Stretched out in the paddy-field, where the mud mingled with the flattened stubble, the ten men huddled close together. Every so often they dozed off, woke up with a start in the damp night, then sank back again into their nightmares.
Esclavier held on to Lieutenant Lescure by his webbing belt. Lescure was raving; he might have got up and started walking straight ahead, giving that yell of his: “They’re attacking, they’re attacking! Send over some chickens . . . some ducks!”* He would not have obeyed the Vietminh sentry who told him to stop and would have got himself shot.
Lescure was quite calm at the moment; every so often he gave a little whimper, like a puppy.
In the depths of the darkness a Jeep could be heard slithering along the muddy track, its engine labouring, racing and fading in jerks. It sounded rather like a fly in a closed room knocking against the window-panes. The engine stopped, but Esclavier who had woken up waited hopefully for the familiar noise to start up again.
“Di-di, di-di, mau-len.”
The sentry’s words of command were accompanied by a few mild and “lenient” blows with the butt of his rifle, which set the shapeless mass of prisoners in motion.
But a voice now addressed them in French:
“On your feet! Get up! You’ve got to come and push a Jeep of the Viet-Nam People’s Army.”
The tone was patient, certain of being obeyed. The words were distinct, the pronunciation surprisingly and at the same time disturbingly perfect. Lacombe struggled to his feet with a sigh and the rest followed suit. Esclavier knew that Lacombe would always be the first to display obedience and eagerness, that he would turn the other flabby, baby-pink cheek to curry favour with the guards. He would be the model prisoner to the point of turning stool-pigeon. He would flatter the Viets to earn a few privileges, but above all because they were now on top and because he always obeyed the stronger side. To excuse his attitude in the eyes of his comrades, he would try to make them believe that he was hoodwinking the gaolers and exploiting them for the common good.
Esclavier had known this type of man only too well in Mathausen camp. All the inmates there had had their individuality steeped in a bath of quicklime, and all that remained was the bare essentials. Those simplified creatures could then be put into one of three categories: the slaves, the wild ones and what Esclavier with a certain amount of scorn called “the fine souls.” Esclavier had been a wild one because he was anxious to survive. Lacombe’s true character was that of a slave, a “boy” who would not even steal from his master, who would never make a bid for freedom. But he wore the uniform of a French Army captain and he had to be taught how to behave even if it killed him.
A slim figure wearing a fibre helmet towered over Esclavier and the voice, which by dint of being so precise sounded disembodied, made itself heard again:
“Aren’t you going to help your comrades push the Jeep?”
“No,” Esclavier replied.
“What’s your name?”
“Captain Philippe Esclavier, of the French Army. What’s yours?”
“I’m an officer of the People’s Army. Why do you refuse to carry out my orders?”
It was not so much a reproach as the statement of an inexplicable fact. With the painstaking care of a conscientious but circumscribed schoolmaster the Vietminh officer was trying to understand the attitude of the big child lying at his feet. Yet the method had been drummed into him in the training schools of Communist China. First of all he had to analyse, then explain and finally convince. This method was infallible; it was part and parcel of the huge perfect whole which Communism represents. It had succeeded with all the prisoners of Cao-Bang. The Viet bent over Esclavier and with a touch of condescension explained:
“President Ho-Chi-Minh has given orders for the People’s Army of Viet-Nam to apply a policy of leniency towards all prisoners led astray by the imperialist capitalists . . .”
Lescure made as if to wake up and Esclavier took a firmer grip on his belt. The lieutenant did not realize, and perhaps never would, that the French Army had been defeated at Dien-Bien-Phu; if he woke up suddenly he would be capable of strangling the Vietminh.
The can-bo went on:
“You have been treated well, you will continue to be, but it’s your duty to obey the orders of the Vietnamese people.”
In curt, ringing tones, imbued with violence, anger and irony, and seething with revolt, Esclavier replied for all to hear:
“We have been living in the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam for only a few hours but we are already in a position to appreciate your policy of leniency. Instead of killing us off decently, you’re letting us die from exhaustion and cold. And on top of this, you demand that we should be full of gratitude for good old President Ho and the People’s Army of Viet-Nam.”
“He’ll get us all killed, the silly bastard,” Lacombe reflected. “It was hard enough persuading him to surrender, and now he’s starting all over again. But all I ask is to understand this popular republic of theirs. That’s the only line to take, now that it’s all over and we can’t do a thing about it.”
Esclavier did not stop there. This time, fortunately, he spoke for himself:
“I refuse to push the Jeep. You can look upon that as my personal choice. I would rather be killed on the spot than die by slow degrees, demean myself and perhaps become corrupted in your narrow universe. So please be good enough to give the orders to finish me off straightaway.”
“That’s done it,” Lacombe said to himself. “A couple of sentries will force him to his feet with their rifle-butts, drag him off to the nearest ravine and put a bullet through his head That will put an end to Captain Esclavier’s insolence.”
But the can-bo did not lose his temper: he was beyond anger.
“I’m an officer in the People’s Army of Viet-Nam. I have to see that President Ho’s orders are properly carried out. We are poor; we haven’t many medical facilities or clothing or rice. First of all we’ve got to provide our own combatants with supplies and ammunition. But you will be treated in the same way as the men of our people in spite of your crimes against humanity. President Ho has asked the people of Viet-Nam to forgive you because you have been led astray and I shall give orders to the soldiers guarding you . . .”
