The Centurions (20 page)

Dia put his hand on his forehead, and at once he felt a sense of relief, as though another child had come to help him build his dam. The Negro repeated his question:

“How do you feel?”

What remained of Esclavier made an effort to speak and to smile. He started off by swallowing hard, then managed to utter the words:

“I'm thirsty, I'm always thirsty, but I keep bringing up whatever I drink.”

Dia burst into a loud guffaw:

“You'll be better tomorrow.”

Souen left the room with the doctor in charge and Dia. The Negro was scratching his head and had become extremely solemn, which gave an innocent and at the same time sly expression to his face.

“He's been passing blood, hasn't he, Miss Souen?”

She felt she should defend her patient:

“This evening was the very first time.”

“God Almighty, they brought him here too late. Intestinal haemorrhages are the final symptoms of spirochetosis. I've never seen anyone survive who's reached that stage.”

Dia turned to the doctor in charge:

“Miss Souen will have to stay with the patient all night to give him something to drink at regular intervals. She's got a certain way with her.”

“Comrade Souen,” the Viet replied, “will certainly volunteer for this additional task. She knows her duty as a militant and has pledged herself to our cause body and soul and once and for all.”

He delivered this little speech with unconcealed self-satisfaction. He looked to see if it had made any impression, but the big Negro remained impervious, his thoughts elsewhere. He was running over in his mind everything he knew about this illness, every treatment that had been discovered. None of them was available here, and in any case it was now too late. He hung his head and felt the sharp pang that occurred every time death got the better of life and snatched one of his patients from him. He was a Christian at heart but he still vaguely believed in the old animist legends and felt that every creature that died diminished the sum total of the “vital force” of the entire universe. Some of his own strength would be taken from him when Esclavier strained for the last time to expel what life he had left. He would also lose a comrade, and he had an extremely profound sense of solidarity. Between themselves Negroes called one another brother, but Dia also called many white men brother.

In the early hours of the morning Esclavier's temperature went up again and Souen remembered what the black doctor had said . . . The Frenchman was going to die . . . unless . . . But she hadn't the right to think of that.

It was amoebic dysentery the patient had, since he was passing blood; she knew this, she didn't have to be a doctor for that.

In the director's medicine chest there were some of those long brown phials that cure dysentery; they contained emetine. But emetine was in short supply, it was reserved for the soldiers of the People's Army.

Esclavier started moaning again. She wiped the sweat off his forehead with a damp cloth. His features were drawn; he was battling with death all by himself, battling with the big black fisherman of legend who haunted the sunny beaches of Annam with the souls of men in his net. She was there to help him, and she was doing nothing. But she had not the right to do anything, not even to believe in the big fisherman.

Once again she wiped his forehead and tried to force his teeth open to make him swallow a drop of tea.

The emetine was reserved for the soldiers of the People's Army; this was as it should be, for they had to fight without aircraft, without medical facilities against the wealthy soldiers defending imperialism. But President Ho had decreed a policy of leniency . . .

Esclavier gave a sort of violent hiccup; Souen thought he was going to die and she felt overwhelmed with sorrow as though someone very dear to her was about to be snatched away: her father, her mother . . . No, this was different, it was something even stronger. Then the patient recovered his breath.

She tried desperately to find a solution:

“I'll go and see the director; I have done my duty by him, he has confidence in me; I shall ask him, as an exceptional favour, for a phial of emetine. He won't be able to deny me this. Yes, but he's not here; he's asleep, he's tired, I can't wake him up for something so unimportant. I shall report to him tomorrow. Anyway there will soon be peace, and medicines will start arriving from all four corners of the earth.”

Souen hurried across to the infirmary; she was blinded by the gusts of rain which twice tore the helmet off her head.

She lit her way by switching her electric torch on and off, as she had been taught, so as not to waste the battery.

When she got back, she had the precious phial clutched in her damp hand. She took a syringe and a needle out of her first-aid box and by the light of a candle-end heated up some water on the open fire.

The water took a long time to boil. She felt like screaming with impatience; the patient was liable to die at any moment. She blew frantically on the embers. Outside, the monsoon burst into a steady downpour.

Eventually she managed to give the injection and Esclavier immediately seemed more comfortable and began to breathe more regularly again.

The downpour had also abated slightly; it had lost its aspect of violence and fury and the myriad drops of rain tapping on the roof of the hut sounded almost friendly. The fire flickered and slowly died down, still throwing off a gleam or two which flared over the thin partitions and over the patient's face, that emaciated mask in which the eyes formed two dark cavities.

Souen felt happy; at the bedside of this man whose very name was unknown to her, this man of an alien race, she experienced a feeling of joy of which she had never before suspected the existence.

With her little wicker fan she slowly swept the thick air above the prisoner's face and smiled. He was hers, for she had saved him, of that she was certain, little knowing that emetine had no effect at all on spirochetosis. One day peace would come and they would meet again. He would be strong and upstanding again, the finest, strongest white man in the world. Then she would tell him how for his sake she had stolen the precious phial.

Her misgivings returned, but gently, like the sound of the rain, and, like the rain, they seemed to share her secret.

Souen had made the
tou-bi
a gift of her first fault against the Party, almost as though it was her virginity. As a result of this she felt vaguely distressed and at the same time filled with wonder.

When Dia came back the following morning, Esclavier was asleep and still being attended by an exhausted and radiant little Miss Souen. He put a hand on the patient's forehead and felt his pulse. The fever had abated. With a final effort, by summoning up all his strength, Esclavier had managed to reach the threshold of the tenth day.

Dia felt like laughing out loud, singing and dancing. Death had been warded off, humanity was the richer by a man's strength. That night he had prayed to the Lord for Esclavier's soul and all the time the Lord, with a great chuckle, was busy curing the captain. He was immensely pleased.

