The Centurions (29 page)

“And you call Percenier up on the telephone?”

“No, that was the first time.”

Mina lay down beside the captain and nestled her head against his shoulder.

“I'd never thought of it before. Perhaps it was you who gave me the idea. I don't know you from Adam, you don't bother your head about niceties, you fling your shoes into one corner of the room, your coat into another. You have a bath and splash the water all over the place . . . and I get up and make you breakfast. All the others, I used to send packing at dawn. Once the show was over, off they went and no harm done. Just because a man knows what a girl's got under her skirt, that doesn't mean he's got any rights over her. But I want to hang on to you . . . maybe because you're like me, because you don't find life so wonderful . . .”

“What do you find wrong with it?”

“Even a little
poule
has her dreams. Do you know which is the loveliest street in Paris?”

“No.”

“The Rue de Buci. That's where I was born, among the carrots, cauliflowers and leeks in the market. My mother was a concierge, my father worked in a post office. She was a holy terror, my mother. She gave everyone hell, you should have heard her! I remember one row about a fish that wasn't quite fresh; she pelted the fishmonger with his own whitings and mackerels, screaming it was an ‘insult to the working class.' There were two or three other harridans as foul-mouthed as she who promptly rose in support of the ‘working class.' It was a regular free-for-all. My mother fought with one half of the neighbourhood and was ready to quarrel with the other. On liberation day she denounced the whole lot of them. Liberation committees were meat and drink to her . . . Life at home was anything but placid; every day was spent in an atmosphere of high drama.”

“What did your father do?”

“He smoked his pipe and read his paper with his spectacles slipping off the end of his nose. When I think of all the energy my mother expended just for the sake of putting fifty yards of the Rue de Buci in a state of revolt. I left school and studied shorthand-typing at Pigier Secretarial College. A friend of my father's found me a job with the Mercure Laboratories where I started as a book-keeper. The head of the personnel made it quite clear from the start—either I went to bed with him or I should find myself in trouble. It was common knowledge in the office that the boss was partial to little beginners. I went and complained to Mr. Albert Percenier-Moreau . . . That very evening I became his girl-friend. There was no other way out . . .”

“Are you sure?”

“I could have settled down, of course—home, husband, squalling brats and all the rest of it. But I should still have had to go to bed with the head of the personnel. Thanks to Albert, I've already had my photo in the weeklies.”

“To advertise his products?”

“What of it? I've had some small parts in films; one day I might be given a big one. I'm following a course of dramatic art and my teacher says I show promise. I photograph well, my face seems to be expressive.”

“So's the rest of you.”

“Anyway I'm no longer broke, making do with a cup of coffee and a couple of croissants for lunch. I can afford a fine young captain when I feel like it, and in linen sheets too; I've every reason to be hopeful. Prince Charmings aren't to be found in a typist's office, but they all go to the cinema.”

“What does your mother think about it?”

“She says I'm a traitor to the ‘working class' but still accepts my money to buy herself a refrigerator. I see her as little as possible. She enjoys the role of the mother whose daughter has gone to the dogs . . . and since she needs an audience, well, it all takes place in the street. I'm very fond of that street all the same. Over there I'm once again the little Merchut girl, Elizabeth Merchut.”

“Whereas here . . . ?”

“Whereas here I'm Mina Lecouvreur. But that's enough about me. What about you? For someone who's just back from Indo-China, you don't seem to be in much of a hurry to get home. Are you married?”

“No, thank heavens.”

“Well, then?”

Philippe ran his fingers through Mina's hair.

“I've got a score to settle with a dirty little bastard.”

“Are you going to break him?”

“It's not quite as simple as that; the little bastard may not be as much of a bastard as he seems . . .”

“Did he run off with your girl when you were away fighting?”

“No.”

With her chin in her hand, Mina voiced her thoughts out loud:

“Worse than that even? He stole your apartment?”

“And everything in it, but I've only myself to blame.”

