The Centurions

by Jean Larteguy

  “But what about Monette?”

  “Give her Bert.”

  “Captain Esclavier is bald and bloated and suffers from B.O.”

  “Liar. He’s tall and slim, with lovely grey eyes. He’s brash and very sure of himself.”

  Out in the garden, as the sun went down, iced champagne was served by Arab servants. They were dressed in the traditional uniform: red leather slippers, baggy trousers, and short tunics with gilt buttons.

  While paying his usual subaltern’s compliments to Juliette, the general automatically kept an eye on Monette and Loulou Buffier, who made their skirts swirl every time they moved so as to display their golden legs.

  The general was uneasy. He had just heard that on the 10th of August a big meeting of the rebel leaders had been held in the Soumann Valley, that it had taken place quite openly and that the Kabyles and the hard core of the interior had got the better of the Arabs and the politicians from outside. Open warfare was now inevitable, irregular, guerrilla warfare which would now be conducted by the most intelligent of the Algerians. Furthermore, they would be able to rely financially and politically on the 200,000 Kabyles who were employed in France.

  The general asked for some more champagne. It was dry and chilled, exactly as he liked it. The Vincents certainly did their guests well, they kept the best table in Algiers. He decided to forget his worries.

  Colonel Puysange had joined Glatigny and Esclavier who were chatting to Isabelle and her husband. He seized the major by the arm in a friendly manner.

  “Glad to see you again, my dear Glatigny. What news of Claude? And how are your five children?”

  He was warning Isabelle, if she did not know it already, that Glatigny was the father of a large family. Every woman, he thought, had a horror of that buck-rabbit sort of man.

  Ever since he arrived in Algiers, Puysange had had his eye on Isabelle and kept weaving intricate webs all round her.

  Glatigny introduced Esclavier to him.

  “Delighted to know you, Captain. Your name’s familiar to me, of course. It’s a great name in our Republic . . .”

  Isabelle looked at the captain with renewed interest. Puysange was a pain in the neck. He turned to Isabelle, fully aware of her passionate nationalism and attachment to the land of Algeria:

  “This name may mean nothing to you, madame: the Dreyfus case, the Front Populaire of 1936, the Fighters for Peace, the Stockholm Appeal. Of course, the captain’s absolutely on the other side, since he’s out here with us.”

  Esclavier went white in the face.

  “You seem to have forgotten my family’s activity during the Resistance, sir, not to mention the part played by my Uncle Paul, General de Gaulle’s delegate. Our Resident Minister was one of his closest friends. I hardly dare call on him as he’s anxious to take me into his military department whereas, by temperament, I prefer to be in action . . . in the mountains.”

  Glatigny appreciated this passage of arms. Esclavier had just scored a direct hit. Puysange had been doing all he could to join the Minister’s military department, and his horror of combat and campaigning was a legend in the army.

  The professor of geology came and joined them. The lenses of his spectacles were like magnifying glasses, behind which his eyes seemed to swim like a couple of fish in an aquarium. He was extremely thin, with the coppery red complexion produced by the Sahara, he wore thick winter clothes and one of his shoe-laces was undone. He asked the captain:

  “You’re the son of Professor Étienne Esclavier, are you? I’m delighted!”

  He seized Philippe’s hand and started shaking it with an energy which one would never have suspected in such a skeleton.

  Seeing that things were not turning out as he expected, Puy-sange stumped back towards his general. But the innocent pleasure which this worthy man felt at the good dinner which was about to be served in the loveliest surroundings in Algiers, made him all the more exasperated. He decided to ruin his evening for him and leaned towards him.

  “I almost forgot, General. The commander-in-chief wants a detailed report on the situation in Algeria for the Ministry of Defence. He’d like you to let him have it by Monday morning.”

  “Hell!” said the general. “There goes my Sunday . . . The situation . . . well . . . you know it as well as I do, Puysange . . .”

  “The Minister needs it for a question to be put before the Assembly . . . This report, without disguising the known facts, must be on the optimistic side . . .”

