The Praetorians (7 page)

“I can't do it.”

Marrestin mistook the paratrooper's conciliatory tone for weakness. He concluded that Raspéguy, like many officers who were said to be hard to handle, needed only to feel the fist of a real leader.

He assumed a curt, trenchant tone:

“If you don't obey immediately I'll relieve you of your command.”

“Then it's up to you, sir. You yourself will give the company commanders their orders to go out and get their men killed for the sake of the bulletin.”

Raspéguy had picked up the receiver of the W.T. and was holding it out to the general:

“Go ahead. But all the papers will know, because I'll tell them, that because of your negligence, and because you don't know how to wage this sort of war, two hundred and fifty or three hundred
fellaghas
were able to cross the barrier. I shall also tell them how, after having been responsible for the deaths of twenty reservists, you still wanted to kill off a hundred or so paratroopers, who are likewise reservists.”

On the W.T. Captain Orsini was asking for the colonel. Raspéguy turned amiably to General Marrestin:

“You're in touch with Orsini, sir. Would you like to talk to him?”

Marrestin had turned pale. On the
13
th of May he was on a tour of inspection in Constantine. Not being abreast of the events, he had loudly proclaimed his loyalty to the Government, although he had never stopped plotting against it. A little paratroop captain had come slouching over and, pointing to a sort of underground shed, had said to him:

“In you go.”

In front of fifty hilarious or dumbfounded officers General Marrestin, the divisional commander, had crept into the shed. And now he had just recognized that voice which had a whiff of Corsican maquis about it.

Raspéguy put the receiver down on the ground and assumed an insidiously good-natured tone:

“Well, General Marrestin, don't you think it would be better for all of us to come to some arrangement? Even so, I still can't understand how such a large band managed to get across the barrier!”

Marrestin had recovered a little of his self-assurance. He was coolly calculating his chances. This was no time to have a show-down with Raspéguy over a question of tactics. In the Rue Saint-Dominique they would support the colonel, for, though accusing him of every sin in the book, they considered him outstanding in the field. The losses had been somewhat heavy, which was already embarrassing, especially when it was learnt that the band had got across the barrier without being fired on.

The general composed his voice:

“I hold you alone responsible for this operation, Colonel. I'm putting the other regiments under your orders. If our losses are too high, if the band is not completely wiped out, I give you my word: your career's finished, I'll make a report to the Ministry myself. In any case it is compromised as a result of your insolence and insubordination. I'm going back to my command post. I want you to give me a situation report every hour.”

“You can say that again,” Raspéguy thought to himself. “My career may perhaps be compromised, but yours is going to take a bit of a knock. I know that barrier. I've been along it from one end to the other, in front and behind. It can't be crossed like an open field. There's something fishy about this business, I can feel it in my bones. You're the one behind it, Marrestin.”

The colonel picked up the receiver and answered Orsini.

“I can hear you more clearly now. Have you reached the top of the slope yet?”

“Just about. I've got a prisoner who's talked. We had to knock him about a bit. He tells me his little pals had buried all their heavy weapons and were escorting an important chief. He doesn't know where the weapons are or the name of this chief.”

As he flew over the pennant of the
10
th Regiment, the general sniggered:

“‘I dare.' You're telling me!”

But in the eyes of his pilot, a young N.C.O., he saw a gleam of such violent hatred that he felt frightened throughout the return flight. The N.C.O. had witnessed the altercation.

 * * * * 

As each piece of information reached them, Raspéguy and Captain Naugier marked the companies' new positions in red and blue on the map.

The colonel stroked his chin. He had had no time to shave and he did not like the feeling.

“Do you think I went a little too far with our brass-hat friend? What do you feel about it, Naugier?”

“In
1917
you might have been shot, sir, but today you're bound to be backed up.”

“Can you tell me why?”

