The Centurions (22 page)

“Before knowing him, as a naked little nigger-boy, I used to tremble with fear. But when he held my little black paw in his great hairy fist, I was no longer scared of the fetishes or poisons. Father Teissèdre was love: the love of the Negroes, of the white men, of the whole world; he was stranger than all the fetishes and witch-doctors and political commissars . . .

“One day he came into an inheritance: a farm in his native Auvergne. He sold it to pay for my education . . . In the name of love, in the name of Father Teissèdre, to hell with the Vietminh!”

He took a great gulp of the rice spirit.

“The Vietminh and all those who deny love and mystery and gods, who block their ears so as not to hear the joyful and bewitching tomtoms of nature, sex and life, all those will be found dead one morning and no one will know why. When they've snuffed out all the lights, they'll fall flat on their backs and die . . .”

And Dia the magnificent, dead drunk, fell flat on his back himself, while there rose in the clammy, stifling darkness the sweet, clear melody of Lescure's shepherd's flute.

After delivering Esclavier at the hospital, the team of stretcher-bearers under the leadership of Marindelle made their way back to Camp One by easy stages.

As soon as they were away from their chiefs, the three
bo-dois
who made up the escort became carefree, cheerful and friendly with the prisoners, from whom they could only be distinguished by the weapons which encumbered them. They merely attended to the evening meal, which they made a point of preparing themselves, for the
tou-bis
were no good at cooking the rice which had to come out of the pot after twenty minutes' simmering, hot, dry and each grain separate. The “newcomers” would have willingly prolonged this holiday-camp existence, but Marindelle, Orsini and Leroy told them they had to be back in camp by
14
July.

“Anyway,” said Leroy, “we've only got enough rice to last up to the twelfth.”

Parodying the Voice, Marindelle explained:

“The
14
th of July is the feast of the liberation and brotherhood of the masses. The French people, our friends, who are fighting by our side in the camp of Peace, were the first to shake off the yoke of tyranny and feudalism on the
14
th July
1789
. The Bolshevik revolution of
1917
completed this task of liberation. These are the great dates of humanity on the path of progress and in the historical sense . . .”

Marindelle resumed his normal voice:

“Therefore, by way of celebration, on the
14
th July
1954
rations will be doubled all round provided we put on a big show with lectures, news bulletins, self-examinations at every level, both national and individual, manifestoes and motions, choirs and orchestras, theatrical productions and I don't know what else . . . A show that's not to be missed, calories to be built up, and perhaps the announcement of our release.”

They reached camp on
13
July, shortly before the midday meal.

The parade ground was already decorated with banners in honour of every liberation movement, denouncing every form of constraint and imperialism, and cursing every Bastille and every prison.

Merle, with his hands in the pockets of his shorts, his beret tipped forward over his nose, and his nose sniffing the wind, was on the prowl for “news items.” He wanted, he said, to write a full report on the preparations and the event itself for the camp newspaper.

At the slaughter-house he saw four skinny goats fastened to two stakes, some chickens and ducks for those on the “régime,” and two pigs whose exact weight he noted down for the sake of accuracy. They had to be weighed on old-fashioned bamboo scales. One came to just over seventy pounds, the other to almost eighty.

He went and interviewed the camp commandant who told him that for
14
July the prisoners would be issued, in addition to their rice in lard and lentils, with a supplementary ration of goat in sauce, rice and molasses, and half an ounce of salt per man.

He exaggerated these items of news as he saw fit, spoke of pigs weighing the best part of three hundred pounds and whole flocks of goats, and hinted that the Viets who had just discovered a store of wine-concentrate were going to dole out a quart to every man in the camp . . .

Merle's article was a great success. He decided that once he was free he would embark on a journalistic career.

Marindelle then assembled his team.

“We must all contribute,” he told them, “within the limit of our means and our imagination, to the celebrations organized for the
14
th July. The afternoon meeting will be brought to a close by the adoption of a manifesto addressed to the French people which will be broadcast on the Vietminh radio and reported in France in
l'Humanité
. This manifesto has been drafted by some of the old hands; I did a certain amount of work on it myself and you can count on us. There's nothing missing; we've even made sure of just the right amount of exaggeration to make anyone with any sense in his head howl with laughter. Needless to say, all the old hands will be only too eager to sign it, and also a large number of the newcomers.”

