P —— was like any other little Algerian town situated in the cultivated zones: a long street with three cafés, a Moslem veterans’ association, a few French shops and a larger number of Mozabite stores. The French inhabitants were called Perez or Hernandez: and the Mozabites, who never ventured outside their own front doors, were as fat and limp as slugs.
At the end of this street with its scarred and pitted surface, stood the police-station, a brand-new building with fine yellow railings and white bars across the windows.
The gateway was reinforced with sandbags, the café terraces protected against hand-grenades by iron grilles, and the entrance and exit of the town sealed off by makeshift roadblocks of spiked fences and barbed wire.
Barbed wire everywhere: round the public gardens and its bandstand where no band had played for years, along the church, the town hall and empty school, in front of the little concrete blockhouses guarded by steel-helmeted, trigger-happy sentries.
The Moslems hugged the walls and avoided running into the Christians; hatred had become a living, palpable thing, it had its own smell and habits; at night it howled in the empty streets like a famished dog.
In two months the whole area round P —— had gone over to the rebels. Settlers’ farms had gone up in flames, turning darkness into daylight right up to the gates of the town; flocks had been slaughtered; men, women and children had been massacred in particularly atrocious circumstances.
Cars were machine-gunned on the roads, and buses set on fire, and one convoy every other day was the only means of communication between P —— and the rest of the world. Troops only moved about in full strength, and even then were shot at every time they emerged.
Colonel Quarterolles, the garrison commander, had been taken prisoner in 1940. He had not taken part in the war in Indo-China and he claimed to know Algeria like the back of his hand by virtue of having commanded Tunisian and Moroccan levies over a period of fifteen years. First of all, he was unwilling to admit that with a garrison two thousand strong he was held in check by a “band of thugs and murderers armed with boukalas.” It was only after one of his platoons that had gone out on patrol to a farm five miles outside the town had got itself wiped out that he requested the support of an operational unit.
And that was how one fine day the Raspéguy circus turned up in P —— with its trucks, its loud-speakers and its paratroops in their outlandish headgear. Colonel Quarterolles thought that these lads of twenty, with their over-tailored tunics and easy gestures, powdered like little marquises by the dust of the road, did not strike a serious note at all. He liked hefty warriors in steel helmets, clanking with heavy equipment—the old-fashioned, wine-swilling type of soldier.
Quarterolles had managed to extract the commitment from the headquarters of Area Ten in Algiers that the paratroops sent to him would be placed under his orders and that he himself would command all the operations “in person.” In order to get rid of him, the Chief of Staff had promised him anything he asked.
The commander-in-chief had thought of relieving Quarterolles of his command and sending him back to France, but he feared there might be a scandal. It was only by a miracle that a scandal had so far been avoided.
At Lille the S.F.I.O. Party had just adopted a motion on Algeria requesting the Government to concentrate all their efforts on achieving a cease fire. If the newspapers had come out with a report in heavy type: “A platoon of twenty-eight reservists has been massacred outside P —— by a rebel band; three machine-guns, one 60-calibre mortar with its shells and twenty-three rifles or submachine-guns have been lost,” the congress might have not only requested but demanded a cease fire as well as disciplinary measures against the army leaders who allowed the soldiers under their command to be massacred.
The only unit in reserve was the 10th Colonial Parachute Regiment which was said to be insufficiently trained and lacking in team spirit. The general had sent for Raspéguy who had reported with Esclavier by his side. They had been made to wait in a little room through which busy young officers kept passing to and fro, clacking like old hens.
A captain came to fetch them; he wore a scarlet waistcoat with brass buttons under his tunic—like a damned lackey, as Raspéguy observed.
The general was sitting at his desk, bent over a large sheet of glass with a map of Algeria spread out underneath it. His face was lifeless, his voice toneless:
“Raspéguy, I allowed you the two months you requested in order to train your regiment. Those two months are now up; are you ready?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ve got a tough job for you. Do you want to hang on to your reservists?”
“Very much so.”
“That’s up to you. You’ve heard about what happened at P ——. I want those arms we lost there to be recovered. I want Si Lahcen dead or alive . . .
“Good hunting, Raspéguy! For this job you’ll have an absolutely free hand. I want results and I don’t give a damn what methods you use.”
Raspéguy had asked:
“What’s my position in relation to the colonel commanding the sector?”
“It can be whatever you like. If he gets in your way . . .”
He made a gesture with his hand as though to sweep away a troublesome fly. His handsome face with its regular Roman features remained inscrutable but Esclavier noticed that his eyes betrayed the cruel glint of a mandarin of old China, whose peace and meditation has been disturbed by an importunate intruder.
The intruder was the garrison commander.
Raspéguy had reported to Colonel Quarterolles in the prescribed military manner, snapping splendidly to attention, giving a smart salute, keeping his eyes fixed on some point in the middle distance. But he had no badges of rank, no decoration, no weapon, and his battledress was unbuttoned to reveal his sunburnt torso.
“I’ll have to take him in hand immediately.” Quarterolles had said to himself, “these former N.C.O.s always try to take the bit between their teeth.”
“Look here, Colonel, I’ve noticed your men don’t wear steel helmets. The regulations . . .”
“The regulations are all very well, Colonel, but they overlook one important point.”
“What’s that?”
“That we’ve first of all got to win. Now no one can fight properly and win while lumbering about the mountains in the month of July with a heavy helmet on his head. I’ve given my men orders to leave their helmets behind at the Camp des Pins, but to take two water-bottles each.”
“That’s your business. Tomorrow we’ll mount an operation to occupy a few farms which I had to abandon for lack of personnel. Today I’ve arranged quarters for your unit in the town. You can take over the school as your headquarters.”
“No.”
“Eh?”
