The Centurions (17 page)

“Propaganda as well?”

“Even that's not enough. Propaganda doesn't work or give such good results unless it touches something deep, something real in a man.”

“Such as breaking his solitude,” Esclavier solemnly explained.

“It's been a long time since the Viets have known solitude,” said Marindelle. “The Viets remind me of those grinds at school, those bookworms who by dint of sheer hard work and perseverance carry off all the prizes at the end of the term. And yet they're the least gifted.

“We soldiers of the expeditionary corps were fairly well off. We had our cars waiting outside as we set off on operations, we had our cases of beer and our rations. Sometimes we felt rather parched, so aircraft would come and drop us some ice. Now and then we carried out some brilliant raids before breakfast, but never bothered to follow them up. Meanwhile the earnest, hardworking grinds carried on with their laborious war. The Vietminh were not better soldiers than we were, especially when you compare their untold strength to our twenty thousand-odd paratroopers and legionaries who were the only ones to face them in pitched battle. Even so they had to be five or ten against one to get the better of us. But then the Viets
all
made war, and without stopping, day and night, whether they were regulars, coolies, Du-Kit guerrillas, women or babes in arms . . . They made any amount of mistakes, they had about as much gumption as an old boot, but they never failed to learn from their mistakes.

“As a result of this sort of warfare, these termite methods,” Marindelle went on after a short silence, “the Viets have become pernickety and bureaucratic-minded. They take endless notes, make reports and keep files at every level of command, using tiny little bits of paper, because that's what they're short of, paper.”

“For the last four years,” said Leroy, “we've been pushed around the whole time by the
can-bos
or the officers. They keep whipping out note-book and pencil, demanding to know our names and why we came to Indo-China, asking a mass of technical questions about weapons and equipment. They solemnly take down anything you can think of, then wander off completely happy.”

“That mania of theirs was extremely useful to us,” said Glatigny. “They never stopped working their W.T. sets to broadcast the minutest detail. Every evening, at every level, they gave us a full report of their activities. We were able to intercept it all and we knew to the nearest pound what they were getting from China.”

“Then why the hell did we come to grief?” Esclavier rudely inquired. “We knew everything to the nearest pound. And the Viet artillery at Dien-Bien-Phu? We knew everything, and that's all; we did nothing about it.”

“Without that information we might have been driven out of Indo-China two years earlier.”

“Well spoken, my little staff officer!”

Seeing that the discussion was taking a nasty turn, Orsini broke in:

“Here, in the camp, the Viets keep revising the nominal roll over and over again. They jib at an accent, at a comma. They're so bigoted, it makes you sick. You're not allowed to use the word ‘Vietminh'; you must always talk about the Democratic Government of Viet-Nam, and say ‘sir' to the lowest
bo-doi
besotted by propaganda. But we haven't the right to wear our badges of rank. There's no way of knowing what they think or how they live. You come up against a blank wall and their reply is the same old phonograph record.

“To begin with, during the first year or two, we thought they were wary of us. Then we noticed it was more than that. They simply have nothing to say apart from ready-made phrases, there's nothing personal about them. The Party and the army, that's their whole life. Outside them they have no existence whatever.”

“That explains it,” said Boisfeuras. “Many of the officers and other ranks have been waging clandestine war for the last seven years. They've lived in bands quartered in out-of-the-way little villages, either in the mountains of Thanh-Hoa or the limestone country of the Day. They had nothing in common with the mountain people who despised them as inhabitants of the Delta. So they were reduced to living among them in this military, intransigent, rigorist and highly organized community . . .”

“That's absolutely true,” said Marindelle. “Even the Voice, who's a graduate of Hanoi and quite brilliant, I believe, has ceased to have an original thought or to struggle against his surroundings. All those chaps, just in order to survive, needed all the strength they had. They had to endure night marches, battles to the death, insufficient food. In their leisure hours they were transformed into propaganda machines. They were compelled to reiterate again and again the same slogans that had to be hammered into the thick skulls of the
nah-ques
. They organized all sorts of associations to embrace the civilian population and saw to it that these associations did not come adrift immediately. They had to instruct recruits, conscript coolies, collect money . . . These men didn't have a minute to themselves; their life wasn't their own, and when, utterly exhausted, they found time to sleep for a few hours, they preferred to accept the Communist system wholesale rather than to ponder over it and discuss it.”