Marindelle was pacing up and down in front of his comrades who sat squatting on their heels.

“Nevertheless, in order to prove the sincerity of our feelings, it wouldn't be a bad thing if some of you refused to sign this manifesto. I therefore propose to distribute the various roles we have to play. When the Voice calls on you individually for your official signature, you will all read through the text with the utmost care and if necessary ask a few judicious questions before putting your name to the manifesto. Captain Glatigny who is looked upon as a ‘feudalist'—that's written down in his file, I've seen it—obviously can't be expected to sign. So you'll declare, sir, if you don't mind, of course:

“‘I am an aristocrat and the son of an aristocrat, a pupil of the Jesuits and a French officer. During the last few weeks, thanks to the humiliation of defeat, I have become aware that my heredity, my background and my profession have corrupted the man in me. I now recognize the bestial selfishness of my class. But I have not yet been completely stripped of my inheritance of false ideas. If you order me to do it, I am quite prepared to sign this text with which I heartily agree in so far as it concerns the peace and brotherhood of the masses. But I am not convinced by the rest of it and I should feel I was deceiving you if I did not confess what doubts I have on this score.'

“Assume the proper tone of voice and an air of modesty combined with a certain forthright endeavour that suggests your regret at not being able to fall in completely with the fighters for Peace. After that, confide in the Voice who, with tears of joy in his eyes, will take the pen out of your hand and urge you to persevere with your re-education which has started so well. Shall we rehearse it together?”

“No, Marindelle,” said Glatigny, “I do not care to lie, not even to an enemy.”

Marindelle's voice became as dry as Glatigny's:

“I must remind you, sir, that you are still at war; what I'm asking you to do is an act of war. It's something more subtle but infinitely more realistic than a cavalry charge.”

Boisfeuras broke in.

“Marindelle's right, Glatigny. Perhaps this role doesn't appeal to you because in your case there's a certain amount of truth in it?”

Glatigny made an effort to speak in a detached tone but he felt the anger welling up inside him.

“Would you kindly explain exactly what you mean by that, Boisfeuras?”

“You have recognized the failure of your class, the feudalism of generals and staff officers to which you belong. Which makes you so grumpy that you lose all sense of subtlety and self-control.”

Glatigny gradually calmed down:

“You must forgive me, Marindelle. You're right, my reeducation is still not complete. You ask me to perform an act of war and as such I shall do it . . . to the best of my ability. In my military career I've been required to do a number of unpleasant things, and this is one of them.”

“I've been having to do unpleasant things for the last four years,” Marindelle gently replied.

“I shan't sign all that crap,” Pinières declared.

Orsini took him to task for this, and his voice suddenly betrayed the inflexions of his native Corsica:

“Don't be a nitwit, it's the surest way of letting your family know you're still alive.”

“I happen to have worked with the Commies, when I was in the F.T.P. They're not such bloody fools as that; they know what I'm like and they realize I'm hardly likely to take part in their little games again.”

“All the more reason,” said Marindelle. “Your name on the list will act as a further disclaimer.”

“Do you really hate them as much as all that?” Boisfeuras asked Marindelle.

“I sometimes admire their courage and endurance; they're fortunate in having a faith; I've even got a certain weakness for the Voice, I've hoodwinked him so often. I realize that many of their methods are valid and that we ought to adapt ourselves to their form of warfare in order to get the better of them.

“It's difficult to explain exactly, but it's rather like bridge as compared to
belote
. When we make war, we play
belote
with thirty-two cards in the pack. But their game is bridge and they have fifty-two cards: twenty more than we do. Those twenty cards short will always prevent us from getting the better of them. They've got nothing to do with traditional warfare, they're marked with the sign of politics, propaganda, faith, agrarian reform . . .

“What's biting Glatigny?”

“I think he's beginning to realize that we've got to play with fifty-two cards and he doesn't like it at all . . . Those twenty extra cards aren't at all to his liking.”

 • • • 

The
14
th July festivities were a great success. For several hours the prisoners forgot their circumstances.

There was a civilian in the camp. He had been there for two years. The Vietminh had captured him in the Moyenne Région while he was going round from post to post selling odds and ends. He was about thirty years old, with a little moustache, and was for ever taking his notebook out of his pocket and totting up rows of figures. He was working out all the money he would have earned if, instead of being a poor wretched civilian, he had been a soldier whose pay was accumulating in a post office savings' account.