“Take a leaf out of Mother Merchut's book. Start screaming: ‘It's an insult to the working class' and then pitch in. We could bring her along with us if you like. She loves meddling in other people's business . . . Only a paratroop officer and the working class don't quite go together. Don't worry, though Nathalie Merchut has always put her taste for squabbling above her political convictions . . . and like her daughter, she's got a weakness for handsome young soldiers . . .”

This time Philippe Esclavier laughed out loud, visualizing his arrival at the Rue de l'Université flanked by Mother Merchut and her daughter, breaking in on the staid meeting of Weihl and his progressivist friends, and shrieking: “It's an insult to the working class.” “And nothing could be closer to the truth,” he reflected.

“You don't often laugh, Philippe. A pity, because it suits you, you no longer look like an angry old bear. Here, give me a kiss. Do you know anyone in show business?”

“Not a soul. I'm just a brutal and licentious soldier.”

“It was too much to expect, I suppose. Have you ever been in love with a girl . . . I mean, really in love?”

Esclavier hung his head and felt the blood rushing to his face.

“Yes, I've been in love . . . I never went to bed with her; I only kissed her once, and then only on the cheek . . .”

“Calf love.”

“No, it was . . . three months ago . . .”

“Don't cheat, Esclavier,” Dia had told him when they had got drunk together in Marseilles. “The whole thing's too good to be true. Little Souen was all on her own; you had nothing to do with it, you were just a pretext. Lescure probably got closer to her than anyone else, playing his little flute in the dark.”

And here he was professing his love for Souen, for the benefit of this little bitch! Yet he could not resist it. He was certainly the son of his father, whose two or three extra-conjugal adventures had given rise to books or rather literary discussions . . .

Intellectuals didn't know how to love; they were always obsessed by their own problems; they listened in raptures to the beating of their heart; anything served as a pretext for them to probe their souls in order to produce a spate of words. He had not yet been able to eradicate this persistent weed, this observant and monstrous egoism.

Like little Mina, he was obsessed by show business; but his show business was exclusively for himself and a few initiates. He suffered but consciously thought of putting his suffering to use, he struggled with himself while pondering on the way in which he could describe his struggle, he loved or pretended to love in the hope of using that love in the form of narrative. This was in his blood, this need to serve as an intermediary between what he experienced and felt, and a public. This obsession with the public was inherited from his father; it was like a thistle that had to be rooted out.

As he felt in his coat pocket for a packet of cigarettes, Philippe found a notebook in which he had jotted down the addresses and telephone numbers of his comrades on leaving them in Marseilles.

Glatigny: Invalides
08
–
22
. He rang him up while Mina lay down on the thick carpet and did some stretching exercises “for the sake of her figure.”

A very well-bred, over-bred, deep-throated voice replied:

“Countess Glatigny speaking. You wish to speak to the captain? Who shall I say? Captain Philippe Esclavier. He'll be delighted; he never stops talking about you. I hope we shall meet soon. Just a moment, here he is.”

Esclavier gave a little shudder:

“Brr . . . I bet Glatigny doesn't have much fun.”

But his comrade's warm voice was already on the other end of the line:

“So you've got to Paris at last. How long did you stay in Marseilles?”

“Four days.”

“Where are you? Come and lunch with us. You know the address:
17
Boulevard des Invalides. You haven't got a car . . . Shall I come and fetch you?”

Philippe had no wish to partake of a family meal, to be interrogated on every count, to have to answer questions which ostensibly had no connexion but which would enable the countess to determine his social background and fit his accent and manners to the preconceived idea she would have of him.

“I suggest we lunch together alone, Glatigny. Let's meet at the Brent Bar off the Champs-Élysées. It's in a side street next door to the Colisée.”

“I'll see if I can get away.”

Philippe heard his comrade's voice more faintly:

“Claude, I shan't be in to lunch. What's that? General de Percenailles's coming? Well, you'll have to make some excuse for me!”

A child shouted in the background, then another, and Glatigny's voice sounded closer:

“Right, Esclavier, see you in your bar at half-past twelve.”

