The Centurions

by Jean Larteguy

  Pasfeuro sat down on a boulder opposite a wall. He did not notice the splendid view, the ochre-coloured ledges of rock, the pinewoods punctuating the lighter expanses of stone and, far down below, the clear green waters of the Tarn.

  The captain’s rasping voice broke into his unpleasant day-dream, plunging him into this bath of light and colour, and his love resumed its ludicrous dimensions.

  “Come on, journalist, one last effort. There’s a village behind this rock, and above that the Templars’ commandery.”

  Pasfeuro went on climbing and presently the ruins of a village appeared among the nettles, bushes and broom. Some of the houses were still intact with their dry-stone roofs, walls as thick as fortifications and semi-circular vaults. The Templars’ commandery dominated the village; all that remained of it was a vast stretch of wall which threatened to collapse and bury the rest of the ruins.

  “It’s lovely,” said Boisfeuras, “this silence and solitude, these ruins and these gorges bathed in a blue mist, like some parts of the country in the north of China. It’s the first time I’ve come across a place in France where I don’t feel a stranger. What made the Templars, those strange warriors who owned most of the wealth of the western world, come and take refuge in this wilderness?”

  “Not much is known of their history,” Pasfeuro told him. “The East, it’s certain, provided the Templars with a certain number of rites which they introduced into their Christianity, the initiation ceremonies among others. Perhaps they came up to these commanderies in the Causses to prepare the fusion between the Islamic East and the Christian West, which was the dream of their Grand Master Simon de Montferrat and which would have been the first step towards the unification of the world.

  “The Templars discovered the power of money at a time when money was despised, and in Syria the sect of the Assassins had taught them the power of a dagger wielded by a fanatic, in other words terrorism. They were ready for the conquest of the world.”

  “The ancestors of the Communists?”

  “Perhaps. But the Templars were burnt on the stakes of Philippe le Bel just as the Communists were shot through the head by Stalin’s henchmen.”

  “I’d rather like to rebuild this village and this commandery on this very spot,” said Boisfeuras, “bring a few men I know up here and re-create a new sect which might have its assassins but, above all its missionaries, who would attempt to bring about not the fusion of the religions of the East and the West, but of Marxism and what I can only call, for want of a better word, Occidentalism.”

  “Do you really mean that?”

  Boisfeuras gave a cynical sneer:

  “Of course not. I’m in my father’s hands, I’ll soon be the director of an insurance company. Where would I recruit my initiates? Among the agents, clerks and typists? Initiates of that sort are only to be found among the young paratroop officers, who have a sense of brotherhood. They are still sufficiently unspoilt and disinterested to do without comfort. They are ready for any adventure and capable of laying down their lives for any high-minded cause, provided it does not conflict with certain prejudices to which they still cling.

  “Can’t you see them in this restored village of Capluc, quarrying stones and reading books which they can no longer possibly ignore—Karl Marx, Engels, Mao-Tse-Tung, Sorel, Proudhon . . . ?”

  “‘Go through the motions and you will believe,’ Pascal said. Go through the motions of the Communists, read their books, and you will become a Communist.”

  “No. All the officers in my monastery would already be innoculated against Communism by the Vietminh camps.”

  Boisfeuras gave another cynical laugh.

  “But these are just words which are lost in the winds of Lozère, just a senseless dream which can never be realized, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t like dreams of that sort, they culminate in Fascism, Communism, Nazism and unleash those epidemics which people find hard to cure. The Germans aren’t cured of Nazism, nor are the French cured of Pétain and the occupation. There’s not a single Communist country which has managed to stamp out the blight of Marxism. Don’t toy with ideas of that sort, Boisfeuras. Leave the tinder in the hands of the older generation; they’re in too much fear of dying not to use it with infinite precaution.”

  “That’s also what my father thinks. He would like me to grow old quickly so as to leave the world in peace.”

