A week after Ahmed’s arrest Si Lahcen and his band were driven off the plain and forced to take refuge in the mountains. The rebels had had to abandon their dumps and their hide-outs which were no longer secure. Information became scarce and supplies were no longer available from P —— where the whole political and administrative organization of the rebellion had been decapitated.
The headmen of the douars came up one after another to see Si Lahcen near the cave where he had set up his headquarters. They all had the same thing to say:
“Si Lahcen, we are aware of your courage and your strength, but take your band of moujahidines away from our douar, for the French are bound to hear about it sooner or later; then they’ll burn down our mechtas, slit our throats and shoot your men.”
Si Lahcen did his best to stem their panic. He ordered some spectacular executions, but the hundred or so men and women he had shot down or butchered could not wipe out the memory of the mechtas of Rahlem. The only remorse he felt was when he realized this massacre had been completely useless.
Sitting near his cave, with a blanket round his shoulders to protect him from the early-morning dew, he let himself be carried away by his memories.
His best friend in Indo-China had been Sergeant Piras, a lively, skinny little chap who had worked at every kind of job and read every book. He used to wink as he rolled himself a cigarette and he kept his tobacco in a sort of round metal tin.
Each time they ran across each other in the course of an operation, Piras would wink and ask him:
“Well, Lahcen, how’s your destiny?”
If Piras had not been killed during Operation Atlante, he might perhaps now be fighting against him, disguised as a lizard. He imagined holding him in the sights of his rifle while Piras, standing like an ibex on a rock, took out his tobacco tin and greedily rolled himself a cigarette.
He would fire, but to one side, in order to scare him: Piras had been his friend. He realized all of a sudden that all his friends were in this army he was fighting against, whereas his own people, on the contrary, were alien to him and some of them, like Ahmed, disgusted him. Ahmed died as he had lived, not as a soldier but as a stool-pigeon. Captured, he had given away everything he knew.
A sentry came to inform him that a liasion agent, a certain Ibrahim, had just arrived from P ——.
Ibrahim may have been fifty years old or he may have been sixty: his full beard was speckled with grey; he was dressed in European clothes, with a watch-chain stretched across his waist-coat, but on his head he wore a turban made of some sort of linen and his feet were bare. He was a wise, cruel and self-possessed man. For a long time he had been in command of the small group of killers who by night controlled P —— and the surrounding douars: it was a miracle he had not yet been caught when all his men had already fallen to the Frenchmen’s bullets.
Ibrahim came and squatted down beside Si Lahcen and offered him a cigarette.
“What is it?” asked the rebel leader. “I told you to stay down at P —— and reorganize your group.”
“Si Lahcen, there’s not a single lizard left in the town. They all disappeared in the night. They’re hunting you up in the mountains and they know where you are.”
“Who gave me away?”
“Yesterday evening they caught three of your moujahidines as they were leaving a mechta to come and join you. One of them preferred to die, but the two others talked.”
“The lookouts haven’t signalled any trucks on the road.”
“The lizards are making war as we do; they’ve marched all night and are now less than two miles from your cave. As they advance they look under every stone and behind every bush to make sure there isn’t a hide-out there.”
“Do you think I can still get through by way of Oued Chahir?”
“That’s the route they’ve taken. They’re there already. I almost ran into one of their patrols which had laid an ambush and was moving up the river-bed at dawn. I hid under some branches and waited; then I took off my shoes and came up here, taking great care not to dislodge any pebbles.”
Si Lahcen rose to his feet and, followed by Ibrahim who was still barefoot, he inspected his position. He could not have chosen a better one. He had encamped with his band on a sort of peak overlooking a little pebbly plain as flat as a glacis, an open bit of ground hemmed in by the mountains, into which his assailants would be forced to venture.
Behind him rose a sheer cliff, on his left was the crevice up which Ibrahim had climbed and which could be easily defended with a few cases of grenades. Only his right flank was vulnerable: it formed a fairly gentle slope bristling with natural obstacles, and led towards the west. But it was a narrow approach; with his machine-gun, his three F.M.s and his mortar it would be easy for him to foil the attack of an enemy who would be unable to deploy and would therefore be obliged to advance in file.
“We’ll wait for them here,” Si Lahcen decided. “If they want a fight, I’ll take them on.”
The sun had risen; it shone straight into Ibrahim’s eyes, forcing him to screw them up, which gave him the rather sly expression of an old Berri peasant. He stroked his beard:
“Allah-i-chouf.* Let me have a rifle.”
Si Lahcen had about a hundred men at his disposal, the rest of the band having failed to join him. He made each one of them—and it was a difficult task—dig into a prepared position and build a little parapet of stones to protect himself. He gave orders not to fire unless certain of scoring a hit and to save ammunition, for they would have to hold out until nightfall before being able to withdraw towards the heights. He positioned the automatic weapons himself, gave each of them a definite mission, set up the mortar, then retired inside his cave. At the entrance to it he noticed a curious patch of sunlight which kept alternately appearing and vanishing.
Si Lahcen rummaged in his sack for a bar of chocolate. He pulled out a little leather case containing his Military Medal. He looked at this for several minutes. The ribbon was the same warm colour as the patch of sunlight.
