The Praetorians

by Jean Larteguy

  “Esclavier? I think he’ll pull through. But see you don’t get caught with your pants down yourself. We’ve had enough casualties today, and I don’t want any more.”

  The colonel replaced the receiver:

  “Why are you looking at me like that, Marindelle? Are you surprised I should tell Pinières that Esclavier’s all right, although I’m anything but sure, and that I should forbid him to get himself killed?”

  “No, sir, one must always forbid the wounded to die, and the desperate to lose hope. I can’t help admiring you because you’re neither blinded by hate nor do the deepest feelings that exist, your feelings for Esclavier, make you lose your faculties for a second.

  “It’s a shame, sir, that you decided to be a mere soldier.”

  Raspéguy looked at him in amazement:

  “What else can one be except a soldier?”

  He picked up the telephone again and got through to Dia:

  “Has that surgeon turned up yet, for God’s sake?”

  * * * *

  In the plantations of Melsa a group of fifteen paratroopers ran into twenty armed rebels who appeared to be creeping off into the desert.

  Under cover of the mud walls, dodging behind the trunks of palm-trees, crawling along the irrigation channels, the fellaghas were on two or three occasions on the point of escaping from their pursuers.

  Eventually they were cornered in a house, but, concealed behind the terraces, and possessing two automatic weapons, they put up a fierce defence. To finish them off, the cannon had to be brought up.

  Raspéguy had openings pierced in all the plantation walls and decreed a curfew for seven o’clock in the evening.

  Then he gave orders for the slaughtering of any camel found outside the three resettlement zones in which the nomads were confined.

  At five in the evening Captain Pinières was able to break off the engagement. He had not had many casualties, only a few men injured by stones, or burnt, for the Annexe had been set on fire.

  On the little sandy square, where three palm-trees and a stone column stood, the demonstrators had left eight dead or wounded, including some women and children.

  * * * *

  “You must come and see,” Boisfeuras said to Marindelle. “The slaughter of the camels! I’ve just been informed of a flock about forty kilometres away. I’m flying off in a helicopter in a few minutes with two combat groups. You’ll see my terrors transformed into butchers!”

  The helicopters touched down near a dune which the wind had carved into broad stripes. Down below, round a well, were fifty or so camels guarded by three shepherds, a black tent with women and children, and two dogs which started barking.

  The paratroopers had brought an interpreter with them. He went off to question the head of this little group of nomads, a tall thin man with a fine biblical head.

  “Weren’t you told you had to come into Foum el Zoar?”

  “Yes, we were,” the nomad admitted, “but some other people came and forbade us to leave.”

  The interpreter rejoined the two captains.

  “He knew all right, but he asked me if you would care to take tea with him in his tent.”

  “No,” said Marindelle.

  The paratroops had already started killing off the camels, while the women and children broke into shrill screams. Before keeling over, after being struck by the bullets, the animals raised themselves up on their front legs, extended their necks, gave a scream and collapsed in the sand. Then their legs gave two or three final twitches.

  A sergeant, with a revolver in his hand, strolled up and down, finishing them off with a coup de grâce, as though they were traitors or heroes being executed in the moat of a fortress.

  “We forgot to read them out their death sentence, the poor beasts,” Boisfeuras remarked ruefully.

  “Sentenced to death and shot for not belonging to this day and age, because the Sahara has to die under the drills of the oil men, the bullets of the soldiers and the knives of the rebels!”

  A paratrooper snapped to attention in front of the two captains, and in an embarrassed tone:

  “There’s a little white female camel, she keeps trotting by our side and won’t leave us. Couldn’t she be saved?”

  “How do you think we’d get her back in the helicopter?” asked Marindelle. “And if you leave her here she’ll die of thirst.”

  “I understand,” said the soldier, hanging his head.

  But you could see that he didn’t understand and never would.

  “On his side, Meskri is acting in the same way,” said Marindelle. “He’s making a clean sweep of the past and the customs of these nomads. In every tribe or group he has replaced the traditional headman with a leader. As with the Viets, every decision is taken in common, but, of course, it’s always the leader’s advice that prevails. That’s what Abdallah told me. This is the sort of motion on which they’re made to vote:

  “‘The section of the Alghesatem tribe fervently hopes that after the victory of the Algerian Republic it may be permitted to settle on land fit for cultivation and be helped to build its own village. . . .’

  “The Viets would have rounded this off with a little couplet about production. The fellaghas haven’t yet reached that stage, but it will come.”

  Boisfeuras asked in a bitter tone of voice:

  “Are you proud of the job we’re doing, Marindelle, and do you think Meskri is proud of his?”

  “I’m certain Meskri is . . . as for myself, I’m none too happy about it, but I don’t see what else we can do.”

  “What about my dogs?” the nomad scornfully demanded. “Why don’t you kill my dogs as well? I don’t need them any more.”

  He was bundled into a helicopter with his family, his few cooking utensils and his louse-ridden blankets.

  He did not flinch when the aircraft took off.

  “You just wait,” the interpreter told him, “where we’re going to take you there’s as much water as you like, corn to make biscuits, and tea. You’ll be given money for your camels, plenty of money.”

