by Alexis Jenni
‘I don’t know. But it was a fine idea. Heavy work sobers up Gascard. And we’ll be drier inside than we would be in a rammed-earth pillbox.’
‘I’m not setting foot inside,’ said Moreau.
Everyone looked at him. Submachine gun in hand, his hair neatly parted, in the afternoon heat he smelled of a barbershop.
‘Do whatever you like,’ said Salagnon.
The rains came after a long preparation. Potbellied storm clouds like war-junks built up over the South China Sea. The clouds slowly rolled their lacquered black hulls, gliding forwards like colossal ships, casting thick shadows on the ground beneath. As they passed, the hills took on the deep emerald colour of thick molten glass. The clouds launched rumbling broadsides, perhaps as they collided or perhaps to cause panic. The roll of huge drums echoed through the valleys, louder, nearer, as a curtain of rain fell suddenly, torrents of lukewarm water splashing against the woven walls, sluicing across the palm-thatch roofs, carving the claggy soil into a thousand red rivulets that raced downhill. Salagnon and Moreau had heard the thunder following them, and the curtain of rain beat down on the trees; they ran along the muddy path, pursued by this roar that was moving faster than they were, the branches strafing, the sky thundering; they ran to the village built on the slope. ‘Built’ is perhaps the wrong word for the clutch of bamboo huts thatched with dry leaves; better to say ‘placed’ or better yet ‘planted’; like shrubs, like kitchen plants in which one could live. In a forest clearing these vegetable shacks grew indiscriminately from the thin soil littered with dead leaves. Below, the terraced rice fields swept down to a river flanked by large rocks. The route coloniale skirted the village; the brown river was three days’ walk.
In these mountain villages everything seems precarious, impermanent; here man is merely transitory, the jungle waits, the sky mocks; the villagers are actors from a touring theatre company settled in for the night; they walk stiffly, they are very clean, they say little and their clothes seem curiously opulent in the forest clearing.
Salagnon and Moreau were still racing down the path as the rain inundated the mountains; storm clouds filled the sky, water coursing down faster than they could run, stripping the smooth stones bare, stirring up a seething, reddish mire that surged down the slope; the very road was running with them, overtaking them, a crimson torrent swirling around their legs, beneath their feet. They stumbled, almost slipped, as the rains finally caught up with them. The brims of their bush hats immediately went limp and slapped against their cheeks. They leapt on to the veranda of a big house, the large ornate cabin set in the middle of the shacks. A group of men were waiting for them, sitting in a semicircle watching the rain come down in sheets. They shook themselves, laughing, took off their hats and their shirts, wrung them out and stood there, hatless, shirtless. The village elders watched them in silence. The village chief – they called him this, not knowing how to translate the word that described his function – got to his feet and casually shook their hands. He had seen cities, he spoke French, he knew that in France, where the power was, what he thought of as rudeness was seen as modern and hence the epitome of politeness. And so he adapted, he told everyone what they wanted to hear. He shook hands a little half-heartedly, as he had seen it done in cities, trying to emulate a gesture that was alien to him. He was the chief, he steered the village, and it was as difficult as steering a boat through rapids. At any moment the boat might sink and he would not be saved. The two Frenchmen came and sat with the impassive old men under the eaves; they stared out at the curtain of rain while a cold mist drifted towards them; a hunched old woman came and gave them bowls of a cloudy alcohol that did not smell particularly pleasant, but warmed them considerably. Still the water coursed down the slope, forming a river, a canal, tracing a street through the village. On the far side was a shack with no walls; a simple raised floor with a thatched roof mounted on wooden poles. The materials looked new, the construction solider, all the angles straight. Children were sitting inside, taking lessons from a teacher in a white shirt gesturing to a map of Asia with a bamboo cane. He pointed to places and the children named them, reciting their lesson as one with that birdlike cheeping of a tonal language being spoken by immature voices.