This speech was so impersonal, so mechanical, that it suggested the voice of an old priest saying Mass. Lescure, who was once a choir-boy and had just woken up, responded quite naturally: “Amen.” Then he burst out into a long strident laugh which ended up in a sort of breathless panting.
“My comrade has gone mad,” said Esclavier.
The Vietminh had a primitive horror of madmen, of whom it is said that the mah-quis* have devoured their brain. The people’s democracy and the declarations of President Ho were of no more avail to him. The darkness was suddenly thronged with all the absurd phantoms of his childhood, with that seething populace that inhabits the waters, the earth and the heavens and never leaves man alone and in peace for an instant. The mah-quis slip through the mouths of children, they try to steal the souls of the dead.
He was frightened but, so as not to show his fear, he said a few words to one of the sentries and went back to his Jeep. He switched on the engine; the prisoners all round him started to push. The wheels lifted out of the ditch, the engine started purring; all the mah-quis of darkness were exorcized forthwith by the reassuring sound of the machine, that brutal music of Marxist society.
“Di-di,” said the sentries, as they led the prisoners back, “now you can sleep.”
• • •
The mah-quis had devoured Lescure’s brain. During the week before the surrender the lieutenant had not stopped taking maxiton pills, which were included with the rations, and had eaten very little proper food. Lescure had a thin, lanky body, blotchy skin and lacklustre hair. There was nothing to qualify him for an army career. But he was the son of a colonel who had been killed on the Loire in 1940. One of his brothers had been executed by the Germans and another was condemned to a wheelchair ever since receiving a shell burst in the spinal column at Cassino.
Unlike his father and two brothers, all robust military animals, Yves Lescure delighted in a mild form of anarchy. He was fond of music, the companionship of friends, old books with fine bindings. As a token of loyalty to the memory of his father, he had gone to Coetquidan School, and of those two years spent in the damp marshes of Brittany, among somewhat limited but efficient and disciplined creatures, he retained a depressing memory of an endless succession of practical jokes and inordinate physical effort. This had left him with the impression that he would never be equal to a task for which he had such little inclination.
But to please the casualty of Cassino, to enable him to go on living in the war through the medium of himself, he had volunteered for Indo-China and, without any preliminary training, had dropped into Dien-Bien-Phu—a feat that his disabled brother would have longed to perform had he been able. Lieutenant Lescure had derived little pleasure from the experience.
Esclavier had seen him come down on one of those wonderful evenings that occur just before the rainy season, looking like a bundle of bones in his uniform, having forgotten his personal weapon, and with an expression of utter bewilderment on his face.
The heavy Vietminh mortars were pounding away at Véronique II and the clouds drifting low in the overcast sky were fringed with gold like gypsy shawls.
He had reported to Esclavier: “Lieutenant Lescure, sir.”
Dropping his haversack at his feet—a haversack containing books but no change of clothing—he had looked up at the sky:
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
Esclavier, who had no time for “day-dreamers,” had curtly replied:
“Yes, very beautiful indeed. The parachute battalion holding this position, of which I am in command, was six hundred strong a fortnight ago; there are now ninety of us left. Out of twenty-four officers, only seven are still in a condition to fight.”
Lescure had apologized at once.
“I know I’m not a paratrooper, I haven’t much talent for this sort of warfare, I’m clumsy and inefficient, but I’ll try to do my best.”
Lescure, who was scared stiff of not being able “to do his best” had taken to maxiton a few days later. He had taken part in every attack and counter-attack, more oblivious than courageous, living in a sort of secondary state of consciousness. One night he had gone off into no-man’s-land to rescue a sergeant-major who had been wounded in the legs.
“Why did you do that?” the captain had asked him.
“My brother would have done it, only he can’t any longer. By myself, I couldn’t even have attempted it.”
“Your brother?”
And Lescure had explained quite simply that it was not himself who was at Dien-Bien-Phu, but his brother Paul who was wheeled round Rennes in an invalid chair. His courage was Paul’s, but the clumsiness, the sunsets, the fear—those were all his own.
Since then the captain had begun to keep an eye on him, as the N.C.O.s and privates in his company had already done for some time.
For Véronique, as for all the other positions that were still holding out, the “cease-fire” had come into effect at seventeen-hundred hours. It was then Lescure had collapsed, yelling:
“Quick, some ducks, some chickens! They’re attacking!”
Esclavier had continued to keep an eye on him.
• • •
In the middle of the night they were woken up and had to abandon the half-light of the paddy-field for the pitch-black darkness of the forest. They followed a path through the jungle. Branches kept lashing their faces; the slimy earth slid from under their feet or else suddenly swelled into a hard mound against which they barked their shins. They had the impression they were going round and round in an endless circle.
“Di-di, mau-len,” the sentries kept shouting.
The darkness began to fade. They emerged at first light into the Muong-Phan basin.
Esclavier recognized the figure of Boisfeuras outside the first hut. They had untied his hands; in a bamboo pipe he was smoking some thuoc-lao, a very strong tobacco which was cured in molasses. A sentry had given it to him after he had exchanged a joke or two with him in his own dialect.