“When parents throw their child out into the street they can't expect respect and obedience from him when he's an adult. Well, we've become adult without the help of our traditional leaders; we have fought wars in which they took no part and undertaken journeys on which they were unwilling to accompany us. We have suffered a lot, which has prompted us to think. But our leaders have remained in the state of knowledge they had reached at the age of twenty. Our fellow-countrymen have ignored us for ages. But they showed some interest in us when we gave them a good fright on May
13
th and they felt themselves threatened. They thus discovered that we were ‘not altogether happy.' Esclavier resigns and is at once headline news. A short time ago no one would even have heard of him. Fear has made film-stars out of us, and that's not what we wanted. So, of course, one shoots a line, squares one's shoulders and draws one's stomach in, but we feel like crying. Here we are, turned into prætorians for having wished too strongly to be soldiers of the people, and into bogeymen for having wanted to be loved.”

At that moment the second lieutenant reappeared, clambering with difficulty over the rocks, dragging his haversack behind him. Naugier blew his nose. Raspéguy pointed a finger at the lad.

“To begin with, the paratroops were a wonderful myth, a story to enthral every schoolboy in France. But instead of spreading
throughout the army, and growing bigger and better, the myth has shrunk, as you've seen for yourself, and now it's turning to vinegar.”

Standing with his hands in his pockets, facing the curving line of the bare grey crests, Raspéguy fell to dreaming again. And his massive chest expanded as he heard the sound of a bugle vibrating in his head, so loud as to be almost unbearable.

This time, he decided, all on his own, he was going to create a fresh myth which would be acceptable to everyone, to this little second lieutenant climbing up towards him no less than to professional fighters like Naugier, Orsini and Pinières, something that would have captivated Boisfeuras and Esclavier as much as the
fells
hiding in the valley and the strong-arm men of Babel-Oued.

 * * * * 

In a cleft among the rocks, concealed by some brambles, in the almost stifling smell of absinthe and basil, four men huddled close together, sweating, while the mosquitoes devoured their faces and arms.

Mahmoudi was sucking a blade of grass, and from time to time a cruel smile made his teeth flash in the half-light.

Atarf grumbled:

“We're going to suffocate to death. If only we could have a smoke! I'm thirsty.”

“Drink your sweat. That'll teach you to fill your flask with brandy instead of water. The Koran forbids brandy.”

“To hell with the Koran. They're probably dropping beer to those bastards up there, and ice!”

“I've marched with them, I've sweated with them, all of us eaten alive by mosquitoes which fed on our blood, and shitting our guts out on the way. They know how to do without beer and ice.”

“Then why are they losing?”

“They're being made to defend a cause they don't like. They let them off the lead for three days, four days, maybe a week, then bring them back growling to their kennels and tie them up again.”

“Still, they brought off the May
13
th revolution, your pals,
and it didn't change a thing. They're going against history, they're done for, they'll drown in their own shit.”

“Didn't anyone ever tell you, Atarf, that I was with them on the
13
th of May?”

“Yes.”

“One of them was called Esclavier, another Boisfeuras, a third Marindelle, led by Major Jacques de Glatigny, and behind them there was Raspéguy, who held his wolves in check, ready to let them loose. He never needed to.”

“And then?”

“Boisfeuras got himself killed, Esclavier has just left the army and I am here.”

“You're a romantic, Mahmoudi, and romanticism is no longer in fashion in revolutionary wars. It would have done you good to go to Prague. They would have taught you to not to give a damn about the Koran and to take an interest in what makes the strength of the modern world: the masses, and the methods one must use to lead them.”

“The other side also knows those methods. In the Forum they imposed the idea of integration on a crowd which only the day before would not even hear of mixed schools!”

Behind them Ahmed grumbled:

“Ina al dine.”

The wireless operator, whom he had jostled, insulted him in his turn, but under his breath and without conviction. It was hot and the hide-out smelled like a grave. The operator had dug plenty of graves when he was with Ziad, who saw spies everywhere.

