by Alexis Jenni
The villages along the coast consisted of thatched bamboo huts set on thin piles, not one of which was straight. They rarely saw men in the villages. They were told the men were out at sea, fishing, or up in the forests fetching wood, and would be back later. On the beaches, above the narrow boats that put out at night, small fish were drying on lines; the stench they gave off was disgusting, but even so it made their mouths water; it suffused the air, the food, the rice, and even the Annamese seamen, who steered the junk without a word.
Shots were fired at them from one village. They were tacking to windward, sailing close to the shore, when a shot rang out. They returned fire using the machine gun, causing one of the huts to collapse. They came about, jumped down into the shallow water, excited and suspicious. In one of the huts they found a French rifle and a half-empty box of grenades inscribed with Chinese characters. It was a small village. They razed it to the ground. It burned quickly, like crates filled with straw. They did not feel as though they were burning houses, just shacks or hayricks that quickly exploded in vivid balls of flame that roared and crackled, then dissolved into fine ash. And besides, the villagers were not crying. They stood in a tight group on the beach: women, small children, old men – all the young men were missing. They bowed their heads, they muttered a little; only a handful of women let out a high-pitched wail. All this seemed so unlike war. What they were doing looked nothing like an abuse of power, like those historical paintings of villages being burned. They were simply destroying huts; a whole village of huts. They stood, watching the flames, their feet sinking into the sand. The huts collapsed, sending up glimmering sparks, and the smoke disappeared into the sky so vast, so blue. They had not killed anyone. They climbed aboard the junk again, leaving behind a row of charred stilts sticking out of the sand.
They used the Chinese grenades to fish in the river. They scooped the dead fish out with their hands and the Annamese cooked them in a chilli so hot that they cried just at the smell, howled as they ate, but they were determined not to leave a crumb; they rinsed between mouthfuls with warm wine and together cleaned the huge communal plate from which they were eating, the four soldiers in shorts and Lieutenant Salagnon. They fell asleep, feeling sick and drunk, and the Annamese deckhands steered the junk without a word, sailing out to sea, where they threw up, to the open sea where the wind quickly sobered them. When he awoke, Salagnon’s first thought was that the deckhands had been loyal to him. He smiled at them a little foolishly and spent the rest of the day silently clearing his headache.
They encountered the Viet Minh at the bend of a creek. A line of men dressed in black were unloading a junk, wading up to their chests in water, each balancing a green crate on his head. From the bank an officer in a pale uniform shouted orders. Next to him an orderly was taking notes on a writing tablet; the men in black crossed the beach with their crate and disappeared behind the dunes like a mirage in the rippling heat haze. The five Frenchmen were thrilled. They hoisted a black flag made from a pair of Viet pyjamas, and sailed straight at the anchored junk. The officer pointed to them, shouted, soldiers in palm-leaf helmets leapt from behind the dune, jumped down on to the beach and unlimbered a machine gun. A neat line of bullets punctured the bulwark; they did not hear the gunfire until after the impact. A mortar shell erupted from the junk and exploded in the water in front of them. Another burst of gunfire ripped down the sail, shattering the wooden battens. The Annamese sailors let go of the shrouds and took shelter behind the splintered bulwark. Salagnon set down the machete hindering him and grabbed his revolver in its canvas holster. A fresh salvo of bullets embedded themselves in the mast; the whole junk juddered; the untethered sail began to luff. There was no wind in her now, they were drifting, they were about to run aground. The Annamese chattered briefly. One of them asked a question. Salagnon thought it sounded like a question, although in a tonal language it was difficult to tell. They hesitated. Salagnon cocked his revolver. He glanced at them, then he grabbed the halyard, took the rudder and beat to windward. The sail immediately swelled, the junk gave a start and they moved off. ‘Nothing broken?’ said Salagnon. ‘All fine, Lieutenant,’ said the others, getting to their feet. Through the binoculars they watched the men continue to unload crates. They did not seem in any great hurry: the orderly went on scribbling on his writing tablet; the line of men carried the last of the boxes past the dunes. ‘I don’t think we’re scaring them,’ sighed the soldier with the binoculars.
