The Centurions (21 page)

Only then did everyone manifest his compassion.

“I shall be seeing Philippe again,” Souen said to herself, “I shall be with him every day.”

A thrill of delight ran through her.

Next day Dia, for whom the walls of the hospital had ears, heard all about it. He discussed it with Lescure.

“That silly little Souen might have killed Esclavier with her emetine! Emetine jolts the heart; and now she believes she saved him. She's as blindly in love as a schoolgirl. It will turn out badly for her in the end, badly for both of them perhaps. Have you ever been in love, Lescure?”

Lescure bent his head over the piece of bamboo he was carving into a shepherd's flute:

“A cousin of mine. I told her and she started squirming about in her chair as though she was sitting on a packet of pins. And she laughed and laughed . . . After that, only tarts. I was quite popular at the Panier Fleuri in Hanoi. I used to play the piano for them. Esclavier's a lucky dog!”

Dia peeled a banana pensively.

“I'm very fond of you,” he said all of a sudden. “I'd like to keep you here with me. We're left in peace, we only talk when we feel like talking. You'll soon be able to play me that flute of yours. But the director of the hospital is beginning to think you're not so very mad. He's talking of sending you back to Camp One.”

“But I am mad, Dia. I can show him.”

“I'll bring him in for a consultation. We'll arrange a little scene for him.”

Next day, when Dr. Nguyen-Van-Tach came into the hut, Lescure pretended to be asleep. He woke up with a start:

“Boy,” he shouted, “
mau-len
! Make tea at once, I shout for you the whole time, you good-for-nothing!”

Dia crept up behind the director with a bowl of tea.

“He's very over-excited this evening. Here, hand him the tea, I've put some bromide in it.”

“Come on, boy,
mau-len
!”

Nguyen-Van-Tach was furious. Dia gently reasoned with him:

“Come, sir, he's mad, and you're a doctor . . . an excellent doctor, moreover. Hand him this bowl of tea. He doesn't know you have beaten the French Army at Dien-Bien-Phu.”

“I'd like you to cure him so that he learns. It's really too easy a position.”

“Madness is often an easy solution for those who take refuge in it.”

And thus it was that Lescure stayed on at the hospital and was served tea by the director.

Esclavier quickly recovered his strength. His skin lost its strange colour. In addition to his improved “régime” rations, Souen brought him fruit, guavas and slices of fresh pineapple, and enriched his rice with chicken or sometimes little chunks of fat pork cooked in sugar.

Relieved by her confession and by the absolution that had followed, she devoted herself whole-heartedly to her nursing duties, little realizing that her attitude towards the prisoner was that of a
congai
in love. She forgot all her Marxist vocabulary and the “peace of the people” to ask him more personal questions.

“What is Paris like?”

Esclavier tried to think.

“It's very beautiful and very dirty, very rich and very poor, There's a wood on either side of it: Vincennes where the poor go, Boulogne which is for the rich.”

“And where did you go?”

“To the Luxembourg, where the students go—who are poor, but who all believe that one day they'll be rich and famous.”

“Are French girls pretty?”

“Today's the
18
th July, isn't it? The beaches will be crowded with golden-skinned girls, laughing, splashing about in the water, playing with rubber balls, who are in love, or believe they are, or pretend they are. When they come back from the beach, they put on bright-coloured dresses and reflectively sip long iced drinks while pretending to understand a boring boy who talks to them about Sartre but who has gentle eyes. And it's his eyes they look at. Our lovely young French girls don't know there's a war going on.”

He suddenly looked at the little Vietnamese girl with her plaits, her collar buttoned up to her chin, in her dull-green uniform:

“But you're also lovely, Souen, you're also golden-skinned . . . and you're at war!”

“I'm at war for my people.”

“Our pretty girls dance, drink, eat, play in the sun and make love for the sole pleasure of their selfish bodies.”

He was lying on his bunk, propped up on his elbows, with his head resting in his hands; and through his mind scampered the slender girls of his country, the merry, eager girls tasting of sugar and vinegar.