“No. The whole regiment will camp out in the mountains tonight and we’ll light some big fires so that the fellaghas will know that we’re there. I don’t like the idea of barbed wire, Colonel; I saw too much of it out in Indo-China.”
“I forbid you . . .”
Raspéguy shrugged his broad shoulders and smiled.
“Come now, Colonel, we’d better see eye to eye. Besides, it would be tiresome for you if we did not recover the weapons which you let them steal from you . . . and I feel it’s not going to be very easy.”
“That incident has been grossly exaggerated.”
“That’s to say it has been hushed up.”
“But, for you and your staff, if the school won’t do . . .”
“I live with my men, I march with them, I eat the same rations, I put up with the same heat and thirst. So do my staff. My compliments, Colonel.”
Raspéguy saluted. The trucks disappeared in a great cloud of dust, heading for the bare mountains which were tinged mauve and blue by the clear light of the late afternoon.
In the last truck three paratroopers were singing a slow, melancholy cowboy song.
“Yet another of those tricks they brought back from Indo-China,” Colonel Quarterolles said to himself, “with their don’t-give-a-damn attitude, their lack of discipline, their contempt for regulations and proper channels, their line-shooting and shoulder-swinging . . . We’ll see what they’re like when they’re on the job, those puppets.”
Vesselier, the mayor, came and called on the colonel. He gesticulated with his hands while he spoke and had a pronounced colonial accent:
“Ah, Colonel. Where do they think they are off to, those fools, into the blue like that without knowing what’s going on? They ought to be stationed on the farms so that the crops which haven’t been burnt might at least be harvested . . .”
“And he did not even introduce me to his officers,” the colonel complained. “We’ll see about that tomorrow . . . Have you got any new information on the band, Mayor?”
“The band, the band . . . If it had been left to us, Colonel, the whole business would have been settled long ago. As you and I know, there’s only one thing they understand, these fellows—a firm hand on the cudgel.”
By nine o’clock in the evening the main street of P —— was deserted, all the shops shut, but outside on the balconies the householders sat taking the air and looking towards the mountains where the lights of the paratroops’ camp blazed brightly.
• • •
On the following day Major de Glatigny and Captain Boisfeuras came and reported to Colonel Quarterolles. The colonel knew Glatigny by name. He was extremely affable.
“We should like to get in touch with your Intelligence officer,” said the major.
“I’ll send for him.”
Presently a tubby little captain appeared; he had little boot-button eyes immersed in fat and minced as he walked. He looked stupid, narrow-minded and as obstinate as a mule.
He sank back into an arm-chair and mopped his brow.
“Moine, tell these gentlemen what you know about the Si Lahcen band.”
“We estimate it’s about a hundred and thirty strong, scattered across the whole range. By day they lie low in the mechtas, by night they’re on the prowl. They have no automatic weapons . . .”
“What about the submachine-guns they captured from you?” asked Boisfeuras.
“They’ve got no ammunition for them.”
Captain Moine was lying with complete confidence, certain of being covered and of not running any risk.
“So when they wiped out your platoon,” Glatigny persisted, “the rebels had no automatic weapons? Thirty men with three machine-guns and several submachine-guns let themselves be surprised by fellaghas who had nothing but antiquated rifles. Is that how it was?”
“I was on leave in Algiers.”
“But you held a court of inquiry on your return.”
“I’ve been out here three years. I have my sources of information. One of these witnessed the battle. The fellaghas only chucked a few hand-grenades at the trucks. Our men lost their heads.”
“Who were your men?”
“Reservists of an infantry regiment from the north of France.”
“Who was in command?”
“A cadet who had just left school.”
“And you never tried to put them in the picture or prepare them for this sort of warfare?”
“They were given two or three lectures when they landed at Algiers, at least that’s what they said.”
“That’s all over and done with,” said Quarterolles, “we can’t call the poor men back to life. I’m surprised your colonel isn’t here with you; we’ve got to make arrangements for occupying a certain number of farms. I’ve taken it up with the mayor; the engineers are sending up some barbed wire and a few mines.”
Glatigny replied in that polite, slightly contemptuous tone which he had learnt when serving on the staff.
“The whole regiment has been out on operations since four o’clock this morning and I don’t think Colonel Raspéguy is thinking for a moment of occupying any farms.”
“What does he want, then?”
“The band and, above all, the weapons. For that, we need information, for nothing can be done in this sort of war without information. Who is Si Lahcen?”
“A highway robber,” said Captain Moine, picking his teeth.
“Has he got any family, friends or relations who can give us any information about him?”
“We arrested his brother, but he escaped the same evening.”
“So Si Lahcen must have accomplices in the town; that’s only to be expected. Who are his accomplices?”
“That’s a matter for the police, not the army.”
Boisfeuras then brought a sheet of paper out of his pocket.
“Since you seem to be in the dark about him, Captain, I’ll tell you who Si Lahcen is: a former sergeant-major in the levies, Military Medal, mentioned four times in dispatches in Indo-China. Noted by his leaders as a remarkable warrant-officer, with the makings of an officer. On his return here he sank all his savings into the transport business and bought a bus. But the civilian administrator was the undercover owner of a whole line of buses. He made things difficult for Si Lahcen, he kept imposing fines on him and one day suggested buying his bus back from him for less than it cost him. Suborned by old friends of his who had risen in revolt, unable to find a soul who could protect him against the administrator, financially ruined, Si Lahcen took to the hills and started burning all his rival’s buses. One night he came down here himself and slit the administrator’s throat. That’s correct, isn’t it?”
Flies were buzzing about the unshuttered room. The colonel brought a handkerchief out of his pocket and mopped his brow. He had since taken over the administrator’s house and did not like to be reminded of that incident.