In the distance they saw the other junk slowly cast off and disappear beyond a headland; they tossed the black flag into the sea with their scarves and the century-old muskets they had confiscated, then packed the machetes away with their bush kit. The Annamese sailors manoeuvred skilfully, despite the rips in the sail. They headed back to the naval port and there was no more talk of the rice battle. They gave back the junk.
‘It’s not serious, this pirate lark of yours.’
‘Not my idea. It came from Duroc in Saigon.’
‘Duroc? Not there any more. Sent back to France. Ravaged by malaria, addled with opium, a roaring alcoholic. A bonehead of the old school. You’re being sent to Hanoi. That’s where the war is.’
In Hanoi Colonel Josselin de Trambassac affected an air of nobility: a gentleman with Cistercian tastes, a Knight of the Cross in his crusader castle, facing down the Saracen hordes; he worked in a spartan office, with a large map of Tonkin mounted on an easel. Coloured pins marked the location of posts, a forest of drawing pins covering the Haute-Région and the delta. When a post was under attack, he drew a red arrow pointing to it; when a post fell, he removed the pin. The pins he removed were never reused; he kept them locked in a long wooden pencil box. He knew that putting a pin in that box symbolized the burial of a young lieutenant who had come from France, and several soldiers. There were Viet back-up troops, too, but they could escape, disappear, go back to their former lives, while the lieutenant and his men would never come back, their bodies lay forgotten in the jungles of Tonkin among the smouldering rubble of their post. One last rite that could be done for them was to store this pin in a wooden box, which would quickly fill with others pins; and to take them out from time to time and count them.
Trambassac never wore the formal uniform befitting his rank; he only ever appeared in battledress, his immaculate camouflage uniform with a frayed canvas belt, the sleeves rolled up to reveal his sunburned forearms. As in a war situation, his rank was apparent only from the bars on his chest, and there were no dark sweat patches under his arms, because this wiry man did not sweat. He greeted subordinates standing with his back to the glare of the window, so that he appeared as a shadow, a shadow that talked: sitting facing him, staring into the light, the man could hide nothing.
Salagnon had relaxed his posture slightly, having been told to, and he waited. Behind him, in a wicker chair, the uncle sat, motionless.
‘You know one another, I believe.’
They nodded curtly. Salagnon waited.
‘I’ve heard of your escapade as a corsair, Salagnon. It was foolish and, more importantly, ineffective. Duroc was nothing but a reactionary old fossil, sitting behind a desk, drawing arrows on a map, and when he had coloured in the arrows, he would watch them dance, so stupefied was he by opium and by the whiskey shots between the opium pipes. But in your farcical adventure, you proved yourself resourceful and you managed to stay alive, two qualities we value extremely highly here. You’re in Tonkin now. This is where the real war is. We need resourceful men who stay alive. The capitaine here knows you and was willing to vouch for you. I always listen to my capitaines, because this is their war.’
His yellow eyes gleamed in the darkness. They turned to the uncle in his wicker chair, sitting motionless in the shadows, saying nothing. He carried on.
‘We’re not in Kursk, nor in Tobruk, where thousands of tanks weaved across minefields, when men only mattered when they numbered a million, where thousands were killed by mistake in carpet-bombing raids. This is a war of capitai
nes, where you die by the blade, just like the Hundred Years’ War, the battles led by Xaintrailles and by Rais. In Tonkin the unit of measure is the group, regardless of its size, and they are mostly small groups; and at the centre, the soul of the group, the collective soul of the men, is the capitaine, who spurs them on and whom they follow unquestioningly. This is a return to feudal warfare, Lieutenant Salagnon. The captain and his vassals, a few valiant knights who share his adventures, their squires and their menials. Isn’t that right, Capitaine?’
‘If you say so, sir.’
He always asked the uncle’s opinion, seeming to mock him, but actually seeking an approval that never came; after a moment, he went on.