Souen squatted by the head of the bed. Esclavier turned towards her and gently stroked her hair. He felt deep affection and friendship for his little Vietnamese sister in uniform who was suffocating with him in this hut among the blazing limestones, who, like him, had known war and all its horrors and who had been moved by human suffering. To make her ugly, she had been given a helmet and tunic several sizes too big for her, and her magnificent hair had been knotted into two long plaits which hung down to her shoulders. She had been forbidden to be a woman.

Esclavier drew Souen closer to him and her cheek brushed against his. She gave a little sob and shut her eyes. She was trembling from head to foot and she felt as if she was drowning in an emerald-green sea which was warm and cool at one and the same time; then everything seemed as simple as love, as simple as death.

She loved her
tou-bi
; her defences were down. She would do whatever he wished. She would risk death in order to please him; she would steal to get him better food; she would escape with him if he asked her. She would be his little
congai
, like her sister with the major, and if ever he left her she would kill herself.

She ran her damp finger over the captain's brow and the last memory she had of him was his big grey eyes and the desire she fancied she read in them. In fact it was only astonishment.

A
bo-doi
had come to tell Souen that the director wanted her. He had thrust his head through the door of the hut and had seen her with her cheek against the
tou-bi'
s; he had witnessed her treachery against the people when she had caressed him. He had crept away without a sound to notify his superiors.

Souen rose to her feet.

“I'm going to fetch your meal,” she said, “I'll be back at once.”

“She's a nice little thing,” Esclavier said to himself. “When I'm released, I must try and send her a little present.”

But it was a
bo-doi
who brought him his meal.

Doctor Nguyen-Van-Tach had called a meeting of the camp vigilance committee to interrogate Souen. They were eight in number, including three women, and the meeting was held in a hut with an armed guard outside the door.

Souen faced them, standing bareheaded and stiffly to attention.

The
bo-doi
who had caught her out delivered his evidence.

Yes, he had seen Comrade Souen pressed amorously against the prisoner; yes, she had certainly stroked his face. Did he think sexual intercourse had previously taken place between them? No, he did not think so. Comrade Souen had her uniform jacket buttoned up and the prisoner just had his arm round her shoulder.

The head nurse rose to her feet.

“Can you state, Comrade Souen, that you have never had the slightest sexual intercourse with the prisoner Esclavier?”

“Yes, I can.”

“Yet because of him you stole a phial of emetine?”

“Yes.”

“Were you . . .” she hesitated before uttering the horrible, obscene word “. . . in love with him?”

“Yes.”

Doctor Nguyen broke in. Once again he was anxious to save the little fool and tried to help her.

“This prisoner, who is classified as a dangerous type, tried to take advantage of you in a moment of weakness, was that it?”

“No. He doesn't come into it, he doesn't even know I love him. I was the one who leant over him, I was the one who caressed him, just as the
bo-doi
told you.”

The head nurse broke in again in her icy, insinuating, knowing voice:

“Comrade Souen, think carefully now before answering. Would your waywardness have led you to commit the sexual act with the prisoner?”

Souen dropped her deferential attitude towards this dried-up, hypocritical, ignoble old woman who had always hated her:

“Yes, comrade, I would have done it. I would have lain down beside him and since I am young and pretty he would have made love to me.”

“And for that infamous physical contact which is punishable by death . . .”

“It's not an infamous contact, it's love.”

“For this infamous contact you were prepared to betray the confidence of your people, and of the Party and the army . . .”

“I wouldn't have betrayed anyone. I love this man; I'm only happy when I'm by his side. If you gave me my freedom I would go back to him. I don't know what's happened, but apart from him nothing else exists . . .”

“Do you repent?” the director asked.

“Repent?”

She looked absolutely amazed.

“But how can a woman repent of being in love?”

