by Robert Irwin
‘Captain, you walked about in the Sahara for a week and you had no food and water?’
‘Oh no, it wasn’t as long as that. Three days, maybe four days. I can’t be sure. I was delirious for part of the time and, towards the end, unconscious.’
‘But you walked about in the desert with this bullet in your leg? You are a very strong man.’
‘Ah no. You don’t understand. That was at the end, when the Arabs picked me up.’
‘Ah yes, that was what you said but, tell me, why did this bedu shoot you in the leg?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps it was, as Zora said, an accident.’
‘So you believe what this Zora said? You really remember nothing of what happened until you awoke at the flat belonging to al-Hadi? How long were you prisoner of that unusual woman?’
Nounourse says something about al-Hadi’s wife, too fast for me to catch, and the others laugh. But I laugh too in order to express my solidarity with the group. In fact I am intensely irritated. They are getting nowhere with this rubbish. Certainly they are not impressing me.
The ‘doctor’ who is not really a doctor leans towards me.
‘You laugh and yet you are dead man.’
‘We have never seen a dead man laughing before,’ affirms the juggler.
‘You should know,’ continues the ‘doctor’, ‘that garrotting is a slower process than hanging on a drop scaffold. Normally death in a garrotting comes from asphyxiation. Though it is possible that in Nounourse’s hands your neck might snap – if the cords don’t break first. I keep telling Nounourse that he should use piano wire, but he won’t have it. I believe that I am right in saying that even after your neck has snapped, you will retain consciousness for between a minute and a minute and a half. And then everything in your bowels will come bucketing out.’
The ‘doctor’ turns to address the others on the floor.
‘And yet here he is laughing and not bothering to convince us about anything.’
‘I am, damn it. It is you who are not wishing to be convinced.’
‘Well, we shall try again. Forgive so many questions. You forgive us, please?’
‘We have to be clear.’
‘Yes. This Zora woman was holding you for these friends of yours, this Raoul and Chantal, and they are Children of Vercingetorix?’
‘I don’t know about Raoul. He was – is – was Chantal’s friend. Chantal certainly belongs to the Children.’
‘When Raoul came to the flat of Zora, you engaged him in a long debate about communism?’
‘Yes, or rather he engaged me in it. As I said, he was trying to turn me from Marxism. Of course, he failed.’
‘Mmmm. You should know, comrade, that all of us here in the room are socialists, but we are Algerian Nationalists first. We are not Marxists and we are not going to take orders from Moscow or Peking.’
‘Thank you, comrade, for this important clarification. I hope – I am sure that nevertheless we share a common struggle against the hegemony of French monopoly capitalism in Algeria.’
‘Mmmmm.’
No one in the room looks very satisfied, and the questioning is resumed.
‘How long were you the prisoner of the woman, Zora, and her dog?’
‘Christ, I don’t know! I was drugged. A week at least. It could have been much longer.’
I allow a certain degree of panic to appear in my voice. I have their number now. This little gang of street-corner freedom fighters, they want to get the feeling that I am cracking, that I acknowledge their ascendancy. This is the crude emotional trade off that they are demanding. I’ll make them pay for it later.
The ‘doctor’ clicks his tongue.
‘You have not told us as much as you might. The implication is that Chantal and her ally, this Lieutenant Schwab, intercepted the bedu before other army search parties could, paid the bedu to pick you up, contacted this woman Zora and, having told her how you tortured and murdered her husband, found it easy to persuade her to keep you in her custody until Chantal and Raoul could meet at Laghouat and decide what should be done with you, but it happened that you escaped before Chantal could arrive.’
The ‘doctor’ has counted the argument off on his fingers. He is the only bright one here, perhaps even a little cleverer than I am. His view of the events is clearer than mine. But Nounourse is scratching his head. Which fool was it who said, ‘The unexamined life is not worth living’? For it is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of stupid examiners. The group’s interrogation techniques are amateurish beyond belief. If this cell is to stay in existence, it will need licking into shape.
