The Centurions (39 page)

“So what? I've commanded Thais, Vietnamese, Chinese, Spanish refugees, workmen from Courbevoie and peasants from the Landes; I could just as easily command Jews if I'm given any. I'd give them the yellow star as a badge; the Nazis made it a mark of infamy, I'd make it into a banner. We would cover it in so much glory that even the Arabs, even the blacks, would be proud to fight under it.

“But first of all I'd make my Jews do two hours physical training every day; I would restore them their pride in their bodies and by the same token, their courage.”

Weihl was more and more astonished. He felt that Raspéguy, in his own fashion, had the makings of a revolutionary leader and he felt almost sorry that he wasn't on his side and could not follow him. With a hollow feeling in his stomach, he shared the bread, ham and wine that Raspéguy had brought with him.

After settling the colonel into one of the spare bedrooms, Philippe Esclavier had gone out to see Mina. Percenier-Moreau was away and the captain enjoyed waking up in her apartment with its over-heavy curtains and over-soft bed, the proper setting for a kept woman. There was too much chromium plating in the bathroom, its bottles and boxes of cosmetics gave it the aspect of a beauty parlour or clinic. He could loll about in bed, in the clinging smell of perfume and love-making, read shopgirls' magazines, listen to cloying music, and enjoy at last that warrior's rest that is only to be found in the company of girls and in a certain sort of second-rate atmosphere.

When she lay in his arms, he talked to her about Souen, the little Vietnamese who had died for love of him. He expatiated on pleasure and love, the pleasure that all women can give provided they are young, beautiful and sensual, love which is unique and occurs no more than once in a lifetime. Mina would weep and beg him to stop. This was how he took his revenge on her for the sense of appeasement she gave him. But Raspéguy was back now, and he felt like a greyhound having his collar put on again. He realized with rage in his heart that he also needed a leash and a whip; he only fought well when he was chained up and it was Raspéguy who held the chain. Free of all fetters, living in featherbed surroundings ever since his return from Indo-China, he was frightened of becoming in a few months as flabby as Weihl and the intellectuals of his circle. He welcomed and feared Raspéguy's return, for he felt at one and the same time the need to obey him and the urge to bite him.

 • • • 

One evening Philippe Esclavier took Raspéguy along to the Brent Bar. It was apéritif time. The clients were talking in subdued voices, which produced a gentle buzzing sound, punctuated by an occasional discordant note: dice rattling on a table top, a glass being spilt or the shrill exclamation of a woman. The atmosphere was compounded of good tobacco, old brandy and expensive scent.

Edouard recognized Raspéguy at once. During the battle of Dien-Bien-Phu several weekly magazines had had a photograph of the colonel on their cover. He went up to him:

“I should be happy, Colonel, since this is your first visit to the Brent Bar, if you would allow me to offer you and Captain Esclavier a whisky or a glass of champagne.”

“Whisky for me,” said Philippe.

Raspéguy felt the warm animal stirring within him. He was recognized even in this Parisian bar. He turned round and scrutinized the slightly tarnished mirrors, the red plush seats and dark panelling. His big hooked nose seemed to inhale and savour the various smells, hanging on to some of them and rejecting others.

“It's nice in here,” he said to Edouard. “I'd like to have an absinthe.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“An absinthe—Spanish pernod.”

“It's forbidden, Colonel.”

“All the dives on the Basque coast have it. One merely asks for ‘a sugar.'”

Edouard gave a little start. The Brent Bar was not a dive and did not deal in contraband. But Raspéguy appealed to him. During the occupation he had sheltered men who had the same sort of face, who uttered strange, sometimes outlandish passwords, who came from London and handed round their last English cigarettes while asking for volunteers to help them blow up the Atlantic Wall.

“I'll settle for a whisky,” said the colonel.

The barman then met Raspéguy's gaze which pierced him straight between the eyes like a harpoon.

“Do you enjoy spending your life behind this bar, serving drinks without risking anything, not even a fine for handling a little contraband? Don't you sometimes feel like closing up shop and going off to the wars, climbing a mountain or exploring a back-water of the Amazon?”

