The Centurions (7 page)

“I've got some money, milady, let me see to it.”

Claude turned round towards her:

“But, Marie, supposing I can't pay you back; there's still no news of the captain.”

“I'll stay on; I'll take some job or other in a restaurant. For once they'll get some decent food. The children belong to me just as much as to you.”

The wart above Marie's lip quivered with indignation.

A newspaper-boy went past shouting out the latest bulletin: “Dien-Bien-Phu fallen; no news of the seven thousand prisoners or three thousand casualties.”

The little countess with the doe-like eyes suddenly turned aside and started weeping silently. The passers-by stared at her in astonishment. Marie rounded on them with rage in her heart; she felt like burying her teeth in them and shouting in their faces that at this very moment her captain was dead . . . or perhaps even worse off.

 • • • 

In the afternoon they watched the arrival of the three hundred officers who had been taken prisoner at Dien-Bien-Phu. Those who were on the staff or who had been captured at General de Castries' H.Q. had had time to make a few preparations. They all wore clean uniforms and their haversacks contained a change of clothing and provisions. They gave the impression that their presence there, amongst all the others, was only by mistake.

Suddenly Raspéguy's powerful voice rang out. He had just caught sight of one of his officers, in a dirty vest and with a filthy bandage round his leg, tied up to a tree because he had jostled a sentry of the People's Army.

“You bastards! What about the rules of war? What do you think you're doing, tying my men up like prize pigs being taken to market?”

Raspéguy was suddenly beginning to find some use for the rules of war which he himself had never observed. On occasion he had been known to conclude his orders with the brief injunction: “Don't be too inhuman.” In actual fact he always wrote out his directives after the operations were over and exclusively for the benefit of his superiors.

He was followed by General de Castries, downcast because he had not been able to die and pass into the realm of legend.

His cheeks were sunken, his features drawn, and the khaki bush-shirt which hung on his shoulders looked several sizes too big for him. He wore the red forage cap of the Moroccan Spahis and a Third Regiment scarf. Behind him came “Moustache,” his batman, a huge Berber whiskered like a Janissary.

The general had reached a little stream of clear water flowing between muddy banks at the foot of the camp. The Vietnamese believed this water could kill. It had needed Communism and war to induce them to venture into these cursed mountains with clear-flowing rivers.

Moustache had seventeen years' service behind him and knew his job. From his haversack he brought out a clean, well-pressed uniform, bush-shirt and trousers, and a leather toilet case.

Castries took off the shirt he was wearing. He heard a noise behind him and turned round. It was Glatigny.

They had known each other for a long time and their families had intermarried at various stages.

The general lisped with great distinction and detachment:

“Ath you thee, old boy, it'th all over. Yethterday, at theventeen hundred hourth, I gave the order to theath fire. Marianne IV fell at nine in the morning. The Vieth were thtrung out along the river to the eatht. There wath nothing left but the thentral strong-pointh with three thousand wounded piling up in the dug-outh, not to mention the corptheth. I reported to Hanoi at thixteen thirty hourth. Navarre had left for Thaigon and I got on to Cogny who told me: ‘Whatever happenth, no white flag, but you're at liberty to take any decision you conthider fit. Do you thtill think a break-out's impothible?' It'th crazy. They never realized what wath going on. They must find thome tholution at Geneva. In three months we'll be releathed.”

It was curious how this word Geneva seemed suddenly fraught with hope. Glatigny repeated it under his breath and found there was something magical about the very sound.

The general finished shaving. He handed his shaving-brush still covered in lather to Glatigny, who suddenly realized how dirty and stubbly he was and to what extent he had forgotten how important personal appearance is to a cavalry man. In
1914
cavalry officers used to shave before going into action. In modern warfare all those rites were ludicrous; it was not enough to be well-born, smart and clean; first of all you had to win.

“I'll soon be thinking exactly like Raspéguy and Esclavier,” the captain said to himself.

But Castries was already passing him his razor and metal shaving-mirror.

“Im! Im!”
the sentry behind them yelled. “Silence! Forbidden you speak to general!”