‘Our children are learning to read, to count, to understand the world,’ said the chief, with a smile. ‘I have been to Hanoi. I have seen the world is changing. We live in peace. What is happening in the delta, that is not us, that is far away, many days’ walk. It is far from who we are. But I saw that the world was changing. I worked so that the village would build this school and bring a schoolteacher. Now we rely on you to keep peace in the jungle.’
Moreau and Salagnon nodded; their bowls were refilled, they drank, they were drunk.
‘We are relying on you,’ he said again, ‘so that we can go on living in peace. And changing as the world changes, but no faster, at the correct rhythm. We are relying on you.’
Befuddled by drink, girdled by the roar of the rain hammering on the thatch, by the gurgling cataracts tumbling all around, the cascades splashing into the puddles, ploughing up the soil, Moreau and Salagnon nodded again, bobbing their heads to the rhythm of the children’s chanting, a Buddhist smile playing on their lips.
When the rain finally stopped, they headed back to the post.
‘There are Viet Minh there,’ said Moreau.
‘How do you know?’
‘The school. The teacher, the children, the map of Asia, the elders saying nothing and the chief talking to us; the way he says things.’
‘But school is a good thing, surely?’
‘In France, yes. But what do you expect them to learn here, if not their right to independence? They’d be better off ignorant.’
‘Does ignorance protect people from communism?’
‘Yes. By rights we should be suspicious, we should interrogate, even liquidate if necessary.’
‘And we’re not going to?’
‘We’d end up ruling over the dead. And he knows that, the treacherous old bastard. He’s risking his neck, too. He’s trapped between us and the Viet Minh. He’s faced with two ways to die, caught between two rocks that could scuttle his boat. There has to be a route to survival, but it’s so narrow that navigating it is almost impossible. Maybe we can help him. That’s not what we’re here for, but sometimes I get sick and tired of our mission. I’d rather live in peace with these people, instead of having to be constantly on the alert. It’s probably the booze talking. I don’t know what they put in it. I feel like doing what they do, sitting down and watching the rain.’
All across the world the gathering dark is a time that makes people sad. In their post in the Haute-Région, at night, they have trouble breathing; the darkness weighs on them and they feel a twinge of panic. This is normal. The progressive absence of light is like an absence of oxygen. Little by little, everything was leached of air, their lungs, their movements, their thoughts. Lamps grew dim, they guttered, chests struggled to rise and fall, hearts panicked.
The world existed only through the radio. The High Command issued vague orders. The breach must be closed. The Viet Minh swan around like they own the place. Things have to be made watertight. They must not be allowed to reach the delta. The mountains must be made inhospitable to the Viets. Seek out contact. Hit squads should be sent out; each post should become a base of operations for a continuous series of raids. The radio crackled in the night beneath the lone electric light in the blockhouse, spluttering advice.
In the evening Moreau would set out with his Thais. Salagnon would man the post; he had trouble sleeping. In the blockhouse, beneath the only bulb, he would paint. The generator purred softly, feeding power into the network of wires in the ditches. He painted in ink. He thought of Eurydice. Without a single word, he told her what he could see in the Haute-Région of Tonkin. He painted the hills, the strange fog, the glaring light when the mists dispersed; he painted the straw huts, the thickets of bamboo, the stiffly formal natives, the
wind in the yellow grass around the post. He painted Eurydice’s beauty spilling over the landscape, in the faintest glimmer of light, in every shadow, in the dim green glow glimpsed through the leaves. He painted at night, though he could barely see, painted everything shrouded in the beauty of Eurydice; and Moreau would come upon him in the morning sleeping next to a pile of pages warped by the humidity. Half of these he would shred and burn, the rest he would carefully parcel up. These packages he would give to the drivers who brought ammunition and provisions, each addressed to Algiers, although he did not know whether they arrived. Moreau would watch him work, watch him choose, watch him rip up half of his sketches and package the rest. ‘You’re making progress,’ he would say. ‘And it keeps your hands busy. It’s important to keep your hands busy when you’ve nothing to do. All I have is my knife.’ And while Salagnon was picking through his sketches, Moreau would sharpen the blade, which he kept in an oiled leather sheath.