Philippe had the impression that his comrade was relieved and delighted with this opportunity he had just been given to escape from his little family hell.

“Take my number as well,” said Mina. “If you ever feel low just give me a ring and if Albert isn't about, come over and see me. Just a couple of good pals doing each other a good turn . . . I'd like to take you to the Rue de Buci some day, if only to show my mother and her little crowd that I'm not just an old man's moll.”

“Look out, Mina, you're getting sentimental. Very bad for your career.”

“You can be so sweet sometimes, just for a few minutes, and then, suddenly, out you come in your true colours . . . the real man, selfish and cruel . . . who takes his pleasure and promptly puts his trousers on again.”

“Well I never, you're trying to start a row!”

Mina held her chin in her hand.

“But it's true, you know.”

She gave a rather forced little laugh.

 • • • 

Leaning back in her arm-chair, the Comtesse de Glatigny scrutinized the stranger who was sitting in her drawing-room reading the paper, in a pair of old slippers and a grey pullover.

The stranger was her husband, the father of her five children.

“Jacques.”

“Yes?”

He looked up; she did not even recognize his face. Was it leanness that exaggerated his features and his square chin, the rather common chin of a boxer or swimming-instructor?

Why had he thought it necessary to parachute into Dien-Bien-Phu? It was a splendid, dashing gesture, and at the time Jacques had been praised to the skies by everyone she met. Later on there had been a certain reservation. By jumping in he had betrayed his class, for in the army, as in the rest of the country, there were class distinctions which had nothing to do with rank or service. By his action he had publicly repudiated the general staff to which he belonged. Yes, the action of an officer of the line . . . a breach of manners on his part . . . and now this habit he affected of pinning a paratrooper's badge on his uniform! Paratroops were nothing but adventurers disguised as soldiers.

Rather than lunch with General de Percenailles, he preferred to meet this chap Esclavier in a bar. General de Percenailles was a dreary old bore, but he still had useful connexions in the cavalry and played the dual role of arbiter of elegance and chairman of a sort of honorary jury; he it was who decided what was done and what was not done. He was one of those who had condemned Jacques's gesture. This luncheon might have set everything to rights, but Captain de Glatigny, a staff officer who was in the running for the command of a squadron, preferred to meet a big oaf of a paratrooper in a bar.

Since his return Jacques had never stopped talking about this fellow Esclavier and all the tricks he got up to, about a sort of tramp called Boisfeuras, about Pinières and Mahmoudi, an Arab, and a certain Raspéguy, an illiterate who had become a colonel and who at any other time would have remained a warrant-officer for life.

The day after he got back, they had both gone out to dine with Colonel Puysange who was said to wield considerable influence behind the scenes in the army.

General Mélies of the Ministry of National Defence was also there, and in the course of the evening the name of Lieutenant Marindelle had cropped up.

Lowering his eyelids, which gave him a vaguely sphinx-like appearance, Puysange had observed:

“I've had a report on that officer. During his four years' captivity it seems the Communists worked on him pretty thoroughly and he actually became one himself. His parents are well off; we're going to ask him to resign his commission.”

Claude de Glatigny had seen her husband go white in the face and raise his voice all of a sudden:

“If you did that, Colonel, it would be a pretty dirty trick apart from being a crime against the army.”

“But, Captain, he can be invalided out. We can put it down to malaria; that's been done before you know . . .”

“Lieutenant Marindelle was one of the few of us who understood about revolutionary warfare. His conduct in the camps was above all praise, I can vouch for that . . . He's an exceptional man, Colonel . . .”

Colonel Puysange had been warned that anyone who had been in a Vietminh camp was never quite the same when he came out. But for a Glatigny to have changed to such an extent—this was really astonishing. Yet he could not tolerate such an attitude in one of his subalterns, and at the same time he had to tone down the necessary reprimand and make it sound like a friendly admonition, for the captain belonged to a powerful clan.