Yes, he had certainly earned his medal out in Indo-China! The post overlooked the Red River. It was made of logs and the watch tower, soaring high on its stilts, looked like one of those stands which are put up in the middle of a vineyard when the grape is ripe.
The post commander was a lieutenant with a long neck and prominent Adam’s apple who wore spectacles; every morning he would sadly ask:
“But why the hell don’t the Viets attack? They can mop us up whenever they like.”
The post was, in fact, completely isolated; it relied entirely on parachute drops; but more often than not a proportion of the containers fell into the river.
Lieutenant Barbier and Sergeant-Major Lahcen were in command of a hundred or so partisans and a dozen Europeans. The partisans had been suborned by Vietminh propaganda and were only waiting for a favourable moment to turn traitor. Wasted by fever, laid low by the damp climate, the Frenchmen were incapable of repelling a fresh attack. Lieutenant Barbier was no longer quite right in the head; he kept imagining that someone was going to murder him; at the slightest sound he would draw his revolver and fire it. He also killed all the house lizards, which bring good luck, and squashed them against the walls of his room, using his shoe as a hammer; it was a bad sign.
One night the Vietminh had landed on the bank of the river below the post. Another group had occupied the village. At four in the morning they had attacked from both directions, while the partisans mutinied.
Lieutenant Barbier had been killed in his bed. He usually woke up at the slightest sound but this time he had not heard his murderer approaching. Lahcen and the white men who were left had taken refuge in the central block-house; they had held out for six hours against a whole Vietminh battalion.
A dinassault* sailing up the river with its armoured barges had come to their rescue when they were down to their last hand grenade. Lahcen had received a bullet in the lung and he still remembered the pinkish froth that had clung to his lips like toothpaste; but this froth had a sickly, salty taste: the taste of his own blood.
He had been evacuated to Hanoi by helicopter. He had been operated on straightaway and three days later, in a bed with snow-white sheets, a general had come to present him with his Military Medal and announce that he had been promoted. There were flowers on the table; the nurses wiped his face whenever he was too hot. Piras had come to see him, with a bottle of brandy hidden under his coat. Hospital regulations, just like the Koran, forbade all alcohol.
Lahcen had been happy; he was properly looked after, he was equal to the other Frenchmen; he had the same rights, the same friends. He laughed at the same jokes as his comrades. On his first night out some sergeant-majors like himself, but with names like Le Guen, Portal and Duval, had got him blind drunk in a bistro and had then dragged him off to a brothel.
Today, if he was wounded, he would not be entitled to a helicopter or to a hospital, and if he was taken prisoner he would finish up with a bullet in his head fired by Le Guen, Portal or Duval, if any of them happened to be present.
To them he was nothing but a renegade, worse than a Viet. If the administrator of P —— had not brutally reminded him that he was just a desert-rat, if he had not stolen from him, then he would have stayed on the side of the French . . . or would he?
No, on second thoughts, he would have gone over to the other side just the same, to avenge a number of other injustices, to remind the French that the Algerian also was entitled to be treated with respect.
Two bursts from a F.M. and the explosion of three grenades interrupted his soliloquy. Si Lahcen slipped the Military Medal into his pocket and ran out of the cave. A platoon of Frenchmen approaching up the crevice had been well and truly engaged.
The group leader, Mahmoud, motioned Si Lahcen to come forward and showed him, a hundred yards farther down, the bodies of two paratroopers, pathetic little mounds of camouflage cloth, and, a little farther on, the wounded W.T. operator with his set attached to his back; he was signalling to his comrades who had taken cover behind some rocks.
“Just watch, Si Lahcen,” said Mahmoud, “like hunting game . . .” A paratrooper had rushed forward and was trying to drag the W.T. operator back, while his comrades opened up with all they had got to give him covering fire. The group leader calmly took aim. Hit full in the head, the lizard collapsed on top of his comrade.
“Would you like the next one?” asked Mahmoud.
Si Lahcen took up a rifle and finished off the W.T. operator. Then he turned back towards the cave. Information had just come in that on his right flank the paratroops were beginning in creep forward and were now holding the ridge overlooking the open ground.
Ibrahim came and joined him in the cave. Sitting cross-legged on the ground, he lit a cigarette, then drew his watch out of his waistcoat pocket; it was a big silver hunter which had been given him by his boss, a settler on the outskirts of P ——. He was quite fond of him but destiny had willed that the roumi should be inside the farmhouse with his wife and children when it was set on fire. He put the watch carefully back in his pocket.
“Ten o’clock in the morning, Si Lahcen, and it won’t be dark till ten o’clock at night; it’s going to be a long wait. They will have all the time in the world to send for their aircraft and perhaps some artillery as well.”
“We could have made for the heights and then dispersed, but only at dawn and you arrived too late.”
Si Lahcen sent for his five group leaders and told them his plan:
“We shall hang on until nightfall, then attempt a break-out at the weakest point of the ‘enemy lines’ and make for the river-bed.” For technical words or expressions, Si Lahcen invariably used French and he took a certain pleasure in displaying his military knowledge in front of his subordinates. “We’re cut off from the mountains . . . Anyone attempting to surrender will be shot out of hand; the wounded will have to be abandoned. We may be attacked from the air, so dig in more deeply, and be quick about it . . .”
