by Alexis Jenni
‘Who are you?’ roared a hoarse voice. A single, bulging eye glittered under a thatch of blond hair.
‘Lieutenant Salagnon with a company of native soldiers from the bay, to provide support.’
The machine gun rattled; the bullets blasted a neat line in the mud, splattering them all. The men started, gave little yelps, broke ranks and huddled around Salagnon.
‘Put down your weapons.’
When all the rifles had been thrown to the ground, the door opened, the ladder appeared, and a Frenchman hopped down, bearded, bare-chested, wearing only a pair of shorts into which was tucked a revolver. Two Tonkinese in black pyjamas followed, armed with American machine guns. They stood three metres behind him, motionless.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ asked Salagnon.
‘Me? I’m surviving, my little tin soldier. You, I’m not so sure.’
‘Don’t you know who I am?’
‘Oh, now I see. I know who you are. But I suspect everyone on principle.’
‘You suspect me?’
‘You, no. No one would suspect you. But a battalion of Viets led by a white man, that can be dangerous. I can’t count how many posts have been tricked by the legionnaire ruse. A European deserter, Viet Minh dressed as back-up troops, no one suspects anything, they politely open the door, come down the ladder, and before they know it, their throats have been cut. They realize they’ve been suckered when they see the blood gush out. Not me.’
‘So, happy now?’
‘Me? Yes. About you, that’s a different matter. Your men aren’t Viet Minh, that’s for sure. Scattering and squealing at the first burst of gunfire, that makes them strictly amateurs.’
He jerked his thumb at the two Tonkinese behind him, standing stiff, impassive, guns at the ready.
‘Now these two, they’re Viet Minh who’ve defected, and that’s a whole other deal. Cool under fire, ready to obey at the click of my fingers, utterly without scruples.’
‘And you trust them?’
‘We’re in the same boat now. Well, not a boat, more a dinghy. If they go back to the other side, the political commissar will have them immediately liquidated; if they give up fighting, the villagers will lynch them; they know that. They have no choice. I have no choice. We are a battalion of the damned. We’re joined at the hip. Every day we survive is a victory. You want to come up, Lieutenant? I’ll buy you a drink. Bring one or two of your men, no more. The others can stay down here, I don’t have room.’
It was dark inside the watchtower, the only light came from the door and the loopholes on each wall, all fitted with machine guns. Only gradually did he make out the men, sitting stock-still against the walls: black uniforms, black hair, eyes scarcely open, weapons cradled in their laps. Every one of them was looking at him, watching his every movement. The murky air smelled of aniseed and of an airless barracks. The lieutenant bent over the pile of crates in the middle of the room, picked up something and threw it to Salagnon, who instinctively caught it. He assumed it was a football. It was a head. He retched, almost let it drop by reflex, and by reflex kept hold of it; the open eyes stared up, though not at him, something he found reassuring. He shuddered, then became calm.
‘I was going to put it outside before you arrived, change the ones down there, they’re starting to stink.’
‘Viet Minh?’
‘I wouldn’t swear to it, but maybe.’
He picked up a cap emblazoned with a yellow star, a flattened piece of shrapnel fashioned by hand.
‘Put this on him, that way he’s definitely one of them.’
A bodiless head is compact, not particularly heavy, like a football. You can spin it, you can throw it, but when it comes to setting it down, you don’t know where to put it. That’s where a stake is very practical: you know where to put it, which way to mount the head. The hairy lieutenant handed him a sharpened bamboo stake. Salagnon embedded it in the oesophagus – or maybe the trachea, he was not sure; it made a squeaking noise like rubber pressed too tightly into wood; something small inside the neck snapped. Then he placed the officer’s cap on it. The men sitting along the walls watched him in silence.
‘This post has already been captured three times. Grenades were lobbed in, there wasn’t much left of the soldiers manning it. So now I show them what we’re made of. I terrorize them. I’ve got traps set around the post. I’m a landmine: come too close to me and boom! Right, I think you’ve earned yourself a drink.’
