The Centurions

by Jean Larteguy

In the evening they walked hand in hand through the orange groves. Old Pélissier accompanied them in his wheelchair.

  “I’ve managed to make Philippe understand,” she told him.

  He ran his hand through his whiskers.

  “It must have been quite a job, you made so much noise about it. Do you really think he understood just because you rubbed yourself up against him like a cat in heat . . . Well, anyway, he’s now got something worth protecting in Algeria.”

  “What?”

  “You.”

  Esclavier and Isabelle spent the night on the estate. The wave came and bowled Isabelle over again and Philippe no longer made any attempt to fight against this passion which was creeping over him.

  In the middle of the night a servant came and woke them up. They went outside; there was a red glow in the sky; the neighbouring farm had been set on fire.

  The Murcier estate was one of the oldest in the area; it had been founded a few years after the conquest by one of Bugeaud’s officers who had been demobilized on the spot.

  Leaning on his sticks and sniffing the air, old Pélissier went on cursing without a pause. Eventually he had a stroke and had to be put to bed. Isabelle decided to stay behind on the farm and Philippe drove back to Algiers by himself in the young woman’s car. Before leaving her, he said:

  “I’d like you to meet Dia.”

  “Who’s Dia?”

  “A Negro, our medical officer. To some of us, especially to me, he’s an extremely important person. If I ever had the urge to go to confession like a good Christian, Dia would be the man I’d choose as my father confessor.”

  “Meaning?”

  “That maybe I’m in love with you, maybe I’m genuinely in love, but I should very much like Dia to tell me so.”

  • • •

  Captain Boisfeuras had arranged to meet Chief Inspector Poiston in a bar next door to the Mauretania. He had known the inspector in Saigon, when he was dealing with the Chinese community there.

  “They’re a bit wary of me,” said the inspector, “because I come from Indo-China, but at least I know my job and I don’t deceive myself . . . Algiers is in the hands of the rebels. We’ve got the names of all the leaders of the F.L.N. We know where they’re hiding out, but we can’t put a finger on them.

  “The laws in force in Algeria are the same as in France; they prevent us from taking any action. The police are busy watching one another and every man is ready to denounce his rival if he commits the slightest irregularity. There’s only one solution . . . in my opinion. Let the paratroops loose in the Kasbah, a whole division of them. We’d keep them informed and they could pull off all the jobs that are forbidden to us. But it’s urgent.”

  “We’re due to leave for Cyprus.”

  “This is hardly the moment!”

  “The Resident Minister says that a French division in Egypt would be worth four in North Africa.”

  “But when you get back here, the fellagha flag will be flying over Government House and the Resident will have been strung up to a lamp-post unless he manages to get away in time. Things are moving quickly. Have you heard of the autonomous zone of Algiers?”

  “No.”

  “Well, imagine Saigon entirely in the hands of the Vietminh. apart from a few residential quarters, with Ho-Chi-Minh, Giap, Ta-Quan-Bu and all the rest of them firmly established in the town . . . Because, I may as well tell you, the leaders of the rebellion are already in Algiers . . . They’ve just come in from Kabylie . . .”

  “Put them inside.”

  “Algeria can go to hell, so long as our rivalries continue. I’d better be off, Captain; it’s rather frowned on to be seen talking to the army . . . But hurry up and come back from Egypt before everything is drenched in blood.”

  5

  MR. ARCINADE EMERGES FROM THE SHADOWS

  During the month of September and the beginning of October there were several events which preoccupied the French of Algiers. For the initiates of the Yacht Club there was the surprise party which Isabelle Pélissier gave in honour of Captain Esclavier so that no one should fail to know that he was her lover. Bab-el-Oued, with the tactlessness, open-mindedness and good humour that were typical of this quarter, focused a sharp eye on the liaison between Concha Martinez and her paratroop colonel. The only thing that took temporary priority over this affair was the match between Racing Universitaire Algérois and Saint-Eugène; but from then on Bab-el-Oued became deeply attached to the colonel, it made him its hero at the same time as its adopted son and forced his name down the throat of the prudish, upper-class quarters of Algiers.