The group leaders started to embark on one of those endless discussions during which no problem is ever solved but which provides an excuse for killing time and exchanging cigarettes, noble thoughts and, occasionally, insults.
Three mortar shells landed in front of the cave, putting an end to the chikaia. There was a scream from a man who had been wounded. The group leaders rushed back to their men who were firing like lunatics; their bullets whined and ricocheted off the bare rocks.
Another company was now doubling across the open ground under the spasmodic and therefore rather ineffective fire of the rebel automatic weapons. Si Lahcen gave orders for the mortar to fire, but the shells fell well beyond.
From the top of the peak the long files of soldiers looked like columns of clumsy, stubborn ants as they stumbled over the obstacles or vanished behind them and reappeared again. The Tyrolean rucksack which the paratroopers wore on their backs gave them enormous thoraces and spindly little legs.
Lying flat on his stomach outside the cave, Si Lahcen kept them under observation. The leading sections presently arrived at the foot of the peak and disappeared from view.
A reconnaissance plane appeared in the sky, little bigger than a fly and insistently buzzing like a fly. It turned and, growing larger, became a bird of prey whose savage shadow swept the rocks. In spite of his orders, the moujahidines fired at it, thereby giving away their positions. The aircraft appeared to be hit, it dipped one wing and swooped down towards the plain with the slow, graceful movement of a wounded sea bird.
A few minutes later two fighter planes roared over the ridge. On their first run they dropped some bombs which burst with an ear-shattering explosion, causing a hail of stones but no damage. On the second run they fired rockets and four men crouching in a hole were killed. One of them was seen to leap into the air, his back broken, like a wild rabbit that has just received a full charge of buck-shot.
Lahcen knew they would come in again and machine-gun at a low altitude. Only this time the aircraft would be vulnerable to F.M. and rifle fire.
One of the planes roared over the cave, firing all its guns. Burning-hot shell-cases rained down round Si Lahcen who was still lying prone at the entrance.
Then there was silence. Si Lahcen crept forward under cover of the rocks and inspected his positions. The machine-gunning had killed two of his men and two others were seriously wounded. The casualties had been hit in the stomach and there was no chance of their surviving. That at least was the opinion of Mokri, the medical officer of the band, who had studied two years at the Algiers Faculty.
For the whole of that day the two wounded men never stopped moaning and crying out for water; there was no morphine to give them. They were disturbing the morale of the band and suffering pointlessly, since they would have to be left behind in any case.
Si Lahcen drew his revolver, a Lüger, the one which the administrator of P —— used to keep on his bedside table, and deliberately, without the slightest emotion, put the two men out of their misery. One of them just had time to curse him before his brains were blown out.
The lull lasted an hour, then the position was pounded by the 81-calibre mortars. After a few bracketing shots they began to find their range. One of the F.M.s and its crew of three was wiped out.
Ibrahim drew his watch out of his pocket. It was only half past one in the afternoon.
• • •
Raspéguy was crouching cross-legged by the side of his transmitter, munching some stale bread spread with the army-ration meat-paste which tasted as though it was made of sawdust and shavings. In front of him was a large-scale map in a plastic cover on which he made a number of marks in red and blue pencil as each of his companies reported their position.
Major de Glatigny, who had just been with the mortars, came and sat down beside him.
“It doesn’t look so bad,” said Raspéguy. “We’re closing in on them and the lads are sticking it out. What are the casualties?”
“Four dead and seven wounded. The dead are all in Esclavier’s unit.”
“What did they get up to this time?”
“Bucelier’s group advanced along a defile almost right up to the rebel position. They thought they would be able to take it on their own and pushed ahead contrary to orders. Pinières, who went to their rescue, got a splinter in his arm but he refuses to be evacuated.”
“Can he manage?”
“Yes.”
“Then its up to him.”
“Merle’s death was a great blow to him. He was engaged to be married to his sister and I think this death has put an end to the whole using.”
With a gesture of his hand Raspéguy indicated that all this was of no importance and belonged to the past. His only interest now was the rebel band which was caught in the net but was going to do its utmost to escape.
The colonel bent over his map again. The shadow of his cap concealed the whole of the top of his face.
“Glatigny!”
“Yes, sir.”
“You are Si Lahcen, you’re surrounded with a hundred or so men on a peak, with hardly any food supplies, water or ammunition. What would you do?”
“I shouldn’t let myself be pinned down on the peak. In my opinion, Si Lahcen will wait till it’s dark and then attempt to break out towards the river-bed and the valley.”
“That’s right, that’s exactly what he’d do. But in which direction?”
“On his left flank. That’s the easiest for him.”
“No, along the ridge on his right, so that his men won’t have too much ground to cover before coming up against our force and trying to dislodge them. His last chance is a swift, fierce hand-to-hand engagement.”
Raspéguy unhooked his receiver and called up:
“Blue Authority from Passavant.”
“Blue Authority listening.”
“Well, Esclavier?”
“I had some difficulty getting Bucelier away. They were under fire but they refused to withdraw and abandon the bodies of their four comrades.”
“The band is ours; you’ll have it tonight; get ready.”
A W.T. operator approached at the double.
“A signal from P ——, sir, yes, from Colonel Quarterolles, it’s urgent.”
“Everything’s urgent with him. Bring your set up here.”
