The Praetorians (11 page)

He bent down.

“A refrigerator, ice, Perrier water. Do you mind if I help myself, sir?”

“You can drink up all this muck and then go and sleep it off in an armchair in front of the fire. I'm getting out of here; it doesn't suit me. I'll have to find another office.

“You don't know anyone on whom we could unload all this junk?”

Boisfeuras had strolled over to the sideboard and was pouring himself out a drink:

“There's only one possible purchaser, and he's the O.P.A. agent for the whole zone. . . .”

“You know who he is and he's not inside yet!”

“His name is Ben Mohadi, sir. Yes, the brother of the deputy—former Secretary of State, and tomorrow, perhaps, a Minister. No evidence against him. Hands off. That's what they told me in Algiers.”

“Everything about this war is rotten, and if it goes on we'll be like all the rest of them.”

Raspéguy began pacing up and down, bumping into the furniture.

“This town,” said Esclavier, as he finished off his drink, “stinks of racketeering and easy money. In the barracks the soldiers have sheets; not a single vineyard has been destroyed for a year.

“Three operations in one month, four shot-guns recovered, but a film show every evening. Sunday-afternoon dances at the mayor's or sub-prefect's, bathing parties, fishing expeditions. . . .

“And, one afternoon, twenty bodies on the beach, including women and children, and a young girl pinned to the sand with a bayonet, like a butterfly to a cork.”

He poured himself out another whisky and drank it down, then flung the glass into the fireplace.

“We must bring off something big,” said Raspéguy, “and be quick about it.”

Colonel Raspéguy's measures, including the eight o'clock curfew, were not very popular with the local population.

Macheret, the councillor general, declared over the preprandial anisette:

“Not only are these military bastards incapable of protecting us and allow us to get massacred, but they also muck us about. They would do better to catch the band responsible for the outrage.”

“Everyone knows it came from Kabylia.”

“Yes, but in Kabylia there are mountains to climb. Down here they're on the flat, and the wine isn't expensive.”

Missot thumped the table with his fist:

“Only a week ago you were all saying: the man we need is Colonel Raspéguy, he's the only one who can clean up the district. You said so to the deputy when he came and even to Lacoste when he saw you in Algiers.”

But no one listened to Missot or paid any attention to his outbursts. His farm had been burnt down a year ago; he was poor and lived in two rooms with his old Moslem overseer who did the cooking. Missot had the bitter satisfaction of never having paid any dues to the F.L.N.,
*
but his wife and son had been killed.

Some of the shopkeepers employed him to do their accounts or fill in their tax forms and reimbursed him more often than not with a slap on the back.

“Good old Missot!”

“Is it true,” Bouvion asked, “that poor Jacquier has gone off his head because of his daughter?”

“That's what they say,” Macheret cautiously replied.

Anything concerned with Jacquier made him feel uneasy and frightened.

Missot clapped his big hands together, then swept back a lock of grey hair falling into his eyes.

“Jacquier's going to come back and there'll be some bloodshed.”

Jacquier arrived on the following day, at the same time as the new sub-prefect. He went at once to see the colonel. Raspéguy had settled into a disused dispensary in the centre of the town,
between the town hall and the church. A big deal table served as his desk and he had hung the walls with maps of the district.

A Virgin of Lourdes in plaster, daubed in blue with a halo and a long chaplet, was still fixed to one of the walls. The statue reminded Raspéguy of his village. On
15
th August they carried the Virgin through the streets, stopping at each of the flower-decked altars of repose, while the men chanted canticles in Basque or Latin.

He began humming one of these age-old canticles, and nostalgia for his country, his estates, the men of his race and his law, for the first time plucked at his heart-strings.

Jacquier came in without knocking, with his hat on his head.

“You're Colonel Raspéguy, aren't you?”

Raspéguy slowly raised his eyes and looked at this huge red-faced man with his fur-collared overcoat, the massive signet-ring on his finger, and his cold, steely little eyes.