“Want some?” Boisfeuras asked in his rasping voice.
Esclavier took a few puffs which were so harsh that they made him cough. Lescure started yelling his war-cry:
“Some chickens, some ducks!”
And he made a rush at a sentry to grab his weapon. Esclavier held him back just in time.
“What’s the matter with him?” Boisfeuras asked.
“He’s gone off his head.”
“And you’re acting as his nurse?”
“Sort of . . . Where are you quartered?”
“In the hut with some of the others.”
“I’ll join you.”
Lescure had calmed down and Esclavier held him by the hand like a child.
“I’ll bring Lescure with me. I can’t leave him on his own. During the last fortnight this choir-boy, this wet rag, has surpassed even himself. He has performed more acts of courage than the rest of us put together—and do you know why? To please a cripple who lives ten thousand miles away and won’t ever know a thing about it. Is that good enough for you?”
“And it’s to save his skin that you didn’t try and escape?”
“There’s nothing to stop me now; the others will take care of Lescure. We might have a go at it together. The jungle’s your home ground. I remember the lectures you gave us when we were due to be dropped into Laos during the Japanese occupation. You used to say: ‘The jungle is not for the strongest, but for the wiliest, the one with most stamina, the man who can keep his head.’ And we all knew you said this from personal experience. Have you got any plan in mind?”
“I’ve all sorts of ideas, but I’m not going to try to escape, at least not yet . . .”
“If I didn’t know you, I’d say you were afraid of it. But I’ve no doubt you’re thinking up some wildcat scheme or other in your complicated Chinaman’s brain!
“I didn’t realize you were at Dien-Bien-Phu. What were you up to there? I thought you would never have anything to do with that sort of pitched battle.”
“I had started something up north, on the border of Yunnan. Something that was liable to annoy the Chinese. It misfired . . . I withdrew to Dien-Bien-Phu on foot.”
“The same sort of hare-brained wheeze as your pirate-junks in the Baie d’Along, in which you planned to go marauding up the coast of Hainan?”
“This time it was something to do with leper-colonies.”
Esclavier burst out laughing. He was glad to have run into Boisfeuras again, barefoot in the mud and surrounded by the bo-dois, but as completely at ease as he had been the year before on the rickety bridge of a heavy junk with purple sails, in charge of a band of pirates recruited from the remnants of the armies of Chiang-Kai-Shek.
Another of his “hare-brained schemes” had been to arm the Chin and Naga headhunters of Burma and launch them against the rear of the Japanese Army. Boisfeuras who was then serving in the British Army had been one of the few survivors of this operation and had been awarded the D.S.O.
Boisfeuras was the man he needed to accompany him on his escape. He was full of resource, a good walker, used to the climate, and acquainted with the languages and customs of a good number of the tribes in the Haute Région.
“Come on, let’s have a try at it together.”
“No, Esclavier; I’m all for waiting. I’d advise you to as well.”
“I can’t. I once spent two years in a concentration camp and in order to survive I was reduced to do certain things which horrify me every time I think of them. I swore I would never allow myself to be in a position where I would have to do them again.”
Esclavier had squatted down at Boisfeuras’s feet and with a sliver of bamboo involuntarily began tracing some figures which were the mountains, others which were the rivers, and a long sinuous line running between the rivers and the mountains, which was his proposed escape route.
No, he could not start being a prisoner all over again . . .
• • •
The first mission which Esclavier carried out as a cadet had occurred without a hitch. He retained a fond recollection of his parachute jump by night. It was in the month of June and he had had the impression of being buried alive among the tall grass and wild flowers, of sinking deep into the rich scented soil of France.
There were three men waiting for him: Touraine peasants, who conducted him and his wireless operator to a big manor-house. There they settled them into a lumber-room above a barn.
From this hide-out they could keep the main road under observation and instantly report the movements of the German convoys. Runners came in from the neighbourhood of Nantes with messages and information, which had to be encoded and transmitted. Neither Esclavier nor the wireless operator was allowed to leave the house but all the scents of spring were wafted into their attic.
A merry servant girl, a little animal with lively gestures and rosy cheeks, brought them their meals, sometimes a bunch of flowers, and always some delicious fruit.
One afternoon Philippe put his arms round her; she did not struggle but returned his kisses with clumsy ardour. He arranged to meet her in the barn below; they met. In the heady smell of the hay, with their ears pricked for the slightest noise, like animals lying in wait, they clumsily embraced and were suddenly carried off by the raging torrent of their desire.
From time to time a bat on its darting flight would brush against their intertwined bodies. Philippe could feel the girl’s loins tremble beneath his hands and a fresh surge of desire overwhelmed him.
When he climbed back to the lumber-room, limp with fatigue and with the smell of the crushed straw and their love-making fresh in his nostrils, the wireless operator handed him a signal: it was an order for him to liquidate an Abwehr agent, a Belgian passing himself off as a refugee, who had been taken on as an agricultural labourer in a number of farms.
The peasants were chatterboxes; they loved to talk about what they were doing and hinted that their barns were not only used for the purpose of storing hay. Three of them had just been arrested and shot. This they owed to the Belgian in the Abwehr.
