The Mysteries of Algiers (24 page)

As he is firing off his second shot, I ask him. ‘And you? What are you doing now?’

He attempts a sort of shrug to the table behind us where he has left his
képi.

‘Sections administratives des Services specialisées. Still only a captain, but what the hell!’

So he is with the
képis bleus,
Soustelles’s social workers in uniform.

He lets the ball get lost while he tells me more.

‘It’s very rewarding work. I’m with the big regroupment camp outside Blida. Every day it’s something different. Jack of all trades and master of none! One day it’s getting the men organized to dig ditches, the next it’s the clinic and getting a cyst on some old Fatima’s scalp treated, the next it’s telling them how to deal with potato blight and the next it’s teaching the kids how to play football. It’s building bridges. I couldn’t have believed I could be so happy. And those kids, once you’ve got their trust, the smiles you get from them …’

If it’s an act, it’s a very convincing one. I grunt as I too lose my ball. He moves closer and gives my beard a tug as if to reassure himself that it is genuine. His eyes bore into mine. Then he squares himself up to me challengingly.

‘You think that I have gone soft, don’t you?’

‘It’s your go. No, I don’t. I think your lot do a great job getting the old men to paint the gates of their regroupment camp and getting the fatmas to arrange flowers in tin cans, while our lot go out into the
bled
and knock the hell out of their husbands.’

He manages to laugh.

‘Well, I suppose there’s something in that. Still the same old comrade in arms! Ever the cynic. That’s how you were in Indochina, always one of the awkward squad.’

‘I’m not cynical, Edmond. I certainly admire what you do. You take risks like the rest of us. At any time you could get blown up in the field or knifed in your tent. It takes courage to turn your back on an Arab – or for that matter to shake hands with one. And yes, you could win the war for us.’

‘That’s right. It’s an adventure of the heart. There are risks, but the troubles will die down if and only if we can establish some sort of basis of mutual trust. And – it shouldn’t be me telling you this – but in that camp I’m like father to them. They bring their problems to me and we talk things through. There is nothing soft in listening to what the Arab has to say. He often has a point. What we need in Algeria now is the faith of a child and the hands of a warrior …’

‘Faith of a child, hands of a warrior.’ I nod thoughtfully, but I am not thinking about that. I wonder if it can be possible that he does not know what I have become, what I have done? It is in fact now well advertised. There are fly-posters on buildings and lamp-posts everywhere and I find it hard to take a piss in a public
urinoir
without facing my image pasted on the wall in front of me. I appear in batches of nine or twelve photos of wanted men – the only European in the batch – every one a killer on the run. Families have been set alight in their farm houses, a priest has been executed by progressive mutilation, a pregnant woman has been eviscerated and the foetus ripped from her womb, and yet, eerily, almost every grainy snapshot shows a smiling face. But, of course, most of these photos date from the times when there was still hope for these men, before the oppressive structures of the colonialist apparatus had been fully exposed, before these men had to take to the cellars and the hills. Some of the photos show signs of retouching and were, I guess, made to be used by marriage brokers or given to fiancées. Mouloud Besmuti, the one who cut the woman open, has the biggest grin of all and it looks to me as though his snapshot may have been taken in one of those fairground booths. I am the only one in this gallery who is not smiling – a boot-face, crew-cut officer’s military passcard photo.

Edmond has turned back to the machine.

‘I like pinball. It’s not a snob’s game. I’d really like to get some of these machines in our camp. They would love it, flashing lights, bright colours and all, but I doubt if the general would wear it.’

‘He’d be right too. Machines like this would encourage unhealthy expectations in our Arabs.’

‘What the hell do you mean, old fellow?’

‘Just look at it.’

I point to the design on the backglass. On a podium there stands a blonde with cupid lips. She has been poured into a skimpy little black cocktail dress whose unrealistic curves are brought out by the glossy highlights and she is being serenaded by young men in white tuxedos with slicked back hair and knowing grins. The ambience is something between a high school prom and a brothel. Here is a scene from the dream life of capitalism. As Marx puts it in
The German Ideology
, ‘The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life processes, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises.’