Castries paid no attention to this interruption.

“You see, all the divisions we were containing at Dien-Bien-Phu will now pour down into the delta which is rotten through and through. Hanoi's liable to be surrounded before the rains start.”

“Im! Im!”
The sentry was getting impatient.

“We'll have to come to terms. The Americans could have intervened before; now it's too late.”

Glatigny was enjoying the feel of the lather on his face, the gliding of the razor over his skin. He had the sensation of shedding a mask and being able to resume his own identity at last.

A
can-bo
, an officer or under-officer with the offensive accent of a brothel attendant, brusquely interrupted them:

“No talking with general: you there, rejoin comrades at once,
mau-len
.”

Glatigny had finished shaving. Castries handed him his toothbrush and his tube of toothpaste, but he did not have time to use them; urged on by his superior, the sentry gave him a shove. He rejoined his comrades: Boisfeuras, who was eavesdropping on the
bo-dois
' conversation; Esclavier and Raspéguy looking strangely alike, each with the same lean, wiry body and unruffled expression, and the same slight tension in every muscle.

Raspéguy grinned pleasantly:

“So you managed to find one of your own sort again?”

The prisoners remained in the Muong-Phan basin for a couple of weeks. They were split up into separate teams and that was how Captains Glatigny, Esclavier, Boisfeuras and Lacombe, and Lieutenants Merle, Pinières and Lescure found themselves condemned to live together for several months. They were presently joined by another lieutenant, an Algerian called Mahmoudi. Withdrawn and silent, he prayed twice a day facing in the direction of Mecca. Boisfeuras noticed that he made several mistakes and prostrated himself out of time. He therefore inquired:

“Have you always said your prayers?”

Mahmoudi looked at him in astonishment:

“No, not since I was a child. I only began again after being taken prisoner.”

Boisfeuras peered at him with his almost colourless eyes.

“I should like to know the reasons for your renewed fervour—a purely personal interest, I assure you.”

“If I told you, sir, that I did not know myself, or at least did not know exactly, and that you wouldn't enjoy hearing what I feel . . .”

“I don't mind hearing anything . . .”

“Well, it seems to me that this defeat at Dien-Bien-Phu, where
you
”—he laid particular emphasis on the “you”—“have been beaten by one of
your
former colonies, will have considerable repercussions in Algeria and will be the blow which will sever the last links between our two countries. Now, Algeria cannot exist apart from France; she has no past, no history, no great men; she has nothing except a different religion from yours. It's through our religion that we shall be able to start giving Algeria a history and a personality.”

“And just so as to be able to say ‘you Frenchmen,' you prostrate yourself twice a day in prayer which is absolutely meaningless?”

“More or less, I suppose. But I should have liked, even in this defeat, to be able to say ‘we Frenchmen.' You people never let me.”

“And now?”

“Now it's too late.”

Mahmoudi appeared to think the matter over. He had a long narrow head with a determined jaw, a slightly hooked nose and tranquil eyes, and his fringe of black beard trimmed into a point made him look like the popular conception of a Barbary pirate.

“No, perhaps it isn't too late, but something will have to be done quickly—unless of course a miracle occurs.”

“You don't believe in miracles?”

“In your schools they made a point of destroying whatever sense of wonder or belief in the impossible I had.”

 • • • 

Mahmoudi continued to pray to a God in whom he no longer believed.

Glatigny also fell into the habit of kneeling down and praying twice a day to his God, but he had faith and this was manifestly clear.

Lieutenant-Colonel Raspéguy, who felt ill at ease with the senior officers, came and joined them whenever he could. He was only really in his element among the subalterns, captains and N.C.O.s. He always went barefoot—by way of training, he claimed, with a view to further operations. But he never mentioned what sort of operations. He would sit on the edge of a bunk and trace mysterious figures on the earth floor with a sliver of bamboo. Occasionally he would burst out:

“Why the hell did they have to dump us in this damned basin? Christ Almighty, it's unthinkable . . .”