All he said was:

“Get out.”

At Algiers Jacquier had always called on the governors general with his hat on his head. He did not understand.

“My name's Jacquier, Maurice Jacquier . . .”

“So what?”

Raspéguy had risen to his feet.

“If you want to see me you will apply for an interview; you will wait outside and you'll come in with your hat in your hand. Now get out or I'll bundle you into the street with a kick in the arse.”

Jacquier realized that the man in front of him was capable of committing such an act of sacrilege, that he would even take pleasure in doing so, because he held him responsible for all the waste and damage caused by this war.

He had come to Z to lend Colonel Raspéguy his support, to put at his disposal his whole network of accomplices, all those men whom he had suborned for the last thirty years, in order to unearth the men who had killed his daughter. He had even had Pellegrin appointed sub-prefect, which had not been easy.

All of a sudden he felt very old, very tired. Why try to swagger any more? Algeria, which he loved with a possessive, brutal
passion, was lost, and his daughter, the only human being he cared for, had died in an ignoble manner. He also had a son, drunk from morning to night, who crashed sports cars and slept with waitresses.

Jacquier took off his hat and in a weary voice:

“I'm sorry. . . . I was in such a hurry to see you.”

“That's better,” said the colonel. “Take a seat.”

Raspéguy was amazed. Jacquier was nothing but this spineless mass of blubber, and he had made the whole of Algeria tremble! They said he bought wives whom he fancied from their husbands, made and unmade governments, selected deputies, infected everything around him. Boisfeuras had told him one day that he ought to be hanged, for this was the only way of showing the Moslems that the army had come to introduce a new order and not maintain the old feudal privileges.

“I've come to help you,” said Jacquier, “because this business concerns me personally. My daughter Alexandra may have been a bit of a slut, but I loved her. I found in her many of my own defects and some of my qualities.

“She had come to spend three days' holiday with old Ben Mohadi and his wife—one of her school-friends.

“Ben Mohadi is the financial and political head of the rebellion for Z and the whole zone. I know that; he's the one I pay so that my lands are not touched and my lorries are allowed to get through. But now I want his hide.”

“Do you think it's Mohadi who had your daughter killed on the beach?”

“No, but when one of my managers, engineers or architects makes a mess of things I'm responsible for it.

“Maybe Mohadi was sleeping with my daughter, just as I had tried out his wife before he married her. I don't give a damn about that; but he did not protect her. The skirt side of it is unimportant. Skirt can be bought just like any other commodity. It costs a little more per kilo, that's all! Just by looking at you, Colonel, I can tell how much I disgust you. You're the great archangels of death, who kill and get killed for a hundred thousand francs a month, the price of a good bit of skirt at the Aletti for a single night.

“I can't help it, I'm greedy. I must possess estates, vineyards, apartment houses, boats, men and women.”

“If you want to make your confession, Monsieur Jacquier, we have a padre in the regiment. But I'd advise you to see our M.O. He's a Negro; he knows certain secrets. . . .”

“I know you can't do anything against Mohadi. He's clever and cautious. But in three days' time he'll be storing a big consignment of arms in his house. The hiding-place is behind the bookcase in his study; the shelf of pornographic books opens out. You'll also find there all the accounts of the
willaya.
Good-bye, Colonel.”

“I may perhaps need you again. Where are you staying in Z?”

“Where I always stay, with my good friend Lucien Mohadi, but only for the night; I'm going back tomorrow morning. So that you won't have any bother from your civilian authorities, I've had Pellegrin appointed sub-prefect. You already know him, I believe.”

Jacquier picked up his hat and walked out.

 * * * * 

The sub-prefect Denis Pellegrin was reputed to be one of the best and quickest shots in France. War in any form was his true profession. Chance had dictated that he should belong to the administration.

