The Centurions (4 page)

As he puffed at his cigarette he uttered a few words, and a
bo-doi
with the supple and sinuous backbone of a “boy” bent over Glatigny:

“The battaliong commangder asks you where is French major commangding strong-point.”

Glatigny's reaction was that of a regular officer; he could not believe that this
nha-que
squatting on his haunches and smoking foul tobacco was, like him, a battalion commander with the same rank and the same responsibilities as his own. He pointed at him:

“Is that your C.O.?”

“That's him,” said the Viet, bowing respectfully in the direction of the Vietminh officer.

Glatigny thought that his “opposite number” looked like a peasant from Haute Corrèze, one of whose female ancestors had been raped by a henchman of Attila's. His face was neither cruel nor intelligent but rather sly, patient and attentive. He fancied he saw the
nha-que
smile and the two narrow slits of his eyes screw up with pleasure.

So this was one of the officers of
308
Division, the best unit in the whole People's Army; it was this peasant from the paddy-fields who had beaten him, Glatigny, the descendant of one of the great military dynasties of the West, for whom war was a profession and the only purpose in life.

The
nha-que
emitted three words with a puff of stinking smoke and the interpreter went over to question the Vietnamese paratroopers. Only one of them answered, the sergeant, and with a jerk of his chin he indicated the captain.

“You are Captain Klatigny, commangding Third Parachute Company, but where is major commangding strong-point?”

Glatigny now felt it was stupid to have tried to pass himself off as an O.R. He replied:

“I was in command of the strong-point. There was no major and I was the senior captain.”

He looked at the
nha-que
whose eyes kept blinking but whose expression remained inscrutable. They had fought against each other on equal terms; their heavy mortars were just as effective as the French artillery and the air force had never been able to operate over Marianne II.

Of this fierce hand-to-hand fighting, of this position which had changed hands twenty times over, of this struggle to the death, of all these acts of heroism, of this last French attack in which forty men had swept the Vietminh battalion off the summit and had driven them out of the trenches they had won, there remained no sign on this inscrutable face which betrayed neither respect nor interest nor even hatred.

The days when the victorious side presented arms to the vanquished garrison that had fought bravely were over. There was no room left for military chivalry or what remained of it. In the deadly world of Communism the vanquished was a culprit and was reduced to the position of a man condemned by common law.

Up to April
1945
the principles of caste were still in force. Second-Lieutenant Glatigny was then in command of a platoon outside Karlsruhe. He had taken a German major prisoner and brought him back to his squadron commander, de V——, who was also his cousin and belonged to the same military race of squires who were in turn highway robbers, crusaders, constables of the king, marshals of the empire, and generals of the republic.

The squadron commander had established his H.Q. in a forester's cottage. He had come out to greet his prisoner. They had saluted and introduced themselves; the major likewise bore a great name in the Wehrmacht and had fought gallantly.

Glatigny had been struck by the close resemblance between these two men: the same piercing eyes set deep in their sockets, the same elegant formality of manner, the same thin lips and prominent beaky nose.

He did not realize that he himself also resembled them.

It was very early in the morning. Major de V—— invited Glatigny and his prisoner to have breakfast with him.

The German and the Frenchman, completely at ease since they found themselves among people of their own caste, discussed the various places where they might have fought against each other since
1939
. To them it was of little consequence that one was the victor and the other the vanquished provided they had observed the rules and had fought bravely. They had a feeling of respect for each other and, what is more, a feeling of friendship.

De V—— had the major driven to the P.O.W. camp in his own Jeep and, before taking leave of him, shook him by the hand. So did Glatigny.

The
nha-que
battalion commander, who had listened to the “boy” interpreter as he translated Glatigny's reply, now gave an order. A
bo-doi
laid down his rifle, came up to the captain and took a long cord of white nylon out of his pocket: a parachute rigging-line. He forced his arms behind his back and tied his elbows and wrists together with infinite care.