  There also appeared, in what it is now customary to call the “fashionable circles,” a mysterious Mr. Arcinade. He was smooth and sociable, he loved sweet cakes, knew all the ins and outs of the Algerian question and appeared to have inside information on Parisian politics. Boisfeuras, who met him several times, could never make up his mind if he was a double agent, a police informer or a sincere patriot whose mind had been somewhat disturbed by reading too many thrillers and spy-stories.

  But “Force A” which was due to land in Egypt, which had been standing by since 22 September and whose existence was now an open secret, had soon ceased to be of any interest to local society.

  Every morning the people of Algiers would open their shutters, put their noses out to sniff the sea air and notice that the fifteen merchant ships that had been requisitioned for the transport of the troops were still in the harbour. Whereupon they would go off to their various occupations, shrugging their shoulders.

  The taxi-driver Jules Pasdeuras, who kept his vehicle in the rank at the foot of the Rampe Bugeaud and held court in the Bar des Amis, summed the situation up twice daily in what was possibly a rather coarse manner, but at the time there was no one in Algiers who did not share his opinion:

  “The Egyptian expedition? My ass!”

  The phrase was accompanied by a magnificent gesture of derision. In a short time no one ever referred to Force A except as the “My Ass Expedition.”

  It was only after the arrival at the Saint-Georges Hotel of two hundred civilian pilots, who were due to convoy the paratroops to Cyprus, that the people of Algiers began to take the matter a little more seriously.

  On the other hand, with the exception of a few rare initiates of the rebellion, no one knew that a certain Khadder, who until then had fulfilled a very secondary role as a medical orderly up in the mountains, had just been posted to the autonomous zone of Algiers. Thanks to a government grant, he had previously received a sound education in the Faculty of Science. He had stooping shoulders and a whining voice and never stopped complaining of the pain he suffered from one of his vertebrae which had been displaced as a result of a fall; he harped on it continuously, like an old hypochondriac on his health or a general on his one and only victory, and thereby earned the nickname among his fellow-students of “Khadder the Vertebra.”

  Khadder’s mind sometimes used to wander, he would forget where he was, what experiment was under way and which of his friends was with him. Mireau, who was his neighbour at the laboratory, would then give him a good kick in the behind.

  “A boot in the ass is the poor man’s electric shock treatment,” he would bitterly observe.

  Mireau was working his way through college and was reputed to have once shown leanings towards the Algerian Communist Party.

  Pasfeuro had been recalled to Paris “for consultations.” The director of his paper, a man of considerable presence and with any amount of decorations, liked to endow his correspondents’ movements with the importance of a diplomatic posting. The Minister for Foreign Affairs having sent for his ambassadors and experts to question them on the possible repercussions of the Suez Expedition in the Middle East and the rest of the world, he promptly followed suit by summoning all his permanent representatives to the Quotidien head office. The ambassadors got the best
part of their information from the Quotidien correspondents, who in their turn got it from the unofficial military and commercial attachés, the fake consuls and “box-wallahs” who were extremely well informed but with whom their Excellencies would never associate.

  The two meetings took place on the same day, at the same time, one on the left bank of the river, the other on the right. The director of the Quotidien and the Minister for Foreign Affairs both had a “contact” in the rival establishment. They were both waiting, the latter to take a decision, the former to orientate the policy of his paper and cull the sensational news items which could not fail to emerge from these meetings.

  Villèle had greater freedom of movement, the managing board of his paper having decided once and for all to stick by the opposition until such time as they were invited to take up the reins of office. To these uncomplicated souls, Paris was France; Jewish banking, the École Normale, Polytechnique and the 16th arrondissement were Paris; the cafés of Saint-Germain-des-Près were a school for thinkers, and progressivism a political ideal. Young, brilliant and well dressed, they had just the right amount of insolence, caddishness and cynicism to maintain the illusion.

  Villèle, who was in Algiers, was therefore able to witness what later came to be called the “El Biar scandal.” He was the one who described it to Pasfeuro, in a report which was accurate enough in detail despite the somewhat “sneering” interpretation he gave it.