He was fair-haired, impassive, drank heavily but was never drunk, slept four hours a night and could march for days and days on end without showing the slightest sign of fatigue. His legend had been born in Indo-China, where he had managed to be sent out as a governor's head of chancery. Three months later he was on the Chinese border, engaged with Boisfeuras on some obscure and dangerous assignment. Then he had rallied a substantial tribe from the Haute Region to the French flag. With his partisans, and without its costing one piastre, he had kept access to Haiphong open through the northern route up to the day Tonkin had had to be evacuated.

Pellegrin had resumed the traditions of the skull-and-crossbones: he boarded junks, made the Chinese merchants disgorge, inventing taxes, trafficking in opium if needs be.

Every so often he used to go down to Hanoi or Saigon on an
eight-day bender. He would sleep on the softest beds and with the loveliest girls in the town, play merry hell at Cholon, get into fights with sailors (against whom he harboured a mysterious resentment) and break up one or two bars. Then in the morning, with empty pockets, he would set out on the return journey with his old ground-sheet, his bush hat and Mauser equipped with telescopic sights. Born in La Villette, he had preserved the cockiness and dragging accent of the guttersnipe, but he knew the poems of Apollinaire by heart. All he possessed could go into one suitcase: on the other hand, he could have filled the Théâtre Chatelet with his friends. To all of them he was the symbol of that cynical and at the same time romantic youth born in the maquis and the concentration camps, seared by despair and violence, capable of every excess and every sacrifice, but incapable of any normal activity. He was only at ease when on the fringe of the law and convention, so that, when he was required to see that they were respected, the result was often quite bewildering. At the time of the war of the sects, the Vietminh as well as the partisans of Ngo Dinh Diem had put a price on his head, five thousand piastres more than on that of the half-caste Colonel Leroy, of which he was extremely proud. The F.L.N. had just done the same.

For this adventurer, in whom they saw a man flayed alive, women had a great weakness. Three whiskies, a poem, sometimes a cry of touching distress or a bad-taste joke, and, without knowing how it came about, they found themselves tucked up in bed with him.

He took no pride in his conquests, always remained on friendly terms with the women with whom he had spent a few nights, and on their wedding days spent a fortune on filling their rooms with flowers.

The only thing he could not bear was being alone, finding himself face to face with his inspiring or sordid but invariably gory past, and being obliged to say: “All this for nothing.”

Colonel Raspéguy was one of the few people who had not succumbed to the charm of the sub-prefect. He was wary of desperadoes and romantics. To him war was a serious thing,
which had no room for amateurs or fanatics, still less for those who flirted with death.

But he knew he could rely “professionally” on Pellegrin's courage, efficiency and, above all, his discretion.

Raspéguy went to see him in the former command post of Colonel Saint-Marcel, which the sub-prefect had taken over while waiting for the transfer of power, and gave him one of his wonderful broad grins. Pellegrin fell into his arms.

“This calls for a celebration, Dad, the meeting of the two biggest bastards in the army and the French administration. You must tell me, Colonel, what we're playing at here. No instructions from the civilian authorities, except, of course, hands off Ben Mohadi.”

“Where are you going to hang out? At the sub-prefecture?”

“Out of the question. I've just bumped into that dirty old Viet, Boisfeuras. We're going to live in sin; we're used to it.”

“It's true, they're very like each other, those two,” Raspéguy thought to himself. “They're both the sort who go too far and will end up one morning, with teeth clenched, in front of a firing squad, or one evening with a knife between their shoulder-blades.”

There were several officers of the regiment at the command post. Major de Glatigny, looking remote, sat puffing at his stubby pipe. He was going on leave to France on the following day, which seemed to afford him little pleasure. Esclavier was asleep in an armchair, a bitter scowl on his face. Orsini and Pinières were playing cards, both of them cheating as hard as they could.

A second lieutenant burst into the room, looking distraught:

“Captain Leroy has just been killed.”

“It was the killing of Captain Leroy,” said Philippe Esclavier, “that set the machine in motion and provoked the revolt of the army.