The wireless operator was also keen on the servant girl and jealous of Philippe’s success. He sniggered:
“All on one day—bloodshed, ecstasy and death!”
The wireless operator was an educated man: a lecturer at Edinburgh University.
The Belgian was working on a neighbouring farm; after supper his employer asked him in for a drink, to give the two other farm-hands time to dig a grave behind the dung-heap.
Philippe waited by the door of the living-room, hugging the wall. He had butterflies in the stomach and his dagger felt slippery in his sweaty palm.
He would never be able to kill the Belgian. How had he managed to get mixed up in this damned business? He should have listened to his father and stayed behind with him, sheltered by his books instead of playing at hired assassins.
The man came stumbling out, impelled by a shove from the owner of the farm. He had his back turned to Philippe, who sprang forward and buried the dagger between his shoulder-blades, as he had been taught during his commando training. But the blow lacked sufficient strength. Philippe had to repeat it several times over while the peasant sat astride the man’s waist to prevent him from fighting back. A filthy butchery! They emptied the Belgian’s pockets. Orders had been given for his papers to be sent back to London. Then they tipped the body into the hole by the dung-heap.
Philippe went and vomited behind a low wall.
Bloodshed, ecstasy and death . . .
When he got back to the farm he caught the wireless operator in the act of fornicating with the servant girl. In the arms of this ginger-headed runt, she was heaving the same sighs of pleasure as she had with him an hour or two before. At first his feelings were hurt but he resolved to be cynical about it and came to an arrangement with the operator whereby they each made use of the girl in turn.
Philippe Esclavier succeeded on his second mission, which he carried out on his own, but was arrested before he could even embark on his third.
He had been dropped in with Staff-Sergeant Beudin. The Germans, who had got wind of the operation, were waiting for them on the ground. Beudin, who landed in a stream, managed to escape, but Philippe had a pair of handcuffs snapped round his wrists before he was even able to unfasten his parachute harness and draw his revolver.
He was conducted forthwith to the Préfecture at Rennes and brought before the Gestapo. After being tortured, he had been deported to Mathausen camp.
In his barrack-room there was a skinny little Jew without family or country who had sided with the Communists for some sort of protection. That was what had saved him from the gas chamber. His name was Michel Weihl. The Communist organization within the camp had entrusted him with the task of obtaining information on the newcomer.
“He’s a Free French agent from London who was dropped in by parachute,” Weihl had reported one evening to the man responsible for that particular barrack-room, a certain Fournier.
“Then he may as well be left on the list of the detachment that’s leaving for the salt mines.”
Weihl had warned the newcomer. Esclavier had then gone to Fournier and told him that he was the son of the Front Populaire professor.
Fournier had been staggered. The name of Esclavier was still held in great repute among the left and extreme-left wing. But so as not to show his surprise, he had replied:
“The Socialists are a soft bourgeois lot. If you want us to help you, you’ll have to join our ranks, the Communists.”
Philippe Esclavier had agreed to this and his name had been taken off the list. But during the whole of his captivity he had continued to serve the Communists who constituted the only efficient hierarchy in the camp.
What they demanded of him sometimes defied all the rules of the accepted moral code. As a Communist, he might have considered himself absolved by reason of the higher interests of the cause for which he was fighting. But he had never been a Communist, he had only cheated in order to survive; all he had been was a dirty bastard.
• • •
Boisfeuras’s harsh grating voice brought him back to the Muong-Phan basin:
“Day-dreaming, Esclavier? It’s not good for a prisoner to take refuge in the past. He loses his grip, goes into a decline. Come on, I’ll show you where we hang out.”
Esclavier and the new arrivals reached the huts and sank down on to the bamboo bunks. They heaved a sigh of well-being. It was dry, clean and warm.
Glatigny had propped himself up on his elbows as Esclavier came in.
“Hallo,” he said to himself, “here’s that proud brute without his dagger or his long-barrelled Colt . . . and without Raspéguy for once.”
Esclavier had recognized Glatigny. He bowed slightly from the waist with the affected elegance of a man of the world.
“Hallo, it’s you, my dear fellow. How’s the C.-in-C.? And his daughter, that dear girl Martine?”
Glatigny reflected that some day or another he would have to bash Esclavier’s face in, but that this was hardly the moment. He had almost done so one evening in Saigon, when he had prevented Martine, the general’s daughter, from going out with the captain. Esclavier would have made her drink too much and maybe taken her to an opium den, then he would have slept with her, and next morning he would have laughed in her face like the big hoodlum he was.
Glatigny fell back on his bunk and Esclavier went and lay down close at hand.
“All the same, I was surprised,” the paratrooper went on, “not to say extremely surprised, that you should have come and joined us.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning that you’re not just a G.H.Q. puppet or the duenna of that dear Martine, but also . . .”
“Yes?”
“But also perhaps . . . an officer . . .”
Esclavier sprang to his feet and went to fetch Lescure who was standing stock-still with a vacant expression in his eyes and his arms swinging loosely by his side.
With infinite care, not to say gentleness, Esclavier made him lie down and placed a kitbag under his head.