“I want to see Colonel Raspéguy at once. He’s here to carry out operations under my orders. Garrison affairs are my business and no one else’s. I’d rather not know the source of your inaccurate information. I would point out, however, that you’re casting aspersions on a senior official who was deeply respected in this area. I shall expect to see your commanding officer shortly. That’s all, gentlemen.”
They left the room. Moine followed them outside. Boisfeuras asked the captain to provide him with an interpreter.
Moine had been closely acquainted with the administrator Bernier, a short, tubby little man with bandy legs, and also knew about his political and financial dealings with the few big caids of the district and the senior public works officials. His villa on the Côte d’Azur had been completed; he was going to retire with his little pile—the sum mentioned was a hundred million, which wasn’t so bad for an administrator—and he had even been awarded the Légion d’Honneur for his good and loyal services. It was about this time that Si Lahcen, clanking with medals, had come back from Indo-China and had decided to put his savings into a bus line.
“A champion, that administrator,” Moine reflected. “In his day there had been no question of rebels; he had his own way of treating the natives, a way which was at once paternal and determined, but rather more determined than paternal. He was not proud and held open house. He stole as much as he could, but allowed his subordinates to do likewise. With him, there was nothing to risk; he was protected by everyone: the Socialists, the clergy, the freemasons and the settlers.” It was he, Moine, who had discovered his body, his throat slit from ear to ear.
“How did the paratroops know about all this? He would give them Ahmed as an interpreter, a sly lad whom he had well in hand and who would be able to give them the information they wanted. Some hotheads maintained that Ahmed had connexions among the rebels, but the same thing was said of all the Arabs.”
Once they were outside, Glatigny turned to Boisfeuras and asked:
“Where did you get that information on Si Lahcen?”
“I ran into Mahmoudi at Algiers. Si Lahcen had served under him as his sergeant-major. When he heard we were going to P —— he told me the whole story. Mahmoudi is in a bit of a fix.”
“Mahmoudi is a French officer.”
“But he’s serving as a Moslem, under a special statute, and no one ever misses a chance of reminding him of it. I’ve pulled some strings to have him transferred to Germany.”
“What will he do in Germany?”
“He’ll wait there till we’ve rid Algeria of its fellaghas, its crooks, its civil administrators and its army of old dotards like Quarterolles and lazy bastards like that Captain Moine.”
“That’s a pretty tall order, my dear Boisfeuras. It will be a long time before Mahmoudi gets back from Germany.”
The two officers climbed into their Jeep and left P —— with a sense of relief to rejoin their regimental base in the mountains.
Lurching over the pot-holes, with his carbine between his knees, Boisfeuras tried to concentrate on this problem: how to capture Si Lahcen’s band without any information apart from a few police reports and local gossip. A band a hundred and thirty strong is bound to be seen when moving across bare, arid territory; it needs food supplies, water and ammunition. It cannot remain indefinitely in the mountains. He nudged Glatigny:
“Glatigny, what would you do in Si Lahcen’s place? Don’t forget that Si Lahcen has been out in Indo-China.”
“In Si Lahcen’s place?”
“Yes. Would you play at boy scouts out in the open in this heat when you could quite simply stay in the mechtas round P ——, drink cool water, listen to the radio and entertain the girls?”
“Go on,” said Glatigny.
“Supposing Si Lahcen, who has seen how the Viets work, had set up an intelligence network and a good politico-military organization in the town. He would know everything: every movement of our troops, the departure times of the convoys. While Colonel Quarterolles is forced to protect himself on all sides, he would be able to strike where he wanted, when he wanted.
“The group or section that had laid the ambush would do the job and scatter through the mountains immediately afterwards. It would have its own arms dumps; it would return next morning, mingling with the peasants coming into market. For that, all that’s required is to have the population well in hand.
“Meanwhile we’re rushing about the bare mountains, exhausting our men; we shall never be able to find anything.”
“So, according to you, we ought to establish headquarters in P ——?”
“Yes, and hold all the surrounding villages, collect information at any price and by any means, force Si Lahcen and his men to really take to the mountains, and cut them off from the population which provides them with information and feeds them. Only then will we be able to fight them on equal terms.”
Colonel Raspéguy came back to camp with his men exhausted by the heat and a hard march through arid gorges, over razor-sharp stones, and along dried-up river-beds.
They had found nothing: not a trace of Si Lahcen’s band, not even one of those little walls made out of a few boulders that are called choufs and are used by look-outs to shelter behind. But ten miles away, in the plain at the foot of the mountain, some agricultural labourers and their families had been found with their throats cut because they had stayed on in a settler’s farm after he had left it.
Leaning back against the white wall of a little marabout and smoking his pipe, Raspéguy watched the shadows sweep over the plain in a series of waves which presently came and broke on his rock.
When he was a child, he used to hate coming down from the mountains. The town with its sly, worldly shopkeepers, its crowds on market days, its strident voices, its cafés and its music made him feel ill at ease.
The lights of P —— began to twinkle down below and the searchlights started sweeping the barbed-wire entanglements. The loud-speakers blared. Raspéguy had laid ambushes on every trail, at every approach which the fellaghas could possibly use, and had made arrangements to be notified as soon as anything happened so as to be able to be on the spot at once.
Esclavier sank down beside him and Raspéguy handed him his packet of cigarettes and flask of coffee. Then Glatigny, Marindelle and Boisfeuras came and joined them. They in their turn sat down.
A sentry could be heard loading his submachine-gun and, farther off, a man singing. The slightest noise was wafted up to them, stripped of its bare essentials in the clear air and thereby endowed with the gravity of prayer, the purity of crystal.
“It’s nice up here,” said Raspéguy, “it’s clean and cool and we are on our own.”
“But it’s down below that things are happening,” Boisfeuras retorted in his grating voice.
“Let’s hear what you’ve got to say,” said Raspéguy wearily.
• • •
On the following day the paratroops came back to P ——.