  The consommé au madère was served.

  Paul Pelissier was watching his wife, the other Isabelle, the woman she suddenly became when she wanted to appeal to a stranger: her eyes were sparkling, her skin looked brilliant, her voice sounded warmer. He himself was only entitled to her withdrawn expression, her inert and unresponsive body. For the last six months they had been sleeping in separate rooms.

  He noticed Bert who was also looking at her, who was suffering as he was but who had not had the luck to hold her at least once or twice in his arms, the luck or the disappointment.

  Isabelle was trying to seduce the captain who was sitting next to her; she was displaying all her charms but would certainly get rid of him before he ever became her lover. There were moments when Paul was glad that his wife was frigid.

  His neighbour was Monette. He knew the little idiot had gone to bed with Tremagier in the hope that he would marry her. He felt an urge to be unpleasant:

  “Well, Monette, have you heard from Albert recently?”

  The young girl blushed and hung her head.

  On the other side of her, Bonfils and Maladieu were discussing business across the little actress who was sitting between them. He lent an ear. Maldieu was talking about the plans for a new building project out at El Biar. Paul was interested in this; if the project materialized, the land he owned would increase its value threefold.

  Real estate and dealings on the stock exchange fascinated him as much as gambling, whereas he had never been interested in vines and citrus fruits. The settler’s days were numbered. Isabelle still felt deeply attached to the land, but then she was just a sentimentalist. Paul regarded himself as someone up-to-date, a man of the times, with an international outlook equal to that of a New York broker accustomed to luxury hotels. Summer on the Côte d’Azur or in the Balearics, winter in Switzerland. He had a certain prediliction for that country, with its stable finances, and he was far from insensible to the respect its inhabitants showed for money . . . He had spent three months in a sanatorium there and retained a pleasant memory of that period of aseptic semi-consciousness.

  When he had left for the sanatorium, old Pélissier had said to Paul’s father:

  “Only one grandson you’ve been capable of giving me, and he’s turned out unsound.”

  Paul could not understand why his grandfather had such a passion for Isabelle. In moments of doubt and defiance, when he had drunk too much and his wife had denied him his rights, he imagined there was a vast plot hatched against him and made a show of sniffing at his food as though it was poisoned.

  Glatigny was exchanging small talk with Loulou Bouffier. The young girl found the major distinguished and intelligent and was sorry he was married. Another pointless dinner, she thought. She turned her attention to Captain Esclavier, but Isabelle had appropriated him completely. That little bitch had an astonishing talent for keeping the man in whom she was interested apart from everyone else round him. Paul was bursting with jealousy and Bert could not bring himself to eat—it was very funny and served them right! Hallo, there was Monette wiping her eyes with a handkerchief. Still thinking of Tremagier, the little fool! In strict confidence she had told him she had not even enjoyed it, which really was the limit! The professor of geology was gulping his soup rather noisily. Every now and then he would stop, with his spoon in mid-air, and declare that there was oil in the Sahara.

  Gl
atigny was thinking about Aicha. He tried to imagine her at this dinner, violent and rebellious, reminding them all of the tragedy being enacted in Algeria; she would have been the loveliest woman present apart from that strange Isabelle who was leaning over towards Esclavier and arguing with him, her cheeks aflame.

  “No,” Esclavier was saying to Isabelle. “The only reason I’m here is to do my duty as an officer and I try to do it as best I can. In Indo-China, I sold my soul: out here, I’m simply doing a job.”

  “Out here, you’re in France, Captain. My grandfather came from Alsace. He was driven from his home by the Germans in 1870, and he was given a settler’s plot. My name’s Kelber and our village in Alsace is called Wintzeheim. They also make wine there. My grandfather brought some vine plants with him when he left, with five hundred gold francs as his total assets.

  “No, don’t look at my husband; he’s not one of us, he’s from Algiers. His grandfather and mine were close friends. He came from Touraine with his vine plants. I do so wish I could make you understand . . .