“He’s raving,” he said. “He’s lucky; he doesn’t realize that the French Army has been beaten by a handful of little yellow dwarfs because of the stupidity and inertia of its leaders. And you yourself must have felt this so strongly, Glatigny, that you abandoned them and came and joined us, ready to commit yourself in our company.”
Lescure sat up with a start and, stretching out his hand, began burbling:
“Here they come, here they come, all green like caterpillars! They’re swarming all over the place, they’re going to eat us up! Quick, for Christ’s sake—some chickens, some ducks . . . And while you’re about it, why not some partridges, also some thrushes, some pheasants and some hares. We’ve got to let fly with everything we’ve got, to crush the caterpillars which are going to devour the whole wide world!”
Immediately afterwards he fell asleep and his face was once more the face of the dreamy, immature adolescent who liked Mozart and the symbolist poets. And from the depths of his madness there came to him the opening bars of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.
• • •
Daylight had transformed the absurd, hostile world of the previous night and the smell of hot rice rose in the still morning air. The prisoners, who now numbered thirty or so, were gathered round a basket of woven bamboo full of snow-white rice steaming gently in the sun. Some tea had been poured out for them in empty bully-beef tins, but this was simply an infusion of guava leaves. A few mouthfuls of rice sufficed to appease their hunger now that their stomachs had shrunk so much.
The bo-dois ate the same rice and drank the same tea. They appeared to have forgotten their victory in order to commune together in this elementary rite. The sun rose higher and higher in the pewter-coloured sky, the glare became painful, the heat suffocating. Somewhere in the distance an aircraft dropped a stick of bombs.
“The war’s still on,” Pinières remarked with satisfaction.
With his large paw he kept squashing the mosquitoes on his red-tufted chest. He looked at a sentry as though he longed to strangle him; that skinny neck was a temptation . . . The war was still on.
Unconsciously, the bo-dois stiffened and resumed their surly attitude; the morning’s truce had come to an end.
Lacombe had gone off with a big handful of rice wrapped up in a banana leaf, which he tried to hide. With a nudge of his elbow Esclavier made him drop the rice, which fell in the mud.
“It’s my rice, after all,” Lacombe began to whine.
“Try and behave yourself in the future.”
A sentry had angrily advanced on the paratroop captain, lifting his rifle butt to strike him, then he had held back; the slogan of the policy of leniency had deterred him just in time. He now drew the other soldiers’ attention to the spilled rice and jabbered furiously. Esclavier gathered he was saying something about colonialism and the people’s rice.
Glatigny could not help admiring his comrade for having tried to impose a certain standard of behaviour on the group.
Then he relapsed into his day-dream and strove to remember: he had been a prisoner for two days, so it was now the 8th of May. What would Claude be doing back in Paris? She loved the smells of the markets and the colour of the fruit. He pictured her stopping for a moment in front of a stall in the Rue de Passy. Marie was with her, because, in the eyes of the old cook, she had never grown up and was still incapable of managing her life by herself. Claude thrust her bottom lip out slightly and in her low distinguished voice politely asked the prices. And Marie buzzed about behind her:
“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.”
“They’re not, they’re against us.”
“You’re wrong. Last February they evacuated all the survivors of the 6th Laotian Light Infantry, including the wounded, right through the 308 Division lines. The Viets may hold the valleys, but the Méos hold the heights.”
“That was in February. Since then the Viets have overrun the highlands and conscripted the Méos. Your plan’s feasible, but there are the Viets to reckon with, the whole Vietminh world, Vietminh organization, the Vietminh intelligence service . . .”
“It can’t be true. No Méo has ever served any master except his own fantasy and has never been known to betray a guest.”
Glatigny, who had woken up and heard them whispering together, came over and joined them.
“I’m off,” Esclavier told him. “I’d be grateful if you would look after Lescure for me.”
“Can I come with you?”
“Impossible. There’s only the remotest chance of success, even for one man on his own. Boisfeuras doesn’t think I’ll get away with it, and he may be right.”
“Have you got any provisions?”
“No.”
Without a sound Glatigny went and got Lacombe’s kit-bag.
“This might come in useful. That fat swine won’t ever need it in an attempt to escape.”
“Too heavy,” said Esclavier.
He only took three tins. Boisfeuras handed him a silver piastre which he carried strapped to his leg by a band of adhesive tape.
“This is the only currency the Méos recognize. You’ll either get yourself killed or be recaptured. Good luck.”
Esclavier gave him a tap on the shoulder.
“You were chasing her yourself, you old bastard, while pretending to defend her virtue. Just like the Viets. That was the best policy perhaps. Take good care of Lescure, Glatigny. He did something I could never have done—fought and showed courage for someone other than himself.”
Esclavier plunged out into the dark and was instantly soaked by the rain. There was a light flickering in the guard-post hut. The guard-post lay to the north; he would therefore have to move in the opposite direction and take cover in the jungle at once.
“Halt!”
The voice came out of the rain and the darkness.
Esclavier replied:
“Tou-bi, prisoner, very bad stomach.”
This was the password which enabled them to make the most of Vietminh modesty and leave their huts at night, for the “Hygiene Rule,” which was one of the four rules of a soldier in the People’s Army, decreed that “the natural functions had to be performed in private.”