“I spent the war in the underground intelligence networks,” said Edouard, “and I've stuck to my habits. I can find enough adventure here. People are inclined to talk freely to a barman, and one can pick up quite a lot of information.”

“Where does that get you?”

“It's interesting to know, for instance, that everyone is fed up with the régime, everyone despises it but adapts himself to it.”

“What about Algeria?”

“Not a very popular war, that one, but it won't last long.”

“You're wrong, it will be extremely long and arduous. I'll bring you a banner; it's black, like a pirate's flag, with a dagger and parachute in silver. Above there's the motto:
I dare
 . . . You can hang it up on the wall and all my men, their pals and girl-friends, will come and drink in here.”

The colonel held out his hand and Edouard had the feeling that he, too, was enlisting under Raspéguy's black flag.

“By the way,” said the colonel, “I want a room for the evening of January
15
th where I can be left in peace and quiet with a few of my officers.”

“We've got just what you need downstairs. Very discreet, with an exit into the courtyard.”

“A plot,” was Edouard's immediate thought. It was widely believed that the officers who had come back from Indo-China were hatching something. He was overwhelmed with joy at the thought that the overthrow of the Fourth Republic would be organized at the Brent Bar, while he, Edouard, with a broad grin on his face, mixed an americano for the Under-secretary of State in the Ministry of the Interior.

Colonel Raspéguy was extremely busy between the
8
th and
15
th January. He paid a number of visits to the Colonial Troops Inspectorate but never took Esclavier with him. He was even received by a cabinet minister, but for once derived no sense of jubilation out of it.

Sometimes Esclavier, waiting for him at the wheel of the Régence, would see him come out fuming: “The bastards, they tried to do me in the eye again . . .”

The
15
th January eventually arrived. Raspéguy had asked all the officers he had invited to come in uniform and without their wives. At seven o'clock in the evening it was like a blaze of poppies in the Brent Bar. Edouard leaned towards the Under-secretary:

“They're a nice crowd, those fellows.”

“What are they doing in here?”

“I think they're celebrating someone's birthday.”

“They'd be much better out in Algeria. An americano, please, Edouard.”

The meeting took place in the room downstairs, round a long table made up of several smaller ones joined end to end. At one end sat Major Beudin, commonly called Boudin, with a big commercial ledger spread out in front of him. Opposite him was Raspéguy who, as he always did in battle, was breaking up his cigarettes to put into his pipe. Also present were Glatigny, Esclavier, Boisfeuras, Marindelle, Orsini, Leroy, Pinières and Merle—all of them, with the exception of Boudin, former inmates of Camp One. Raspéguy banged on the table:

“First of all, Boudin, you'll stand us all a drink.”

“But . . .”

“You're far too stingy. The only reason you were late coming here was because you wanted to save the expense of a taxi.”

Boudin swayed in his seat and whined:

“Look here, Colonel, that's too much!”

“As I interrogate them in turn, you'll note down the military situation of everyone who's here. We'll begin by you, since you happen to be the highest in rank. Go on, start writing: Beudin, Irinée, length of service, decorations, date of promotion, wounds—don't forget that attack of jaundice which prevented you from being with us at Dien-Bien-Phu—present situation . . .”

“You know perfectly well I've been waiting for you to be given a command before joining you.”

Boudin was suffocating with indignation. For months he had been waiting for a reply to all his letters. Raspéguy had not even congratulated him on his promotion to major and yet they had been warrant-officers together in England. If it had been Esclavier, now! And here he was forcing him to record that Major Beudin, who had not been through Dien-Bien-Phu because of a liver attack, which was hardly his fault, had been “waiting for posting” for the last three months, out of loyalty to Raspéguy.

In his round bullet head, as neat and tidy as a consulting engineer's office, Boudin once again ran through his endless list of grudges against Raspéguy. But the colonel was already going on:

“Captain de Glatigny, what is your military situation?”