During the siesta hour, while the whole town was sleeping, they marched through as though on parade, six deep, moving silently in their rubber-soled boots, looking straight in front of them with a blank expression in their eyes, and singing that slow, melancholy song from Indo-China which was also the song of the American Marines in the Pacific.
The Moslems crept out of their shacks and silently watched these soldiers who were not like any others, who appeared not to see them as they marched by at their slow, steady pace. And they felt vaguely apprehensive, for, like all men, they were frightened of the unusual and unknown.
Through the slits of a shutter in a Mozabite store, Si Lahcen was also watching this strange march-past.
He turned round to Ahmed:
“I’d rather they were up in the mountains but, as you see, they’ve come back. They’re going to settle down in our midst and stir up the ant-heap until something emerges . . .”
“We could make life impossible for them in P ——. This evening a couple of men can go and pitch a few hand-grenades into the two cafés on the Rue Maginot.”
“You don’t know what they’re like, Ahmed. It’s easy to see that you were never out in Indo-China with the ‘lizards.’ If they catch your grenade-thrower they’ll hang on to him themselves, they won’t hand him over to the police and the man will talk; and you won’t know a thing until they come and drag you off—you, the official Intelligence interpreter—to the garrison commander himself.”
Ahmed shrugged his shoulders. He did not care very much for the Kabyle Si Lahcen, with his sergeant-major attitude, his slow reactions and caution. The band he was commanding was becoming more and more like a regular company, and if it was left to him, he would dole out badges of rank and insignia, forbid looting and rape, in fact everything that endowed this war with its powerful attraction for the primitive creatures under his command.
At heart, Si Lahcen had a deep respect for the French Army and disliked being considered a bandit. He was a skinny, unprepossessing little man, but as tough and hard as a vinestock, whereas Ahmed had the indolent beauty of a desert Arab.
Ahmed was the political commissar of the area, and Si Lahcen the military leader. The rebel headquarters had not yet decided which of the two branches, political or military, had priority over the other, so that the two men often found themselves in conflict.
Si Lahcen whistled the paratroops’ song between his teeth. He had often heard it out in Indo-China, when the battalions used to set off on some suicide operation from which very few of the men returned.
One day, while serving on the edge of the delta, he had witnessed the arrival of those paratroops who had been reported dead or captured for over a month. They had struggled hundreds of miles through the jungle, surrounded by Viets. They were using their rifles as crutches; many of them were barefoot, their faces were swollen by mosquito bites and the sweat had rotted the skin under their arms and between their thighs. They stank and could hardly stand upright, but they kept on singing this tune, for they knew that if they stopped they would not be able to take another step.
Sergeant-Major Si Lahcen had been proud that day to belong to the same army as them.
That battalion, he remembered now, had been commanded by the same Raspéguy who had marched through P —— just now, at the head of his men but wearing no badges of rank.
“Well, what do we do now?” Ahmed inquired, this time in French. “Do we just wait to be picked up?”
“It would be best to lie low for the time being,” Si Lahcen replied pensively. “Stay up in the mountains as long as they’re in the town, come back here if they take to the mountains again, and avoid a show-down . . .”
“No. The population’s still undecided, in spite of the few examples I made. They’ll veer towards the stronger side, that’s to say the one they fear the most. For the moment that’s us; but tomorrow, if we sat back and did nothing, it would be the paratroops.”
“You’re coming back to those hand-grenades of yours again.”
“I think I can do better than that and make your lizards lose face once and for all.”
On the following day Ahmed became the official interpreter of the paratroops for the duration of their operation and was attached to Captain Boisfeuras. He was issued with a cap, a bivouac tent and a pistol. He had become a lizard himself.
Ahmed soon noticed that the sort of Chinaman who was always with the captain never took his eyes off him for a second. On two occasions he saw him reach for his carbine, making sure that the gesture did not pass unnoticed. It was an unconcealed warning.
The paratroops crowded the cafés and shops, and prices began to go up; there were one or two brawls between them and the garrison troops.
Raspéguy, who had taken over the school building, had all the barbed wire round it removed. “All it’s good for is giving one a sting in the ass when one gets back after dark,” he explained.
In a class-room, which still had its desks and blackboard, he had assembled all the leading members of the community: Caid Djemal and his brother, the mayor Vesselier, the representative of the Mozabite merchants, the president of the veterans’ association, and Captain Moine. Also present were Boisfeuras, Glatigny, Esclavier and Merle, whose company of reservists were quartered round the school. Ahmed attended the meeting as the official interpreter; and Caid Djemal’s brother, who knew what part he played in the rebellion, kept darting little glances of admiration at him.
Raspéguy stood on the platform, a piece of chalk in his hand. The civic dignitaries and the officers were seated at the desks and had unconsciously assumed the attitude of schoolchildren, leaning on their elbows, shuffling their feet and scratching their noses.
Merle was hiding behind Esclavier’s back and poring over Micheline’s letter yet again.
Olivier, my love,
I’ve been thinking things over since you left for Algeria and I now know I love you like the most besotted little shopgirl and, as in the song, “until the end of the world.”
As children we used to play at that cruel and treacherous game of hating each other, loving each other, tearing each other to shreds, making each other jealous. When you came back from Indo-China I could not help going on with the game, and besides you know how I like to shock people. I had a good time making a scarecrow out of my little Olivier at Tourangeaux.
I’m glad you left our town slamming every door behind you, glad that you’re out in Algeria, earning no more than 80,000 francs a month and running the risk of getting killed, whereas my faithful spouse, “little Bezegue,” gets ten times more for trailing around bars and eyeing the little barmen.
But I feel like screaming when I’m alone in my room. Olivier, I’m through. I’m going to ask for a divorce and then come out and join you. Whether as your wife or your mistress, I shall live with you and this time I’ll know my place, which is that of every woman, not by the side of the man she loves but slightly behind him.