“At Z we had realized this war was rotten because the régime administering the country could only remain in power by means of universal corruption. It was this régime alone that allowed a man like Jacquier to remain in Algiers and continue to make money, although everyone knew that he had come to an arrangement with the rebels for Mohadi to be left in peace though he was one of the rebel leaders.

“It was the actual root of the evil that we had to attack. Anything else was useless.

“When Glatigny came back from leave, bringing Albert Bonvillain with him, the time for discussion was over and we had to envisage some form of action.

“The army was about the only solid structure left in the State, even though the rot had set in there as in every other service. Generals were not appointed by merit but according to whether they accepted the unwritten rules of the racket or not.”

“Just a moment,” said Urbain Donadieu.

He raised his finger.

“Listen.”

Through the open window they could hear the three notes of the toad.

Iréne and Philippe did not realize that, to the old man, this reed-like melody, limited to three notes, signified that any action,
even if it furthered a great dream, was limited to the life-span of the man who performed it, that history, like sand, had drunk up the dreams and blood of millions of men without being fertilized by it, and that in the long run this little harmonious cry had as much importance as the convulsions of nations, the collapse of empires and the death of civilizations.

But these are reflections which only come with the stiffening of the muscles, the hardening of the arteries and the end of desires, when man, unconsciously preparing himself for death, tries to deprive this disappearance of all its tragic horror.

“What became of that amazing sub-prefect?” asked Irène, who was bored by all Esclavier's generalities.

“According to the latest news, he's in Mauretania, where he has taken sides with a band of wretched nomads against a big mining company and also against the Moroccans.

“The mining company has tried to have Pellegrin recalled and the Moroccans have tried to have him killed.

“Pellegrin is playing the part of the Angel Gabriel faced with a paradise on earth which is really nothing but a sun-scorched hell.

“Dreams have such a hold on the people of Islam! We never realized it was more important to let our Moslems dream than to build them schools, hospitals and factories.

“On the
13
th of May, when we had suddenly stopped being reasonable and discussing statistics and technical matters and instead conjured up an immense dream, then we saw them rally to our side.”

“Aren't you confusing dreams with hope?” Donadieu asked.

“It's quite possible. But to me a dream is vaster and more mysterious than hope. One dreams of great victories and fraternity, one hopes to win the national lottery.

“General de Gaulle's régime would only take into consideration the material needs of the Moslems. Monsieur Homais made himself into a technocrat, he went to the Polytechnic School; he was the one who was asked to settle the Algerian problem.”

“Go on with your story,” said Irène. “We know all these truisms, we've had them dinned into our ears all the time. What interests me is the
13
th of May.”

“To begin with, a chain reaction. Because Leroy had been killed, Boisfeuras wipes out Ben Mohadi. Then the Ben Mohadi clan and his political friends organize a great
ramdam
round this incident. They are joined by the progressivists and Communists, who had been trying for some time to find some excuse to launch their campaign against torture. The Communists wanted to discredit the paratroops, turn them into reprobates, then, at a later date, absorb them. They would then have at their disposal the military personnel and technicians which they lack to seize power. For them, it was a stratagem. There was no moral consideration whatever. The progressivists were even worse. All they wanted was to infect us with their own disease, guilty conscience.”

“And did they succeed?” asked Irène.

Esclavier hung his head:

“To a certain extent. The Government let them have their own way and allowed the investigation into the Mohadi affair to be entrusted to a civilian judge. Then it brought Boisfeuras before this judge.

“The machine had been set in motion. Behind Boisfeuras we were all of us caught up in the works. It was then only logical to drag through the law courts the whole of that French army which had had the effrontery to fight for its country, the hundreds of officers who had soiled their hands in this war. We were going to be tried in the first place for the battle of Algiers, then for having put down the rebellion in the Aurès, or for having served in Indo-China or Korea. . . .

