“You can’t trust any of them,” they would say. “One fine day we’ll wake up to find our throats cut and our children poisoned.”
Then they would quote the story of the baker who had been murdered by his assistant. The two men had worked together every night for over ten years; they had become close friends and were to be seen every morning emerging covered in flour from their bake-house. They would go and have lunch in a bistro on the other side of the street, taking their newly baked bread with them and ordering some ham to go with it.
Within a few days Bab-el-Oued witnessed a distinct rift between the Moslems on the one hand and the Jews and Europeans on the other. This was exactly what the F.L.N. wanted: to divide that ill-defined zone and split up its inhabitants who tended to resemble one another more and more, for they had so many things in common: a certain nonchalance, love of gossip, contempt for women, jealousy, irresponsibility and inclination to day-dream.
Villèle and Pasfeuro spent every night at the Écho d’Alger offices, where there was a W.T. tuned in on the police transmitter’s wave-length. They listened in to the calls and were thus able to ascertain the number of the outrages and the place where they had occurred. In November they averaged more than five a day and accounted for two hundred deaths.
In the early days the journalists would rush to the spot at once, by car, motor-cycle or taxi. There they would see a few bodies lying on the pavement and covered in an old blanket, some wounded being taken off to the Maillot Hospital, or the impotent rage of a man with a face distorted by hatred and misery; there they would hear a woman screaming as she went for the police or ambulance men with her claws. The Jewesses and Spanish women were the most uncontrolled of the lot.
Very soon the journalists could no longer bear to photograph these horrors, listen to these screams, and be taken to task as though it was they who were arming the terrorists.
Pasfeuro and Villèle had again attended a Government House Press conference. The spokesman had given a garbled version of the outrages and minimized the number of casualties; more often than not the outrages were modestly referred to as “incidents.” He had announced the arrest of several terrorists “whose identity could not be revealed,” promised that measures would be taken against them and reported the annihilation of a sizeable fellagha band in the Collo Peninsula, where a considerable amount of weapons had been seized.
Villèle had given a knowing smile and Pasfeuro had shrugged his shoulders in despair, which had succeeded in unleashing the spokesman’s anger:
“Are you again questioning the accuracy of my information?”
“Naturally,” Villèle calmly replied, rising to his feet.
“Come and see me in my office with Pasfeuro. We must thrash this out together once and for all.”
Their colleagues on the local Press watched the two bad boys enter the headmaster’s study with the satisfaction of goody-goodies who were beyond reproach.
As soon as he was alone with the two special correspondents, the spokesman changed his tune. He sank back into an arm-chair, his head lolling limply against the head-rest.
“Out with it,” he said wearily.
“To begin with,” said Villèle, “the outrages have caused seventeen victims and not six, not one arrest has been made, and the Government has no disciplinary measures in view . . .”
“Secondly,” Pasfeuro chipped in, “we got the worst of it in the Collo skirmish: fifteen dead and twenty-two wounded. The arms that were seized amounted to two sporting rifles. But what about the arms that were lost? They haven’t been mentioned in any report.”
The spokesman rose to his feet and started pacing up and down the thick office carpet, peering at the two confederates through his eyelashes, which were as curved and long as a woman’s; he had confused and tricked them so often that he was now reduced to treating them with a certain amount of frankness and honesty.
A minor civil servant who had embarked on his career in the wake of the Resident Minister, the spokesman had allowed himself to be carried away by the Algerian tragedy and, with all the resources of a nimble mind, with all the unscrupulousness of a pupil of Machiavelli who has pledged himself to a cause, he had set about defending Algeria inch by inch.
“All right,” he said, “there’s no point in deceiving you; your information’s quite correct. But what good would it do to make it public at this stage? It would only add to the general alarm. We’re on the brink of a catastrophe; anything could happen within the next few days. The crowd may get completely out of hand, Europeans and Moslems may start killing each other. But we can’t do a thing, our hands are tied by your friends, Villèle: they need the loss of Algeria in order to seize power . . . no matter if the whole of Algiers goes up in flames.”
“You’re exaggerating, Mr. Spokesman, we only want to save what can still be saved, by coming to terms with certain valid elements of the F.L.N.”
The telephone started ringing.
“What the hell does this bastard want, I wonder?”
Since living in the company of army men he had assumed a coarse manner of speech which he felt was demanded of him.
He lifted the receiver.
“Hallo? Oh, it’s you, Vivier . . . What’s that? Froger has just been killed? Where? On the steps of the Main Post Office . . . Serious? I should damn well think so. We’re in for it now, Vivier. No, it’s up to you to notify the chief. You’re the head of security, after all . . .”
Without waiting a moment longer, the two journalists dashed out of the room and raced down the marble stairs of Government House.
Amédée Froger, the President of the Interfederation of the Mayors of Algeria, had by virtue of his qualities and shortcomings become the standard-bearer of all the settlers. The F.L.N. had struck the Europeans right between the eyes. The repercussions were bound to be violent.