I love you and am at your orders.
MICHELINE.
Merle would have liked to read this letter out to his comrades, but Piniéres was rushing about the mountains and only the other evening he had heard Boisfeuras say to Esclavier:
“No world is more alien to women than the world of soldiers, priests and Communists, by which I mean fighting soldiers, militant Communists and evangelizing priests . . .”
Esclavier, who chased girls as though they were game but was never in love with them, had tended to agree.
They would tease him and call him a callow youth. They refused to understand, no doubt because they had never known the joy of waking up in the morning next to a beautiful young girl whom one has loved all night.
Raspéguy, who was writing something on the blackboard, reprimanded him like a schoolmaster.
“Since you’re here, Merle, you may as well pay attention.”
Olivier quickly stuffed the letter back in his pocket, as though he was afraid it might be confiscated. He saw Ahmed smile at him and he smiled back.
“What it boils down to is this,” said Raspéguy. “Unless we can get some information, we’ll never lay our hands on the band; the farms and crops will continue to be burnt down, terrorism will go on making life unbearable . . . What we need is a thread which will lead us to this band. This thread is to be found in the town. Give me one end of it and I shall soon follow it up to Si Lahcen.
“You don’t know anything, Mayor? Or you, Caid Djemal, or any of you others? Are you frightened? It’s as bad to fall into the habit of fear as to grow accustomed to being ill.”
Captain Moine was puffing contentedly at a cigarette end. Well might the paratroops swing their shoulders and light fires all over the mountains, they could do no better than those who had been stuck in this sector for months. And they had crept back to P —— hanging their heads. The same boat as Moine’s would take them back to France and they would incur the same reproaches; all the rest was play-acting.
Of course the thread which could lead them to this band existed in the town, but each time one thought one had a firm grip on it, it snapped. All was lost. Meanwhile there was nothing more to do but drink anisette and have a whore sent over from the brothel two or three times a week.
As they filed out of the class-room at the end of the meeting, Merle found himself next to Ahmed. He invited the interpreter to have a drink. The Moslem was a handsome, well-educated man; he looked one straight in the eye and his laughter had the right ring. His paratrooper’s uniform suited him perfectly.
“The difficult thing about this war,” said Ahmed, as he drank his beer, “is to find that guiding thread. I’ve heard some talk, however . . . But then there’s always talk about something or other, we Arabs are incurable gossips!”
Merle, who had been dreaming about Micheline, suddenly sat up.
“Yes, Lieutenant, they say there’s a certain amount of dissension in the Si Lahcen band. It’s only a rumour. Si Lahcen is a Kabyle, his men are not; he treats them brutally . . . he’s got a sharp tongue . . . and his loathing for the French has sent him off his head. They say he himself does all the throat-cutting . . . and the other things to his prisoners.”
“A dozen men belonging to his band are said to have escaped with their arms to a group of mechtas and are anxious to join the French.”
“Shall we follow it up, Ahmed?”
“I’m not sure how reliable this information is. This war is tearing me in two, and I don’t mind admitting it. I could never fire on my co-religionists in spite of the atrocities they’ve committed; but to rally them to our side, if we promise them their lives will be saved and they won’t be molested, I’d like to do that very much.”
“Colonel Raspéguy will promise, and he’ll keep his word.”
Ahmed shrugged his shoulders and smiled.
“I like you very much, but you’re not at all prudent. What if I was trying to lead you into a trap? In my opinion this information is not very reliable.”
“Where did you get it from?”
“A Mozabite merchant.”
“Could I go and see him?”
“If you really want to; the man seemed so shady to me that I have not even mentioned this to Captain Boisfeuras.”
“Could I see him tonight?”
“We could call on him together, but as it’s best to be on the safe side, take a bodyguard with you to wait outside.”
“How far is it?”
“Right in the town, just a short step from here. Don’t forget that night is on the rebels’ side, and that Si Lahcen has done me the great honour of putting a price on my head. I’ve already escaped two attempts on my life.”
“Very well, then. Come and pick me up at the mess.”
“I’d rather you did not mention this to Caption Boisfeuras. I work with him and it might annoy him. Besides, it’s such a trivial thing! It’s only to satisfy your curiosity. You’ll find me outside the school.”
• • •
Ahmed knocked at the door several times and the Mozabite, blinking his eyes, came and opened it for them. He looked scared stiff:
“I haven’t done anything, gentlemen, I’m a great friend of France.”
“But he also subscribes to the F.L.N.,” said Ahmed, shrugging his shoulders, “put yourself in his place . . . We’re not going to do you any harm, we simply want you to tell the lieutenant what you already told me.”
Ahmed gave him a shove and they went inside.
Bucelier and Bistenave stood on guard outside the shop. The town was utterly silent, the stars shone brightly in a very dark sky. There was a sound of whispering on the other side of the door.
“Bucelier, I don’t like it at all,” Bistenave suddenly exclaimed.
“Got the wind up?”
“No, but I don’t like this war, this sudden return to P —— and Merle sniffing around like a poodle that has found a bone, and Ahmed with that handsome, treacherous face of his.”
“Treachery here, fifty yards from H.Q.? You must be crazy!”
Ten minutes later Merle came out again with Ahmed.
“This looks serious,” he said, “and urgent.”
“I don’t trust that Mozabite, sir. He’s got nothing to gain from this but a lot of trouble. Do think it over.”
“But he’s quite definite about it: eleven men with a machine-gun, ready to come over to us tonight. They’ll defend themselves if they see a large force turn up, they don’t trust us, but they’ll give themselves up to one officer accompanied by no more than a couple of men. The Mozabite confirms what you told me about a split in the Si Lahcen band.
“Why should this Mozabite want to lead me into a trap? If he lied he’ll pay for it dearly; his shop will be burnt down . . .”
