“They’ll lose their nerve, just you watch,” Sergeant Molintard said to Péladon and Videban.
Like a judo expert, he ducked down in front of a demonstrator who had just stumbled forward. Then, slipping behind him, he gave him a shove.
“Go on, then, you sod!”
But Lagaillarde, followed by some of his men, had already reached the railings with Puydebois, who was wearing on his breast the red heart surmounted by a cross and who was accompanied by his henchmen with their shoulders tucked in. They all started shaking the railings under the amused eyes of the paratroopers who had opened their ranks wide to let them through.
“Hey, you oafs,” Sergeant-Major Pieron shouted. “If you can’t manage with your hands why not use a lorry?”
The C.R.S. came charging back and a volley of tear-gas bombs forced the assailants off the railings on to which they were clinging.
Out of breath, Xavier Fortanelle reached Boisfeuras.
“I’ve caught up with you at last, sir.”
“So what?” Boisfeuras replied in his rasping voice. “Can you drive a G.M.C.?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Jump into that one.” He pointed to a sand-coloured truck belonging to the 10th Regiment standing twenty yards away.
“Get it going and head straight for the railings!”
“But, sir——”
“Do you want to seize the Government General, yes or no?”
“Well, you know, I’m from Clermont-Ferrand.”
“Get going, and make it snappy.”
Xavier Fortanelle, understanding nothing of what was going on, and therefore reverting into a good soldier who obeys any order he is given, climbed into the driving seat and started up the engine. Lagaillarde, Puydebois and a few others joined him and clambered on to the step.
The lorry gradually gathered speed and crashed into the railings, which caved in.
The demonstrators were now in the inner courtyard.
“Well, I never!” said Xavier, mopping his brow with the back of his hand.
He wanted to report back to Captain Boisfeuras, but the officer had disappeared. The assailants had already launched another vehicle against the iron shutters and glass doors of the buildings which still resisted them.
With crowbars, other groups were smashing in the wind-screens and doors of some official cars parked in the courtyard.
Adruguez seized Xavier by the arm:
“Well, are you coming? It’s not over, you know. We’re in front of the Government General, but we’re not inside it.”
Up on the first floor Esclavier had managed to get through to Glatigny.
“Listen, Jacques, it’s really serious. They’re trying to seize the Government General. Your veterans? They packed up and went home. It’s the young ones who burst through. No, of course the paratroops didn’t fire on them; they even let them through. It’s nothing, just a window-pane that has just smashed to smithereens. The chaps who started it? How many of them? Four or five hundred, not more, but the whole of Algiers is behind them now. The crowd’s roaring down below. . . . Hundreds of footsteps rushing up the stairs. Wait, I’ll go and see. . . . That’s it, they’ve got inside. What a shambles! Lagaillarde has just appeared at the cornice on the fifth floor. Can you hear the roar? It’s shaking the windows. You’ll try to get here at once? Hurry up, they’re pinching our coup d’état. Who? The Tojun, of course, and Puysanges. Bonvillain? He’s doing nothing, he’s talking!”
Esclavier hung up in a fury and went back into the office where the two secretaries sat crouching in the same armchair.
“Have you got anything to drink here?”
“Yes, Captain,” one of them replied in a timid voice, “some orangeade.”
Esclavier looked at his watch. It was ten past seven in the evening.
The crowd that had broken into the offices was beginning to ransack them. Files, with their contents scattering in the breeze, typewriters, card-indexes, furniture, were pitched out of the windows.
Xavier Fortanelle was now following Lagaillarde and Adruguez, Lagaillarde because he was in uniform and Adruguez because “there is something about his face.”
No one asked him who he was or what he was doing there. They were already used to him. With them he ascended the great marble staircase and entered the office of Maisonneuve, the chief of staff of the Resident Minister, where a certain number of high officials had gathered together.
Xavier did not know any of them, but he could see how uneasy they all seemed, the officials and the insurgents alike. There was a big tall girl beside him, swinging her bag. He asked her:
“What do we do now?”
Françoise Baguèras offered him a cigarette.
“I wish you could tell us! On one side there are your little pals who have seized the G.G., and don’t know what to do about it, and on the other these handsome gentlemen who would like nothing better than to have it seized, but not by you!”
Xavier sank into a big green leather armchair. The arrival of General Massu, fuming, an ugly expression on his face, his great beak of a nose thrust forward underneath his shaggy eyebrows, made him leap to his feet again. He had just remembered that he was only Corporal Fortanelle, on unauthorized leave and, moreover, in civilian clothes! His pal Antestieu, who had put on a smart suit to seduce a girl and was then caught, had been given a month in prison.
Down below the crowd was still yelling, seething with currents and cross-currents. This sea of people was as stormy as the Mediterranean behind it was calm, shimmering in the setting sun. One of the insurgents begged Massu:
“Say something to them, sir.”
Massu burst out in a fury:
“They make me sick, the whole lot of them. I’ve nothing to say to them. Today was meant to be a patriotic day for our comrades who were shot, not a day of plunder. . . .”
