When Pasfeuro and Villèle tried, in their articles, to explain the paratroops’ success in the battle of Algiers and the failure of the strike, the reason they gave was the over-confidence of the F.L.N. Believing that victory was in sight, it had omitted to take the usual precautions of clandestine activity, in particular the security measure of keeping the various cells and networks apart. In evidence they quoted the arrest of Si Millial, followed by that of Ben M’Hidi and the hasty flight of all the members of the C.C.E.* who had settled in Algiers as though the town was already the seat of government of the Algerian Republic.
In actual fact, the audacity with which Boisfeuras had seized the card index system from the D.S.T., his contacts with Arcinade, the burlesque turn which fate had taken and the speed which the paratroops displayed were the factors which determined their success. This speed resulted both from the paratroopers’ ignorance of police methods and their habit of always relying on surprise for the successful conduct of an operation.
The 10th Parachute Regiment had established its headquarters at the gates of the Kasbah, in an old Arab palace which had long been abandoned. During the night the paratroops installed a field telephone network and an electric light system operating on a portable power plant. In the middle of the town they therefore still had the impression of campaigning “in the field,” of remaining soldiers and not being transformed into policemen.
The companies were billeted within the unit perimeter, the men living in the outhouses or in requisitioned villas. Boisfeuras and Marindelle had moved into a big empty room opening on to a gallery on the first floor which encircled the patio. The roof was flaking and the sky-blue paint on the walls had turned a dirty grey as a result of the damp.
In the basement of the old palace, which was used by a neighbouring school as a store-room, they had found some tables, desks and a big blackboard on its wooden stand. Since they did not have a stick of furniture themselves, and their own stores had not yet arrived, they appropriated this makeshift material.
Boisfeuras had brought in the D.S.T. card index system, a massive cabinet of polished wood with a stout lock. He broke it open with his knife; the cabinet contained a hundred and fifty cards.
At three o’clock in the morning Sergeant Bucelier came and brought the two captains some coffee, which they laced with two small bottles of rum they had extracted from some ration boxes.
The power plant droning away below them faltered every now and then and the naked bulbs hanging on their lengths of wire would begin to dim; once or twice they went out altogether.
Because of the cold they wore blue duffel-coats over their uniform. Every now and then, to warm themselves up, they would stride up and down the room slapping their thighs, looking like two Grands Meaulnes against this schoolroom background.
Boisfeuras started going through the cards. The same names kept cropping up: Mohammed abd el Kassem, Ahmed ben Djaouli, Youssef ben Kichrani . . . Most of them had no address; a few of them lived in the streets and lanes of the Kasbah, the shanty-towns of the Clos Salembier or the Ravine of the Femme Sauvage.
The records mentioned that Mohammed abd el Kassem had belonged to the Étoile Nord-Africaine, then to the U.M.D.A.; that Djaouli was a member of the M.T.L.D., after having first joined the P.P.A.
All these initials and descriptive signs of anti-French activity meant nothing to the captain who was completely ignorant of the political history of Algeria.
Marindelle glanced through the pamphlet which had been distributed to the intelligence officers of the parachute units. It was marked in red with the word: “Confidential,” and in its content and layout resembled one of those brochures that are handed out to tourists on arrival at an airport or frontier.
Bucelier sat on his bench reading an old magazine which had a fascinating article on the love life of some minor royalty.
At five in the morning, utterly worn out, they fell asleep at their desks, their heads pillowed in their arms.
They were woken up with a start by Raspéguy’s voice:
“Nothing has been done about the tap water, I see. Everyone is dozing in this regiment, as though we were at ease.”
The colonel was already washed and shaved; he had just doubled round the old palace to get some exercise. He was longing for immediate action but, like his officers, did not know in which direction to expend his energy.
He began thumbing through the card index system, glancing at the names inscribed in regulation block capitals by some conscientious clerk.
“All this stinks of rebels,” he said. “Is this what you pinched from the flatfoots, Boisfeuras? Well, when are we going to act on it? You’ve at least got some addresses. Get moving; the strike’s in two days’ time and in this box we may have the names of the men who are organizing it.”
“There’s nothing in it,” said Boisfeuras, “but the usual informers’ statements, out-of-date political stuff, no reliable evidence, nothing but hearsay . . . So-and-so is said to have done this or that . . . So-and-so is said to be in such-and-such a place . . .”
Raspéguy flared up impatiently:
“Get to work! These men may have been marked down rightly or wrongly but among them there’s bound to be a few who haven’t got a clean conscience. We’ll round them up and have a little talk . . .”
“The curfew’s been lifted for the last two hours, sir,” Marindelle pointed out, “the birds will have flown and as soon as we round up the first one the Arab grape-vine will sound the alarm. We’ve got to arrest the whole lot or else none at all. We could let the other regiments have the addresses of the ones living outside our sector.”
“To hell with that! We’ve got the cards and we’re going to hang on to them.”
“The curfew starts at midnight,” Boisfeuras observed. “Five minutes past midnight would be a good time to begin the operation since, legally, our birds will think they’re safe from a police search at that hour.”
“We must think this out carefully,” said Raspéguy. “Bucelier, move over to the blackboard! And take that expression off your face, haven’t you ever seen a blackboard before? The captain will read you out the names on the cards and you’ll write them down in chalk; Marindelle, you’ll pin-point the addresses on the town map. We’ll divide the suspects up into areas, one area to each company. We should be able to have the whole lot in the bag in less than half an hour. I want all company commanders to report to me at thirteen hundred hours. I’ll go and warn them now in any case and see how they’re settling down.”
Raspéguy strode off, happy to escape from the schoolroom atmosphere; he had spent most of his childhood playing truant.
He drove through Bab-el-Oued in his Jeep as though he owned the district and hooted loudly as he went past the “casa de los Martinez.” A shutter opened and Concha, not yet properly awake, with her young breasts escaping from her blouse, appeared at the window.
“I must try and find a minute or two this afternoon,” he reflected.
Then, on second thoughts, he said to himself:
“But why shouldn’t I go and visit her at home? I’m the boss of Bab-el-Oued now.”
• • •
Boisfeuras was busy reading out the cards and Bucelier, who was fed up with this job, did his best to make the chalk grate as he inscribed the names on the blackboard.
“Hallo,” Boisfeuras suddenly exclaimed, “here’s a good one, filled in on both sides, and with far less hearsay evidence than usual:
Si Millial, belonging to a big family in the Ksour, university graduate, studied at the Sorbonne, has always taken an active part in nationalist movements. During the war made contacts with the German and Italian services, then, after the landing, with the American O.S.S. Arrested while working for this organization and sentenced to only five years’ imprisonment for collaborating with the enemy, the Americans having intervened in his favour.
In 1948, almost immediately after his release, attended the Youth Congress at Prague, where he spoke against the crimes of French colonialism. Later reported in Iraq, Syria, the Lebanon and Cairo.
Still owns a flat in Paris, on the Quai Blériot. Large private income, but insufficient to account for his standard of living and travelling.
Appears to have risen to the leadership of the F.L.N. extremely quickly, although there has been no trace of him since 1 November 1954, the date of the outbreak of the rebellion.
The name Si Millial rang a bell in Boisfeuras’s mind. He remembered now: that madman Arcinade had mentioned him.
The captain turned the card over, paused for a moment, then handed it to Marindelle.
“Any interest to you?”
The bottom line was underlined in red:
When in Algiers, Si Millial is said to live at 12, Passage des Dames, the address of Christiane Bellinger, a lecturer at the Faculty; she is believed to be his mistress.
Marindelle had gone as white as a sheet and the card trembled in his fingers. This card was one of the few which bore an official identity photograph, full and side face, taken in the prison at Lambèse. Amar had hardly changed at all since then, but the set expression gave no hint of his lively intelligence or charm.
Chalk in hand, Bucelier waited impatiently.
“Leave me this card,” said Marindelle. “I’ll deal with this case myself.”
Boisfeuras took up another card and began reading out:
“Arouche, dentist, 117 Rue Michelet . . . M.T.L.D. . . .”
At five minutes past midnight about twenty Jeeps set out from the 10th Regiment barracks and drove straight into the deserted city, each with three armed men on board. Each team had been given a name, an address, and in some cases a photograph.
At the company commanders’ meeting Raspéguy had made himself quite clear:
“Cast your nets wide, round them all up, and if any of them don’t like it . . .”
He made a sweeping gesture with his hand.
“No rough stuff, mind you, but I don’t want any escapes . . .”
With a serious air Esclavier inquired:
“What if they ask to see our search warrants?”
