The Centurions (51 page)

The Vincents had invited about twenty guests to dinner, all people of quality, at least they thought so.

Juliette Vincent counted them off on her fingers, wrinkling her brow as a rebellious fly kept buzzing just above it. Four army men: the general commanding the sub-division and his chief of staff—the general was paying court to her slightly more than mere politeness demanded—Jacques de Glatigny, for whom she had had a soft spot ever since
1945
, and his friend Captain Esclavier; a professor of geology from the Faculty who was just back from the Sahara where, so everyone said, he had made some wonderful discoveries . . . anyway he was all the rage that month; and his wife whom she had never seen, whom no one had ever seen. There are women like that, whom no one ever sees anywhere. That accounted for six of the guests—the foreigners, so to speak.

Then came the Algerians, those who were exclusively from Algiers and did not own a country estate handed down to them by their ancestors. First of all, Dr. Yves Mercier with his wife and Geneviève, his sister-in-law, who was reputed to be his mistress; the three of them were always asked out together. After that, Bonfils and Maladieu, two big Public Works contractors who were established on both sides of the Mediterranean and dealt in millions. They had important political connexions and were lavish with their inside information. Bonfils had married a girl from the upper-crust of Algiers whose first husband had been killed in Italy. Dear little Yvonne still made a great show of being a war widow. She was also worth about fifteen hundred acres of the finest land. Maladieu was coming with a young actress who had a leading role in the company which was presenting
Bal de Voleurs
at the Grand Theatre—“My God, what have I done with the tickets?” she suddenly thought—Maître Buffier and his two daughters. People were saying that since he became a widower, the lawyer sought consolation among his youngest secretaries; his daughters, Monette and Loulou, were very much in the swim; they were to be seen at every ball, at every surprise party. They were both looking for husbands, preferably from metropolitan France. Juliette already knew that the two Buffier sisters would throw themselves at Glatigny and Esclavier. When they discovered the major was married they would quarrel over the captain. Loulou would get him, as usual, and Monette would come and weep on her shoulder. Juliette had a certain affection for poor little Monette. At one time, in order to hang on to a possible fiancé, she had surrendered to him entirely, which had been unwise and useless. Luckily only a few close friends knew about this.

Then Isabelle Pélissier, her husband and their follower. That was what Juliette called Bert, “a follower.” The Vincents, the Pélissiers, the Bardins and the Kelbers belonged to the same clan: the big settler overlords of the Mitidja and the Chelif. Isabelle was a Kelber and Juliette a Bardin.

Things weren't going very well between Paul and Isabelle; yet they were childhood friends. What a curious girl, that Isabelle, Juliette reflected. She was considered flighty and flirtatious and whenever she disappeared for several months from Algiers, every one thought she was having an affair. But in point of fact she had gone off to stay with old grandpa Pélissier on his farm which he had sworn never to leave again.

Before the troubles the old man used to spend six months of the year in France; since November
1954
he had not set foot in Algiers.

“Whatever happens,” he had said, “I shall only leave the farm as a corpse—having died from old age” (he was eighty years old) “or because the
fellaghas
have killed me or because we have lost Algeria and I have put a bullet through my head.”

They said he still drank a litre of rosé wine at breakfast.

There would be no one from Government House at the dinner. The Vincents had fallen out with the Resident Minister.

Isabelle was the first to arrive, in a very simple grey dress.

“It suits you perfectly,” Juliette told her, as she kissed her on the cheek.

Isabelle knew that the compliment was sincere for it was slightly tinged with envy.

“I've come to help you receive your guests,” she said. “Let's see your table plan. You've put me next to old Colonel Puysange. He gives me the creeps; he's as lecherous as an old curé. No, put me here, that's right, next to this Captain Esclavier.”

“But what about Monette?”

“Give her Bert.”

“Captain Esclavier is bald and bloated and suffers from B.O.”

“Liar. He's tall and slim, with lovely grey eyes. He's brash and very sure of himself.”

