The Centurions

by Jean Larteguy

  When his father was still alive, the room was cluttered with books that had just been published.

  Almost all of them bore the inevitable dedication:

  “To the master, Étienne Esclavier, with all my admiration . . .” “The respectful homage of a disciple . . .” “To the guiding-light of our generation . . .”

  Base flattery was mixed with sincerity.

  Étienne Esclavier used to savour the new books like flowers or fruit. He loved the smell of the paper and the fresh ink. He would pick at the stacks at random, glance through a book and put it down again a few minutes later, but sometimes when his interest was roused, he carried it away clasped to his breast like a precious discovery.

  It was in this room that father and son gave full rein to their exclusive passion. Between them they spoke a language to which they alone held the key. The great men of the Third Republic, the writers and artists who came to the Esclaviers, found themselves dubbed with ridiculous nicknames. Sometimes the professor would pull one of them to pieces for his son’s amusement, and soon his absurdities, his vanities and falsehoods would be layed bare on the carpet. Philippe took down a book. Marriage by Léon Blum. The fuss it had caused on publication now seemed laughable. He remembered Léon Blum.

  It was in 1936; he was thirteen years old. Étienne Esclavier, with his long silver locks nodding at every step, had marched from the Nation to the Bastille holding him by the hand to introduce him to this Popular Front which was partly of his own making.

  Léon Blum, who could be gentle when he liked, had stroked little Philippe’s hair, and old Jouhaux had clasped him so tightly to his “breadbasket” that he had burst into tears.

  It was in this room, through this very door, that Eugen Jochim Raths had appeared.

  Philippe remembered it clearly. As he himself was doing now, he had put his hand on the back of this arm-chair and, like him, he wore the badges of rank of a captain, but it was very cold in the big drawing-room.

  Defeat had fallen like a black veil over Paris. Came the occupation and times were hard in the Rue de l’Université, where one was too well-bred after all to indulge in black market activities.

  Paris was ruled by the Germans, and the people of Paris by the black marketeers, the B.O.F., the dairymen, the grocers and the butchers.

  Étienne Esclavier had taken refuge in a magnificent isolation into which he had taken his son with him. It was easy to convince him, by pointing out the morals then in force, that this was not the moment to commit oneself. Every day he had doled him out the sleeping draught which he had baptized “detachment.”

  Although suspect in the eyes of the occupying forces, such was his renown that Professor Esclavier retained his chair at the Sorbonne. The students flocked to his history lectures as though they hoped these might reveal a secret message which would tell them they must fight and die.

  But the professor told them nothing and the students tried to find some secret meaning in every word he uttered . . .

  The German officer had arrived late in the afternoon. He was tall, slim, wore the Iron Cross and spoke perfect French.

  Étienne Esclavier, looking very pale, received him standing up, and when Philippe slipped his hand into his father’s he felt it trembling like that of an old man. He had no idea his father could age so rapidly and lose his self-control to such an extent.

  “Don’t worry,” said the German, “I haven’t come to arrest you. I’m Eugen Jochim Raths; I was a pupil of yours at the Sorbonne.”

  “I remember now,” the professor replied with an effort. “Please sit down, won’t you.”

  “Please regard this call as absolutely personal: a visit from a pupil to his master, nothing more. You used to tell us: ‘The world is moving towards socialism; nationalism is dying, wars will become impossible, for the people don’t want them any longer; puppets like Hitler and Mussolini will collapse in ridicule . . . ’ Now, the whole German people is behind the Führer, and I mean the people, the working-classes. At the head of my squadron I crossed France from Turcoing to Bayonne in a matter of two weeks. The democracies were incapable of fighting and Europe will be rebuilt round the German nation and its legends. You were wrong, Professor.”

  “Possibly.”

  “I’ve got my sergeant outside on the landing with some rations. I should be glad to share them with you and continue this discussion at dinner.”

  Philippe had slipped away from his father.

  “No. We don’t want you here,” he said to the German.

