The Praetorians (35 page)

General Murcelles, a product of the Polytechnic, was only forty-eight years old. He was tall, thin, attractive, rather untidily turned out and often absent-minded. He greeted Raspéguy like an old friend.

“I can't tell you how pleased I am to see you here,” he said, shaking the colonel's hand. “I've had this Sahara command
for the last two months, and, without knowing exactly how or why, I had the feeling shortly after coming out here that the whole structure was tottering, cracking up and falling apart in places.”

“There must be something going on,” Raspéguy cautiously remarked.

“Yes, but what?”

“Maybe much the same as what's going on in the rest of Algeria, sir.”

“Before being made a general I was commanding a sector in the Atlas. We had the O.P.A. to deal with, and also rebel bands. We hunted down the O.P.A. and thereby starved out the rebels.

“It's not a bit like that over here. There's no O.P.A., just desert and a few oases. I haven't once heard about funds being collected.”

“Has there been a thorough investigation?”

The general gave a slight pause:

“I can do no more than rely on my subordinates.”

“Have they been out here long?”

“They're old Sahara hands who always come back to their desert. They know the family trees and the habits of the people by heart. Let's go in for a drink, it's so hot! Are your men comfortably quartered?”

“I don't want them to be comfortably quartered, I want them to sweat their guts out, go thirsty and even hungry. They've got one month in which to get used to this climate, find out what's happening, and a few days in which to fight. That doesn't leave them enough time to study family trees. . . .”

In the whitewashed office, with grilles on the windows, the general spread out a map.

“Look, Raspéguy. The frontier of southern Morocco, the enclave of Ifni, Mauretania. These dots here are the oases, black for the populated areas, blue for the wells. And these here are the drill-works and camps of the oil men, but they've been abandoned.

“All the rest is a vacant space, it's the Sahara, the name that the Arab geographer El Yakoubi gave it in the ninth century, which means a cemetery. Now here's my plan. We shall go through all
these populated areas and oases with a fine toothcomb. It's easy to cordon them off, no one can escape except into the desert. You'll be very useful to me, your men are extremely mobile, especially with the helicopters at their disposal.

“We'll soon manage to unearth those hundred or so deserters.”

Raspéguy broke up a couple of cigarettes and filled his pipe with them:

“You won't unearth a thing, sir. This operation is liable to be useless. . . .”

“Useless?”

Raspéguy passed his hand across his face. He was thinking:

“Unless . . . Perhaps it would be a good thing to talk a lot about this operation, to put everyone wise to it . . . and then not carry it out.”

“Explain yourself more clearly, Raspéguy.”

“While you roam around with your trucks and camels, and your aircraft cruise above you—without finding anything, needless to say—my regiment, which is used to it, will do the dirty work. For at a given moment there's always some dirty work to be done in this war. Thanks to which one fine day there will appear in the desert not a hundred but perhaps a thousand armed men, driven from their hide-outs and lairs.

“Then, once again, out in the open, we shall be able to fight as they did in the days of old.”

“There's one thing you're forgetting, my dear Raspéguy: I'm in command here.”

In a weary voice the colonel went on:

“I requested complete independence for this operation, but they omitted to notify you clearly. It's always the same.

“I could shelter from the establishment, keep under cover—the cover would be you—and we'd carry out our little raking operations. I would report to you with all due respect every morning and evening. We'd march our men off their feet and wear out our equipment, our helicopters and trucks. We'd certainly manage to unearth a few rebels, or manufacture some. We would collect a few arms. It seems the Spanish sell them in large quantities at Ifni. You would give me a splendid report, mention me in dispatches, I would put the ball back into your court and
everyone would be happy. Ah, what a fine army we have, people would say, in which they all get on so well together! But France would lose this part of the Sahara and it wouldn't be long before the remainder followed suit, which would provide Paris with fresh reasons for wanting to abandon Algeria, since we shouldn't have any more oil. . . .

