The Centurions (24 page)

Pasfeuro sometimes wondered who on earth his father might be. Certainly not the old marquis, whose tastes were exclusively unnatural. Perhaps the plumber who happened to call that day. Ever since the Crusades his family had been easy-going in that respect. But what the hell did he care? He was now plain Pasfeuro, a reporter on the
Quotidien
, who earned
150
,
000
francs a month, plus the fiddles on his expense account.

He loved his job, but he was less talented than Villèle; he did not cheat so much. Pasfeuro was against the war in Indo-China but not against the men taking part in it.

Perhaps he would shortly see Yves Marindelle, Jeanine's husband, coming down the sandy path. It might be slightly embarrassing . . . In this batch there was probably also a distant family relation, that fellow Glatigny who wore an eyeglass and who was allowed to ride horses which were even better bred than he was.

Pasfeuro suddenly noticed a little Vietminh in uniform who earlier on had introduced himself to him as a journalist. He was now on board one of the LCTs and had just handed a piece of paper to one of the Pims.

The latter promptly turned round towards his comrades and gave certain instructions.

“Ho Chu Tich, Muon Nam!”
*
the Pim shouted.

His comrades took up the cry, shouting louder and louder, and suddenly, at a sign from the “journalist” who had gone back ashore, they all threw their bush hats into the water.

That wretched dented headgear which was worn by every soldier in the expeditionary corps had suddenly become the symbol of servitude.

The crowd on the banks cheered and waved small flags but there was nothing spontaneous about this manifestation.

“Enjoying it?” Pasfeuro asked Villèle. “The whole thing's a put up job.”

“Men regaining their liberty, it's always rather moving.”

As a Pim passed close by him waving wildly, for it was wiser to be in with the new masters, Villèle recoiled in a squeamish sort of way. Pasfeuro sneered:

“They're quite clean, you know; they were all given a bath before embarking.”

A medical orderly or doctor in a white smock, with a surgeon's mask stretched across his mouth, was preparing to deal with the sick and had lined his stretchers up in a row on the bank. Behind him stood his team of nurses, detached and aloof. But the Pims were all perfectly well; they were as plump as could be and bursting with health. The man in the white smock dithered; he had received his instructions and behind him two cameramen were watching him rather reproachfully.

At long last he noticed a victim of sea-sickness who was still somewhat green in the face. He fastened on to him; he was saved; here at last was a victim of colonialist atrocity. The Pim, wondering what was happening to him, tried to get away, but he found himself laid flat on his back, held down on the stretcher, photographed and filmed. Only his legs kept kicking out in a rather ridiculous manner.

“Brain-washing makes me sick,” said Pasfeuro, “any form of brain-washing. Propaganda's a filthy business. Are you going to write about this show, Villèle?”

Villèle put his head on one side and in a slightly scornful tone replied:

“It's only a detail. You've got to try and see things as a whole . . .”

Three violins playing out of tune; a drum which couldn't very well do anything else but play in tune; three little pig-tailed Vietminh girls going through the motions of a national dance, and behind them, looking very pale, the French prisoners.

They marched under a triumphal arch of paper and bamboo which proclaimed the brotherhood of the masses, then another, smaller one, which wished them a safe and speedy return to hearth and home.

Pasfeuro could scarcely recognize the emaciated youngster in the front rank as Yves Marindelle. He was no longer the mischievous noisy, truant schoolboy with his pockets stuffed with practical jokes and snares who had flown out to Indo-China four years earlier after entrusting him with his child-bride. This was a cross between an old man and an adolescent.

Yves caught sight of him, rushed up and burst into tears.

“It's you, old man, you've come all the way here. How's Jeanine?”

“She's waiting for you in Paris.”

“Why didn't she write . . . through Prague?”

“She tried to . . . several times . . . through the Red Cross.”

Glatigny had now come up behind them. He too had changed; he no longer looked like one of his horses.

“Glatigny, let me introduce a cousin of Jeanine's, who now goes by the name of Pasfeuro.”