  His father had protested:

  “Be quiet, Philippe!”

  And had then tried to explain:

  “It’s an old pupil of mine I’m receiving here, not an enemy. Please forgive him, Herr Raths.”

  The German had smiled:

  “Young man, some boys of sixteen have already experienced the bitter taste of war and others have died with a rifle in their hands. I believe that if I were your age, if I were a Frenchman, I should not confine my fighting to a mere impoliteness. I came to tell your father that if most of us follow the Führer, I’m not one of them. In spite of their being so cruelly contradicted by the facts I still want to believe in his lessons; but I remain loyal to my country. Goodbye, Professor; goodbye, young man.”

  The German had put on his cap, saluted with a click of his heels and left the room.

  “What came over you, Philippe?”

  “I thought he was going to insult you.”

  “You might have got us arrested.”

  Then, shortly afterwards, came that evening of 17 October 1941. His father was writing, wrapped up in a heavy dressing-gown, stopping every so often to blow on his fingers. Philippe, curled up in a blanket, was trying to concentrate on a school-book. It was the Tumulte d’Amboise.

  Antoine de Bourbon and the Prince de Condé confined themselves to secretly encouraging all the enemies of the Guises . . . The conflict would start in their favour, without their uttering a formal challenge out loud: an equivocal attitude which reduced the opponents of the Government to the role of conspirators . . .

  Philippe shut the book and threw it down on the floor.

  “They’re fighting in Russia, Father, thousands of young men are getting themselves killed . . . meanwhile I’m reading the Tumulte d’Amboise.”

  Bent over his lamp, Professor Esclavier raised his head.

  “All that is no concern of ours, Philippe, but the Tumulte d’Amboise is part of your prescribed reading. In the last year you’ve made hardly any progress in your work. You’re listening too much to the echoes of the outside world.”

  “The Jews have been given orders to wear the yellow star. If our old friend Goldschmidt was in the occupied zone, he’d be forced to wear it, and little Guitte as well.”

  “The Germans are wrong, utterly wrong, but these outrages in the streets are stupid and criminal.”

  “You heard what Hauptmann Eugen Jochim Raths told me: ‘If I were a Frenchman, I should not confine my fighting to an impoliteness.’”

  “Mind will always get the better of brute strength.”

  “Uncle Paul . . .”

  “Paul has been up to his usual tricks. Expelled from the board of education for refusing to sign something or other in favour of the marshal.”

  “He was quite right.”

  “His duty was to carry on with the education of the new generations.”

  Jacqueline thrust her head through the door; she was growing up extremely pretty.

  “There are two gentlemen who want to see you, Papa. One of them is a former pupil of yours. They’re out of breath, as though they had been running.”

  “Show them in.”

  In their old hobnailed boots and army capes dyed brown, Mourlier and Beudin looked like a couple of tramps. In spite of the cold they were drenched in sweat. Mourlier was rubbing his nose s
o hard that it looked as flat as a Negro’s.

  “It’s like this,” he said, “we’ve just brought down a Gestapo type, a Frenchman, a collaborator, right outside his house, with a revolver shot.”

  Beudin spoke up in his turn, but in jerky little phrases on account of his panting:

  “But we only wounded him; it’s the first time I’ve used a revolver . . . Within three hours we were traced and identified, we can’t go back to where we live . . . Got to make for England and join de Gaulle . . . Mourlier said: ‘Professor Esclavier’s the only man who can get us out of this. We can trust him all right . . . ’”

  Étienne Esclavier had risen to his feet:

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t do anything for you.”

  Mourlier had given a start:

  “What!”

  “I don’t know de Gaulle and have no wish to know him; I disapprove of violence and don’t want to be mixed up in this murder.”

  “Murder! But wasn’t it you who said: ‘Those of us who prove to be so criminal as to make allies of our enemies should die; each of us has the right to be their judge and at the same time their executioner. Fascism is a crime against the soul . . . ’”

  “I might have said that . . . when the war was still on. Since then there has been the armistice. I never asked you to kill men in the streets, which is liable to provoke reprisals. Furthermore, I don’t know either of you. As I said before, I can’t do anything for you.”