“You seem to be very fond of them,” Esclavier remarked rather nastily.

“I try to understand them, certainly. If I had been a Vietnamese, I don't think I could have held out, I should have sided with them. Imagine the life of a young militant before he is poured into the Vietminh mould which will eventually depersonalize him. He knows the romance of revolution. He slips into a village at night. In the depths of a hut lit by an oil lamp he organizes a meeting. Often it's only a hundred yards or so from a French post. He hears the sentries clearing their throats. All that is known about him is his pseudonym; he leads a mysterious, fascinating life.”

“You've been reading too much Malraux,” Boisfeuras gently remarked. “Communism isn't like that at all.”

“That doesn't stop these peasants, who have never left their little bit of paddy-field, from talking about China and the U.S.S.R. He lets them think that he has just arrived from those distant countries and they gape at him in admiration. His voice becomes seductive and compelling. He uses words that have a magic ring to them, such as Michourism, Collectivism, which he is mad about himself. He leads a life of adventure and all the girls look at him with yearning as they peck away at their sunflower seeds.”

“I'd also be on their side,” thought Merle. “And I,” thought Mahmoudi, “may soon be obliged to lead that sort of life, but in my case the
canh-nas
will be
mechtas
; China and the U.S.S.R., Egypt and Iraq; Communism, Islam.”

“I've known that sort of thing,” Pinières reflected.

Marindelle fell silent for a moment or two. The old Tho spat and cleared his throat. Marindelle went on in a calmer tone of voice:

“And after a few years of communal life the result is a man without a soul who is totally inhuman and at the same time ambitious and incredibly naïve, like all those who believe they have found the one and only Truth. On top of that there's the influence of the boy-scout movement, for Ta-Quan-Bau who's in charge of the Vietminh youth is a former scoutmaster and inspector general of the Admiral Decoux schools. The doctrines of national revolution took firm root there and many of the leading Viets have been through those schools. You mustn't overlook doctrinaire intransigence. They're still in the first stage of Communism, that of revolution and single-mindedness. They have a faith untempered by any sense of reality.”

“He's a fine speaker is our Marindelle,” said Orsini with satisfaction.

“I think I can round off your explanation,” said Boisfeuras. “There are times when the Vietminh appear to be solely a section of the Communist Party. Their implementation of the agrarian reforms, their methods, their propaganda system, particularly as addressed towards the women, their soldiers' uniform, their manner of fighting, all these are Chinese. The Chinese Communist armies of Mao-Tse-Tung and Chu-Teh have brought those tactics to a fine art. Yet though this hold that China has on them is strong, it is not as complete as it might appear. Although linked to Peking, the Vietnamese Communist Party has its own contacts with the central organization in Moscow. Most of the Vietminh leaders were groomed in France by French Communists directly responsible to the U.S.S.R. The Vietminh is therefore more orthodox than the Chinese Communist Party. They have decided to apply wholesale Communism without trying to adapt it to the local temperament or climate, as Mao-Tse-Tung and his lot have done on a very big scale.

“Perhaps that's why the Vietminh fight shy of discussion and stick to their catechism. They seem to be afraid, they're not sure of themselves. They haven't the traditions or the intelligence of the Chinese. They've always been a slave nation.”

“The Vietminh have become solemn and melancholy and have lost all their spontaneity,” Marindelle went on. “That has almost happened before my eyes. You hardly ever see them laugh and if they do it's usually the private soldiers, never the N.C.O.s or officers. They have rapidly lost their youthful virtue, their revolutionary enthusiasm and ardour, and that's why they're so disturbing. They can't stand a joke; they can't even see one.”

“What about the girls?” asked Merle.

“The women are now considered equal to the men. They have the same rights, therefore the same duties. They have become officers, propaganda agents, political figures, but they have lost all their personality.”

“Vietnamese girls as sweet as mangoes,” Pinières involuntarily muttered at the memory of My-Oi.

“Sentimental and even sexual relations are looked upon as useless, worthless and uninteresting. The Vietminh has become a puritan, partly by necessity. His exhausting life leaves him hardly any spare time or energy. He denies all religion, but behaves like the strictest Quaker.”

Esclavier sniggered:

“I wouldn't mind having a go at a young militant Viet girl to see if Marxism prevents her from enjoying it . . .”