  But the nomad was not listening. He watched his black tent surrounded by his dead camels disappear, and his inscrutable features betrayed nothing but supreme indifference.

  * * * *

  “You’re a good story-teller,” Irène said to Esclavier, “because you’ve got all the necessary nastiness, ill-will, passion and resentment. You’re at a loose end now, your name’s well known, you ought to try your hand at journalism, or at least write your memoirs . . . I mean a sort of confession, forty or fifty pages . . . I could help you and I know several papers who’d be interested.”

  “So do I,” said Urbain perfidiously.

  “Nothing shocks me more, Irène, than an unfrocked priest inveighing against the Church, an unfrocked Communist inveighing against the Party or an unfrocked officer spitting on the army.”

  Irène had extended a helping hand to Philippe, but he had rejected it, and she felt she was no longer capable of writing that article, as though love in some perfidious way had stifled her ambition. She asked herself: “What am I going to say when I get back to Paris?” But she already knew she was not going to go back to Paris, or if she did that she would not be returning alone. . . .

  “I’m going to call on Boisfeuras’s father tomorrow,” said Esclavier. “He must have received the letter the captain wrote to him the day before he was killed. I should very much like to see it, because I still don’t know why my friend died. Would you like to come with me, Irène?”

  The young girl wanted to refuse, for she hated the chores which death involves: burials, condolences, anniversaries, commemorative Masses. But deep down inside her the little voice which in moments of anger she called the lovesick virgin, the female slave, the shop-girl in love with the fine soldier, told her that it was only fit and proper for a fiancée or
wife to accompany her fiancée or husband in such circumstances.

  Once again she found herself obeying this voice she hated.

  “And what about Captain Boisfeuras?” asked Urbain.

  “His photograph, the one of him dying, is now hung up in most of the paratroop officers’ messes. Boisfeuras has become a sort of symbol. Destiny was to play this trick on him. His last words were not, as was reported: ‘Victory is his who dares the most,’ but: ‘Life, what an idiotic dream!’

  ‘I wasn’t present at his death myself; I was wounded and in pretty bad shape. But I was told about it by a press photographer who was there.

  “It was Boisfeuras who bumped off Meskri. Meskri was very like us, but he happened to be on the side of the fence which enabled him to do what we didn’t dare, because we were commanded by old dodderers who forced us to abide by the rules, because we belonged to a nation steeped in high principles and sordid jealousies, because we were on the defence whereas Meskri was on the attack.”

  * * * *

  La Serbalière, the estate belonging to Captain Boisfeuras’s father, was about forty kilometres from Saint-Gilles-de-Valreyne. Irène got into Philippe’s car, which started off, creaking and clanking as though it was about to fall apart.

  “Where on earth did you pick up this old wreck?” she asked.

  “A second-hand dealer’s at the Porte de Versailles.”

  “It’s not going to leave us stranded on the road, is it?”

  “What does it matter if it does? You’ve got nothing to do, nor have I, and when I rang up old Boisfeuras he said we could turn up at any hour of the day or night. It’s odd, he’s got the same slightly sneering voice as his son.”

  “My holiday will soon be over.”

  “Can’t you string it out a little longer? You could easily get a doctor’s certificate to say you were ill.”

  “Will you come back to Paris with me, just for the trip?”

  “Maybe, but not just now. I’ve got to wait until the slight stir caused by my resignation dies down.”

  “Let me drive,” Irène said all of a sudden.

  “Are you scared?”

  “No, you drive very well, just as you make love and no doubt make war very well, but I’d like to hear this old heap clank a little louder.”

  “Feeling nervous?”

  “I don’t like these little meetings under the photograph of the son of the house adorned with a mourning band because he died for his country.”

  “Then why did you come?”

  “I don’t know, maybe because I like being with you and I’m interested in Boisfeuras as a person, or even because I’m frightened of being bored if I stayed at home alone with my father!”

  Philippe changed seats with Irène, who drove off with a great jerk.

  “What a brute!” she said. “In Paris I’ve got a Dauphine. When you come I’ll lend it to you. I can never find anywhere to park, so I never take it out. You could live at my place. I’ve got a room which is more or less separate from the rest of the flat. On the rare occasions my father comes to Paris that’s where he stays.”

  After asking the way two or three times they drew up outside the great stone gateway. Philippe got out and rang the bell. Min appeared and let them in.

  He recognized Esclavier, but betrayed no particular pleasure at seeing him again. He was hollow-cheeked and emaciated, and the pupils of his eyes were dilated.

  “You’re taking drugs,” Philippe said to himself. “Boisfeuras used to forbid you, but he’s no longer here.”

  The magnificent garden had been neglected. Weeds invaded the lawns and flower-beds.

  Min preceded them into a damp gloomy drawing-room, in which the double curtains were drawn, and ushered them into the small ante-chamber which served old taipan Boisfeuras as an opium den.

  The only light, as in the depths of a church, was the golden glimmer of the oil-lamp. Stretched out on his mat, the old man did not even get up to greet them.

  “I must apologize,” he said.

  He made a vague gesture with his hand and invited them to lie down facing him.