“
Esketou
, shut up!”

Mahmoudi pricked up his ears:

“They're going on with the helicopter operations. They're surrounding the valley, but won't come into it. In their position I'd have done the same. Even so, we'll try and break through when night falls, before the moon comes up. Towards the end of the night they will be more vigilant.”

“I was told exactly the opposite,” said Atarf.

“Forget everything you've been told. In this war you do the
opposite of what the rules lay down; in fact you only learn the rules in order to do the opposite.”

 * * * * 

Captains Pinières and Orsini were interrogating a prisoner. He was squatting on his haunches in the full glare of the sun, his hands tied behind his back.

Orsini had stuffed a handful of salt into his mouth, as though giving a powder to a dog, and was waving a water-bottle under his nose.

“What's the name of this leader you were escorting?”

“
Manarf.
Give me something to drink, Captain. He was short . . . young . . . but not so very young. . . .”

Orsini brought the water-bottle closer to him.

“They said he was a captain in the levies . . . but I never heard his name. . . .”

“You were also in the levies, weren't you?”

“Sergeant Ahmed Ahia, eleven years' service. . . .”

“And you don't know the name of this captain—you, a deserter like him?”

Gigantic, ruddy and stinking of sweat, Pinières had drawn his pistol out of its holster. The prisoner watched him, with a look of resignation in his eyes.

He was prepared to die; he knew that when deserters were recaptured they never got as far as prison: they were shot. The army settled its own accounts and did not allow the law to intervene. They had found his military identity card on him, which he kept as a sort of fetish, but which, instead of saving him, was going to cost him his life. What did it matter now if they learnt that the deserter captain's name was Mahmoudi? He was so thirsty! Like all men from the south, he worshipped water; his dreams always featured water running under palm-trees, wells and
norias.

Ahmed had served in France, at Auvours Camp; on Sundays he used to sit by the side of the river and watch the water flowing past all day.

He spoke.

“The captain's name is Mahmoudi; he's to be the new chief of Willaya
4
after he's killed Ziad, if he ever gets there.”

“How do you know this?”

“Everything is known, Captain, in a
kattiba
, as in a company.”

“Drink,” said Orsini, “but not too much. For you it's all over; soon you won't ever be thirsty again, but we're staying on up here and my water-bottle is almost empty.”

“It was written.”

The captain untied the prisoner's hands and held out his water-bottle. The former sergeant was sparing with the water of the men who were about to kill him. He took three mouthfuls, rinsed his mouth out and handed the bottle back to the captain. Then he made a sign that he was ready. Two soldiers, their fingers on the triggers of their sub-machine-guns, came up on either side of him. They took him off behind a rock, without brutality, as though they were setting out on a patrol with him. There was a burst of fire.

“You come across some odd chaps in their ranks,” said Pinières. “Only a year ago that fellow was still with us. Now they're all going over to the other side.”

“We know why,” said Orsini, rolling his shoulders. “The Arab is always willing to break his word, but he won't tolerate lies or broken promises from anyone else. It's only natural, he looks for something in us that he can't find in himself. De Gaulle has behaved to the Arabs as though he was an Arab himself, and he has forced us to do the same. It's because of him that we'll shortly have to kill Mahmoudi if we find him. I don't fancy the idea of finding him.”

“Nor do I,” said Pinières. “Do you remember, at Camp One, when he used to come to Mass with us? He sat between Esclavier and me; Esclavier who couldn't bear the sight of a priest, and myself who had never set foot in a church.”

“And a week before the
13
th of May? We had released him on parole. That was yet another idea of old Esclavier's, but it was always like that with him. He dared to say openly what we were all thinking. So he's told all about the plot, that's to say our plot—there were so many others afterwards. And old Mahmoudi, beaming with joy, speaks up: ‘Nationalism is nothing new to me. I know what you ought to tell the Moslems; I know what they dream about. If you want your coup to succeed with them, leave it to me.'