‘What I propose, therefore, is that you form your own company and set off for war. Recruit partisans from the islands in Halong Bay. They’re terrified of the Viet Minh there; they’ve never actually seen one. They don’t know the meaning of the word “communist”, so they support us. Recruit them, we’ll provide you with weapons, and you head off with them to fight in the jungle.
‘We’re not from here, Salagnon. The climate, the sun, the terrain, we’re not adapted to any of these things. That’s why they’re thrashing us. They know the terrain, they know how to live here, they melt into the background. Drumming up local troops means taking the war to them, beating them on their own ground with the help of people who know it as well as they do.’
In the shadows, the wicker creaked. The colonel slowly bared his teeth, which glittered in the half-light.
‘Bullshit!’ muttered the uncle. ‘Bullshit!’
‘Bluntness is the natural language of capitaines, and one we heartily encourage. But would you care to explain to Lieutenant Salagnon exactly what you mean?’
‘Colonel, only fascists really believe in the spirit of place, in the idea that man is rooted in the land.’
‘I believe it, and I can tell you that I am not a… fascist, as you put it.’
‘Of course you believe in it. I’m guessing your family name dates back to the Middle Ages. There’s probably some corner of France named after you. But the earth does not exude a vapour that shapes the soul and strengthens the body.’
‘If you say so…’
‘The Tonkinese don’t know the jungles any better than we do. They’re peasants from the delta. Their shack, their paddy field, that’s the only terrain they know. And the Viet Minh are no more familiar with the mountains they’re holed up in than we are. The reason they’re thrashing us is because they outnumber us, because they’re driven by rage, because they’re inured to hardship and, more importantly, to unconditional obedience. When we can spend three days in a hole in the ground because a superior officer tells us to, when we can lie silently in the mud with nothing to eat but a bowl of cold rice, when we can leap out of that hole when a whistle blows to be gunned down, then we will be like them, then we’ll have what you call an understanding of the terrain; that’s when we will beat them.
‘And even if these were people of the jungle, I maintain that a soldier who has been trained and motivated, a man who has been drilled hard, can survive better in the jungle than someone inexperienced, who has know it since childhood. The Vietnamese are not Indians, they’re not hunters. They’re peasant farmers hiding in the jungle. They’re as lost and uncomfortable as we are, as exhausted and as ill. I know the jungle better than most of them, because I’ve learned to, by accepting the hunger, the silence and the obedience.’
The cat’s eyes – or snake eyes – of the colonel flashed.
‘Well, then, Lieutenant, you know what you have to do. Recruit, train and come back here with a company of men drilled to be obedient and to endure hunger. If hardship is what shapes a warrior then – given the means at the disposal of this task force – it is something we can give you in abundance.’
He smiled again with all his dazzling teeth and with a flick, brushed a speck of dust from his spotless battledress. The gesture was as good as a dismissal; it signalled it was time to fall out. Josselin de Trambassac had a sense of timing; he knew when decorum required him to stop, because everything that needed to be had been said. It was the business of the other to know everything else. To spell things out was vulgar.
Salagnon left, followed by the uncle, who gave a limp salute and slammed the door. They walked down the long hallway, hands clasped behind their backs, staring at the tiled floor. They met orderlies weighed down with files, tanned officers to whom they gave a faint salute, Annamese servant boys in white jackets who stepped aside as they passed, prisoners in black pyjamas who spent their days mopping the floors. Down the hallway lined with identical numbered doors, there came the echo of footsteps, the scrape of furniture being moved, the constant murmur of voices, the clatter of typewriters, the rustle of paper, angry outbursts, barked orders and the clack of shoes on concrete steps as orderlies and officers went up and down, taking them three at a time; outside, engines roared into life, making the walls shake, then drove away. A hive, thought Salagnon, a hive, the humming hub of war, where everyone did their damnedest to be modern, swift, straightforward. Efficient.
The uncle laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder. ‘Where you’re going, things will be a bit tougher, but not dangerous. Make the most of it. Learn. I’ve got the jeep. If you like I can take you to Haiphong train station.’