The operator lugged the “300” up to Raspéguy, who took up the earphones but held them out at arm’s length, for Quarterolles at the other end was screaming as though he was being flayed alive:
“Send me the helicopter at once so that I can reach your position.”
“The helicopter’s being used exclusively for transporting the wounded, Colonel, and we’ve already got quite a number of wounded.”
“This is an order.”
“If you’re so keen to get here, you can walk. That’s all. Out.”
And Raspéguy rang off, ordering the operator to cease all communication with P ——. Then he turned to Glatigny.
“Men have been killed and more are going to be killed because of that fellow Quarterolles, and now he wants to come swanking up here in a helicopter, give a pat on the back to our boys who’ve been stewing in the sun for hours, who’ve had no time to eat, who’ve got no more water in their bottles, and ask them in a fatherly fashion: ‘How goes it, old boy?’ when he himself has just left the lunch-table with a pint of beer inside him.”
“He’s still the garrison commander, sir. It’s a serious business questioning the hierarchy of the army. In this particular case you’re probably right! But at other times, at most times . . .”
“Jacques” (this was the first time that Raspéguy had used his Christian name, admitting him into his military family like Esclavier and Boudin), “don’t you think I realize the danger? But if we want to win this war we have to shed all sorts of conventions. We are all responsible men and we stick together. What Esclavier and Boisfeuras did, which is condemned by every army regulation, has enabled us to get our hands on this band today. I don’t like massacres and I don’t like torture, but I feel it’s you, myself, all of us, who slit those throats at Rahlem and who made Ahmed and his little friends at P —— talk.”
“And God, sir?”
“Tonight Esclavier and his reservists will fight it out on equal terms with Si Lahcen’s fellaghas. In this fight they’ll settle their account with God or their conscience. Tonight they’ll be making their confession to death. And we’ll only intervene if they can’t manage by themselves; but I know they’ll hold out.”
Raspéguy leant back against a rock and Glatigny had the impression he was withdrawing into himself, searching through his gory, painful and glorious memories for the strength to carry on with his war.
But Raspéguy was actually dreaming of a dark, stagnant lake, bristling with dead branches and reeds, streaked with slow-moving fish and exuding a slimy miasma. He lowered himself gently into these waters, tensing his stomach, contracting his nostrils, struggling against his fear and disgust.
The wireless began to crackle:
“Amarante calling Violettes. Send us up some more grenades; we’re running short.”
The hunt was on again, and the explosion of bombs and rockets echoed and re-echoed in the depths of the valleys.
Glatigny sat with his head in his hands, recalling the Méo highlands.
• • •
Night fell without a sound; there was no more firing. It seemed as though the men had forgotten their quarrel and were taking advantage of this peace and quiet to gather, friend and foe together, round a camp-fire where, relieved of their burden of anger, courage and criminal actions, they could confide in one another and talk about their homes, the ample, welcoming bodies of their wives, their barns full of crops, sheep roasting over glowing embers and the cries of children.
But all round the peak, oblivious of the magic of the night, the wireless transmitters with their little orange lights were crackling louder than crickets.
“Passavant from Blue: they’re advancing on us now.”
It was Esclavier’s voice. Glatigny and Raspéguy remained glued to the W.T.
Esclavier had posted his men half way up the crevice, at the point where it began to open out. They did not form an unbroken line, but were scattered in twos and threes, crouching in holes or behind the rocks. They were staggered in depth over a distance of more than two hundred yards. Down in the river-bed Pinières’s company stood in reserve.
It was pitch black, the moon was not due to rise for another hour.
A few pebbles had been dislodged, which had alerted the advance posts, and immediately afterwards the fellaghas were on top of them, yelling like madmen. The whole defile had been set ablaze, the F.M.s firing long devastating bursts, the grenades exploding with a dull thud. The mortars, meanwhile, lobbed over tracer shells which spun slowly over the gorges and ridges, transforming them into a stage décor.
Bucelier found himself next to a machine-gun. It had just jammed and the gunner was having difficulty inserting a fresh magazine. He pushed him aside to take his place and was crushed by a body bearing down on him, a body draped in a tattered jellaba. He felt a violent jolt in all his muscles, while a blaze of light pierced and shattered the surrounding darkness.
“They’ve got me, like Bistenave,” Bucelier reflected.
But he felt nothing, while his head remained enveloped in the sweat-stained jellaba.
Then he heard some shouts, some words of command, the thundering voice of Lieutenant Pinières. Some submachine-guns were firing in short, sharp, angry bursts. He heard Santucci shout out:
“But where the hell is Bucelier?”
He was suddenly moved to tears because they were talking about him as though he was still alive. Stupidly, he thought:
“It’s good to have friends and not be dead in the midst of strangers, as in a car accident.”
The body on top of him was still soft and warm, but did not move and smelt of vomit and urine. He called out and was astonished to hear the strange voice which was his own:
“Here, here. It’s me, Bucelier.”
The fellagha’s body was dragged off him and the sergeant looked up to see some stars shining indifferently in the sky, and then the faces of his comrades above him. Hands were feeling his body, but without hurting him, unbuttoning his camouflage blouse and loosening his belt.
“But there’s nothing wrong with you at all,” Esclavier told him.
