by Alexis Jenni
The heat, the gaping wound of the Far East, had begun in Egypt at the point when the Pasteur, which sailed the route to Indochine, sailed into the Suez Canal. The crowded ship slowly followed the watercourse, wending its way through the desert. The inshore wind had dropped; they were no longer at sea, and it was so hot on deck that touching metal fittings was dangerous. Below decks, filled with young men who had never seen Africa, it was impossible to breathe; soldiers melted in the heat, several of them fainted. The colonial doctor brutally brought them round, bawling at them to make them understand: ‘From now on you keep your bush hat and you take your salt tablets, unless you want to pass out like an idiot. How stupid would it be to set off for war and die of sunstroke? Imagine the telegram being sent to your families. If you’re going to die over there, at least die in a decent fashion.’ After Suez, a veil of melancholy settled over the soldiers crowded into every space aboard the ship; only now did it dawn on them that some men would not be coming back.
At night they heard loud splashes against the hull. There were rumours of legionnaires deserting. They dived in, swam, climbed the sides of the canal and, soaking wet, set off on foot into the dark desert to a different fate, and no one would hear from them again. NCOs kept watch on deck to stop men from jumping. On the Red Sea a steady breeze returned, ensuring they would not all die overwhelmed by the sweltering sun that beats down on Egypt. But heat of a different kind was waiting for them in Saigon: a sauna, a steam bath, a pressure cooker whose lid would remain firmly screwed on for the duration of their stay.
At the Cap Saint-Jacques they disembarked from the Pasteur and headed up the Mekong. The noun was enchanting, as was the verb; putting verb and noun together, ‘heading up the Mekong’, they felt the thrill of being somewhere alien, of setting out on an adventure, a feeling that quickly faded. There was not a ripple on the glassy river; it gleamed like sheet metal covered with dark oil, while the barges carrying them left a dirty trail in their wake. The flat horizon was very low, the sky came down very low, blanching at the edges of crisp white clouds that hung motionless in the air. What Salagnon saw was so flat that he wondered how they would be able to get enough footing to stand up. In the back of the barge the young soldiers, exhausted by the crossing and the heat, were dozing on their knapsacks in the sickly sweet smell of mud rising from the river. Guys in shorts with bare, tanned chests sat in the stern, scanning the banks, with tripod-mounted machine guns. Their faces expressionless, they did not even trouble to look at these brand-new tin soldiers, this herd of pale, neat men whose transhumance they were charged with, half of whom would soon be dead. Salagnon could not know that within a few months he would have the same face. The engine of the barge boomed over the water, the armour plate clattered beneath the men and the deafening roar rolled away and died on the vast Mekong, since it met no obstacle, nothing that might reverberate. Huddled with the others, silent like the others, heart in his mouth like the others, throughout the journey to Saigon he had a feeling of hellish solitude.
He was summoned by some old fogey from Cochinchine who had fixed ideas about how war should be conducted. Colonel Ducroc held meetings in his office. Lounging on a Chinese sofa, he served champagne that remained chilled until the ice cubes melted. His magnificent white uniform, elaborately embellished with gold, was a little tight, while the ceiling fan dispersed his sweat and filled the room with a scent of cooked fat and eau de Cologne; as, outside, the tropical day advanced – a series of dazzling slashes in the venetian blinds – the stench of him grew stronger. Between pudgy fingers he held out a tiny object that all but disappeared.
‘You know how they say “hello” here? They say “Have you eaten rice yet?” That’s how we’re going to win, by focusing all of our forces on this.’
He squeezed his fingers, wrinkling them, but Salagnon realized that he was holding out a grain of rice.
‘In this country, young man, controlling the supply of rice is vital!’ he said enthusiastically. ‘Because in a famine-stricken country everything is calculated in rice: numbers of men, tracts of land, the value of inheritances and the length of journeys. This yardstick by which everything is measured grows in the mud of the Mekong; so if we control the rice getting out of the delta, we can crush the rebellion, just as we might starve a fire of oxygen. It’s physics, it’s mathematics, it’s logic. Look at it whatever way you want: by controlling the rice, we win.’