Raspéguy turned on him:
“This is no time for joking. We’re at war.”
Major de Glatigny had tried to have as little as possible to do with this operation, which he assumed to be necessary but which he found extremely unpleasant on account of its police-like aspect.
Boudin had had to leave for France at short notice, his mother having fallen seriously ill. Glatigny had taken his place and his new duties enabled him to confine himself to billeting and supplies and to communications between the various companies.
As the first Jeeps started off, he was lying on his camp-bed smoking a stubby pipe. He tried to remember if military regulations, which provided for every eventuality, had envisaged that a regiment in a French town, in peace-time, without a state of emergency being proclaimed, without an official proclamation being made by the Government, could be invested with all civil and military powers, including those of every branch of the police . . . No, that had never been foreseen.
The arrival of Marindelle interrupted his thoughts.
“Well, how far have you got?” he inquired, unconsciously emphasizing that he was not whole-heartedly with them.
Marindelle was looking rather odd. His expression aged him, suddenly revealing that he was over thirty and had suffered a great deal of hardship.
“Jacques, I want to ask you a favour.”
“Go ahead.”
“A personal favour . . . I want you to come with me on a search.”
“You can have my Jeep and my driver. I don’t see what use I could be myself.”
“I want you to come with me to Christiane Bellinger’s. That’s where Si Millial, one of the leaders of the rebellion, is hiding out.”
Glatigny leaped to his feet.
“What! It’s not possible! Police rumours . . . You can’t trust those chaps an inch. Don’t forget, you were listed as a Communist. I only know Christiane slightly, but all the same I could see that she’s a very gentle, warm-hearted girl. Now Si Millial is the man who has organized terrorism and brought it to a fine art.”
“I’ve met this Si Millial at her house. He quoted Camus to me—Les Justes—and yesterday I shook his hand as though he was a friend—that hand which is responsible for every bomb that’s exploded in Algiers. We listened to the gramophone. He likes Mozart as much as I do.”
“But Christiane doesn’t know his real identity, surely?”
“Yes, she does. She reproaches me for being a policeman, but consents to his massacring women and children. The Communists are quite right to treat their intellectuals like calves, to castrate them and fatten them up, because they know their fine principles will allow them to be as foul as they like, without giving them the slightest twinge of conscience.”
“Don’t get so worked up about it.”
“Jeanine was a dirty little strumpet, and now this girl has led me up the garden path with her humanistic attitude, while the bombs were going off all the time. She’s made me an accomplice of the terrorists.”
“All right. I’ll come with you.”
That was another of those eventualities that had not been catered for in army regulations.
• • •
Marindelle and Glatigny went to Christiane’s house with an escort of two paratroopers. There was a light on in the drawing-room.
Marindelle posted the two men on either side of the entrance, with orders to fire on anyone who tried to come out, then he opened the heavy studded door with the key that Christiane had given him.
The drawing-room light shone out on to the staircase, illuminating the blue-patterned tiles. Christiane’s voice called out:
“Is that you, Yves?”
“Yes, I’ve brought a friend of mine with me. I’ve told him about Amar and he’d like to meet him.”
Amar was sitting in an arm-chair thumbing through an art book which he held in his chubby hands. A glass of whisky stood on a table by his side.
He looked up, smiled at Marindelle and rose to his feet.
“Nice to see you again, Captain.”
All of a sudden he noticed that the two officers were in battle order; their caps, which they had not taken off, made their faces leaner than ever; each had a revolver and a knife hanging from his webbing belt.
“I’m glad to find you’re still here, Si Millial,” said Marindelle. “For a moment I was afraid you might have changed your address.”
Amar glanced at the window . . . then at the door. The window had a grille on it; by the door stood the major with his hand on his holster.
He had been caught in the hide-out which he believed to be invulnerable. His lucky star, his baraka, had let him down again. But his nimble mind had been trained by long years of clandestine living to react properly to the most unexpected situations.
“It remains to be proved, Captain, that I’m Si Millial”—he glanced at his wrist-watch—“I must remind you that it’s now half past twelve and the law forbids you to make a search at this time of night. However, out of regard for Christiane, I am willing to prove my identity.”
He sat down again, but Glatigny noticed he kept glancing at the telephone. He locked the drawing-room door from the inside and came and stood by the receiver.
“Yves, I find your manners intolerable, and your friend’s too,” Christiane exclaimed. “I thought you were too intelligent to be jealous. Si Millial . . .”
She had no time to correct herself and went scarlet in the face.
Si Millial rose to his feet, stretched out his stubby little arms and in a calm, almost amused voice declared:
“I’ve made two mistakes, gentlemen. I’ve confided in a woman and I’ve slept in a bed. Let me telephone my lawyer, Maître Boumendjel, then you can bring in the policemen who are with you.”
He moved towards the telephone, but Glatigny intercepted him.
“Those aren’t policemen at the door, sir, they’re paratroopers; you’re not being detained, you’re a prisoner of war and you are not entitled to a lawyer.”
“What are you going to do with me?”
“Interrogate you,” said Marindelle, “until no more bombs go off in Algiers, until the strike has failed, until the last terrorist in your network has been wiped out.”
Christiane kept glancing alternately at Marindelle and Si Millial.
“Amar, these men are mad. You told me you belonged to a political party, but surely you, a man of peace, an enemy of violence, have never had anything to do with bombs?”
“My right hand, my dear Christiane, does not know what my left is doing. I make war as best I can. If I were in the position of the French, I wouldn’t need bombs, but I’ve no other means at my disposal. What difference do you see in the pilot who drops cans of napalm on a mechta from the safety of his aircraft and a terrorist who places a bomb in the Coq Hardi? The terrorist requires far more courage. You’re a woman and too tenderhearted; you are open-minded but without conviction, and besides . . . you’re not one of us.
“Gentlemen, I’m at your disposal.”
Marindelle summoned one of the paratroopers who came and handcuffed Si Millial. He stretched out his hands and turned to Glatigny.
“I didn’t know you handcuffed prisoners of war?”
“Yes, when they’re not in uniform.”
Marindelle was the last to leave. He collected a suitcase with a few clothes and a briefcase stuffed with documents from Si Millial’s room. He put the key down on the chest of drawers, then marched out without a word. Christiane made no attempt to hold him back. Yet she had been pregnant for the last week.
• • •
Glatigny and Marindelle brought their prisoner back to the dilapidated old palace which served as their regimental head-quarters. They made him sit down on a camp-bed in a corner of Glatigny’s office.
The major then settled down in front of his small square table. He unscrewed the cap of his fountain-pen and took out a clean sheet of paper. He felt ill at ease and could not decide how to begin the interrogation.
“Your name?” he asked.
Si Millial appeared indifferent, almost amused, as he sat there with his manacled hands in front of him. This was not his first interrogation, nor the first time he had had handcuffs round his wrists. Like an earnest pupil, he replied:
“Amar Si Millial, but also Ben Larba, Abderhamane . . . I’ve used at least a dozen names in the last five years. But thousands of Algerians also know me by the name of ‘Big Brother.’”
Glatigny put down his pen. He suddenly remembered the Vietminh political commissar who had interrogated him for the first time in the tunnel which served as an air-raid shelter. He had had the same reactions as him: the fountain-pen, the sheet of paper . . .
“Are your handcuffs bothering you, Si Millial?”
“A little.”
Glatigny went over and unfastened the steel bracelets which he then tossed into a corner of the room.
“As you can imagine, Si Millial, we don’t find this sort of work particularly pleasant. We would much rather be fighting you on equal terms up in the mountains; but you’ve forced us to wage this sort of war.”
“I agree, Major, your conception of military honour must be a bit of a disadvantage in this sort of . . . work, as you call it. Why don’t you hand me over to the police?”
Once again Glatigny was reminded of the Vietminh, who had also been sarcastic about military honour, as displayed by colonial officers.
“Stick to the rules of the game, Major. Send for my lawyer, and the police inspector of this area and his constables, to draw up a warrant for my arrest, for we’re not in a state of emergency. Then your conscience will be at rest and you will have observed your code of military honour.”
“No,” Marindelle burst out. “Our bourgeois conception of honour, we left behind us in Indo-China in Camp One. We’re now out to win, and we’re in much too much of a hurry to saddle ourselves with such ridiculous conventions. Our diffidence, our indecision, our pangs of conscience are the best weapons you could use against us; but they won’t work any longer.”
A long silence ensued; the lamps began to dim, faded away to a few red filaments, and then went out completely. Marindelle spoke up again in a more confident tone:
“Si Millial, we want to know who’s responsible for the general strike. We’ve got to have his name.”