People were shouting and arguing. Everyone was talking at the same time, but it was Massu’s rough, uncouth voice that rose above the din.
Esclavier and Boisfeuras slipped into the room.
“Hello, there’s Massu,” said Boisfeuras. “I didn’t expect to see him here.”
The Tojun, who had reached the Government General through the secret passage connecting it to the Region Ten buildings, arrived in his turn, sleeves rolled up, five-star cap on his head, his breast covered all the way down to his stomach with decorations.
“The fruit has fallen, he’s come to pick it up,” Boisfeuras observed with a certain admiration.
The Commander-in-Chief made an appearance on the balcony outside the office.
In the Forum the crowd that had acclaimed Massu hooted him. Two hundred thousand voices threw in his face the defeat of Indo-China, for which he was not responsible.
The Tojun came in again. His features were still completely composed, but his forehead was bathed in sweat.
“His little trick didn’t come off as well as he expected,” Esclavier remarked. “He hadn’t foreseen everything; the crowd wants no truck with him.”
“Or with de Gaulle. Look at Puysanges creeping out with that hang-dog look. He was the one who persuaded the Tojun that he was popular.”
Massu had advanced into the midst of the demonstrators who were gathered in a corner of the office and asked them what they wanted.
“A Public Safety Committee, pending a Public Safety government in Paris,” Lagaillarde and a few others replied.
“Who can we put in this committee of yours?”
“Civilians and the military.”
“Make me out a list.”
Adruguez shook Fortanelle:
“You there, what’s your name?”
Xavier remembered his illegal position and blurted out the first name that came into his head:
“Albert Duchemin.”
It was the name of on
e of his cousins who was a commercial agent in groceries “for the lay and religious communities.” It said so on his visiting cards.
“Put Albert Duchemin down on the list.”
A few minutes later General Massu asked Xavier:
“You there, my lad, what the devil are you doing here?”
Fortanelle was scared out of his wits. He wondered whether he had not better own up completely. But the general frightened him. Besides, he was longing to get out of this big, cold, solemn office and find Paulette, to escape from this nightmare populated with generals, students and paratroopers.
The crowd gave another great cry.
“Well,” Massu went on, “what are you representing here?”
“The crowd,” said Fortanelle.
Massu shrugged his shoulders in irritation.
Françoise Baguèras took out her notebook.
“What are you up to?” Pasfeuro asked her.
“I’m jotting down the first historical statement of this revolution. Where has Malistair got to?”
“He’s trying to cable New York.”
A little later Fortanelle was pushed forward behind General Massu, who informed the crowd of the creation of a Public Safety Committee presided over by himself and composed of seven members including one Duchemin.
Meanwhile the real Duchemin, in an inn near Tulle, was whispering sweet nothings to a buxom servant girl who smelt of skimmed milk.
“This is wonderful,” said Esclavier. “Massu, the only man who wasn’t in any of the plots, has become president of the Public Safety Committee and finds himself at the head of the revolution!
“The Tojun’s in the trap. Bonvillain and the Gaullists are in the trap, the veterans are in the trap, and soon, all together in Uncle Ubu’s trap, there’ll also be de Gaulle himself, and Lagaillarde, and a certain number of officers from the 10th Regiment.”
The confusion was complete, but General Massu, who still did not understand what was going on, obeyed some old military reflex and issued orders which presently brought about a certain discipline.
He had the guard in front of the Government General reinforced, and enrolled in the Public Safety Committee a certain number of officers from his own staff or from the parachute division with whom he had already worked: Ducasse, Trinquier and also Boisfeuras because he happened to be there.
Gradually night fell, the gentle night of Algiers with its milky light. General Massu had gone out on to the balcony and read a telegram addressed to the President of the Republic:
“We notify you of the creation of a civil and military Public Safety Committee in Algiers, presided over by General Massu, on account of the gravity of the situation and the absolute necessity to maintain law and order and in order to avoid bloodshed. This committee expectantly awaits the creation of a Public Safety government, which alone is able to preserve Algeria as an integral part of Metropolitan France.”
The crowd began to disperse in spite of the appeals of Lagaillarde, Martel, Puydebois and Adruguez, who did not wish to be left alone with the military.
“They’ll gobble us up,” said Puydebois. “There they go, the captains, majors and colonels, all signing on with our Public Safety Committee, as though they were queueing up for their rations.”
Glatigny arrived at last. He jammed Boisfeuras up against a door.
“Well?”
“We’ve been had. Massu, without any ambition and ‘to avoid a balls-up’—that’s his expression—has assumed the leadership of the movement, and on his orders I find myself a member of the Public Safety Committee, with three or four colonels from the division who happened to be strolling down the corridor outside.”
“And Esclavier?”
“Down below with his chaps. Bonvillain?”
“Here he comes right now.”
Bonvillain came in, very cool and collected, very much the master of himself in the midst of this confusion; he introduced himself.
“I’m the envoy of Jacques Soustelle.”
“And all the time I thought he was Chaban’s man,” murmured Boisfeuras. “I’m sure he has never even met Soustelle! I’m going down to find Esclavier.”
