The Mysteries of Algiers

by Robert Irwin

  I pace round the room watched by the placid Saphia. Try again.

  I am Chantal. I am back in Algiers now. I am pretty sure that Philippe is in Algiers too. As I step in circles round the room, I wonder if I have any clues as to where Philippe will be and what he will do next, and I try to guess what my reactions will be to what he does next – or do I mean his to mine? It is a fair bet that Philippe has been successful in getting information about the planned co-operation between rightwing piednoir groups and the paras into the hands of the FLN by now. That particular trick has been lost by us. My guess is that he will feel peculiarly bitter towards me for having unmasked him at the Security Panel. He will certainly have more respect for my abilities, and my elimination will be one of his priorities. I should take care to vary the times and the itineraries of my trips from the villa to the office, and I should always travel armed. Security at the villa should be stepped up. I will get Daddy to put more men on the wall. I will have a description of Philippe circulated to our men throughout the city. But I am aware that by now he will not look much like old photographs of him.

  Ah, it really is no good. Yet it is vital that I should be prepared for Chantal’s next move. I have seen so many military strategies and intelligence plots come to grief on the assumption that, while one’s own men are on the move, the enemy is standing stock-still just waiting to be hit.

  Plod. Plod. Of course she is looking for me and guarding herself. That is ploddingly obvious, but I want to know how she thinks as well as what she thinks – I want to enter the fascist romantic style of thought. Maurice is an old-fashioned ultra and Vichy collaborator and of course there was Uncle Melikian, but Chantal’s own brand of wolves-at-the-door fascism began, I should guess, as dinner-party chit-chat kind of thing – opinions produced at table and frivolously defended in the interests of épater one’s elders, but, in time, such opinions harden and in defending them one becomes strongly attached to them. Slowly the shocking romantic frivolity hardens into a total delusional system. In the system, her daddy, her villa and Western Civilization, as she imagines it, are all under threat from the fanatical devotees of a German Jew who lived in London in the nineteenth century. Das Kapital is the cabbala of a thieves’ kitchen of psychopathic terrorists, venereal free-lovers, death-camp commissars and well-poisoners. The real danger to her gilded existence is boredom and futility, but she fears what she wants to fear in life. It is the same with her enthusiasms – they are her own delusional projections.

  This passion for D’Artagnan for example. It is plain to me that she has read the book with her eyes shut. Armed with the analysis provided by correct ideology, I recognize D’Artagnan for what he is – an arriviste of near plebeian origins, at best a lukewarm defender of the King and quite indifferent to the Church, rather sympathetic to Cromwell’s republicanism in fact. Does D’Artagnan not tell the King of France, ‘The voice of the people is the voice of God’? The man was a social-climbing snob. Why else sleep with Milady de Winter? A glorified grocer with interests in the wine trade and in property. But with the book on her lap and her eyes shut, Chantal sits in the torrid over-scented garden and dreams and sighs over a D’Artagnan who is as much an hallucination as the appearance of a four-foot-high purple spider in her garden would be. D’Artagnan is her hero and Captain Philippe Roussel, late of the Foreign Legion, her master villain, but this does not prevent a love –

  The return of Jalloud brings a welcome end to my fruitless pacing. He and Nounourse went out over an hour ago for a walk around the block. Jalloud is very cheerful. He tells Saphia to leave us alone. He has to chivvy her into the bedroom, for she is reluctant to leave her chair, but off she goes sighing, bulging and swaying to collapse on to her bed. Jalloud produces an envelope from his pocket.

  ‘I had forgotten. We found these photographs in your bag and I had them developed by one of the comrades.’

  Yes, there she is, Yvonne sprawled like a discarded rag doll with the black stuffing coming out of her head. It is a good photo. I do not trouble to conceal my satisfaction, but Jalloud says, ‘She could have been your mother.’

  ‘That my fellow Frenchman should prefer their mothers and France to social justice, I can understand that. These things are not abstractions. France is family and people that one loves, houses we have built, fields that are cultivated. The pull is strong. Of course it is. But understanding is not the same as agreeing. Social justice comes first. And no half-measures. As Lenin says, “One should always try to be as radical as reality itself.” ’

  ‘Talking to you is like pressing the button on a tape recorder,’ says Jalloud and he gives me another of those disarming smiles.