He took the head on the spike and proffered a full glass in exchange that smelled strongly of aniseed. All the men passed round glasses of a milky liquid of an opalescent yellow that managed to gleam in the darkness.
‘It’s genuine pastis. We make it ourselves. We drink it in our spare time; and round here, all our time is spare. Did you know that star anise – that smell so typical of France – is not actually from Marseille? In fact, it comes from here. Your health! So, what about you? Where are you headed with your gang of clockwork soldiers?’
‘Into the jungle.’
‘The jungle, sir, no chance. The men don’t want to.’
‘Don’t want to what?’
‘To march into the jungle.’
‘That’s what I enlisted them for.’
‘No, no enlist for march in jungle, no change. Enlist for have gun, to have money.’
He had to get angry. That same night, several men absconded. The jungle was not the place for fishermen. It is no place for any man. When they came under fire for the first time, it was not as hard as they had imagined. Thinking that someone wants you dead, that they are single-minded, determined, is unbearable only if you think about it; but you do not think about it. A black fury blinds men for the duration of the machine-gun burst. There are no thoughts, no feelings; there are only escape routes, criss-crossing trajectories, getaways, stampedes, a mortal but entirely abstract game. There is nothing to do but fire and be fired upon. It takes only a brief respite to think again about how unbearable it is to be fired upon; but it is always possible not to think.
Troubled thoughts can be blocked out, but they return, in sleep, in the silence of the early hours, in unexpected gestures, in the raging sweat that surprises, because you do not know its cause, but that, thankfully, comes later. In the moment, it is possible not to think, to live poised on the boundary that separates one action from the next.
It is strange how thoughts can flame or flicker out, chatter endlessly or shrink to almost nothing, to the clicking of a wind-up toy, a series of cogs that turn, lurch forwards in short jerks, all identical. Thought is a form of calculation, the answers do not always come out right, but it carries on. Nose pressed into the mud, sprawled among the leaves, this is what Salagnon was thinking; it was hardly the time, but he could not move. The first deafening shots rang out almost as one; five, he was counting them; the whistle of shells merged, the mortars fell together, perfectly spaced, the ground beneath his belly shook. A spray of dirt and splintered wood rained down over their backs, their bush hats, their kitbags; pebbles jangled against the metal of their weapons; shell fragments, when they fall, do little damage, but it is important not to touch them, because they burn, they cut. They fire on command, in sequence, five mortars. I didn’t realize the Annamese were so organized. But these are Tonkinese; these are no kids, they are veritable machines automatically doing as they are ordered. They are ranged in a line; an officer equipped with binoculars signals his commands with a pennant. Another salvo is fired, falls, closer this time. The next one will hit us. The explosions plough up the earth in a neat furrow. Five metres between salvoes. Twenty seconds between each strike, just time enough for the dust to settle, for the officer to check the results through his binoculars, have them adjust their elevation, and the pennant falls again. The shells fall five metres further. Methodically they creep closer. They wait for the impact before firing another round; they know their targets are lined up on the ground, they intend to hit them precisely, all at once. Three more rounds and we wil
l be dead.
The earth shakes, stones and splinters rain down on them again. ‘Next time, we run when we hear the shots, pass it on. We dive into the craters up ahead and hide before they explode.’ The shrill shriek splits the sky, crashes into the ground like crates of lead being dropped. They bounded through the rain of earth, passed through the dust, crouched in the freshly dug furrows. Hearts beating fit to burst, mouths champing on debris, they gripped the butts of their rifles, clung to their hats. Another salvo. Five shells passed over their heads and ploughed up the ground where they had been lying a moment earlier, five spades that would have sliced them in half and buried them, earthworms, dead. They didn’t notice. How little it takes.
