The Centurions (52 page)

Going to look at some vineyards in the company of a French colonial Egeria did not appeal to him in the least. Nevertheless he accepted the invitation in the hope that the drive would bring them closer together and offer certain opportunities which he would be able to exploit.

“I'll come and fetch you at seven o'clock,” Isabelle went on. “Bring a weapon with you.”

“A dramatic outlook on life peculiar to the Mediterranean races,” thought Philippe.

Vincent, who had drunk a great deal, left the table before his guests. Everyone pretended not to notice. Maladieu was speaking with brutal lyricism about Algiers where buildings were going up like mushrooms. One could tell that, as far as this particular businessman was concerned, the development of the Algerian capital was not only a sound speculation but an adventure which suited his sanguine nature.

The little actress was charming and silly; she recited some poems and everyone applauded. The general left; he looked very worried. Puysange asked Esclavier and Glatigny to lunch with him next day at the Saint-Georges. They were glad to be able to refuse, Esclavier on the grounds of a previous engagement with Isabelle Pélissier and Glatigny because of urgent matters that required his attention.

The geologist was still talking about oil, anticlinals and grapholithic sandstone. Everyone nodded his head very wisely.

 • • • 

Lieutenant Pinières was dining alone in the Brasserie de la Lorraine. He had been trying to write to Merle's sister, but had torn up several rough drafts one after the other. It was all over. What answer could there be to the young girl's declaration:

“I loved Olivier so much that I could not bear the idea of having his best friend always with me . . .”

Pinières had toyed with several ready-made phrases, such as: “Life must go on” and “Nothing lasts for ever” but on paper they looked pointless and odious.

Pinières could not bear his dreadful solitude any longer. He ordered a double brandy and decided to visit the clandestine brothel where he had been told he could find a Vietnamese girl . . . Tomorrow he would seek refuge with Dia who would take him out deep-sea fishing, which was the doctor's latest passion. Then they would have some fish soup and get so drunk they would have to crawl on all fours up the grey sandy beach.

 • • • 

“Don't you know how to eat with chopsticks?” Marindelle asked Christiane. “It's quite simple; you hold one of them steady and use the other as a lever. No, hold them a little higher up . . . Now then, let's try again.”

They were in a little Vietnamese restaurant which had just opened at the top of the Boulevard Saint-Saens.

The only other people in the room were half-a-dozen Nungs in black berets belonging to the commander-in-chief's personal bodyguard, two colonial infantry sergeants, and a half-caste.

Christiane Bellinger abandoned her chopsticks and used a spoon to eat her rice. She was surprised and secretly delighted with her adventure: this impromptu dinner with a young paratroop captain.

Because he was five years younger than she was, he had appeared to her as a sad young lad at a loose end, with great curiosity and a lively mind. She was astonished when he had told her he was a professional soldier and had been in the army since the age of nineteen.

At the Prado Museum, in a little cubbyhole next to the Saharan gallery, she had been busy taking a plaster caste of a neolithic skull which she had discovered herself at Gardhaia. She was just wiping her hands clean on her old white smock when the captain had bashfully come in, with his red beret in his hand.

“Could you tell me where the guide has gone, please, madame? I can't find anyone in the museum, even to pay for my ticket.”

She had laughed:

“Are you as anxious as all that to pay for your ticket?”

“No, but I'm looking for a catalogue with some information on those primitive paintings discovered in the Sahara . . .”

“They're only copies, the originals are at Tassili des Ajjer.”

“I don't even know where Tassili des Ajjer is. You see how badly I need a catalogue, or a guide!”

Thus it was that Christiane Bellinger, a lecturer in ethnology at the Faculty of Algiers, after washing her hands and taking off her smock, had acted as the young captain's guide for the entire afternoon.