“I know him,” said Glatigny. “He's also a cousin of mine.”

He gave a slight bow and turned his back on him.

“What's wrong, Herbert? He doesn't seem exactly delighted to see you. Oh, of course, it's because you've changed your name.”

“I'd almost forgotten,” Pasfeuro was thinking, “I've also got that silly Christian name, Herbert, maybe because my mother slept with a lord . . . or with the butler.”

Pasfeuro had promised Jeanine to put Yves in the picture, to tell him it was all over between them, that she wouldn't ever sleep with him again, that she would no longer be his wife but always his sister if he wanted. He couldn't do it: it would have been worse than hitting a cripple. He would stand him a lot of drinks, give him the best meal that money could buy, get hold of a girl for him, the loveliest girl in Saigon . . . and afterwards perhaps he might bring himself to tell him.

After having their names checked, the prisoners filed on to the LCT, still in complete silence. A few journalists followed them aboard. When the ramp was raised behind them a voice rang out, the voice of a former prisoner perched in the bows:

“Off with this filthy crap!”

He hurled his Vietminh helmet into the water. All his comrades followed suit.

Villèle leaned towards Pasfeuro and asked under his breath:

“Who's that savage who's trying to jeopardize our relations with the Vietminh by that idiotic gesture?”

“Captain Phillipe Esclavier.”

The helmets now mingled in the Red River with the bush hats and bobbed about in the wake of the boat as it drew away from the shore.

The senior officers were liberated after the subalterns, and General de Castries on the last day.

When a journalist asked him what he was looking forward to most, he replied with an extremely distinguished lisp:

“Thteak and french-fried potatoeth.”

Pasfeuro interviewed Raspéguy who was in great form, beaming with health and vigour; he had done two hours' physical culture every day.

“Did you have a very hard time in captivity, Colonel?”

“Not at all. In fact I might even say I found it extremely interesting. I think it taught me a lot—for instance, how to go about it so as not to let those fellows get the upper hand . . . smart fellows, you know. Nowadays you've got to have the people on your side if you want to win a war.”

“There's no longer any question of war; the armistice has been signed.”

“The armistice! That's just another staff college idea! The armistice! There won't be any now . . . or if there is it'll be a swindle or some sort of racket. You didn't by any chance see a man called Esclavier and his gang of ruffians go through?”

“Yes, three days ago. They're all in the Lannemezan hospital.”

“Have you ever done any fighting yourself?”

“Yes, and I can't say I enjoyed it very much.”

Raspéguy looked utterly bewildered; he could not understand how anyone could fail to enjoy fighting.

Lescure and Dia were evacuated together, but by helicopter with the seriously sick.

When Colonel V—— who commanded the French detachment saw the Negro doctor, he turned to his second-in-command and said:

“Better keep an eye on that bird: a doctor, therefore an educated black; must have been influenced by Vietminh propaganda; a Communist most likely; make a note of him.”

The colonel had a powerful voice; Dia, a sensitive ear; he had heard everything. He turned towards Lescure:

“I suppose we're going to run into bastards like that everywhere!”

Lescure played two or three notes on his flute and shrugged his shoulders.

 • • • 

The former prisoners spent anything between one week and one month in various hospitals in Indo-China. Then they began taking to drink, sleeping with women or smoking opium . . . but hardly any of them seemed to be in a hurry to get back to France.

They were becoming re-acquainted with the pleasures of Vietnamese life; instead of alienating them from “yellow skins”; their captivity had brought them closer. They could be seen arguing with rickshaw coolies and Chinese itinerant vendors. They proved to be amenable and not at all recalcitrant, they reported punctually whenever required and filled in any number of forms, but they appeared to be living outside the Army, in a world of their own; they eschewed the company of white women and of their former comrades who had not been through the same ordeal.