The shelling stopped. At a whistle, the line of soldiers wearing palm-leaf helmets emerged from the jungle, rifles slung across their chests, taking no precautions. They think we have been ripped to shreds. We fire, then we charge. At this point, they start up again. This is what happened, with unbridled ferocity. They fired on the line of soldiers, who went down like ninepins; they bounded forwards, hurled grenades, charged, shattered the skulls, the torsos of men crawling on all fours, men lying, sitting, sprawling on their backs; with a flick of their bayonets they disembowelled those still standing; they reached the mortars ranged along the chalk line in the undergrowth, fired on those fleeing through the trees. The officer fell, clutching his pennant, feet still touching the chalk mark, binoculars resting on his chest. They raged on. At such moments one does not see people, only problematic shapes, sacks into which a blade plunges, hoping it does not snap; sacks to be fired on, they crumple, they fall, they are no longer a problem, we move on. They counted the dead. Several bodies still lay where it had all begun, hit by the mortar shells; they had not moved, they had not understood the order passed from one man to the next, or they had reacted too late. Life, death, depend on unpredictable calculations; this one came out right; as for the next one, we shall see. High up in the jungle they heard long whistle blasts. They ran.
It went on for weeks. Salagnon’s fishermen held up as best they could. They came down with diseases they had never encountered on the bay. Their numbers slowly declined. They became hardened. They disappeared one afternoon in a matter of seconds. They marched in single file along the narrow, raised dykes, the sun slanted, their shadows stretched out on the watery expanse of the rice fields; a sultry heat rose from the mud, the air veered orange. They passed a silent village. A machine gun hiding in a clump of bamboo almost did for them all. Salagnon was unscathed. The radio operator, the interpreter and two soldiers, those standing closest to him, survived. After night fell, an air strike razed the village. At dawn, with another section passing along the road, they sifted through the ashes, but found no bodies and no weapons. The devastated company was officially dissolved. Salagnon returned to Hanoi. At night, lying on his back, his eyes wide open, he wondered why the machine-gun burst had been so brief, why it had stopped before it came to him, why they had not started shooting at the head of the line. Surviving made it impossible to sleep.
‘The life expectancy of a junior officer just arrived from France is less than a month. Not all of them die, but most. But if you set aside those who die in the first month, then the life expectancy of officers rises exponentially.’
‘Tell me, Trambassac, do you really have time to do these macabre calculations?’
‘How can you expect to fight a war without using numbers? The conclusion to be drawn from these calculations is that any officer who survives the first month can be trusted. We can give them a command post. They will survive, since they have already survived.’
‘That’s preposterous. You’ve just proved that command posts should be awarded to men who manage to stay alive! Who else would they be given to? The dead? We only have the living. So give up on all the calculations and the probability; war isn’t probable, it’s certain.’
Victorien Salagnon was given a company of Thais from the mountains: forty men who understood nothing of the autocratic egalitarianism of the Viet Minh and, moreover, had for generations despised the lowland Tonkinese. The NCOs spoke some broken French and, in addition to Sous-lieutenant Mariani, fresh out of military academy and newly arrived from France, he was assigned Lieutenant Moreau and Sous-lieutenant Gascard, who had come from God knows where. ‘Isn’t it a slightly unusual number of officers?’ asked Salagnon. They were drinking under the frangipani trees on the eve of heading up the Black River. ‘Yep.’ This seemed to bring a smile to Moreau’s face, a thin-lipped smile like a razor slash beneath a black moustache trimmed to within a millimetre, perhaps less, that glistened with wax. It was impossible to truly know whether he was smiling. Gascard, a red-faced giant of a man, simply nodded his head, drained his glass and ordered another. The sun was setting; a myriad lanterns hanging from the branches gave out a soft glow. Moreau’s neatly parted, slicked-back hair gleamed. ‘It’s a lot, and it’s unnecessary. But it’s understandable.’ His voice was warmer than his sleek, pointy face suggested, thankfully, since otherwise he would have been frightening. He was creepy when he was silent.
‘What do you mean it’s understandable?’
‘You get to be the leader. You get the stripes by sheer fluke, and the kid here, who’s just out of school, they’re sending him along to learn from you.’
‘What about you two?’