The captain helped him out of his hole. Bucelier was covered in blood but he was not wounded. Whereupon he burst into a loud guffaw, a nervous explosion which ended up in a sort of hiccup. Esclavier put his arm round his shoulder and held him against him, like a lost child who has just been found again.
“You’re lucky, you know, Bucelier. The fellagha who pounced on you was mashed to a jelly by a grenade thrown by one of his own friends. You’d better get down to the river-bed; the medical orderly will give you something to drink and if you think you can manage, you can come back afterwards. It’s not over yet.”
“Did they break through, sir?”
“No, but they’re bound to try again. They lost thirty men in the process, though.”
“And us?”
“A few.”
Bucelier never forgot that display of affection, when Esclavier put his arm round his shoulder.
A quarter of an hour later the fellaghas attempted a second break-through. This time it was Pinières’s company that bore the brunt. But Si Lahcen’s men failed to come to grips, and the moon which had risen illuminated the gorge and the confused fighting that ensued.
As the fellaghas broke off the engagement, the lieutenant caught sight of a short figure behind them silhouetted against the sky; he was firing on the runaways with a submachine-gun to try and rally them.
Pinières picked up his carbine and, standing up, with legs apart, carefully took aim and fired one, two, three shots.
Si Lahcen fell to his knees and dropped his weapon, then rolled a few yards down the slope and his hands, which had been clenched, slowly opened. Pinières searched him and drew the Military Medal out of his pocket. In his wallet there was also his pension card and his last mention in Indo-China.
“There’s something wrong about this war,” Pinières said to Esclavier.
A few fellaghas who were well dug in still put up some resistance but at dawn they were dislodged from their positions. Five or six of them surrendered, the rest preferred to die.
The regiment withdrew from the mountains towards P ——, bringing its dead back with it. Information had already reached the town about the death of Si Lahcen and the destruction of his band; the population knew that it had been a tough, relentless fight and that everyone had acquitted himself well.
As the paratroops filed past, some old chibanis, whose sons had probably been killed by them up in the hills, waved to them; on their grey jellabas they were wearing all their medals. It was not the enemy they were greeting but simply those who had had God on their side that day.
Next morning a religious and military ceremony was held in honour of the twelve men of the 10th Colonial Parachute Regiment who had been killed in the recent battle. Seven of them were reservists.
The coffins were loaded on to a G.M.C., coffins made of plain wooden planks whose thickness was laid down by Ordnance regulations, as was the diameter of the nails.
It was then Raspéguy spoke, addressing himself exclusively to the reservists.
“You fought extremely well. You have paid a high price for the right to belong to us; so any of you who wish will be allowed to go on a parachute course as soon as we get back to Algiers. Gentlemen, I am proud of you and salute you.”
And standing stiffly to attention, straightening his back and squaring his shoulders, Raspéguy saluted the truck which drove off with the Ordnance coffins and the few hundred faces turned towards him, the mutineers of Versailles whose features were drawn with fatigue, but who felt happy, released by the fight from the bloody memory of Rahlem.
Then, accompanied by Major de Glatigny and Captain Boisfeuras, Raspéguy went off to take leave of Colonel Quarterolles.
“Colonel,” he said, “I’ve got a present for you.”
He produced Si Lahcen’s Military Medal and put it on the desk, and also a sheet of paper folded in four and stained with rain and sweat.
“It’s only a mention in dispatches from Indo-China, Colonel, but it earned Sergeant-Major Si Lahcen his medal.”
Raspéguy snapped to attention and read out the rebel’s citation:
“‘Sergeant-Major Si Lahcen, of the Third Regiment of Algerian Light Infantry; magnificent leader of men, stalwart fighter, surrounded in a strong-point by infinitely superior forces, his officer being killed, he assumed command and although seriously wounded refused to surrender, withholding the attack for six hours until the arrival of reinforcements.’
“It’s the same Si Lahcen, Colonel, that Pinières killed, while he was trying to stem the rout of his men. It would have been easier to have kept him on our side.
“Ah, I almost forgot, Mayor; I think Captain Boisfeuras has also got something for you.”
“It’s a receipt for a contribution to the F.L.N.,” Boisfeuras sneered.
“It must be a fake,” said Vesselier.
“A receipt which isn’t made out in your name but in the name of Pedro Artaz, the foreman on your Bougainvillées estate. I can’t see how Pedro Artaz, who earns 40,000 francs a month and has a wife and three children, manages to pay 400,000 francs every quarter out of his own pocket.”
“I’ve also got a present,” said Glatigny. “It’s for Captain Moine. It’s a letter from Ahmed to Si Lahcen which I found among his papers.”
Puffing at an old cigarette end, Moine raised his head slightly and his little eyes betrayed the bestial hatred he felt for the handsome major who, with one foot on a chair, began to read Ahmed’s letter:
Brother Lahcen,
As far as Captain Moine is concerned, you needn’t worry. He’s drunk every night and owes 300,000 francs to the Mozabite, Mechaien. If he makes any fuss, we’ll be able to blackmail him. But he’s much too stupid, lazy and cowardly . . .
“Here, take the letter, Captain.”
Without moving, Moine stretched his hand out for it.
Colonel Quarterolles tried to change the subject:
“I’ve drafted a number of citations, for I must admit your men behaved admirably . . .”