  I do not reply, but what I think is that I do not care if I am predictable, so long as I am right.

  Jalloud puts the photos back in his pocket and continues, ‘Nounourse will be back soon. We have been talking – about you of course and your information. Comrade, I am happy to be able to tell you that our cell is prepared to take part in the sabotage of the Vercingetorix plot and the “elimination” –’(he pronounces this word with ironical relish) ‘– of Chantal. We would like very much for you to help us. And we will be asking neighbouring cells in Algiers for their help too.’

  ‘Thank you, Jalloud. I don’t want to seem ungracious, but shouldn’t all this be cleared with your commanding officer first? I don’t know what you call him or who he is, but he is at present the only FLN colonel in Algiers. The codename he used when I sent my reports to him was “Tughril”. If we act without clearance from above, I fear that we might all end up smiling the Kabyle smile.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’ says Jalloud. ‘I am “Tughril”.’ And he giggles in nervous self-deprecation.

  ‘You can’t be “Tughril”. Nounourse runs the cell.’

  ‘Nounourse runs the cell and I run Nounourse, and all the other cells in Algiers too, for that matter. Fortunately, not all the cells are in the charge of men like Nounourse, or the job really would be too much for me.’

  Jalloud is very young. I don’t know whether to believe him or not. However, I suppose I shall have to act as if he really is who he says he is. There can be no proof. But Jalloud claims to have read all my reports and found them very useful.

  ‘Nounourse really wanted you dead, you know,’ says Jalloud. ‘We have been walking and talking, and now I have sent him on a longer walk to cool off.’

  I decide to risk it.

  ‘People like that, ex-petty criminals –’

  ‘Nounourse’s crimes are not so petty.’

  ‘– ex-criminals are not to be relied upon, at least not as the leaders of revolutionary cadres. Listen to what Engels says, “Every leader of the workers who uses these scoundrels as guards or relies on them for support proves himself by this action to be a traitor to the movement.” For your own good, I suggest that you get rid of him.’

  Jalloud smiles gently.

  ‘Well, I can see that you two have not hit it off. But you listen, Engels is not in charge of the Algiers wilaya. I am and I say Muhammad before Engels or before Marx. Muslim does not murder Muslim. Social justice is not going to be achieved that way. I have told Nounourse all your good points and told him to like you. Now I am ordering you to do the same. Nounourse is a fine fellow.’

  ‘The man is a clown! A buffoon! At best a circus strong man!’

  Jalloud laughs delightedly.

  ‘Well yes. He has a big mouth, no? I can tell you a story about that. This was two years back, when I was not yet colonel, but only a major. Nounourse was in the group of cells I had been put in charge of. My orders were to form them into a commando platoon and to use this platoon to give the French a very big fright. Our plan was to blow up the big gasworks down by the docks. That really would have been an explosion – had it come off. You must remember the incident? It was an obvious target and naturally the French were not fools about it. There was always a very heavy guard of armed gendarmes around the gasometer. My plan was to send a platoon
in with a time-bomb on a short fuse. They were to fight their way up to the steel casing of the gasometer itself, plant the bomb, then scatter, but not scatter so far that they could not hold off the gendarmes and the fire-brigade with their sniper fire. Then, if possible, my men should make their separate ways back to headquarters. However, when I briefed the men, I made no attempt to conceal from them the probability that they were members of a suicide squad. They listened to me very carefully. Then, as soon as I had finished, Nounourse was up on his feet, demanding that he lead the section that actually carried the bomb. He said that he was going to stand over it with his sten gun, until the device actually went off and if it did not go off then he could make it go off with his teeth. He beat on his chest just like Tarzan. Yes he actually did! (It is Saphia who encourages him in this. She has a thing about Tarzan. She is always reading the comics.) So he was banging on his chest and telling us at the top of his voice that he was the greatest bandit in all Algiers, and how many gendarmes he was going to kill and lots more noise. Everyone was looking up to him. But I had my eye on another man in the group, not noisy like Nounourse. A dyer from the tanneries. This dyer said quietly that of course the mission made him afraid, but he was just going to do his duty. He hadn’t much experience, but he was going to do his duty.

