académie Française on a visit to the vice-prefect. Yet others are described by Brown as small shopkeepers, and there is one villainous-looking French sergent-chef with a hare-lip, and arms covered by tattooing. Apart from the Academician these people are like Breughel’s feasting peasantry in modern dress.
Inevitably a glass of anisette stands on the table before each guest, and when emptied is instantly refilled by an attendant Arab. My impression is that a number of those present are a little drunk already and, downing an anisette myself in an attempt to get in the mood, feel instantly dizzy.
Such conversation as has any point is about the past misdeeds and the evil intentions of the pro-Vichy faction — claimed by this dedicated gathering of Gaullists to be intensely engaged in treasonable activities — and the desirability of persuading the Allied authorities to permit the formation of a popular militia to deal with them. More and more though, under the influence of the raw alcohol, the gathering slides into a good-humoured, fatuous and rather noisy occasion. The meal is vast and interminable, the main course being wild boar saturated in garlic, and there are innumerable libations in local red wine of great body, but like most Algerian things devoid of finesse. The diners begin to sleep with their heads on the table, and fall on the floor where they are left undisturbed. Two of our comrades are out for the count, and the distinguished member of the Académie Française is carried off to bed. A moment later his lady companion who is somewhat younger than he is gets up and says in a ringing voice, ‘Excusez-moi. Il faut que je pisse.’ At this moment Madame Gaudinot changes places to seat herself next to our youngest section member, offering in the coarsest of argot (‘veux-tu voir ma belle craquette?’) to show him her sexual parts. The FSO is well in control, and laughs with insistent politeness at bawdy jokes he does not understand. Sergeant-Major Leopold watches this scene with sardonic composure.
I find myself in the corner of the room, discussing with Michel the state of mind of a prisoner in the condemned cell. ‘You know what’s coming to you,’ he says, ‘because they’ve lined you up to watch it all happen before. They chop your head off in the courtyard. Last couple of times a fellow called Professor Dornier was there. He was doing some experiments about consciousness. He was got up in a rubber suit and rubber gloves, standing by the basket, and as soon as the head came off he would grab it up by the hair and shout into an ear, “Eh Jacques! Tu m’entends? Réponds!” They say the eyes always opened once. Sometimes twice.’
‘As I understand it, you were framed,’ I said.
He laughed. ‘Put it that way if you like. They knew I was for de Gaulle, so someone took a contract out on me. I decided to get him first, that’s all.’
14TH DECEMBER
An urgent signal from GHQ Algiers to send an NCO to Bou Zafra in the Monts de Constantine, for an interview there with a Caïd Slalil. Several queries are raised. In the first place, surely this area is under the responsibility of 312 Section at Constantine? Leopold gets back to Algiers only to learn that the Intelligence major making this request has no idea of the existence of a Constantine section. After that it comes as no surprise to learn that there is no such place as Bou Zafra, and — according to the French — no such person as Caïd Slalil. The French point out that the name is not an Arabic one.
Much detective work is required before a Caïd Shallal is finally located in the village of Bou Zerqa, and GHQ confirms that this is their man. Captain Bouchard of the Gendarmerie, who has come to our help
once again, calls the caïd, entre nous, a disreputable ruffian, to be approached with great caution, as he is believed to have been involved in several kidnapping and ransom incidents. He conducted a reign of terror, says the captain, in the Djebel Ouasch mountains to the north of Constantine, where previously he had to some extent been held in check by the presence of garrison troops in Constantine itself. Now, since these have been withdrawn, he is on the rampage again.
In discussing this business the captain appears shifty and troubled. He has made it evident, as best he can, that it would suit him if we left well alone where the Arabs are concerned. His distaste for them proclaims itself in an original way. When referring to an Arab he habitually garbles or mispronounces his name. Thus Gaudinot’s immediate subordinate, Meksen — a man having some status in the town — becomes Meknes. Meksen is the name of an illustrious ancestor who made the pilgrimage twice, and gave most of his worldly goods to the poor. Meknes that of a dull little provincial town — an Algerian Bootle. Toukousch, another Arab notable, is always referred to as Touschkou, which most people find unbearably funny. To sum up this view on Arabs in general, Captain Bouchard concludes our meeting with the muttered verdict, ‘C’est une race infecte.’
15TH DECEMBER
Leave for Bou Zerqa at nine in the morning. So far as I understand, the Allied forces have kept to the main roads in their occupation of Algeria. Penetration has been shallow, hardly exceeding a hundred miles at any point, and I look forward with some excitement to a view of an undisturbed hinterland. Bou Zerqa could be reached more easily and directly through Constantine, along the main north-south highway, which is first-class, but for some reason Leopold fights shy of an intrusion into 312 Section’s territory, as if they exercise exclusive rights over hundreds of square miles (little of which they will ever see). This means that I have the benefit of the main road only as far as El Arrouch, and am obliged thereafter to cross the Monts de Constantine by a second-class highway leading down through the gorge of the Oued-Zenati River to reach Shallal’s headquarters, said to be in a feudal castle built over Bou Zerqa.
The day is one of perfection, like England in April at its best. The sluggish old Army Norton copes somehow with the gradients and carries me into an entranced landscape from the dawn of history, pristine and empty of humanity, massed with cork oaks, with deer and wild goats scrambling on the mountain sides and eagles swinging like pendulums in the sky.