“My honour as a soldier prevents me from replying. In our army I’ve got the rank of colonel.”
A rectangle of dark blue sky appeared through a shattered pane in the window. A Jeep drove off outside. The signallers repairing the power plant could be heard cursing the “useless bloody contraption.”
The rasping voice of Boisfeuras came to their ears:
“Well, have you got it going? Bring in some lamps.”
The harsh light of the hurricane lamp that Boisfeuras was carrying drew closer, casting flickering shadows on the walls; presently, enclosed in this circle of light, they settled by the side of the bed, so close together that they were almost touching.
“Well, Marindelle,” Boisfeuras observed, “I see you found the bird in his nest. This is Si Millial, isn’t it? Why haven’t you tied him up? With all these light failures, he could make a break for it. Have you searched him? What about his luggage?”
Marindelle showed him the briefcase and the suitcase on the table.
“Get up, Si Millial,” said Boisfeuras. “Come on, on your feet! Take off your jacket, your tie and belt and shoes. Bucelier, take all this stuff away and put it in my office. Don’t forget the briefcase or the suitcase.”
Si Millial now looked ridiculous, as he stood there in the shaft of light holding his trousers up with both hands.
“The address of the letter-box? Come on, be quick about it!”
“I’m a colonel, I’m entitled to my rights.”
“Out in Malaya, Si Millial, I once picked up a Japanese and stripped him down to his under-pants. He also told me he was a general. I had it inscribed on his tomb: ‘General Tokoto Mahuri, War Criminal.’
“Well, are you going to come clean?”
Si Millial was disconcerted by this forthright, brutal treatment; until then he had held all the cards; but Boisfeuras brought him back to the harsh reality of his position: that of a terrorist without any safeguard.
“Are you going to come clean or not?”
He tried to parry the blow by bluffing:
“Everyone knows I’ve been arrested by now. My letter-box is blown.”
“No one knows yet.”
“What about the woman?” Boisfeuras suddenly asked, turning to Marindelle. “Did you bring her with you?”
“She won’t talk,” said Marindelle.
“I’ll take your word for it; after all, you know her better than I do. We’ve got to act quickly, we’ve only twenty-four hours left. Your letter-box, Si Millial?”
Glatigny tried to intervene. He was surprised and disturbed by this new side to his character that Boisfeuras was revealing.
“Why not go through his papers and belongings? Perhaps you’ll find the address you need among them.”
“Leave this to me; I know how to deal with this sort of business. And Si Millial is by no means a beginner; before starting up on his own he had already worked for several intelligence services, it didn’t matter which, provided they were operating against us.”
He sneered:
“But I suppose you’re not too keen on what we’ve now got to do, Glatigny. Afraid of getting your hands dirty, perhaps? This man in our clutches is an unexpected stroke of luck. Perhaps he’ll be able to prevent our having to fight in the streets. But it’s no good putting him behind glass, in a shop-window. This is Si Millial, the bomb man. Come on, Marindelle!”
The power plant suddenly started up again and the lights came back. They dragged Si Millial off in his stockinged feet, still holding up his trousers with his hands.
In the “schoolroom” stood Min.
“The address of the letter-box?” Boisfeuras asked once again.
Si Millial slowly shook his head and Min took a step towards him.
Marindelle had opened the window and was taking deep breaths of the cool night air. He knew it had to come to this, that this was the ghastly law of the new type of war. But he had to get accustomed to it, to harden himself and shed all those deeply ingrained, out-of-date notions which make for the greatness of Western man but at the same time prevent him from protecting himself.
“22, Rue de la Bombe,” Boisfeuras eventually informed him. “Marindelle, take a couple of Jeeps and drive like hell. We’ve only an hour left before the curfew ends.”
The patio began to overflow with prisoners. Some were in pyjamas under their overcoats and, still half asleep, kept rubbing their eyes. Others with a searchlight trained on them, were lined up against a wall with their hands in the air, expecting to be shot at any moment.
Raspéguy, with a pipe in his mouth, stood leaning over the gallery on the first floor, wondering what he was going to do with this lamentable mob. He longed to escape with his men into the mountains, leave this job to others who were qualified to do it, inhale the damp morning air into his lungs and experience once more the sadness and intense delight of days of victory. Today was only a day of arrests.
“We’ve got Si Millial, sir,” said Marindelle, as he went past him.
“Who the hell’s that?”
“A rebel colonel, maybe the chief one.”
“Good God, where is he?”
“In Boisfeuras’s office.”
Raspéguy found Si Millial tied to a bench. Min stood by the side of Boisfeuras’s desk, connecting the field telephone up again.
The colonel sat down on the bench next to the prisoner and gave him a light-hearted slap on the thigh.
“So you’re Colonel Si Millial, are you?”
Si Millial was beginning to lose heart; he felt as though he was being drawn and quartered so as to reveal his innermost secrets. A breach had been made in his courage and he feared it was bound to grow wider.
He wanted to reply, however, and reassert himself under that label of colonel which was the only thing that was likely to impress these army men. He replied with a certain self-satisfaction.
“Yes, I’m a colonel, because with us there are no generals!”
“A good thing too,” Raspéguy replied. “If only we could do without them! What’s your command?”
“Thousands of men, hundreds of thousands, an entire nation which is up in arms against the oppressor.”
“I see, just as I’m at the head of the entire French Army. But try and be a little more specific.”
“I’m the military leader of the Committee of Co-ordination and Execution, our government in other words.”
Raspéguy gave a whistle of admiration. He turned to Boisfeuras, who was making notes in red pencil on Si Millial’s papers, and asked:
“What did you get out of him?”
“He’s a hard nut; he wouldn’t give away a thing. Only an address: 22 Rue de la Bombe. I’ve sent Marindelle over there.”
Boisfeuras suddenly leapt to his feet in excitement and tapped the papers:
“There’s the whole plan of the strike in here, Si Millial’s contacts in France, a letter from the Afro-Asiatic Group written on paper with a U.N. heading . . . We caught him just in time!”
Raspéguy looked at Si Millial with renewed interest.
“Well, I must say, you’ve got some important connexions!”
Si Millial was shivering with cold. Raspéguy called for Bucelier:
“Give him back his coat and his shoes, and let him have a drink of ‘juice.’”
Si Millial put his clothes on and tied up his shoe-laces.
“I also know you, Colonel,” he declared, “at least by repute. In their brutality and efficiency, your methods are rather like ours. After Rahlem we wanted to liquidate you, for we considered you infinitely more dangerous than a lot of generals and politicians.”
Raspéguy bridled and offered Si Millial a cigarette.
“No, thanks,” he said, “I only smoke American tobacco.”
Raspéguy sent Bucelier off for a packet of Virginia cigarettes.
“Philip Morris,” Si Millial specified, “and a box of matches, I forgot my lighter.”
Boisfeuras had stopped examining the papers. He now knew who Si Millial was; the “colonel” was exaggerating his military rank, a courtesy title bestowed on him by the group of Kabyle chieftains after the Soumman meeting. His political power, however, was considerable, especially outside Algeria.
He was on intimate terms with several politicians who had played, and perhaps would soon be playing again, an extremely important role. He had numerous acquaintances among intellectual circles in Paris, also among the Catholics, and even among certain figures reputed to be of the “centre,” who represented high finance and heavy industry and who found that the war in Algeria was costing them far too much.
Si Millial would obviously have to be handed over to the judicial authorities. But at a time when certain sections of public opinion were prepared to come to terms with the F.L.N., a prisoner of such importance would immediately be transferred to Paris where his detention would soon be changed to open arrest; he would then be able to renew all his contacts.
Si Millial was par excellence a “qualified spokesman.” His charm and moderation, which served to conceal his energy and harsh realism (his papers contained ample proof that he was the instigator of terrorism), made him at this moment the most dangerous man in the whole rebellion; he was the one who would be approached if there was a question of coming to terms.
Boisfeuras felt that for the moment he held the fate of Algeria in his hands. Destiny was giving him the dice to throw, but he would not have them in his hand much longer.
In a few hours his prisoner would be taken away from him; he had to act quickly. Si Millial would not talk, would not tell him anything more than he had found in his papers; he decided he would have to disappear.
Boisfeuras already saw Raspéguy in that attitude which all his officers knew only too well, making a naïf and effective show of his charm. A soldier of fortune, he had inherited from the smuggler-peasants of his Basque mountains the taste for extravagant gestures occasionally accompanied by somewhat sordid bargaining. To him Si Millial was a prize which was well worth its ransom of glory, like a Spanish infanta captured by a Barbary pirate. He would surrender his prisoner in exchange for honours and Press publicity and would keep a jealous eye on his state of health.