“That’s true. But I’m wary all the same. Besides, this group of rebels are sure to have look-outs posted and if they hear trucks approaching they’ll have time to escape. Promises of this kind have often been made and then not kept. In a bulletin ‘thirty dead’ sounds better than thirty won over.
“This is an attempt which has got to be made alone or not at all. I’m all for dropping it. All the same, I’ll go and notify Captain Boisfeuras.”
Merle motioned to Bistenave and Sergeant Bucelier to come nearer.
“Look here, guys. Five miles from here there’s a group of mechtas. We’ve been through there before; at the moment eleven fellaghas from the Si Lahcen band are hiding up there. They want to give themselves up but only to one officer accompanied by a couple of men. They won’t be there after tonight, they’re frightened of being wiped out and they’ve got look-outs posted. If we drive up in trucks, they’ll make off.
“My friend Ahmed here doesn’t think much of this information and believes we’ll find nothing in the mechtas.”
“Ten to one against,” said Ahmed, “which isn’t worth the risk.”
“Can’t you see the three of us coming back with our eleven rebels—the reservists teaching the professional paratroops how to wage war!”
“That,” said Bucelier, “would be great fun.”
In his excitement Merle had seized Bistenave by the shoulders and was shaking him:
“And without firing a shot, Curé. We’ll hop into a Jeep, and if there’s nothing there we’ll be back in an hour. Ahmed, give us enough time to get away before you go and notify Captain Boisfeuras.”
“Aren’t you going to notify Captain Esclavier?” asked Bistenave, whose mouth had gone dry with apprehension.
He dared not openly protest. Bucelier would only repeat that he was afraid. Merle was pawing the ground with impatience:
“Esclavier’s dining with Raspéguy at Colonel Quarterolles’s. When they come out of the house we’ll present arms to them with our eleven rebels, and Quarterolles will have a fit.”
“It’s up to you,” said Ahmed. “I’ll notify Captain Boisfeuras in a couple of hours. If you’re careful there won’t be any danger, but I’m almost certain you won’t find a soul in the mechtas.”
Ahmed sauntered off at an easy pace, but on his way home he ran into Captain Boisfeuras and his Chinaman under the yellow light of a street lamp. The captain gave him a friendly wave; Min put his hand on his revolver and held it there.
The Chinaman uttered a few words in a harsh-sounding tongue, but the captain shrugged his shoulders.
A Jeep drove off. Inch-Allah! The dice had started rolling and God alone knew which side they would turn up.
Lieutenant Merle had to argue at the exit of the town with a sentry who would not let him through, and for a few moments Bistenave hoped that their crazy expedition was going to end in front of the barbed-wire entanglements of the guard-post.
Merle explained that he had orders from Colonel Raspéguy to contact a patrol which was coming in with prisoners and that the matter was urgent.
The sergeant appeared on the scene.
“You’ve taken some prisoners, have you?”
“Yes, eleven.”
“There’s no denying it, sir, you’re doing better than we ever did.”
He helped the sentry to draw back the barrier.
The moon came up and the Jeep, with only its sidelights on, started slithering up the trail.
“I’m going to be married,” said Merle, who was driving. “Yes, to an impossible girl. Got a cigarette, Bistenave? Would you light it for me, please. Thanks.”
“We’re mad, sir.”
“Of course, that’s what’s such fun. Here, what about that cigarette?”
“We should have informed Captain Esclavier all the same,” said Bucelier pensively.
“Look, old boy, Esclavier has done this sort of thing dozens of times and you may be sure he never informed anyone. You’re really getting too regimental. It’s quite simple, there are some men who want to give themselves up and we’re going out to collect them.”
“The night is on their side, sir.”
“The night’s on the side of whoever is out in it, and tonight’s the finest I’ve ever seen. The moonlight seems to have frozen everything round us like snow . . .”
“The mechtas, sir . . .”
Merle switched off the engine.
“Bistenave, you come with me. Bucelier, you stay with the Jeep. I don’t think it’s a trap, but if anything should happen, drive back and inform Captain Esclavier. If I call for you, but only if I call, come and join us. But it’ll be all right, I know; I’ve got a lucky charm in my pocket.
“Off we go, Bistenave. The Mozabite said the first mechta on the left and to knock three times. It’s odd, I can’t hear any dogs barking.”
The dogs had had their throats slit an hour before and their bodies had been thrown into a ditch.
Bucelier saw the lieutenant, followed by the seminarist, clamber up a little ridge. He heard him knock on the door of the mechta with the butt of his revolver; the door opened.
At that moment a burst from a submachine-gun shattered the darkness a few yards away. He felt a jolt and a stab in the shoulder. The Jeep was rolling down the slope, he must have taken the brake off, he couldn’t remember. He switched on the engine. Two, three bursts passed over his head. He switched on the lights. Warm blood was dripping on to his hand and he could feel his left arm going numb. He swerved the car round as he changed gear.
The only thing he knew was that he had to reach the First Company camp as soon as possible, warn Captain Esclavier and get everyone on his feet. If he was quick enough, the lieutenant and Bistenave could still be saved.
As he drove past the guardpost he was nearly fired on.
“What’s up?” asked the sergeant.
“Quick, there’s been some trouble . . . Quick, for God’s sake . . . Raise the barrier. Captain Esclavier . . .”
At that moment he fainted. A glass of water thrown in his face brought him round again. He was in the infirmary, lying on a stretcher. Captain Esclavier was standing in front of him with Dia, the Negro M.O. He saw that his arm had been bandaged.
“Quick, quick . . .”
He heard the throb of the G.M.C. engines and the sound of men running about outside.
“What happened?” Esclavier inquired.
He told him.
“Oh, the silly bastards!” the captain exclaimed in great distress.