“Leroy was not in any way an exceptional officer, he wasn't a Bournazel or a Psichari, but a good captain in a crack unit. He had the foibles of an old bachelor, he was rather close-fisted and his envy was easily roused. As a lieutenant he had been a remarkable athlete, but since his return from Indo-China he had put on weight and when he was depressed he took to the bottle.

“But he was always to the fore when things were most desperate. As a prisoner at Cao Bang he had made an amazing attempt to escape with two of his comrades.

“He was fond of his men and his job and never let his friends
down. Maybe he was as frightened as anyone else, but he never showed it.

“His body had been laid out in the infirmary. Dia, the regimental M.O., was waiting for us. His black skin had gone quite grey.

“He lifted a sheet and showed us the mutilated body. Dia was one of Leroy's oldest friends. Three years in a Vietminh reeducation camp brings men together, even if one of them is in the exceptional class, like Dia, and the other no more than average.

“Dia had turned grey and his lips were trembling. Nothing had been spared Leroy: his sexual organs cut off, his stomach gashed open, his eyes gouged out and, across his throat, a great gaping wound——”

“Stop it,” Irène cried.

“One after the other we filed past our comrade's mutilated body, not only the captains, but also the subalterns, the sergeant-majors, the N.C.O.s and the reservists who turned aside to be sick.

“This time, we knew, it was not the work of Willaya
4
; the crime had been committed in the town itself. And there were a few of us who knew the name of the man who had ordered this crime: Lucien Ben Mohadi.

“When Raspéguy made Boisfeuras personally responsible for handling the affair no one protested, not even Dia, though he did not like the captain or his methods, not even Glatigny, who had a more idealistic conception than we had of the army and honour.

“Leroy had been killed just outside Z, while making his way back on foot to his company which was quartered in a former co-operative warehouse. He was alone, unarmed, and was probably whistling his favourite little tune:

“‘When a soldier marches off to war,

He has . . .'

“Leroy knew all the anti-militarist songs. They had lain in wait for him and three or four of them had pounced on him,
then dragged him down an alleyway. His papers were not stolen, nor was his watch. We could have searched the town from top to bottom, we would have found nothing. There remained the instrument: a butcher's knife, but there were fifteen butchers in Z, and, besides, a knife can always be wiped clean.

“Boisfeuras worked it all out with Pellegrin, assisted by Min, his batman, a Nung whom he had brought back with him from Tonkin, and by four policemen, yes, four worthy French policemen, the sort you see cycling along our roads. The policemen were an idea of Pellegrin's, who was a doctor of law and, when he was drunk, recited great chunks of the Civil Code. At Saigon, however, since he considered the judiciary crooked, he had blown up the statue of Themis holding her scales with plastic high explosive.”

Urbain Donadieu made his trumpeting sound.

“He sounds a splendid chap, this Pellegrin. His free-and-easy attitude to all the old hackneyed images we inherited from the Romans—Themis and her scales, Minerva and her wisdom, Mercury and his wand—is bound to rejoice the heart of an old man like me.”

“We knew that Mohadi was going to store a quantity of arms in his house. We had to wait three days before the arms arrived.

“Mohadi had the nerve to invite all the officers of the regiment to drinks at his house. There were three of us who accepted this invitation: Boisfeuras and Pellegrin out of, shall we say, professional curiosity, and myself on the orders of the colonel.

“In the course of our various wars we have at least learnt not to underestimate the enemy. We have got rid of the sense of superiority of the great white primates who invented the aeroplane, the motor-car and television. Funny little yellow men who don't weigh more than a hundred pounds have given us a good hiding. We have seen the dregs of the Kasbah,
basga
-players,
kif
-addicts or pimps, become leaders of a band in the hills and handle their men with as much competence as our best field officers.