“That sort of thing,” said Leroy, “is strictly forbidden between a
tou-bi
and a girl of the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam. Anyway camp routine doesn't allow the slightest carnal desire to exist. It's the great sex truce. But if, in spite of everything, the impossible happened, it would mean the immediate liquidation of the
tou-bi
and a concentration camp for the girl, in other words death for both.”

“In actual fact, to what use have you put these theories of yours?” Boisfeuras asked. “You seem to have landed on your feet all right in the artificial world of the Vietminh.”

“In order to survive,” Marindelle explained, “we have found the right balance. This balance we call the ‘political fiction' of the camp. It's at the same time a philosophy, an organization and a way of life. It's unexpressed and unacknowledged, but everyone here has assimilated it. It gives us the exact attitude to adopt in order to find the best solution to each problem of our daily life.

“It's time to go to bed. Orsini and Leroy have to get back to their barracks. There's Mass tomorrow. Everyone goes, even those who aren't Catholics, even those who don't believe in anything. For us it's the equivalent of taking up a political and moral stand. That's why, Mahmoudi, I'd be grateful if you would come. You see, it's our church against theirs and you belong to ours.”

“I'll see.”

“You must come.”

“All right then, I'll come.”

Glatigny lay awake for a long time. He never imagined this sort of conversation could have been possible among a group of young officers or that they could have been able to analyse the situation with such lucidity. And that child-lieutenant Marindelle, completely at ease in the Marxist world, talking quite naturally about the political fiction of the camp, urging his comrades to go to Mass because it was a question of taking a political stand . . . that child who was more mature than all of them with the possible exception of Boisfeuras and whose sister-wife back in Paris was being unfaithful to him with a certain Pasfeuro who was a journalist . . .

During the first year of their captivity the hundred and twenty officer prisoners of Camp One had refused to co-operate with the Vietminh in any way. They attended the instruction periods, but the
bo-dois
had to drive them to the assembly place with their rifle butts.

There, on a little bamboo platform, the Voice or some other political commissar entrusted with their re-education would lecture them on a given theme: the misdeeds of colonialism . . . the exploitation of man by capitalism . . . But not one of the prisoners listened to their educators' ponderous phrases, and when the Voice afterwards questioned them on the lesson they could never give the right answers.

Faced with this display of ill-will, this refusal to collaborate in their re-education, the Voice had taken certain measures and the prisoners had their daily rations reduced to a ball of rice with a few herbs, but without so much as an ounce of fat or fish juice.

They had held out a whole year, but thirty of them had died from exhaustion, beri-beri and vitamin deficiency. It was then the oldest and highest ranking officer in the camp, Colonel Charton, had given the order to “play the game” in order to survive.

And so the day came when a lieutenant, young Marindelle, spoke up and gave the correct answers. The Voice was exultant and he felt that the secret wound deep inside him was beginning to close.

The rations were improved, the prisoners were given molasses, dried fish and bananas, and they signed manifestoes in favour of peace and against the atomic bomb. They accused themselves of all sorts of crimes, almost always falsely; they shouted their guilt out loud; and in return were allowed a certain amount of medical treatment.

But Potin who had been a Communist, and who could not be trusted to stand by his comrades to resist the Vietminh, was inveigled back into the bosom of the party whose expressions and vocabulary were already familiar to him.

He was like those Christians who, after neglecting their duties for a long time, are restored to the church by some sudden chance in the course of a service. This swarthy little man who wore steel-rimmed spectacles was absolutely honest about it. One day he came up to his comrades and said:

“Look. I was once a Communist. I didn't think I still was but I have become one again, completely and without reservations. So from now on I'm on the side of the Vietminh. I want you to know this and to treat me accordingly. I shall try not to know what you are doing, what escapes you are planning, but please don't tell me about it. Stop trusting me in any way.”

From then on he had volunteered for the nastiest, most arduous fatigues; he had refused everything which could have improved his lot.

Even Orsini and Leroy, who were irrepressible and animated by a tenacious and steadfast hatred for the Vietminh, bore him no malice. But they spoke to him as though to a
bo-doi
, which hurt him deeply, for he admired both of the lieutenants for their courage, loyalty and sense of friendship. Marindelle alone showed some understanding, but he was wary of him and his lively intelligence. He was the worm in the Communist apple, the choirboy who served Mass in order to drink the communion wine.