‘Us? We lose stripes as fast as we earn them. Gaspard, because he’s a dipso. Me, because I’m too excitable when it comes to the enemy, and too insubordinate when it comes to my superiors. On the other hand, we’re indestructible. We may not look good in dispatches, but we know what we’re doing; that’s why they’re sending us. They’re thinking: “Good riddance! We’ve got ourselves a squad: a survivor, a couple of experienced bushmen, a kid who’s bound to learn something, and an unspecified number of local soldiers. Set this lot loose in the jungle and the Viet Minh better watch their arses.” In difficult situations, delusion is as good a response as any.’
Salagnon laughed this off. The way he saw it, he was about to head into the mountains with two lieutenants and forty guys, who, since time immemorial, had longed to wage war on the people of the plains; it was as good as a life-insurance policy. They drank quite a lot. Young Mariani seemed to be enjoying Indochine. They stumbled back to their quarters, tipsy, through the unidentifiable, milky scent of the white flowers, passing the huge illuminated windows of the Tonkin Grand Hôtel. Inside, there were civil servants, Annamese of higher caste, women in off-the-shoulder dresses, officers in full dress uniform from all three branches of the military, and Trambassac, wearing fatigues pinned with all his medals. It was glittering. There was music and dancing. Beautiful women with long black hair were waltzing with dainty steps and an aristocratic reserve guaranteed to break the hearts of officers from the French Far East Expeditionary Corps. Moreau, drunk but steady, pushed aside the orderly guarding the door and headed straight for the bar, where generals and colonels, glimmering with gold braid and decorations, stood murmuring gravely, champagne glasses in hand. Salagnon hung back a little, worried, with Gascard and Mariani three paces behind.
‘I set off at dawn, Colonel, knowing there is every possibility that I shall be killed. I couldn’t touch the food in the mess hall, it was warmed-over slop, and the ration of wine we get is so acidic it could be used to clean our rifles.’
The brass hats turned, but did not dare interrupt this unsettling, scrawny, impeccably coiffed young man, who, though visibly drunk, had perfect diction. The thin-lipped mouth beneath the neat moustache was unsettling. Trambassac smiled.
‘I see you’re drinking champagne. I trust the foie gras does not melt in this heat.’
Having recovered from the surprise, the generals were about to protest and to deal ruthlessly with the interloper; a few muscular colonels had set down their glasses and stepped forwards. Trambassac stopped them with a paternalistic wave. ‘Lieutenant Moreau, please join us as my guest. You, too, Salagnon, and the two men hiding behind you.
’ He took several champagne flutes from the tray proffered by a manservant and handed them to the astonished young men, keeping one for himself. ‘Messieurs,’ he said, addressing the company at large, ‘you see before you the finest this army has to offer. Here in the city they are gentlemen of unimpeachable honour, but in the jungle they are wolves. They set off tomorrow and I pity General Giáp and his army of rogues. Messieurs, to the airlift, to the Empire, to France; you are her sword of justice. I am proud to drink to your valour.’
He raised his glass and drank. Everyone else did likewise. There was a smattering of applause. Moreau did not know how to respond. He blushed, raised his glass, and drank. The music and the murmur of conversation resumed. No one took any further notice of the four young, undecorated lieutenants. Trambassac set his half-full glass on the tray of a passing waiter, walked over and tapped Moreau on the shoulder. ‘You are leaving at dawn, my boy. Stay a little longer, enjoy yourself, but do not get to bed too late. You will need your strength.’
He disappeared into the gilded crowd. They did not stay. Salagnon grabbed Moreau by the arm and they went outside. The warm air did little to sober them up, but it was fragrant with huge flowers. Bats flitted noiselessly around them.
‘You see,’ said Moreau quietly, ‘I always get shafted. It’ll take me until tomorrow to get riled up again.’
* * *
There is no way of knowing before being there what it is like; for that, you have to go there, and even then words fail. It is clear, yet you talk only about insignificant things; you talk only to those who already understand, those who know, and with them there is no need to explain, it is enough to suggest. What we do not know, we must see and then accept: what we do not know remains for ever remote, for ever beyond reach, despite the best efforts of language, which is designed primarily to evoke what we already know. Salagnon plunged into the jungle with three young officers and forty men whose language he could not speak.