  ‘So, well, there is not much more to tell. On the day of the mission I put Nounourse in charge of the section of the platoon that was carrying the bomb. He would have broken my head like a coconut if I hadn’t, but in the same squad I put that modest young dyer who was not afraid to admit that he was afraid. When night fell the comrades went off down to the docks. I wept as I kissed them all goodbye. Everything went wrong. The details are of no interest. Down by the docks the comrades took a wrong turning on the way to the gasworks, and blundered into a cul-de-sac. They were spotted by a gendarme. Also perhaps there was a leak in our security, for that night the docks were crawling with regular troops as well as gendarmes. The comrades find themselves trapped in this little road without an exit. And what happens? Nounourse sets the bomb against the wall at the end of the road and starts its fuse, and they shoot away at the police and soldiers. The bomb goes off. A couple of the comrades are injured in the blast and one is killed. But those who can go through the wall, while Nounourse holds the troops off, making his Tarzan cry all the time. At the end he runs out of ammunition and has to bludgeon a soldier down with the butt of his gun. Then Nounourse makes off. It was amazing he escaped, for he was carrying another man, that young dyer who was too frightened to walk and the load was not very pleasant, for the dyer has shitted in his pants. Later that night we executed the dyer for cowardice in the field.’

  Jalloud scrapes his chin and gives me a very direct look.

  ‘I tell you all this to show you that things are not always what they seem. Or rather they are precisely what they seem. That is the paradox.’

  Again I am not sure whether I believe Jalloud, but there is no point in saying so.

  ‘I had better give you another shot before Nounourse comes back. He does not like to see drugs being taken in his flat.’

  While Jalloud busies himself with the solution and the injection, he continues to talk.

  ‘Nounourse is OK. You will see. He obeys me. They all obey me. I bet anything that you think I am too young to be in charge of a whole wilaya. It is not so. Some months back this summer I and some of the comrades had to go to Arzew to meet a Bulgarian who was saying that maybe there might be arms from Russia for us, maybe not. You know Arzew? This meeting was on the cliffs by the sea where we could see that we were not being watched. We had look-outs in all directions. The Bulgarian was thinking maybe what you are thinking, that I was not really in charge of my men. So I told him to be a witness to what was going to happen and I made a signal to one of my watchers on the cliff and he threw himself off the cliff down on to the rocks below, dead, just like that, and the Bulgarian’s doubts were at an end. It is true. Nounourse was there.’

  Jalloud sighs heavily.

  ‘So now, I and my men are at your disposal. You can snap your fingers at them, like me. What is your plan?’

  It will not do to show any hesitation.

  ‘The demonstration and putsch are still more than a fortnight off. I have ideas about that, but first I propose that we put a spoke in their wheels by eliminating Chantal. That woman is dangerous.’

  ‘Murder Chantal? Why not?’ says Jalloud indifferently. It does indeed seem that he will go along with anything I say. ‘Why not? But how? and where?’

  ‘Just this morning I noticed that the opera house is mounting the Ring cycle. The first night of Rheingold is the day after tomorrow, and –’

  ‘And she will be there.’

  ‘All the old Pétainist scum will be there, come to celebrate the Aryan Artist as Superman. In any case, it is the event of the season. The de Serkissians will have a box for the first night. That is a certainty.’

  ‘The opera –’ Jalloud hesitates. ‘That will be difficult. To get in will be possible for you, perhaps for several of us. But what about weapons? Will we not be frisked and searched at the doors? Will it be the gun or the bomb? And how are we going to escape? None of us knows the opera house. Does it have to be the opera?’

  ‘The opera will be best. The de Serkissian villa and the SDECE building where she works are both heavily guarded. Besides, action like speech has its rhetoric. An outrage at the opera will have a definite effect – and it will prove to the world that there is nowhere that these people can be safe.’

  Jalloud deliberates.