The fat folds in his face obliterated his features, unwittingly giving him an impassive, faintly pleased air; when he squinted for any reason, his eyes were transformed into two Annamese slits, making it look as though he knew whereof he spoke. The country might be vast, the population at best indifferent, his forces meagre and his equipment falling apart, but he had very fixed ideas about how to win a war in Asia. He had been living here for so long that he believed he had melded with it. ‘I’m not completely French any more,’ he would say with a little laugh, ‘but French enough to use the statistics of the Intelligence Service. Subtlety in Asia, precision in Europe: by combining the wisdom of both worlds, we can achieve great things.’ With the point of his pencil he tapped the report lying next to the champagne bucket, and the confidence of his gesture was as good as proof. The figures explained everything about rice production: production in the delta area, capacity of junks and sampans, daily consumption by combatants, maximum weight transportable by the coolies, walking speed. If you integrate these data, you realize you only need to confiscate a certain percentage of the production from the delta to tighten the noose and strangle the Viet Minh. ‘And when they are dying of hunger they’ll come down from the mountains. They’ll come down into the plains and then we’ll crush them, because we have the numbers.’
This glorious old codger gesticulated as he explained his plan; the ceiling fan turned overhead, dispersing his muggy scent, the smell of a local river, warm and perfumed and slightly sickly; behind him on the wall, the large map of Cochinchine was criss-crossed with red lines that indicated victory as certainly as an arrow indicates its own extremity. He concluded his explanation with a complicit smile that had the ghastly effect of causing his many chins to pucker and discharge an excess of sweat. But this man had the power to distribute military equipment. With a stroke of his pen, he granted Lieutenant Salagnon four men and a junk to win the rice war.
* * *
Outside, Victorien Salagnon plunged into the molten tar of the street, into the boiling air that clung to everything, filled with potent, penetrating scents. Some were scents he had never smelled before. He did not even know that a smell existed that was so pervasive, so intense that it was also taste, texture, object, the flow of fickle, mellifluous matter within him. It mingled plant and animal; it might have been the scent of some giant flower with petals of flesh, the smell of meat that oozed sap and nectar; you long to bite into it, you feel you might pass out or throw up, you do not know how to react. The streets were pervaded by the scent of pungent herbs, the scent of honeyed meats, the scent of sour fruits, the musky scent of fish that triggered a craving not unlike hunger; the smell of Saigon awakened an instinctive desire mingled with a little instinctive repulsion and a longing to know. They had to be cooking smells, because all along the street, at makeshift stalls wreathed in steam, the Annamese were eating, sitting at stained, rickety tables, worn out through too much use and too little repair; the wisps of steam all around made his mouth water, triggered the physical symptoms of hunger, although he had never smelled any of these scents before; it had to be their local food. They ate quickly from little bowls, noisily slurping soup, spearing threads and morsels using chopsticks they wielded like paintbrushes; they brought the food quickly to their mouths, drinking, sucking, moving the food around with a porcelain spoon; they ate their fill, their eyes lowered, focused on their gestures, without speaking, without pausing, without exchanging a single word with the two people sitting shoulder to shoulder on either side; but Salagnon knew that they were aware of his presence, that even with their h
eads lowered they were watching him; with those eyes that seem closed they were tracking his every movement through the fragrant steam, every one knew where he was, the only European on this street where he had vaguely lost his way, having taken several arbitrary turns after leaving naval headquarters, where he had just been assigned four men and the command of a wooden junk.
He did not know how to communicate with the Annamese people sitting at tables, did not know how to interpret their expressions. They were tightly packed, their eyes fixed on their bowls; their attention confined to the short trajectory of the spoon moving between the bowls they cradled and open mouths, sucking with the gurgling sound of a pump. He could not see how he might say a word to anyone, how he might notice anyone, isolate him, talk to him and him alone in this cacophonous throng of men focused on eating and nothing else.