  • • •

  A thick, soot-laden fog hung over Paris when they got there. It was cold and the city rumbled with a joyful ferocity, crunching and devouring mankind.

  Boisfeuras and Pasfeuro were swallowed up in the seething crowd, the former cherishing his “big scheme,” the other his love, that darling vulture that was eating out his heart.

  2

  THE BEAUTIFUL BUILDINGS OF PARIS

  “I firmly believe, sir, and I’m not the only one, that this is the root of all our troubles. De Gaulle should have come to an agreement with Pètain. Decoux would have stayed on in Indo-China and we should never have had this wretched war.”

  The man was elegantly dressed and smelled of lavender water; greying hair added to his distinction; his double chin quivered above a polka-dot bow tie; and the button-hole of his blue suit was adorned with the narrow ribbon of the Légion d’Honneur.

  “Someone who’s on to a good racket,” Philippe Esclavier immediately concluded. “Not the sort of man to have done any fighting but one who’s got a certain pull with the Government . . .”

  The Mistral train was going all out up the Rhône valley, belting through the stations, thundering over the points.

  It stopped for a moment at Avignon. Philippe got up and peered through the carriage window, as though his father might suddenly appear on the platform with his finely chiselled features, his flowing white hair and that air of calm assurance with which he moved. He was one of those men whom ticket-collectors scarcely dared to approach. Uncle Paul, on the other hand, always gave the impression of not having paid his fare.

  The train jerked Philippe back from his memories. His travelling companion was holding forth again in the faintly protective and slightly disillusioned tone of voice affected by the fifty-year-old man who has succeeded in business.

  “The war in Indo-China, Captain, is the outcome of a series of unforgivable mistakes. One of my cousins was under-secretary to the Ministry of Associated States at the time of Dien-Bien-Phu; he always said . . .”

  “I’m in France,” Esclavier kept telling himself. “I’ve just passed through Avignon station and I don’t feel a thing, no sensation at all, not the slightest urge to cry. I simply sit back in my seat facing this old bore.”

  “Let me introduce myself: Georges Percenier-Moreau, laboratory director of the Mercure pharmaceutical products. We did a lot of work for the army during the Indo-China War, antibiotics for the most part . . .”

  “So you’re a chemist, are you?”

  Percenier-Moreau gave a start, like a barman in a smart hotel on being addressed as “waiter.” He had not noticed the mischievous glint that had come into the captain’s grey eyes and said to himself:

  “What imbeciles these army people are. Outside their own profession they don’t know a thing.”

  Yet he could not bear the idea of being taken for a pharmacy assistant:

  “A chemist, Captain, does not have an annual turnover of several million francs. Let’s say that the chemist is the retailer and I’m the manufacturer. I make, I invent the goods that he sells.”

  “You must forgive my ignorance. So you’re by way of being both a research worker and manufacturer.”

  “That’s more like it. Our research department . . .”

  He preferred to evade the question. The activities of Mercure laboratories were confined to packaging the products which other firms invented and manufactured.

  “But I mustn’t bore you with all that. You�
�re a nice young man, I can see”—the tone was now distinctly protective—“would you mind telling me your name?”

  “Captain Philippe Esclavier of the Fourth Colonial Parachute Battalion.”

  “I say, that’s interesting. You’re not related by any chance to the Esclavier, the professor?”

  “I’m his son.”

  “I would never have imagined . . .”

  “Nor did he, and he died without understanding it.”

  “I also know Mr. . . .”

  “Yes, a certain Weihl who calls himself Esclavier. My brother-in-law. Weihl is all for the Communist revolution, purges and firing squads. He sends that little shiver down your spine, which makes a pear taste better and your mistress’s skin feel softer; he leaves you room to hope, if you do one or two little things that aren’t too compromising, that he might, once he’s in power, include you among the useful middle class.”

  “But, Captain . . .”

  “Utter nonsense, my dear sir. The Communists, and I think I know them pretty well, will put the Weihls of the world into the same concentration camp as the . . . but what did you say your name was?”