Glatigny looked closely at the
nha-que
and it seemed to him that his half-closed eyes were like the slits in a visor through which someone far less master of himself was peering out at him. His triumph made him feel almost drunk. He would not be able to control himself much longer. He would have to burst out laughing or else strike him.

But the slits in the visor closed and the
nha-que
spoke softly. The
bo-doi
, who had picked his rifle up again, motioned to the Frenchman to follow him.

For several hours Glatigny trudged along trenches that were thigh-deep in mud, moving against the current of the columns of busy, specialist termites. There were soldier-termites, each with his palm-fibre helmet adorned with the yellow star on a red ground, male or female coolie-termites dressed in black who trotted along under their Vietnamese yokes or Thai panniers. At one stage he passed a column carrying hot rice in baskets.

All these termites looked indistinguishable, and their faces betrayed no expression of any sort, not even one of those primitive feelings that sometimes disrupt the inscrutability of Asiatic features: fear, contentment, hate or anger. Nothing. The same sense of urgency impelled them towards a common but mysterious goal which lay beyond the present fighting. This hive of sexless insects seemed to operate by remote control, as though somewhere in the depths of this enclosed world there was a monstrous queen, a kind of central brain which acted as the collective consciousness of the termites.

Glatigny now felt like one of those explorers invented by science-fiction writers, who suddenly find themselves plunged by some sort of time machine into a monstrous bygone age or a still more ghastly world to come.

He could hardly keep his balance in the mud. The sentry escorting him kept repeating:
“Mau-len
,
mau-len
,
di-di
,
di-di
.
”

He was brought to a halt at an intersection between two communication trenches. The
bo-doi
had a word with the post commander, a young Vietnamese who wore an American webbing belt and carried a Colt.

He looked at the Frenchman with a smile that was almost friendly and asked:

“Do you know Paris?”

Glatigny began to see the end of his nightmare.

“Of course.”

“And the Quartier Latin? I was a law student. I used to feed at Père Louis's in the Rue Descartes and often went to the Capoulade for a drink.”

Glatigny heaved a sigh. The time machine had brought him back to the world of today, next to this young Vietnamese who, at a few years' interval, had haunted the same streets and frequented the same cafés as himself.

“Did Gipsy's in the Rue Cujas exist in your day?” the Vietnamese asked him. “I had some wonderful times there. There was a girl who used to dance there . . . and I felt she was dancing for no one but me.”

The
bo-doi
, who did not understand a word of this conversation, was getting impatient. The student with the Colt lowered his eyes, then in a different, curt and unpleasant tone said to the Frenchman:

“You've got to move on now.”

“Where are they taking me?”

“I don't know.”

“Couldn't you tell the
bo-doi
to loosen my fetters; my fingers are all numb.”

“No, that can't be done.”

Thereupon he turned his back on Glatigny. He had changed back into a termite and went off slithering in the deep mud.

He would never escape from this ant-hill, never again see the Luxembourg Gardens in springtime or the girls with their skirts swirling round their thighs and a handful of books clutched under their arm.

The prisoner and his escort moved on behind Béatrice, the Legion strong-point commanding the north-eastern exit from the Dien-Bien-Phu basin. Béatrice had fallen during the night of
13
–
14
March and the jungle was already beginning to invade the barbed-wire entanglements and shattered shelters.

As they emerged from the trench, a shell burst behind them. A solitary gun was still in action at General de Castries' H.Q. and it was now trained on them.

Without a pause they entered the dense forest covering the mountains. The path climbed in a straight line up the narrow ravine over which the tops of the giant silk-cotton trees formed a thick canopy.

Shelters had been cut out of the slope on either side of the path. Glatigny caught a glimpse of some
120
-calibre mortars drawn up in a neat row. They glistened faintly in the shadows; they were well oiled and, as a technician, he could not help admiring their maintenance. There were some men lounging about in undress uniform at the entrance to the shelters. They looked far taller than the average Vietnamese and each of them wore a medallion of Mao-Tse-Tung on his breast. This was
350
Division, the heavy division which had been trained in China. The Intelligence Department at Saigon had reported its arrival.