Sometimes he shyly asked one of the officers:

“The Vietminh have put me in the same camp as you; they therefore regard me as a military prisoner and an officer. On this score I may be entitled to an officer's pay. I've lost everything. I even owe some money to a Chinaman. No? You don't think I'll be considered as an officer? My truck which they burnt was worth
40
,
000
piastres, the contents
100
,
000
piastres, and they took all the ready cash I had on me:
60
,
000
piastres . . .”

The prisoners were hoping that at the evening meeting they would be informed that the war was over. But the Voice made no announcement. The prisoners went back to their
canh-nas
, weighed down with disappointment.

The fortnight that followed was one of the gloomiest periods of their whole captivity. The instruction sessions brought the same old news of the Geneva negotiations which were dragging on interminably. A rumour sometimes spread through the camp in a matter of minutes and brought all the prisoners out of their huts: “American marines have just landed at Haiphong and two units of Chinese volunteers are concentrating on Mon-Kay and Lang-Son . . .”

The old hands discussed the news with a sort of disillusioned philosophical attitude, while the newcomers at once drew dramatic conclusions from it: they were going to be sent to China, they would never be released.

Some of them came and saw Glatigny, hoping he would still know all about the intentions of G.H.Q.

“What do you think?” they would ask the C.-in-C.'s former A.D.C.

Glatigny refused to cheat in order to reassure his comrades.

“The internationalization of the war is a solution which has never been completely excluded. The French in Indo-China are fighting against the entire Communist world. It would thus be logical if the nations of the free world stepped in, as they did in Korea.”

“So you believe that the marines have really landed?”

“It would mean that the Geneva conference has broken down.”

“In that case we ought to try and escape at the first opportunity,” said Pinières. “Who's with me?”

“Don't let them lead you on, though,” Marindelle warned them. “That rumour of a marine landing is utter nonsense. I'm pretty certain it was put out by the Voice, the source and medium of every news item. We shall have to undertake your education a little more thoroughly.

“Political re-education has a great deal in common with market-gardening. When you arrived here you were fallow land covered in weeds, thickets and wild flowers. The problem was to make this land yield a good solid Marxist crop.”

“So the soil was broken up for tilling,” said Orsini, “meaning that you were reduced to the appropriate mental and physical condition by an extremely judicious diet.”

“Twenty-five ounces of rice a day in fact,” Leroy chipped in.

The three old hands were performing a well-rehearsed turn. They never missed a cue; they each appeared in turn and made their little speech, then disappeared into the wings.

“Yes, twenty-five ounces of rice a day—the minimum vital ration. Within a few hours, as you saw for yourselves, you were dying of hunger; all you could think of was food. Your stomach clamoured for attention and left you no time for any preoccupations of a philosophical, political or even religious nature. Then the instruction periods began.”

“That was the seed being sown, the good old Marxist seed. It encountered no resistance in such well-tilled soil . . .

“The next thing was to create a sort of Pavlovian conditioned reflex in you, a politico-stomachic reflex. The prisoners have been enlightened and are making political progress. The minimum vital ration is increased proportionally and the stomach is prepared to think along the right lines . . . On the other hand, any backsliding is punished by a reduction in the diet and the stomach has to suffer the consequences of this mental rebellion.”

“But there was still one weed which was particularly tenacious because its roots lay buried deep in the earth: hope—the hope of getting back to France, living as free men once again, seeing our families once more and making love to a girl without committing a political sin.”

“It's worse than quack-grass, this hope. No sooner is it pulled up than it grows again and in a trice strangles the tender little shoots of the Marxist crop. It's got to be pulled up all the time. The best method they've found is the false rumour. Here's what I mean: on the
14
th July everyone in camp was filled with hope of a speedy release. The quack-grass was running wild. So the Voice disseminates one of his false rumours by one of his usual means: a piece of paper dropped on the ground, a
bo-doi
who shoots his mouth off: ‘The Vietnamese delegation has left Geneva for Prague. The Mendès-France government has just been overthrown; the marines are landing at Haiphong . . .' Hope is abruptly snuffed out. There's no other solution . . . the only way to survive and get away with a whole skin is to become good fighters for Peace.”