“Mohadi was a remarkable man, but an absolute bastard: six foot, slim, sallow complexion, hair greying at the temples, shifty eyes which could be gentle and caressing or flash with anger. He
was a man who took great care of his body. Every morning he did physical jerks and went out riding. He did not give himself airs like many of the Maghrebi pseudo-intellectuals; he had an easy-going manner and a sense of repartee. With a monocle in his eye he would have made an excellent cavalry colonel. He had all the qualifications: breeding, money, arrogance and a certain contempt for danger provided it did not last too long.

“But he was a bastard who was calmly betting on both sides. If the French won they would make him a prefect; if the G.P.R.A., he would be a Minister.

“I forgot to say that he had won his Légion d'Honneur at Monte Cassino as a lieutenant in the levies and that he had thoroughly deserved it. One contradiction the more.”

 * * * * 

Mohadi's guests, Boisfeuras, Esclavier and Pellegrin, sat in deep leather armchairs, in their host's library, drinking champagne out of crystal glasses. His wife, with an imperceptible gesture, motioned to the servant when a glass was in need of refilling. She must have been a good housewife.

She was fair and buxom; her skin had that particular clarity of really pampered women. Esclavier, who was sitting next to her, felt she was on edge, nervous to the point of making him feel uncomfortable.

Pellegrin alone seemed perfectly at ease, pecking at the almonds in the dishes. He picked a book up from one of the tables.

“So you read Sade, do you?”

“Do you like him?” asked Mohadi.

“No. He was a queer and an idler. When he tried to discuss any other subject but buttocks he argued like an old boot. It takes all the stupidity, all the boredom, of our age to have brought him back into fashion. And he couldn't even write! But you and I, Mohadi, have got something else besides these dirty-minded schoolboys' amusements, haven't we? This war offers us distractions that are more stimulating, but also more dangerous.”

Pellegrin put the book down and faced his host. Mohadi saw nothing reassuring in the placid face of the sub-prefect. He turned to Boisfeuras, who was dipping a biscuit in his champagne and
saying nothing. But Boisfeuras looked up. His eyes, which changed in colour, had gone yellow behind his half-closed lids.

Mohadi realized that with Boisfeuras and Pellegrin he was up against men of his own calibre, dangerous, pitiless and well aware of all his activities. But he insisted on going through with this mad poker game, in which each player looked in silence at his cards, knowing full well what his opponents held.

Esclavier stood up:

“We must get back before the curfew.”

“Why?” Pellegrin asked. “We're enjoying ourselves. Tomorrow we've got to bury poor old Leroy. Raspéguy will make a funeral oration at the graveside, and as that old bastard knows how to twist your guts I'm bound to shed a tear or two. Besides, Leroy was a friend of mine. May I have another glass of wine, Mohadi?”

All of a sudden he addressed him by the familiar
tu
:

“It's first-class, your bubbly! Fundamentally, there's quite a resemblance between us, because we don't believe in anything, except you in your interests, and me in my friends. What intoxicates us is the big gamble, at the end of which lies life or death; it's the last stake.”

“Listen, Pellegrin—since we're talking of gambling and calling each other ‘
tu
'—there are some people who always back a number which is bound to lose. Something has gone wrong with the roulette wheel, and it can't come up. They do it with a sort of perverse obstinacy and then they're angry with the others because they've lost. . . . You French——”

“I thought you were French as well.”

Mohadi made a gesture with his hand and went on:

“You're backing numbers that will never come up. After Indo-China it was Morocco and Tunisia, now it's Algeria.”

Boisfeuras rose to his feet and rasped out:

“You know what a martingale is, Mohadi: you keep losing for a long time before winning anything, and then suddenly a run of numbers comes up and you make a big pile. But what interests you, and in this perhaps you're like us, is first and foremost the gamble, and only secondarily winning. If you were nothing but a politician you would be sitting pretty at Tunis
without running any risk. But gambling is in your blood, as it is in Pellegrin's, and in mine. With Esclavier it's a little different; our friend is more complicated and needs to mingle regrets and subtleties with the brutal pleasure of gambling.