Esclavier opened the window and shouted in his ear-splitting voice:
“First Company. Ready to move off.”
“I want to come with you,” said Bucelier.
“He can go,” Dia confirmed. “It’s only a flesh wound. And I’m coming too, because I was extremely fond of Merle.”
Bucelier suddenly realized they were all talking of Lieutenant Merle as though he was dead. He wanted to shout out that it wasn’t true, that it couldn’t be true, because no one had the right to kill Lieutenant Merle.
They found the two bodies stretched out on the ridge in front of the mechtas, with their throats slit, their guts ripped open and their sexual organs stuffed into their mouths. The headlights of the trucks illuminated the ghastly sight.
Second-Lieutenant Azmanian pointed out that the two bodies were turned in the direction of Mecca, like animals sacrificed in some holocaust. He had heard that at one time the Turks used to do the same thing in Armenia. He turned aside to be sick.
The reservists slowly came forward, their weapons in their hands, and formed a silent circle. They did not move but stood riveted by the scene.
Bucelier was trembling from head to foot; he no longer felt any pain in his shoulder.
“Give me your submachine-gun,” he said to Mongins, “I’m going into the mechtas.”
The men murmured:
“We’re all coming with you.”
Captain Esclavier appeared in the centre of the circle and never had the men seen him look so tall and redoubtable. Without a word, he unbuckled his belt and stripped off his equipment and revolver, keeping only his knife in his hand.
“Only the men,” he said in his dry voice. “Don’t touch the women or children, only the men, and only with knives—so that those who’ve got the guts can at least defend themselves.”
“The fellaghas who did the job have gone off,” Dia gently observed. “Those chaps in there don’t amount to much.”
Following Esclavier’s example, the men were taking off their equipment, discarding their rifles, submachine-guns and grenades, keeping only their knives.
Their rage, the thirst for blood and vengeance which had seized them, was so strong that they were almost calm and detached.
They advanced slowly towards the silent mechtas; they felt nothing but a faint fatigue, a sort of strange hunger which drove them forward.
Esclavier broke the door down with a thrust of his shoulder. Not one of the Arabs offered any resistance.
• • •
The sun was rising by the time Raspéguy, who had been notified by Dia, turned up pensively sucking his pipe. Twenty-seven Moslem bodies were lined up together, their throats cut, their heads turned towards the West, in the direction of Rome. Flies were already buzzing around them, sipping the blood.
“What a filthy business!” he said.
Esclavier sat leaning against the trunk of an olive-tree. He was very pale, his features were drawn, and there were dark circles under his eyes, as though he had just recovered from a long illness: he was shivering a little and felt icy cold.
Raspéguy came up and approached him gently, as though he was frightened of startling him:
“Philippe . . . Philippe . . .”
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s not very pretty, what you’ve done.”
“But for that, they would have massacred the lot, women and children included . . . and I wouldn’t have been able to hold them back.”
“I should have preferred grenades and submachine-guns, and the whole lot wiped out. Knives turn warfare into murder. And here we are doing what they do, soiling our hands like them.
“But perhaps it was necessary and we had to begin somewhere, since we were forced to come down from the heights into the plain and because we’ve been outraged in our manly honour by the mutilation of Merle and Fleur de Nave. It was primitive man, not the soldier, who reacted by subscribing to this holocaust.
“Call the men together, Philippe, I’ve got to talk to them.”
Raspéguy climbed up on to a rock above the bodies. The First Company faced him, a hundred and fifty men shattered by disgust, fear and hatred of war, on the point of mutiny, ready for anything in order to forget what they had just done, and at the same time feeling closer to one another than they had ever felt before, bound together by bloodshed and horror.
Raspéguy started speaking in a low voice, staring down at his boots.
“Gentlemen . . .”
By addressing them as gentlemen he was restoring a little of their lost dignity.
“Gentlemen, you acted in the heat of anger, but myself, this morning I feel cold. After thinking it over carefully, I should have given orders for every grown man in this douar to be shot, and you would have been responsible for their execution. In that respect, the incident is closed.”
He thrust his head forward like a falcon about to take flight and slowly glanced down the ranks in front of him.
“Because you were fond of Lieutenant Merle and little Bistenave, it’s you I entrust with avenging them, because that”—he pointed to the bodies—“isn’t vengeance; it’s merely a reprisal. I’m giving you Si Lahcen’s band. It’s yours with its rifles and submachine-guns; but the next time you’ll need more than your knives. That’s all.”
The soldiers felt as though they had been relieved of a heavy burden. They experienced a new feeling towards the colonel, in which admiration was mixed with gratitude and embarrassment.
“What do we do with the bodies?” asked Sergeant-Major Mourlier.
“Leave them there till this evening,” Raspéguy replied. “They may as well be of some use.”
Thus was born the cruel legend of the “lizards in caps,” of the warriors with knives who were more redoubtable than the shock troops of the F.L.N. In the depths of the douars they began to be regarded as demons impervious to bullets, sons of Alek and Azrael, the angel of death.
• • •
“Quickly, Captain,” said Min to Boisfeuras.
“What did you find out?”
“Ahmed has been to the post office and drawn out all his savings. Yesterday evening he had a long talk with Lieutenant Merle.”
Ahmed lived alone in a small house on the outskirts of the town: two bare rooms. In one stood a camp bed with army sheets and blankets, in the other a table and, next to the sink, a spirit lamp.
Mash’ Allah! The dice had come up badly.
The interpreter started stuffing tins of food and packets of cigarettes into a haversack. In spite of all the precautions he had taken, the job would be traced back to him in no time. He had abandoned his paratrooper’s uniform for cloth trousers, a flowing shirt and a striped jellaba.
He bent down, lifted up a tile and drew out some documents and money, two hundred thousand francs in big blue notes.