  “Would you like to come with me tomorrow to our estate in the Mitidja? We’ll go and see old Pélissier; my own grandfather is dead, but Julien Pélissier is so like him . . . that I feel I’m his grand-daughter. We’ll leave at dawn, as soon as the road is open.”

  To Esclavier, Isabelle had suddenly stopped being that flirtatious, winsome girl with the magnificent body whom he would have liked to hold in a long embrace; she was beginning to assume a proper shape and existence in these surroundings which had no attraction for him.

  Going to look at some vineyards in the company of a French colonial Egeria did not appeal to him in the least. Nevertheless he accepted the invitation in the hope that the drive would bring them closer together and offer certain opportunities which he would be able to exploit.

  “I’ll come and fetch you at seven o’clock,” Isabelle went on. “Bring a weapon with you.”

  “A dramatic outlook on life peculiar to the Mediterranean races,” thought Philippe.

  Vincent, who had drunk a great deal, left the table before his guests. Everyone pretended not to notice. Maladieu was speaking with brutal lyricism about Algiers where buildings were going up like mushrooms. One could tell that, as far as this particular businessman was concerned, the development of the Algerian capital was not only a sound speculation but an adventure which suited his sanguine nature.

  The little actress was charming and silly; she recited some poems and everyone applauded. The general left; he looked very worried. Puysange asked Esclavier and Glatigny to lunch with him next day at the Saint-Georges. They were glad to be able to refuse, Esclavier on the grounds of a previous engagement with Isabelle Pélissier and Glatigny because of urgent matters that required his attention.

  The geologist was still talking about oil, anticlinals and grapholithic sandstone. Everyone nodded his head very wisely.

  • • •

  Lieutenant Pinières was dining alone in the Brasserie de la Lorraine. He had been trying to write to Merle’s sister, but had torn up several rough drafts one after the other. It was all over. What answer could there be to the young girl’s declaration:

  “I loved Olivier so much that I could not bear the idea of having his best friend always with me . . .”

  Pinières had toyed with several ready-made phrases, such as: “Life must go on” and “Nothing lasts for ever” but on paper they looked pointless and odious.

  Pinières could not bear his dreadful solitude any longer. He ordered a double brandy and decided to visit the clandestine brothel where he had been told he could find a Vietnamese girl . . . Tomorrow he would seek refuge with Dia who would take him out deep-sea fishing, which was the doctor’s latest passion. Then they would have some fish soup and get so drunk they would have to crawl on all fours up the grey sandy beach.

  • • •

  “Don’t you know how to eat with chopsticks?” Marindelle asked Christiane. “It’s quite simple; you hold one of them steady and use the other as a lever. No, hold them a little higher up . . . Now then, let’s try again.”

  They were in a little Vietnamese restaurant which had just opened at the top of the Boulevard Saint-Saens.

  The only other people in the room were half-a-dozen Nungs in black berets belonging to the commander-in-chief’s personal bodyguard, two colonial infantry sergeants, and a half-caste.

  Christiane Bellinger abandoned her chopsticks and used a spoon to eat her rice. She was surprised and secretly delighted with her adventure: this impromptu dinner with a young paratroop captain.

  Because he was five years younger than she was, he had appeared to her as a sad young lad at a loose end, with great curiosity and a lively mind. She was astonished when he had told her he was a professional soldier and had been in the army since the age of nineteen.

  At the Prado Museum, in a little cubbyhole next to the Saharan gallery, she had been busy taking a plaster caste of a neolithic skull which she had discovered herself at Gardhaia. She was just wiping her hands clean on her old white smock when the captain had bashfully come in, with his red beret in his hand.

  “Could you tell me where the guide has gone, please, madame? I can’t find anyone in the museum, even to pay for my ticket.”

  She had laughed:

  “Are you as anxious as all that to pay for your ticket?”

  “No, but I’m looking for a catalogue with some information on those primitive paintings discovered in the Sahara . . .”