Raspéguy replied with exaggerated courtesy:
“Colonel, I’m in the habit of rewarding my men, both dead and alive, myself, and I don’t entrust anyone else with the task.”
He saluted and withdrew with his two officers. Moine tore the letter up into small pieces, then ground the pieces under his heel and suddenly raised his head.
“I hope, sir, you’re going to put in a report about the conduct of Raspéguy’s officers in P ——. They tortured and liquidated Ahmed instead of handing him over to the proper authorities.”
“But you’ve done the same yourself, Moine, countless times . . .”
“Yes, but I always made out a report which was counter-signed by the police; I was quite in order.”
The regiment did not go back to the Camp des Pins straightaway, but wandered all over Kabylie to support the garrison troops whenever an important operation was undertaken . . .
The “lizards” marched through cork forests, in the indigo-coloured shade of the trees. The ferns bent and crackled under their jungle boots while flies, gorged on sap and plant-juice, came and settled on them as though dead drunk after a clumsy, faltering flight.
They toiled over the burning stones of the Aurès and Nèmentchas and, with parched throats, dreamt of the fresh springs of France half-choked by watercress and wild sorrel.
They ran their tongues over the salty sweat which dripped on to their lips. They marched, they laid ambushes, they killed rebels armed with sporting rifles or submachine-guns.
On 27 July they heard that the Egyptians had nationalized the Suez Canal, which affected them scarcely at all since none of them had shares in the Company.
They went on marching or devouring the dust of the roads in open trucks. One day they were sent off to occupy a series of little oases at the foot of the Saharan Atlas where they relieved a Foreign Legion unit.
Esclavier and his two companies of reservists set up headquarters at V ——, on the site of an old Roman camp of Cornelius Balbus. It was just outside the oasis, overlooking a broad expanse of sand-dunes.
The grove of palm-trees watered by seguias was cool and smelt of apricots. It was divided up into countless little gardens in which the norias of the wells made a gentle rattling sound. The women, unveiled, with tattooed faces, and adorned with heavy silver jewellery, smiled at the soldiers while the children, more persistent than the flies, ran after them begging for chocolate or offering them pleasures which the women of the oasis could not provide without a certain amount of danger.
The rebellion had not yet reached this area; the regiment took it easy and the officers spent their time calling on one another and showing off their palm groves with the pride and delight of owners. Raspéguy had left Boudin at Laghouat to attend to the administrative questions and supplies.
One evening almost all the officers had dropped in on Esclavier who, having taken over the legionaries’ furniture, had the most comfortable mess. It boasted a refrigerator, a few fans and, on a whitewashed wall, a primitive fresco depicting the Battle of Camerone.
Glatigny had brought a gazelle which he had shot from his Jeep, Boisfeuras a case of whisky which he had ordered from Algiers, and Boudin had sent up a small barrel of Mascara wine. They had decided to make a night of it and had started drinking systematically to get drunk as quickly as possible; through drink they contrived to come to grips with the painful, unwelcome memories that dogged their footsteps, to grapple with them, and exhaust themselves in the effort so as to wake up in the morning with a splitting headache and their minds at rest.
They drank first of all to Merle and all the others who were dead, then to themselves, to whom the same thing might happen any day, to Si Lahcen whom they had had to kill, and to Colonel Quarterolles, Moine and Vesselier whom they would very much have liked to shoot. But as they got more and more drunk they began to forget Algeria and France and presently all of them were talking or dreaming of Indo-China.
At the same moment all the officers and warrant-officers of the French Army, all those who had known Tonkin or Cochin-China, the Haute-Région, Cambodia or Laos, whether sitting in the mess, lying in ambush or sleeping in a tent, were likewise aggravating their yellow infection by picking at the thin scabs that covered it.
• • •
Esclavier had never been able to bear drunken conversation for long and so went out into the cool, blue desert night. He wandered about the ruins of the Roman camp until he came to the edge of the plateau. Sitting down on the base of a broken column, he contemplated the infinite expanse of the sky and the dunes; he felt a shiver down his spine which was perhaps nothing more than the cold night air. To reassure himself, he ran his fingers over the column and touched the inscription that he had deciphered on the morning of his arrival: Titus Caius Germanicus centurio IIIa Legio Augusta.
Twenty centuries earlier a Roman centurion had dreamt by this column and peered into the depths of the desert on the lookout for the arrival of the Numidians. He had stayed behind there to guard the limes of the Empire, while Rome decayed, the barbarians camped at her gates and the wives and daughters of the senators went out at nightfall to fornicate with them.
The centurions of Africa used to light bonfires on the slopes of the Saharan Atlas to make the Numidians think that the legions were still up there on guard. But one day the Numidians heard they were no more than a handful and they slaughtered them, while their comrades who had fled to Rome elected a new Caesar in order to forget their cowardice.
The centurion Philippe Esclavier of the 10th Parachute Regiment tried to think why he, too, had lit bonfires in order to contain the barbarians and save the West. “We centurions,” he reflected, “are the last defenders of man’s innocence against all those who want to enslave it in the name of original sin, against the Communists who refuse to have their children christened, never accept the conversion of an adult and are always ready to question it, but also against certain Christians who only think of faults and forget about redemption.”
