The Centurions (59 page)

At first the captain wondered if she slept with this Arab when he was away, but quickly realized this was highly improbable. With Christiane, Marindelle had found peace and happiness, the pleasure of long conversations, and affection too; all that Jeanine had been unable to give him. Christiane was not the sort of woman to conceal from him that she had another liaison if such was the case. She had frankly admitted far more embarrassing things to him, in particular the passion she had once had for one of her young female pupils, of which she had never been completely cured.

Amar seemed a rather odd little chap, with eyes that sparkled with intelligence, a broad forehead above a rather commonplace face, and chubby little hands like a child's.

“I'm very pleased to meet you, Captain,” he said in his gentle voice, “Christiane has often spoken to me about you and your experiences out in Indo-China.

“Christiane's a little uneasy because she thinks I'm not quite in order; I once spent five years in prison at Lambèse for . . . let's call it nationalism . . . and there's a rumour that you paratroops are soon going to be masters of Algiers, that you're going to be invested with every power, including therefore the powers of the police.

“Don't worry, though, my growing pains are over and there's nothing that can be held against me now.”

“You'll stay to dinner, won't you, Yves?” Christiane asked. “We've all become rather on edge in Algiers. All this shooting in the streets, these bombs and searches . . . You see, I even ask you if you'll stay to dinner when this house is just as much yours as mine! I've asked Amar to move in here. Up to now he's been living in the Kasbah, where he's exposed to all sorts of troubles. He's like me, he has nothing to do with this war.”

After dinner Marindelle had a long conversation with Amar.

The uneasy atmosphere had lifted; Christiane had put Mozart's Horn Concerto on the gramophone, which reminded Yves of their first awkward embraces. Amar sat with his eyes closed, puffing at his cigarette.

“How long were you a prisoner?” he asked the captain.

“Four years.”

“I was inside for five. What did you think about all that time? What enabled you . . . how shall I put it? . . . to remain yourself?”

“I made the best of it. The Vietminh taught me a number of things . . . among others, that the old world was doomed.”

“It's doomed in Algeria just as much as in the Far East. Why are you fighting to preserve it?”

“My friend Boisfeuras would say: ‘To give the lie to History.' History is on the side of the Nationalists, as it's on the side of the Communists. Anyone who tries to turn man into a submissive robot is travelling with the flow of History. What I'm fighting against in Algeria is this mechanization of man.”

“If I were a rebel, I would say I was fighting for much the same reason. At one time I fought so that we Moslems should become French. It was a great mistake. It's in themselves, in their history, that nations must seek their reasons for existing.”

“And when they haven't any history?”

“They must invent it.”

“France is an offspring of Rome, but she's not ashamed of it.”

“Algeria will also be an offspring of France. But the time has come to divorce, and one of the parents refuses to divorce, in the name of the past, in the name of moral rights, because her settlers cultivated the fallow land, built towns and apartment houses. The Vietminh must have taught you that History is ungrateful.”

“The Nationalists are going rather too far to obtain this divorce: outrages, arson, bombs, the massacre of children . . . culminating in Communism. If you think that History . . .”

“The weak have to use whatever weapons are at hand. The bomb may be the weapon of faith, and the just man (it was a Frenchman from Algeria who said this) may be the one who throws the bomb to destroy a tyranny, even if that bomb kills some innocent victims. If you granted us independence, perhaps we would come back to you.”

“You're divided among yourselves by different languages and customs; the people of the mountains hate those of the plain . . . If we left you to your own devices, you'd be at each other's throats. You're not a nation.”

“I know. I've also said, like Ferhat Abbas: ‘I've looked for Algeria in books and cemeteries and I never found her.' But since then you've filled our cemeteries sufficiently to create a history for us.”

“Do you believe the Algerian people will benefit from independence?”

“It's too late to think about that. The Algerian people have been too scarred by war, their existence has been too disturbed to turn the clock back at this stage. You yourselves are creating Algeria through this war, by uniting all the races, Berbers, Arabs, Kabyles and Chaouias. The rebels should be almost grateful to you for the violent measures of repression you have taken.”

“And the million French?”

“Why do you think that we, who number eight million, should be forced to become like them, which they have always refused to allow in any case?”

“Very soon all men will be alike all over the world.”

“What interests us is today and not tomorrow.”

“And you, Christiane, what do you think?” Marindelle asked.

“All I want is peace,” she said, “and that the masses should have the right to account for themselves.”

“It's always a mere handful of men who account for the masses, and nothing great, alas, has ever emerged from peace, neither a nation—as Amar has just pointed out—nor a great work. Peace has always been the reign of mediocrities, and pacificism the bleating of a herd of sheep which allow themselves to be led to the slaughter-house without defending themselves.”

“I never pictured you as an apostle of war, Yves, but then I keep forgetting you're an officer.”

“You've just said,” Amar went on, “that it's always a mere handful of men who account for the masses; that's true. But these men still have to follow the basic direction of the masses. The handful of men that make up the F.L.N., either here or in Cairo, are moving, in my opinion, in that direction.”