The sentry let him pass and Esclavier clambered up a slope. He was swallowed up at once in the jungle; the creepers were like tentacles that tried to wrap themselves round him; the thorns were like teeth that tried to tear him to shreds. It was impossible for him to maintain a straight course; there was only one idea in his mind—to keep climbing so as to reach the ridge. Once there, he would be able to take his bearings.
Every now and then he almost collapsed from exhaustion; his eyelids felt like lead; he was tempted to lie down for a bit and go to sleep and resume his march a little later. But he remembered the window in the Compiègne train, squared his shoulders and pushed on. He was right not to have waited any longer before escaping. He knew how quickly a man can lose his strength in a camp where the work is hard and the food insufficient, and how quickly he can lose his courage in the demoralizing company of grousers who are more or less resigned to their condition as prisoners.
By daybreak he had reached the ridge and was able to rest. The valley no longer existed; it was lost in the mist. He was in the country of the Méos who live above the level of the clouds.
In the legendary days of the Jade emperors, the masters of the Ten Thousand Mountains, a dragon had come to China and laid waste the country. It had devoured the armies that were sent out against it and also the warriors clothed in their magic armour. The emperor had then made a promise that anyone who rid him of the dragon would be given his daughter’s hand in marriage and half the kingdom. The big dog Méo had slain the dragon and came to claim his reward. The emperor was unwilling to keep his promise but he also feared the dog’s strength. One of his counsellors had then suggested a subterfuge. Admittedly, he had promised half of his kingdom to whoever slew the dragon, but he had not specified which half. Why not the upper half? As for the daughter, there was no problem. The emperor had a large number of them and spent most of his time begetting even more.
Thus it was that the dog Méo was given the hand of the emperor’s daughter in marriage and, as a dowry, all the land in the empire that lay above the level of the clouds. His descendants, the Méos, wore a silver dog-collar in memory of him. They loved animals, lived in the highlands and, because they were after all descendants of the Jade Emperor, looked down on all the other races, especially the Vietnamese of the deltas.
Esclavier was extremely fond of the Méos even though they were so dirty that their squat little bodies, with calves as thick as a Tibetan sherpa’s, were always jet black. They never mixed with the lowlanders, the servile and ingratiating Thais, they admitted no social or family organization; some of them even declined all form of communal life. They kept to their mountain ridges, the last anarchists of the world.
The sun blazed down. Esclavier began to feel thirsty. He kept following the ridge of the mountain and in the afternoon a Fleet Air Arm “Corsaire” flew over him very low. He waved at it wildly, but the pilot did not see him. In any case what could he have done? He had to push on, alone and unaided, and the thought of himself, lost in the midst of the elephant grass, his throat parched with thirst, was strangely beguiling.
He bypassed the first Méo village he saw tucked away behind a mountain peak. He felt it was still too close to the Vietminhs and to Dien-Bien-Phu.
After a further three hours’ march he came across a ray: a section of the forest that had been burned down. In the cinders the Méos had planted some hard rice, vegetables and poppies. There were four women there, dressed in rags, with panniers on their backs, barefoot—their feet looked almost monstrous—with their calves encased in leggings. They were collecting vegetable marrows. Esclavier knew that he ought to push on farther, but he was at his last gasp, he felt terribly thirsty and it would soon be dark.
He went up to the women. They did not look at all scared but uttered little guttural exclamations and turned their broad flat faces towards him. They smelt so dreadful that he was almost sick.
“It must be a question of habit,” Esclavier said to himself. “At Véronique II, towards the end, I was hardly conscious of the stench of the corpses.”
A male Méo appeared, with his silver collar round his neck and a primitive hunting-bow in his hand. He was barefoot, his hair falling over his eyes, and wore a short jacket and black trousers.
Esclavier did not know how to communicate with him. He showed him the silver piastre and the sullen face came to life. The captain went through the motions of eating, bent down, plucked a marrow and bit into it. It was juicy and full of flavour.
“Tou-Le,” he said, “cousin Tou-Bi, village Bam-ou-Tio.”
The Méo made a sign that he had understood and walked ahead. They kept going until it was dark. Tireless, the Méo trotted along hair-raising paths which invariably followed the line of the steepest slope. He had to stop and wait for the Frenchman every two hundred yards.
At last they reached the village, a few thatch huts on low piles. The shaggy little mountain ponies, as tireless as their owners, stood with their heads inside the houses where the feeding-troughs were, the rest of their bodies in the open.
Tou-Le was there, indistinguishable from any of the others, a little older perhaps, a little more shrivelled, fossilized by age and opium. He recognized Esclavier at once and bowed low before him in token of his friendship. The captain was saved, he felt like laughing. The Méos and the highlands still belonged to the French. Boisfeuras was wrong, which was only to be expected since he did not know this region very well.
The Méos had killed a suckling-pig; it was roasting over the embers, exuding a delicious smell of grilled meat. The stodgy hot rice was spicy and dished up in little baskets. Esclavier knew the customs of the country; he rolled it into a ball between his fingers and popped it into his mouth after first dipping it in a red sauce.
The flames in the hearth cast flickering shadows on the inside walls of the hut and red glints were reflected in the eyes of the horses as they snorted and shook their chains.