Philippe heard the yapping of a jackal in the distance and, closer at hand, the song his comrades were bawling out, as they rapped on their plates with their knives and forks . . .
He thought of the Communists; he could not help feeling a certain respect for them, as the centurion Titus Caius Germanicus had felt for the nomads prowling round his desert camp. The Communists were frank enough to say what they wanted: the entire world. They fought fairly and no quarter or pity could be expected. Did Titus Caius also know he would have his throat cut?
But Philippe felt hatred and disgust welling up against the people back in Paris who were rejoicing in advance at their defeat, all those sons of Masoch who were already getting pleasure out of it.
Titus Caius must have thought the same about the progres-sivists of Rome. The barbarians, like the Communists of the twentieth century, had needed those traitors to open the city gate to them. But they despised them and on the day of their victory they had decided forthwith to exterminate them.
A strange thought crossed the captain’s mind: “Perhaps we could prevent the empire from collapsing by transforming ourselves into barbarians, by becoming males disgusted with all these females, by turning into Communists.”
As he rummaged in his pocket for a cigarette, Esclavier came upon a letter from the incestuous Guitte who refused to remain his sister by adoption. He had given her money and clothes, as he would to a real sister; he had even paid the instalments on her small car. She had spread it abroad that it was perfectly normal for him to keep her since she was his mistress and was living with him.
Old Goldschmidt, who had heard these rumours, had given his daughter a severe reprimand in front of the captain. She had merely shrugged her shoulders and said:
“It was only to help Philippe. He’s frightened of giving me a bad reputation; now that I’ve got one, what’s he waiting for?”
Guitte had waited a few minutes, and since he had made no move, she had left the room; he had not seen her again before his departure. But she had just written to say that she had got a lover, which suited her down to the ground.
Mina kept sending him postcards from the Côte d’Azur where she had gone on holiday. They were photographs of grand hotels, naked girls on the beach, parasols and pedal-boats, regattas and water-ski championships. Philippe stuck them up in the mess; the second-lieutenants and cadets of the reserve came and brooded on these holiday pictures for hours on end.
How paltry everything suddenly seemed in the middle of this African night!
He heard a great crash; back there in the mess a table had collapsed.
Marindelle came out and joined Esclavier.
“They’re dead drunk,” he told him. “Dia made a bet he could jump over the table and landed right on top of it. Pinières has passed out in a corner of the room, stripped to the waist and covered in bandages. Glatigny is sitting back in his chair quietly smoking his pipe, while Boisfeuras is practising knife-throwing against the door.”
“And Raspéguy?”
“He hasn’t opened his mouth but keeps eating, drinking and cutting up his bread with his penknife. He’s not very keen on these systematic binges. He thinks they’re a waste of time, effort and breath.”
“What about you, Yves?”
“I’m rather fed up.”
“Your wife?”
“I don’t love her any longer but I’ve got to get her out of my system; it’ll take some time. There’s some talk about the French and British intervening in Egypt. You know we’re rather well in with G.H.Q. Algiers since that business at P ——.”
“I’m not very proud of that . . . We say we come out here to protect the Algerians against the barbarism of the F.L.N., and my men and I then go and behave like Ahmed’s or Si Lahcen’s thugs.”
“We came out here to win, you know, and for no other reason. It’s thanks to the example you set at Rahlem that we wiped out the best organized band in Algeria, thereby saving the lives of hundreds, maybe thousands, of men, women and children.”
“When I went into the mechtas with a knife in my hand, I didn’t think of that. I should like to be in a war which wasn’t a civil war, a good clean war where there are only friends and enemies and no traitors, spies or collaborators, a war in which blood doesn’t mingle with shit . . .”
Raspéguy came up behind them.
“It’s not a bad spot,” he said. “We might have stayed here a little longer, but in a week’s time we’re going back to Algiers. We’ve just been posted to the general reserve.”
“What does that mean, sir?” Esclavier inquired.
Raspéguy put a hand on each of the captains’ shoulders, leaning heavily on them.
“It means we’ll be the first to enter Cairo.”
• • •
Two weeks later the 10th Colonial Parachute Regiment got back to its quarters in the Camp des Pins.
Before the reservists, who had just completed their six months’ stint, were demobilized, Raspéguy insisted on putting any of them who wished through a parachute course. All the reservists who had taken part in the Rahlem business volunteered.
“I don’t see how we can very well do anything else,” said Bucelier.
He couldn’t explain exactly why, but he felt it had to be done. Five or six soldiers who had been put off by the rigours of the training or the fear of breaking a leg just when they were on the point of going home, tried to get out of it. But their comrades did not give them a moment’s peace until they too decided to jump.
One evening, at eighteen-hundred hours, during the daily Press conference at Government House, the Press Information captain of Area Ten announced that “the mutineers of Versailles” were going to do a parachute jump at the Camp des Pins a few days before being demobbed and that they had all volunteered for it. The journalists had been invited by Lieutenant-Colonel Raspéguy who was in command of the unit to which they belonged.
The spokesman who was at the meeting thereupon buttonholed Villèle, his favorite butt.
“You’ll be writing this up in that rag of yours, won’t you, Mr. Villèle—that some reservists, Communists, have asked to do a parachute jump before leaving Algeria?”
“I’ll see,” said Villèle. “I’m going out there and if it’s true I’ll certainly write about it.”