Boisfeuras, brought up among realists like the Chinese, was blind to the beauty of a gesture and had no professional ambition. As far as he was concerned, Si Millial was merely part of the over-all picture he had painted for himself of the destiny of France. In the eyes of this émigré Frenchman, Algeria was the ball and chain which kept France fettered to her role of a great power and obliged her to behave with more nobility and generosity than a nation of complacent bourgeois shopkeepers like Switzerland.
Si Millial was in a position to give France an opportunity of ridding herself of her ball and chain; he could be the man of independence. That was why Boisfeuras decided he would have to die.
“We’ll have to keep Si Millial’s arrest a secret, sir,” he told Raspéguy. “There’s still quite a lot I want to ask him.”
“Of course! Of course! Just imagine how the other regiments are going to take this; Bigeard will have a stroke and ‘Prosper’ won’t get over it in a hurry. Give him anything he wants; take good care of him. I’m counting on you.”
He shook hands with Si Millial and gave him a hearty slap on the back.
“See you soon; we must have a long talk together some day. There’ll be plenty of time.”
Raspéguy stalked out, rubbing his hands together.
“You’ve still got some questions to ask me, Captain Boisfeuras?” Si Millial inquired.
“No, no more questions.”
Si Millial then realized that he was going to die. This captain who was looking at him, with his head propped up in his hands, had decided his fate.
In his place he would have done the same and, for a few moments, he felt a strange respect for him, for, of all these officers, he was the closest to himself. Boisfeuras belonged to his own just and efficient world, just with a justice which thinks nothing of men being slaughtered, women being raped or farms being burnt to the ground. At the same time Si Millial pitied that other self of his, which would continue to live without friends, without women, in the chilly solitude of men who make and unmake history.
Si Millial suddenly felt utterly weary; he hoped it would be over quickly and painlessly. He regretted all that he had never known, all that was the common lot of other men: jasmine, women’s affection, the laughter of children, the click of checkers in a Moorish café smelling of mint.
Boisfeuras said something in Chinese to Min—just a few brief words—then turned to Si Millial:
“Min will show you to your cell. Good-bye, Si Millial.”
“Good-bye, Captain Boisfeuras. Your nights are going to be very long from now on . . . as mine have been.”
Min took Si Millial by the arm and escorted him outside. Boisfeuras looked at his watch: seven o’clock in the morning. Marindelle was not yet back: he could sleep for an hour.
He lay down on a bench and fell sound asleep at once.
• • •
Marindelle came back from 22 Rue de la Bombe with one male prisoner and three females: a whore by the name of Fatimah, an old hag, a woman with hennaed hands called Zoullika, and her daughter Aicha. More difficult to handle than an angry cat, this Aicha had insulted, bitten and scratched the soldiers escorting her. Oddly enough, for a Kasbah girl, she was wearing European clothes; her dress was simple, elegant and in good taste; she wore none of that heavy silver jewellery affected by women of the people, but only a small gold wrist-watch.
The man was Youssef the Knife, with his fingers loaded with heavy rings. An old offender, he had come quietly; but he protested violently when he was separated from Aicha to whom he claimed to be engaged.
Marindelle had found nothing in the Rue de la Bombe except a few pamphlets, two knives which at a pinch could be considered lethal weapons, and a miniature F.L.N. flag which could be found in every other house in the Kasbah.
He woke Boisfeuras who was still asleep on his bench.
“A wild-goose chase,” he said. “At Si Millial’s address I picked up a pimp, his old beldame of a mother, and a couple of tarts. Nothing else. One of the tarts, the youngest, at least has the advantage of being extremely pretty.”
“Let’s begin with her, then,” said Boisfeuras somewhat wearily.
A big paratrooper with a moustache dragged Aicha into the office.
“Captain,” she said to Boisfeuras, “your men have been trying to rape me in the courtyard outside.”
The paratrooper shrugged his shoulders:
“She planted her claws in my cheek, so I gave her a good slap. She’s a holy terror, this bird!”
“Well,” Aicha inquired, “are you going to let me go? I haven’t done anything.”
Boisfeuras considered her for a moment. The way she had immediately addressed him as “Captain” revealed that she was a well-bred woman who was used to the society of officers.
He seized her by the arm and took off her wrist-watch.
“I’ll make you a present of it,” she said scornfully, “but please let me go.”
Boisfeuras examined the gold watch-case.
“Since when do little tarts from the Kasbah have Cartier watches?”
Aicha went scarlet in the face.
“I found it.”
“Good heavens,” Marindelle exclaimed, “she was having me on! Bucelier, bring this lady’s fiancé in.”
Youssef sauntered up to the deck, with a broad grin on his face, looking very pleased with himself.
“Take your fiancée in your arms,” Marindelle told him, “and give her a kiss.”
The two captains watched Aicha twist away from him in disgust as the pimp brought his lips to her mouth.
“That’ll do,” said Boisfeuras.
Youssef was taken away.
“Right. Now we’ve had enough of your nonsense. What’s your name?”
“Aicha.”
“Where do you live?”
“22 Rue de la Bombe.”
“Do you know Si Millial?”
“Which Si Millial?” she retorted arrogantly, her eyes glinting with hatred, her lips quivering.
Boisfeuras seized her by the shoulders and started to shake her.
“Leave me alone,” she screamed, “or I’ll complain to your superior officer, Major Jacques de Glatigny. He’s a friend of mine.”
“Marindelle, go and fetch Glatigny.”
The major arrived a few minutes later. He still had some lather below one ear; he had been shaving and had just had time to wipe his face. He caught sight of Aicha.
“What on earth are you doing here?”
“Ask the captain.”
“I found her in the Rue de la Bombe,” said Marindelle, “at the address of Si Millial’s letter-box. Do you know this bird?”
“Yes.”
“You’d better deal with her, then,” said Boisfeuras, “she’s a dirty little liar. She was trying to pass herself off as a Kasbah girl.”
“She’s a third-year medical student,” Glatigny quietly observed. “Aicha, come into my office.”
“Don’t let her get away with it, Glatigny, I’m certain she knows Si Millial.”
Aicha followed the major out of the room, after casting a defiant glance at Boisfeuras.
“I never knew Glatigny had connexions of that sort,” Marindelle observed dreamily.
Boisfeuras sneered:
“Now he’s in it up to the neck! None of us will be able to get off until we’re on an equal footing with the fellaghas, as covered with mud and blood as they are. Then we shall be able to fight them; and in the process we’ll lose our souls, if we really have souls, so that back in France some jokers can go on airing their views with a clean conscience.
“Bring that pimp of a Youssef here, Marindelle; I’m certain we’ll be able to talk turkey with him.”
• • •
“Sit down, Aicha,” said Glatigny. “I think there must be some mistake; a girl from a big tent doesn’t get involved with a certain class of people. What were you doing in the Kasbah?”
“I live there; you saw me home there youself. Are you going to torture me to make me confess?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“To make me confess that I know Si Millial?”
“Don’t talk rubbish. I’ll see that you’re escorted home presently . . . as soon as you’ve given me your real address.”
“22 Rue de la Bombe.”
Bucelier knocked at the door and came in.
“The young lady,” he said, “forgot her watch. Seems this little job is worth hundreds of thousands of francs, sir. At least, that’s what Captain Boisfeuras says.”
He clicked his heels and went out. Glatigny handed the watch back to Aicha who put it back on her wrist.
“If it hadn’t been for you,” she said, “that Captain Boisfeuras would have stolen it from me.”
“I very much doubt it. He’s extremely rich, you know, but he’s not interested in money; he prefers to be out here with us. Come along now, Aicha, let’s get this over. Your address?”
“22 Rue de la Bombe.”
“I know that a girl like you can’t possibly be involved in all these bomb outrages and terrorism, with a lot of fanatics, pimps and drug-addicts.”
“Naturally, because a man like you, Major de Glatigny, can’t imagine using a knife or a bomb.”
“In 1943, in Savoie, I killed a Gestapo colonel, in his bed and with a knife. It was an unpleasant experience, but I did it. Women shouldn’t have any part to play in war.”
“What about Joan of Arc? If she had known about bombs, she would have used them against the English.”
Aicha looked lovelier than ever to the major, even more attractive than when he had first met her: a luscious fruit which he would have liked to cut open to quench his thirst. He could not take his eyes off the young breasts which swelled beneath her blouse. He remembered the softness of her skin.