“I'm asking you to help me, sir, yes, to help me wear myself to the bone, but on condition I'm given a free hand with my chaps. Leave your Sahara troops in peace. Let them go on dreaming as they gaze up at the stars and thinking what fine fellows they are, the worthy sons of Laperrine and Foucauld.”

Raspéguy shook his head.

“When I was a kid I read a book about Father de Foucauld. Like him, I wanted to be a soldier and a missionary and, above all, to roam around on the back of a camel. But what shocked me is that this former officer let himself be killed without defending himself.”

“You're not a good Christian, Raspéguy?”

“I know my prayers. When I'm at home in my village I go to church and I sing hymns with the men. After which I settle down in the pub. . . .

“Well, sir, do we keep your Sahara troops out of it? Or, rather, let them go out and roam around the desert? They're lucky not to know that in this war we have to fight sometimes as policemen, at other times like pimps, always in blood and shit.

“When the time comes to fight out in the open, in the soft evening light or on a cold morning with a nip in the air, we'll invite them all with their blue caps, their
gandourahs
and white
meharis
. And if they get killed they'll leave this world with a clean conscience, without being saddled with remorse as we are, and they'll be received in paradise with blasts on a bugle.”

General Murcelles was moved by the tone of this big colonel covered in glory and medals, by his manifest concern, bitterness and also selflessness: Raspéguy was prepared to soil his own hands in order to spare the others.

“Do as you see fit,” he said. “Only I insist on certain formalities. You will send me a written report every day in which you will sum up your activities. Once a week you will report
to me in person and tell me what you're doing and how you're progressing.”

“Do you really want to be tarred with the same brush, sir?”

“I do, because I'm in command, and therefore responsible if you fail or commit too many irregularities. I shall personally organize this diversionary operation which you say is useless but which might help you all the same.

“I'd been given a stylized, not to say unpleasant, picture of you, Raspéguy. It's not the man whom I have here before me today, and I'm glad of that. The other man I should have been reluctant to understand, and therefore to help. Good luck, Colonel.”

 * * * * 

In a reconnaissance plane Raspéguy flew back to the M'Zil Valley, a dark, almost black patch in the middle of the tawny “cemetery.”

Esclavier was waiting for him at Tiradent. The colonel, bubbling over with high spirits, gave him a great slap on the back.

“I played on the feelings of that general of ours. He's going to leave us alone and not saddle us with his Saharans, and maybe even help us. He doesn't look such a bad chap!”

Esclavier, who knew Raspéguy inside out, realized that the colonel, as usual, was mingling an ounce of duplicity with a lot of sincerity. But it was always the duplicity he stressed and on which he prided himself.

The colonel inhaled the stifling, sand-laden air.

“Tell me, Philippe, how does the situation strike you in your sector?”

“Not so good. I wander about with my chaps under the palmtrees. Covered in flies, we listen to the
norias
pumping up the water, we watch the little blind donkeys going round and round, and the turtle-doves singing—it's full of turtle-doves. The kids pester us for chewing-gum and cigarettes. In the morning, in the dunes, I instruct my drivers on vehicle management in the sand and show them how to use their sheets of metal when they get bogged down. They're wasting away before my very eyes.

“Crouching on the little clay embankments, the inhabitants of Tiradent look on as though we were a circus show.

“No outrages, nothing, no one has come out into the open yet. Some evenings, when there's an aircraft available, I go and see Boisfeuras at Foum el Zoar. He's in the dumps.”

“If he had a job to do, that chap, he'd get better. I don't think it'll be long before he sees some action.”

“All my chaps have dysentery. They're green in the face.”

“The same as at Ilghérem, it's the magnesium water. Dia will send you some pills.”

“Sir, I don't like the look of this business at all.”

“What's wrong with it?”