Nguyen could do nothing more for her. To have interceded again would have appeared suspicious. He made a proposal that Souen should be expelled from the Party forthwith and sent to a re-education camp for an indefinite period of time. This was tantamount to a death-sentence. No one, man or woman, white or Vietnamese, had ever returned from those forced labour camps. Souen knew this. It was one of those things that were discussed in undertones in the divisions.

The proposal was accepted by the majority. The members of the committee withdrew and for a moment Doctor Tach was left alone with Souen.

“I wanted to help you,” he told her, “and avoid such a severe measure being taken against you. But if you mend your ways, in a few months you may be reprieved.”

“Doctor Tach, I'd like to see him just once more. He must be asleep now, he won't even notice. Just once more . . .”

“No, that's absolutely out of the question.”

“It was nothing to do with him; he mustn't be punished. Promise me you won't take any action against him.”

“We shall hold a court of inquiry . . .”

“Promise me, Doctor Tach. I was very fond of you; you're the only one I was fond of in the whole of this camp.”

“I promise.”

Souen seized his hand and kissed it before he had time to snatch it back. Two sentries came and marched her off.

Nguyen-Van-Tach went on sitting with his head between his hands, trying to sort the matter out in his mind. Souen had made the ancient womanly gesture of submission; she no longer behaved like a Vietminh girl; she had recovered her allure and her beauty. He himself had been aware of her attraction. All this, because she had fallen in love.

It would be difficult to establish Communism completely as long as men and women still existed, with their instincts and their passions, their beauty and their youth. In the old days the Chinese used to bind their women's feet to make them smaller; that was the fashion; it must have had some religious or erotic significance. Now, in the name of Communism, they bound the whole human frame, they frustrated and distorted it.

That also might be nothing but a fashion. Souen had discovered love and kicked everything else overboard, recovering at the same time her freedom of action and speech. A fashion! To kill thousands of creatures in the name of a fashion! To disrupt their lives and habits until one day someone would speak up and declare that Communism was out of fashion!

Nguyen had some difficulty in dismissing these unwelcome thoughts from his mind. He had his job to do as a doctor. He was a good doctor, Dia had said so. He loved his country; even as a child he had dreamt of its independence. That was something positive. That wasn't just a fashion.

 • • • 

On the following day Dia, accompanied by Lescure, came and fetched Esclavier. They helped him to walk to their hut and settled him in.

Dia did not come back until after dark and was a little tipsy when he arrived. He had got hold of a bottle of
choum
, a crude rice spirit produced by the Mans who lived below the hospital, for which he had bartered a few tablets of quinine.

“We must drink,” he said, “. . . all three of us . . . Because a little light has gone out in the camp. Drink up, Esclavier, it's because of you, though it's not your fault. Drink up, Lescure, my lad, and play us that flute you made. Play what went on in your head when your little cousin laughed at you because you were in love with her. And I'll sing—I, Dia, the Negro, with all my university degrees. I'll sing like a man of my people to exorcize the evil fetish, the curse that lies on us, because the little light has been snuffed out.”

“Dia, what are you talking about?” Esclavier inquired.

“Little Souen—they've sent her to a concentration camp because she was in love with a handsome
tou-bi
. For his sake she had stolen a phial of emetine. A
bo-doi
caught her kissing him and denounced her. But she was so proud of her love that she refused to repent and spat in their faces like an angry cat.”

“Dia, I didn't even notice it!”

“Of course not! Drink up, Esclavier. Doctor Tach told me you won't get into trouble. That was her last request before being marched off by the
bo-dois
: that you should be spared. Nguyen would also like to get drunk tonight. But he can't. He daren't admit it even to himself, but he was also in love with Souen. Love is catching, it might have spread through the hospital, then the camp, then the whole Vietminh. So quick, out with that little light!

“When I was a little bush nigger, a bearded missionary came and took me by the hand. He was called Father Teissèdre. I served Mass for him; he taught me to read and write. Then, as he loved the jungle, our customs, our songs, our secrets, he used to come with me and visit the sorcerers and witch-doctors, those who slay the Prince of the Dance with a golden arrow every seven years and those who fasten iron talons to their hands to play at panther-men.