Things were not going well in this post on borrowed time. The days dragged out. They were aware of their fragility: their fortress overlooked a vast expanse of jungle, clearly visible on the rocky outcrop, where no one could come to their aid. The Thais would squat on their heels and watch the time pass, babble in their trilling voices, smoke lazily, play games of chance that led to long, mysterious arguments from which they would get up and stalk off furiously, to unexpected reconciliations, more games, more long silences as they waited for the sun to set. Moreau would doze in a hammock he had hung in the yard, although he constantly kept watch through eyes that never fully closed; and several times a day he would inspect the guns, the ditches, the door; nothing escaped him. Salagnon sketched in absolute silence; not uttering a word even in his mind. Mariani read little books he had brought with him, re-reading each page so often that he must have known every word better than he knew his own thoughts. Gascard took charge of the heavy work with a squad of Thais; they cut bamboo stakes, sharpened them with a masterly flourish of their machetes and created traps all around the post; when they finished, he would slump in a chair, swig from his bottle and not get up again until evening. Rufin spent his time writing letters using his cache of fine writing paper. He wrote at the table in the blockhouse, hunched over like a schoolboy the better to follow the lines. He wrote to his mother in France in the impersonal tone of a little boy; he told her he had an office job in Saigon dealing with supplies. The office really existed and he had worked there before absconding, slamming the door and running into the dark jungle, but he did not want his mother to know this.
Time did not pass quickly. They knew that the whole Viet Minh army could attack them. They hoped they might pass unnoticed. They would have built another concrete tower, but the convoys had brought no more cement.
Eventually, one evening, Salagnon set out with Moreau. They slipped between the trees, scarcely able to make out the kitbag of the man in front in the inky darkness. Rufin led the way, because he could see in the dark and could recognize the tiny trails of animals that others would easily miss even in broad daylight; Moreau brought up the rear, so that no one strayed; between them Salagnon and the Thais carried the explosives. For a long time they put one foot in front of the other without seeming to make any headway, feeling the distance only through the numbing tiredness. They emerged into an open space a little less dark, whose edges they could not see; they felt a little more ease, a little less oppressiveness now that they had stepped out of the cover of the trees. ‘We wait for daybreak,’ Rufin whispered in his ear. They all lay down. Salagnon dozed fitfully. He watched darkness dissolve, details appear, a metallic glow suffuse a vast area of tall grass. A path wound through it. Lying on his belly, he peered between the blades of grass as though between tiny tree trunks. The Thais, as usual, did not move. Nor did Moreau or Rufin, who was asleep. Salagnon found it difficult to be comfortable; the grass was itchy, he felt columns of insects march between his legs, under his arms, over his stomach, that just as quickly disappeared; it was probably the sweat that itched, the fear of moving and the simultaneous fear of staying still, the fear of being mistaken for a tree stump by wood-boring insects, the fear of stirring the grass and being spotted; the feel of living plants against the skin is disagreeable, the sharp leaves cut, the flower heads tickle, the roots are uncomfortable, the soil shifts and sucks. Having fought a war, one can come to despise nature. Day was breaking, the heat was becoming oppressive; still his sweat-soaked skin crawled with the urge to scratch.
‘There’s one. Over there, look. This is a perfect spot. You can identify the enemy easily.’
A young boy appeared on the edge of the jungle, stepped on to the path. He paused, warily glancing to left and right. He clearly did not like the look of this path fringed with tall, swaying grasses. He was Vietnamese, that was obvious even at a distance; his black hair was neatly parted, his eyes were narrowed to a slit that stared, unblinking, making him look like a sentinel bird. He was about seventeen. He was holding something to his chest, cradling it between his hands, clutching it tight. He looked like a schoolboy lost in the woods.
‘That thing he’s holding, it’s a grenade. The pin has been pulled out. If he drops it, it’ll explode and bring the whole regiment following down on us.’