Never had she had such an attentive and passionately interested pupil; the conscientious, unassuming Christiane had shone as a result. She had launched into the boldest comparisons, conjuring up the history of the dark ages of the Maghreb, with as much dash as the worthy Maître E. F. Gautier. The captain had asked her out to dinner. He was now the one who was doing the talking, as he initiated her into the mysteries of Vietnamese cooking, telling her about the Far East, about that war in Indo-China whose complexity she had never realized, about the Vietminh for whom he unmistakably displayed a certain sympathy.

When he saw her home afterwards, Christiane asked him in for a drink. It was only as she opened the heavy studded door of her old Arab house that she remembered that men meant nothing to her, that she had decided to do without them and organize her entire life round her work. But the captain was more of a child than a man, with that odd tuft of fair hair on the top of his head.

 • • • 

“I shan't go,” Raspéguy said to himself.

Boudin was contentedly smoking his pipe, buried in a rickety old armchair with a detective novel in his hand.

“What do you think of women?” the colonel asked him all of a sudden.

Boudin peered over the top of his book in surprise:

“I haven't really thought of them much . . .”

And he returned to his book. Raspéguy looked out of the window at the sea and the crowd of bathers on the beach. An Arab went past, carrying a sort of jerrycan containing ice-cream.

“Ices . . . Ices . . . Cold as snow . . . Fifty francs.”

“Right, I'll go, but in civvies,” the colonel decided. “And I'll tell her that if she won't sleep with me tonight, she can go and get stuffed elsewhere: a dirty little slut of a Mahonnaise who can't see a pair of pants without . . .

“If Esclavier or Glatigny got to hear about this, I'd look pretty silly. With Boudin, there's no danger; he's not sharp enough.”

The colonel went into his room to change; when he came back Boudin was still reading.

“Going out?” asked the major.

“Yes, I thought I'd go into town, see what's on at the movies, maybe spend the night at the hotel.”

“See you tomorrow, then.”

“See you tomorrow.”

Boudin dashed into his room to don his walking-out uniform. The colonel, he was certain, was off to see his little slut of a Mahonnaise.

This evening Boudin was going to dine at the Ambassade d'Auvergne, have a good solid meal of sausages and cabbage, and all his compatriots would listen to him religiously and count his medals. They had asked him to bring the colonel along, but the dinner would then lose all its spice, for Raspéguy would be the centre of attraction.

Concha was seventeen, with dark curls and the rounded forehead of a young kid. Her red skirt set off her slender waist, and her blouse her firm young breasts. The merest suspicion of a moustache emphasized her full lips which were thickly coated with dark red lipstick.

The whole of Bab-el-Oued was hanging out of the windows waiting for the promised arrival of the colonel with whom she went out. Paulette, her friend and best enemy, was standing beside her outside the Martinezes' house to see “if the colonel was true.” Concha stamped her foot.

“
Mira
, I keep telling you. It's a colonel he is, I've even seen his badges, five bars on each of his shoulders.”

“You've seen them?”

“Well, nearly. You are a beast! The paratrooper came and spoke to him in his Jeep and he called him colonel.”

“That's a good one! He's probably only the driver, your colonel.”

“Colonel, I tell you, even though his name is Raspéguy, and he's going to arrive in full uniform.”

“Raspéguy, that's not a French name!”

“Not French? It's as French as Lopes, isn't it?”

Paulette's surname was Lopes, but her christian name made her intransigent in matters of origin.

The big black car came gliding up the slope and drew up in front of the two girls. Furious that a little slut could get under his skin to such an extent, Raspéguy slammed on the brakes. He opened the door and leant out:

“Are you coming?”

“Why didn't you put on your uniform?”

“Maneate un poco,”
he shouted to her in Spanish.

With her hands on her hips, Paulette gave a snort of triumph.

“You see, he's only the driver . . . a Spaniard from Oran who wants people to think he comes from France.”

“Never mind, you've never driven in a car like this!”

Concha bundled into the car, furious at having lost face, while the old women leaning out of all the windows shrieked with laughter and slapped their thighs.

“Where shall we go?” asked Raspéguy.

“It's all the same to me. I've got to get back early.”