A stiff blond head rose above the heads of dark hair bent over their bowls. He walked towards it. A tall European was eating, keeping his back straight, a legionnaire wearing a short-sleeved shirt and no hat; on either side were two Annamese, but there was no one sitting opposite, or on the empty seat where he had placed his white kepi. He ate slowly, emptying his bowls in turn and pausing momentarily after each one to sip from a small, glazed, earthenware jar. Salagnon gave a vague salute and sat down opposite him.
‘I think I need help. I’d like to eat, everything smells amazing, but I don’t know what to order or how to go about it.’
The other man continued to chew, keeping his back straight; he drank from the neck of his small, earthenware jar; Salagnon politely insisted, although he did not beg, he was simply curious; he wanted to be guided and once again asked the legionnaire how to go about things; around him the Annamese went on eating without raising their heads, their backs bowed, deliberating making that slurping sound; these people were so reserved, so discreet in everything, with the exception of this noise they made when they ate. Customs are unfathomable. When one of them finished, he got to his feet without looking up and another man took his place. The legionnaire nodded to his kepi on the chair.
‘Already two lunches,’ he said in a thick accent.
He drained the earthenware jar. Salagnon carefully moved the kepi.
‘Well then, now three lunches.’
‘You have money.’
‘Like a solider off the boat with his pay packet.’
The other gave a terrible roar. The Annamese, busy with their soup, did not flinch, but an elderly man appeared, dressed in black like the others. The dirty dishrag tied around his waist was clearly his cook’s apron. The legionnaire reeled off a list in his booming voice, his thick accent noticeable even in Vietnamese. A few minutes later the bowls arrived, coloured morsels that the sauce made glossy as though lacquered. Unfamiliar aromas floated around them like clouds of colour.
‘That’s fast…’
‘They cook fast… Viet cook fast.’ He eructated with a huge laugh, starting on another jar. Salagnon also had one. He drank. It was strong, unpleasant, slightly foul-smelling. ‘Choum! Rice wine! Like potato alcohol, but with rice.’ They ate, they drank, they got dead drunk and by the time the elderly, slightly grubby cook doused the fire beneath the large black pan that was his only utensil, Salagnon could not even stand; he was bathed in a mixture of sauces, salty, spicy, sour, sweet, that had engulfed his nostrils and glistened on his sweat-drenched skin.
When the legionnaire got up, he stood almost two metres tall and had a pot belly that could have accommodated a normal man if he curled up into a ball. He was German. He had seen all of Europe and he liked it in Indochine, where it was a little warm, hotter than in Russia, but in Russia the people were annoying. His crude French ground away the words and gave everything he said a strange concision that implied more than it actually said.
‘Come play now.’
‘Play?’
‘Chinese play all time.’
‘Chinese.’
‘Cholon, Chinese town. Opium, gambling and many, many whore. But careful, stay with me. If problem, shout “À moi la legion!” Always walk, even in jungle. And if not walk, make pleasure scream.’
They went on foot and it took a long time. ‘We take tuk-tuk, the engine it explode!’ roared the legionnaire in the teeming streets, spangled with the dim glow of lamps and candles set on the pavements, around which the Vietnamese crouched and chatted in their unfamiliar, unpredictable language, which sounded like a radio when you turn the capacitor, looking for a station lost in the ether.
The legionnaire walked without staggering. He was so massive that his drunken lurches remained within the confines of his body. Salagnon leaned against him, as he might against a wall he was using to fumble his way along, although fearing he would be crushed if the big man toppled.