  ‘OK. I can see that, but the details will be difficult. We will need to know more about the layout of the place and the location of the de Serkissian box. That is important. We will need time maybe to “persuade” some of the stagehands or other backstage people to co-operate. It could be done perhaps … but we can’t just charge into it.’

  ‘True. I have thought about that. Rheingold is on Monday. Three days after that is the first night of Die Walküre. Later come Siegfried and Götterdämmerung. So I will go to the first night of Rheingold, reconnoitre and report back. Then later we make the attempt on one of the other first nights.’

  Jalloud thinks hard. Then he seems to see a possibility.

  ‘Yes. Good. It would be best if we murdered that woman during Götterdämmerung. That is Twilight of the Gods, is it not? It will have a good effect, as you say.’

  He stands up and walks about, waving the now empty syringe in an excited fashion.

  ‘But I am coming to the opera too! I have never been to an opera before! Let us take a box, if we can … We will need proper dress, but I can fix that. Our expenses can all come out of the FLN funds.’ He giggles a little hysterically. ‘But what Nounourse will make of it, I do not know.’

  At that moment the door opens.

  ‘Ah, there you are, Nounourse! We were just talking about you.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  Jalloud looks elegant and excited. From time to time he self-consciously runs his fingers down his jacket. He has provided me not only with a dinner-jacket, but also a hat, white scarf and gloves and a gardenia in my button-hole – and dark glasses. I am to wear the hat tipped over my eyes and the scarf wrapped round my mouth, for fear lest any of my former comrades-in-arms recognize me. I look like Rudolph, Prince of Geroldstein – as impersonated by a grocer in a small-town amateur dramatics society. I am only thankful that Jalloud’s mates in the kasbah have failed to produce the sash of the Légion d’honneur. When Nounourse sees me, he roars with delight and throws a punch at my stomach. It is true that I have a paunch, but it is a muscular paunch. It can take the kick of a mule. I don’t even grunt. Nounourse gives me a funny look.

  Jalloud is frantically hunting for his binoculars and he asks me if we should take money for ice-creams. Saphia in her chair gets irritated by Jalloud’s jokes and nervous gestures. I am irritable and I sweat profusely, for, over the last two days, Jalloud has been watering down the doses o
f morphine.

  In the foyer, I thrust past the fat white women with gold on their bosoms and the men with shiny faces. The men bow to hear their partners’ words, then bob away as I thrust past. Ah, the charm of the upper classes! Well, I am determined not to be charmed by them. These people have come together in the evening’s stifling heat in a sort of demonstration to the world outside. For, after all, in one thousand three hundred years of history, the Arabs have produced nothing that remotely compares with Wagner’s Ring cycle. Squeezing their bums into their seats is, then, a political act for these idlers. Certainly I hate opera. What is remarkable is that they do too and that they are so bad at disguising it. They will talk about anything except the music that they are here for and they will shift restlessly on their seats. Even so, it is a price they are ready to pay, if only to have something to talk about at the dinner parties which form the life-in-death of the dull winter season in Algiers. If a socialist revolution in Algeria succeeded only in closing the opera house and putting an end to those dinner parties, it would already be something. Personally, I used to enjoy the dirty stuff we sang in the barracks on Camerone Night. I am also fond of the songs of Edith Piaf. She sings for the little people.

  The audience is stacked and raked in the confined space, like so many birds of prey nesting on a cliff face, squawking and extending their jewelled talons. We have a box. Jalloud’s French army issue binoculars sweep the balcony, the grand tier, the circle and the stalls. There is no sign of Chantal or of her family. General Challe is here though. Jalloud has spotted him in a front stalls seat. If only we had managed to smuggle weapons in tonight … I, too, scan the house obsessively. Since I have returned to Algiers, I have been conscious of Chantal as an unseen presence. Wherever I go, she walks with me, a ghost who walks hip to hip with me and who matches her steps precisely to mine and at night I have lain awake wondering if my ghost also walks with her and when she lies with another man is my ghost also present as the third one in the bed, unconsenting but repeatedly violated? I find the strength of this romantic and certainly neurotic fantasy somewhat eerie and Marx’s guidance on these matters is enigmatic. What he says in The German Ideology is that ‘The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life-processes, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises.’