  Pasfeuro had seen Jeanine in Paris and resumed his liaison with her. His director had congratulated him on “his very remarkable work in Algeria.” He had all at once forgotten to ask for the increase in salary that he had been promised for some time.

  Reclining in a deck-chair in the garden of the Hotel Saint-Georges just as night was beginning to fall, drowsy and yawning with happiness, he was listening inattentively to his companion’s account. The name of Marindelle roused him from his torpor.

  “Imagine,” Villèle told him, “one of those grand penthouse apartments, with a terrace all round it adorned with flower-pots, succulent plants, dwarf palm-trees and olcanders; big French windows overlooking the Bay of Algiers with all its twinkling lights; thick carpets, deep sofas, first-rate drinks. That big oaf Esclavier certainly knows how to choose his mistresses. Apart from the professional interest he arouses, I’m beginning to have quite a soft spot for him.

  “I had met him the evening before in the Aletti bar and he had asked me to come . . . What an excellent introduction Indo-China is for all those army people! No matter what you write about them, provided you’ve once set foot in Viet-Nam you’re absolved, you’re one of the family.

  “The official reason for the party was not, of course, because Captain Philippe Esclavier had given Isabelle Pélissier joy when she had always believed herself to be frigid. No, it was in honour of the officers of the Tenth Parachute Regiment who were just off to capture Cairo. Her husband was there: a narrow-chested little squirt, but not without intelligence. If I were the captain or his lady-love I’d be a bit more careful . . .

  “The accepted hierarchy of Algiers was completely upside-down for once. Your cousin, Marindelle, for instance, had brought . . .”

  “What’s that?”

  “Ah, I thought that would wake you up! Marindelle turned up with a somewhat mature woman, a lecturer in Saharan ethnology at the Faculty. Neither he nor she left any room for doubt about the kind of relationship that united them. There was something incestuous about their liaison. Oedipus and his mother . . . Does that suit your book?”

  “What a bastard you are!”

  “Do you know, the role of the utter, out-and-out bastard is becoming more and more difficult to keep up in this dull, hypocritical, tolerant world of ours?

  “The paratroops arrived in their camouflage uniform, with their sleeves rolled up and their collars undone. The Algerines were all in black ties, silk shirts and white shantung dinner-jackets; the women, for the most part, in cocktail dresses by the leading Paris designers.

  “The local dignitaries made a big fuss of the mercenaries whom they badly needed in order to bring to heel the Arab League which was threatening their privileges. You remember Salammbo, the dinner at Megara, in Hamilcar’s garden. I kept thinking about it all the time . . . ‘The more they drank the more the mercenaries remembered the injustice of Carthage. Their efforts, viewed through a haze of drink, seemed prodigious and too poorly rewarded. They showed one another their wounds, they recounted their battles . . . Whereupon they felt alone and abandoned in spite of the crowd, and were suddenly afraid of the great city slumbering beneath them in the shadows, with its flights of stairs, its tall dark houses and its obscure gods who were even fiercer than the people themselves . . . ’”

  “Do you know Flaubert by heart?”

  “Yes, I could quote whole chapters at the age of fifteen. I had stolen the book from a stall; it was Salammbo—just imagine, if instead of Salammbo I had taken Les Mystères de Paris—and all at once I was forced to go to work for the Quotidien . . . Colonel Raspéguy turned up with a little tart from Bab-el-Oued, a luscious little piece, dressed up to kill, as common as they make them and stinking to high heaven of skewered meat and pimento. He believes in direct action, that chap. He noticed straightaway that the fine ladies of Algiers were rather discreetly made up, so he turned to his little marmoset who was plastered in red, blue and black, took her by the scruff of the neck, locked her up in the bathroom and gave her a good scrubbing. When she came back she was bright red, as through she had just been sand-papered. She was fuming and never opened her mouth for the rest of the evening except to say ‘shit’ each time a worthy gentleman offered her a glass of champagne or something to eat . . .