They stepped into a noisy, brightly lit room in which no one paid them any heed. Crowds of people quivered around the gaming tables, where supercilious young women shuffled cards and chips, while saying as little as possible. When the die was cast or the wheel was spun, a ball of lightning would run through the crowd; the hunched Chinese players would fall silent, their eyes narrowed to thin lines, their black hair blacker, standing on end, crowned with a halo of blue sparks; and when the card was turned over, when the ball stopped, there was a shudder, a cry, a loud sigh that was at once angry and silent, and conversations suddenly started up, just as shrill and shrieking, while men took great wads of cash from their pockets and waved them like a challenge or an appeal; and the impassive young women collected the chips with a long-handled rake, which they wielded like a fan. They played again.
The legionnaire gambled away the rest of Salagnon’s money, lost, and they both laughed. They wanted to go to a different room, since, behind a red-lacquered double, door people seemed to be playing for higher stakes; richer men and prettier women went in and came out; this attracted them. Two men dressed in black blocked their path by simply raising their hands; two thin men whose every muscle was visible and who both had pistols tucked into their belts. Salagnon insisted. He stepped forwards and was pushed back. He fell on his behind, furious. ‘Who gives the orders here?’ he roared, his voice slurred by the choum. The henchmen did not budge, their arms folded in front of them, not looking at him. ‘Who gives the orders?’ None of the players looked round; they busied themselves at the tables with their shrill cries; the legionnaire helped him to his feet and led him outside.
‘Who’s in charge here? This is France, isn’t it? Huh? We give the orders, don’t we?’
This made the legionnaire laugh.
‘Funny man. Here, French only order in restaurant. Maybe not. Viet give what he give. Viet Minh order. Chinese order. French eat what he get.’
He bundled him into a rickshaw, growled instructions to an Annamese and Salagnon was driven back to his hotel.
In the morning he woke up with a throbbing head, a dirty shirt and an empty wallet. Later, someone told him that he got off lightly, that such evenings often ended with someone floating in a river, naked, their throat cut, sometimes even castrated. He never knew whether this was true or whether it was just a story people repeated; but in Indochine no one ever knew anything that was true. Like the lacquer applied layer by layer to create a form, reality was the sum of layers of lies, which, by slow accretion, took on an appearance of truth that was perfectly satisfactory.
He was given four men and a wooden junk, but the four referred only to French soldiers. The junk came with a crew of Annamese deckhands he found it difficult to put a number to: five, six, maybe seven. They dressed identically and could spend long hours utterly motionless; they disappeared without warning only to reappear, but it was impossible to tell which of them was which. It took him some time to recognize that they did not look alike.
‘The Annamese are pretty loyal to us,’ he had been told. ‘They don’t like the Viet Minh, who are mostly Tonkinese; but be careful just the same, they sometimes belong to sects or to criminal gangs, and some of them are just crooks. They might be servi
ng their immediate interests or some long-term goal you wouldn’t understand. They might even stay loyal to you. There is no way you can ever know; the only sign that you’ve been betrayed is if they slit your throat, but that can be a bit late.’
Afloat on the South China Sea, Salagnon learned to live in a pair of shorts and a bush hat. He became tanned like the others, his body became harder. The large fan-shaped sail swelled in sections; the ribs of the boat creaked; he could feel the beams lurching when he leaned on the bulwark, when he lay on deck in the shade of the sail, and it made him slightly nauseous.
They were never out of sight of land. They inspected the rice barges that plied the waters along the coast serving the villages of the delta. They inspected the villages built on sand, when there was sand, and otherwise raised on stilts above the muddy banks just above the waves. Sometimes they found an old flintlock musket, which they confiscated in the way they might a dangerous toy; and if one of the rice barges did not have the necessary papers, they sank it. They took the coolies aboard and set them down on the shore or, if it was not far, they tossed them into the water and left them to swim for it, cheering them on with gruff laughs as they leaned over the gunwale.
They lived bare-chested, tying a scarf around their heads. They were never without their machetes, which hung from their belts. Standing on the bulwark, hanging on to the halyard, they leaned out over the water, shielding their eyes with their hands in a striking pose that did not offer much visibility, but amused them greatly.