‘That’s what the West is to the Arabs. They will think that everyone who steps off the boat at Marseilles is given a white tuxedo and …’

‘You are a devil for cynicism, my dear fellow!’

‘I’m not cynical. A cynic, looking at your
képi-bleu
type work, would say that by giving to the Arabs, you prevent them from taking and what the Arabs need to be taught is how to take. But you will never hear me say that.’

‘I have heard you say that.’

A look of fixed dislike has settled on his face. It’s got a bit awkward for him now and he is wondering what to say next. Perhaps he will walk away and leave me in peace. Damn the man, let him leave in peace. But, no …

‘It’s not a matter of being lovey-dovey with the Arabs: it’s a matter of being able to heal wounds as well as inflict them. Simply, if we are not human –’ He breaks off. ‘You do think I have gone soft, don’t you?’ He rests his clenched fists on the machine. ‘You little arsehole! You don’t remember anything, do you? How about that time, in Hoa Binh, at the Bishop’s Palace in the Garden of Supplications after the chaplain and I found you with that little Chinese tart? I beat you to pulp. I could do it again now for old time’s sake.’

I raise my hands deprecatingly.

‘Yes, yes, that was quite a thrashing, but it’s your go. Let me get the drinks this time.’

I walk away, thinking, and I think that I have nothing to fear. Indochina was a long time ago and I was a different man before Dien Bien Phu. That’s true. But I’m not sure that I was ever in Hoa Binh. Certainly I never went to the Bishop’s Palace and I don’t think I can remember being in any fight over a Chinese tart. What the hell was or is the Garden of Supplications? Now that I think about our little chat as it has run so far – ‘old comrade in arms’, ‘old fellow’, ‘little arsehole’ – not once has he called me by my name. It is certainly quite likely that we met on one or other of the Red River operations, but I am pretty sure that he has got me mixed up with someone else. In which case, it is now time to throw him off the scent completely. The Kabyle’s glazed eyes follow me as I return with the mollifying glass of beer.

And then I casually try it out.

‘I shouldn’t like us to quarrel and, by the way, Edmond, I think that you have forgotten my name. It’s Antoine – Antoine Galland.’

‘Antoine! That’s fine! Let’s shake on –’ But his hand never reaches mine. He wrinkles his nose.

‘No, wait a minute, surely … have I been muddling you? … Surely … Philippe. Sorry. I thought you were Philippe Roussel. Surely, you were one of Joinville’s team …’

It is very quiet between us. Then he tries a short laugh.

‘No. It’s Antoine. That’s right. I had forgotten …’

‘No, Edmond. Now, you remember. Yes, it’s Philippe Roussel. Keep that hand away from your holster. I have killed and I will kill again.’

And I ease the handle of my Tokarev out from my pocket far enough for him to see it.

‘I want you to go and sit over there. I want you to sit on your hands.’

‘What?’

‘Sit on your hands. You liberal colonialists have had plenty of practice at that.’

He shakes his head, but he does as I tell him. I give him a fraternal hug round the shoulder, leaning low over him to prevent others in the bar from seeing what I am doing, and I get the gun from his holster and slip it inside my jacket. It is time for another gamble. I speak very low and he has to incline his head to hear it all.

‘Now, don’t turn round straight away, but there is a man sitting behind us, the one in the postman’s uniform with the gauntlets. You must have noticed him. He’s been keeping you under observation all the time we talked. He’s one of my men. In a minute I am going to walk out of this place. OK, you can turn your head now and look at him.’

The Kabyle’s regard which had dropped for a moment is fixed on us. It’s an unnervingly impassive stare.

‘What I want, Edmond, is for you to just sit and reflect for a while. You are going to stay here, until ten minutes after my man has left. Then, of course, you can raise the alarm, but on the whole I think it would be better if you managed to forget we have ever met. Don’t you? We have our men in your filthy regroupment camp at Blida. They can take your head off your shoulders any time. It’s been nice talking to you, Edmond. I only wish I could remember you as well as you remember me.’