“He's saved,” Dia told the nurse. “I can't get over it. He saved himself all on his own, without my medicine . . .”

“Don't you think . . .”

She stopped short. For the pleasure of scoring over the black man, she had almost revealed her theft of the emetine.

When Dia bent over Esclavier to examine him more closely, she started forward as though intent on defending her patient. Dia looked at the girl and was astonished to see that she was no longer an insect, that there was something warm, triumphant emanating from her, that her eyes sparkled and her nostrils quivered. Life was coursing once more through her veins.

“It can't be possible,” Dia said to himself. “She's showing every symptom of being in love!”

In the four years he had been at this hospital he had never seen such a thing: a Vietminh woman falling for a prisoner. He felt like being very gentle with her, calling her “little sister” and telling her to be extremely careful because she risked death, and Esclavier as well, if anything occurred between them. For the moment Esclavier was quite incapable of doing the least thing, but she, Souen, was aglow with love; it was as visible as a firefly in the dark.

When he went back to Lescure, Dia was singing. He seized the slender lieutenant by the elbows and dandled him in the air like a child:

“Two miracles have happened,” he chanted. “Blessed be the Holy Virgin and all the angels and all the demons of hell. Esclavier should have died last night; this morning he's alive, alive and kicking, his fever's almost gone; and that little brute Souen has fallen in love with him and is beaming like a candle. Love has come into the big Vietminh hospital of Thu-Vat for the first time, like a ray of sunshine on the termites. Perhaps they'll all die of it.”

By the evening Esclavier was much better. He no longer brought everything up and cheerfully gulped down every cup of tea that Souen made him. Dia brought him a tin of condensed milk which he was keeping for a special occasion. It still bore the label: “Gift of the American Red Cross.”

When Souen came back next morning, she found that the captain, while attempting to sit up, had fallen off his bunk. Stark naked, with one elbow resting on an emaciated leg, he looked sheepish and at the same time furious. She could not help laughing.

“Well, well, well,” said Esclavier, “that's the first time I've heard you laugh. I thought you all had something cut out of your throats.”

She helped him climb back on to his bunk and experienced a fresh tremor as she felt Esclavier's arm round her shoulder. She tried to reason with him:

“That's not very nice of you, Eclapier . . .”

The captain peevishly corrected the pronunciation of his name:

“Esclavier. Captain Philippe Esclavier of the
4
th Colonial Parachute Battalion . . .”

“There are no captains here, or paratroops. There are just
tou-bis
, prisoners to whom we're applying President Ho's policy of leniency . . .”

“Oh, balls!”

Exhausted, the captain fell asleep. Souen pulled the bedclothes over him and ran her fingers over his forehead. He was called Philippe. She repeated the name: Philippe . . . Philippe . . . He had big grey eyes, as luminous as the sea on certain mornings in the Baie d'Along. For a moment she imagined herself sleeping in his arms, like her sister with the major, then instantly dismissed the idea. Philippe was just a
tou-bi
, an enemy of her people.

 • • • 

That evening Souen attended the political education meeting which was held once a week for the personnel of the hospital under the presidency of the director, Doctor Nguyen-Van-Tach, a member of the Central Committee.

As usual, the meeting began with a collective self-examination undertaken by Nguyen-Van-Tach. He reproached himself in the name of his comrades for the insufficient efficiency of the hospital and emphasized the fact that even if the armistice was signed at Geneva, the struggle would go on until every vestige of capitalism disappeared from the earth.

Some of the participants then accused themselves of minor faults, promised to make amends and made solemn resolutions that were utterly out of proportion to their misdemeanours. The usual routine.

Souen was sitting in the front row and for the first time the doctor noticed how beautiful she was: a butterfly that had just emerged from its chrysalis and was stretching its new wings in the sun.

All the desires he had suppressed since he had joined the People's Army—high-spirited young girls, iced beer, unreserved friendships with men like Dia, the click of mah-jong pieces in Chinese shops—came flooding back like a whiff of magnolia on a June evening in Pnom-Penh. He would have liked to hold Souen tight in his arms and caress her long eyelashes with his lips.

He mastered his emotion and cleared his throat.

“I must congratulate our comrade Souen,” he said, “for the great forbearance with which she has looked after a prisoner in spite of the disgust and contempt this mercenary inspired in her . . .”

“No,” said Souen.

There was a heavy silence. One never protested when praise was meted out to one but, on the contrary, it was customary to lower one's eyes and assume a modest, startled air of embarrassment.

“No, Comrade Tach, I'm not worthy of your praise. It's my duty to inform you that in the course of this task I committed a serious fault. In your absence, when the
tou-bi
was going to die, I took it on myself to take a phial of emetine and inject him with it. My pride tempted me to put my own interpretation on President Ho's directives on the policy of leniency . . . But today you have made me aware of my fault, for I should have known this medicine was reserved for our valiant combatants. I beg leave to be removed from my post.”

Souen had spoken on the spur of the moment, to be relieved of her sin, and she was already regretting it, for she was going to be separated from her
tou-bi
.

Doctor Nguyen scrutinized his audience but no one showed either anger or compassion. They were all waiting for him to give a sign of the one or the other. Souen was really gorgeous, sitting bolt upright, her face raised towards him, offering herself for punishment.

He had some difficulty in assuming the injured tone to suit the occasion:

“Comrade Souen, I must give you a severe reprimand. I see, however, that you recognize the gravity of your fault. Your past record and political background speak for the purity of your intention. I feel partly responsible myself for having allotted you these extra tasks which might have warped your judgement to such an extent that you allowed yourself to put your own interpretation on our beloved leader's decisions. You will remain in your post and deal with the
tou-bis
instead of tending our glorious combatants. That will be your punishment.”