‘Yes, I suppose that must be it.’ I agree with calculated feebleness.
But the ‘doctor’ scrapes his nails against his half-shaven chin.
‘Well, there are many mysteries in this story.’
The juggler with the packets of morphine picks up the questioning.
‘You tell us that, for six years now, you have been a double agent, making a mess of the intelligence records of the French military and sending invaluable information to the FLN here in Algiers?’
‘Yes, I have.’
‘What a hero!’ But there is a distinct lack of enthusiasm in this commendation.
‘Colonel Tughril can corroborate what I say.’
The ‘doctor’ leans over to smile at me.
‘It’s a pity there is no Colonel Tughril in this room. Indeed we have never heard of Colonel Tughril.’
‘And we live here,’ affirms the juggler, but then he looks round the room (which is so sparsely furnished that it might be a dentist’s waiting room) as if he had never seen it before.
Nounourse lets out a terrible rumbling laugh and the cords round my neck tighten a little. (So who have I been sending reports to?)
My voice comes out rather wheezy.
‘Listen, for that matter what evidence have I that you really are an FLN cell? It is all trust, isn’t it? Reflect a little.’
‘You came to us, not we to you.’
‘You shot your way out of a legionnaire fort and walked across the Sahara and killed I don’t know how many people to come to us.’
‘And now you don’t like us.’
And Nounourse wants to know, ‘Did you kill the child?’
‘The child? What child?’
‘The woman Zora’s child.’
‘Ah. Oh yes, I killed him too.’ (We are making such a melodrama of this that I can hardly stop myself from laughing.) ‘God help me, I killed the child.’
‘You are a fine fellow,’ says Nounourse thoughtfully.
The juggler resumes his performance with the little sacks of morphine. It is as if the weights of guilt and innocence, of truth and lies, were coming to rest and being weighed, first on one palm and then on the other. We all watch him. Then, abruptly, the cord hangs loose around my neck and Nounourse stretches and makes himself more comfortable.
‘I take the sofa.’
He looks around challengingly.
‘We are going to sleep now,’ the ‘doctor’ tells me helpfully. ‘It is six hours to daylight.’
‘What has been decided?’
‘Nothing has been decided. But first I should look at that leg of yours. Lie down over there.’ And he points to a corner of the room beside an inner door.
And so he does. The comrades even allow me another shot. I get the impression that Nounourse might have vetoed this gesture of mercy, but, once assured of sole possession of the sofa, Nounourse is extravagantly sprawled in sleep, snoring heavily and with arms and legs projecting at all angles over the sides of the sofa. The ‘doctor’ is even kind enough to administer my shot. He tells me that one should always squirt a drop out of the needle before inserting it. It prevents air bubbles getting into the veins.
‘Thank you, doctor.’
‘I am not really a doctor, you know,’ he tells me again. ‘Just a student.’ And he gives me another of his charming shy smiles. ‘I am Mr Jalloud.’
&n
bsp; The comrades dispose themselves to sleep on the dusty carpet. I lie awake for a little while. As the ‘doctor’ says, nothing has been decided. It has all been an infuriating waste of time, their self-important examination of my credentials. That is the trouble with amateur revolutionaries, this business with the noose around the neck and the solemn questions, as if they were inducting me into some seedy Masonic lodge. This sort of thing is not, or at least should not be, what revolutionary activity should be about. They have failed to take any decisions, either with regard to the implications of my cover having been blown, or with regard to the now very imminent putsch of the paras and the pieds noirs in Algiers. But I am alive, and as long as I live I can do great things even with such a third-rate cadre as this one. Nounourse’s snoring is so stentorian that it is hard to be sure, but I am almost certain that there are noises coming from behind the door by which I lie. I think that I hear a prolonged wailing. But it is hard to be sure. Then I too plunge into a deep and mysterious sleep.