  “At first the various groups kept apart. The paratroopers discussed the war, the settlers wine and citrus fruit, the business men money, the women clothes or the latest diet: and all of them, as they sipped their whisky or champagne, kept whispering about Isabelle and her paratrooper and casting sidelong glances at Paul Pélissier to see what attitude they should adopt towards the adulterous wife and her lover. For rarely have I seen two people proclaim so openly that they were in love and sleeping together. They left in their wake a warm, provocative aura of sex.

  “Dia, the Negro, turned up a little later with his little chum Boisfeuras, that disturbing character with the grating voice. They looked as if they had already had a drink or two. They were followed by a big red-haired lieutenant with a set expression who distinguished himself by tripping over the edge of a mat. He measured his length on the floor, thereby provoking a caustic comment from Raspéguy:

  “‘When you can’t hold more than a quart, Pinières, it’s best not to drink a barrel.’

  “Dia gulped down a tumbler of neat whisky, gave a belch of satisfaction and affection, then put his arms round Esclavier and Isabelle and hugged them to his breast. Dia’s got the same sort of voice as Paul Robeson, rich, deep and melodious, a voice made for seducing women, children and slaves . . . which speaks to the heart and the guts. All the guests who were out on the terrace came inside again; that voice attracted them like wasps to a honey-pot.

  “‘Philippe,’ he said to the captain, ‘I’m glad you’re in love with a woman who’s so like you, who’s your own sort, a real live woman . . . this time. What’s your name?’

  “‘Isabelle.’

  “‘Isabelle, this evening there’s something we’ve got to do; we’ve got to kill your little rival; she’s already died once, you know. Don’t be too frightened of her; she was a girl with plaits and a fibre helmet on her head. Little Souen, we all loved her, she was our Indo-China war, she was the one we had come to protect, although we didn’t know it, against the very people with whom she was fighting. We loved her like a little something outside time and space. Souen wasn’t lively like Isabelle. Indo-China wasn’t as real as Algeria . . . It was a place apart, where we lived by ourselves, in a war which we had invented for
ourselves, where we crept away to die like those sick or wounded elephants who struggle off on their own feet to their secret burial grounds. With you, Isabelle, it’s much more simple. You’ve become Philippe’s girl so that he can come with his friends to protect your home . . . ’

  “‘The nigger’s dead drunk!’ Paul Pélissier cried out in a shrill voice. ‘How dare he address my wife as “tu”! He’d better get out of here . . . he’s raving mad . . . ’

  “Whereupon Raspéguy seized the husband by the arm.

  “‘If you like, we can all go with him. With our nigger, we’ll go off and leave El Biar, Algiers, Algeria, the Sahara; we’ll leave you to deal with your Arabs whom you claim to know so well. But if it hadn’t been for us they would have thrown the whole lot of you into the sea ages ago.’

  “At that moment, I promise you, everyone found it quite normal that Isabelle should be Esclavier’s mistress and even that she should advertise the fact, everyone, even her husband . . . What really shocked poor little Paul Pélissier was that Dia had addressed his wife by the familiar ‘tu’ and put his arms round her. As the evening wore on, and the glasses were emptied and refilled, the mercenaries began talking about the war, the Resistance, the prison-camps and Indo-China. I discovered a great deal about them that night.

  “I now realize they’re a simple, rather pathetic lot, anxious to be loved and delighting in contempt for their country, capable of energy, tenacity and courage, but also inclined to abandon everything for a girl’s smile or the prospect of a good adventure. They revealed themselves to me in their true light: vain and disinterested, thirsty for knowledge but averse to instruction, sick at heart at being unable to follow a big, unjust and generous leader and being forced to attribute their reason for fighting to some political or economic theory . . . to take the place of the leader they haven’t been able to find.

  “Those ‘reprobates’ who paid Isabelle the homage of their tales of bloodshed, their savage or nostalgic songs, their distant loves, their mad dreams of conquest, who tore off their medals and ornamental armour to cast them at her feet, were pathetic and at the same time exasperating. In Indo-China they had become adults, and suddenly, because they were about to be launched against Egypt in a good old war of reconquest, they were once more transformed into the pretentious, unbearable warriors they had been before.