Once more, I stroll over to the bar. It is important that I do not look back. I buy a beer. Then I walk over to the postman and hand him the beer.

‘It’s a grand job you postmen are doing in these dangerous times. This beer comes with the compliments of that officer over there.’

Close up, it is clear that I have guessed right. The postman is almost completely blotto. He has difficulty in raising the glass in his gauntleted hands, but he raises it in a sort of half-toast to Edmond and looks at him in bleary puzzlement. I slip Edmond’s gun on to his lap. The postman is so past it that he does not seem to register this.

Then I walk out. Never run. It is for my enemies to run. But I admit I am somewhat shaken. I have been walking around this city in a sort of fantasy, for it is as if I imagined that I were Fantômas, the master criminal whose disguise the police and the authorities are incapable of penetrating. Yet twice in one day I have been recognized. These are risks which are not worth running. It is quiet in the foggy street outside. Then I hear the matchstick crackle of gunfire. It is impossible to tell in which direction. Hardly an hour passes in this city without the sound of shooting. I do not think that Nounourse and I can exist in that confined room for much longer without trying to kill each other. I am getting out of control and dangerous to myself. It is plain that our final strike in Algiers must be soon.

The barricades are going up. On the Saturday the shopkeepers and workers come out with picks and shovels and start hacking at the surfaces of the roads and levering great lumps up to form barriers across those roads. These new walls are crowned by wood and barbed wire. The militias are out in the streets too, sporting their arms and standing guard rather self-consciously over the barricades that are going up. Occasionally a police officer or a para will stroll up and they and the militia men and shopkeepers chat casually. But most of the time the police are happy to keep to themselves, playing cards in the shade of their armoured black marias. The leaders of the demonstration and the strike walk about having oblique conversations and shifting their gaze to see what their comrades are doing. People everywhere are waiting for people somewhere else to do something. As I do the shopping, I hear the phrases which are the small change in this season’s currency of conversation. ‘The suitcase or the coffin’, ‘It’s now or never’, ‘We are at the last quarter-hour’, ‘The days of hope, like Hungary in ’56.’

It is midwinter, but the temperature is spring-like and the girls who bring picnic baskets to the men on the barricades are in their summer dresses. The young men slick back their hair and joke with the girls. In the evenings, in place of the traditional
paseo
up the boulevard Guillemin and round to Trois Horloges, there are street parties where the young dance the rumba and the cha-cha-cha and the old look on, for once, indulgently. Where cars can still drive, convoys of cars drive around aimlessly sounding their horns to the rhythm of
Al–gér–ie fran–çaise.

The last time they played this game, the
pieds noirs
took Government House and brought Generals Salan and Massu to the balcony. They put an end to concessions to the Arabs, forced the fall of the government in France and brought de Gaulle to power. This time it is again no concessions to the Arabs and they plan to remove de Gaulle from power. There is a lot of swagger and hard talk in the streets, but Marx’s phrase keeps running in my head, ‘the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce’. The putschists will form a Committee of Public Safety and will demand that Jacques Massu, the torturer of the kasbah, be brought back to Algiers. They are reckoning without Captain Philippe Roussel.

The day of the strike comes, 24 January, 1960. In the heart of the city and in the white suburbs the shutters come down. The clusters of men on street corners are getting larger. Every cluster has its transistor radio blaring. They talk casually and eye other groups up and down the road as they talk. At last, from the higher reaches of the city, small bands begin to move off down the ravine roads and flights of steps in rivulets, then in great streams of humanity, heading towards Government Square. The strategy worked out by the Children of Vercingetorix and other ultra groups is that their militias and the vast mass of the white population of Algiers will descend on Government House in such numbers that the gendarmes guarding the place will be forced to withdraw and the commissioner of police will call in the paras and the Foreign Legion. Key officers in these regiments will then declare themselves in sympathy with the aims of the demonstrators and from that moment on the coup will be properly launched. In order for the army to declare itself in this way, it is crucial that the gendarmes are forced out of the way as peacefully as possible, so, although the militias march under their banners with their antiquated Lebel rifles sloped over their shoulders, the rifles are for show, not use.