There were smiles from the men as the captain went past. Perhaps they were hardly aware of him since he did not belong to their world.

With his hands tied behind his back, Glatigny could not walk properly and waddled from side to side like a penguin. He felt utterly exhausted and sank to the ground.

The
bo-doi
leant over him:

“
Di-di
,
mau-len
, keep going,
titi
.”

His tone of voice was patient, almost encouraging, but he did not lift a finger to help him.

The soldiers outside the shelters were now succeeded by
nha-ques
dressed in black. In a patch of sunlight just above the path sat an old man eating his morning rice. Glatigny had no sense of hunger, thirst, shame or anger; he was not even conscious of his weariness; he felt at the same time extremely old and as though he had just been born. But the heady smell of the rice unleashed an animal reaction in him. He had not eaten for five days and suddenly felt ravenous and cast a greedy eye on the mess-tin.

“Any to spare?” he asked the old man.

The
nha-que
bared his black teeth in a sort of smile and gave a nod. Glatigny turned round to show him his fetters, whereupon the man rolled some rice up into a ball between his earth-stained fingers, carefully detached a sliver of dried fish and popped the lot into his mouth.

But the soldier gave the captain a push and he had to set off again up the increasingly steep path.

The sun emerged out of the morning mist; the forest was silent, dense and dark, like one of those dead calm lakes in the crater of a volcano.

Glatigny now began to understand why Boisfeuras had not tried to escape, why he wanted the “experience.” In his present plight Boisfeuras was the one who kept crossing his mind and not his superiors or his comrades. Like him he wanted to be able to speak Vietnamese, to lean across towards these soldiers and these coolies and ask them various questions:

“Why do you belong to the Vietminh? Are you married? Do you know who the prophet Marx is? Are you happy? What do you hope to get out of it?”

He had recovered his curiosity, he was no longer a prisoner.

Glatigny had reached the top of the hill. Through the trees he could now see the Dien-Bien-Phu basin and, a little to one side, under the eye of a sentry, a small group of figures: the survivors of the strong-point. Boisfeuras was asleep in the ferns; Merle and Pinières were arguing together somewhat heatedly. Pinières was always inclined to be quick-tempered. They called out to him. Boisfeuras woke up and squatted down on his haunches like a
nha-que
.

But the
bo-doi
urged Glatigny on with the butt of his rifle. A short youngish man in a clean uniform stood in front of one of the shelters. He motioned him to come inside. The shelter was comfortable for a change; there was no mud. In the cool shadows, at a child-size table, the officer caught sight of another short young man exactly like the first. He was smoking a cigarette; the packet on the table was almost full. Glatigny longed for a smoke.

“Sit down,” said the young man, speaking in the accent of the French Lycée at Hanoi.

But there was no chair. With his foot Glatigny turned over a heavy American steel helmet which happened to be lying there and sat down on it, making himself as comfortable as he could.

“Your name?”

“Glatigny.”

The young man entered this in a sort of account book.

“Christian name?”

“Jacques.”

“Rank?”

“Captain.”

“Unit?”

“I don't know.”

The Viet laid his ball-point pen down on the table, and took a deep puff at his cigarette. He looked ever so slightly disconcerted.

“President Ho-Chi-Minh” (he pronounced the “ch” soft, as the French do) “has given orders that all combatants and the civilian population should be lenient” (he laid great stress on this word) “towards prisoners of war. Have you been badly treated?”

Glatigny got up and showed him his fettered wrists. The young man raised his eyebrows in surprise and gave a discreet order. The first little man appeared from behind a bivouac of brightly coloured parachute material. He knelt down behind the captain and his nimble fingers undid the complicated knots. All at once the blood rushed back into his paralysed forearms. The pain was unbearable: Glatigny felt like swearing out loud, but the people in front of him were so well behaved that he controlled himself.