  “Percenier-Moreau.”

  “As the Percenier-Moreaus. Why Moreau, incidentally?”

  “That’s my wife’s name.”

  “As clear as daylight,” Philippe thought to himself, “his father-in-law is the real boss. Percenier-Moreau is a parasite of the Weihl-Esclavier class. My father also ran a laboratory, but for distilling and conditioning ideas. He left it to the retailers—the journalists, schoolmasters and professors—to advertise and sell his wares. Weihl appropriated the trademark and is now living on his reputation.”

  It was Françoise Percenier-Moreau who had dragged her husband along to the Rue de l’Université. He had been bored to death there: nothing to drink but a sort of tepid, watered-down punch, and dainty little sandwiches. Weihl’s attitude to the “Mercure Laboratories” had been somewhat condescending, which had punctured its managing director’s vanity. Françoise, meanwhile, wallowed with delight in the swirling mists of abstract discussion and wrinkled her brow as she spoke of the working class.

  The captain closed his eyes and put his feet up on the seat.

  “Scandalous behaviour,” Percenier said to himself. “That’s the sort of thing you might expect in the third class, but hardly in the first. Service personnel don’t pay any fare, or else only quarter-price; they travel in a manner beyond their means and therefore above their station.”

  He unfolded his newspaper. Trouble in Algeria. What was the army doing about it? Nothing, and meanwhile the officers lolled about in luxury trains.

  Percenier turned over to the entertainments page. In the centre there was a photograph of a new discovery, a slender and at the same time sensual figure with a childish yet somehow provocative mouth: Brigitte Bardot. He thought she looked rather like Mina, a little starlet whom he was keeping. Mina did not cost him much. He managed to provide for her out of the firm’s expense account. So long as the Treasury did not get wise to it. But when she went out to dinner she invariably ordered roast duck. He dreamt of a girl who would take her time over the menu and give a sophisticated pout as she dipped her lips into the Lanson 1945.

  Drowsed by the swaying motion of the train, Philippe let himself be carried away by the memory of his father, Étienne Esclavier, the man he had loved more, admired more and despised more than anyone else in the world, and this memory was at the same time tender and bitter, provoking anger as much as tears.

  A hand was gently shaking Philippe:

  “Captain . . . Captain . . . we’ve arrived in Paris, the City of Lights, the vast forcing-house of exotic flowers. But beware, they’re carnivorous! Are you being met? Have you got a car? I’d be delighted to drop you anywhere.”

  Percenier-Moreau had an umbrella and a pigskin briefcase in his hands, and his jaunty little hat set carefully aslant his greying hair gave him the mocking, insolent appearance of a Parisian pierrot.

  The grey Bentley glided noiselessly up the luminous stream of the Champs-Élysées.

  “Forgive me for coming this round-about way,” said Percenier, “but I’ve got to drop in and say hallo to a little friend who’s waiting for me in a bar . . . just long enough to down a whisky. You’re not in a hurry, I hope?”

  “No. No one’s waiting for me.”

  Percenier-Moreau was far from displeased at being able to show the captain that a “fifty-year-old chemist” could treat himself to someone like little Mina.

  The Brent Bar was down a side street a few yards off the Champs-Élysées. Dark panelling, red plush seats and a long bar adorned with the flags of the nations gave the place the atmosphere of one of those comfortable London clubs where whisky is at its best.

  The clients spoke in subdued voices. The men all looked like Percenier-Moreau, most of the women were young and pretty. Mina was enthroned on a stool near the cashier’s desk, petulantly nibbling at a straw.

  “I might have gone to the cinema,” she was telling the cashier, “instead of waiting for him here like a little tart who needs a few thousand francs to see her through till the end of the month.”

  “Oh, come now, Miss Mina, we don’t have any tarts in here.”

  “What do you call Solange, then? She’s never with the same fellow longer than a week.”