At eleven o’clock that night Pasfeuro, who had just filed his copy, joined Villèle in the Press Club, the only place that kept open after curfew. This tunnel, obscured by cigarette smoke, was a seething mass of journalists, police officials, pimps and informers, drug-pedlars, secret service agents, professional prostitutes and amateur tarts, the latter, like the former, on the look-out for a greenhorn who was drunk enough to see them home.
“Well,” Villèle inquired, “what’s the latest?”
“The funeral’s fixed for tomorrow, 28 December. The New Year’s getting off to a good start!”
“It will see the independence of Algeria, that’s inevitable. History, like a river, always flows in the same direction.”
“Balls!” said Pasfeuro. “Utter and complete balls, this irreversibility of history . . . Your little Commie chums were clever to appropriate destiny for themselves. What strength it gives them!”
“Do you think Algeria can be saved? Can’t you see that it’s rotten to the core? It appears sound enough, but that’s merely a façade which is going to be blown down in the gale of the general strike which Cairo and Tunis are threatening before the U.N.O. debate.
“We’ve got the same number of officials at Government House, rather more than last year in fact, and they all keep sending one another memoranda and publishing reports; but the machine’s working in a void, no one reads the things, no one acts on them. Meanwhile four hundred thousand soldiers are standing by, waiting to be able to go home.”
“You’re exaggerating, the army holds the hinterland.”
“Perhaps, but it doesn’t control a single town; its sphere of action ceases at the gates. And in the towns, what do you find? A few old flatfoots entangled in their peacetime regulations, who have got no information and are only too anxious to save their skins. The rebellion, like a worm, has insinuated itself into this defenceless fruit and devoured it from the inside.
“The F.L.N. is master of the towns, starting with Algiers itself: it has therefore won. Remember Morocco; the revolt th
ere started in the medinas, after which the hinterland followed suit.”
“Why not put the army into the towns?”
“Out of the question, it’s illegal.”
“But legality now merely serves to protect a band of terrorists and assassins. The whole of Algiers is controlled by a few hundred killers, as you know perfectly well.”
“Those who are in favour of withdrawing from Algeria are very keen on the legal aspect. Legality is only interesting when it’s useful to us and is on our side.”
“You talk like Louis Veuillot, my dear Villèle: ‘The liberty which you demand from us in the name of your principles, we deny you in the name of ours.’”
A tart came and sat down at their table; her fair hair fell over her face, her breasts drooped and she smelt of drink.
Villèle gave her a smack on the behind with the palm of his hand:
“You see, Pasfeuro, I’m going off to sleep with her. More often than not one sleeps with whatever comes to hand.”
He rose to his feet and rested both fists on the wine-stained table-cloth:
“And perhaps it’s for the same reason that I sleep with the flow of history.”
• • •
Amédée Froger’s funeral gave rise to several incidents of violence, in the course of which a number of Moslems, who had nothing to do with the killing or with the F.L.N., were clubbed to death, knifed or shot by a raving mob. This sort of pogrom was commonly referred to as a “rat hunt.”
At seven in the evening Pasfeuro was standing outside the Aletti with Parston, one of his American colleagues, when the mob emerged from the Rue de la Liberté and the Rue Colonna d’Ornano, and swept up the little lanes and stairways towards the Rue d’Isly.
By the tobacconist’s stall on the other side of the street, an old Arab stood watching this milling crowd in amazement, wondering what mysterious reason there could possibly be behind it. Pasfeuro distinctly saw a man run up to the Arab and brain him with a heavy iron bar.
He dashed across the street, forcing a way through the crowd with his elbows, and began to pick the old man up. He was already dead, his skull bashed in, and the journalist withdrew his hands which were now covered in blood. But he could see a policeman who had witnessed the murder taking to his heels.
Pasfeuro straightened up slowly and his rage was so intense that he was trembling from head to foot.
“Some day I’m going to do in one of those bastards,” he said to the American who had come across and joined him.
Parston was an old hand who had been in every war and every revolution. He took Pasfeuro by the arm.
“It wasn’t a man who killed the Arab,” he said, “it was the mob. The mob’s a strange sort of beast which lashes out at random and then doesn’t remember a thing; it has a taste for murder, arson and plunder. The man who struck him down was probably a nice young chap who loves his mother and looks after his cats. I’ve studied the mob for a long time . . . Leave well alone . . . and come and wash your hands.”
“I hate the beast, I’d like to shoot it dead . . .”
“Everyone hates the mob, but everyone belongs to it.”
They went back to the Cintra and spent the rest of the night drinking. To calm Pasfeuro down, Parston treated him to a description of all the horrors he had witnessed in the last twenty years. He now talked about the mob as though it was some monstrous, mythical hydra, like the one whose heads and arms were chopped off by Hercules only to sprout anew immediately afterwards.
Pasfeuro then remembered the policeman he had seen taking to his heels; there was no more law and order, the hydra was prowling about Algiers in complete freedom. The F.L.N. would soon be able to put its men into the streets and launch the Kasbah against the European quarters.
Day by day armed commandos coming from the Wilaya IV were infiltrating in small groups into the Kasbah or going to ground in the suburbs of Algiers.
On their side, the Europeans were buying weapons and grenades regardless of the cost. Mr. Arcinade suddenly assumed great importance; one day all the walls appeared daubed with his emblem: a red heart surmounted by a cross.