He got up, came and sat down beside her on the camp-bed and took her arm; he felt he was on fire.
“Come along now, Aicha, be reasonable and let’s have done with this. At least tell me your name; our job’s unpleasant enough as it is.”
“Then why don’t you leave us and go home?”
“This is our home, just as much as it is yours. If you like, we could have dinner together this evening and forget all this unpleasantness. Now then, your name and address.”
“Captain Boisfeuras wanted to find out if I knew Si Millial and, to do so, he would have tortured me. What you want is to sleep with me in order to ask me afterwards if I know Si Millial. The secrets of the bedchamber . . . a well-known police method!”
Anger brought the blood rushing to Glatigny’s cheeks.
“I’m an army officer, not a policeman. I’m married, a Catholic, and faithful to my wife. I only want to get you out of this mess in which your thoughtlessness and silly pride have landed you.”
“I live with a friend, a European woman, Christiane Bellinger, a lecturer at the Algiers Faculty. You can ring her up if you like.”
Glatigny rose to his feet. He had gone as white as a sheet.
“We arrested Si Millial at Christiane Bellinger’s last night. He would only have given the address of this hide-out to someone utterly reliable and close to him.”
Boisfeuras came in.
“Youssef the Knife came clean at once,” he said, “an old habit with him. He’s just an underling, but not her. Your little girl-friend, Glatigny, is one of the chief organizers of terrorism in Algiers. I think you’d better hand her back to me; this is getting serious, she must certainly know the whereabouts of the bomb dumps and workshops. You’re liable to get your hands dirty; mine already are . . .”
Aicha felt overwhelmed with fear each time the captain with the rasping voice came near her. He frightened her even more than Youssef; there was nothing to Youssef, he simply wanted to sleep with her; but in Boisfeuras Aicha felt she inspired nothing but a purely professional interest.
With a look of entreaty in her eyes she turned to the major:
“No, I’m staying with you!”
“Boisfeuras,” said the major, “I’ve been behaving like a fool. I think it would be better if you took her off my hands.”
Aicha became furious:
“Major de Glatigny leaves the dirty work he daren’t do himself to others; but all the same he was the one who helped me carry my bag and got me through the road-blocks.”
She suddenly realized, but too late, that she had gone much too far.
“What were you carrying in that bag?” the major asked in a toneless voice.
He slapped her across the face twice and repeated the question:
“What were you carrying in that bag?”
“Detonators.”
Boisfeuras gave a sarcastic chuckle:
“I see you can manage all right. I’ll leave her to you.”
He strode off, swinging his shoulders slightly. Glatigny felt he was beginning to hate him for that chuckle of his.
Aicha crouched on the camp-bed, weeping. Her rage was mingled with a strange feeling of impotence, the same sensation she had felt when Youssef had embraced her in the house in the Rue de la Bombe before Amar intervened.
She cast a sidelong glance at the major who was sitting back in his chair; she hated him as she had never hated a man before and hoped he would strike her again, that he would cease being that puppet with the bloodless face, mechanical gestures and toneless voice who was saying:
“Go on. Who were the detonators for?”
She insulted him first in French and then in Arabic and, since he still did not react, she scrambled to her feet and came and spat in his face.
He struck her in the face and the gold signet-ring on his finger scored her cheek. She fastened her claws into him and they tumbled on to the narrow bed together.
For the first time Glatigny experienced the fury of desire, a raging torrent which swept away his beliefs, his honour and his faith like so many floating corpses.
The girl went on struggling but more and more feebly. He crushed his mouth against her burning lips, against her cheek streaked with blood and tears. He squeezed her swelling breasts and her thighs now opening to receive him.
Aicha gave a loud scream and clumsily returned his kisses.
“I love you and hate you,” she said to him a little later on. “You’ve raped me and I’ve given myself to you; you are my master and I shall kill you; you hurt me terribly and I want you to start all over again.”
“I’ve got to go off to a meeting,” he said, “I’ll be back soon.”
“Don’t go. I’ll tell you everything I know, everything, the whereabouts of the bomb dump and the address of Khadder the Vertebra who makes them.”
“I’ll get back as soon as I can.”
“Don’t go. The dump is in the Rue de la Bombe. It’s behind a cupboard . . .”
“Draw me a plan.”
She got up half naked and made a rough sketch of the dump on a clean sheet of paper.
He took her again, in a welter of torn clothing, blood and tears, and to his horror he heard himself saying he loved her.
It was then she told him her name: Aicha ben Mahmoudi ben Tletla, the daughter of Caid Tletla, a former lieutenant-colonel in the French Army, the sister of Captain Mahmoudi who had been taken prisoner by the Vietminh in Indo-China. It was her brother who, on his return, had bought her the watch.
Glatigny went back into the “schoolroom.” He flung the sketch of the bomb dump down on Boisfeuras’s desk.
“Send some men over. The bombs are there.”
“What shall we do with the girl?”
“Aicha’s never planted a bomb herself, and she’s Mahmoudi’s sister.”
“Have you known this for long?”
“No, I’ve only just found out, but the job was already done.”
“What if you had known?”
“It wouldn’t have altered a thing. I can’t help thinking I must have been born with that girl in my blood. I’m an utter swine.”
“Like me.”
“Far worse. I see myself as a dirty little bastard who can only think of his loins.”
“My father used to say that in love one must stake one’s soul in the same way as one stakes one’s life in war, and if he had known about the war we’re fighting now, he would have added: one’s honour.”
“I’ve lost my honour and I’ve lost my soul, but at least it might lead to something! Go and collect the bombs. There are twenty-seven all ready to be planted.”
As he went out Glatigny ran into Dia who was wandering about with his hands in his pockets.
“There are some things here I don’t like,” he said in his deep voice. “It’s not very pretty, men in their shirt-tails with their hands in the air, and women in tears.”
“And bombs exploding, is that pretty?”
“No, that isn’t pretty either. I’d like to get away from here.”
“Look, Dia. I want to make a confession.”
“There are plenty of priests in Algiers, in white robes, in black robes, and even some in uniform who swear like troopers and dream of a holy war.”
“You’re the only one who will understand, Dia.”
“Come along to the infirmary; I’ve got some brandy there; come and make your confession to the bottle.”
Seated on a packing-case which had not yet been opened, in a sort of cellar lit by a large skylight enclosed in a grille, Jacques de Glatigny described what had just happened to him.
“Dia, in my dishonour I experienced the greatest pleasure in my life.”
“Only pleasure?”
“No, the greatest joy as well. All the time I was wallowing in horror, fanfares were sounding in my head. All my past life collapsed like a wooden fence devoured by termites. There was nothing left but this girl next to me. A huge void, a desert, and this girl held tight in my arms, this monstrous love . . .”
“Have another drink. What about her?”
“Everything collapsed for her as well: the Front, the independence of Algeria . . . she betrayed her friends to me, she’s in the same desert as I am.”
“You know, that’s not a bad story! It’s rather like what happened to Esclavier in the hospital at Camp One. All this hatred, the screams of women and children disembowelled by the bombs, and of men being killed and tortured, the even greater despair experienced by the torturers, all this has once again given birth to love.”
“A strange sort of love, Dia, which reeks of fire and brimstone, which reminds me of some obscene stories I once read in my adolescence . . .”
“No, get that idea out of your head. Don’t you see that this is yet another victory for life, life in all its sexual greatness and serenity, which doesn’t give a damn for man’s beastliness, thoughtlessness or stupidity . . .”
“I happen to be married.”
“Which doesn’t give a damn if a man is married or fights his fellow man, which doesn’t give a damn for causes and independence, races and hatred, because the destiny of man is love and all the rest is worthless.
“I don’t care for cold, calculating minds, but when something so magnificently spontaneous as your adventure occurs, then I’m reassured and I drink and I feel warm and comfortable.”
“But Aicha is Mahmoudi’s sister!”
“All the better! When you and Mahmoudi were slogging side by side along the tracks of the Haute Région, that merry, openhearted god already knew that one day he would bind you a little closer together by a virgin’s tears. I think he loves us all, that round-bellied god, who is always willing to stretch out a helping hand to prevent us from sinking into despair. By the way, I’ve just had a letter from Lescure. He’s marrying the cousin who used to tease him so much. He must have hooked her like a fine silver fish with a little tune on his flute.”
“Dia, you’re the only one who can save us. This girl, Aicha, I want you to look after her, because of Mahmoudi and because of me. We can’t ever release her now.”
“Because she wouldn’t want it, and nor would you.”
“Maybe. She’s a third-year medical student.”