  Mina pouted with infinite charm; she had a hungry mouth, a sensual, womanly body, all curves, and the features of a child.

  Percenier rushed up to her with much ado, seized her hand and kissed (or rather, licked) it.

  “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, darling. I’d like you to meet a friend of mine, Captain Philippe Esclavier; he’s just back from Indo-China.”

  Philippe and Mina looked into each other’s eyes. They barely shook hands and pretended to disregard each other, but both of them already felt that they were going to spend the night together. The voice of desire was insistent, making their ears tingle; they took great care not to let their hands so much as brush against each other, while Percenier-Moreau kept buzzing round them like a fat old bumble-bee.

  He left them for a moment to go and telephone his house. Philippe laid his hand on Mina’s—a hard, heavy hand which could hurt.

  “Wait for me here; I’ll be back.”

  “And then?”

  “Then we’ll go and have a drink somewhere else . . .”

  “I’ve never felt this so strongly,” Mina thought to herself. “What’s this man with the gaunt face and big grey eyes got? Something, in any case, which Percenier never had. How I can make old Percenier sweat with my roast duck! The captain has the famished look of the fairy-tale wolf. Mina, my pet, you’d better watch your step! Achtung, Mina, out-of-bounds; handle with care. He must have slim hips and a firm, flat stomach. Not like Albert’s little pot-belly, carefully squeezed into a flannel belt!”

  Albert Percenier-Moreau came traipsing back.

  “We’d better be off, Captain. Darling, I’ll ring you up tomorrow morning.”

  Esclavier asked to be dropped near the Luxembourg, from where he took a taxi straight back to the Brent Bar. Edouard, the barman, was aware of his little game. He was pleased with the trick that was being played on the “chemist” and inwardly rejoiced. This big fellow who wasted no time on details or subterfuge, who went straight after what he wanted, appealed to him; and so did Mina, who pretended to be stupid but who was as crafty as a monkey, full of appetite and sensuality.

  Esclavier wanted to settle up for the two whiskies Mina and he had just drunk in silence.

  Edouard refused the money.

  “It’s on the house.”

  “Why?”

  Edouard leant over the edge of the bar and quietly replied:

  “Because I like the look of you both.”

  All of a sudden Philippe was overwhelmed by the memory
of Souen, the Vietminh girl. He could no longer recall every detail of her face but tried to reconstruct it mentally round the slanting eyes. Souen alone was love; all the rest were mere encounters, like Mina, this exciting little tart who was clinging on to his arm.

  • • •

  Philippe Esclavier was woken by the telephone ringing. He rolled over on his side, rolled back again, and even stuffed the pillow over his head to escape the persistent noise pursuing him.

  Mina picked up the receiver in the dark:

  “Hallo? Oh, it’s you, Albert. What do you mean by waking me up at this unearthly hour? It’s ten o’clock already? But it’s quite dark outside. There’s a fog, is there? No, I don’t feel like going out. No, you can’t come here either. The place is in a dreadful mess and anyway I’m rather tired. What did I think of Captain Esclavier? Oh, nothing to write home about . . .”

  She was quietly stroking Philippe’s leg and the warm palm of her hand felt gently insistent.

  “No, Albert, I don’t like those cocksure young types who think every woman’s going to fall into their arms. What I need is tenderness and affection, which can only be found in men who have had some experience of life, like you, my dear . . .”

  The pressure of her hand increased.

  Philippe snuggled up to her, returning her caresses in his usual straightforward manner. Mina’s voice changed, becoming deep and guttural, on the verge of a passionate groan, the sort of voice that Percenier-Moreau had rarely had occasion to hear.

  “Of course I love you, honeybunch!”

  She hung up, uttering a long wail of pleasure.

  Mina eventually got up to make breakfast. She drew the curtains; a dim light filtered through the window and presently the smell of coffee and toast began to fill the room. The phonograph played a languid blues in the background.