  “I was one of your most assiduous pupils, Professor. I attended your lectures, I read all your books and articles. Because you belonged to the S.F.I.O., I also joined that party; because you said we should fight against Fascism, I volunteered . . . and now you don’t even recognize me: Mourlier, Eugène Mourlier . . .”

  He repeated his name with a sort of absurd despair. Beudin chipped in:

  “You wouldn’t remember me, of course. I’m from the Cantal, a mechanic in a little village near Aurillac. Mourlier had taken refuge with us. He told me a lot of bunkum and I believed him and followed him to Paris. That bunkum was all yours, it seems.”

  He shrugged his shoulders:

  “Come on, Eugène, can’t you see? Your professor has simply got the wind up. We’d better be off before his windiness prompts him to call the police.”

  Philippe had got up, struggling to rid himself of the blanket which enveloped him. He shouted out:

  “That’s a lie.”

  “Hallo, now the kid’s butting in,” Beudin observed simply.

  “Try and understand,” the professor told them, “put yourselves in my place. I’m a man of letters. I have a book to finish; it’s not up to me to meddle in these affairs. I’m too old for this sort of thing.”

  “There’s a war on,” said Mourlier.

  Philippe saw his idol melting like wax. The contempt, or rather the astonishment he discerned in the faces of Mourlier and Beudin hurt him atrociously.

  “We’re off, Professor. All I ask is that you wait a little before summoning the police.”

  “I’m coming with you,” said Philippe.

  He put his shoes on with clumsy movements, not wishing to look at his father. He had some difficulty in putting on his lumber-jacket. The three of them went out together and, as he banged the door behind him, Philippe heard his father’s heart-rending cry.

  They took the métro and got out at a station at random, for they did not know where to go. The station bore the name “Gambetta.” Mourlier thought this augured well; he believed in omens. Gambetta had escaped from the siege of Paris in a captive balloon. They went into a café with blacked-out windows and ordered beef tea. This was one of the non-alcohol days.

  • • •

  A year later Professor Étienne Esclavier heard that his son had been captured by the Germans and tortured.

  Philippe had been tortured for six hours, his father for several months. The professor developed a loathing for anything remotely connected with violence, brutality, armies and police forces. He forgot his cowardice; he ceased to be “that rabbit Esclavier,” as he had been called by some of his colleagues who knew him well.

  One day at the Sorbonne, unable to contain himself any longer, he devoted a whole lecture to the subject of torture. It was extremely moving; he was once more the great inspired spokesman of the Front Populaire and he wound up with this sentence which seemed incomprehensible to everyone:

  “I can speak about torture, I know what it is like, I suffer torture every night of my life.”

  The pupils rose to their feet and applauded. Next day Professor Esclavier’s course of lectures was suspended.

  Goldschmidt had described this incident to Philippe, but only eight years later, when the captain had just been repatriated from Indo-China and his father was already dead. He had added:

  “Towards the end of his life Étienne Esclavier used to fly into a rage whenever anyone mentioned war. He suffered a great deal from the fact that you were out in Indo-China. But what on earth came over you? Why did you stay on in the army?”

  Philippe had given an answer which was not quite true, though at the same time not entirely false:

  “I stayed on in the army out of disgust for what I saw on my return from deportation, later on from habit, and now because it’s the life that happens to suit me.”

  Disgust he had certainly felt on coming back from Mathausen. He was saddled with Michel Weihl, who had nowhere to go and was as pathetic and exasperating as a lost dog. The professor had been overwhelmed at seeing his son again. He had sobbed as he hugged him in both arms, stroking his face with his fingers like a blind man. Happy and at ease, they had made all sorts of plans, one of which was to go and have a good rest at Avignon, at Uncle Paul’s. Jacqueline and his mother had already gone there.