“I’ll take her on. I’ll make her look after her own people, and like that, by being good and generous with them, she’ll forget that, for having earned the right to love, she was forced to be disloyal to them. Then I’ll tell her about Mahmoudi and his friend Merle, and she’ll understand that since he was one of us, she is as well. Go and fetch her. This evening we’ll all eat together and she’ll have the place of honour. She’s entitled to it; she’s Mahmoudi’s sister.”
“Will Boisfeuras be coming?”
“I don’t think so; he needs to be alone, all alone to do what he has to do or thinks that he has to do. He’ll be leaving us soon, and so will Marindelle if he goes on feeling so miserable.”
• • •
The briefing that evening at divisional headquarters was a triumph for Colonel Raspéguy. He had discovered a dump of twenty-seven bombs, arrested one of the leaders of the rebellion and captured all his documents.
The general wanted Si Millial transferred forthwith to G.H.Q. Raspéguy telephoned to Boisfeuras:
“The general wants Si Millial to be brought here at once; I want our bird here within the next ten minutes. See that he’s well guarded.”
“It’s too late, sir.”
“What? Did he get away?”
“No, he’s just cut his wrists in his cell with a piece of glass.”
“Couldn’t you have stopped him?”
“Min was meant to be keeping an eye on him.”
“A pity,” said the general, “they would have been glad to see him in Paris. What about the strike, Raspéguy?”
“I think Boisfeuras has a plan in mind.”
“He sometimes has extremely odd plans in mind, that Boisfeuras of yours!”
• • •
Since his return Esclavier had spent almost every night with Isabelle in a small flat in the Bouzareah which she had borrowed from a girl-friend. He was just going off to join her there, when Boisfeuras rang him up:
“Among the men you rounded up,” he asked, “is there anyone called Arouche, a dentist, 117 Rue Michelet?”
“Yes, but of no interest to us; I’m planning to release him tomorrow morning, with apologies: a completely assimilated Kabyle, who studied in France and whose clients are all European.”
“Arouche is responsible for the bomb network of Algiers. At least all the information that’s just this moment come in leads me to think so. Tomorrow morning, at the moment the general strike is declared, fifteen bombs are due to go off in various European shops in the town. These bombs mustn’t go off whatever happens, and Arouche knows exactly where they’ve been planted.”
“Well, what shall I do with him? Bring him along to you?”
“No, I’ve got the strike to attend to; you’ll have to deal with him yourself.”
“How?”
“That’s your business.”
Esclavier repeated his question:
“How?”
And his knuckles turned white as his grip tightened on the telephone.
Boisfeuras had rung off.
In the villa where Esclavier was living, there was no heating and it was bitterly cold. He lit a cigarette and coughed; he had been smoking a lot to allay the anxiety amounting almost to fear which he had felt ever since the first Jeeps of his company had driven off to round up the suspects.
Esclavier shouted for a runner and told him to bring in Arouche.
He had installed his office in the small drawing-room of the villa. There were seats and arm-chairs upholstered in white, an upright piano and, on the chimney-piece opposite, an ornamental brass clock supported by dolphins. Its hands now pointed to a quarter past nine.
There had been the same sort of clock at Rennes, in the office of the Gestapo chief, with the same ridiculous design, the same gilt face, the same Roman figure in black. Perhaps it was this clock which made Esclavier feel so apprehensive.
Arouche was pushed into the room by the runner. He had a thin, pale face, deep-set eyes, and a camel-hair overcoat over his clothes. He had not had time to put on a tie, but had buttoned up his shirt collar.
When he talked his lips curled back, revealing snow-white teeth as pointed as those of certain primitive African tribes.
“So you’ve decided to release me at last, Captain. That won’t stop me bringing a charge against your arbitrary conduct.”
“Where are the bombs, Arouche?”
“Doctor Arouche. What did you say?”
Esclavier noticed this reaction of vanity but reminded himself that many dentists in France had it as well.
“The fifteen bombs which are due to go off at nine o’clock tomorrow morning in the European shops which will have just opened up for the day, where are they?”
Arouche gave a little start as though he had been pricked, then pulled himself together.
“You must be confusing me with someone else. There are many Arouches in Kabylie.”
“But only one Arouche who’s a dentist at 117 Rue Michelet.”
The telephone rang. It was Boisfeuras again.
“This time,” he said, “it’s certain. He’s a short little fellow, narrow face, he has a scar on his jaw, the little finger of his left hand is deformed; thirty years old at the most.”
“That’s him all right.”
“While you’re about it, ask him about a certain Khadder the Vertebra. And don’t forget: the bombs are due to go off tomorrow morning, just when all the clients who haven’t been able to shop at their usual retailers’ are pouring into the food departments of the Prisunic and Monoprix. You must make him tell you in which shops they’ve been planted and for what time they’ve been set. As soon as we have the information, I’ll send along four bomb disposal squads; they’re already standing by.”
Esclavier put down the receiver.
“Arouche, some squads are standing by to dispose of the bombs; out with it now, and be quick about it. After that we’ll talk about a certain Khadder the Vertebra.”
Arouche had risen to his feet and was twisting his hands to prevent himself from shouting out his hatred in the paratrooper’s face.
“Have you finished squirming about?” the captain asked him drily. “I’m in a hurry.”
Arouche sneered:
“A girl waiting for you?”
“Exactly, a woman.”
“While Algeria is going up in flames, that’s all you can think about—fornicating like a pig. But tomorrow, the whole of Algiers is going up, and maybe your girl-friend with it.”
Esclavier had to make an effort to master his anger and not strike the little dentist in the face.
“The bombs?”
“No. I’m the only one who knows. You may as well go off and join her now. Your bomb disposal squads can spend all night searching the shops of Algiers, they won’t find a thing. You can kill me, torture me, I’ll die with pleasure in your hands, because tomorrow . . .”
“I could easily make you talk . . .”
The clock struck ten, emitting a faint tinkling sound like an old music box.
“. . . But I shan’t make you, Doctor Arouche; it’s against all my principles. You have your reasons for fighting, I have mine, but that has nothing to do with bombs which go off and kill women and children.
“Once you have talked, I’ll hand you over to the police; you can then settle matters with them, but you can call your lawyer beforehand and I’ll see to it personally that nothing irregular occurs.”
“No.”
Arouche ran his fingers over his scar in the hope that it would revive the hatred that gave him his strength. He remembered the punch in the face which had sent him flying and the subsequent kick that had broken his jaw.
It was on his return from Paris. Back there, there had been a few girls in his life but he had never been able to keep them for long; for there came a day when he could not help calling them whores—in many cases they were whores, but they didn’t like being reminded of the fact.
In Paris he used to see a lot of the French students from Algeria, who treated him more or less as one of themselves. He had changed his Moslem name of Ahmad to Pierre; were not his ancestors Christians at the time of Saint Augustine?
Algerines together, they formed a united front against the Frangaouis, whose lack of virility they derided—this enabled them to forget their own idleness.
On his return to Algiers Arouche had moved into a European quarter of the town; he had found his old Paris friends again but did not realize their relationship was now on a different footing.
One evening, after a professional dinner, he had gone out with them to a night-club; he had then—not without encouragement—made a rather too obvious pass at the sister of one of his friends. The friend had promptly flown off the handle:
“What the hell does this nigger think he’s doing? He’s forgetting himself!”
He had then been beaten up in public and thrown out. Ever since that day hatred had replaced every other sentiment in his heart.
He knew he would not talk. He could see that the paratrooper, in spite of his lean, handsome face, was a weakling, full of contradictions, a phrase-spinning type.
Let him go on spinning phrases to his heart’s content! In the meantime the minutes were ticking by. The captain would never find the bombs which were cunningly concealed in packing-cases containing tinned food and had already been planted in the shops thanks to the co-operation of a delivery boy. They were timed to go off at half past nine.
Esclavier weighed his words carefully, racking his brains to find some argument based on reason and humanity which might appeal to this motionless, unshakable body sitting in the white-upholstered arm-chair.
In spite of himself, all he could produce were his father’s threadbare theories on non-violence. His words sounded false, his phrases trailed away into the void, for they found no echo.
The captain noticed the imperceptible gesture Arouche made to glance at the clock and his expression of relief when it struck eleven; all he wanted was to gain time.
Esclavier tried another tack.
“Arouche,” he said all of a sudden, and in a dry tone of voice, “I was tortured once myself. I know what it’s like, and I know that one talks, for everyone talks in the end . . .”