Salagnon nodded; the interminable hallway was making him dizzy. The modern building reverberated with echoes, the line of doors stretched out for ever, each one identical but for the number; they opened and closed as men came and went with files, huge piles of dossiers, lock-keepers along the river of paper that sustained the war. War required more paper than it did bombs, a torrent of paper vast enough to drown the enemy. He was grateful that his uncle had offered to take him.
He went to fetch the permit for the Haiphong train, but went to the wrong door. This one was ajar and he pushed it open; he stood on the threshold, since it was dark inside; the shutters were closed and the shadows were pervaded by an acrid smell of piss. A lieutenant in dirty fatigues, his jacket open to the waist, rushed at him. ‘You’ve no fucking business here!’ he barked, holding up a blackened hand. He hit him in the chest, pushed him outside, his eyes burning with a spark of madness. He slammed the door. Salagnon stood there, nose pressed to the door. He could hear rhythmic thuds from inside the room, as though someone were beating a stick against a bag filled with water. ‘Come on,’ said the uncle, ‘you got the wrong door.’ Salagnon stood rooted to the spot. ‘Hey, come away from there.’ Salagnon turned to the uncle and said very slowly. ‘I thought I saw a naked man in there, hanging upside down by his legs.’ ‘You thought, you thought… It’s hard to see anything in a dark room, especially through a closed door. Now come on.’
He laid a hand on Salagnon’s shoulder and pulled him away. Outside, on the bare parade ground, there were lines of tanks, covered trucks, field guns. Officers in a jeep drove along the lines of equipment; they were constantly jumping down from their vehicle before it came to a stop and leaping on again. The base whirled, it thrummed. Nobody walked, because here everyone runs; at war people run. This is one of the precepts of war in Asia, a precept from the West, which invented these machines; speed is another form of strength. Lines of soldiers, sagging under the weight of their kit, raced to board the covered trucks, which immediately started up; parachutists sprinted, their heavy bags slapping against their legs, heading into the distance towards a round-nosed Dakota with its door open, its propellers already turning. Everyone on the base was running; and Salagnon ran too, hot on the heels of his uncle. All this power, he thought, our power: we cannot possibly lose now. In the middle of the vast parade ground, at the top of a tall flagpole, hung a tricolour unstirred by any breeze. At the foot of the flagpole, fenced in with barbed wire, several dozen Annamese were crouched, motionless, waiting. They did not talk among themselves, they simply waited. They were guarded by armed soldiers. While around them the base wheeled frantically, this group of men was the sti
ll hub at the centre.
Caught up in a wave of panic, Salagnon could not tear his eyes away. He saw an officer carrying a whip made of reeds come and go several times, gesture for one row of Annamese to get to their feet, then lead them into the building. The others did not move. All the while the guards continued to circle, the bustle all around continued, a reassuring cacophony of engines, voices and the clack of feet marching in step. The door to the barracks closed on the little men in their black pyjamas. They walked with great economy of movement. Salagnon slowed his pace, fascinated by this still hub; his uncle retraced his steps.
‘Ignore them. They’re Viet Minh, suspects, men we’ve captured. They’re prisoners now.’
‘Where are they going?’
‘Don’t worry about that. Let them be. This base is hopeless. A farcical parody of power. We’re the ones out in the jungle, we’re the ones fighting. And we fight properly, because we’re risking our lives. Risk restores our sense of honour. Come on, never mind what happens here, you’re one of us now.’
He clambered into a battered jeep, which he drove recklessly.
‘What were they doing in that locked room?’
‘I’d rather not answer.’
‘I’d like you to answer.’
‘They were gathering intelligence. Intelligence is gathered in the dark, like mushrooms or endives.’
‘Intelligence about what?’
‘Intelligence is what a guy says when he is forced to talk. In Indochine it’s worthless. I don’t even know if they’ve got a word for “truth” in that tonal language of theirs. They always say what people want them to say; for them it’s a matter of politeness, and in their world propriety is life itself. Intelligence is the grease that oils this war, the dirty grease that stains whatever it touches; but out in the jungle we’ve no need for grease, just sweat.’