Out in the garden, as the sun went down, iced champagne was served by Arab servants. They were dressed in the traditional uniform: red leather slippers, baggy trousers, and short tunics with gilt buttons.

While paying his usual subaltern's compliments to Juliette, the general automatically kept an eye on Monette and Loulou Buffier, who made their skirts swirl every time they moved so as to display their golden legs.

The general was uneasy. He had just heard that on the
10
th of August a big meeting of the rebel leaders had been held in the Soumann Valley, that it had taken place quite openly and that the Kabyles and the hard core of the interior had got the better of the Arabs and the politicians from outside. Open warfare was now inevitable, irregular, guerrilla warfare which would now be conducted by the most intelligent of the Algerians. Furthermore, they would be able to rely financially and politically on the
200
,
000
Kabyles who were employed in France.

The general asked for some more champagne. It was dry and chilled, exactly as he liked it. The Vincents certainly did their guests well, they kept the best table in Algiers. He decided to forget his worries.

Colonel Puysange had joined Glatigny and Esclavier who were chatting to Isabelle and her husband. He seized the major by the arm in a friendly manner.

“Glad to see you again, my dear Glatigny. What news of Claude? And how are your five children?”

He was warning Isabelle, if she did not know it already, that Glatigny was the father of a large family. Every woman, he thought, had a horror of that buck-rabbit sort of man.

Ever since he arrived in Algiers, Puysange had had his eye on Isabelle and kept weaving intricate webs all round her.

Glatigny introduced Esclavier to him.

“Delighted to know you, Captain. Your name's familiar to me, of course. It's a great name in our Republic . . .”

Isabelle looked at the captain with renewed interest. Puysange was a pain in the neck. He turned to Isabelle, fully aware of her passionate nationalism and attachment to the land of Algeria:

“This name may mean nothing to you, madame: the Dreyfus case, the Front Populaire of
1936
, the Fighters for Peace, the Stockholm Appeal. Of course, the captain's absolutely on the other side, since he's out here with us.”

Esclavier went white in the face.

“You seem to have forgotten my family's activity during the Resistance, sir, not to mention the part played by my Uncle Paul, General de Gaulle's delegate. Our Resident Minister was one of his closest friends. I hardly dare call on him as he's anxious to take me into his military department whereas, by temperament, I prefer to be in action . . . in the mountains.”

Glatigny appreciated this passage of arms. Esclavier had just scored a direct hit. Puysange had been doing all he could to join the Minister's military department, and his horror of combat and campaigning was a legend in the army.

The professor of geology came and joined them. The lenses of his spectacles were like magnifying glasses, behind which his eyes seemed to swim like a couple of fish in an aquarium. He was extremely thin, with the coppery red complexion produced by the Sahara, he wore thick winter clothes and one of his shoe-laces was undone. He asked the captain:

“You're the son of Professor Étienne Esclavier, are you? I'm delighted!”

He seized Philippe's hand and started shaking it with an energy which one would never have suspected in such a skeleton.

Seeing that things were not turning out as he expected, Puy-sange stumped back towards his general. But the innocent pleasure which this worthy man felt at the good dinner which was about to be served in the loveliest surroundings in Algiers, made him all the more exasperated. He decided to ruin his evening for him and leaned towards him.

“I almost forgot, General. The commander-in-chief wants a detailed report on the situation in Algeria for the Ministry of Defence. He'd like you to let him have it by Monday morning.”

“Hell!” said the general. “There goes my Sunday . . . The situation . . . well . . . you know it as well as I do, Puysange . . .”

“The Minister needs it for a question to be put before the Assembly . . . This report, without disguising the known facts, must be on the optimistic side . . .”

The consommé au madère was served.

Paul Pelissier was watching his wife, the other Isabelle, the woman she suddenly became when she wanted to appeal to a stranger: her eyes were sparkling, her skin looked brilliant, her voice sounded warmer. He himself was only entitled to her withdrawn expression, her inert and unresponsive body. For the last six months they had been sleeping in separate rooms.