Ménard was also converted, but his reasons were more questionable and when he was thrown out of the army, although he claimed to have played the double game, he found no one to defend him. A few others took to progressivism, either through conviction, cowardice, or to be given extra privileges. Marindelle was one of these, but for another reason. This incurable chatterbox, this cheerful merry andrew had an astonishing capacity for secrecy. This was only realized two years later when he escaped with the whole group of irrepressibles.

There were a number of setbacks which should have enlightened the Vietminh and made them realize that their propaganda had gained a hold upon no more than half a dozen individuals. For instance, the incident of the chickens.

The prisoners had been given permission to keep chickens for their own consumption. Orsini, with many an obscene allusion, applied to have ducks instead but his request was not taken into consideration; each prisoner, with the ardour of a retired suburban, kept two or three birds. There was clucking all over the camp.

During one of his lectures the Voice announced that in token of satisfaction for this praiseworthy endeavour, he would allow the prisoners to put all their chickens into a common pool, which would enable them to recognize the superiority of collectivization to private enterprise. So, as from the next day, a chicken
kolkhoz
was to be established.

The prisoners did put their chickens into a common pool, but in a somewhat unforeseen manner. They killed them all that night and clubbed together to eat them.

At the end of the third year, however, they witnessed a strange conversion due entirely to the influence of Marindelle. The group of irrepressibles, about twelve strong, suddenly gave evidence of unexpected zeal. They hastened to sign every petition condemning war, the use of the atomic bomb and napalm. Given half a chance, they would also have condemned the air-gun and the bow and arrow. They indulged with frenzy in self-examinations, accused themselves violently of every crime they could think of, made a still noisier show of repenting of them, manifested their desire to be instructed in the Marxist religion and made really remarkable progress in dialectics.

Marindelle had to do his utmost to curb their zeal for fear it should appear suspicious.

The Viets are rather like Christians; they welcomed these last-minute converts with open arms, and, having soon become model fighters for peace, the neophytes occupied every responsible post in the camp.

Not content with their daytime activity, with inventing a progressivist hymn in which every word had a double meaning, they also met at night, but always among themselves, to perfect their education under the tutelage of Marindelle.

Marindelle would take a seat in the centre of the circle and fire questions at them:

“Leroy?”

“Present.”

“How much rice did you steal today?”

“Three handfuls. That brings our store up to a hundred pounds. We'll need four times more than that.”

“Millet?”

“I'll get the hatchet tomorrow. The Man wants a litre of
choum
and a couple of chickens for it.”

“Orsini?”

“I scrounged a pair of trousers; they could be made into a sack. They belonged to Ménard and he made a fuss. So I pitched into him and accused him in the presence of a
bo-doi
of playing a double game and being nothing but an imperialist in disguise.”

“Don't overdo it.”

“I,” said Maincent, “managed to relieve one of the
bo-dois
of his tinder lighter.”

“Have you prepared your self-examination?”

“I can't think of any more crimes to accuse myself of.”

“Use your imagination; you've got to replace Potin as officer i/c stores before the rainy season begins. I've been working on the Meteor for the last fortnight, but the supervisor-general is on his guard. From now on we're going to work in four teams of three; each team will build its own raft. We'll have the hatchet in turns.”

“I've got a map,” said Juves, “or rather, a tracing on a bit of bum-wad. They let me have a look at a pamphlet on French atrocities and it contained a map of Tonkin. I made a copy of it.”

“So what?”

“Do you realize, smart guy, what we're letting ourselves in for? Over three hundred miles roped to bamboo rafts; first the river by the camp in full spate, then the Song-Gam with its falls and rapids near Tho-Son. Enough to drown us twenty times over. We meet the Bright River at Binh-Ca, with Viets stationed on all the islets. It's a hundred to one, a thousand to one, against our pulling it off.”

“Do you know a better way? Can you see us marching barefoot through the jungle?”

“No.”

“Well, then? Do you want to die here, still performing your Marxist monkey-tricks? Especially as you're not particularly gifted.”

Orsini broke in heatedly:

“We've agreed once and for all. Marindelle's the boss and we're sticking to his plan.”

“This war is bound to end some day,” Juves protested.

“Don't you believe it. Do you think France is going to climb down because of these little bastards? If we stay on here, all that's left for us is to become collaborators like Ménard or, better still, Commies like Potin. I'd rather do myself in.”