On one occasion Glatigny tried to put forward the High Command theory that Dien-Bien-Phu was the key to the whole of South-East Asia and had been from time immemorial.

“Listen,” Raspéguy said to him, “you're quite right to stand up for your lord and master, but now you're with us, on our side, and you don't owe him anything more. Dien-Bien-Phu was a foul-up. The proof of it is, we lost.”

Sometimes the colonel would go up to Lescure and then turn round to Esclavier and ask:

“How's your crackpot? Any better?”

He regarded his favourite captain with a certain amount of distrust and wondered if he was only looking after the madman the better to prepare his escape, his “midnight flit,” without even letting him know.

At the time of the surrender Raspéguy had wanted to attempt one last break-out; he had been refused permission. He had then assembled his red berets and told them:

“I'm granting every one of you your liberty. It's every man for himself from now on. I, Raspéguy, am not prepared to be in command of prisoners.”

Esclavier was facing him at the time and the colonel had seen that peculiar glint in his eyes:

“So you're giving me my liberty, are you? Well, you'll see if I don't take advantage of it . . . and all by myself.”

If he had had a son, he would have wanted him to be like the captain: “as tough as they come,” prickly and unmanageable, with a strong sense of comradeship, and so crammed with medals and feats of arms that if he had not curbed him a little he would have had even more than himself.

He went up to Esclavier and laid a hand on his shoulder.

“Philippe, don't be a damned fool. The war's not over yet, not by a long shot, and I'll be needing you.”

“It's every man for himself, sir, you said so yourself.”

“We'll have a go at it together later on, when we're ready, when everything's right for it.”

 • • • 

On the third morning—while the prisoners were still at Muong-Phan—it began to rain. Water began to drip through the thatch on to their bunks.

Lacombe woke up and remarked that he was hungry. Then, turning round, he noticed that Esclavier's place was empty. He felt there was something wrong and opened the haversack in which he had hidden six tins of baked beans. There were three missing. He woke up the others.

“Someone's stolen my rations; I'd put them aside . . . for all of us . . . just in case. Esclavier must have taken them; he's run out on us.”

“Pipe down,” Boisfeuras quietly said. “He's decided to try his luck. We'll keep his absence concealed as long as we can.”

Glatigny had come up to them:

“He didn't take all the tins?”

“Almost all,” said Lacombe, whose flabby cheeks were quivering.

“He didn't want to load himself down. Yet I advised him to take the whole haversack.”

“But. . . .”

“Didn't you say you put those tins aside for all of us? Well, one of us needed them particularly badly . . .”

Pinières was furious. He turned to Merle:

“Esclavier might have let us know; we could have gone with him. But you know what he's like: absolutely unco-operative, always does things on his own and trusts no one but himself.”

Mahmoudi, sitting cross-legged on his bunk, did not budge. He did not even try to get out of the way of the water dripping down on to his neck. Lescure was quietly singing a strange little ditty about a garden in the rain and a boy and a girl who loved each other but did not realize it.

The storm had broken in the middle of the night and it had suddenly turned as black as pitch, while the thunder rolled round the valley like a salvo of artillery. Two or three flashes of lightning ripped across the sky. Esclavier had leaped to his feet and crept up to Boisfeuras's bunk.

“Boisfeuras!”

“What?”

“I'm off.”

“You're mad.”

“I can't stand it any longer. This storm, you see, there was a storm like this during my journey from Compiègne to Mathausen. There was a moment when I could have jumped out of the train through a badly fastened window in the carriage, but I waited in the hope of a more favourable opportunity.”

“You're a damned fool. Can I help you in any way?”

“This is my plan: if I head due south I can reach the Méo village above Bam-Ou-Tio in a couple of nights. I once had a look round that part of the country, and the Méos were always friendly. They're related to Tou-Bi, the head man of Xieng-Kouang. They'll give me a guide. By following the crests of the mountains I'll be able to reach the Nam-Bac valley in a fortnight or so and that's where the operational base of the Crèvecœur column should be. If it isn't there, I'll push on to Muong-Sai. The Méos between the Na-Mou and Muong-Sai are all on our side.”