He noticed Bert who was also looking at her, who was suffering as he was but who had not had the luck to hold her at least once or twice in his arms, the luck or the disappointment.

Isabelle was trying to seduce the captain who was sitting next to her; she was displaying all her charms but would certainly get rid of him before he ever became her lover. There were moments when Paul was glad that his wife was frigid.

His neighbour was Monette. He knew the little idiot had gone to bed with Tremagier in the hope that he would marry her. He felt an urge to be unpleasant:

“Well, Monette, have you heard from Albert recently?”

The young girl blushed and hung her head.

On the other side of her, Bonfils and Maladieu were discussing business across the little actress who was sitting between them. He lent an ear. Maldieu was talking about the plans for a new building project out at El Biar. Paul was interested in this; if the project materialized, the land he owned would increase its value threefold.

Real estate and dealings on the stock exchange fascinated him as much as gambling, whereas he had never been interested in vines and citrus fruits. The settler's days were numbered. Isabelle still felt deeply attached to the land, but then she was just a sentimentalist. Paul regarded himself as someone up-to-date, a man of the times, with an international outlook equal to that of a New York broker accustomed to luxury hotels. Summer on the Côte d'Azur or in the Balearics, winter in Switzerland. He had a certain prediliction for that country, with its stable finances, and he was far from insensible to the respect its inhabitants showed for money . . . He had spent three months in a sanatorium there and retained a pleasant memory of that period of aseptic semi-consciousness.

When he had left for the sanatorium, old Pélissier had said to Paul's father:

“Only one grandson you've been capable of giving me, and he's turned out unsound.”

Paul could not understand why his grandfather had such a passion for Isabelle. In moments of doubt and defiance, when he had drunk too much and his wife had denied him his rights, he imagined there was a vast plot hatched against him and made a show of sniffing at his food as though it was poisoned.

Glatigny was exchanging small talk with Loulou Bouffier. The young girl found the major distinguished and intelligent and was sorry he was married. Another pointless dinner, she thought. She turned her attention to Captain Esclavier, but Isabelle had appropriated him completely. That little bitch had an astonishing talent for keeping the man in whom she was interested apart from everyone else round him. Paul was bursting with jealousy and Bert could not bring himself to eat—it was very funny and served them right! Hallo, there was Monette wiping her eyes with a handkerchief. Still thinking of Tremagier, the little fool! In strict confidence she had told him she had not even enjoyed it, which really was the limit! The professor of geology was gulping his soup rather noisily. Every now and then he would stop, with his spoon in mid-air, and declare that there was oil in the Sahara.

Glatigny was thinking about Aicha. He tried to imagine her at this dinner, violent and rebellious, reminding them all of the tragedy being enacted in Algeria; she would have been the loveliest woman present apart from that strange Isabelle who was leaning over towards Esclavier and arguing with him, her cheeks aflame.

“No,” Esclavier was saying to Isabelle. “The only reason I'm here is to do my duty as an officer and I try to do it as best I can. In Indo-China, I sold my soul: out here, I'm simply doing a job.”

“Out here, you're in France, Captain. My grandfather came from Alsace. He was driven from his home by the Germans in
1870
, and he was given a settler's plot. My name's Kelber and our village in Alsace is called Wintzeheim. They also make wine there. My grandfather brought some vine plants with him when he left, with five hundred gold francs as his total assets.

“No, don't look at my husband; he's not one of us, he's from Algiers. His grandfather and mine were close friends. He came from Touraine with his vine plants. I do so wish I could make you understand . . .

“Would you like to come with me tomorrow to our estate in the Mitidja? We'll go and see old Pélissier; my own grandfather is dead, but Julien Pélissier is so like him . . . that I feel I'm his grand-daughter. We'll leave at dawn, as soon as the road is open.”

To Esclavier, Isabelle had suddenly stopped being that flirtatious, winsome girl with the magnificent body whom he would have liked to hold in a long embrace; she was beginning to assume a proper shape and existence in these surroundings which had no attraction for him.