In the morning I am woken by the juggler flinging open the shutters and the comrades move about the room in the grey light before the sunrise collecting their things. The juggler unties my hands. The call for the fajr prayer comes from a nearby mosque. Just as I think we are about to leave, Nounourse goes to the door in front of which I had been lying and unlocks it. A family emerges, a man, a woman and three children. They look frightened and grey in the grey light. Nounourse starts shouting at them. I gather that they have been our unwilling hosts all this time. The comrades commandeered their house for the night. Nounourse gets the man to bring us bread and stands over him while he makes coffee. Nounourse continues shouting and waving his garrotting cord at the man. Then, once we have finished breakfast, Nounourse has smiles for everyone, especially the children. We all shake hands with the terrified family, before issuing out into the kasbah.
The juggler and the other anonymous fellow swiftly disappear. While I am wondering what I should do now and how I may take the initiative, another part of my mind is off in a fantastic fugue, imagining what would happen to the kasbah if the Children of Vercingetorix took over this quarter. Once the old tenements had been dynamited, preferably with their inhabitants still inside them, I imagine that we might see a colossal structure with a podium and arena for mass rallies crowned by a shrine of honour to the fallen Sons of France and then an avenue of pseudo-classical colonnades sweeping down the hill. Away with the Arab mess! All the buildings will have strong crisp lines, in a harmonious blend of the old and the new traditions of Europe.
I barely hear Nounourse booming out behind me. ‘We have a mission for you. You can go with Jalloud. You will help him. You will do exactly as he tells you. Remember I am never very far away and remember also that I do not like you, Captain Addict.’
Chapter Fifteen
Why did I tell such terrible lies? It is as if Koot Hoomi – some great astral spirit – was dictating nonsense to me. I think that Raoul is not dead. I am sure that Zora is not. I am bound to be found out sooner or later. As we pick our way out of the kasbah, I am possessed by the fear that at its exit we shall encounter, by chance, Raoul with a bandage round his head or Zora flanked by infant and alsatian. But this is only a passing flicker. I have no time for pessimism – or fantasy. They are both alike products of a bourgeois individualist liberalism. Precisely the products of a historical moment, they are poses adopted in bad faith as a reaction to the strains of industrial capitalism. As Lenin says, ‘We can (and must) begin to build up socialism, not with fantastic material especially created by our imagination, but with the material bequeathed us by capitalism.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘We need more morphine,’ Jalloud tells me.
‘What?’
‘And some other things as well.’ But he will tell me nothing more.
We are not going out by the Médée checkpoint, but we walk west in the general direction of the Bab al-Oued and exit by the rue des Zouaves. Jalloud’s case is checked, but of course there is nothing incriminating in it. As we head up the boulevard de Verdun, Jalloud becomes talkative once more. He tells me that we are going to his hospital. He is attached to its staff while he is doing his doctorate. He is doing a thesis on cenesopathy, but there are problems with it.
The Verdun Hospital for Nervous Diseases is situated just a little way short of the big Muslim cemetery, beyond the civil prison. Set a little way back from the boulevard behind pleasant rows of trees, the place nevertheless resembles the prison. And this is not by chance for, like a prison or a barracks, the hospital is an instrument of social control. At the gate of the hospital there is a massive queue of hopeless Arabs, so hopeless and unexpectant that perhaps they are not a queue. Several groups are brewing tea on the flagstones and one family has a goat with them. Jalloud produces a white coat from the bag and makes me put it on.
‘If anyone asks, you are Major Beaufré from the Army Medical Service and you have to sort out some queries on your supply roster. There will be no problem.’
But Jalloud does look a little nervous. However there is no problem. The uniformed guard at the gate is arguing with a ferocious old Kabyle woman whose streakily dyed hair and patchwork dress make her look like a gypsy queen. She lunges up at him and,. though I do not understand Kabyle, I guess that she is heaping the curses of her ancestors on him. The guard’s mouth is screwed up in distaste.
‘You cannot see Dr Fanon. We have no Dr Fanon here.’
Jalloud flashes his identity pass at the guard and he waves us through. Once we are inside the hospital and pacing down the corridor, Jalloud starts speaking in an urgent low voice.