Bou Zerqa, Shallal’s capital, is a squalid place built by the Europeans, although long since abandoned by them, and his castle the shell of an old Esso filling station with great rubbish-filled caverns where the pumps have been uprooted. Several Arabs with inflamed eyes squat on the cracked cement with their backs to the sun. The caïd and three henchmen await me in what was once the office, now a void of stained walls smelling strongly of urine. Inbreeding has furnished them with identical triangular faces, and deeply cleft chins. Their sore, watchful eyes never leave my person, and after shaking hands the caïd scratches himself vigorously. The meshwi — the usual lamb roasted whole — awaits outside at the back, over the ashes of a fire, and we squat to pick at it with our fingers, and sip mint tea. A ceremonial silence is maintained for some minutes, then, after using his cloak to wipe his hands and his eyes, the caïd, who as a nominally French official is obliged to speak French, puts some questions from which it is immediately clear that he suffers from basic misapprehensions.
‘You are German?’
‘No, English.’
‘Ah. So you are fighting with the Germans? On their side?’
‘I’m on the other side. I’m fighting against them.’
‘Then you are with the French? Their brothers? Their brothers in this war?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ah-h.’ The caïd picks the sprig of mint out of his tea and chews it, eyes narrowed. The lean, brown, supple fingers are outstretched to stroke and tap on the blackened carcase of the lamb like a musical instrument before tearing away more shreds of flesh. The caïd rips out a blackened titbit and thrusts it into my hand. ‘So you fight with them? The French? Ah-h.’
‘They fight with us if that sounds better.’
‘And tell me, oh my brother,’ the caïd asks. ‘Who will God give victory to in this war?’
‘To us.’
‘Ah-h. There are many of you?’ he asks.
‘Many thousands. We have many cannon, aeroplanes and ships. The enemy cannot resist.’
The caϊd seems to be crossing himself in a gesture of astonishment, in the Christian fashion. To his three followers he says, ‘They will win the war.’
He turns to me again, clicking his tongue as beggars do locally before imploring alms. ‘You and the French, ah-h. You and the French. We all of us look for allies, for friends in a war. We could become your friends, too, my brother. We could come to your aid.’
The outcome is that, disappointed as the caïd and his followers are that we are on the wrong side, he is quite prepared to do a deal and send a hundred horsemen to strengthen our war effort, and naturally there would be some unspecified quid pro quo. I assure him that I will pass on this offer to the general.
At this point when I am ready to shake hands all round and take my departure, it suddenly becomes clear that the transaction is incomplete. ‘Le cadeau,’ the caïd shouts, in his strangely thin, high-pitched voice, ‘faites entrer le cadeau,’ and I realize that there is to be a ceremonial gift.
The door opens, a form wrapped in a blanket is shoved through it, and a moment later the blanket is pulled open to reveal the face of a girl of about thirteen. She is bright yellow from what I assume to be hepatitis, and covered in pock-marks.
‘This present is for you,’ the caïd says. ‘To take with you.’
The best way out of this in a diplomatic fashion seems to be to point out that I lack the proper means of transportation, and this seems to be accepted with good grace. Perhaps it is only a polite and hospitable gesture, after all, and not intended to be taken seriously.
Chapter Sixteen
THE FIRST MAIL TO arrive from England brought letters from my mother, the Corvaja parents and Ernestina. My mother had important news for me. She had been taken to a séance in London where the medium — she quoted her name as being a celebrated one — giving a demonstration of clairvoyance had asked, ‘I’m being given the word mistletoe. Does it mean anything to anyone here?’
My mother had naturally claimed the association, whereupon the medium had continued, ‘Your husband is on the other side. He is trying to reach you. He asks you to help him make contact by projecting your thoughts to him.’ What followed sounded like a long-distance call on an extremely bad line, with the message given by the medium so broken up and intermittent that hardly any of it made sense. From what my mother could gather, and passed on to me, it seemed that my father had little enthusiasm for life after death, and had failed to shake off the boredom troubling him in his existence on earth. All he could say of it at best was, ‘I am making progress,’ adding that he missed his friends.
Spiritualism would seem from my mother’s letter to have been on the upgrade again. First they had insisted that the war would never happen. After that, during the so-called ‘phoney war’, they had tried to explain it away as an ‘astral confusion’. Then only at the start of the Blitz had they accepted the reality of the conflict, many of them, including my mother, taking the view that God had only really made up his mind and come down on the British side at the time the Americans had done so. The congregation at her church had doubled since then, my mother said, adding that she had been in the local newspaper after curing its editor of arthritis following two sessions of laying-on of hands. Finally she mentioned that a bomb had blown all the windows in and that in falling out of bed when this happened she had cracked a couple of ribs.
The Corvajas soldiered on unflinchingly in their shattered house. They drew water from a stand-pipe in the street, were able through the disruption of the wiring only to switch on
the light in one room, and even this rarely, due to frequent power cuts. They kept out the cold by wearing several sets of underclothing, and wound crêpe bandages, of which they had a good stock, round their legs. Rats colonizing the ruins across the road had to be kept at bay, and Ernesto had acquired some skill with a catapult in order to do this. He mentioned having damaged a hand slightly while shovelling fire bombs from the roof in one of the earlier raids. They lived, like the rest of the population, on nine ounces of meat and three of butter per week, and one egg per fortnight, plus unlimited potatoes, and found their health much benefited from the simple diet. They had only suffered one major crisis since the great bombing: the dog Mazeppa’s sudden and painful illness, reducing them as animal lovers to a state of panic. The vet diagnosed this as the result of a surfeit of condoms picked up in the gardens of Gordon Square, from which the railings originally excluding the general public had been removed to make weapons of war. This had become a death-trap for dogs without superb digestions. Fortunately, an operation had been carried out successfully, so all was well again.