Xavier Fortanelle, who was trying to find some excuse for leaving, fell into step with him.
In the courtyard a smell of damp burnt paper assailed their nostrils and they slipped on a carpet of damp sheets: what remained of the Government General files after being drenched by the firemen.
Inside some cars with broken windscreens a number of paratroopers were enjoying themselves with various girls.
All of a sudden a burst of giggling made the little corporal jump. He thought he had recognized Paulette’s laughter. Xavier looked to the left, to the right, pricked up his ears. The laughter burst out again, but more stridently. He rushed forward. It was Paulette all right, lying in the back seat of a Versailles with its windows broken and doors torn off. Her skirts were drawn up, a big sergeant was on top of her, and, with her hair dishevelled, a blank expression in her eyes, she gave a long shriek of pleasure each time the paratrooper drove into her.
When Sergeant Molintard looked up he saw Xavier’s distraught face a few inches from his own. He tried to apologize:
“What a job! She’s the third I’ve had in the last hour or two. Revolution certainly turns them into hot-pants!”
Xavier Fortanelle slowly turned away from Paulette, who hid her flushed face in her arms, and from the paratroop sergeant who was buttoning up his trousers, dazedly saying:
“She’s your fiancée! I must say, that’s tough luck on you.”
Xavier sat down on a low wall, beneath a bougainvillaea, and burst into tears. The two captains in red berets came up to him.
“Well,” Boisfeuras asked him, “what’s wrong with you? You’ve seized the Government General, you’re a member of the Public Safety Committee—you’re even the youngest member! A great career lies ahead of you, and you’re blubbing!”
“Corporal Fortanelle, sir. I’m on unauthorized leave, I don’t give a damn about having seized the Government General, because I come from Clermont-Ferrand and I’m a cuckold.”
“But we all are!” Esclavier exclaimed. “Go back to your unit, forget your girl, forget the Forum and the Public Safety Committee. If some day, on the Place de Jaude, they ask you what you did in Algeria on May 13th, you’ll reply: ‘I was on the beach.’”
Captain Esclavier, who was relieved towards the end of the night, asked to be driven to the villa in Birmandreis, where he thought he might find Glatigny, Marindelle or Mahmoudi.
“There’s no one here,” said an orderly, “except a lady who’s waiting for you in your room.”
Isabelle Pélissier was lying asleep on his bed, fully dressed. She got up with a start and flung herself into the captain’s arms.
“Philippe, nothing can keep us apart now. I know all you’ve done for me and for French Algeria.”
Overwhelmed, Esclavier hugged her tightly. This was really cuckolds’ day. Adruguez had seized the Government General for Isabelle yet he, Philippe, was the one whom she had come to thank.
8
THAT MORNING ANYTHING WAS POSSIBLE
Urbain Donadieu beckoned for the bottle of brandy which was out of his reach.
He filled his glass, drank half the contents and smacked his lips.
“I’m enchanted by all this! History is nothing but a series of blunders, confused situations, indecision among the strong, audacity among the weak, until historians come along and put it all in order.”
Irène, who was irritated by her father’s sententious tone and digressions, turned on Esclavier:
“You sneered at our parade in the Place de la République and called it a masquerade. Well, what was the 13th of May in Algiers, I should like to know! A comic opera!”
“That comic opera at least had the merit
of being joyful and truculent. And then we had that little shiver up our spine that foretold victory, we felt that anything would be possible.
“The parade in the Place de la République, on the other hand, was nothing but a display of puppets who would afterwards be put back in their cupboards, and who knew it.
“On May 18th, in Paris, Captain Marindelle met some figures from the political world or the demi-monde. They came to offer him their services . . . because, you see, I had sent him to my brother-in-law, Michel Weihl, one of the great defenders of the Republic. While the whole police force were looking for Marindelle—without much conviction, admittedly—he was living at 128 Rue de I’Université, receiving and making telephone calls.
“Michel and his friends knew the captain had come from Algeria, that he had been parachuted into the south-west and that his mission was clearly defined: if the liquidation of the régime began to drag he was to prepare an armed drive on the capital.
“All of them, it seems, were extremely useful to him.”
“There’s not much hope of my article being published,” Irène thought to herself. “The May 13th conspiracy hatched in one of the progressivist salons of Paris which is frequented by everyone on the paper! Who knows if the boss himself did not go and call on Captain Marindelle? And my Philippe, who feels so noble and pure, delighted to be able to despise the whole lot of them. . . . How irritating he can be, with his scorn and self-sufficiency!”
“So, as I see it,” Urbain Donadieu broke in, “on the evening of May 13th your little group was knocked out of the game.”
“Next morning we all joined in. Bonvillain and his friends, by playing on Soustelle’s name and popularity, had been able during the night to get several of their supporters enrolled on the Public Safety Committee—war veterans, members of the U.S.R.A.F. or the Vigilance Committee. If they were lacking in drive those chaps were well seasoned in the political game; by virtue of their past records or present positions they also wielded more weight than the members of the Committee chosen at the outset from among those who happened to be on the spot.
The Praetorians Page 21