‘Well, we have some time before the ward visits. I can show you round and you can see some of our patients. But first I should like to show you how to do a blood transfusion.’
And this is what he does. He takes me into a sort of glorified store cupboard, where there is a row of transfusion trolleys and other apparatus closely crammed together. Jalloud talks at a tremendous manic pace and tubes, needles, plastic bags and anti-coagulant are brandished before my face and then whipped away.
‘Pay attention please. This is important.’
Then he goes through it again at twice the pace.
‘Well, I’m sure you will manage,’ he says finally. ‘We’d better not be caught in here. I’ll take you round a ward or two.’
He takes me into a sunny airy ward. A few of the patients are in dressing-gowns and Jalloud’s ‘special’ patient is one of them. He is clearly pleased to see Jalloud, but rather apprehensive of me, even though I am Jalloud’s friend. The patient conforms perfectly to the classic symptoms of cenesopathy. He has difficulty in speaking, for he is in constant terror that he is about to swallow his tongue, but haltingly he describes for my benefit how his body is perpetually alive with electric shocks, like continuous pins and needles, but much more painful. For the last two years he has hardly been able to sleep. Also he is terrified of touching light switches. His case is an important part of Jalloud’s thesis, but the problem with the thesis is the aetiological aspect of the case. These symptoms first appeared after he was taken in for a week’s questioning by the gendarmerie.
‘Of course, my professor and I are agreed that there is no connection,’ says Jalloud.
On the next bed is the cenesopath’s best friend.
‘This one has to be watched,’ says Jalloud, gesturing towards the watcher, a nun who surveys the patients from the end of the ward, while her hands work away at a piece of tacking. ‘This man has only been in a few months and he has tried to commit suicide, I think, five times now. His wife was raped during a ratonade in the bled. He hallucinates too. On Friday the patients had couscous with mutton. But this poor man thought that the mutton was a bird resting on the couscous – a maggoty bird – and as he continued to look he thought he saw that the couscous grains were really maggots too. Hospital food is like that for him. However what we are treating him for is internal lesions. We cannot understand
how he got them … Out in the bled they blow us to pieces and here we try to patch them up again.’ And Jalloud gives me one of his funny smiles.
‘But that one over there will interest you, I think.’
The man whom Jalloud surreptitiously points to is at the end of the ward. He is a European and we do not approach him, for fear of being overheard by the nun.
‘The case is a little obscure. I believe that he nailed a dog to some sort of electric wheel and got the wheel to spin so fast that the brains flew out of the dog. There were fears for the safety of his family … He had good prospects too … He was a gendarme assigned to traffic control, but his superiors thought so highly of him that they assigned him to interrogation duties.’
An unfortunate European victim of this terrible war, but really the French should build bigger hospitals and put all the Arabs in them, for, from the perspective of the colonist, what is revolution but a criminal psychopathic reaction against a stable and ordered society? The psychotic, the amnesiac, the lethargic, the insomniac, the abouliac, the paranoid, the deviant and the paraesthetic drift in and out of the wards and down the corridors. It is not so very different from the streets of Algiers – only the pretence has been removed. We are drifting with them. We pass a fat man sitting up in bed in a private room chanting happily to himself.
‘Kill. Kill. Kill the blacks. Kill. Kill the Arabs. Kill the Jews. Kill. Kill the pieds-noirs. Kill. Kill the flics. Kill – Good morning, doctor,’ he shouts cheerily as we pass, and as we move on we can hear him continuing to chant, ‘Kill the doctors. Kill. Kill the sisters …’
Jalloud and I dart into another of the hospital’s glory holes. This one is locked, but Jalloud has the key. He produces two Monoprix carrier bags from his case and takes a few handfuls of stuff from the shelves – morphine and other drugs – and puts them in one of the bags.
‘The comrades in the bled need these things very badly. Maybe they need the morphine even more than you do. What do you think? You can take it out for us. They will not search you with your lovely white skin. Right now, you stay here. I will lock you in. I am just going to see if your patient is ready for you.’