“Even the old warrant officers, even Pieron, are jumpy. Last night a sergeant loosed off several bursts with his machine-gun. This morning one of the men had a nervous breakdown. They're all dying of heat, but they freeze as soon as the sun goes down. The sand gets into their weapons and clogs them, and they're frightened of not being able to use them as quickly as they should. I make them go out on patrol at night, which they don't like at all. They have a feeling that they're being followed in those narrow alleyways hemmed in between two mud walls and that someone is going to fire on them from behind.

“But the Saharans, with their blue caps, big baggy trousers and twenty anisettes a day, see nothing and feel nothing. Full of their desert lore, they hand out advice which sounds more like witches' prescriptions than anything else.”

“It's our chaps who've the right idea, Philippe. The whole of this valley stinks of murder and violence, in spite of the turtledoves. Don't be caught off your guard.”

 * * * * 

On the eve of his departure Ahmad Lahouène, carrier and dealer in dates, invited Captain Marindelle to dinner. He had spread it abroad that he was buttering up the captain in order to be given a contract for the transport of some particularly interesting foodstuffs.

His house, built of clay and palm-trunks, looked as dilapidated as any of the others. Situated in a well-watered garden, it was surrounded by crumbling walls. A smell of apricot and mint rose in the evening air, which was suddenly free of its usual sand.

An extremely strict Moslem, Lahouène provided no alcohol, only tea, iced fruit-drinks, mutton roasted in an oven which had been dug out of the earth in the Moorish manner, and
pastilla
.

Slightly obese, full of affability and distinction, Lahouène confined himself during the meal to amiable small talk. He spoke about a journey he had made in France and about the Eiffel Tower, which he had climbed to the top.

Marindelle was likewise all smiles, relaxed, belching at the right moment and making the prescribed conventional remarks that he had learnt the evening before from a Camel Corps officer.

“I shall be away for a few weeks,” Lahouène eventually said. “About the transport of those supplies from Colomb-Bechar, go and see my son; he's my eyes and my right hand.”

The merchant accompanied his guest down to the garden gate.

“You should also go and call on the grand marabout of M'Zil, who's also the richest landowner in these parts: Sheik Sidi Ahmou. He'll be flattered by your visit, I'm sure. His
zaouia
is the most powerful one in the south. The faithful come all the way from Senegal to see him. May God keep you, and don't forget our little arrangement about the transport. . . . Fix up the prices with my son. The roads are bad, the trucks wear out very quickly.

“It's a shame that such a remarkable man as Sidi Ahmou doesn't confine himself to dealing with the faithful and his lands but has let his head be turned by that nasty one-eyed dog Abdallah.”

Marindelle now held one end of the thread.

 * * * * 

Sheik Sidi Ahmou was a giant of a man. He was six foot six tall. From his mother, a black slave, he had inherited a deep solemn voice, crinkly hair which was going grey and a taste for highly spiced greasy food. Through his father, the head of the
zaouia
before him, he descended from the celebrated Sheik Ma el Ainin, who had supported the Moorish tribesmen in all the rebellions against France, providing them with arms, advice and his blessing. At the age of seventeen Ahmou had
already made the pilgrimage to Mecca, by way of Dakar, where he had taken ship for Jeddah. Then he had disappeared for fifteen years. As a young man, Ahmou had wanted to educate himself and get to know the modern world. He had taken a job as a factory hand in the outskirts of Paris, then managed a small boarding-house where his compatriots put up. Ahmou had drunk wine, eaten pork and slept with white women whose pubic hair was unshaven.

After the boarding-house he had worked for an anarchist chemist and learnt, for what it was worth, the usage of certain powders and pills and at the same time the right of nations to shape their own destinies.

He read at random whatever came to hand and he retained everything. But these various branches of knowledge, instead of blending together, were piled one on top of another in his mind.

Generally speaking, he remained faithful to the primitive Islam of the brotherhoods, full of superstitions, magical practices, questionable saints and the remnants of a fetichist past, to which he added only a few “modernist” ideas. While he was still quite young, the France of the great pioneers astride their camels had made a deep impression on him. He had subsequently known another France, the country of misery and want, of abjection and Arab brothels, and he now remembered only the latter.