He turned to Pasfeuro:
“Coming?”
They descended the broad stairs of the forum as far as the war memorial and went into a café where they ordered two anisettes.
“Had you heard about this story?” Villèle asked. “You know the whole Raspéguy outfit pretty well, don’t you?”
He gave a slight sneer.
“Especially that fellow Marindelle.”
“Some day, my fine friend, I’m going to bash your face in if you don’t keep off that subject. No, I hadn’t heard.”
“Shall we go and have a look?”
“You said you were going anyway, do you need me as well?”
“No . . . but I think it’ll be a good story. You could give me a lift . . . Let’s meet outside the Aletti.”
“Why don’t you hire a car like everyone else?”
“I’m never in Algiers more than a few days at a time. Please let me pay for your drink.”
Villèle could not help wondering what Pasfeuro’s reaction would be if he knew that he put the cost of a car down on his expenses although the one he always used was borrowed from a friend. He had even managed to get hold of some blank Europe-Cars receipt forms.
• • •
In front of two or three generals, a handful of colonels and a dozen journalists, two hundred reservists led by Captain Esclavier launched themselves for the seventh time into the blue. Their parachutes floated in the air for a few moments. Pulling on their rigging-lines, they landed without mishap and received their brand-new paratrooper’s badge from the hands of Colonel Raspéguy.
Then they marched back to their quarters and prepared for their departure. Bucelier, who had signed on again because he was now frightened of going back to France, watched them with a lump in his throat.
The rest of them were quits; they had done their jumps. But he wasn’t yet, at least he thought not.
Colonel Raspéguy, Esclavier and Pinières went down to the docks to watch the reservists as they embarked on the Sidi Brahim; they remained there until the last moment when the liner cast off. While waiting for them at the bar of the Aletti, Pasfeuro, Villèle, Marindelle and Boisfeuras proceeded to get drunk.
It was after the fifth whisky that Boisfeuras mentioned the leap of Leucadia.
“I once knew an Englishman out in Burma,” he said, “a crazy sort of chap who dropped into us one morning with some containers of gasoline meant for another unit which, unlike us, did at least have one or two vehicles. He was a specialist, but on Ancient Greece. Though he didn’t have a clue about the Far East, he knew a great deal about Greece and her esoteric customs. All he could do was talk and I often used to listen to him.
“One evening, while the mosquitoes were busy eating us alive and we were trying to force a stew of monkey down our throats, he asked me:
“‘Do you know the origin of the parachute? I thought not. And I don’t suppose you’ve heard of the island of Leucadia in Greece, either, have you?’”
“He was a bit of a bore when he assumed his professional tone after whining all day:
“‘Well, it was at Leucadia that the parachute was born. At Leucadia there’s a white cliff dedicated to Apollo—Leucadia from leukos, the Greek for “white,” as of course you know—a hundred and fifty feet high, from the top of which, in an extremely remote age, probably the proto-historical—that’s to say some time between prehistory and history—they used to hurl people into the sea as a sacrifice to the Sun-god. They were either youths or young girls who had been charged with all the crimes of the community, like the scapegoat in Leviticus.
“‘At a later date the priests of Apollo used to look for volunteers among incurable invalids, criminals or victims of unrequited love, all of whom were much the same thing in the eyes of the Ancients. The unloved is a culprit, don’t forget.’”
Marindelle almost upset his glass. “The unloved is a culprit!”
But Boisfeuras, punctuating his story with little sniggers, parodying the voice of the archaeologist-paratrooper, went on with his tale:
“‘They say that Sappho threw herself off the leap of Leucadia in a moment of despair. But which Sappho? There were two, one was a courtesan, the other a poetess. A woman who writes can’t ever love, so it must have been the courtesan who did the leap.
“‘Whoever survived the leap of Leucadia was cleansed of his sins and was certain to obtain his heart’s desire.
“‘The priests humanized the leap, posted boats down below to retrieve those who had jumped from the cliff. But there came a time when no one was willing to take such a risk any longer; in the course of its development, civilization eliminates heroism. Those who were unlucky in love were more discreet or else were made to look ridiculous.
“‘So in place of those who wanted to redeem their faults, the priests themselves volunteered to jump, for a certain fee. They trained seriously, did gymnastics, strengthed their muscles, exercised their reflexes, and learnt how to fall. To delay their drop they fastened feathers, live birds and God knows what else on to themselves . . . in other words, the parachute.
“‘I knew all this when I dropped, and that’s probably why I sprained my ankle. I was always the scapegoat up at Oxford; now I’m at peace at last.’”
Boisfeuras drained his glass, ordered another round and proposed this strange toast:
“I drink to the leap of Leucadia which Esclavier’s two hundred reservists performed today to cleanse themselves of a fault which they thought they had committed.”
“What fault?” Pasfeuro asked.
“Didn’t you ever hear about the mechtas of Rahlem?”
“No,” said Villèle.
He almost asked for further details, but his instinct warned him not to; this evening he was being barely tolerated.
“By the way,” Boisfeuras went on, “I forgot to tell you what became of that English fellow. The gods felt that he had not cleansed himself sufficiently of his faults, or else those of Oxford University were too heavy by half. On his next jump he did a ‘Roman candle’ and smashed himself to bits.”