The first meeting of the anti-terrorist commando he had created was held on the very evening of Amédée Froger’s gory funeral, at Telemmi, in a rented flat occupied by Puydebois, a little settler from Blida. Puydebois, a violent, tough, outspoken man with a thickset, powerful frame, close-cropped hair and a blue chin which he had to shave several times a day, kept saying over and over again:
“We’ve got to choose between a suitcase and a coffin. My choice is a coffin, but it had better be a big one because I plan to take quite a number with me.”
Paul Pélissier had come accompanied by Bert. He had been driven to action by a variety of sentiments. The desire to surprise his wife and win her back from Esclavier was mingled with the need “to do something,” and not feel so isolated and therefore so unhappy in the midst of this town which was collapsing in anarchy and bloodshed. Now that he carried a weapon he had the sensation of being at last the man of exception born in revolution and conspiracy.
Bert followed Paul as he had always done. He was a placid, handsome, rich young man, but there was no life in those 176 lb. of healthy flesh, in that beautiful statuesque head, no desire, not even the most commonplace envy, nothing but Paul to whom he had belonged since his childhood.
The medical orderly Maleski had been brought by Malavielle, a Government House employee recruited by Arcinade.
There was only one thing in the world that Malavielle feared: not being “in the thick of things.” He loved mystery as other men love sport, gambling or women, with passion, and suffered for the very reason that there was no mystery in the sort of life he led: the life of an exemplary minor official who boarded in a H.L.M. with his unassuming little wife and three over-well behaved little children.
Maleski could not dismiss from his mind the vision of the cafeteria, the ambulance and the injured child. He had haunting nightmares and hallucinations; women filled him with horror; he could no longer stomach a mouthful of meat or a single glass of wine. His hatred of the “rats” was akin to that of a teetotaller bent on preserving his chastity; it was cold and implacable, it manifested itself neither in word nor gesture, it verged on madness.
The student Adruguez was not quite sure how he came to be there. One falls into conversation with a stranger in a café one evening, one drinks a few anisettes, one accepts an invitation to dinner and one finds oneself involved in a plot. Since it was not the first time this sort of thing had happened to him, he was not unduly impressed.
Arcinade took up his position in front of a table on which lay a Bible and a revolver. He was in shirt-sleeves, with his collar open at the neck, chubby and glistening with high-quality sweat.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “we are on the brink of defeat. Tomorrow Algeria will cease to be French . . . unless we act promptly and decisively! Our organization already numbers hundreds of adherents, there is no lack of volunteers for printing pamphlets, bill-sticking, and collecting information; but that’s not enough; we now need men for killing.”
“As usual,” Adruguez said to himself, “we’ve got to kill, but whom? No one seems to agree on that score . . . there’s nothing but a lot of talk about rat-hunts and submachine-guns. If you’re not in the thick of things, there’s not a chance of getting a girl. Nowadays you’ve got to pack a pistol before you’re entitled to give them a smack on the behind.”
“Terror,” Arcinade went on, “must be answered by terror, outrage by outrage. That’s what you all think, isn’t it, Puydebois, isn’t it, Maleski?”
He raised his voice and thumped the table.
“Well, that’s not the solution! First and foremost, we’ve got to be efficient. It’s not enough to throw a few bombs of our own, what we’ve got to find out is who is throwing them. We’ve got to do the work which the police are
incapable of doing and the army isn’t allowed to do: counter-terrorism.
“You, whom I’ve chosen for your devotion to the country, for your high moral qualities, your courage and self-denial, this evening I bring you . . .”
He thumped the table again.
“. . . the support of several important leaders of our army. We’re going to act in conjunction with the Secret G.H.Q.”
Adruguez sat up in his seat. This time things looked rather more serious than usual.
Arcinade believed implicitly in this Secret G.H.Q., a myth he had fondly cherished ever since he had been in touch with one of the countless clandestine organizations that flourished at Vichy during the occupation, for this deceiver of others succeeded also in deceiving himself.
He had met Colonel Puysange on three separate occasions and had spoken to him in guarded terms of “certain steps he was planning to take.” The least the colonel had been able to do was to “lend him the support of G.H.Q.”
Nothing more had been needed for Arcinade, who was always inclined to read between the lines, to imagine some vast collusion between his own organization and this great G.H.Q. of which Puysange could be none other than the Algiers representative.
“Before going any further, my friends, I’m going to ask you to take an oath on this Bible, as I shall now do in front of you.”
Arcinade squared his shoulders and, with a great show of emotion and sincerity, pledged himself as follows:
“In the name of Christ, in the name of France, so that Algeria shall remain French, I swear to fight to the death, to keep my activity secret, to carry out every order I am given, no matter what it may be. If I betray my oath, I shall expect to be executed like a traitor.”
The new adherents repeated the oath one after another, Puydebois quivering with emotion, Bert without understanding a word, Malavielle with delight, Maleski with the sombre conviction of someone possessed reciting a formula of exorcism, and Paul Pélissier with such deep anxiety that he stuttered from the effort.
The Centurions Page 50