The boy came to a decision. He stepped off the path and walked through the grass. He advanced slowly. Without moving, the Thais buried themselves deeper in the ground. They knew Moreau. The young boy kept moving, clearing a path with one hand, while keeping the other pressed against his chest. From time to time he stopped, looked over the tall grass, listened, then walked on. He was heading straight for them. He was a few metres away. Lying on the ground, they watched him come. The thin stalks did little to conceal them. They were hiding behind blades of grass. The boy was wearing a rumpled white shirt stained with green and brown, half hanging out of his shorts. His black hair was neatly trimmed, the parting still visible, he clearly had not been living in the jungle long. Moreau drew his knife, which slipped almost soundlessly from the oiled scabbard with the faint rasp of a reptile’s tongue. The young man stopped, he opened his mouth. He had guessed, of course, but wanted to believe it was just some small, slithering animal. His hands came down and slowly parted. Moreau leapt up from the grass, Salagnon followed instinctively, as though wires connected their every limb. Moreau charged at the young boy, swooped down on him; Salagnon caught the grenade in mid-air and held it tightly, keeping the safety catch in place. The knife quickly found the throat, which offered no resistance to the blade; blood pulsed from the severed carotid, gushed with a melodious sibilance; Moreau’s hand over the mouth of the boy prevented him from making the slightest moan. Salagnon held the grenade, trembling, not knowing what to do with it, not quite realizing what had happened. He thought he might vomit or laugh or burst into tears, but he did none of these things. Moreau wiped his blade meticulously, so it would not rust, and cautiously, since it cut through flesh more easily than a razor. He held out a small metal ring to Salagnon.
‘Put the pin back in. You can’t go on holding it like that for the rest of your life. That’s all he had, an unpinned grenade. For him it was double or quits. The Viet Minh regiments are surrounded by scouts. If they happen on us, they get killed or they toss the grenade and try to run for it. It’s a test for people joining the revolutionary underground or a punishment meted out by the political commissar for those who step out of line. Those who survive get to stay with the group. We should have a few minutes before the others arrive.’
The grenade buried itself for ever in Salagnon’s memory; his fingers trembling, he reinserted the pin. The weight of it, the density of the thick metal, the precise shade of green paint, the Chinese character boldly engraved on it, he would remember all these things. The Thais dragged the body out of sight and, under orders from Rufin, who was the expert, set the explosives in alternating lines along the path and spooled out the detonation wire.
‘Let’s take our places,’ said Moreau.
He tapped Salag
non on the shoulder, urging him on. They split up into various groups and positioned themselves in a circle like the teeth of a trap. They dropped to the ground again, set their grenades in a line in front of them and poked the muzzles of the machine guns through the tall grass.
The Viet Minh regiment emerged from the forest: two lines of men, guns slung across their bellies, helmets threaded with palm leaves. They marched in step, soundless, maintaining a uniform distance. In the middle of the path, between the two lines of soldiers, coolies were bent double under the weight of heavy explosives. They reached the mines. Rufin hunkered over his machine gun; Moreau gave the signal and the Thai sergent brought the two wires together.
The sky above the jungles of Tonkin is often overcast. The constant seething of vegetation fuels it with fog, with clouds, with mists that mask the blue by day and the stars by night. But one night the whole sky cleared and the stars appeared. Leaning on an earthen rampart, head resting on a sandbag, Salagnon stared up at them. He thought about Eurydice, who probably did not often notice the stars. Because Algiers is always bright. Because in Algiers no one ever looked up. Because in Algiers people talked and went about their business; they did not spend the night alone, staring for hours into the heavens. There was always something to do in Algiers, always something to say, always someone to see. Unlike here. Moreau came and joined him.
‘Have you seen the stars?’
‘You’d do better to keep an eye on the jungle.’
Moreau pointed to something snaking through the trees. Pinpoints of light were visible through chinks in the forest canopy, but the moonlight made them difficult to see. But if one looked for a long time, for long enough, they made up a single, continuous line.
‘What is it?’
‘A Viet Minh regiment heading for the delta. They march in silence, with no lights. So as not to lose their way they set lanterns along the path, hidden lanterns that shine down but not up, so the soldiers can see where they are stepping. They pass through our lines, a whole division of them, and we never notice.’