  “They’re only copies, the originals are at Tassili des Ajjer.”

  “I don’t even know where Tassili des Ajjer is. You see how badly I need a catalogue, or a guide!”

  Thus it was that Christiane Bellinger, a lecturer in ethnology at the Faculty of Algiers, after washing her hands and taking off her smock, had acted as the young captain’s guide for the entire afternoon.

  Never had she had such an attentive and passionately interested pupil; the conscientious, unassuming Christiane had shone as a result. She had launched into the boldest comparisons, conjuring up the history of the dark ages of the Maghreb, with as much dash as the worthy Maître E. F. Gautier. The captain had asked her out to dinner. He was now the one who was doing the talking, as he initiated her into the mysteries of Vietnamese cooking, telling her about the Far East, about that war in Indo-China whose complexity she had never realized, about the Vietminh for whom he unmistakably displayed a certain sympathy.

  When he saw her home afterwards, Christiane asked him in for a drink. It was only as she opened the heavy studded door of her old Arab house that she remembered that men meant nothing to her, that she had decided to do without them and organize her entire life round her work. But the captain was more of a child than a man, with that odd tuft of fair hair on the top of his head.

  • • •

  “I shan’t go,” Raspéguy said to himself.

  Boudin was contentedly smoking his pipe, buried in a rickety old armchair with a detective novel in his hand.

  “What do you think of women?” the colonel asked him all of a sudden.

  Boudin peered over the top of his book in surprise:

  “I haven’t really thought of them much . . .”

  And he returned to his book. Raspéguy looked out of the window at the sea and the crowd of bathers on the beach. An Arab went past, carrying a sort of jerrycan containing ice-cream.

  “Ices . . . Ices . . . Cold as snow . . . Fifty francs.”

  “Right, I’ll go, but in civvies,” the colonel decided. “And I’ll tell her that if she won’t sleep with me tonight, she can go and get stuffed elsewhere: a dirty little slut of a Mahonnaise who can’t see a pair of pants without . . .

  “If Esclavier or Glatigny got to hear about this, I’d look pretty silly. With Boudin, there’s no danger; he’s not sharp enough.”

  The colonel went into his room to change; when he
came back Boudin was still reading.

  “Going out?” asked the major.

  “Yes, I thought I’d go into town, see what’s on at the movies, maybe spend the night at the hotel.”

  “See you tomorrow, then.”

  “See you tomorrow.”

  Boudin dashed into his room to don his walking-out uniform. The colonel, he was certain, was off to see his little slut of a Mahonnaise.

  This evening Boudin was going to dine at the Ambassade d’Auvergne, have a good solid meal of sausages and cabbage, and all his compatriots would listen to him religiously and count his medals. They had asked him to bring the colonel along, but the dinner would then lose all its spice, for Raspéguy would be the centre of attraction.

  Concha was seventeen, with dark curls and the rounded forehead of a young kid. Her red skirt set off her slender waist, and her blouse her firm young breasts. The merest suspicion of a moustache emphasized her full lips which were thickly coated with dark red lipstick.

  The whole of Bab-el-Oued was hanging out of the windows waiting for the promised arrival of the colonel with whom she went out. Paulette, her friend and best enemy, was standing beside her outside the Martinezes’ house to see “if the colonel was true.” Concha stamped her foot.

  “Mira, I keep telling you. It’s a colonel he is, I’ve even seen his badges, five bars on each of his shoulders.”

  “You’ve seen them?”

  “Well, nearly. You are a beast! The paratrooper came and spoke to him in his Jeep and he called him colonel.”

  “That’s a good one! He’s probably only the driver, your colonel.”

  “Colonel, I tell you, even though his name is Raspéguy, and he’s going to arrive in full uniform.”

  “Raspéguy, that’s not a French name!”

  “Not French? It’s as French as Lopes, isn’t it?”

  Paulette’s surname was Lopes, but her christian name made her intransigent in matters of origin.