The following month Maincent succeeded Potin as officer i/c stores. The Communist, who had given ample proof of his integrity, did not protest even though Marindelle had reported him to the camp commandant for stealing rice for himself and his friends. Leroy saw fit to apologize:

“You understand . . .”

“I think I understand,” he curtly replied.

He went off, hunching his shoulders. He would have given anything to be one of them, to share in the fresh strength they had suddenly derived from preparing their escape and through which they had made themselves masters of the camp.

That was how the political fiction of the camp came into being. The Vietminh only knew prisoners who were zealous or reluctant, who advanced with faltering steps along the path of re-education or else, on the contrary, made rapid progress. But in the shadows there already existed a sort of clandestine collective government which ascribed the role that each man had to play in the vast charade that had been prepared for the benefit of the Voice and the camp guards.

To begin with, this state of mind was unconscious and unexpressed. It was Marindelle and his group who, in preparing their escape, gave it a cohesive and specific form. After they were recaptured the political fiction became general. With the sly and patient perseverance of prisoners, the officers of Camp One managed to lend a double meaning to every gesture and every word, to ridicule their guards, their ideas and their convictions at every instant, and to trick them all the time while maintaining an air of the utmost gravity.

Discovering laughter again, the prisoners contrived to prize open the mysterious gates of this Kafkaesque hell into which they had been plunged.

They remained captives, admittedly, but the part of them which the Vietminh were so anxious to enslave, all that was not purely physical, had broken free, and this time laughter was more effective than bamboo rafts.

For the escape bid met with total failure.

The rains had started. The level of the river no longer dropped in the interval between two storms and its muddy waters churned with driftwood. The four rafts were ready and, weighted with stones, lay on the river bed. They had been crudely constructed out of bamboo sticks held together with creepers which had already started to rot in the water. These rafts were in fact nothing more than thick logs some fifteen to twenty feet long which the officers planned to sit astride rather like horses. They were pierced by a plank at both ends to prevent them from turning turtle in the water. They had knocked together some clumsy paddles with which to steer them. The rafts, which they had tried out on several occasions, floated almost totally submerged, so that they had to carry their foodstuffs slung round their necks. Each team was equipped with fifty pounds of rice and a bully-beef tin full of salt, which was nowhere near sufficient.

Four copies had been made of Juves's map. Each prisoner had provided all the information he could on the country to be crossed and this information had been recorded on the maps.

“A suicide operation,” Juves maintained.

“It's tonight or never,” Marindelle announced one morning. “Tomorrow they're organizing a general search; we'll have to be off before. That s.o.b. of a supervisor-general is beginning to suspect something. He's not straight, that rat. He's a dirty
nha-que
who's impervious to all dialectic.”

They attended the instruction period which took place at five every evening. The daily storm broke after supper, towards seven o'clock. The downpour drowned every other noise and isolated the huts. This was the moment they chose for their escape.

Marindelle had previously handed Trézel, “the parson,” a letter addressed to the Voice with instructions to leave it outside the camp office but not until the following morning.

“What's it all about?” asked the wary Breton who had never been able to understand Marindelle's complex character.

“Don't ask too many questions. I'm making a break for it . . . but I'm taking certain precautions. In other words, I'm buckling on my ventral.”
*

The letter was written in pencil on bamboo paper and the Jesuits by whom Marindelle had been brought up in the prison-convent of Saint François de Sales at Evreux would have been proud of their pupil.

Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam,
Camp One

Sir,

When you read these lines I shall have left Camp One in the hope of reaching Hanoi and France. I suppose you will be disappointed and will think that I have relapsed into my former errors. I wish to justify myself in your eyes for I need your moral support if I am to carry on the struggle for peace. During the thirty months I spent in your camp you made me see not only where my duty lay but also that the title of peace fighter had to be earned. I now feel fully qualified and certain of my aim. I am impatient to engage in this campaign which you are waging throughout the world to wipe out the last traces of a society that is rotten, selfish and damned to eternity.

This campaign I must wage in my own country, among my own people and my own class. If you had released me, I should have appeared suspect to many of my comrades and to my own government. Having escaped, however, I shall be able to operate in complete freedom. Were it otherwise, would I be writing to you now?

My two comrades, Orsini and Leroy, likewise share my views.

I am convinced that one day we shall meet again and that side by side, fraternally united, in Paris, the centre of our communal culture, we shall work together to bring about that world of hope and peace for which you have already sacrificed more than your life.