And, while Arouche kept his eyes on the clock, he embarked on this confession which was so painful to him that the sweat broke out on his forehead and he found himself panting for breath:
“It was in 1943, Arouche. I was dropping for the third time into the occupied zone; the Germans were waiting for me down below. Before I could even get out of my parachute harness and draw my revolver, I was caught, with a pair of handcuffs round my wrists.”
Arouche glanced at him, with an almost amused expression, then switched his gaze back to the clock.
“It’s not so much the beating-up that’s hard to bear, Arouche; it’s the waiting for it and not knowing what the pain will be like. The Gestapo man was dressed in black; he had a smooth, shiny face and wore steel-rimmed spectacles. He kept looking at his hands pensively, as though they reminded him of some unpleasant memory. It wasn’t he who frightened me, but something behind him, a clock like this one here. What frightened me was what was going to happen.
“He asked me who I was and what rank I held; he knew everything about my mission, which was to blow up the power-house of a factory, but what interested him far more was the names of the people I had to warn in case of an accident, the recovery team . . . ‘To some extent or other,’ he told me, ‘everyone talks over here; and the proof is that we’ve got you in our hands. I’ll give you half an hour to think it over.’
“After that, Arouche, I kept watching the clock, as you’re watching it now, with its chubby Tritons blowing on their trumpets and the minute-hand starting on its course. Would you like a cigarette, Arouche? The German offered me one before leaving me alone in the room.
“The instructions we had been given in London were quite simple: to hold our tongue long enough for the networks to be able to take the necessary security measures. This length of time was never precisely defined.
“So, as I watched the clock, I kept trying to persuade myself that I wouldn’t talk, that I would rather be mutilated for life than admit that if anything misfired I was to go to a certain bookshop in the Rue Guynemer at Vannes and ask for the rare edition that Mr. Duval had ordered.
“I pictured the owner of the bookshop as an old white-haired lady who had nothing more to expect out of life . . . whereas I was only twenty years old. How old are you, Arouche?”
Arouche shrugged his shoulders without replying, unable to take his eyes off the clock.
“The German displayed no emotion, neither hatred nor pity, nor even a trace of interest. He actually told me:
“‘I don’t think the information you’ve got will have the slightest effect on the eventual outcome of the war, whichever side wins, but what you’ll suffer will mark you for the rest of your life.’
“He came back half an hour later; he sat down at his desk and, like the good, conscientious official that he was, he checked his wrist-watch by the clock.”
Automatically Esclavier pushed back his cuff and likewise checked his wrist-watch by the clock. It was now a quarter to twelve.
“Then the German pressed a bell and three men in civilian clothes came in; one of them was a Frenchman. They dragged me out of the room.”
Esclavier had risen to his feet and was pacing round the Kabyle.
“It’s the first blow that hurts. It takes you by surprise, you’re not expecting it, you think it won’t be possible to stand another. Then, just as you’re beginning to persuade yourself that the pain is just bearable, the second blow comes down and shatters your resistance, all the little illusions you’ve so carefully built up.
“It’s then you begin waiting for the third blow, which does not come right away; your wincing, throbbing flesh prays to get it over as quickly as possible until the moment comes when it begins to hope that there won’t be a third blow, and that’s the very moment it comes.
“And this goes on, Arouche, hour after hour, with men who have got all the time in the world, who stop every now and then for a drink or a snack. You tell yourself: now they’re going to leave me in peace for ten minutes, for a quarter of an hour. But suddenly one of them gets up and gives you another wallop, still chewing on a piece of sausage he has just popped into his mouth.
“I held out, Arouche, up to the moment they began thumping me over the head with a sock filled with sand; I felt as though my skull was coming apart, that my brain was being bared: a wretched, quivering jelly.
“I gave them the address of the bookshop in the Rue Guynemer; I told them everything I knew. After the war I spent six months on garrison duty not far from Vannes, in the Meucon camp. I never dared go near the Rue Guynemer or ask about the bookshop there. What if the old lady had been a young girl of twenty!
“You know why I didn’t hold out, Arouche? For the same reasons that you’re going to talk. I didn’t have a sufficient motive, nothing but vague ideas and theories: peace among nations, anti-Fascism, high principles and all that sort of nonsense, meanwhile taking care not to catch a cold in the head and to avoid sitting in a draught; I also felt a certain amount of resentment and scorn for my father. But that’s not enough to turn a man into a martyr.
“All you’ve got, Arouche, is hatred, and what a petty little hatred it is! You’ve never been able to have the sort of girl you wanted—a European girl—isn’t that it? I realized that just now. That’s not a good enough reason to blow up a whole town and massacre women and children.
“You won’t hold out; and you’ll know as I do what it feels like to be a coward and to be saddled with that cowardice all your life.
“Come on now: where are the bombs?”
Arouche still kept silent, but Esclavier could now see how fragile the dentist’s courage and resolution were. Out in Indo-China he had once known a Viet who had refused to talk. He had had the impression that the man had withdrawn into himself and was sealed off by a trapdoor in some mysterious refuge where he no longer felt, heard or saw a thing.
Arouche did not have such a refuge. The twelve strokes of midnight issued with a gentle tinkling sound from the clock.
“Arouche, the bombs?”
Once again Esclavier felt like a coward because he was incapable of making another man go through what he had been through himself. He would have to ask Bordier and Malfaison to deal with the dentist.
The telephone rang—no doubt Boisfeuras was getting impatient. It was Isabelle, with a sob in her voice:
“Philippe, they’ve killed grandfather and his three servants, set fire to the farm and destroyed the vines. I want to get out there at once, but because of the curfew . . . Oh, Philippe!”
She burst into tears. After a short silence she went on:
“He was so fond of them! Come and join me as soon as you can. Yes, I’ll be waiting at the Bouzareah.”
It was not until dawn that Esclavier reached his mistress’s flat. The news of the murder of old Pélissier had made him see red, and what he dreaded most of all he had managed to accomplish all by himself, without having to appeal to his N.C.O.s.
By the time the dentist was carried off on a stretcher, in the early hours of the morning, he had confessed everything; none of the fifteen bombs went off.
But when Philippe tried to make love to Isabelle, he found he was incapable. The young woman had been too involved in his mind with the ghastly hours he had just spent and a little of that horror still clung to her. And since there was no one else he loved or desired, he suddenly discovered the inferno of love in which all those who cannot quench their desire have to live.
Philippe stroked Isabelle’s hair and went and lay down on the other bed; he felt he wanted to die.
• • •
The general strike broke out on 28 January. During the morning it was almost universal. Following the instructions of Radio Tunis, the inhabitants of the Arab quarters who had laid in enough foodstocks for a week did not set foot outside. The streets were empty, the shops closed.
The Zouaves strutted about the Kasbah in full-dress uniform and distributed sweets to the children whose numbers gradually increased until they swarmed around the soldiers like flies. Other units were busy driving these children off to school in trucks.
A large number of Moslem school-teachers followed them; out of a sense of solidarity or because they were frightened, a few Frenchmen went on strike. They were replaced by soldiers and were meanwhile set to work emptying the garbage cans.
The 10th Parachute Regiment was entrusted with the task of opening up the shops. Its squads hooked the metal shutters on to the rear of their trucks and tore them down bodily. Some of these shops were looted, but none of the owners came and protested, for the looted shops all belonged to F.L.N. subscription-collectors. Boisfeuras had carefully compiled his list from the documents Arcinade had provided.
Marindelle no longer slept at night. His past life stuck in his gullet until it almost choked him. That evening, while in the room next door Aicha and Glatigny kept embracing and recoiling, loving and hating each other, he tried to imagine the bonds that linked them together and the motives which had driven the young girl to go even farther in her submission to her lover, farther even than Glatigny wanted. It was she who had asked to attend the parade of suspects. Sitting at a school desk, with her head concealed in a coarse hessian sack which had been pierced with two holes for her to see through, she had picked out the members of the F.L.N. organization from among the men who were marched past for identification.
Aicha was consumed by a fire, the fire of her love, and she was feeding it with everything in her past life that had been of any importance. When she had nothing more left, she would plunge into the flames herself.
This state of mind could be traced to her inordinate and passionate nature, but still more to her spirit of rebellion against the social system in which she had lived. Even in a sophisticated family like Caid Tletla’s some traces of a nomad, warrior society still survived, and a woman, even if she wore Paris dresses, was regarded solely as a source of pleasure and as booty.
For the first time in her life Aicha felt she was being treated as an equal by a man who was at once her lover and her enemy. She had just discovered that dignity had the lean face of Glatigny, his slightly pursed mouth and his frequently sad eyes.