“You told me you were free this evening?”

“With a colonel, yes, but not with a driver.”

The colonel switched off the engine and took his officer's identity card out of his pocket.

“Can you read? No! You can see the photograph, though. Now either you get out at once or else you stay with me.
Pronto, puta de chica
 . . . make up your mind about it.”

“What a way to talk to me!”

She threw him a sidelong glance and sat back in her seat.

“I'll stay.”

“What good does it do me, your being a colonel, if the others don't know it,” Concha presently said, pouting as the car streaked along the coastal road. “Don't drive so fast, you're going to kill me, you great brute.”

But she was proud of the colonel's contempt for the rules of the road and whenever he passed a car, hooting furiously, she gave a saucy little wave; once or twice she also put her tongue out but that was only because she thought she had recognized some merchants from her neighbourhood.

The young girl's presence inflamed Raspéguy's blood and sent shivers up his spine. He had booked a room in a small seaside hotel and carefully set his trap. The owner, a Maltese, whom he had gone to see in uniform in order to impress him, had proved extremely understanding.

As he drove along he fondled Concha's breast. She allowed him to do so for a few minutes, then suddenly scratched his hand.

“You're for it tonight, my girl,” he said to himself, “or else I've forgotten all my Latin.”

Then he realized he couldn't very well forget all his Latin since he had never learnt any in the first place, and put his foot down on the accelerator.

First of all they went for a bathe and Concha admired the colonel's powerful physique, his long muscles without an ounce of fat on them.

“He's a handsome man,” she thought, “but there isn't a single hair on his body.”

Hairiness was very popular in the Martinez family, who regarded it as a sign of virility.

“
Frangaouis,”
Odette had told her, “are not so quick off the mark as our men . . . but they're much more cunning.”

She made up her mind to be extremely careful. She had already been close to disaster more than once. Men's desire disturbed her most of all at night, when “her blood boiled” at the thought of their caresses.

Raspéguy swam far out to sea until his head was nothing but a black dot, and when he came back she could see his diaphragm expand and contract as he panted for breath.

“Well I never!” she said. “I thought you were going to drown yourself.”

“What would you have done?”

“Hitch-hiked back.”

With their apéritifs they ate some skewered meat. Calmer after his long swim, Raspéguy watched the Sunday-afternoon Algerian crowd. Its vitality, its mixture of child-like innocence and vulgarity, appealed to him, but he thought the men made too many gestures with their hands when they talked and that in that respect they resembled the Arabs. A number of sturdy, handsome young men walked past their table and ogled Concha, but they were not the sort who would ever join up in a parachute regiment and Raspéguy felt almost inclined to tell them so.

“Listen,” said Concha, “after dinner let's go out dancing or to a movie. I've got to be back by midnight because of the curfew.”

“I've got a pass.”

“I haven't.”

Bowing from the waist, the manager ushered them into the restaurant.

“There's not a table left, sir,” he said, “they've all been booked; but if you would like to go upstairs you could have dinner in one of the small rooms with a balcony looking over the sea. They're used as bedrooms during the week, but on Saturdays and Sundays we serve meals up there.”

“Let's go somewhere else,” said Concha.

“No.”

She looked askance at the colonel but her woman's intuition, which in her case took the place of intelligence, told her that he would not yield an inch and would rather leave her stranded on the road.

A small table was laid out on the balcony. Concha noticed the bed with its white coverlet in the corner of the room and the towels hanging by the side of the wash-stand.

While they were eating Raspéguy made no attempt to kiss her or fondle her. He showered her with little attentions, but his cruel eyes never left her and followed each of her gestures, her slightest movement; they were as cold and fascinating as the eyes of a reptile.

Concha began to feel drowsy.

At the end of the meal the colonel ordered champagne. It was the first time she had ever drunk champagne. It tickled her nose and she would have laughed out loud if she had not felt so frightened and if she had not at the same time derived such pleasure from her fear. She was both hoping and dreading that something might happen.