“My name's been sent in, Colonel. I'm being gazetted a squadron-leader in February. I've applied to be posted as a military attaché on the other side of the Iron Curtain.”

He felt he had to make some excuse:

“Algeria's a rebellion which will soon be put down . . .”

“No, it isn't,” said Raspéguy. “You remember what the Viets used to say in camp? The war will go on until the complete victory of Communism throughout the world. This is not the moment for an officer worthy of the name, and I saw at Dien-Bien-Phu that you are one, to go wasting time in an embassy.”

“This peasant can talk like a marshal of France when he feels like it,” Glatigny reflected. Claude had driven him to make that application, but he already regretted it. He felt an urge to be with his comrades, to fight at their side, far from staff offices and military and political drawing-rooms where the important commands are won by a word in the right place, a little flattery and pulling of strings. He knew that Raspéguy had managed to obtain command of a parachute regiment; he hoped to join him. He dared not admit to himself that Claude's presence was a burden to him, in spite of the clumsy efforts she was now making to draw closer to him by means of his friends. On two occasions she had entertained Guitte Goldschmidt who was said to be Esclavier's “little fiancée” and was once more on good terms with Jeanine Marindelle. But behind all these strategems Jacques detected the presence of his wife's confessor, Father de la Fargière.

“All right then, Glatigny? Good. Boudin, make a note of it: ‘Waiting for a posting.' For the first time in my life I shall have a staff college graduate as my Operations officer. What about you, Esclavier?”

“I've still got three weeks' leave left.”

“You can take that later. Boudin, put it down: ‘Captain Esclavier is rejoining his unit, at his own request, next week.'”

“Which unit is it?”

“The
10
th Parachute Regiment, at present stationed at the Camp des Pins near Algiers. Boisfeuras?”

“Yesterday I had planned to leave the army to take over the directorship of an insurance company.”

“Have you handed in your resignation?”

“Not yet.”

“Hang on to it then. In Algeria we're going to wage that revolutionary war which you kept dinning into my ears, and put to use what we learnt from the Viets and what you were taught by the Chinese. You'll be my Intelligence officer.”

Boisfeuras had received a letter from Pasfeuro who had been in Algiers for three weeks. He remembered whole passages of it:

The rebellion is far from being kept in check; on the contrary it's spreading, since it finds fresh encouragement daily in the Government's lack of resolution and the inability of the military to organize themselves so as to deal efficiently with guerrillas. The French reject all innovations, the Moslems welcome them . . . But it's the actual climate of this war that worries me, it's amazingly similar to Indo-China. Once again we're faced with the keyword which stirs up the masses and eventually drives them to communism—“independence.”

This war is already proving more brutal and savage by virtue of the violent, passionate, sexual temperament of the Arab and likewise of the Algerian Frenchman who resembles him if only in his bravado and attitude towards women . . . I haven't heard a word from Jeanine . . .

“Well, Boisfeuras?”

“I'm with you, Colonel.”

“Write it down, Boudin. Now then, Marindelle. I must first of all congratulate you on your Military Cross and your promotion. But, believe me, it was quite a business getting them for you. There's a little shit in the D.P.M.A.T. who's made a note in your personal file: ‘Suspected of Communism.' I've decided, for that reason, to make you the political commissar of the regiment. We'll find another name for it, of course, since it's not provided for in regulations, but that will be your job. Agreed? Make a note of it, Boudin.”

“Will our wives be able to come out to Algeria, Colonel?”

“No.”

“Regulations allow it.”

“We're going to wage war outside all regulations. Are you really so keen on your wife coming out to Algeria?”

The question struck Marindelle like a blow in the face, No, he was not so keen on it, he'd had enough of the amorous fiction of the married couple. His love was dead. But Yves was not angry with Pasfeuro or with Jeanine. It was all over. Things would have to sort themselves out by themselves. He would have liked to leave immediately and no longer have to play this atrocious comedy. His comrades regarded him with great friendship, affection and understanding. Tears came into his eyes, he blew his nose.