When he raised his head again, Min stood in front of him, his revolver aimed straight at him. With the end of the barrel he motioned him to stand up and put his hands above his head. Boisfeuras came in; he took the money, the documents and papers and then sat down astride a chair.
“Now look,” he said to Ahmed, “either you tell me the whole story, or Min will deal with you.”
“I don’t understand. I did all I could to stop Lieutenant Merle setting off in the middle of the night. I tried to notify you.”
“This money from your post office savings account . . . the haversack . . . We’re wasting time, Ahmed. And also these documents!”
Boisfeuras whistled in admiration; he had just glanced through a typewritten document in French and Arabic, dated from Cairo, bearing all sorts of red and blue seals, and confirming that Ahmed was the political commissar of the zone.
“I underestimated you.”
Ahmed sprang forward to grab Min’s revolver, but a chair came smashing down on his head.
When he came to, he found himself sitting on his bed, with his wrists tied to the metal bars with telephone wire.
“To hell with you,” he calmly said to Boisfeuras, “you and your Chinaman as well. I’m not talking.”
“You’ve got your reasons, I’ve got mine; I could be in your place, you could be in mine. That’s fate.”
“The dice rolling,” Ahmed reflected.
“I’m not sentimental, but in Indo-China I saved young Merle’s life and I was very fond of him. But I can forget him. Only, by cutting his throat like a dog, you’ve insulted us all. Unforgivable.
“We now want Si Lahcen and his band. It’s become a personal matter.”
“If you want Si Lahcen, go and look for him up in the mountains.
“Once again, Captain Boisfeuras, to hell with you. I’m not talking. But one day we’re going to throw you out of here and chase you right back to where you came from. Then we’ll give ourselves a treat with all your wives, all your daughters and your precious selves as well.”
“What the hell do I care?” Boisfeuras replied, quite calmly. “I want to know how your town organization works, I want names, the whereabouts of the hide-outs and your contacts with Si Lahcen.”
“No.”
“What’s more, I’m in a hurry. When you’ve had enough of Min, just let me know.”
Min went out, then came back again with a sock filled with fine sand dangling from his hand. Without striking too hard, he started hammering Ahmed’s head, as the Viet’s had taught him, always on the same spot—but in those days it was the Vietminh who administered the blows and Min who was on the receiving end!
Ahmed endured it for four hours—three hours less than Min. That evening Boisfeuras had a complete list of the members of the political organization of P ——. They were arrested forthwith. As for Si Lahcen, he had long ago taken to the hills.
Colonel Quarterolles was fuming when he called on Raspéguy.
“What the hell’s going on?” he asked. “No one tells me a thing. It seems that one of your subalterns has been killed and in return you’ve wiped out twenty-seven fellaghas. You’ve arrested Ahmed, the interpreter, the caid and his brother . . . and all the shops are being searched. What’s it all about?”
“In a week from now, Colonel, Si Lahcen’s band will have ceased to exist, I’ll bet you anything you like. We’ll both of us be able to go back to Algiers.”
“Why both of us?”
“Because no one here will have any further reason to maintain you in your command. The whole town, the whole administration, was rotten to the core and in the basement of the town hall we found three cases of ammunition earmarked for the rebels.
“Here’s something else you might like to hear . . . Si Lahcen had been living here, in P ——, the whole time; Ahmed, your right-hand man, was the political leader of the rebellion; and the mayor—the worthy Vesselier—he paid the Wogs to keep their mouths shut . . .
“Our men have had to wade through all this muck and little Lieutenant Merle has had his balls cut off. It was I who brought Merle out here, he belonged to me, he was part of me.
“You killed him with your stupidity and incapacity. We’re burying him tomorrow, but I forbid you to come to the funeral. If you do I’ll knock you down in front of everyone.”
• • •
“Well?” Dia asked Esclavier.
The captain was holding his head between his hands; he was unshaven and he and the M.O. had just polished off a half-bottle of brandy.
“Well, nothing.”
“Don’t you know? I’ve had a letter from Lescure. Guess what he’s up to. During the day he follows a course of ethnology at the Sorbonne and at night he thumps a piano in a night-club. He says he’s very happy.”
“Dia, what about yesterday?”
“I think you limited the damage.”
“Dia!”
“You’re ashamed because you let the black panther escape. It was sleeping peacefully deep inside you; it was the others that roused it, then it came and lay down again, its muzzle and claws full of blood.
“I’ve also got my panther, and it was growling very loudly when I saw Merle’s body but it didn’t escape.
“Marindelle, as you know, is never like the others; he can’t believe that we’ve all got a panther sleeping deep down inside us. He said to me: ‘Objectively speaking, the reprisal wasn’t a bad job. Fear has changed sides, tongues have been loosened, our soldiers now want to fight it out. We obtained more in a day than in six months fighting, and more with twenty-seven dead than with several hundreds.’
“I don’t understand the word ‘objectively.’”
Esclavier pulled a copy of Zero and the Infinite out of his pocket.
“Look what Boisfeuras has given me to read.”
He opened the book at a page which had been turned down: a quotation from the German bishop, Dietrich von Nieheim, who lived in the fourteenth century.
“When her existence is threatened, the Church is absolved of all moral commandments. Unity as an aim sanctifies every means, cunning, treachery, violence, simony, imprisonment and death. For all order exists for the purpose of the community, and the individual must be sacrificed for the general good.”
“Boisfeuras had just had Ahmed shot, after dining and getting drunk with him. He even promised to look after his wife.”
“Well,” said Dia, “we’re going to go on getting drunk together and I’m very glad it was your black panther that made you kill rather than that old bishop’s maunderings. I drink, Esclavier, to your black panther and also to mine.”
“What’s Glatigny doing?” Esclavier suddenly asked.
“He’s in church, saying his prayers.”