Through the medium of Aicha Marindelle realized what immense power lay in this spirit of rebellion which had been stored up for centuries by millions of women. There was enough explosive there to blow the whole of the Maghreb sky-high. The Algerian F.L.N., like the Tunisian Neo-Destour and the Moroccan Istiqlal, had been frightened of it and had not dared touch it, even in their struggle for independence.
How could one awaken the Moslem women, how could one make them feel that their emancipation might come from us? Certainly not by treating them to feminist lectures . . . At this point an idea occurred to the captain which most of his comrades found extremely odd, not to say unpleasant. On the following morning he had a number of women and young girls rounded up in the Kasbah; he filled three trucks with them and drove them off to a wash-house. There he made them scrub away at the paratroopers’ sweat-stained vests and pants. These women had been hauled off without any of their menfolk raising a finger to protect them. They thereby lost their prestige as warriors, which suddenly reduced the ancestral submission of their wives and daughters to nothing. Bent all morning over their washing, these women felt as though they were submitting to being raped over and over again by the soldiers whose garments they were purifying.
When they came back to the Kasbah without having been molested, when these strong young men had helped them out of the trucks with a courtesy which they were rather inclined to exaggerate (more often than not their fiancés or husbands were old, decrepit and ill-mannered), some of them thought of abandoning the veil, and others that they might take on a lover who was not a Moslem.
• • •
Algiers became a paratroop city. It got used to living to the silent, stealthy tread of patrols in camouflage uniform who, with a blank expression on their faces and a finger on the trigger of their guns, paced up and down the narrow lanes and stairways.
The paratroops did not mingle with the local population; they lived on their own, outside the town and its customs, like occupants from another planet. They answered no questions, refused the wine and sandwiches that people offered them. They broke the strike, they destroyed the bomb network, but even the best-informed journalists could not tell “what was going on.”
Si Millial was the brains behind the strike. Once he had vanished, the entire organization he had built up fell to the ground. The paratroops were able to penetrate the rebellion at various levels. Some of the former F.L.N. followed them through fear, because they had given away their comrades and could find no justification for this except in the victory of the paratroops; others, the greater number, because they always veered towards the stronger side, those who were able to protect them.
Within the framework of the 10th Parachute Regiment each company began to assume an autonomous existence, thereby escaping to a certain extent from the colonel’s control.
Esclavier became the specialist in bomb networks and Lieutenant Pinières dealt with the Communist groups who were assisting the rebels by providing them with explosives.
One morning in February Pinières laid hands on the schneiderite factory, which was installed in an isolated villa on the seashore. There were four Europeans there, including a chemical engineer called Percevielle, and a single Arab, Khadder the Vertebra.
So as to avoid all complications, Pinières used the schneiderite to blow up the villa with all its occupants.
On 28 March Raspéguy applied for an interview with the general, which was forthwith granted. The 10th Parachute Regiment had covered itself with glory in the battle of Algiers and its colonel had become the most popular figure in the paratroop units.
The general began by congratulating Raspéguy on his promotion to full colonel.
Raspéguy puffed pensively at his pipe.
“This is certainly the first time I’ve felt no pleasure at being promoted, sir, maybe because this isn’t the proper way to earn promotion.”
“You’ve saved Algeria.”
“And I’ve lost my regiment. We need a little fresh air. We’ve fallen into bad habits. The lads are drinking too much in order to forget what they’ve been forced to do. We’ve achieved better results than the others because we’ve wallowed in the shit more than they have. So we ought to be dragged out of it before the others: the process of disintoxication will be longer. Come on, sir, we’ve done our job, we’ve got our hands good and dirty, please let us go.”
“I still need you here.”
“Boisfeuras isn’t the only one I’m worried about, sir. Marindelle blows all his pay in the Aletti casino in a single night and you know all about Glatigny and that Moslem girl of his. I don’t know what’s happened to Esclavier, but there’s something wrong with him as well.”
“Reinforcements are needed for the Némentchas.”
“We’re all set to go.”
“Perhaps it would be better after all if you left Algiers, while there’s still this little matter to be settled . . .”
“There’s still some little matter to be settled?”
“It’s nothing, don’t worry.”
While the 10th Regiment was taking to the mountains again, fifty-two Algerian officers signed a letter addressed to the President of the Republic, which they submitted to him direct, without going through the usual channels.
Sir,
In the face of the events which have disturbed our country for several years, we are anxious to remain true to our word, as officers, and to the ideal of Franco-Algerian friendship to which we pledge our lives.
If we have hitherto concealed the resentment and anxiety we feel, it is because, on the one hand, we were bound by our very education to the country we were serving and, on the other, because we had hoped that our sacrifices would sooner or later serve the cause of Franco-Algerian friendship.
Today this hope is replaced by the deep conviction that the present turn of events is actually opposed to that ideal. Our position as Algerian officers is rendered untenable by the ruthless struggle which divides our French comrades and our blood-brothers.
If we appeal to you, who represent the French nation, it is certainly not to break with our past as soldiers in the service of France, nor is it to sever the bonds of friendship, comradeship and fraternity by which we are attached to her and also to her military traditions, but out of hostility towards a policy which, if we were to condone it, would transform this attachment into a betrayal of the Algerian people who turn to us for support and of France who needs and will continue to need us.*
Captain Mahmoudi, having been charged as one of the instigators of this manœuvre, was first put under close arrest in Germany and then transferred to the Cherche-Midi prison in Paris.
It was from this prison that he wrote a long letter to Olivier Merle to try and justify the attitude he had been driven to adopt.
The letter was returned to him, with the following observation in red ink:
Lieutenant Merle has been killed in action.
While they were marching over the grey crags of the Némentchas in bitter wind and driving snow, the officers of the 10th Parachute Regiment heard that legal proceedings were being instituted against a certain number of them. The charges were brought against an anonymous X—on the grounds of excessive cruelty, and the officers in question were only to be cross-examined as “witnesses”—a pure formality which was part of the usual legal procedure.
At the evening halt, Glatigny, Boisfeuras, Esclavier, Pinières and Marindelle gathered round a camp-fire. The flame-coloured smoke rose twisting into the dark sky. Every so often the wind would blow it back into the officers’ faces; whereupon they all coughed and their eyes began to water.
Raspéguy emerged from the blizzard, with his maquila in his hand. His oil-skin ground-sheet and Balaclava helmet made him look like a shepherd from his homeland in winter dress.
He squatted down by the fire and accepted a little coffee in an empty cigarette tin.
“What were you talking about?” he asked. “Those subpoenas you’ve received? I’ve also got one in my pocket. But what’s a bit of paper worth when we’ve got guns in our hands? And yet ‘they’ told us to use every means at our disposal to win that battle of Algiers. Luckily we went about it fairly gently, but if we had taken them at their word! Now that they’re no longer shitting themselves with fear, they send us these little bits of paper. Each time any cabinet ministers or deputies visited our H.Q. I used to say to them: ‘This is on the side . . . We’re doing this job because your government has ordered us to, but it repels and disgusts us.’ Some of them pretended not to understand or to think that I was making a huge joke. Others would answer with a sanctimonious little gesture: ‘It’s for the sake of France.’ And now these same bastards, are trying to haul us into court. Hold tight on to your guns, then no one will come and bother us.”
There was a short silence, then Esclavier burst out in a fury which startled them all:
“Let Rome beware of the anger of the legions.”
Lashed by the squalls of rain and melting snow, with their faces all but hidden in their Balaclavas, the centurions of Africa brooded on their bitterness and despair. Under their streaming ground-sheets they clutched their weapons. A more than usually violent squall put the fire out and they found themselves in the dark. Boisfeuras’s rasping voice then made itself heard:
“Now we know there’s only one thing left for us to do: abandon the whole damned issue.”
Then Glatigny remembered. It was springtime at Sarlat College. The windows of the class-room looked out on to the golden dust rising in the courtyard. Surrendering to the confusion and poetic anguish of his adolescence, he sat there day-dreaming. The voice of Father Mornelier, the professor of Latin and Roman history, rose a note or two higher to indicate that the lesson was over. Glatigny had given a start, abruptly awakened from his gentle torpor; he had retained nothing but a clear recollection of this final sentence:
“A large number of the centurions of the Proconsulate of Africa abandoned the legions and came back to Rome. They became the Praetorian Guards of the Caesars until the day they adopted the custom of nominating them and then electing them from among themselves. That was the beginning of the end of Rome . . .”
There was a burst from a submachine-gun in one of the advance posts. A sentry had fired at a shadow or a noise: a tree bending in the wind, a fellagha, or some animal or other.