Esclavier picked up a sliver of bamboo and, in the cinders in front of the fireplace, traced out the route he wanted to take to reach the Nam-Bac valley.
Tou-Le miraculously seemed to understand and showed his approval by nodding his head. He then brought out a bottle of choum. The two men gulped down the crude rice wine and belched like a couple of Chinese merchants.
Tou-Le suggested a pipe of opium, Esclavier refused with thanks. He was not used to the stuff and he was afraid he might be too tired to walk next day. Everyone said that Méo opium was the best that could be found in South-East Asia. But a paratrooper never indulged in it; that particular vice was the prerogative of naval or staff officers. The Méos all smoked it; for them it took the place of tobacco and appeared to have no harmful effects.
And so, while Tou-Le puffed at his pipe in the flickering light of the oil lamp and contentedly exhaled the thick pungent smoke, Esclavier fell asleep stretched out in front of the hearth.
A line of verse came back to him, a poem of Apollinaire’s:
Under Mirabeau bridge flows the Seine . . .
He would one day watch the Seine flow under Mirabeau bridge, as a free man, having escaped from this hell of green caterpillars which continued to haunt Lescure. He would smile at the first pretty girl he met and ask her out to dinner at a little restaurant on the Ile St. Louis . . .
A kindly hand was gently shaking him. With an effort he opened his eyes. A bo-doi was leaning over him; all he could see was his ready-made smile, his slit eyes and his helmet.
The impersonal voice started off:
“President Ho wants the French prisoners to rest after their long exertions . . .”
A nightmare had insinuated itself into his dream. The young girl took him gently by the hand; she caressed him and he fancied he saw in her rather sad eyes that she was ready to surrender.
But the bo-doi continued to shake him gently:
“President Ho is also anxious that the prisoners should not catch cold. Accept this blanket offered you by a soldier of the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam so that after a good sleep you may recover the strength which you have wasted in vain.”
Esclavier sat up with a start. Tou-Le had disappeared and he saw a sentry standing at the entrance to the hut, his bayonet glinting in the moonlight . . .
Kind-hearted Tou-Le, the free Méo of the highlands, had delivered him into the hands of the little green men of the valleys and the deltas. Esclavier felt too weary; all he wanted was to sleep and let the night find some solution or no solution at all.
In the morning Esclavier followed the Viets outside, spitting on the floor as he left the hut in which a man of the ancient law had failed to observe the sacred rules of hospitality. Tou-Le turned his face away and pretended he had not seen him. This evening he would smoke a few more pipes than usual and would go on doing so until the day came when “for the public good” some political commissar or other would forbid him any more opium. Then he would die; that was what Esclavier hoped.
The four soldiers escorting the captain showed him every consideration and kindness. They were in high spirits; they sang French marching songs to Vietnamese melodies and helped him over the difficult places and slippery monkey-bridges. Like the Cochin-Chinese partisans he had commanded six months earlier in the marshy forest of the Lagna, they were lively and agile; their weapons were well cared for; they could march without making a sound and, when they took off their helmets, they displayed the shock-headed locks of mischievous schoolboys.
At dusk they reached a main trail deeply pitted by the wheels of heavy trucks. Small detachments of soldiers or coolies kept passing them in both directions. They all trotted along with the same rapid jerky gait.
By the side of the trail the bo-dois lit a fire and started cooking their evening meal: rice and lentil soup with one or two little chunks of pork floating in it. On a banana leaf they laid out a few pinches of coarse salt and a handful of wild peppers.
They ate in silence, then one of them brought out a packet of Chinese cigarettes made specially for the Vietminh. He offered one to Esclavier.
The little group surrendered themselves to the peace of the night. Their leader was reluctant to drag himself away from the glow of the fire. With an effort he rose to his feet, adjusted his equipment, put his helmet on and resumed the inscrutable mask of a soldier of the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam. He turned to the prisoner:
“I must now take you to an officer of the division who wishes to interrogate you.”
It was an underground shelter with a floor made of gravel, illuminated by an acetylene lamp. At a table sat a man who looked a great deal more distinguished than the majority of his compatriots. His features seemed to be finely chiselled in very old gold; his hands were long and slender and beautifully kept.
“Your name?”
“Captain Philippe Esclavier.”
Esclavier had recognized the inimitable voice. The first time he had heard it was in the dark, when it had ordered him to help push the Jeep.
“I wasn’t expecting to see you again so soon, Captain. Have you been decently treated since our last conversation in the Muong-Phan basin? It seems, however, that you didn’t follow my advice. I’m glad your rather childish escapade has ended without your coming to any harm. You have now been able to see for yourself how deeply united our nation is, how close the bonds are between the mountain people and those of the lowlands and the deltas, and this despite all the efforts that the French colonialists have made to split us for the last fifty years.”
The Voice fell silent, gazed at the captain with friendly curiosity and went on pensively:
“What are we going to do about you, Esclavier?”
“I suppose you’ll take some sort of disciplinary action against me. This time I agree with you entirely. I’m prepared to pay for my failure. I should like to inform you, however, that it’s the duty of every prisoner to escape and that I hope my next attempt will be successful.”
This statement of principle sounded slightly absurd; it would not have seemed so, however, had he been dealing with a German, a Spaniard, an American—a member of his own “brotherhood.” This word had just occurred to him; he considered it more closely; it did not seem to carry much weight.