“The side who'll win, my dear Amar, is the one who'll take the masses in hand: us . . . I'm referring to our own little army out here, which is numerically inferior to the
fellaghas'
or to you.”

“I'm not a rebel. Can you see an impractical little intellectual like me at the head of a rebellion? But let's pretend, for the sake of argument; let's assume I am a rebel, a leader of the rebellion.”

Amar's eyes sparkled with mischief. He went on:

“There's only one word for me:
Istiqlal
, independence. It's a deep, fine-sounding word and rings in the ears of the poor
fellahin
more loudly than poverty, social security or free medical assistance. We Algerians, steeped as we are in Islam, are in greater need of dreams and dignity than practical care. And you? What word have you got to offer? If it's better than mine, then you've won.”

“We haven't any, but we're now going to start thinking seriously of one. Thanks for the advice.”

“Not at all, but you won't be able to find it, for this word is unique and belongs to us. Let's go on pretending, if you don't mind, Captain. You're just back from Egypt, I gather?”

“Yes.”

“You were beaten by the Egyptians.”

“Yet they ran pretty fast at the sight of us, leaving their weapons and sometimes their trousers behind.”

“That bunch of runaways, that tin-pot army incapable of using the arms which the Russians had given them, those officers with splendid moustaches who stripped down to their under-pants so as to run all the faster, nevertheless defeated you—you, the paratroops, who are said to be the finest force in the whole of free Europe—and they defeated you by taking to their heels! The whole world rose up against France and England, the Russians and Americans alike, because in Egypt you tried to play a game that is no longer in current usage. You've been allowed to play that game again in Algeria, but it won't last much longer. Maybe within the next few days the general strike will ring the death knoll of French imperialism in the Maghreb.”

“If we break that strike . . .”

“We'll start another one later, until the whole world supports us against you.”

“Is there no means of coming to an understanding?”

“Get out of the country, embark your soldiers as you did in Port Said. We'll protect your settlers provided they observe our laws.”

“Get out of the country, leaving a million hostages behind . . .”

“The four hundred thousand Moslems living in France would also be hostages.”

“What régime would you like to establish in Algeria?”

“A democracy which wouldn't have the blemishes of yours, with an infinitely stronger executive body, a collective administration operating within the framework of all the leading elements . . .”

“As I said before, the final outcome is bound to be Communism. Perhaps we are defending an out-of-date system, but your revolution is also out of date; it's middle-class, and if it wants to succeed it will have to employ the only methods which are up to date, that is Communist methods—your collective administration is one example of this—unless your military get the upper hand . . .”

“We shall know how to protect ourselves against our military as well as against your Communists. But let's stop this game. I'm only an unimportant little man called Amar. I'm going up to bed.”

“Just one more question: I'd like to know if you're still a Moslem.”

“The only aspect of Islam that I've retained is a belief in
baraka
, that beneficent force which is enjoyed by those who have a destiny unlike that of others.”

Later on, when they were in bed, Yves Marindelle asked Christiane:

“I'm fascinated by Amar; he plays the role of the rebel leader with absolute conviction, he seems to be abreast of international politics. Where does he come from? What's his background?”

“A police interrogation already?”

“There's no need to be so touchy; I'm merely doing my duty to the best of my ability. I'd like to help Amar if he's in any trouble, provided of course you give me your word that he's not a member of the F.L.N.”

“Amar is from the Ksour Mountains and his family, who are extremely rich, send him enough money to live on. He reads and studies a great deal; his only interest in politics is theoretical. But it's quite possible he sympathizes with the F.L.N.

“Yves, let's forget the whole business, Amar and bombs and all the rest of it. Hold me in your arms. I'd be miserable if anything happened to separate us . . .”

 • • • 

It was on the night of the
25
th that Boisfeuras managed to get hold of the card index system of the D.S.T. He had had to overcome Raspéguy's scruples, but won him over by maintaining that if the
10
th Parachute Regiment did not do the job, another regiment would pull it off and get all the credit. Escorted by a dozen paratroopers in battle dress, he went and “requested” the collaboration of the heads of that police branch, which in fact, acted as an intelligence service.

“If we refuse to let you have this card index system, what will happen?” asked the director of the D.S.T.

“We shall be forced to conclude that you're covering up for the rebels, that you are their accomplices; by the same token we might be forced to regard you as traitors and, in order to avoid any scandal . . .”

He drew his attention to the submachine-guns.

“. . . wipe you out.”

“I submit in the face of force.”

“Please, let's say in the face of reason.”

Boisfeuras took the card index system away with him and promptly sent back a letter signed by Raspéguy, thanking the D.S.T. for having so promptly displayed such a spirit of co-operation with the units responsible for the security of Algiers.

On
26
January, when they woke up in the morning, the people of Algiers discovered they were living in a new town.

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
10
th 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
10
th 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.