  “Paul did wonders during the war,” the professor had said in an off-hand, peevish tone. “But you know how stubborn he can be. He won’t understand anything and does his utmost to prevent the unity of the Socialist and Communist parties. De Gaulle’s got him in the palm of his hand. He has done him proud and made him a Commissaire de la Republique. But I still haven’t lost all hope of convincing him . . . In two months’ time, Philippe, there’s going to be a special session of examinations for all those who’ve come back from the war or from deportation. You will present two theses. The subjects are limited and we’ll help you through.”

  A few days later the professor had had a telephone call from the secretary of a resistance and deportees organization which was controlled by the Communists and of which he was a member.

  Philippe was squatting on his haunches playing with a cat. It was marvellous, this warm, living thing. As he let himself be nibbled, as he stroked the black coat, he began to realize at last that he was free, that he could get up, go out, listen to music, smoke as many cigarettes as he liked and ask the cook to make a raspberry tart. Through the open french windows he could hear the cries of children playing in the garden.

  After hanging up, his father had come back and stroked his head.

  “Did they shave your head?”

  “Yes, like everyone else.”

  “How thin you are! Not feeling too tired?”

  “No, I’m all right.”

  “Did you suffer a great deal?”

  “I can hardly remember now.”

  “I’ve just been rung up by the Association of the Republican Resistance Workers and Deportees. They’re organizing a big meeting at the Salle Wagram. I have to take the chair. Many of your deportee friends will be there: Rivière, Paulien, Juderlet, Fournier . . . it was Fournier who rang me up.”

  “They’re all the Communists of the camp.”

  His father appeared not to hear.

  “They’d be very pleased if you came with me this evening and wore your deportee’s uniform.”

  “I’ve burnt my uniform. It smelt of gas chambers an
d human excrement and also of all the filthy things I had to do in order to survive.”

  “Your friends from Mathausen asked me to remind you that if you came back alive, you owed this in part to the Communists.”

  Weihl had then chipped in:

  “There’s no problem about the deportee’s uniform. The association has new ones for us to wear. I asked for the largest size for you.”

  “So you’re also in this game, are you?”

  “But I thought . . .”

  “Now that the matter’s settled,” said the professor, “I’d like to read you the draft of my speech. The subject is falsehood. We have just finished living four years in a state of falsehood . . .”

  “It isn’t settled at all,” said Philippe, “I’m not going and I have no wish to disguise myself. The falsehood is still continuing. I remember your talks on the wireless in 1939, Father, I also remember Mourlier and Beudin when they came to see you after firing on a Gestapo agent. I didn’t want to remember any more.”

  “There was some misunderstanding with your friends . . .”

  Philippe had locked himself up in his room. Nevertheless the professor had given his speech in the Salle Wagram. Weihl had gone there with him, wearing a deportee’s uniform. Many of the audience had therefore thought that Weihl was his son. The next day he engaged him as his secretary, and a month later Philippe Esclavier embarked for Indo-China.

  Philippe knew this incident had not dictated his decision, but had rather served him as a pretext. His attempt to resume his studies had not met with much success. Prolonged intellectual effort had always been repugnant to him. Philippe could be brilliant, but he lacked application and he had what Glatigny, with a slight touch of irony, called “the indolence of the well bred.” Dreams and intellectual activity are incompatible, whereas action is well suited to a large measure of dreams.

  Philippe had discovered that military life fits in with a certain form of laziness. The existence of an officer is divided very unequally between moments of hardship, fatigue and danger and long periods of inactivity and leisure. In those moments of supreme effort an officer can be driven, despite fear, hunger and weariness, to accomplish extraordinary feats which will turn him, but only for an instant, into someone greater, more disinterested and more dauntless than other men. During the periods of inactivity he moves with the slowness of a drowsy bear in a little enclosed world of his own. All effort is banned from it, or is anyway extremely restricted by regulation, ritual and custom; its jokes are traditional and even its malice has been codified.