“You want to be a martyr, don’t you, to be tied to a tree, beaten with rifle-butts, condemned to death and shot? In your eyes that would be a means of endowing your act with an importance which to us it does not possess. We’d like to put that act in its true perspective; as we see it, you’re nothing but a spoilt child who has been playing truant.”
This time Esclavier was able to classify the person. His studied expressions: “I wasn’t expecting to see you again so soon,” and “playing truant”—the man was a schoolmaster. He had the condescending mannerisms of a “somebody.” He belonged to the race of pedagogues, but to him both men and arms had been entrusted. What a temptation for an intellectual gasbag!
“I had already appreciated your frankness,” the Voice went on. “That frankness of yours will be the first condition of your re-education. During your stay in the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam you will have time to learn how to conduct a self-examination. You will then realize, I hope, the immensity of your errors, your ignorance, your lack of understanding . . . This time no disciplinary measures will be taken against you. You’ll be taken back to your comrades. You will merely have to tell them about your attempt to escape. We rely on your frankness to give them an absolutely accurate account of what happened.”
• • •
“Instruction Period” in the Muong-Phan camp. The officer prisoners, seated on tree-stumps, formed a semicircle round a sort of bamboo platform on which the “pedagogue” stood, commenting on the latest news of the Geneva conference. As he spoke in his somewhat over-elegant, over-elaborate French, his eyes kept darting over his audience. A mah-qui of the termite world, he was there to hollow out the brains of all these men, to empty them of their substance and then stuff them full of propaganda rubbish.
“There is immense hope among the people of France . . . The Vietnamese armistice commission has been able to make contact with the democratic elements of your country and to notify your families at last of your fate . . .”
Then he read out an article in L’Observateur, fiercely attacking the intransigent policy of Georges Bidault who was opposed to any concession. The commissar seemed genuinely distressed by the desperate efforts of this warmonger who was trying by every means to obstruct the peace and brotherhood of the masses and, by the same token, the release of the prisoners. But he still had hope; a single individual could never impede the urge of the masses towards progress.
He concluded his lecture and after folding up L’Observateur, with the pointed remark that this was a French paper and by no means a Communist one, he indicated Esclavier who was sitting at the foot of the stand:
“Your comrade, Captain Esclavier, returned to our camp this morning. He will now tell you in his own words the circumstances of his escape and of his recapture.”
A low murmur rose from the prisoners when Esclavier, with an inscrutable expression on his face, took the commissar’s place on the platform. He spoke in short, clipped phrases, without looking at any of them but only at the sky which was streaked with a few grey clouds.
“Christ, I hope he doesn’t do anything silly,” Raspéguy muttered, leaning over to his neighbour, a fat colonel.
“Such as?”
“Such as strangling that little bastard who’s forcing him to behave like a clown. He’s one of my men, you know, a real tough nut who’s easily roused.”
Esclavier described all the circumstances of his escape and his capture. He omitted nothing, neither the women’s friendliness, the juicy vegetable marrow, the smell of the meat grilling over the fire, nor the welcome warmth of the fireside in the Méo hut. As they listened to him, they all felt a profound nostalgia for their lost freedom and dreamt of escaping, even the most timid among them.
“The only thing I regret,” Esclavier concluded, “is having chosen a bad route. I advise you against the mountain ridges which are held by the Méos and also against the valleys which are held by the Thais.”
Then he stepped down from the platform with the same inscrutable expression on his face.
Glatigny leaned over towards Boisfeuras:
“He got out of that one nicely. He’s given us all a longing to be free. I’m pleasantly surprised.”
“Did you think he was just a big hairy-chested brute?”
“Well, there is that side to him.”
“Get to know him better; try and win his friendship—which isn’t easy—and you’ll find that he’s intelligent, sensitive, extremely cultured . . . but he doesn’t like to show it.”
Lieutenant Mahmoudi had shut his eyes and was dreaming of his homeland, of the arid soil, the grey stones, the pungent smells of the Sahara, of the sheep cooked whole on a spit, of the hand that is dipped into the animal’s insides and withdrawn dripping with spicy grease. In the deep blue night a shepherd boy was playing a poignant and monotonous melody on a shrill reed pipe. Somewhere in the distance a jackal howled.
“It’s very decent of the Vietminh, don’t you think?” Captain Lacombe asked him. “They might have taken it out on us for Esclavier’s escape and put him in solitary confinement . . .”
“Captain Esclavier is the sort of man we admire in my country, even if we do have to fight him some day.”
And Mahmoudi recalled a proverb of the black tents: “The courage of your enemy does you honour.” But Esclavier was not his enemy . . . not yet . . .
As he entered the hut, Esclavier declared that he felt hungry, that his escapade and his little session of self-examination had sharpened his appetite. Without another word he took a tin of baked beans out of Lacombe’s haversack, opened it and fell to.
He offered the tin to Glatigny:
“Have some?”
Lacombe felt powerless, he was on the point of tears. It was his very life this savage was devouring in his great champing jaws. Everyone else laughed, even Mahmoudi whose face glistened with cruel delight.
Then Esclavier went and lay down on his bunk in front of the fire.