One morning they were quietly herded on to a ship; it was the
Edouard Branly
, a stout old Chargeurs Réunis tub with good food and comfortable cabins. They put into Singapore, where they bought mangoes and Chinese knick-knacks; Colombo, where they made an excursion to Kandy; Djibouti and Port Said; and one day, towards ten-thirty in the evening, they reached Algiers.

It was
11
November
1954
.

 • • • 

They were told that the boat would be leaving again at two o'clock in the morning and that they could go ashore.

Mahmoudi left them there. He had been ill during the voyage and an ambulance was waiting to take him to the Maillot hospital. He could hardly bring himself to part from them. In leaving them he seemed afraid he would once more be assailed by all his doubts, uncertainties and contradictions.

The former prisoners of Camp One went ashore and were astonished to find the town as dead as though it was under siege. All the shops in the Rue d'Isly were closed. Patrols tramped the pavements in their hobnailed boots. The steps of the main post office were picketed by a platoon of C.R.S. wearing steel helmets and armed with submachine-guns.

They made for the Kasbah in the hope of finding a night-club or brothel open but came up against barbed-wire entanglements guarded by Zouaves. They did not come across any of their comrades of the parachute units, and at the empty bar of the Aletti Guillaume the barman told them they had all left the evening before for the Aurès.

Not knowing where to go, frightened of finding themselves plunged once again into an atmosphere of war, a fear to which they thought they had become impervious, they fled back to the boat. In the bar Merle had picked up a Paris newspaper, and since his comrades were jostling all round him, he read bits of it out loud.

Seeing this little gathering, Raspéguy promptly joined them, followed by a portly little major of the Algiers garrison wearing the red forage cap of the Zouaves.

Aurès. First major engagement. Entrenched in the caves, the fellaghas are firing on our troops. Thirty rebels captured in Kabylie. Batna, tenth November. The first major engagement in the general mopping-up operations in the Aurès is now taking place in the Djebel Ichmoul two kilometres from Foum-Toub; south of this locality a detachment consisting of two companies of paratroops have made contact with a band of outlaws who have taken refuge in some caves from which they are firing with automatic weapons. The battle was still going on at dawn this morning.

Three paratroopers have been wounded, one seriously. They have been brought back to Batna by helicopter. The bodies of two rebels have been found and one prisoner has been taken; he was armed with a rifle and revolver.

In Kabylie, near Dra-el-Mizan, two policemen have captured thirty rebels who had committed various offences in the area. While they were passing through the village, the population attacked them. In spite of the policemen's intervention, one was killed and another wounded.

In Algiers the police have discovered a store of bombs in the residential quarter of the town. A similar discovery has been made in the department of Oran, at Er Rahel.

At Rio-Salado in the same department, the police have identified eight men who were being sought for terrorist activities and arrested six of them. Twenty pounds of explosive and three rifles were found in their house.

For the last forty-eight hours all civilian aircraft have been grounded. An aeroplane was reported last night, flying with all lights extinguished above the Aurès range, while a number of fires were observed in the mountains; the authorities believe that the rebels, whose supplies are running short since the roads have been cut, may be receiving arms and food by parachute.
*

“It's the same old war going on,” said Boisfeuras. “The Viets were right.”

The little major could not let this pass. All the men arriving from Indo-China had their vision completely distorted by their captivity or engagements against the Vietminh. They had caught some nasty yellow infection of which they would have to be cured, come what may.

“Captain,” he said, button-holing Boisfeuras but addressing all the other officers as well, “Algeria is not Indo-China. The Arab is a Moslem and not a Communist. We are dealing with an essentially localized rebellion, a few bands of Chaouia brigands. We have sent in the paratroops, which we should have done some time ago. It will all be over in a week. In Algeria there have always been flare-ups of this kind . . . ever since Bugeaud, and in the same area. Forget Indo-China, you're now in Algeria, only a few hundred miles away from France.”

He turned to Raspéguy who, as a senior officer, was surely bound to back him up.

“That's right, isn't it?”

Raspéguy sucked his pipe and cast a glance of inquiry at Esclavier.