  His eyes alone still glittered in his waxen face.

  “I believe you were one of my son’s oldest friends, Monsieur Esclavier, and you were wounded in the same battle that cost him his life. I am delighted to meet you and to welcome you here.”

  He plunged a needle into a little pot and began toasting the pellet of opium over the flame.

  “My relationship with Julien was not that of a father with his son, it was rather the peevish connection between two old accomplices. We sometimes used to perform certain actions for the sole purpose of surprising each other.

  “Would you like some tea, mademoiselle?

  “You don’t seem to like the smell of opium. The first few times it’s always nauseating, then it becomes the idea one forms of a haven well sheltered from the storm, a refuge in the mountains when the wind sends the snow whirling round, a comfortable home after a hard and savage campaign.

  “I want first of all to set your minds at rest. The loss of my son did not cause me the great distress or heart-break that fathers or mothers are supposed to suffer in such circumstances.

  “Is opium the reason? I simply found the incident disagreeable, not to say exasperating.

  “I received a copy of Julien’s posthumous citation. Nothing could be more inaccurate, I should think, than a document like that.”

  The slender hands, with their pronounced blue veins, disappeared for a moment, then reappeared in the lamplight with a sheet of paper which the old man began to read out loud in his high-pitched voice.

  “‘Captain Julien Boisfeuras, 10th Colonial Parachute Regiment. A legendary soldier who, for almost twenty years, fought incessantly in every theatre of war, always volunteering for the most dangerous missions.

  “‘On October 23rd, with forces extremely inferior in number, he attacked a large enemy formation which he routed, personally killing the leader who commanded it.

  “‘A hero of the Burma campaign, the Indo-China maquis, the Algerian war, he met in the dunes of Ilghérem (Sahara) the glorious death which was in keeping with his past.

  “‘This citation is accompanied by the posthumous award of the Croix d’Officier de la Légion d’Honneur and the Croix de la Valeur Militaire with palm.’

  * * * *

  “Idiotic, isn’t it?

  “I should like to know the exact circumstances of Julien’s death, Captain Esclavier. They might help to explain the strange letter I received from him a few days before he was killed. You were then seriously wounded, I believe. You had just been operated on and your life was still in danger. My son, who seems to have been very fond of you, mentioned your wound; he even seemed extremely upset by it—at least as much as he could be, for he was always somewhat indifferent, or else secretive.

  “A few weeks after his death all sorts of proposals were made to me, each more ridiculous than the other. It was suggested that I, Boisfeuras, who was known as the rottenest old taipan in the Mud Bank City,* I who had nothing French about me apart from my passport, should preside over the Association of Parents of Paratroopers Killed in Algeria, attend the Mass said in memory of Captain Thingummybob or Lieutenant So-and-So, and even revive the flame at the Arc de Triomphe! It’s a wonder I wasn’t offered a political career based on my son’s corpse.

  “Even beyond the grave Julien managed to find a means of surprising me; he had played this last trick on me: making me the father of an official hero.

  “I’m ready to hear your story, Captain—or rather, Major—for I learnt from the papers about your resignation and at the same time your promotion.

  “You will do me the honour, with this young lady, of being my guests at luncheon. My bep has prepared the big Chinese meal which is customarily offered in the Far East to honour the
soul of the dead. I shall even make the effort of getting up and dressing, which I haven’t done for some time.

  “If you observe the ritual of death you can then go and visit my son’s tomb. He’s buried in the cemetery in Grasse. Min will take you there.

  “I wanted to have the tombstone engraved with the last words attributed to Julien: ‘Victory is his who dares the most.’ But they sounded rather suspect to me. So I merely had inscribed: ‘Julien Boisfeuras, born in Peking, 17 March 1919, killed 23 October 1958, at Ilghérem, the Sahara.’ I was violently reproved for not saying: ‘He died for France.’ But it was for himself he died, for his dreams and for a France he dreamed about and which has nothing in common with this fretful country of ours, whose ambitions and high-mindedness shrink at the same time as her territory. Julien dead for a France like this? Never! But let’s not carp at my son any longer. I’d rather hear about his death.”

  The old man inhaled his pipe in one draw. Then, with his head on the leather pillow, lying perfectly still, with his eyes closed, he waited.

  “At the end of October,” Esclavier began, “we were confronted with a tricky situation in the M’Zil Valley.

  “We had to deal with a rebel, Meskri, a graduate of the Vietminh indoctrination schools who had assimilated all he had been taught, which is more than could be said for us.

  “He wasn’t a Communist. The papers found on his body prove he wasn’t. But, like us, he found it necessary to use certain methods.

  “With my company I fell into a trap he had set for me near the Zair well, and I was wounded. The arrest of an influential marabout had raised against us the whole population of the string of oases in which the rebellion had taken firm root for a year, unknown to the local authorities—in this case, the officers for Saharan Affairs.

  “Our technique was restricted to stirring up the ant-heap so as to force the thousand armed men whom we believed to be dispersed among the hide-outs, shelters and tents of the nomads to come out into the desert, which would enable us to destroy them.

  “Our colonel, Raspéguy . . .”

  Old Boisfeuras shifted his head on his pillow: